The wounded man’s mouth worked. “Mutti,” he whispered, eyes staring disbelief at the life leaking out between his fingers. “Mutti, hilfe, mutti—”
A three-round burst from Eric’s rifle hammered him back into silence.
Eric looked up, met Sophie’s gaze. She was smiling, but not the usual cocksure urchin grin; a softer expression, almost tremulous. Quickly, she glanced aside.
Well, well, he thought. Then: Oh, not now. Aloud, he murmured, “Thanks; good thing you’ve got steady hands.”
“Ya, ah, c’mon, let’s get up those stairs, hey?” she muttered, leading the way with a smooth steady stride that took her up the board steps noiselessly, even under the heavy load of the backpack radio.
The 15mm had hammered beside his ear; for a moment part of him wondered how much combat it would take to damage his hearing. This was worse than working in a drop-forging plant. His mouth was dry, filled with a thick saliva no swallowing could clear; there was water in his canteen, but no time for it. The rifles of his lochos took up the firing, hammering at the narrow slit window twenty meters away, keeping the Fritz machine gunner from manning his post. The light high-velocity 5mm rounds skittered off in spark trails; heavy 15mm bullets chewed at the stone, tattering it with craters.
“Damn hovels are built like forts!” one of the troopers snarled, as the ammunition drum of his Holbars emptied and automatically ejected. He scrabbled at his belt for the last replacement, slapped the guide lips into the magazine well, and jacked the cocking lever.
“They are forts,” McWhirter grunted. “Sand coons are treacherous. Don’t sleep easy without bunkers and firing slits ’tween them and the neighbors.”
Serfdom was too easy on them, he thought viciously. It was the smells that brought it back—rancid mutton fat and spices, sweaty wool and kohl. You could never trust ragheads—Afghans or Circassians or Turks or whatever; they kept coming back at you. Better to herd them all into their mosque and turn the Ronsons on them. He remembered that, from the Panjir Valley in Afghanistan; reprisals for an ambush by the badmash, the guerillas.
The Draka had found the drivers of the burnt-out trucks with their testicles stuffed into their mouths . . . Ten villages for that; he’d pulled the plunger on the flamer himself. The women had tried to push their children out the slit windows when the roof caught, flaming bundles on hands dissolving into flame as he washed the jet of napalm across them, limestone subliming and burning in the heat. He saw that often, waking and asleep.
One hand snuggled the butt of his Holbars into his shoulder while the other held the pistol grip; he was trying for deflection shots, aiming at the windowframe to bounce rounds inside. Tracer flicked out; he clenched his teeth and tasted sweat running down the taut-trembling muscles of his face. “Kill them all,” he muttered, not conscious of the whisper. Figures writhed in his mind, Germans melting into burning villagers into shadowed figures in robes and turbans with long knives into prisoners sewn into raw pigskins and left in the desert sun. “Kill them all.”
“Sven, short bursts, unless you’ve got a personal ammo store about you,” he added with flat normality. The trooper beside him nodded, turned to look at the noncom, turned back sweating to the sight-picture through the x4 of his assault rifle. It was considerably more reassuring than a human voice coming out of the thing McWhirter’s face had momentarily become. Below them, two paratroopers crawled down in the mud and sheep dung of the alley. One had a smooth oblong box strapped to her back; a hose was connected to the thing she pushed ahead—an object like a thick-barreled weapon with twin grips. Four meters from the window and she was in the dead ground below it, below the angle the gunner could reach without leaning out . . . and in more danger from the supporting fire than the enemy.
“Cease fire!” McWhirter and Eric called, in perfect unison; gave each other gaunt smiles as silence fell for an instant. Then the flamethrower spoke, a silibant roar in the narrow street. Hot orange at the core, flame yellow, bordered by smoke that curled black and filthy, the tongue of burning napalm stretched for the blackened hole. Dropped through it, spattering: most of a flamer’s load was still liquid when it hit the target. And it would burn on contact with air and cling, impossible to quench.
Flame belched back out of the window. A pause, then screams—screams that went on and on. Wreathed in fire, a human figure fell out over the sill to writhe and crackle for an instant, then slump still. A door burst open and two more men ran shrieking into the street, their uniforms and hair burning, the gunner at the 15mm cut them down with a single merciful burst.
Senior Decurion McWhirter turned to curse the waste of ammunition, closed his mouth at her silent glare, shrugged, and followed the rest as they jogged down the lane and waited while the pointman dropped to the ground and peered around the corner.
“Love those Ronsons,” he said using the affectionate cigarette-lighter nickname. “Damn having women in a combat zone anyway,” he grumbled more quietly. “Too fucking sentimental if you ask me.” He grunted again. “Meier, Huff, follow me.”
Sofie stuck out her tongue at his departing back. “Old fart,” she muttered.
The last pocket had fallen around 0600. The water in Eric’s canteen was incredibly sweet; he swilled the first mouthful about, spat it out, drank. His body seemed less to drink than to absorb, leaving him conscious of every vein, down to his toes. He was abruptly aware of his own sweat, itching and stinking; of the black smudges of soot on hands and face, the irritating sting of a minor splinter-wound on his leg. The helmet was a monstrous burden. He shed it, and the clean mountain wind made a benediction through the dense tawny cap of his cropped hair. Suddenly, he felt light, happy, tension fading out of the muscles of neck and shoulders.
“Report to Cohort,” he said. “Phase A complete. Then get me the tetrarchy commanders.” They reported in, routine until the Sapper tetrarch’s.
“Yo?”
“Seems the Fritz were using the place as some sort of supply dump,” Marie Kaine said.
“What did we get?”
“Well, about three thousand board-feet of lumber, for a start. Had a truck rigged to an improvised circular saw—nice piece of work. Then there’s a couple of hundred two-meter lengths of angle-iron, a shitload of barbed wire . . . and some prisoners in a wire pen, most of them in sad shape.” A pause. “Also about a tonne of explosives.”
“Loki on a jumping jack, I’m glad they didn’t remember to blow that bundle of Father Christmas’ store.”
“Exactly: it’s about half loose stuff and the rest is ammunition—105mm howitzer shells, propellant and bursting charges both. Lots of wire and detonators, too. Must have been planning some construction through here. And blankets, about a week’s worth of rations for a Cohort, medical supplies . . . ”
Eric turned to the south, studying the valley as it narrowed toward the village in which he stood. It was a great, steep-sided funnel, whose densely wooded slopes crowded closer and closer to the single road. His mind was turning over smoothly, almost with delight. His hand bore down on the send button.
“Is McWhirter with you? Look, Marie, see you in front of the mosque in ten. Tell McWhirter to meet us there, with the old raghead; he’ll know who I mean. Tell him absolutely no damage. Tetrarchy commanders’ conference, main square, ten minutes. Oh, and throw some supplies into that holding cage.” He looked up to see Sofie regarding him quizzically.