Jake tried to make love to the earth, thrusting himself as low as he could go. He ate damp moss and felt wet dirt clods pelt against his back.
Charlie shouted, and Jake had no idea how, but he sensed the kid would get up and bolt. Risking dismemberment by flying shrapnel, Jake lunged up and grabbed Charlie’s leg. He dragged the kid down. Charlie sobbed with fear and kicked at him with his free foot. Jake endured the blows on the top of his helmet. Then he surged up Charlie’s body and bear-hugged him.
“Stay down, you fool!” Jake shouted. “You have to wait out an artillery barrage.”
More shells slammed around them, upon the trees and the mossy open glade. The attack was terrorizing, lung busting and full of screaming metal. But the Earth was a big place. So even though artillery was the king of battle, and the great infantry killer, even massed artillery seldom killed everyone in a selected patch of ground.
Twenty minutes after the first shell landed, the GD bombardment stopped.
Jake looked up. Tress had become shredded stumps or ghostly spikes. The glade looked as if giant farmers had plowed it up and dotted it with moonscape craters. Yet now that an eerie silence had descended, other heads poked up, big human gophers with muddy helmets.
The first spoken words came from behind the penal militiamen. It was the amplified shouts of the MDG Sergeants driving them like slave masters.
“Let’s go!” Sergeant Franks roared through his amplifier. “We don’t have all day. Keep heading west. No malingering or you’ll be shot.”
The few medics rushed to help those they could.
Jake dragged himself to his feet. Maybe a quarter of the penal company did likewise. The other three- quarters were dead, dying or too crippled to do anything but scream or stare at the clouds. A medic already pushed a needle into one screaming, middle-aged man with bloody stumps for legs. Those in good shape would have helped, but the sergeants had already drummed into their heads that during a US attack, penal troops kept moving forward no matter what.
Jake and Charlie walked back several yards to collect their main weapon. They hauled an old TOW missile platform with two wheels. Instead of mules, they pulled it. How it had survived the shelling, Jake had no idea. He was the TOW shooter, because he’d actually fired one of these before.
All along the half-destroyed woods, the company advanced toward Hamilton. There were other companies and battalions moving parallel with them on either side and out of sight. They were reinforcements sent to break through the GD encirclement around the Canadians and Americans holding out in the city.
The bulk of the US reinforcements came from two Army Groups. The first 100,000 soldiers came from New York Command, peeled away from the men facing GD Army Group B north of Lake Ontario. Another 100,000 was on its way from New England Command. They had faced GD Army Group C in Quebec. The present advance to contact came from the US Fifth Army, the XXIII Militia Corps, of which they were part.
Corporal Lee pointed in a new direction. He was the only other member of their squad who had survived the bombardment. Lee was a huge Chinese-American. Jake didn’t know what Lee had done wrong to be sent here. Probably it was simply a matter of being the wrong ethnicity. The Chinese had invaded America, and it seemed to have made most Chinese-Americans suspect by the rest. The man had thick wrists and he was strong. Lee didn’t talk much, but he never complained and he never tried to boss them because he was the corporal.
Jake glanced back. One could easily tell the penal militiamen from the MDGs. The guards wore body armor, making them bulky like gorillas, and they had cool-looking submachine guns. The MDGs also stayed in the rear under the lieutenant’s command. They had one task: to make sure the penal militiamen fought to the death. Cowardice had one reward: a bullet in the back or the back of the head. Only when the last penal militiaman died could the sergeants retreat to safety, but not a moment before.
“Enemy tanks!” shouted a militiaman walking point.
Everyone froze, including Jake.
The shouting militiaman stood near large rocks embedded in the ground. Beyond were more trees, hiding the enemy.
“They told us the GD tanks were miles from here,” Charlie complained.
Jake laughed sourly, and he looked right and left. “There,” he said. He grabbed the TOW hitch, nodded at Lee, and the two men rushed to a boulder sixty feet away, with the platform bouncing behind them.
Many of the militiamen had already gone to their bellies. Three turned tail and sprinted east for safety, heading back for the medics caring for the badly wounded. MDG submachine guns chattered, and the three sprinters belly flopped onto the damp Earth, dead.
About one hundred yards to the rear, Sergeant Franks shouted through his amplifier, “Take out the tanks! That is an order.”
“They killed them,” Charlie whispered. He hunkered low by Jake and Lee. “The detention guards just murdered those three men.”
“Where have you been the last week?” Jake asked. “They’ve been murdering us since training camp.”
“I thought boot camp was supposed to last six weeks at least,” Charlie said.
“For American citizens,” Jake said. “Not for dirty dogs like you and me.”
Lee tapped Jake on the shoulder and pointed west.
Jake cocked his head. From beyond the boulder, he heard squealing treads. The things sounded as if they moved fast, and they were coming out of the shadowy woods.
Then an enemy UAV roared low overhead with crooked wings like an old time Stuka. The thing was like a tin can, an armored ground-attack UAV. The troops had taken to calling it a Razorback. The Razorback’s machine guns opened up. Dirt fountained up like it did in the movies. A group of militiamen standing around like dorks died, falling like bowling pins. Others hit the ground, crawling away.
With his back against the boulder, Jake looked up at the thing. It turned in a tight curve. The Razorback launched a missile, and the air-to-ground rocket zoomed fast, hit and exploded against a TOW tube. The team manning the TOW blew apart into bloody bits, smacking against the wet earth.
Beside him, Charlie groaned in terror.
The Razorback began firing its machine guns again. Meanwhile, the enemy light tanks or Sigrids seemed to sprint for them.
“Damnit,” Jake said. “We need some Blowdarts.” He raised his M16, tucking the butt against his shoulder. It was a pitiful weapon to use against a ground-attack UAV.
Jake led the Razorback as if he was duck hunting, and he depressed the trigger, firing three-round bursts. Lee lifted his grenade launcher, and launched a grenade.
“Down!” Jake shouted.
The grenade sailed up and exploded, and it rained shrapnel on fellow militiamen.
Jake heard Sergeant Franks bellow something. Maybe the man thought they’d turned their weapons on their tormentors: the MDGs. That was one thing about being a penal militiaman: you were only supposed to fire your weapons in the direction of the enemy, never behind you.
Oblivious to everything, Lee raised his grenade launcher again. Jake jumped up and pulled the barrel down.
“No,” he told Lee. “Fire at the Sigrids. Don’t fire at the Razorback flying over us.”
Lee stared at him, and he nodded.
The Razorback turned tightly again. The thing was going to singlehandedly destroy the company. Jake glanced at the detention sergeants. He saw them slithering away, maybe even retreating. Did they figure the company was as good as dead?
“Charlie!” Jake shouted. “You’d better get up and aim at the plane. Fire when I fire.”
Charlie scrambled to his feet, and he tucked the butt of his M16 just as Jake did his.
“It’s coming straight at us!” Charlie shouted.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I see it.” He figured this was as good a way to die as any other. He aimed, and he fired off an entire magazine. Beside him, Charlie did the same thing.
A spark erupted on the Razorback, and it quit firing just as its machine gun bullets fountained near them. Had it run out of ammo? That was the likely explanation.
