Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(91)

The absurdity of facing a tank with just a rifle comes home full force. The tank doesn’t care about her pitiful rifle, or the human being holding it. The tank doesn’t care about anything made of flesh and blood.

The Italian soldiers are a ramshackle mob walking in front of the tanks with more on the flanks. If the column on the left side just keeps walking the way they are they’ll walk directly into Rio, Suarez, and Sergeant Cole.

Five hundred yards, a quarter mile. The enemy infantry are sketched figures, two legs, two arms, a circle of head, just sticks, no face, no expression, no individuality. Yet there’s an air of weariness about them, a sense of exhaustion.

“At least they didn’t spot the jeep,” Cole mutters.

“How do you know . . . ?” Rio starts to ask, but then decides she probably isn’t supposed to be asking questions at a time like this.

Cole answers anyway. “From the way they walk. They haven’t sent out flankers, their heads are down, rifles slung.”

Now that she looks more carefully, Rio sees the same thing: the Italians are not expecting to be fired upon, or perhaps they are and have just given up caring. And yet, they are coming on, and they are bringing tanks with them.

“Maybe they’ll stop,” Tilo says, which makes no sense to Rio. Of course they’ll keep coming, they’ll keep coming at the same leisurely pace until someone fires on them.

They’ll be surprised, the Italians, as well as the German tankers. But surprise wasn’t going to gain the Americans much, not with just two platoons of green troops. The enemy column stretches as far as she can see, a full company of men, easily two hundred or so. Twelve hundred Italians might be manageable by themselves, but they aren’t by themselves. They are very definitely not by themselves.

Clank-clank-clank-clank-clank.

Four hundred yards.

Rio swallows dust. Her hands sweat on the stock of her rifle. Cole is on his knees like a prairie dog, watching the enemy, glancing toward his men, glancing back at the rest of the force. The British commandos are way back, out of sight. The Americans are as dug in as they’re going to get in bare rock, sand, and pebbles.

“We’ll bang on ’em, then fall back,” Cole says.

“Right.”

“No time for a decent ambush. But make your shots count. Discourages the others if you shoot a few.”

“Uh.” That short grunt is all the speech Rio can manage. Suarez is silent.

Three hundred yards. Millican and Pang are the bazooka team, and they are roughly fifty yards closer to the enemy. Millican will fire at two hundred yards. Bazookas are pretty accurate at one hundred to two hundred yards, not much use beyond that unless you get lucky.

Watch your breathing. Slow it down. In, out, slow.

“Okay, Millican, get ready,” Sergeant Cole mutters, as if willing his corporal to strike at the right moment. “Wait till you’ve got ’em . . .”

“Unh?” Rio grunts, thinking he’s talking to her.

She remembers firing the bazooka a few times back at Camp Maron. They are surprisingly simple weapons, a 54-inch section of pipe just 2.36 inches in diameter, with a chunky wooden trapezium stock and a stubby grip for each hand. Two batteries hide inside that primitive wooden stock—a tiny bulb will light up if you pull the trigger when the launcher is empty. The light on means you have enough juice to fire the round.

Pang carries two bazooka pouches, each containing three cylinders that hold the 3.5-pound rockets. He’s already pushed one in the back of the tube and pulled the safety clip clear.

Suddenly there’s a hollow bang, like someone striking an empty steel barrel with a hammer, and a puff of smoke.

The rocket flies right over the top of the lead tank.

“Damn it!”

The bazooka round has knocked the casualness right out of the enemy. Rio sees them diving off to the sides of the road. They may be tired, but they run and jump with impressive speed.

Good. Just stay down.

But they don’t stay down, because now a German staff car, an open, gray-painted saloon, comes tearing up the side of the road, bouncing madly, and nearly driving right over cowering Italians, who have to roll from cover to avoid being hit.

A somewhat portly German officer in the backseat of the staff car yells a blue streak at the Italians, a shrill and tinny sound at this distance. He gesticulates furiously, gestures that very clearly mean, “Get up there in front of the tanks!”

Some of the Italians heed his demands, and some do not but instead stay flat on the ground, very much like Rio and Tilo.

A second round flies from Hark Millican’s bazooka. And this time it hits the side of the leading tank’s turret . . . and glances off. It explodes harmlessly two hundred yards off in the dirt. But it seems to have grazed or perhaps just frightened the lead tank commander who’d been heads-up in the hatch, because he drops out of sight, as does his counterpart in the second tank, both as fast as whack-a-moles. Now slowly, slowly but inexorably, the tank’s big gun comes swinging toward the bare bit of elevation where Millican, Pang, and Magraff squat. Magraff backs away fast, trips and falls, jumps up and runs.

“Millican! Get out of there! Move!” Cole yells. Millican jumps up, drops the bazooka, and hightails it after Magraff, but Pang snatches up the bazooka and run-hobbles away, trying to balance the long tube on one shoulder while pressing down on the ammo pouch to keep it from banging against his hip.