He grabbed the man next to him and turned him so he was facing him. He reached down and turned the man's communication set onto his company's tactical channel. "I'm Captain Callahan," he said. "Charlie Company of second battalion. 314th."
"Sergeant Coolidge," the man replied, his voice shaky and scared. "Bravo Company of third battalion. 322nd."
"I'm taking command of everyone in this position until someone higher ranking shows up," Callahan said. "We need to get everyone on the same tac channel. Start getting everyone to switch. Pass the word up and down the line."
"Right, sir," Coolidge said. He turned to the man next to him and went through the same motions. That man then turned to the man next to him and did the same.
While they were doing that another dozen or so men managed to make it to safety. They were immediately grabbed and made to switch their channels as well. Callahan, meanwhile, got back on the command channel and hailed Colonel West, who had been placed in charge of this particular section of the line.
"Where are you, Callahan?" West asked him from the relative safety of his own APC some six kilometers back. "What's your situation?"
"I'm in position at pillbox seven-three," he said. "I have about thirty men with me and more are trickling in. We're in defilade from Martian fire at the moment but pinned here. We can't advance to the rear of the pillbox and gain entry until we get more men. There's at least a hundred Martians up in that position, maybe more. I'm gonna need some SAWs, some grenade launchers, and a whole shitload of riflemen before we can put this pillbox out of action."
"I'll send out the word for everyone in that section to move to your position," West promised. "How many men will it take?"
"When I've got a hundred or so over here and enough machine guns and grenade launchers, we'll make the attack."
"What about the Martian armor on the flanks?"
"They're in hull-down positions as far as I can tell. They won't be able to engage us with their guns unless they pull out of them a little. If they do that, our tanks will be able to plaster them."
"Got it," West said. "Keep holding. Once we take one pillbox we can get some AT crews in there to slip around the back of the Martian armor and take them from there. That will let us move men to the next pillbox. If we can capture and hold just two of them and then push the armor out, we can start moving men in without having them mowed down."
"That's my idea, sir," Callahan said.
"Are the losses as bad as I'm being told?"
"Worse," Callahan answered. "They're exterminating us out here. The sooner we open a corridor the sooner we can stop it."
"Right," West said. "The order is going out now."
Callahan switched back to the tactical channel and addressed the men who had gathered. "I'm Captain Callahan," he told them. "And I'm not thrilled to be in charge of this clusterfuck but there's no one else here to do it. I know we're all from different units but we need to organize if we're going to live through the next hour. Get yourselves organized into something like squads. As more men arrive, incorporate them into your units. Once we have enough, we're going to circle around to the front of this pillbox so we can put it out of business. Once we do that we should be able to open a corridor to get more troops in here and then we can bring up the engineers and move up to the MPG base. That's the plan for now. Do I have any lieutenants here?"
"Lieutenant Hunter here, sir," a voice spoke up.
Callahan actually knew him. He was a platoon leader from Alpha Company from his own battalion. "Glad to hear you made it, Hunter," he said. "You're second in command of this abortion. Get everyone organized the best you can and make sure everyone else who makes it here gets switched over to this channel."
"Right, sir," Hunter said.
Ten minutes went by, during which another thirty-seven men managed to make it through the open ground and join them. From across the ditch the tank fire that was supporting them began to get erratic, slowing down noticeably.
"They're running out of ammo," Hunter said.
"It's not like they were doing us much good anyway," Callahan said. "All they've done for us is bring a bunch of concrete chips down on our heads."
"Well, at least we're safe here," Hunter replied.
He was proven wrong a minute later. Something thumped to the ground about twenty meters to Callahan's right. He just had time to look over there when a sharp explosion cracked through the air. One of the men was blown straight up into the air, his left leg flying off his body. Two other men went down on the other side of him and stayed down, blood vapor rising from their bodies.
Something else thumped down to Callahan's left.
"Grenade!" someone yelled as men tried to scatter away from it. Most made it. One didn't. The shrapnel ripped into his back, dropping him. Two more grenades came down from different positions. The men began to panic now, some of them running back out into the field where they were gunned down.
"They're dropping them out of their firing ports!" Hunter yelled. "We need to get out of here!"
"There's nowhere to go!" Callahan shouted back, his mind trying to figure a way to deal with this problem.
Some decided to go anyway. Two men rushed around the corner of the pillbox and were immediately blown to pieces by machine gun fire from one of the APCs stationed out there. Three more went running back toward the anti-tank ditch. They were shot down one by one by the Martian riflemen above them about thirty meters out.
More grenades came dropping down. Someone tried to pick one of them up and throw it further out but he didn't do it quickly enough. It exploded in his hand, shredding the entire top of his body.
Callahan felt panic wanting to overtake him and fought it down. He looked out at the three men who had gone running back the way they'd come and suddenly something occurred to him. "Everyone!" he yelled. "Move away from the wall about ten meters. We'll still have defilade there! Move out and get down on your bellies!"
The men didn't have to be told twice. They ran out as a group and threw themselves to the ground. This kept them far enough away from the pillbox that the dropped grenades couldn't hurt them but close enough that they still weren't in sight of the gunners up above.
"Christ," Callahan said, feeling like he was standing on a high wire above a crocodile cage. "How much longer?"
Just fifteen meters above their heads, the machine guns and the rifles fired on, trying desperately to cut down the numbers of men making it across the open ground. Jeff Creek had changed drums on his heavy machine gun three times now and was over three quarters of the way through the fourth. Out on the open ground the red fog of blood vapor was becoming nearly as thick as the one over the anti-tank ditch. The corpses of marines absolutely littered the battlefield but still they kept coming forward, crawling out of the trench and making the life or death sprint towards the safety of the pillbox shadow.
"There's more of them now," Drogan said, firing the rest of her magazine empty at a group making their final approach.
"They're reinforcing this position," Walker said. "They've probably shifted some of their troops assigned to take down other pillboxes here."
"Aren't we the lucky ones?" Jeff asked, cutting down yet another group, although six of them managed to escape and make it to safety.
"The tank fire has stopped though," Drogan said. "Anyone notice that?"
Jeff actually hadn't noticed that, but now that she mentioned it, it seemed like it had been the better part of five minutes since an eighty or a sixty shell had last exploded against the concrete. "Out of ammo, you think?"
"Fuckin' aye," Walker said. "And there ain't no way to..." He paused, listening to someone on the command channel. "Fuck me," he said at last.