Last Orders: The War That Came Early (28 page)

Sasha Davidov rubbed his narrow, pointed chin. No, he didn’t look like a Russian. No wonder Jews got it in the neck all the goddamn time. All you had to do was see them to know them for outsiders. “I don’t like to think things work that way,” he said slowly.

“Well, how the fuck else are things gonna work?” Kuchkov asked in honest amazement.

The T-34s came up during the night. They’d been whitewashed, too, to make them harder to spot. Ivan would have been amazed if the Germans didn’t know they were there, though. Their diesel engines belched and farted as if they’d been gobbling beans and cabbage for the past hundred years. When daylight came, the exhaust pipes would throw up black smoke you could see for kilometers. Just being able to see them coming, though, didn’t mean the Nazis could stop them when they did.

At least it wasn’t one of those attacks where everybody linked arms and charged the Germans yelling
Urra!
Machine guns did horrible things to attacks like that. Sometimes even Russians broke before they got to their target. Sometimes, though, the men the MG-34s and MG-42s didn’t slaughter jumped down into the Fritzes’ foxholes and cleared the bitches out.

Here, the Red Army soldiers trotted through the misty dawn by ones and twos and in small groups. Yes, the T-34s spewed smoke through the mist. Yes, loping along behind them meant breathing all that smelly crap. Ivan didn’t care, even if he coughed. For one thing, he’d had his hundred grams of vodka, so he didn’t care about much of anything. For another, attacking with tanks beat the hell out of going in without them. They smashed things for you. And they drew fire that would be aimed at
your
miserable ass without them.

The Germans had sown mines in front of their positions. Signs with a skull and crossbones and the warning
ACHTUNG! MINEN!
made sure that was no secret. Kuchkov couldn’t have read the words even in Russian. He knew what they meant, though. They meant trouble, to say nothing of danger.

Either the tank commanders didn’t see the signs or they didn’t give a piss. Maybe they thought only antipersonnel mines lay under the snow, and they didn’t need to worry. They found out they were wrong when something went
ba-blam!
under the lead T-34. The tank slewed sideways and stopped, its left track blown off the road wheels. The crew bailed out on the side away from the Fritzes and huddled behind the crippled machine.

Ivan passed them with a certain sour sympathy. Pretty soon, some officer or NKVD man would see them and decide they could best serve the Soviet Union as infantrymen for a while. If they lived, maybe they’d get another tank. Or they might not. Nobody’d tried to put Ivan in another bomber after he bailed out of his burning SB-2.

A foot soldier tripped a different kind of mine. With a small boom, it kicked a package of shrapnel balls and more explosives up to about waist high. Then the package blew up in midair. The shrapnel balls tore the Russian almost in half. They didn’t kill him right away anyhow. He lay in the snow, thrashing and bleeding and screaming, till
someone running by shot him to shut him up. Ivan nodded. That guy was doing the poor mutilated fucker a favor.

Trust the Fritzes to come up with a mine made to blow off your dick and your balls. Ivan wanted to cup his hands in front of his crotch as he ran through the minefield. It wouldn’t help, but he wanted to do it anyhow.

One of Hitler’s saws started spitting out death. The MG-42’s muzzle flashes came so close together, they made almost a continuous tongue of flame. Kuchkov threw himself down on his belly in the snow and crawled forward from then on out. Even so, some of the rounds cracked past just over his back.

A T-34 halted. Its cannon swung to bear on the machine-gun position. The Germans fired everything they had at it. Bullets sparked off its armor plating. But they didn’t seem to have any antitank guns in the neighborhood. The T-34’s gun boomed. The German machine gun fell silent.

“Urra!”
the Red Army men yelled. Some of the ones who’d flattened out like Ivan got up and started running again.

“No, you stupid fucking dingleberries!” he screamed.

Too late. The MG-42 came back to malevolent life. Half a dozen Russian soldiers fell in the blink of an eye. The T-34 fired again, and then once more. The Nazis’ machine gun stayed quiet after that. Kuchkov kept crawling just the same.

By the time the Russians got to the German forward trenches, the Fritzes had pulled out of them. A dead man stared blindly up at the sky. Snowflakes grizzled the dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. Ivan fumbled through his belt pouches for food and tobacco. The Hitlerite had a nice flint-and-steel cigarette lighter. Kuchkov stuck it in a pocket of his snow smock.

“Come on! Chase them harder!” Lieutenant Obolensky yelled.

The men obeyed … to a point. If the Germans were pulling back on their own, a sensible Red Army soldier didn’t want to stick his neck out too far. Like a careless turtle, he might lose his head. Yes, the Nazis could wind up in a stronger position that would have to get cleared out next week. But next week lay a million years away, and it could damn well take care of itself.

The
Block Island
’s launch put-putted toward Tern Island. A strong swell was running down from the north. Pete McGill had always had a pretty strong stomach. He’d been seasick a couple of times, but only a couple. Now, gulping, he wondered whether this would make one more.

Another Marine from the escort carrier leaned over the gunwale and noisily fed the fish. That did nothing to calm Pete’s queasy insides. “Take it easy, boys,” said the potbellied CPO at the rudder. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.” His cheeks were still bright pink. By the way he looked and sounded, he would have been happy as a clam if King Neptune and Davy Jones started playing ping-pong with the launch.

A stubby pier stuck out from the end of the runway the Seabees had built on Tern Island. The launch put in alongside it. Sailors helped the leathernecks scramble out of the launch and up onto the planking. The Marine who’d puked got down on his hands and knees and kissed the creosoted wood. Pete didn’t go that far, but he knew how the poor guy felt.

At the end of the runway, a flock of C-47s crouched under camouflage
netting. More Gooney Birds circled overhead. They’d land for refueling as soon as the first bunch took off. More Marines would file into them. Then they’d get airborne again, too.

Pete ducked his head as he climbed into the plane to which a sailor with a clipboard beckoned him. He took his seat with his back against the C-47’s aluminum skin. He’d be fifth in the drop order.
Good
, he thought.
Not long to wait once the jumping starts. Not long to think about anything
.

Not long once the jumping started. But Tern Island was still two or three hours away from Midway. Till the jump light started going green, he’d have plenty of time to brood about this, that, and the other thing. He figured he’d come up with more ways for this operation to get fubar’d than the Japs ever could.

A scraping noise. A leatherneck across from Pete twitched. “What’s that?” He’d already started brooding.

“That’s your crabs playing hopscotch,” Pete said. The other Marine gave him the finger. Chuckling, Pete went on, “Nah, that’s just the netting coming off. They’ll fire up the motors soon—you wait.”

They did. First the starboard engine roared itself awake, then the port. The thunderous roar filled Pete from the soles of his boots to his helmet pressing against his hair. It seemed to come from inside as much as from without. If you had a loose filling or something, that roar would shake it right out of your tooth.

Before long, the C-47 taxied down the new runway. It bumped a few times, but what did you want—egg in your beer? One last bump and it was airborne. More noises from below meant the landing gear was retracting up into the wings. Pete unslung his rifle and cleaned it.
No jams today
, he thought.
Better not be
.

He wondered if they would have done better to take off in the middle of the night, so they got to Midway around daybreak. He shrugged. He was only a sergeant. He didn’t make choices like that. Hell, he didn’t even get asked about choices like that. They told him to get into the airplane, jump out of it, and start killing Japs as soon as he hit the ground.

He’d do it, too. All he wanted was to kill as many Japs as he could before they killed him. He figured they would, sooner or later. He just
wanted it to be later. He was still paying them back for Vera, killed in Shanghai before the USA and Japan were even officially at war. He was paying them back for his own smashed shoulder and leg, too, but those were details.

The Marine next to him pulled his canteen from its pouch and took a swig. Then he offered it to Pete. The way he’d drunk told Pete it probably didn’t hold water. He took his own cautious swallow. Sure as hell, that was vodka or raw corn or torpedo juice or something else that would pour clear and look harmless but would get you crocked in nothing flat.

“Thanks, man,” he said as he gave back the canteen.

“Sure. All part of room service, y’know?” The other leatherneck grinned.

“Yeah, well, I wish I was in a room in some crib on Hotel Street with somebody prettier’n you,” Pete answered.

“This ain’t exactly the Ritz, is it?” the other Marine said.

“Only compared to where we’re going,” Pete said. That held enough truth to have sobered them if they’d drunk a lot more than the small knocks they’d poured down.

Somebody sitting up near the front bulkhead liberated a harmonica from a pocket and started blowing on it. A civilian DC-3 would have had enough soundproofing to let Pete listen to whatever he was trying to play. A military C-47 didn’t bother with such frills, except maybe in the cockpit. Anybody back here was strictly cargo. Pete wasn’t going to complain. If he had to choose between engine noise and harmonica music, he’d take engine noise any time.

On and on they went. The plan was for high-altitude bombers to plaster Midway before the C-47s got there. That way, the Japs would already be groggy by the time the Marine started falling out of the sky on top of them. It sounded good. Whether it would actually work … Well, they’d all find out pretty damn quick.

After what seemed like either ten minutes or three years, depending, the pilot spoke over the intercom: “Midway comin’ up. Jumpmaster, open the door. Marines, good luck to y’all.” His drawl said he was from somewhere between South Carolina and Mississippi.

Wind howled into the plane when the jumpmaster undogged the
door. Pete got his first look outside since takeoff. The Pacific wasn’t nearly far enough below. He got a glimpse of a real gooney bird—an albatross—gliding along looking for fish.

Then the jumpmaster yelled, “There’s Midway, dead ahead!” He could see it. Pete couldn’t, not from where he was sitting. He just watched the light over the door. Red meant they were still out to sea. When it went green … That was when the picture show started.

Green! The first Marine went out before the jumpmaster could scream at him. Red. Then green again, much sooner that it would have come on a practice run. Another leatherneck out. Red. Green. Another. Everybody slid toward the door at each jump. Red. Green. Red.

Green. Pete stepped forward and stepped out. Sand and scraggly grass not far below. A bullet snarled past him. Not all the slanties were dead or stunned, then, dammit.
Wham!
The chute opened. Down he went. He was a sitting duck, but he wouldn’t hang up here for long. That was why the C-47s came in so low.

His boots thumped on the sand. He cut himself out of the parachute—no saving for a rainy day now. He just missed cutting off the top of his left thumb as he slashed through the tough webbing. He was looking around for his fellow paratroops when there was a tremendous explosion overhead. One of the Gooney Birds had taken a direct hit from a flak gun. It tumbled out of the sky in burning chunks. He hoped the Marines had already got out, but he had no way of knowing.

He had to worry about staying alive himself. Midway was full of broad, shallow bomb craters—the sand didn’t lend itself to deep ones. Marines sheltered in some of them. Others held Japs. The small-caliber Arisakas they carried sounded different from the Marines’ Springfields. The Japs didn’t seem to have any Tommy guns, though a couple of Nambu machine guns and their pale blue tracers added to the chaos.

There! That bastard was wearing the Japs’ faded khaki. Pete brought his rifle to his shoulder. It bucked as he pulled the trigger. The Jap folded up on himself. Then something tugged at Pete’s sleeve. When he looked down, he saw a bullet had torn his tunic without tearing up his arm. Sometimes you’d rather be lucky than good.

Most of the enemy fire seemed to be coming from the east. That was where the main American base had been. Hirohito’s boys must have taken it over when they seized the island. Now they’d die here.

“Come on!” Pete called, and waved his men forward. Before long, his bayonet had blood on it. All that training he’d done with the damn thing, and here he’d finally used it. But the revenge still didn’t feel like enough.