0850, and I'll see you by the barn.'
'0850. Yes, sir. See you there.' Armstrong scrambled out of the hole and wiggled off toward the men he led. The machine gun opened up on him, but halfheartedly, as if the crew wasn't sure it was really shooting at anything. He dove into another hole, then came out and kept going.
'Password!' That was a U.S. accent.
'Remembrance,' Armstrong said, and then, 'It's me, Squidface.'
'Yeah, I guess it is, Sarge,' the PFC answered. 'Come on. What's up? We goin' after that fuckin' gun?'
'Is the Pope Catholic?' Armstrong said. 'Our guys go to the right, the lieutenant goes to the left, and when we get close whoever sees the chance knocks it out. Will you take point?'
Squidface was little and skinny and nervous-he made a good point man, and a good point man made everybody else likely to live longer. But even the best point man was more likely to get shot than his buddies. He was there to sniff out trouble, sometimes by running into it.
'Yeah, I'll do it.' Squidface didn't sound enthusiastic, but he didn't say no. 'Who you gonna put in behind me?'
'I'll go myself,' Armstrong said. 'Zeb the Hat after me, then the rest of the guys. Or do you have some other setup you like better?'
'No, that oughta work,' Squidface said. 'If anything works, I mean. If the guys at the gun decide to go after us-'
'Yeah, we're screwed in that case,' Armstrong agreed. 'You got plenty of grenades? Need 'em for a job like this.'
'I got 'em,' Squidface said. 'Don't worry about that.'
'Good. We move at 0850.'
Armstrong gathered up the rest of his squad. Nobody was thrilled about going after the machine gun, but nobody hung back, either. At 0850 on the dot, they trotted toward the barn. The rain had got heavier. Armstrong liked that. Not only would it veil them from the gunners, the drum and drip would mask the noise they made splashing through puddles.
Somewhere off to the left, Lieutenant Bassler's men were moving, too. Maybe it'll be easy, Armstrong thought hopefully. Maybe the guys at the gun won't know we're around till we get right on top of them. Maybe-
The gun started hammering. Despite the rain, Armstrong had no trouble seeing the muzzle flashes. They all seemed to be aimed right at him. He yipped and hit the dirt-hit the mud, rather.
Nobody behind him screamed, so he dared hope the burst missed the men he led, too. He peered ahead. He didn't see Squidface on his feet, but nobody with his head on straight would have stayed upright when the machine gun cut loose.
He hoped the platoon commander and his guys were taking advantage of all this. They could be getting close…
Then the hateful gun started up again. This time, it was aimed away from Armstrong and his squad. 'Up!' he shouted. 'Get cracking!' He splashed forward. And there was Squidface, up and running, too. Armstrong breathed a silent sigh of relief. He'd feared he would lope past the point man's corpse.
They'd got within a couple of hundred yards when the machine gun cut off once more. 'Down!' Squidface yelled, and suited action to word.
Armstrong threw himself flat, too. Three seconds later, a bullet snarled through the place where he'd been standing. That made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Somebody behind him yowled like a cat with its tail in a rocking chair-Whitey, he thought. His mouth shaped the word Fuck.
Three or four guys from Lieutenant Bassler's group opened up on the machine-gun crew-they could see the Confederates better than Armstrong and his squad could. Then another machine gun farther back opened up on them.
This time, Armstrong said, 'Fuck,' out loud. He might have known-and Bassler might have known, too-that the Confederates would have one gun covering another. Once the men in green-gray knocked out this one, they would have to stalk the next. And if they didn't take more casualties doing it, God would have doled out a miracle, and He was as niggardly with them as a quartermaster sergeant was with new boots.
As soon as the gun in the barn swung back to Lieutenant Bassler's men, Armstrong and his squad rushed it. They hadn't given themselves away by firing, so the gun farther back didn't know they were around-and the men they were attacking didn't realize how much trouble they were in till too late.
Squidface threw the first grenade. Armstrong's first flew at the same time as the PFC's second. The Confederate machine gunners howled. The gun got off a short burst. This time, two bullets came closer to Armstrong than they had any business doing. Another grenade knocked the machine gun sideways. The soldiers in butternut who could still fight grabbed for their personal weapons. None of them fired a shot. Armstrong's men made sure of that.
'Turn the gun around,' Armstrong said. 'We'll let the assholes at the next position farther back know their turn's coming up.'
None of his men was a regular machine gunner. But if you could use a rifle, you could use a machine gun after a fashion. They'd all practiced with them in basic training. And the C.S. weapon was about as simple to use as a machine gun could be. Squidface aimed the gun while Zeb the Hat gathered fresh belts of ammunition.
'You know,' Squidface said as he squeezed off a burst, 'this goddamn thing has a bipod, too. We could take it off the tripod mount and bring it along with us.'
'Are you volunteering?' Armstrong asked.
'Yeah, I'll do it,' Squidface said. 'Why the hell not? We sure get a lot of extra firepower, and we can probably liberate enough ammo to keep it fed.'
'It's yours, then.' Armstrong was all for extra firepower. If Squidface wanted to carry the machine gun instead of a lighter rifle, that was fine with him.
The Confederates back closer to Covington realized what machine-gun fire coming their way was bound to mean. They returned it. Armstrong flattened out like a nightcrawler under a barrel. The Confederates shot a little high, so nobody got hit.
'Way to go!' Lieutenant Bassler's voice came out of the rain. 'Shall we stalk these next assholes, too?'
A gung-ho lieutenant was good. A lieutenant who got too gung-ho wasn't, because he'd get people killed. 'Sir, I have one man wounded, maybe two,' Armstrong answered. 'Let's round up a mortar team and see if we can drop shit on the bastards instead.'
When Bassler didn't say yes right away, Armstrong got a sinking feeling. The platoon commander was going to tell him no. That machine-gun crew up ahead would be waiting for the U.S. soldiers to come at them-not a chance in hell for surprise. Armstrong didn't want an oak-leaf cluster for his Purple Heart.
But before Lieutenant Bassler could issue what might literally have been a fatal order, a couple of Confederates fired short bursts from their automatic rifles in the direction of the gun Armstrong's squad had just captured. Nobody got hurt, but the U.S. soldiers hit the dirt again. Armstrong jammed an index finger up against the bottom of his nose to kill a sneeze. Wouldn't get a Purple Heart for pneumonia, he thought, but I'd sure as hell end up in the hospital with it.
The extra gunfire convinced Bassler he'd had a bad idea. 'They've got a regular line up there,' he said. 'That gun's not just an outpost, the way this one was. No point slamming our faces into it-a mortar team's probably a better plan. Good thinking, Sergeant.'
'Uh-thank you, sir,' Armstrong answered. When was the last time an officer told him something like that? Had an officer ever told him anything like that? Damned if he could remember.
Squidface winked at him. 'Teacher's pet.'
'Yeah, well, up yours, Charlie,' Armstrong replied. 'You want to charge a machine-gun nest when Featherston's fuckers are waiting for you, go ahead. Don't let me stop you.'
'No, thanks,' Squidface said. 'Already got my asshole puckered once today. That's plenty. Hell, that's once too many.'
'Twice too many,' Zeb the Hat said. 'Why ain't we twenty miles back of the line, eatin' offa tablecloths an' screwin' nurses?'
''Cause we're lucky,' Armstrong said, which drew a chorus of derisive howls. 'And 'cause no nurse ever born'd
