The Austrian suspected that the look his NCO had just given him, followed by his statement, was meant to convey the thought that now entered his mind. Hesitating, he waited for Dombrowski to say more. But the big Pole just stared into his eyes. Finally convinced that he had read his companion's meaning correctly, Ingelmann replaced his canteen in its pouch, reached around to his own first-aid pouch, and withdrew the small cerates of morphine. Without a word, he offered them to Dombrowski.
After throwing the stick he had been poking the dirt with, using all his might, the Polish legionnaire reached out and took the morphine, then stood up. "Gather the one good charge we were able to recover and prepare to move out," he ordered. "I must go over to the captain and…"
And what? Dombrowski wondered. Offer up the morphine he held and say good-bye? He turned and began to make his way to Pascal's side. Was there another way? Was there a chance to accomplish their mission and come back to recover their stricken commander?
The Polish legionnaire was still pondering these thoughts and others, when he reached Pascal. Dropping to his knees, he did his best to avoid eye-to-eye contact.
"I take it," the team commander said, "that Corporal Ingelmann's search was unsuccessful."
"Oui, mon capitain," Dombrowski uttered with little enthusiasm. "If Juan did survive the drop, I fear he is hopelessly lost." Pausing, he looked around. "The asteroid has done a marvelous job of rearranging the terrain."
Gazing past his NCO, Pascal saw Ingelmann readjusting his equipment as he prepared to add the one good shaped charge to his load. "You have done all you can here," the French officer announced, knowing that his subordinate was having difficulty stating what was obvious to both of them. "Take the radio," Pascal said as he waved his hand feebly at the set sitting next to him. "The two of you must press on as quickly as possible. If the rest of the countryside is as torn up as it is here, it will take you twice as long to reach the target as I had estimated."
"Oui," the Polish NCO replied weakly as he continued to look around in an effort to avoid facing his commander.
Reaching out, Pascal grasped Dombrowski's arm and gave it a shake. "Stanislaus, you must not concern yourself with my welfare. Your only concern now is the mission. I will manage."
Realizing that there was no easy way to do what he needed to do, the Polish legionnaire looked down at Pascal for the first time. As he struggled to hold back his tears, he stuck out the hand holding the morphine and offered the opiate to his commanding officer and friend.
Slowly a smile crept across the French officer's face. Removing his hand from Dombrowski's arm, he placed it in Dombrowski's hand, which was holding the cerates. "The mission, mon ami," Pascal said as he clasped hands with the Pole. "The mission."
Sensing that he was on the verge of losing it, Dombrowski pulled his hand away, leaving the morphine in the possession of his commander. Standing up, he stepped back, came to attention, and saluted.
With a smile and a nod. Pascal returned Dombrowski s salute. "Now, get going."
Captain Patrick Hogg used a simple formula when it came to spacing halts. When lie got tired, they stopped. Those following him were expected to keep up. Those unable to do so and falling behind were not given any additional time to catch up. They used the break to do that. No one was given any slack for whatever reason. To drive this point home during training, when Hogg saw the last of his stragglers were just about to catch up. he would pick up his personal gear and give the order to move out. This policy was as effective as it was cruel. No one dared fall out of a march led by the Irishman.
The lour men following Hogg at the moment kept an eye on him as he picked his way through the shattered pine forest. Their luck since exiting the C-150 had been rather mixed. While they all had experienced vicious crosswinds and turbulence that surpassed anything they had ever laced before, only one of them had met with a serious problem. That problem had been about as bad as it got. The man's chute had failed to deploy properly. When Sergeant Kenneth McPhcrson found the unfortunate soul, his partially deployed chute was twisted in a bundle next to him. "As best I could tell." McPherson stated when he informed Hogg of his discovery. "Andrews waited too long to open his chute. Either that or he wasn't stable when he did so. Either way. he didn't have a prayer."
To the good, the drop zone that Major Thomas Shields had selected for them was relatively close to their assigned objective. Unfortunately. even this spot of luck had a down side. The blast caused by a chunk of the asteroid had flattened the trees from left to right along their desired line of march. This meant that the pattern of trees blown down created an unending series of obstructions across their path. Every other step they took required each man in Hogg's small team to climb over or straddle a shattered tree. While the initial wave of thermal energy and the force of the blast that followed had stripped away the pine needles, each freshly felled tree sprouted a dense array of bare, spindly branches that presented a unique challenge to the heavily laden soldiers. To compound this problem, some of these barren branches had been snapped by the blast wave or during the fall. This left a series of sharp, stubby protrusions jutting out at all angles, ranging in length from a foot to a few inches. Quickly, the British commandos found that it was the shorter ones that gave them the biggest problem. The most ingenious combat engineer, with unlimited time and resources at his disposal, could not have come up with a better obstacle course.
Despite this, Patrick Hogg drove on toward his objective. His ears were shut to the yelps of pain coming from the commandos who followed as they straddled fallen tree after fallen tree and were, in the process, impaled by snapped branches and splinters. Even when their swearing reached a crescendo, Hogg kept plowing on, increasing his pace rather than slowing it as he tried to put a bit of distance between himself and those behind him. When he finally raised his hand and shouted over his shoulder that they would halt for ten minutes, the members of his team heaved a collective groan.
While the commandos looked around this way and that in order to find a clear patch of ground upon which to settle, Hogg made no effort to check their condition. Rather, he maintained his distance and eased himself down into a squatting position before leaning back until the pack he carried came to rest upon the ground. Once in this reclined state, he stretched out, closed his eyes, and allowed his head to fall back until it came to rest against the top of the pack. Set, Hogg cradled his Heckler & Koch MP 5 submachine gun snuggly in his arms, cleared his mind of all the thoughts that had been swimming about in it, and did his best to concentrate, instead, on his breathing.
This was not at all as pleasant or as easy as it should have been. Dust, ash, and vapors still permeated the air at ground level. The camouflaged cravat that he wore pulled up over his mouth and nose did little to filter out this odious mixture. Still, it was not quite bad enough to resort to his respirator. That would have been a greater hindrance to his breathing than the fetid air was.
As hard as he tried, Patrick Hogg could not simply disengage his brain as one would the clutch in an auto and let it coast along. There was far too much to think about, too much to consider. Even the simple act of breathing brought new issues to mind. The air he took in betrayed a chill he had not noticed before. The unnaturally high temperatures caused by the asteroid's impact and held in place by the freak atmospheric conditions seemed to be giving way to a more normal temperature. That, he thought, would be a problem, particularly with the amount of moisture that seemed to be coating everything. Ice, added to their trials and tribulations with the blown-down trees, would further hinder their already pathetically slow pace.