Once an Eagle (18 page)

Devlin went on: “Poletti got up and ran at the first burst.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I know. I couldn't hold him. He was pretty jumpy, Sam. And it looked an awful long way to that wall. I didn't think myself we'd—” He broke off, said: “That Lujak stopped one in the arm.”

Damon scowled. Down to six effectives now. “Where is he?”

“Lying behind the wall,” Brewster volunteered. “He's not feeling too well.”

Raebyrne cackled. “I imagine he's feeling right dauncy, is Mister Lujak.” He wagged his head in wonder. “Old Sarge! He said he'd do it and he did it. The whole Pee-roossian army! Hot diggerty damn …”

Devlin was saying: “Sam, there's another gun—”

“I know. I took care of it.”

They all fell silent again. Devlin blinked at him. “You mean you got
them
all, too?”

“All but one. They didn't know I was up here. Now, look … ” He took Devlin's arm and drew him over to the east louvers. “You see those sand—”

Except for the four dead, the roof was empty. “Son of a bitch! He's decided to run for it—we can't let that happen. He mustn't get back. Dev, take two men—”

He stopped with a grunt; there he was, under the apple trees, running hard toward the distant patch of woods. He fired almost without aiming: the gunner staggered, stumbled and fell into a little pile of hay beside a tree. Damon put another round into him to make sure, heard Devlin's rifle right beside him; the body jerked with the impact and was still.

“God damn fool,” he muttered. That was bad, a real lapse. He should have kept his eyes on him until they had him tied up—the whole plan could have been jeopardized … He shook his head as if to clear it, turned around again. They were all staring at him; they looked like drunks in the early stages—all eagerness and confusion. Get them going, the inner monitor said crisply. All of them. You're wasting time. You may not have much of it.

“All right,” he said, “now let's get going. We're in here, and we're going to stay here. Dev, go on over and check out that Maxim gun. Set it up facing the other way. Toward the embankment.”

“The other way?”

“Yes. Pile your sandbags at that end and pull out some planks at the gable. I'm going to turn this one around, too.”

“Why, Sam?”

“Just a hunch. I think they're going to run up some reserves. I'll send you Henderson and Schilz as soon as I can. On the double, now.”

“Check.”

“One more thing. Don't fire until I do, no matter what.”

“Right, Sam.”

It was as if someone else were issuing orders—someone with a marvelously clear head, an eye for all contingencies. He sent Raebyrne with Henderson to get Jason and Burgess, he sent Brewster to fill all their canteens from the well in the courtyard, he had Schilz bring up ammunition from the floor below; he himself lifted out a couple of the louvered slats on the north face, and dragged the gun around so it commanded the long field behind them. Raebyrne found some black bread and sausage and a bucket of cold coffee that tasted like burned chestnuts; they bandaged Lujak, who had what appeared to be a flesh wound just above the elbow and who was by now thoroughly cowed; they carried the dead Germans downstairs and covered them all with the tarpaulin. Within twenty minutes Damon was sitting calmly in the tower room with Raebyrne and Brewster, chewing the dense black bread and sweeping the horizon with his new-found field glasses.

“High on the hog,” Raebyrne proclaimed. He had stuck the dead Lieutenant's Luger into the waistband of his trousers and was pouring from hand to hand some of the buttons he'd cut from the officer's tunic. “You know what they say, Sarge.”

“What's that?”

“When times cain't get worse, they got to get better.” He squinted shrewdly at the ceiling. “I knew all along you were making the correct move.”

“You didn't sound very much like it back there in the woods,” Brewster rejoined.

“Well, that's because I need time to come to a decision. I was just weighing the prodes and corns.”

“The what?”

“The prodes and corns. I knew we could do it all the while.”

“Did you,” Damon said. “What took you so long getting up here, by the way?”

Raebyrne made a quick, woeful grimace. “Little bit of bad luck, Sarge. I made it over to the wall in fine form, and saw you duck inside. So I took off through the wall like a catamount in rut—and I got myself hung up on that bantangled wire and down I went, ass over appetite. And when I got up I was like a puppy on a leash, pulling and hauling and not getting anywhere. And finally, just as I was about to give it all up as a bad job, I come loose and went helling on in. Trouble is, it was plumb mass dark after all that direct sunshine, and I couldn't make out thing-one. By the time I found the stairs that grand old fusillade broke out up above. I said, ‘That's old Sarge up there, doing battle,' and away I went. And
boom!
—off went that hand bomb, and smoke and steel shavings all over creation, and back down I went again.” He grinned happily, and licked his lips. “So you can see, Sarge, it was bad luck that turned good. Because if I'd have been just a touch earlier, you'd have had to scratch old Reb. And there'd go your war …” He went off into his high-pitched cackle. “You get the two downstairs on the way by?”

Bent over the Maxim, studying it, Damon shook his head. “No.”

Raebyrne blinked. “But Sarge, one of 'em was bayoneted in the—”

“Shut up, Raebyrne,” the Sergeant said crossly. He had forgotten about the wounded man on the platform. Pumping the cocking handle he felt himself begin to tremble. The other two were silent, and he knew they were watching him. What the hell, he told himself fiercely, I had no choice. One yip out of him and we'd all be dead. But the tremor remained, and he rocked the gun up and down on its elevation bar. There is a price for everything, the thought came to him; a bleak solace. There are no free tickets to any land, and it doesn't matter if—

“Sarge!” Raebyrne hissed from the slits. “Two of 'em—coming this way …”

Two soldiers were coming directly toward them across the field; slender, awkward figures wearing the little round gray fatigue caps with the red piping around the band. Each was carrying two rectangular green metal boxes, just like the boxes on the floor by his foot. They had their rifles slung over their shoulders.

“Ammunition,” he said briefly. “We can use it. Reb, you and Brewster go downstairs and keep out of sight. Let them come in and then cover them. Let them come in. No shooting, now.”

They left. Damon kept moving from side to side, studying the woods, the distant skyline with his glasses. It was hard to say. Maybe he'd guessed wrong. If he had, they were done for, and he had sacrificed ten men to not much purpose. Why was it so quiet? Only a distant muttering, like summer thunder; no rifle fire anywhere. Where had everybody gone? And yet the Germans apparently intended to support these guns …

They came up the stairs, after a few minutes—two rawboned kids, looking ludicrous in the heavy square-toed boots. They were surly with fear. Brewster said something to them in German, and the taller one smiled a quick, frightened smile and bowed.

“What'd you tell him?” Damon demanded.

Brewster looked at him steadily out of his blackened, swollen eyes. “Sarge, I told them they were prisoners of war and would not be harmed.”

He nodded. “Ask them if they are sending reinforcements to these buildings.”

Brewster questioned them for a while without much success. They were Army Service Corps kids, they had just had the surprise of their young lives, and they obviously knew nothing beyond the specific orders they'd been given.

“Tie them up,” he said.

“With what, Sarge?” Raebyrne asked.

“I don't know—find some rope, use your belts—just tie them up,” he said irritably. He felt all at once unutterably tired; there seemed to be no end to this day of stealth and worry and decisions. He watched Raebyrne and Brewster fussing with the prisoners, glanced over at the roof of the other building, where Devlin and Henderson were shifting sandbags. He was weary from carrying the weight of their apathy, their fear, their unfocused resentment.

“
S
ergeant,” Lujak's voice said behind him, tentative and querulous. “Sergeant, we don't have to stay, now.”

“What?”

“Now the machine guns—now the Germans aren't here anymore. We could go back across the field to our lines. You remember, you said—”

He whirled around. “
Will
you shut your mouth!” he said with such vehemence that the wounded man gasped in fright. “I'm running this outfit, and until I'm wounded or killed, what I say goes … ” The thought had been in his own mind, and Lujak's giving voice to it had enraged him. “What the hell's the matter with you—you're acting like a bunch of old women!” Brewster was watching him curiously and he turned away—saw Devlin was crouched behind his gun, signaling him frantically with his hands and pointing toward the north. He raised the glasses.

In the woods out of which they had come an hour before, shadows moved back and forth against the light; he had an impression of animation, a stirring, like a snake's coils in deep foliage. And then all at once there they were—a column of men, marching in perfect order diagonally across their field of vision toward the western patch of forest; their rifles slung, their free arms swinging ponderously. An officer was moving beside them, waving a crumpled piece of paper in one hand. He heard Brewster give a muffled exclamation.

“All right,” he said between his teeth. He felt perfectly calm again, completely in control. “All right.”

“Je-sus, Sarge,” Raebyrne whispered, “there's a hundred crawling thousand of them …!”

“No, there isn't,” he answered calmly, passing his glasses over the nicely aligned ranks, the blank, broad faces. “They're in company strength. That's all.” He went back and crouched behind the Maxim. “All right. Brewster, you're going to be belt feeder. Take it like this, see?—and run it up out of the box.”

“Right.”

“Reb, take Brewster's rifle and stand there—right there. Lujak, here's my Springfield. You will load for Raebyrne.”

“Sergeant, my arm—”

“You've got two of them, haven't you? I said:
you will load for him.
” He settled himself, adjusted the sight slotted in its vertical guides. “All right now, not till I give the word,” he said to Raebyrne. “You will not fire until I give the word.”

They were three hundred and fifty yards away, coming with surprising speed. The ditch that he had used for cover on the east flank of the farm took a sharp turn about a hundred yards or so from where they were sitting, deepened, and ran off toward the northwest. They would have to cross it if they kept on.

“Range three hundred,” Raebyrne said, and released his safety.

“Easy, now.” They were nearer. Their present course, if they held to it, would take them about fifty yards from Devlin's building. Going up to support Brigny-le-Thiep, then. They came on confidently, in silence; some NCO was counting cadence—and gazing at the column, so smart and fresh and vulnerable, Damon felt a sharp twinge of regret. In a few seconds he was going to kill, or try to kill, all of them. Damn fools. They should have sent out a patrol or two. No—someone had reported in:
We hold Brigny Farm,
and so of course they'd never thought to question it. Thank God they had incompetents on their side, too.

“Hell's fire, Sarge, they're going to be eating out of our mess kits …”

“Relax,” he said. “The nearer the better.” Up to a point. He rose and glanced at the roof across the yard. They were crouched behind their sandbag barricade; Devlin was behind the gun, Schilz at the belt, Henderson holding his rifle. While he watched, Devlin slowly turned his head and stared up at the tower; his eyes were shining with tension.

“Range one fifty,” Raebyrne said.

“Sarge—”

“Hang on now.” The officer had paused, was consulting the paper, obviously a map. The sergeant's cadence came sharply across the wheat now. Oh, the God damned fools! A rage mounted in the back of his head, but cold. He threw one last glance back toward the south. Nothing. Where in Christ's name were they all—had the whole lousy AEF vanished off the face of the earth?

They had reached the ditch. The first ranks dipped into it and clambered up the near side, slowly and in poor formation. It was deep, then, and fairly wide. Good. All the better.

“Range a
hundred,
” Raebyrne breathed.

He knew they were all gazing at him now, even Raebyrne. The blood was driving against his temples and throat; his knuckles were white on the grips.

“—Sarge,” Brewster was whispering hoarsely, “Sarge, I can see the fellow's mustache, that fellow—”

As the second detachment went into the ditch he called: “Open fire!” and thumbed the gun.

The sudden hammering roar was deafening. The ranks broke in all directions, the leaders pressing back toward the ditch, others standing in spraddle-legged confusion. He could see their belts, their chin straps, their mouths gaping in black soundless ovals. The officer was frantically waving both arms. The gun jumped and jittered, his forearms trembled with the vibration. He was conscious of the cartridges glittering like a snake's back, vanishing magically into the guide lips, the empty shells raining in bright little bronze jewels against the wall. When he paused he could hear Devlin's gun, and the high whining bark of the Springfields.

Now there were none left standing in the first contingent—only isolated figures that groped and quivered in the wheat. The officer was down, the piece of paper lying on his chest like a dirty white leaf. Damon shifted to the rear detachment, watched them flutter and wilt away. The gun went silent. Brewster was gazing at him in consternation, holding the belt. Stoppage. He yanked at the cocking handle. No luck. He reached in his shirt pocket for the little clawlike tool he'd picked up from one of the dead Germans and jerked out the crushed casing. It ran on.