Trankic was almost within arm’s reach of him now.
Docker said easily, “Sure, Baird, let’s hear all of it.”
Baird let out his breath slowly. “If we pull this cannon and try to make a run for it, we’re dead. They won’t attack until they know what’s up here, what kind of firepower we’ve got. With a field-grade officer in charge, they won’t make any mistakes in tactics. But if they hear us leaving, they’ll know they can take this hill. And then it’s just a matter of arithmetic. A Tiger Mark II makes thirty miles an hour on flat ground, maybe half that coming up the mountain, and when it gets here it’s equipped with a Porsche turret that can traverse three hundred and sixty degrees in less than twenty seconds. We won’t be halfway to the river before their eighty-eight opens up on us... but they won’t take the chance unless we give them the high ground...” He pointed to the mist-shrouded peaks above their position. “What they want is—”
Trankic closed on him now with a rush and tore the rifle from his hands. He tossed it to Farrel and struck Baird once in the body and again in the face, the second blow spinning Baird around and dropping him to the ground. Trankic flipped him onto his stomach, dug a knee into the small of his back and used Baird’s own belt to tie his wrists behind him, securing the knots with a pair of tight hitches.
The blood from Baird’s lips stained the trampled snow. Docker hated the look of it. It reminded him of Larkin and Haskell and he was sick of his feelings, of his fears and responsibilities he couldn’t admit to or avoid. Baird’s eyes were closed, his breathing ragged.
Laurel took out a handkerchief and knelt beside him. “You didn’t have to bust him up like that, Trank.”
“Just try minding your own business. Sonny. Crazy punk could have blown the shit out of all of us.” Trankic turned to Docker. “Unless Larkin gets back before we haul out of here, we gotta leave the machine guns. You want me to pick up Schmitzer and Linari when I get the truck?”
“No, Trank.” Docker shook his head slowly. “We’re not leaving.”
“What the fuck you mean?”
“I mean he’s right.”
Trankic stared at Docker. “Mind spelling it out for me?”
“They’ve got to come up this hill while we’re traveling at least three miles down to the river. For six, or eight minutes, we’ll be in their sights. That damn eighty-eight won’t miss at that range.”
Trankic studied the narrow road curving down the hill from Mont Reynard and Castle Rêve, tracking its misted length through the meadows and trees to the river. He massaged his nose with the back of his hand. “Yeah, I guess our little Napoleon called it at that.” His voice was empty, quiet. “They got us in a fucking trap—”
Suddenly Tex Farrel was waving to Docker from the edge of the hill. “Sarge, they’re zeroing in.”
Concealed by the hedge of frozen underbrush. Docker stared into the valley and saw the turret of the massive tank revolving slowly, the long, gleaming cannon rising toward the crest of the hill.
He realized that his first hope had been simply a reflex of wishful thinking; the Germans in that tank damn well knew there was an enemy position on Mont Reynard. How they knew and what they were after were irrelevant now...
“Get back,” he said to Farrel, and ran toward the revetment, calling to the others to hit the ground before throwing himself full-length onto the frozen earth.
The tank’s cannon sounded with a roar and the first projectile struck the rim of the cliff, showering the hill with shards of rock, the fragments whining around them like bullets. The next three blasts came at rapid fire, and Docker locked his arms over his helmet as the projectiles rushed high above them toward the timberline of distant mountain ridges.
Then there was silence again, broken only by the shifting winds and the noise of rock flows rattling down the sides of the hills. A painful ringing sounded in Docker’s head, and warm blood streamed from his nostrils.
Laurel had thrown himself across Baird, protecting him with his outflung arms and legs. “He’s all right, sarge,” he called out.
“How about you?”
“I’m okay,” but his eyes were bright with shock.
The sleeve of Trankic’s jacket had been ripped open, and blood ran down the back of his grimy hand. Sitting up, he picked tiny pieces of rock from his thick forearm, wincing as patches of skin came free with them. Dormund had blood coming from one of his ears and complained of a killer headache. Solvis was limping; he’d been knocked flat, cracking his knee against splintered rocks. Docker told Dormund and Laurel to untie Baird and put sulfa on his face cuts. Then taking his field glasses from Farrel, he crawled back to the edge of the cliff.
The Mark II had not changed positions, its gray bulk looming through the frosted grove, the cannon covering the overhang of Mont Reynard. He saw now that the small-arms ports were open, revealing the snoutlike muzzles of the 7.9-millimeter machine guns. There was no way that he could see — no reasonably safe way — to get close enough to the tank to destroy its treads, and thereby its mobility, with grenades. He remembered what young Baird had said and knew he was right: With a field grade officer, there’d be no mistakes in tactics. The tank was positioned so that its machine guns covered the open terrain around it, and the thick grove of trees gave the crew the option to leave the tank and double as riflemen.
Docker heard an engine revving up somewhere below him, but his ears were aching from the cannon barrage and he couldn’t immediately locate the source of the staccato sounds. Until he saw the German command car race out from behind the tank, drive into a logging trail and shoot out of sight among the trees before he could so much as raise his carbine at the colonel who was at the wheel, a visored cap shading his features...
Chapter Twenty-Two
December 22, 1944. Environs of Liège, Belgium. Friday, 1400 Hours.
After leaving the girl with the nuns, Larkin drove back into the mountains, where he surmised there would be less chance of running into either American or German troops.
Heading north and west for Liège, the cab warm and snug, he relaxed comfortably as the big truck powered its way up the grades in low gear, clawing through the slick, dangerous turns, dropping from heights into gorges and parting the thick fog and snow with the battering force of its wide grille and fenders.
He’d put the half empty bottle of whiskey on the seat beside him. He felt alert and confident and intended to stay that way. And he also wanted to save something to celebrate with, a couple of fingers of Cutty Sark when he collected his loot from Gervais. Driving fast but carefully, he leaned forward to peer through the flying veils of snow, then relishing the pressure against his back when he swept down the hills, the solid weight that came from dozens of crates of food and wine and whiskey... He thought cheerfully about the money he would collect in Liège and remembered with a good, warm feeling what he’d told Gervais, that nothing left the truck for the warehouse until he had his share in his hands, every damned one of those twenty-one hundred simoleons. He thought about Killjoy Kranston and that made him feel like singing, so he hummed a verse of “Molly Malone,” beating out the rythmn with his fingers on the steering wheel.
With his share of the loot, Larkin figured he wouldn’t have to kiss the Killjoy’s behind for a job when he got home. He could take a year off, let Agnes buy some furniture, and maybe even go back and finish that last year of high school. There wasn’t much mystery about getting ahead in the world. It wasn’t brains that made the difference, it was the breaks. And it wasn’t what you knew but who you knew. Except that made him remember something that dampened his spirits. He’d said that once in a bar in the Bronx and some smart-ass prick had corrected him, saying no, Larkin, you got it wrong, you dumb mick... it’s not who you know, but whom.