Once an Eagle (96 page)

Colonel Krisler was staring at Damon, his head close to the Assistant Division Commander's. “We stuck with the lease?”

“Looks like it.”

The tanks were nearer. There were four that Brand could see now, coming through the grass, beetling up and down in the rubbish heap of underbrush and cascao, their guns wavering like antennae.

“—we've got to do it the hard way,” Krisler shouted. “All I've got are rifle grenades, Sam. Thirties won't stop the bastards …”

Damon had seized him by the arm. “Hang on here, Benjy. There's no place to go—”

“Do tell.”

“I'll get you something. I will!” The General waved to Brand and Chase and they left the pit in a rush, jogging in and out of holes, crashing through the dense growth, the open spaces. Tracers passed over their heads; then they were over a rise and the jungle lightened toward the bay. Shells were falling in the shallow water inside the reef. Brand, hurrying after the General, felt an almost tearful relief at being out of sight of the tanks.

The beach was a maze of wreckage and confusion. There were no tanks ashore, or none that Brand could see. Two amphtracks lay out among the concrete obstacles, half submerged, LCVPs bobbed far out or drifted idly with the current; men were frantically passing ammunition cases and ration boxes from hand to hand. Off to their right, away from the ridge, men were still wading ashore, their rifles held high. Immersed to their thighs they seemed motionless, trapped in the oily water; then all at once they reached the shallows and broke into a nervous run, scampering up the beach toward the palms. Everywhere men were digging in, gesticulating, straining under loads—an incessant, haphazard parade of desperation and stealth under the shells, which flung up plumes of white water or black bile.

“MacRae,” Damon was saying calmly. “Keep your eyes peeled for him …”

Lieutenant Chase said, “Right, General,” and Brand nodded dumbly, threading his way through a swarm of shell craters, crouching or frantically working figures, smashed crates, twisted sheets of corrugated tin, logs, crushed water cans, abandoned packs and rifles and the frayed stumps of trees. How were they going to find anybody in this—let alone the Beachmaster? A corpsman was bent over a massive, torn body: the big knife moved once, twice, jerkily and came away running red. Brand turned away his eyes. Two planes swept in toward the cliff, their engines howling; their rockets sent cloudy, smoking fingers against the cliff face, which erupted in fountains of smoke and flame. Three wounded lay in a row, one man with an arm across his eyes. Beside him a bottle of plasma hung from a rifle butt, its tube gently swaying. The thin, burdensome shriek swept near and Brand threw himself into a hole, felt the concussion slam against his body. His head, his eyes and all his teeth ached in one vast throb of sensation. Another shell crashed savagely near, and fragments rained grossly against the cascao. Sendai was bad, the worst he could imagine, but this was terrible—there wasn't any end to it. That lousy
cliff—!

He looked up to see Damon walking swiftly along the edge of the water, and Chase hurrying to catch up with him. Angry with himself, feeling shaky and harassed, he clambered to his feet and ran along the hard sand. The General was talking to a worried-looking young lieutenant with a freckled face who was standing beside a jeep filled with bedding rolls and cases of rations.

“—orders of the chief of staff,” the boy was saying. “Colonel Bowsma. He gave me—”

“I'm taking it,” Damon answered. “Right now.”

The lieutenant looked frightened. “No—you can't—”

“Oh, yes I can. You're on the wrong beach anyway. You should be on Green One.” The General motioned to Brand and Chase. “Come on, boys, climb aboard.”

“No, but I'm not to surrender this vehicle to anybody—”

“I'll give you a receipt, Doc,” Damon shouted at him over the motor. “Ask me tomorrow …”

They were creeping along through the wreckage, moving toward the cliff, which was still raining shells on them in spite of the planes. The young lieutenant was gazing after them, shouting something. Turning back again, Brand spotted a figure he recognized, tapped Damon's shoulder and called, “Down there! MacRae …”

The General stopped the jeep with a lurch and swung out of it. Major MacRae, the Beachmaster, was sitting propped up against an expeditionary can. He was stripped to the waist, streaming sweat, and there were two bloody compresses on his chest and one on his upper arm. He was wearing a bright blue baseball cap, and his great square face was red and angry.

“Mac!” Damon called. “You seen Pulleyne?”

“No. He ashore? I thought he—”

“How about tanks?”

“No got, General.”

“What's for artillery?”

“Nothing yet—at least not before I got hit … No, there were some thirty-sevens, I think a couple of thirty-sevens down by the old pier, before those Zeroes came over. That raid shook everything up …”

“All right.” They went bucking and snorting along, now in the water, now in behind the trees, past an aid station in a shattered pillbox, past stretcher parties hurrying down with their burdens to a waiting amphtrack at the water's edge. The Old Man spun the wheel and they swung around a wrecked Japanese landing barge, dipped into a hole and rocked crazily up out of it. Behind them came a high, snarling hammer, swelling unbearably, and twisting in the back seat Brand saw the plane coming low, hanging fifty feet above them, the kicking pattern of bullets ripping their path down the beach. At the water's edge a soldier was standing, firing at it offhand, the spent shells spinning past his helmet like tiny bright yellow toys—and a heart-beat after that the plane was past them, rolling up and out over the ridge, the orange-red balls on its dun wings looking garish and absurd.

“Bastard,” he muttered. His teeth were chattering. He crouched in the back of the vehicle among the bedding rolls and tentage. “I hope you burn …”

The jeep stopped so sharply he was flung into Chase. Damon was yelling, “Come on, come on,” was already out and running, and he followed closely this time, in a spasm of relief. At the sea's edge, near a smashed LCVP, half-sunk, he saw the rubber wheel, the shiny, slender barrel. Thirty-seven. Lying on its side, the dirty brown water washing against the perforated plate of the shoulder guard.

“Come on, boys. Give me a hand …”

They crouched in the water, straining, rocked the gun upright. Damon worked the firing lever, daubed at the recoil cylinder with his big red pocket handkerchief. “Plenty of oil. Sight mount's okay. Breech block's okay. She'll serve.”

Brand said, “Yeah, but Chief—”

“Don't worry, we're going to demount it.” Reaching down he pulled the trail pin. “All right, come on. We're going to set her on the hood.”

“On the hood of the
jeep—?
”

“That's the pitch. Come on.”

Brand took the barrel, the other two the breech end; they lifted it clear of the mount, carried it laboriously over to the vehicle and manhandled it up on the hood, the folded-down windshield frame. The windshield itself shattered, and the glass slithered around on the metal. The barrel stuck out over the radiator like a wild snout.

Jesus H. Christ, Brand thought. Now I've seen everything. How in hell's he going to see to drive? Chase's expression was a study.

“Come on, come on,” Damon was shouting over the roar of explosions and rifle fire. “Let's get
ammo
—”

They waded into the landing craft, whose deck plates were warped like barrel staves. A body was floating in the water, facedown, hands extended, rocking gently in the waves formed by their movement; close to the body the water was stained rust red. Brand stepped around it and picked up a box with a black stripe through the center that said SHOT, FIXED, AP, M51 WITH TRACER.

“Make sure it's AP,” the General shouted at him, and he nodded. Chase had begun to throw some of the bedrolls out of the back of the jeep and Damon said, “No, forget it—there isn't time! Get in, get in! …”

He already had the vehicle in gear. Brand flung himself into the front seat and grabbed the breech of the gun. Pieces of the glass from the windshield kept sliding down onto the fenders. They were bucking their way back along the beach, Damon hanging far out in order to see around the gun shield.

“Hank!” the General roared. “Break out that ammo!”

Chase pulled out his fighting knife and began to pry at a corner of one of the crates. Brand remembered then and reached back and pulled the ax out of its bracket over the rear wheel.

A hand struck him on the shoulder. “No!” Damon was shouting at him. “Let
him
do that! Not you! Stand up and clear the track for me …”

He pulled himself to his feet, almost fell out of the jeep as it dropped forward into a gully and out of it again, bouncing crazily.
“Make way!”
he roared, waving his carbine back and forth, glaring at the maze of hurrying, laboring figures who ducked out of the way. Faces turned toward them in fear, in fury, in blank amazement: a master sergeant with a luxuriant black mustache pointed at them and roared with laughter.

“Will you dig the fucking tank destroyer—!”

Brand grinned; hanging onto the gun shield for dear life, waving his rifle and roaring, listening to the rending crash of wood as Chase smashed open the ammunition cases, he was taken all at once with a fit of mirth.

“—For Jesus sake,” he hollered at the beach, the howling, astonished faces, the débris, the exploding shells. “For Jesus jumping
sake—!
”

“God damn right …” The General was grinning now, lying almost horizontally, driving with one hand, squinting ahead. “Hank,” he called. “You got'em open?”

“Check!”

“They all AP?”

“Right… ”

“Hank, you ever fired one of these?”

“Christ, I never
saw
one before …”

“I did,” Brand yelled. “At Harper! Thousand-inch range—”

“Good duty.” Damon nodded. “You're first loader. Hank, you're second loader!”

“Check …”

To the right now, slewing on the shattered palm branches, back along the trail, the ammunition carriers and stretcher parties and walking wounded scattering in their path, yelling at them, cursing. The crackle and yammer of fire was a continuous, pulsing roar now. Off to the right again, and up the little hillock, through grass and lacy bushes like overgrown willows that whipped at their faces, stinging. Near them a machine gun team was firing furiously, huddled in a tight knot, their helmets almost touching each other. Someone was waving at them frantically from a hole twenty feet away. The jeep stopped with a jolt that threw him against the gun shield. For an instant Brand could see nothing ahead—then, in the harsh, tricky zebra-patterns of light and shadow under the trees, unbelievably near, a little forest of bushes and fronds stirred, swaying, and below it a caterpillar tread began its slithering, snakelike, rippling motion. All the hilarity went out of him. The tank looked huge and terrible, its deadly pinhead turret gleaming under the shrubs. Bullets sparkled on its shovel-like snout and danced away merrily, and its machine gun dipped down to the left, the bursts indistinguishable in the uproar. It was close, fearfully close, moving faster now. Standing there gripping the top of the gun shield Brand felt naked and utterly alone.
Tank.
But he could only stand there, conscious now of two others off to the left, mesmerized at their ponderous, lumbering malevolence. The lead tank had turned, was moving diagonally across their field of vision. A tiny orange pennant stood out stiffly from a slender, quivering mast. It was inside the CP where they'd been with Colonel Krisler. It was—

“Posts!” Damon sang out; he had come to his feet in a crouch, his hand on the elevating wheel, his eye to the scope. “Posts! AP, right front, zero range, commence firing…”

Zero range, Brand thought. Jesus, I guess so. But moving was better. He swung back on the operating handle with his right hand, and turning on his hips extended his left. Chase slapped the base of the shell into his palm. He slipped it deftly into the breech, pushing it home until the cartridge rim engaged the lips, withdrew his hand and swung the handle back into the latched position and called, “Up!” and reached back with his left for another shell.

The crash of the gun was deafening. He was pinned against the seat; the breech had slammed against his chest and arm. Jesus. Recoil. Unmounted gun. His arm hurt as if it were broken. He felt stunned, powerless.

“Come on!” the General shouted; he was bleeding over one eye. “Let's go, now …”

Brand struggled against the weight of the gun; they wrestled it forward onto the hood, and wedged the top carriage inside the windshield frame. He caught one swift, terrible image over the shield of an angular, mountainous hull, two rows of widely spaced rivets running up to a curious little binnacle lamp, and below it the rectangular towing ring flailing at the leading edge of the iron—then he had crouched and received another shell from Chase and slammed shut the breech, throwing his hands in front of his face. But this time the gun held its position. He heard Chase call,
“Got him!”
—a strangely thin, hilarious shout, and then he lost himself in the rhythm of loading, the shuttered glimpses over the shoulder guard of Damon's face perfectly impassive, his eyes slitted, looking into the sight, feeling now and then the gun move as the Old Man pressed his shoulder against the traversing bar.

“Chief!” Chase shouted. “He's turning! He's—”

The gun crashed. Brand had swung back for another round when there was a series of stunning shocks against the gun shield and a ripping crash of glass and metal. He cringed, reaching back—saw two black holes appear by terrible magic in Chase's fatigue blouse, another in his throat, and blood spurted in thick scarlet jets over his forearms. For a rapt eternity Chase stood there, his eyes fastened on Brand's with terrified accusation—then he sprawled into the tangle of shells and bedding, his face inverted now, mouth wide and gasping and filled with red froth.