right. He just had time to look over there when a sharp explosion cracked through the air. One of the men was blown straight up into the air, his left leg flying off his body. Two other men went down on the other side of him and stayed down, blood vapor rising from their bodies.
Something else thumped down to Callahan's left.
'Grenade!' someone yelled as men tried to scatter away from it. Most made it. One didn't. The shrapnel ripped into his back, dropping him. Two more grenades came down from different positions. The men began to panic now, some of them running back out into the field where they were gunned down.
'They're dropping them out of their firing ports!' Hunter yelled. 'We need to get out of here!'
'There's nowhere to go!' Callahan shouted back, his mind trying to figure a way to deal with this problem.
Some decided to go anyway. Two men rushed around the corner of the pillbox and were immediately blown to pieces by machine gun fire from one of the APCs stationed out there. Three more went running back toward the anti-tank ditch. They were shot down one by one by the Martian riflemen above them about thirty meters out.
More grenades came dropping down. Someone tried to pick one of them up and throw it further out but he didn't do it quickly enough. It exploded in his hand, shredding the entire top of his body.
Callahan felt panic wanting to overtake him and fought it down. He looked out at the three men who had gone running back the way they'd come and suddenly something occurred to him. 'Everyone!' he yelled. 'Move away from the wall about ten meters. We'll still have defilade there! Move out and get down on your bellies!'
The men didn't have to be told twice. They ran out as a group and threw themselves to the ground. This kept them far enough away from the pillbox that the dropped grenades couldn't hurt them but close enough that they still weren't in sight of the gunners up above.
'Christ,' Callahan said, feeling like he was standing on a high wire above a crocodile cage. 'How much longer?'
Just fifteen meters above their heads, the machine guns and the rifles fired on, trying desperately to cut down the numbers of men making it across the open ground. Jeff Creek had changed drums on his heavy machine gun three times now and was over three quarters of the way through the fourth. Out on the open ground the red fog of blood vapor was becoming nearly as thick as the one over the anti-tank ditch. The corpses of marines absolutely littered the battlefield but still they kept coming forward, crawling out of the trench and making the life or death sprint towards the safety of the pillbox shadow.
'There's more of them now,' Drogan said, firing the rest of her magazine empty at a group making their final approach.
'They're reinforcing this position,' Walker said. 'They've probably shifted some of their troops assigned to take down other pillboxes here.'
'Aren't we the lucky ones?' Jeff asked, cutting down yet another group, although six of them managed to escape and make it to safety.
'The tank fire has stopped though,' Drogan said. 'Anyone notice that?'
Jeff actually hadn't noticed that, but now that she mentioned it, it seemed like it had been the better part of five minutes since an eighty or a sixty shell had last exploded against the concrete. 'Out of ammo, you think?'
'Fuckin' aye,' Walker said. 'And there ain't no way to...' He paused, listening to someone on the command channel. 'Fuck me,' he said at last.
'What is it, sarge?'
'We're pulling out of here,' he said. 'Everyone start gathering as much supplies as you can and start heading for the egress points. Creek, you'll be the last to go. Stay on that gun until the rest of us are down.'
'Why are we leaving?' Drogan asked, alarmed. 'I thought this was the last line of defense.'
'There are almost a hundred marines down below now,' Walker said. 'They're gonna move on us at any time.'
'We can fight them off!' Jeff said. 'They'll have to move up those narrow staircases in order to flush us out of here! We can't let this position fall!'
'We'll do what we're ordered,' Walker said. 'And that's that. MPG doctrine is to not allow a position to become enveloped. I'm told this is a standard part of the defense plan. Now hurry the fuck up, people. They want us out of here as quickly as possible.'
The troops inside the pillbox picked up as much as they could carry and made their way down the steps, leaving only Jeff and the three other heavy machine gunners to hold the fort. Jeff continued to mow down all he could shoot and the tanks and APCs guarding the flanks continued to do the same. Even so, the number of marines making it across the open ground grew exponentially with the reduction in fire.
'Creek,' Walker's voice barked in his ear. 'We're down. Get your weapon and get your ass down here too. We're rallying in the ditch just outside the pillbox.'
'Right, sarge,' Jeff said. 'What about the seven millimeter? Do I disable it?'
'Don't worry about it,' Walker said. 'It's mounted to the wall and would take twenty minutes to dismount. The marines won't have any use for it other than to shoot at their own men.'
'Right,' Jeff said, taking his hands off it. He picked up his pack and his M-24 and headed for the stairs. The trip down took him less than two minutes. Once in the access trench he began following it east until he caught up with the rest of the troops that had evacuated the pillbox. They were moving rapidly toward the rear.
'Where the fuck are we going?' Drogan asked.
'There are small trenches lined with sandbags two hundred meters further down. We're going to occupy those and make the marines lives a little more miserable.'
'Move, marines, move!' Callahan ordered less than a minute later. 'They're pulling out of the position.'
His make-shift company — which was staffed with only ten people who had originally been assigned to him — moved back up against the wall of the pillbox and began to edge along it, turning the south corner and heading for the access point.
'Hunter,' he said, talking to his second-in-command, 'keep close to that wall and keep low. The tanks and the APCs shouldn't be able to hit you along that side. Be careful when you get to the east side. The Martians who just left might be in firing positions.'
'Right, Captain,' Hunter replied, passing that order along to the rest of the men.
'And remember,' Callahan said, 'we don't know for sure they evacuated that position. This could be a trap. They could be waiting up there to gun us all down as soon as we enter. And be careful even if they did evacuate. The Martians love to booby-trap things.'
'Yes, sir,' Hunter replied.
He led the men forward, keeping them hugging the wall. They passed around the corner without incident although all of them nervously eyed the Martian tank position located less than one hundred meters away. They could hear the booms as it fired its main gun out at the advancing troops in the open ground, could hear the stuttering of its twenty millimeter gun and its four millimeter commander's gun. It paid them no attention, however. It couldn't fire on them even if it wanted to since it was below their line of sight.
The lead men made it to the southeast corner of the pillbox without incident. As they slipped around this corner, however, intending to drop into the access trench thirty meters away, small arms fire erupted from about two hundred meters east of them. Bullets came flying in, slamming into the concrete wall, dropping several of the men to the ground. Cries of 'Get Down!' began to overlap on the net.
'Move forward! Move forward!' Hunter ordered. 'Get into that trench!'
The men were now well oriented to what to do when under fire. Most of them had hit the ground the moment the fire had come in. They did not return fire. Instead they crawled forward on hands and knees as quickly as they could. Some got hit and dropped where they were. Most made it through and were able to throw themselves inside.
'What's the situation, Hunter?' Callahan asked as the next group of men turned the corner and started crawling forward.
'We're taking fire from a sandbagged position about three hundred meters behind the pillbox,' Hunter replied. 'Looks like company strength at least. They opened up as soon as we exposed ourselves over here.'
'Can you get some covering fire on them?'
'Not from this position,' he answered. 'Not that will do any good anyway. We're both at ground level and they're behind sandbags. The men are moving forward on their bellies. Most are making it into the access
