Chieftains (12 page)

How far had they advanced in the hour or two since the first dawn battle had started? Browning studied his watch, wondering for a moment if it had been damaged. It showed 16.30 hours. Noon had passed unnoticed...eleven hours since it had all begun! His mind was momentarily confused. They called it battle amnesia didn't they? The real and the unreal blended together, time compacted and loot, incidents jumbled. It was the reason pilots were debriefed the instant they landed; minutes law, as their minds relaxed after long, intense concentration, the memories were no longer accurate.

Ten hours; almost eleven. The Soviet spearhead could already be twenty kilometers into NATO territory, now they had penetrated the defences...perhaps even further. He remembered Captain Harling's words: 'We're about to counterattack their flank.' Flank! Had the captain lied? Was it an attempt by the squadron to break out of their encircled position...an attempt which had failed? The amount of materials the Russians were accumulating east of the river seemed to indicate they felt the bridgehead was secure, and for the first time that day Browning could see no NATO aircraft in the skies above.

Podini was waiting nervously, his Remington so tightly gripped in his hand the knuckles were white, his body pressed hard beneath the gorse.

'What did you see?'

'Half the Commie army. The best part of a full tank regiment, artillery and logistics. The whole darned lot down there in the fields...bridges, combat engineers.'

They returned to the Abrams by a more direct route down the cratered slope. The plain towards Gunthers where the carcasses of the squadron lay had the air of a bone-yard about it, reminding Browning of photographs he had seen of drought-sticken African deserts scattered with the dry skeletons of dead animals. For once Podini was silent, keeping his thoughts to himself as they scrambled down the hillside.

Adams and Ginsborough must have been watching through the lenses, for as the two men returned they climbed from the hull and waited for Browning to speak, their faces begging him to say something encouraging. Browning dropped his Remington back into its holster, squatted beside the Abrams and rested against the crippled track. The men stood looking down at him anxiously. He spoke slowly. 'Just over that hill is the end of the war for us. All we have to do is to walk slowly around there, with our hands up. No more shelling or bombing...no more rockets or napalm.' They remained silent. 'One thing I ought to tell you. The Russians took a lot of Germans prisoner in the '39-'45 war; the last ones they released didn't get home until '57. Some never made it at all...they used them as labourers in the Arctic Circle; maybe some of them are still alive, still up there. They'd be about sixty-five years old, could be even seventy.'

Adams said, 'We've got your point.'

'Maybe we could walk out, travel at night, try to reach the lines,' suggested Ginsborough.

'Could be,' agreed Browning. 'We might still have to try. Only the way I see it, we have a problem. The Russians could be advancing faster than we can walk. They do thirty kilo meters a day in their vehicles, we do ten every night on foot. The end of a week, and we're further behind the lines than when we started.'

'They'll be stopped somewhere, maybe at the Fulda river,' said Podini, hopefully.

'I guess we ought to get Utah mobile.' Adams ran his hand along the taut links of the track.' 'All I want is a gas cutter to get this sonovabitch back on the road. I ain't built for walking, and my idea of a vacation isn't ten years down some old salt mine.'

'It occurred to me when I was coming down the hill that there'd be everything we need in Gunthers. There'd be a garage there; I've seen one. The stuff we need could be in the wreckage.' Browning was deliberately avoiding giving the men orders. This was a difficult situation and it was going to get worse. It was essential he had a hundred per cent backing from the crew, and that would be more certain if they developed his ideas themselves.

Podini nodded. 'Maybe we could do it after dark.'

'Hole up until then,' added Ginsborough.

'They might send out patrols...pick us up.' Adams looked up at the hull of the XM1. 'Baby ain't easy to miss.'

'I think we've got a chance.' Browning pushed himself to his feet. 'The Russians' main concern is the front line. They'll use everything they've got up there, and do their tidying afterwards. I think we can make Utah look worse than she is...enough to fool a helicopter. Let's get to work. Gins, dismantle your machine gun and get yourself up on the ridge. Keep your head down, it's busy over there. Pino, you and Mike go and get a few bodies...'

'Bodies!' Podini looked stunned.

'Bodies the man said,' shrugged Adams. 'You made 'em, what you complaining about? I guess they're for decoration!'

Browning leant some of the broken tree branches against the hull of Utah, then lowered her gun until the barrel was fully depressed – it made her look forlorn. He opened all the hatches. There was a twisted sheet of metal a few meters away, part of the shield of some wrecked field-gun. He wedged it against the right track. There was already an abandoned look to the XM1.

Podini was examining the bodies of the men he had killed sixty meters to the right of the Abrams. They lay amongst the wreckage of their equipment, their bodies torn and mangled. It was the first time he had seen the effect of a shell burst on a human target at close quarters; it was horrifying. He wanted to throw up, but kept swallowing the acid bile that rose in his throat. Bodies, Browning had said. Jesus, there didn't seem to be one that was anywhere near complete! He'd seen his grandmother when she had died, but she had looked as though she were sleeping...a little yellow maybe, parchment-skinned, but only sleeping. These men, the bits of them, were wide-eyed, if they had any faces left at all; their mouths grinned through bloody smashed teeth and their bodies were grotesque, shattered, dismembered.

There was one partly covered by the loose stone of the wall. Podini could see both arms, its chest, head. He bent over it, biting his lip.

'Mike...Jesus Christ! Mike, over here.'

Adams was beside him, quickly. 'What the hell?'

'This guy ain't dead. I saw his eyes move. Feel his pulse will you...'

Adams knelt beside the man and stared at him for a few moments, then put the hard outside edge of his hand against the man's neck. He leant forward and pressed down with all his body weight.

'What are you doing, for God's sake?'

'Taking his pulse,' said Adams, coolly. The man's eyes flickered, then opened. Suddenly there was no more movement; muscles relaxed. 'I don't feel none. I'd say he was dead.'

'Mother of God, you killed him!'

'Me, or you, Pino? Take a good look at him. Look down there.' Adams rolled aside a large stone that was lying across the man's abdomen. Intestines were trailed across the rubble. A sharp splinter of white bone from the crushed pelvis stuck up through the bloody mess of cloth and flesh. 'There ain't no MASH here...wouldn't do him no good, anyway. I did him a favour. Now help me lift him.'

There were three bodies draped across the hull of the XM1, one obscenely dangling from the main hatch. Without close examination, their nationalities were unrecognizable. A fire of dry branches and the rubber-tyred wheel of a wrecked gun curled black smoke across her. It would smoulder for a long time, well into darkness. Utah looked no different from the other wrecks on the battlefield.

Browning, Podini and Ginsborough lay beneath the heavy trunk of a fallen chestnut, its branches a cave around them fifty meters to the left of the tank. Adams was hidden in the gorse on the ridge, with the machine gun.

That's what' we could be looking like, thought Browning, staring at the XM1 and its bloody corpses. It could be us there. It could be us in any of the hugs out there in the fields, twisted, broken. God almighty! There had been guys back home who thought he was crazy when he had joined the army; maybe he had been...maybe he still was.

Thirty-eight years old, and the only thing he could do well was kill. Some of the men he had been at school with were executives in companies now...owned their businesses, were married, with kids at college, mowed lawns in the evenings, watched television. Family? All he had was a sister somewhere, wedded to an insurance salesman. Last he heard of her was that she had gone to live in Detroit. He'd lost her address, and she hadn't written again. He couldn't remember her married name.

Podini. For Christ's sake, he would never lose a member of his family. There seemed to be dozens of them, scattered across the States from Jersey City to Los Angeles. 'You hear on the radio, Pino, some guy in Memphis killed eight cops in a raid on a gas station?' 'Memphis...gee, I got an aunt there.' Podini always had aunts, and uncles, sisters, brothers, cousins...family.

And what about Adams? Six kids! Pretty wife too. She was sixteen when they got married. Half Sioux, half black; the best of both. Was going to be a dancer, ended up a baby factory. Got a good lively sense of humour...you needed one with six kids in eight years, in military accommodation. They were back home in Fort Dix, waiting for Mike Adams to finish his tour of duty. He'd have been with them in another eight weeks. Eight weeks. Shit...eight weeks was no time.

Hal Ginsborough, twenty-one years old. A loader in every sense of the word. All he was interested in were girls, booze and craps; which meant he never had any money.

Three weeks ago...two...even one, there hadn't been a war. There hadn't been a war yesterday. Browning hadn't wanted one...perhaps no one in the whole world wanted a war, but here it was.

One week ago in Kohlhaus, the Edelweiss Bar. Gins drunk and Podini paying. Mike Adams back in camp writing a letter home; he did that three nights a week, at least. Fritz behind the bar, a German American accent 'There will be no war.' Germanic finality. 'We have fought two wars this century, that is two too many. Here we know what war is like.' Christ, hadn't they heard that the Yanks fought, too? And in Korea, and Vietnam. 'This is Communist bluff. All talk...big wind. Have more drink, enjoy yourselves. No war...this time there will be no war. In two weeks my wife and I go to Spain...close bar for one month. Take vacation and sit in sun and forget politics. Eat paella. Drink wine. Dance a little. There can be no war, Sergeant.' Fritz was wrong.

'Ulli, what time d'you finish? Like to come for supper some place?

Her place...afterwards. Ulli Waldeck, age somewhere around twenty-nine. Waitress in the Edelweiss. Divorced. Black curly hair, reasonable looker, a little on the plump side.

'You like to stay, Will?'

'Yes, sure.' Her arms around his neck, her lips soft.

Bed. Energetic, warm, damp and then comforting afterwards.

'Why you never married, Will?'

'Who knows? Never got around to it.'

'Sergeant Acklin's married.'

Del Acklin. He was out there now, in the wreckage of Idaho. Maybe he was still alive, lying there in the twisted steel and smoke, trapped, wounded. And he'd told him this morning maybe it wouldn't happen. No, Del Acklin was dead...Browning could sense it. Like Jones, Stromberg, Woolett, Hughes, Valori, Erikson, Scarsdale...Browning could name twenty more. Vietnam! Just names, rifles dug into mounds with helmets on the butts. Identity discs wedged between teeth...plastic sacks. All they'd found of Stromberg was a kneecap, and that could have belonged to someone else. They'd put it in a bag and sent it home in a coffin, just like a real body. Whoever carried the coffin to the grave must have thought Stromberg had starved to death; he weighed less than a kilo.

Harvey Kossof had been killed in the tank sheds, rolled along the wall by the hull of an XM1 only five weeks ago. Kossof had never even seen the war! He was just signalling a tank into the service bay and didn't leave himself enough room. He'd screamed until they gave him a heavy shot of morphine, and then died. Now he was a name, just like all the others. They promised you a stone in Arlington; the only bit of land most of the guys ever managed to own.

Podini was snoring, his thin face buried in the crook of one arm, his helmet cradled protectively like a kid's teddy bear in the other. Podini had a fiancée; Italian, very respectable. Her father ran a pizza bar in Jersey City, decorated with Chianti and Frascati bottles, so Podini said. He would marry her when he was Stateside again; a hundred guests, all in tuxedos or dark wedding suits. Then he'd quit the army, start work in his father-in-law's pizza bar, and get fat. If Browning ever dropped in there, Podini would beam a welcome. 'Hi, well I'm damned, Will, Jeez, great to see you. Heh, Momma, see who's here...you remember Will! Best table, Will...it's on the house, vino, anything. How are you? You look great! Remember how it was; you, me, Mike and Gins. Jeez, those were the days! How about that?'