Hero (25 page)

"What are you saying, Sergeant?"

"You've assigned me to Bet Party, sir. And that isn't going to happen. Sir." He beckoned to a bulky, tired-looking private, almost Dov's height and weight, who was shouldering an autogun.

"Salute the Captain, Sbezzeguti," Matteotti said, shaking his head at the half-hearted response from the soldier. "Back before I got all the stripes, sir, I was a damn good assistant gunner. And you're going to need a damn good assistant gunner on your right flank. Sir."

Ari started to open his mouth to say no, but stopped himself. Why was he tempted to overrule Matteotti? Because he didn't need a good man on his flank, laying down an autogun barrage to close down the western exit from the town and divert attention from the main charge? No. He wanted to overrule him because he didn't want Matteotti see him turn coward when the shooting started. Ari hitched at the box of flares hanging from the left side of his belt. To hell with it.

"You've got it, First." He glanced at his thumbnail—0137—and up at the night sky. "Pass the word down: Aleph Party's moving out."

It's dangerous to leave an outline against a sky, even a night sky, so they crossed the crest of Hill 201 on their bellies and then rose into a crouch as they moved through the tall grasses.

The wind rose from the north, caressing his face, whispering vague threats and imprecations. Spread out on his right, Matteotti, Sbezzeguti, Stuarti and a pair of fireteams from the First Platoon plodded slowly, like men walking toward the gallows. They moved silently, except for the quiet swish of boots in the grass, and the occasional half-grunt as someone came close to stumbling into a shell crater.

The field had been well-chewed by artillery. Whether it was Freiheimer defensive barrages or Casalinguese prep fire didn't matter; it still looked like a wasteland. Five hundred meters out, he signaled for everyone to drop down. The grasses were starting to thin out and the detachment had to make the rest of the way low.

The repeated artillery barrages had left the ground heavily cratered, but the craters made decent cover. They slipped from one shell crater to another, working their way up until they were a little more than a hundred meters from the nearest autogun emplacement.

Almost losing his footing, Ari staggered into a crater, Dov and three Casalinguese following him.

He turned to look at them: Rienzi, and the rest of his fireteam. Ari took off his helmet and ruffled his hair—helmets have sharp outlines—and raised his head over the edge of the crater. Ten meters away, in a giant of a crater, Matteotti and his autogunner had a whole crowd with them, including Lieutenant Stuarti. Ari was wondering if that was a coincidence, if Matteotti didn't have a dual purpose, one he should have picked up. He wanted to be sure that, if things went to hell, Stuarti didn't end up in charge.

Paulo, looks like you and I have something in common.

He closed his eyes and listened. While he couldn't make out the words, off in the distance he could hear voices. Close enough. He pulled the black box out of his pocket and flipped the cover off the button. He rested his thumb on it. The demolition of the Freiheimer comm shack would do fine as a start signal. . . .

But he just couldn't press the button. His thumb wouldn't move.

Again. I'm doing it again.

He beckoned to the First Platoon communicator—a skinny kid, even younger than him, and gestured for the headset. The kid carefully paid out more comm line, and handed Ari the set.

He slipped it on. "F-six," he whispered, trying to force some calmness into his voice. "Give me Big Brother."

Tetsuo was on in a couple of seconds. "I'm here, Ari. You calling about the support barrage?"

His heart was pounding so loudly that he was sure the soldiers in the crater with him would hear it, if not the Freiheimers.

But he couldn't tell him. He couldn't do it.

"Yes," he whispered, trying to get some moisture in his cotton-dry mouth. "Yes. I'm calling about the barrage."

"Do you want me to launch the flare for it?"

Ari just didn't know; he couldn't think. He knew that he was in the wrong place, the wrong person to be doing this. He couldn't press the button; he couldn't answer. He couldn't stay there, he couldn't make the others just stay and wait, but he couldn't go on. He was supposed to set up the line of departure from twenty meters away from the line of Freiheimer autogun emplacements, but here they were fifty meters out and he didn't know if he could do it and with four sets of round eyes looking at him he was freezing. Again.

"Brother," Tetsuo said. "I'm sorry. Here it comes."

From the crest of Hill 201, a signal rocket screamed into the night and exploded overhead in a green shower.

What?
It wasn't the red flare, calling for support fire—it was a green flare, the Freiheimer signal for a defensive barrage.

Around him, three soldiers, their faces white under the camouflage paint, stared wide-eyed at him, their eyes seeking Ari's for some sort of reassurance, some sort of explanation.

He didn't have anything to give them.

"What are you doing?" he shrilled, his thumb coming down on the button, rewarded by a
crump
!
from the town.

"Run for the town, Ari, take the town. It's your only chance. There's a Freiheimer barrage on its way. If you can't find it in you, brother, fake it."

Ari tossed the plastic box aside and tore the headset off as he leaped to his feet.

He wasn't a soldier, he wasn't a commander, he was a fraud. That wasn't just his problem—it was his secret, his solution.

In the green light of the flares, he rose to his feet, the way a real commander would, and shouted, the way a real commander would have.

"Run for the town," he shouted as the bright lines of tracers drew their way through the night, clawing toward him.
"It's our only chance."

He wasn't a soldier, not anymore—they weren't soldiers, they were screaming madmen. And as shells roared down from the sky, a reinforced platoon of screaming madmen sprinted for the town, overrunning the Freiheimer autogun emplacements and sending the survivors running for their lives.

Few could stand against such madmen.

Those who stood, died.

CHAPTER 17

Company C Assault

Caporel Dominic Rienzi:

No shit, there I was, running like a rabbit, with incoming screaming at me. The Boche autogunners must have been too busy jerking each other off or something—by the time the bugger finally opened up, my squad is mebbe thirty, forty meters away, each of us running like we have rockets stuck up our asses, screaming like we was crazy.

We probably was. I know I was.

I
'
m not sure what
I was aiming at—and I don't remember reloading my piece, not until later. Aw, to hell with it—truth to tell, I don't think I
did,
at least not until
I reached the pit. Asshole that
I
am,
I'd probably fired off the first clip, and was running and shouting, not stopping to reload.

Well, come to think of it, it was probably just as well I didn't stop to reload, 'cause then I hear the fart of one mortar, and then another, and then the whole sky lights up with ilium rounds coming from shit knows where, and it's practically daytime. I mean, I could have whipped out a book and fucking
read,
you get the idea?

You know that funny hissing sound wire makes when it gets close to you, the way the wires scream higher, like a trumpeter on a sweet riff, then drops off? Well, I musta lucked out, 'cause the loudest, wildest, jazziest scream cuts off just as something chews through de Sanctis, armor and all, and then rips my right ear off. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, and I wasn't exactly going to ask him—he was too busy drowning in his own blood, you know?

My ear still hurts like a sonofabitch, by the way—yeah, yeah, I mean the ear itself. I know plastic isn't supposed to—well, never mind.

Well, Gambetta's ahead of me, at least in the initial deploy, but I'm the first one in, with what was left of my squad right behind me—six of us.

And it's one-on-one, because there are six of them, and one of the Boche draws the longest mother fucker of a knife I've ever seen—wish my cock were half the size of the damn thing—and jumps me.

I swear to the Virgin I don't remember what happened next, except next thing I remember, I'm sitting on his chest, pounding his face with my rifle butt. I think he was dead by then, but I wouldn't swear to it. I
know
he was dead a few seconds later, but I couldn't stop. I mean, the fucker's face is, like, a bloody
paste,
and I'm still pounding on his brains with my rifle butt.

I had just about figgered out that killing a dead man is stupid when somebody jumps me from behind, and I think I'm cooked, sure as shit, and I scream even louder, but then he, like, shudders, and
he
screams, and lets me go. Then I hear another shot, and I realize that it's
loud.
A lot louder than a rifle. I can't see much because the somebody in front of me shoots something to the side of me, and the muzzle flash burns out my eyes for second.

So I turn, and the captain's—no, not the capitano, the
captain
:
Hanavi—he's standing there, that big motherfucker of a pistol in both hands, and his face is all lit up by the ilium rounds, and the fucker's
smiling.

He's got the first sergeant with him, and the exec, and both of them are just crouching there, looking at him.

He says something like, "I guess a body
will
stop a hollow-point, eh?" and then he mutters something in that Jewtalk of his, and then he tells us all to reload—which we do, and quick.

Now, by this time, not only do we have enough ilium floating in the air to light up a medium-sized country, but there's wire and lead flying around us in all directions. I guess that the Boche are as bad fuckups as our own quartermasters, 'cause one of them's firing off a lead autogun—not wire—that looks like it's all tracers. I think somebody nails him, 'cause it stops traversing, but it doesn't stop firing. Just sends out a solid stream—you know, in one direction? Really kind of pretty.

I coulda stayed and watched it for hours.

Like I say, I wasn't eager to leave—I mean, like, nobody was telling me to leave, you know? He doesn't do that. Giving an order would be too fucking easy for him—yeah, him: Captain Hanavi.

He says, "We're not doing any good here, friends and cousins," and then he stands up and then I see him—I see him pull a grenade and toss it into the autogun's ammo box as he jumps over the sandbag wall.

I can tell you that Enzo and Anna Rienzi's baby boy was
out
of there.

Just as well, because right after his grenade goes off and the ammo box blows, something
big
hits the gunpit, blowing it to all hell. I got some sand driven hard into the back of my neck and my ears are still ringing. Yeah, both of them.

"Just as well we left, eh, Rienzi?" he calls out as he runs for the town. The bastard was smiling.

And the first sergeant, too—Matteotti was one step behind him, and he was laughing as he ran, I swear. I mean, first sergeant is a tough bastard, but I never knew he was crazy, too.

The big surprise was Stuarti, the exec. I always thought of him as a lightweight, but he starts laughing, too, says something like, "Hey, a guy could get killed out here," and the three of them are laughing while they're running into town.

Shit.

No, I don't know anything about what happened later. But you can't get every sniper, you know. I heard they were still picking a few out three days later, when the company was on R&R, and I was up spending half my time and money in the bar and the rest in the whores.

Nah. I don't know nothing. No, maybe I do know two things. First is that we took that town with only eleven KIA, when I thought we all were walking dead.

The other thing I know is that the captain, he may be a crazy mother fucker, but if the crazy bastard ever wants a ride on
my
mother I'll hold her ankles, you hear me?

Soldato Scelto Aldo Cartage:

I very much hate crossing streets. You've got at least ten, fifteen meters with no cover, and everybody and his mate shooting at you. Or maybe there's nobody shooting at you until just before you reach the other side. I wish I was a better shot; I could have qualified to be a sniper instead of a sniper's target. Being a line infantryman is just pasting a big set of crosshairs on you.

It was toward dawn. We had a sniper in a big building, you know, the alley near J Street? It must have been an office building or something, back before the war. When we finally got inside, the fourth floor was filled with desks, maybe two hundred of them. I'm a country boy—my family are farmers along the southern branch of the Baby Dora—and I've never seen anything like it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

There was this big building across the street, and we couldn't spot the sniper in it, see—although we pretty much knew he was on the fourth floor. There'd been two squads that had tried to rush it, one by one, and some of them had made it.

We were pinned down behind a dumpster, over near the loading dock. We very much had to get across the street . . . do something.

Now, we were hiding in the loading dock of a building that had been pretty badly chewed up. It was the alley, am I right? My sergente hadn't even gotten into the street when he got himself shot—and nailed good. Bullet went in his mouth and out his kidney. He'd forgotten that snipers use holes in the wall as aiming points; he'd been too busy moving us along to pay attention. You can get killed easy enough when you are paying attention; it's kind of silly to forget shit like that.

We'd dragged the body back in, but you know how it is. You can't do anything for the dead, and I was more worried about the living. Every time somebody made a run for it, this sniper in the building opened up, or when he missed, then what's got to be at least three, fireteams in the building we're next to shoot at us.

Then
he
showed up. The captain, I mean, and he's got the first sergente and the exec with him, along with that bodyguard of his, the one with the name like a bird in Basic. Yeah, Dove. Him. He doesn't look like a bird to me.