“Where to, sir?” the driver asked, clearly puzzled.
“If we could do it, I’d have you drive us back to Seoul,” Dunbar said. “Short of that, I’d say we’ve got enough gas for one last fight.”
As it turned out, the tanks didn’t have far to go. With engines roaring, they charged across the clearing toward the road. The troops in front of them scattered, being no match for several tons of churning steel.
Individual soldiers came at them with Bangalore torpedoes, heading for the tracks in hopes of disabling the tanks. The tanks’ machine guns picked off the attackers they could see, but others ran at them from their blind flanks, ready with their destructive stick grenades.
A rifle fired from the fortress wall, dropping one attacker with each shot. It was Cole, giving the tanks a clear path toward the road.
“Slow it down!” Lieutenant Dunbar barked, worried that their momentum was going to carry them over the cliff on the far side of the road. The tank did not have the precision handling of a sports car. “If we go over the edge, that’s it!”
The engine slowed, and they were joined by tank Twenty-two.
“Easy does it. I’ll bet nobody has ever parallel-parked in a tank before.”
Maneuvering carefully in the tight space between the fort and the road, the two tanks positioned themselves end to end, nosing into the piled logs and brush to add their tons of armored steel to the barrier across the road.
The lieutenant ordered everybody out and the crews of both tanks fled through the hatches. Fortunately for them, their sudden maneuver had caused the enemy fire to slacken enough that they all managed to get off the tanks and on the other side of the barrier without anyone being hit.
Like the captain of a sinking ship, Dunbar was the last man out. However, he still had one last task. Taking a jerry can of gasoline, he tipped it over to flood the inside of the tank. From the top of the tank, the sheer face of the cliff was just below. When he glanced that way at the yawning space, the gasoline fumes and vertigo made him feel dizzy.
He shook his head to clear it. He wasn’t done yet.
Bullets whistled overhead as he pulled the pin on a grenade and dropped it down the hatch of his tank.
“Sorry about this, old girl,” he muttered. “Fire in the hole.”
A gout of flame erupted through the hatch and the tank shuddered. He ran over to the other tank to pour gasoline and drop a grenade down its hatch as well.
The tanks were now burning madly, so that at any moment the ammunition inside was going to blow sky high.
Dunbar figured that he would scramble over the barrier, but the piles of brambles caught at his uniform like barbed wire, and jagged branches gouged at him no matter which way he crept. No wonder the barrier had been so effective in holding back the enemy. Finally, he landed in a scratched heap on the other side.
“Remind me not to do that again,” he said.
Nearby, the surviving defenders were joining the tank crew on the road. They had used the back way out to escape the fort. Dunbar shook his head at the sight of so many wounded. Many were wounded in the shoulders or arms and could still walk. The worst of the wounded were on makeshift stretchers and carrying them was a backbreaking task that was going to delay the retreat. Nobody even considered leaving them, because that meant certain death at the hands of the enemy.
The barrier and the furiously burning tanks would slow down the Chinese, but for how long?
Cole took a drink of water from his canteen, having much the same thoughts as the tank commander. There were a lot of walking wounded and a handful of stretchers. He considered all the long miles back to the MLR, much of it through rough country. The barrier would hold back such a determined enemy for only so long.
He nodded, having made up his mind.
He looked around for the kid. If he had been wounded at the front line, he would have been sent to an aid station at the very least. But out here, when every man was needed, the medic had patched him up and given him a tiny dose of morphine that dulled the pain but kept him in action.
“Kid, get me a spare rifle from one of the wounded,” Cole said. “Make sure it’s loaded and has some extra clips. Then put it by that log there.”
“What do you need the rifle for, Hillbilly? You’ve already got your sniper rifle.”
“Just do it, kid. We ain’t got much time.”
Of course, the kid figured out what they were for. The painkillers hadn’t addled his mind that much, at least. “We’re going to fight them off, aren’t we? They can only come across the barrier in small groups, so we’ll have a chance to pick them off. We can hold them off for a while, at least until everybody else gets away.”
“Ain’t no we about it, kid. You go on with the rest. I’m going to stay right here.”
“What are you talking about? I can’t leave you here alone. You can’t face all those Chinese by yourself—“
Cole interrupted him. “I’ve already made up my mind and there’s no changing it.”
“No, you can’t—“
Cole held out his hand in a gesture meant to end further argument. “Maybe I’ll come out the other side of this and maybe I won’t. Either way, it’s been good knowing you, kid. You ever get to Gashey’s Creek, look up Norma Jean Elwood for me, will you? Tell her how much I appreciated those letters and that none of any of this was her fault. I’ve made my own choices in this world, and that’s a fact.”
With tears on his cheeks, the kid shook Cole’s hand.
“Go on. Catch up with the others.” Cole nodded toward the barrier, where the massed enemy could be seen on the other side of the flames, looking for a way through. “Now is the time to git while the gittin’ is good.”
Once the kid had left, Cole turned his attention to the defenses at hand. He knew that he couldn’t hold the Chinese off forever. There were simply too many of them. But he could hold them off for long enough that what remained of the task force could have a chance of escaping.
On the other side of the barrier, the enemy was making every effort to get past the obstruction. It didn’t seem to matter that the tanks were burning. Soldiers were sacrificed to pull away logs or flaming brush, even if it meant catching on fire themselves. Bit by bit, one log and stone at a time, the barrier was being dismantled. When that happened, the enemy would come pouring through.
Cole picked up the M-1 and started shooting through the flames at the figures on the other side. The licking fire made the figures seem devilish and inhuman, like demons from the underworld. Cole fired again and again, his bullets adding to the misery on that side of the barrier. He reloaded and fired until the magazine was empty.
An hour went by as the enemy worked to tear down the barrier and Cole shot at them. Now and then, someone shot back, but the bullets went wide. Despite his efforts, the barrier slowly came apart. The tanks were burning themselves out, leaving smoldering skeletons that the Chinese soldiers clambered onto — never mind that the metal was still so hot that the soles of their thin rubber shoes melted. They were urged forward by their commanders and their political officers, which meant that there was no choice but to go forward.
“Come on, you sons of bitches,” Cole muttered, taking aim as soldiers began to get through, first in ones and twos. Cole picked them off. He had wanted the semiautomatic M-1 for just this reason because he could drop soldiers as fast as he could pull the trigger.
A small group charged across and Cole put down the rifle when it clicked on an empty chamber, then pulled the pin on a grenade and threw it. That held back the enemy for a little while, at least.
Another group charged, and Cole threw another grenade. He still had one more grenade to go.