Another shell exploded very close behind him, close enough that the concussion pushed him forward onto the tank's tread guard. Bullets came slamming in just in front of him, ricocheting off the steel hull of the tank less than half a meter in front of his face. He pushed himself backwards, until he was standing on the ground again and then made his dash to the ditch. He stopped for a second on the edge and saw that his suspicions had been correct. Dozens of marines were down on the bottom, impaled by the sharpened rebar points. Some were dead, the points penetrating through their chests, their stomachs. Others were less fortunate. One man had slid down the concrete side and had ended up impaled right through his groin. He was squirming and twisting, probably screaming as well although Callahan couldn't hear him. Others had the spikes through their lower legs, their thighs, their hips. What this had all served to do, however, was to cushion the landing for those behind them. It was distasteful to use the corpse of another marine as a landing pad but things were down to sheer survival now. Knowing that he would be haunted by it later — assuming he lived long enough for there to be a later — Callahan slid down the eighty degree concrete slope and into the ditch, his feet landing firmly on the chest of one man and the head of another, his weight driving the lethal spikes even further into their lifeless bodies. He stepped forward, using the corpses of others to make his way over and between the spikes until he made it to the far side of the ditch. He leaned against the concrete wall, catching his breath, trying to control the fear and horror.
There was defilade from the mortars and the artillery fire here since the airburst shell fragments were coming in at an angle. Other men had figured this out as well and it was crowded on this side. Most looked like they had no intention of leaving. Others were continuing to leap into the ditch and it was soon full of men, pushing chest to chest, legs to legs. They had to go up the other side and make the final dash to the base of the pillboxes. Callahan spoke on his command channel, trying to tell his platoon leaders to start moving but no one was listening to him. He tried on the tactical channels, speaking directly to the men but all he got for his efforts was insubordinate profanity.
"Fuck that shit, sir," someone yelled back at him. "I'm staying here."
"Goddamn right," someone else added. "If you're so fucking hot to get up there and get your head blown off, be my fuckin' guest!"
"We need to move up all at once, all along the line," Callahan said. "It's the only way that any of us are going to get out of here alive!"
"I know how to get out of here alive," one of his sergeants said. "We go back up the other side and start heading back to the APCs. Remember what happened the first time? The Martians stop shooting at you when you retreat!"
"I vote for that!" someone else put in. "Let's get the fuck out of here! Let the goddamn greenies keep this fucking place if they want it that bad."
Other voices quickly echoed this sentiment. Callahan wasn't listening in on the other companies' channels but he suspected the other captains were probably getting similar dissent. He was actually starting to think that what they were suggesting was sensible when the Martians pulled their next surprise on them.
Mortar shells began to fall into the trench, exploding not in the air but when they hit the bottom. Men were blown apart, splattered against the sides of the trench, ripped apart by the shrapnel, gutted by pieces of rebar that were blown loose and hurtled through the air at high speed. This happened all along the length of the ditch, the shells dropping neatly inside as if they'd been lofted from directly above.
It's a fucking trap! Callahan's mind screamed at him, panic starting to flow freely. They have this entire ditch pre-sighted and they're dropping impact-fused mortars inside of it! They've probably been practicing this for years!
"Get out!" Callahan yelled at his men. "Start helping each other up to the top! We need to get out of here or they're gonna blow all of us to pieces!"
This time the men were a little more willing to listen to him. The edge of the ditch was four meters above their heads. The men against the wall formed stirrups with their hands and other men moved forward, putting their feet in them and getting lifted up to the edge. Once they grabbed the edge the lower man would give the upper a shove, sending him up onto the ground. Many of the men hefted up came tumbling back down again, shot to pieces by the Martian small arms fire from the pillboxes.
"Faster!" Callahan yelled. "And more! We need to get everyone up at once if anyone is going to live! Come on! Move, move, move!"
His men picked up the pace. The other companies did the same although Callahan didn't know if they were simply following his example or had figured out the same thing on their own. But soon hundreds of men all along the length of the occupied portion of the ditch were shoving their comrades upward as fast as they could, trying desperately to get out of the frying pan of the mortar ridden trench and into the fire of the open ground beyond.
Jeff Creek, the rest of his platoon, and two other 17th ACR infantry platoons had been moved from the reserve staging area to Pillbox 73 when it became apparent that the marines were making a push to the center. Pillbox 73 was two kilometers west of the personnel airlocks for the MPG base, one of the primary defensive positions guarding the approach to the most important section of the city. They had been driven over to the rear of it in four of the agricultural trucks and had accessed it by means of the movement trench that led to a small opening in the rear. From there they'd climbed several sets of concrete stairs and entered the lower infantry level where a company of 2nd Infantry Division troops had already been engaged with the advancing marines who, at that point, had just dismounted from their APCs.
The interior of the pillbox was open and cavernous, with a high ceiling. The floor behind them was covered with steel crates full of ammunition, grenades, extra weapons, and other supplies. The firing ports lined the western, northern, and southern walls and consisted of open spaces about half a meter high and two meters long, each protected by an extra layer of concrete. Jeff had been assigned to a mounted 7mm heavy machine gun in the south corner of the pillbox. Drogan and the other members of his squad were in the firing ports around him, lined up with their M-24s and a SAW three to a port. The floor at their feet was littered with hundreds upon hundreds of empty shell casings.
The pillbox was as formidable of a defensive position as they'd been promised. For the past thirty minutes now the WestHem tanks and APCs had been slamming wave after wave of eighty millimeter, sixty millimeter, and twenty millimeter directly into them. The explosions were terrifying, to say the least, and much of the concrete had crumbled away under the onslaught, but so far the barrier was holding. Of the one hundred and ninety troops occupying this particular pillbox only two had been killed and six wounded — all the result of shrapnel flying into their ports at exactly the right angle and making a lucky strike.
What bothered Jeff about the pillbox, however, was not the protection it offered from the front and from the sides, but the apparent lack of protection it offered from the rear. Instead of small openings to fire through like on the other three walls, the rear had huge openings in the concrete, two of them, each one ten meters long by five meters high, going from floor to ceiling. They were, in effect, paneless windows to the outside large enough that he could see the mortar teams and some of the agricultural trucks parked out there. He could see the buildings rising beyond the MPG base, could see the sky and the ground through them. True, they would not generally experience enemy fire coming in from the rear — if they did they were in a lot of trouble — but wouldn't you think they would have enclosed it back there just for general principals? He couldn't think of any rational explanation for this somewhat glaring oversight.