Their ditch blazed with each pop of an intercepting missile, boom of an exploding fuel tank, and roar of a vehicle crashing to earth with tanks filled with jet fuel and pylons festooned with explosives. They tried to continue their desperate flight, but the air battle rose steadily in intensity for several minutes. Stephie looked over her shoulder to see that Becky, who appeared unwounded, had collapsed in a fetal curl on a small sandbar at the concrete edge of their escape route.
John stooped and said something softly, soothingly into Becky’s ear that Stephie couldn’t hear. Stephie — with her shoulders hunched against the raining fireworks — slung her rifle, squatted beside Becky, and loosed a growl as she used her legs to lift the surprised girl to her feet. Stephie pointed down the ditch toward the others, who waited. Stephie also put her lips close to Becky’s ear.
“Get-going-down-that-goddamn-ditch-right-fucking-now-or-I’ll-kill-you!” Stephie shouted.
Becky took off running.
Stephie’s chin quivered just short of tears. John was staring at her. “What’s wrong with you?” Stephie snapped angrily, and took off.
Only twenty-six of the fifty-nine men and women fielded by Third Platoon that morning were present for muster that night. By sunup, Lieutenant Ackerman had collected a few more stragglers. As if more people would miraculously appear if he counted one more time, Ackerman had another roll call. The human inventory was taken in a small park amid colorful preschool swing sets against the steady crackle of a still raging battle. Stephie sat with her back to a tree getting treated by a medic for the burn on her calf and scraped knees.
When finished with those present — now thirty-one in number — Ackerman read the roll of the missing in a croaking voice.
“Aguillar?” he called out. “Dead,” came the reply. “You sure about that?” Ackerman challenged. The hollow-eyed soldier from third squad replied in anger, “Po-sitive.” And so it went. “Sergeant Collins?” Ackerman asked in the “Cs.” “Dead,” Stephie replied. By then, Ackerman had quit asking for confirmatory details. He only wrote “Missing” if no one replied to a name, like “Higgins,” whose entire Second Squad was lost to a man.
Animal answered for Massera. “Dead,” he said simply.
Stephie said, “He was still alive when we had to pull back.”
A bitter Animal replied, “He took shrapnel in the small of his back under his vest. I stuck my fingers up inside the hole in his back. His backbone was in two pieces, and his guts were spilling out into that muddy water. He couldn’t move his legs, and…”
“All right!” Ackerman interrupted. He made his official notation.
When Ackerman got to Private Sanders, Stephie’s former fire-teammate, the answer was more complex. “Well…,” she began. Everyone waited on her to continue. Stephie thought back to the shower of Chinese grenades. Sanders had lost an arm at the shoulder and a leg at the knee, but still crawled through the rapidly burning house. The explosions and conflagration had completely consumed the structure. “Dead,” she finally replied in a voice similarly devoid of life. “Peter Scott?” was the next man up. “He’s dead, too,” Stephie answered with absolute certainty.
Somebody finally asked about Staff Sergeant Kurth. “He’s dead,” Ackerman answered. “Damn,” somebody else said. “I didn’t think they could kill that motherfucker.”
Stephie’s original squad of nine men and women was now down to three — Stephie, John, and Corporal Johnson, the new squad leader — to whom Animal and a griping Becky were attached. “I’m platoon commo!” Becky argued. Ackerman didn’t even reply. Stephie raised her knees and rested her face, covered by her hands, atop them. John Burns settled onto the ground next to her, his body warm against her side. With her face still covered, Stephie leaned against John until her head was on his shoulder. No one other than John noticed Stephie’s bucking chest or ragged gasps for breath from behind her hands. Half the survivors cried like Stephie. The other half — like John and their platoon leader — stared insensate into space.
“Are you all right?” John whispered.
“I’m fine!” came Stephie’s reply, muffled by the clasp of her two hands. “I’m just fine! Can’t you tell?” Sobbing racked her chest.
John tried to pull her hands away from her face, but she wouldn’t let him. “It’s okay,” he said, “to grieve for your friends, Stephie. It’s okay to feel sad.”
She dropped her hands and shouted, “I’m not sad! I’m angry! I cry when I’m angry, okay?”
The shaken company commander arrived — strangely helmetless — and announced, “Gather your gear. We’re pulling back.”
Atlanta was falling to the Chinese.
The first touch of chill made the night air pleasant. Breathable. The hills weren’t high, but they were high enough for Jim Hart’s .50 caliber sniper rifle. He was a kilometer from his target, but he had a perfect view of the lounging Chinese soldiers through a 120-power, motion-stabilized digital scope. When the monstrous weapon was fired on full auto, the scope gave a usable, steady image atop the rocking and rolling receiver group. At twenty-two pounds, including its sturdy bipod, the automatic rifle was called “light-weight.” But that was only relative to the fifty-round box of five-inch-long, thumb-thick rounds slung beneath the hellish weapon.
Hart had stashed his M-16 at his personal arms cache, which could have supplied a platoon for a month of intense combat. But how long would the war last for Hart? How long could he possibly expect to survive?
Not that he’d done too much fighting. Standing prewar orders were to go to ground for a week and let the initial wave of combat troops pass, which he had done. Security had lessened, as expected, but Hart had spent the last two frustrating days under his infrared reflecting shelter waiting for a rat to come along and take the cheese. He checked the rats again. They were smoking cigarettes at the only service station in the county left with tanks completely full of gasoline.
“Now why wouldn’t they wonder why those tanks were full?” Hart mumbled to himself. His whispered monologues were a luxury he dared allow himself. Even so, he used his vocal cords only a few times a day. The noise discipline — and remaining still and quiet for days on end — were the hard part. He was ready to do the easy part.
But it was, at least, simple operating completely out of contact with higher command. Three years earlier, Hart had deployed into the Sinai Desert. Six times a day — every four hours — he had reported into Washington. He would tape and encrypt a message, “burp” it up to a commercial satellite, and then go back to sleep. The exercise was a royal pain in the ass. For two weeks, he had observed the same highway but had seen absolutely nothing to report.
He might as well have saved his batteries for his last message. “Tanks. Total number unknown. In excess of sixty. Probably Chinese armored division. Heading north.” His orders to exfiltrate had arrived live via satellite. Four hours later, he had sped across the Gulf of Suez in a high-speed, rubber boat. He had traveled light. He wasn’t there to fight. Instead of heavy weapons, he had humped satellite gear and a video camera with a telephoto lens. Its digital pictures had been beamed real-time right to the top. When Hart had returned home he had been told that President Peller, himself, had watched video recordings.