The gun started hammering. Despite the rain, Armstrong had no trouble seeing the muzzle flashes. They all seemed to be aimed right at him. He yipped and hit the dirt-hit the mud, rather.
Nobody behind him screamed, so he dared hope the burst missed the men he led, too. He peered ahead. He didn't see Squidface on his feet, but nobody with his head on straight would have stayed upright when the machine gun cut loose.
He hoped the platoon commander and his guys were taking advantage of all this. They could be getting close…
Then the hateful gun started up again. This time, it was aimed away from Armstrong and his squad. "Up!" he shouted. "Get cracking!" He splashed forward. And there was Squidface, up and running, too. Armstrong breathed a silent sigh of relief. He'd feared he would lope past the point man's corpse.
They'd got within a couple of hundred yards when the machine gun cut off once more. "Down!" Squidface yelled, and suited action to word.
Armstrong threw himself flat, too. Three seconds later, a bullet snarled through the place where he'd been standing. That made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Somebody behind him yowled like a cat with its tail in a rocking chair-Whitey, he thought. His mouth shaped the word Fuck.
Three or four guys from Lieutenant Bassler's group opened up on the machine-gun crew-they could see the Confederates better than Armstrong and his squad could. Then another machine gun farther back opened up on them.
This time, Armstrong said, "Fuck," out loud. He might have known-and Bassler might have known, too-that the Confederates would have one gun covering another. Once the men in green-gray knocked out this one, they would have to stalk the next. And if they didn't take more casualties doing it, God would have doled out a miracle, and He was as niggardly with them as a quartermaster sergeant was with new boots.
As soon as the gun in the barn swung back to Lieutenant Bassler's men, Armstrong and his squad rushed it. They hadn't given themselves away by firing, so the gun farther back didn't know they were around-and the men they were attacking didn't realize how much trouble they were in till too late.
Squidface threw the first grenade. Armstrong's first flew at the same time as the PFC's second. The Confederate machine gunners howled. The gun got off a short burst. This time, two bullets came closer to Armstrong than they had any business doing. Another grenade knocked the machine gun sideways. The soldiers in butternut who could still fight grabbed for their personal weapons. None of them fired a shot. Armstrong's men made sure of that.
"Turn the gun around," Armstrong said. "We'll let the assholes at the next position farther back know their turn's coming up."
None of his men was a regular machine gunner. But if you could use a rifle, you could use a machine gun after a fashion. They'd all practiced with them in basic training. And the C.S. weapon was about as simple to use as a machine gun could be. Squidface aimed the gun while Zeb the Hat gathered fresh belts of ammunition.
"You know," Squidface said as he squeezed off a burst, "this goddamn thing has a bipod, too. We could take it off the tripod mount and bring it along with us."
"Are you volunteering?" Armstrong asked.
"Yeah, I'll do it," Squidface said. "Why the hell not? We sure get a lot of extra firepower, and we can probably liberate enough ammo to keep it fed."
"It's yours, then." Armstrong was all for extra firepower. If Squidface wanted to carry the machine gun instead of a lighter rifle, that was fine with him.
The Confederates back closer to Covington realized what machine-gun fire coming their way was bound to mean. They returned it. Armstrong flattened out like a nightcrawler under a barrel. The Confederates shot a little high, so nobody got hit.
"Way to go!" Lieutenant Bassler's voice came out of the rain. "Shall we stalk these next assholes, too?"
A gung-ho lieutenant was good. A lieutenant who got too gung-ho wasn't, because he'd get people killed. "Sir, I have one man wounded, maybe two," Armstrong answered. "Let's round up a mortar team and see if we can drop shit on the bastards instead."
When Bassler didn't say yes right away, Armstrong got a sinking feeling. The platoon commander was going to tell him no. That machine-gun crew up ahead would be waiting for the U.S. soldiers to come at them-not a chance in hell for surprise. Armstrong didn't want an oak-leaf cluster for his Purple Heart.
But before Lieutenant Bassler could issue what might literally have been a fatal order, a couple of Confederates fired short bursts from their automatic rifles in the direction of the gun Armstrong's squad had just captured. Nobody got hurt, but the U.S. soldiers hit the dirt again. Armstrong jammed an index finger up against the bottom of his nose to kill a sneeze. Wouldn't get a Purple Heart for pneumonia, he thought, but I'd sure as hell end up in the hospital with it.
The extra gunfire convinced Bassler he'd had a bad idea. "They've got a regular line up there," he said. "That gun's not just an outpost, the way this one was. No point slamming our faces into it-a mortar team's probably a better plan. Good thinking, Sergeant."
"Uh-thank you, sir," Armstrong answered. When was the last time an officer told him something like that? Had an officer ever told him anything like that? Damned if he could remember.
Squidface winked at him. "Teacher's pet."
"Yeah, well, up yours, Charlie," Armstrong replied. "You want to charge a machine-gun nest when Featherston's fuckers are waiting for you, go ahead. Don't let me stop you."
"No, thanks," Squidface said. "Already got my asshole puckered once today. That's plenty. Hell, that's once too many."
"Twice too many," Zeb the Hat said. "Why ain't we twenty miles back of the line, eatin' offa tablecloths an' screwin' nurses?"
"'Cause we're lucky," Armstrong said, which drew a chorus of derisive howls. "And 'cause no nurse ever born'd be desperate enough to screw you, Zeb."
"Huh! Shows what you know, Sarge." Zeb the Hat launched into a story that was highly obscene and even more highly unlikely. It was entertaining, though, almost entertaining enough to make Armstrong forget he lay sprawled in cold mud with an enemy machine gun not nearly far enough away.
A few minutes later, mortar bombs started bursting somewhere near that C.S. gun. Through the driving rain, Armstrong couldn't tell how close they were coming. "Hey, you guys at the gun, fire off a burst," Lieutenant Bassler said. "Let's see if they answer."
"I'll do it if you want, sir," Squidface said, "but if I was a Confederate I'd sandbag and see if I could lure us in."
"Fuck me," Bassler said. "Yeah, you're right. Maybe we'd better sit tight for a while, wait till reinforcements come up."
Armstrong liked that order just fine. He drew back into the barn and lit a cigarette. It wasn't so bad in here. It was dry-though the roof dripped-and nobody was shooting at him right this minute. What more could you want? A horny nurse, he thought, and then, Yeah, wish for the moon while you're at it.
Jorge Rodriguez had a stripe on his sleeve. Making PFC meant he got another six dollars each and every month. It meant he got to tell buck privates what to do. And it meant the Confederate Army didn't care that he was a greaser from Sonora. He'd convinced the people above him that he made a pretty decent soldier.
Sergeant Blackledge treated him no different on account of his promotion. Blackledge treated everybody under him like dirt all the time. And not just people under him-the sergeant had threatened to shoot General Patton if he didn't quit slapping a soldier with combat fatigue. As far as Jorge was concerned, that took more guts than bravery against the damnyankees.
"Hey, Sarge!" Gabriel Medwick called as Jorge sewed on his stripe. "How come I don't get promoted, too?" He sounded more than half joking-he and Jorge were buddies. He was tall and blond and handsome: the Freedom Party ideal. Jorge was none of the above. They got on well anyhow.