axe in a blurring arc and decapitated the Russian. Malagni toppled forward, dead.
Wing exhaled, not remembering when she had first held her breath. The Dena and Russians surrounding the meadow edge where the giants had fought stared at the twitching, bleeding bodies for a long moment and as if on command, raised their heads and regarded the enemy.
A Russian sergeant cut down three Dena soldiers and the spell shattered.
Sergeant Major Tobias shrieked, “Charge!” and the Dena line hurtled into the Russians. Hand-to-hand combat raged. Wing considered picking off Russians, but none were far enough from her own people to shoot safely.
The Russians began to fall back under the intense attack. But the combat had exacted an insurmountable toll on the Dena army and they faltered. Russian fire from the woods increased and more and more Dena fell.
As Wing laced the woods with machine-gun fire she saw three Russians shooting into the air. She dropped behind the rim and gazed up at their targets—hundreds of parachutes filling the sky.
Men still spilled out of three aircraft overhead. In the distance she could see three more planes winging away. The Russians were shooting them in the air.
She jumped up and tried to make every shot count. She took out fifteen men before her clip ran dry. Frantically she searched for a full clip. There weren’t any.
Smolst had passed out. Wing pulled his hand off the handle on the heavy machine gun, checked the belt feed, and started scything down Russians. A man shouted and they brought their firepower to bear on Wing. Bullets whined past her, made angry buzzes past her ears, smashed against the inadequate earthwork around the firing pit, dirt and small stones sprayed over her.
She dropped to the bottom of the pit. Knew they would be on top of her in moments. This was it.
“God, am I thirsty!” she screamed.
Even with her damaged ears, she detected the increase in weaponry. The bullets ceased seeking her out. Curious, she stuck her head up for a look.
The Russians retreated toward the river. Paratroopers hit and rolled, cut shroud lines, and fired at the Russians. The woods boiled with friendly soldiers.
One man limped among them using a rifle for a crutch, directing, shouting orders, and firing at the Russians with a pistol. The man stumbled and fell and two soldiers who had been waiting for his injury to take over produced a litter and rolled him onto it. They carried him back toward Chena Redoubt from where a number of auxiliary vehicles emerged and roared toward the battle zone.
The last unscathed Russian tank reversed up the far bank—onto an antitank mine. The explosion ripped open the bottom and set off ammunition inside. It went up like fireworks on the Czar’s birthday.
Two soldiers in khaki jumped into her firing pit. The charging grizzlyinsignia of the Republic of California Army adorned their left shoulders.
“You okay, buddy?” one asked. He stopped and took a harder look.
“Sorry, ma’am, didn’t expect to find a woman out here.”
“Water,” she pleaded.
He gave her a plastic canteen and she gulped down a third of it.
“I’m Major Wing Demoski, D.R.A., who is your leader?”
“Some Dena colonel, what’s his name, Ernie?”
The other soldier thought for a moment. “Griz-something, I think. I don’t know, they never introduce me to the senior officers anymore.”
“Hell of a guy, though,” the first one said.
But Wing was already running toward the distant litter as tears threatened her vision.
85
Yamato, drenched with sweat, stopped his drive for the canyon wall and carefully rolled over onto his back behind a large rock. Muffling the sound with his fingers and thumb, he unzipped his flight suit all the way to his navel. Never, he decided, had he been hotter than this, ever.
He briefly closed his eyes and willed his heartbeat to slow closer to normal. Being in superb physical condition, his heart rate dropped to normal after two and a half minutes. He edged up and peeked over the rock.
Not fifty feet away a man sat on a rock with a rifle across his lap, staring fixedly at the tank turret where he had almost nailed himself a lieutenant. Fifty feet was at the edge of accurate range for a .45. Jerry wondered if he could hit the man before he could return fire with the rifle.
At fifty feet the rifle wouldn’t miss, not that one anyway. He eased back down and rested, weighing his options. The guy looked like crap, all beat up and bloody.
It was the “probably” that kicked doubt loose in his mind. He couldn’t afford to take the chance, not if he wanted to try and win Andrea back. The vision of his ex-fiance’s naked body undulated through his mind for a moment before resentment kicked in and he refocused on his current situation.
His shoulder ached and he realized this was an excellent opportunity to void his bladder. Easing over onto his uninjured side, he unzipped and quietly pissed into a windblown depression under a rock. He groaned with pleasure, figuring the constant breeze would whip the sound away from the stonelike sentinel.
They hadn’t covered this situation in flight school or survival school. If the guy was charging from a hundred meters away, or attacking him with a knife at close quarters, Jerry would know what action to take. But when your opponent is at the extreme range of your only weapon and possesses a weapon of superior range, what the hell do you do?
Woodcraft didn’t work here, so he had to think with the military part of his brain. Was it possible to get another fifteen feet closer to him? He knew at thirty-five feet he could hit his target.
The soldier looked next to death. But was he? What had he ever heard about Russians?
Alcoholic peasants with a penchant for exhibitionist self-pity. But he realized he was basing his opinion on Elena, an old girlfriend from the Ukraine, and was probably mentally slandering a lot of fine Russians. His friend John had married her.
He couldn’t worry about John, he had to look out for himself. What had they said in the briefing? He hadn’t been paying attention to the usually boring preflight facts. Once they identified the mission and gave the pilots the weather forecast, Jerry usually allowed his attention to wander because most of the rest of it was for flight commanders and superior officers. First lieutenants performed as ordered.
He knew he had heard it, could he remember what he heard?
Oh, yeah. They said “seasoned combat troops.”
So was this guy sufficiently handicapped that he wouldn’t hear a clunky pilot squirming up behind him? Options being limited, he was going to find out the hard way. He felt rested and hungry, time for dinner.
He rolled onto his knees and elbows and began squirming toward the soldier.
86
Grisha’s leg radiated agony throughout his body. When it snapped during landing, shock and adrenaline walled off the pain. But now that they insisted on bouncing him around on a litter his adrenaline had ebbed and the shock didn’t dissipate anything.
“Ouch, dammit! Can you people slow down?”
“Sorry, Colonel,” the one in back puffed. “But there’s lots more people need picked up back there.”
Immediately chagrined, Grisha said, “I’m sorry, soldier. Halt, both of you!”
