Docker looked to his right where Kohler and Linari and Sonny Laurel were crouched behind the machine guns, hands on the firing grips. To his left Schmitzer and Farrel were on the other guns, Dormund behind them with shiny belts of ammunition. All the men had turned to watch Trankic and Docker.
“All right, hit it!” Docker said.
Trankic pumped a fist high in the air and the machine guns tore the silence apart, the bullets ricocheting instants later with shrill drawn-out whines against the thick armor of the tank. Echoes of the bursts streaked through the valley, and the tracer ammunition formed brilliant looping arcs above the hill, fiery guidelines for the moving tank.
The Tiger II was accelerating rapidly now, gathering momentum for its charge at the mountainside. The sound of its engine and the grind of its tracks shook the ground; Docker felt the tremors through his boots and could see miniature avalanches starting on the hillside, streams of rock and shale and ice hurtling down to the floor of the valley. He also saw the Tiger II’s huge cannon tracking swiftly toward the machine guns on their right flank. As he yelled at the men there to take cover, the ground and air shook with cannon blasts and the twenty-five pound projectiles pounded against the overhang of the mountain. A storm of splintered rock and shale burst around them, one taking an inch-long strip of flesh from Docker’s forehead and so disorienting him that only the feel of the cold rock against his face made him realize he had been knocked to the ground.
Crawling to his knees, he saw that the Tiger II was coming straight up the mountain at their cannon, ignoring the baited flanks, traveling swiftly and safely between the charges of dynamite below the machine guns. And for an instant he saw the tall German officer and one of his soldiers running in a crouch behind the tank, machine pistols in their hands.
The tank’s 88-millimeter cannon was now swinging back toward the center of the hill. Docker ran toward the revetment, but the Tiger II fired again and the projectiles exploded into the overhang behind him, the concussion striking him in the back and throwing him against the sandbagged walls around the cannon... The whole world seemed shredded by noise, the staccato bursts of their machine guns, the rupture of frozen rock under the tank’s tracks, the fire from the tank’s big cannon breaking over them like flails. The weight of it all pressed almost unbearably on Docker, the churning sounds fragmented and seemingly inflamed by the blood filming his eyes.
Trankic had run toward the right flank of the hill when the tank’s cannon turned in that direction. By the time he saw — as Docker had — that the tank was heading toward the center of their position, the first shells were already smashing into the mountainside, the impact stunning and driving him to his knees... When his head cleared, he could smell the stench of powder in the air, its smoky taste mingling with the wet snow and smell of fresh earth churned up by the cannon blasts. When he stared around, instinctively tightening his grip on his rifle, he saw Docker on the ground, and Baird climbing over the revetment wall above him... Kohler and Linari were firing down the hill at the tank. Laurel was lying beside them, an arm over his helmet. The tank was not heading for the machine guns and the dynamite, Trankic knew then, it was coming straight at their cannon. Firing the dynamite was a long shot, maybe they’d get lucky, Trankic thought, the blast could take out the Germans behind the tank, a slab of rock might crack one of the tank treads... he twisted around and slammed a fist down on the plunger of the detonating machine.
The exploding dynamite ripped the ground open, clouding the hillside with dust and black smoke, sending bursts of ice and rock and clods of frozen earth arcing, wheeling through the smoke-threaded mists, and then as they lost their thrust and fell spinning back to the ground they rattled noisily but harmlessly around the turret and armor of the charging tank...
Shock waves from the first dynamite blast knocked Schmitzer off his feet. Shouting at Dormund to take his place at the machine guns, he scuttled across the ground to fall across the plunger and detonate the charges on the left flank of the hill...
Docker and Baird crouched a few feet apart outside the wall of the revetment, ducking instinctively when fragments from the second blast whined over their heads.
“You all right, sergeant?”
“I’m okay.”
“There’s some blood on your face.”
Raising his voice. Docker shouted, “Get back on the cannon, Baird. Move it now!”
When Baird had crawled over the sandbagged wall, Docker ran back to the edge of the cliff and saw through screens of smoke that the Tiger II was only a hundred yards below him on a course that would bring it to the top of the hill a dozen yards to the right of the revetment. One of the German tank crew was lying on the ground halfway down the hill, his face dark and wet in the frame of his helmet, but the officer was still on his feet, firing alternately with his machine pistol at the left and right flank of the hill.
The blood from the gash on Docker’s forehead streaked his eyes and vision, and in his distorted view the German tank looked like some huge animal trying to tear the mountain open. He shook his head, trying to focus better. Slabs of armor gleamed through smoke made red with his blood, like the scales of a great beast, the ranging cannon suggesting feelers or antennae directed by a frightening intelligence. Only the squared black cross on the steel plates above its treads defined the rampaging object as an engine of war and not, as it appeared in Docker’s bloodied vision, some vestigial monster out of memory and time.
He rubbed the haze from his eyes and ran back to the revetment, where, climbing onto the loading platform of the cannon, he gestured urgently to the right. Solvis, his face streaked with smoke, nodded and cranked the gun barrel to the point where the tank would breach the precipice.
Baird was trying to say something to Docker then, shouting to make himself heard, but the words were whipped away in the wind and gunfire. Docker had the impression, though, that there was a new confidence in the boy’s face, surely no sign of panic... He gripped Baird’s shoulder quickly, but there was no more time for talking, no time for deliberation or choice. The Tiger II was suddenly on them, the flaming muzzle of its cannon coming over the edge of the mountain only twenty yards from the front wall of their revetment.
Solvis and Baird made the last corrections in their sightings, and when the tank — its grinding tracks almost vertical, the cannon pointing straight up at the low skies — reached its full extension, its underbelly of thin armor most exposed and vulnerable. Docker slammed his boot down on the firing pedal and their own cannon came to life as it poured round after round of point-detonating ammunition directly into the bottom armor of the climbing tank.
The steel heads of the cartridges smashed into, pierced the Tiger II’s belly-plates; the payloads of trinitrocellulose exploded in a series of flashes that caused the tank to quiver for an instant like an animal in torment. When its center of gravity suddenly shifted, the left treads lost their traction and spun out of control, and the right tracks ground into the earth, twisting the tank sideways in erratic convulsions.
Black smoke now began to stream from the rim of the tank’s turret. Docker covered his bloody face with his arm and fired three more rounds, the explosions creating storm waves that knocked him from the loading platform back onto the rocky floor of the revetment.
Those final blasts tipped the Tiger II back over the edge of the hill, where its own ammunition began exploding, the interior eruptions causing it to slide down the slope, its descent stopped only by trees and boulders sundered by the blasts of dynamite. At last, when the tank crashed slowly and heavily onto its side, the roar of its cannon spent a final projectile harmlessly into the gray skies above the valley of the Salm.