“You got that right,” Swanson said and scowled at Wade. “Why can’t you tell stories like that?”
The gunner reached for the musket ball. “Can I hold it?”
Austin pocketed it. “I can’t let anybody else touch it. Its luck is only for me, but seeing as we’re all in the same boat, so to speak, it’s your luck too.”
“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in probabilities.”
“I’ll tell you this. If I fall in battle, I want you boys to carry this musket ball into the next. And then I want one of you to bring it home and give it to my son.”
“Don’t say that,” Russo said. “If you say it, it’ll happen.”
“Just promise me. I’ll do everything I can to not let you down as Boomer’s commander. I want you to do this one thing for me.”
“We promise,” Russo said before the others ruined the moment.
He didn’t like it, but he appreciated the honor and tradition involved. They came from different worlds back home, even different Americas, but he and Austin had one big thing in common: the pressure to live up to a family name.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE LONG SLOG
American armored columns groped east along the road between Algiers and Tunis, five hundred and sixty miles of rough terrain that steadily grew hillier until the road switchbacked through cork oak forests up into the Atlas Mountains.
The air temperature plummeted while sleet and rain made the ground muddier, a gooey red muck that stuck to everything and dried like glue. Mediterranean squalls turned the mountains lush with heather. That and the fog shrouding the ancient peaks reminded the tankers of Ireland.
By early December, they emerged from the cork forests and drove through fertile grassland valleys. Cactus hedges separated farms. During the day, the Berbers sniped at them from the rocks; at night, the robed harlequins came to sell rugs, beg for cigarettes, spy for the Germans, and steal everything in sight, all the while saying, baraka, baraka, which meant, blessings.
Otherwise, the gasoline cowboys had nothing to do but stare at monotonous scenery until they were all rock happy, or gape at the ambulances hauling wounded back to Algiers along with dire news and rumors that spread fear along the column.
Supplies dwindled; speculation blossomed. Hard fighting and heavy losses at the front. German elite paratroopers and panzer divisions waiting just ahead. Powerful antitank weapons such as 88s, MG42 machine guns, and a monstrous, invincible new tank the Germans called the Tiger. Axis artillery had blanketed the mountain passes with poison gas. A supply train had been captured and its crew crucified on the rocks as a warning.
As they neared Tunis, some soldiers shot off their toes to avoid combat.
“We ain’t even there yet, and they already got us licked,” PFC Swanson said. “By the time we get there, we’ll have scared ourselves to death.”
The real enemy, though, turned out to be mud.
The treads and wheels of scores of vehicles transformed the road into a quagmire, a thick, sticky red soup. It splashed everywhere and plastered the inside of the tank. The crew was smothered in it. It delayed the trucks bringing the beans and bullets, putting the tankers on a rationed diet and barely getting them enough gas and oil to roll another hard mile.
Even worse, at least in Swanson’s eyes, nobody had any cigarettes left, and he was reduced to smoking wild rosemary rolled in toilet paper.
Boomer’s engine howled as she fought the muck. She was bogged.
“You’re burning the clutch,” Swanson yelled. “I can smell it. We’re bellied.”
“Then get out and give us some traction, boombots,” the driver yelled back.
“Everybody out,” Austin ordered. “Get my tank moving.”
“If Tunis is so goddamn important, why didn’t we land there?” Swanson yelled at the top of his lungs. “Can anybody tell me that?”
Nobody answered him, not even Wade, who had an answer for everything. The outside air was cold but warmer than inside the tank, where it was freezing. Waving acrid exhaust from his face, Swanson slid off the sponson and splashed up to his knees in muck. They were in a tight little valley his people back home called a cove. Snow-capped mountains loomed all around. He spotted some wild sheep on a nearby slope and thought about lamb chops.
Austin mounted a yellow flag on his cupola to signal Boomer was out of action then stayed at his station to man the anti-aircraft machine gun.
“I’ll get the shovels.” Clay yanked his foot out of the mud and took an exaggerated step. His face crumpled at the edge of tears. “I just lost my boot.”
Swanson untied the shovels and thought about his options. Normally, the best thing to do would be to wrap chain around the track and tie a towing cable between it and the nearest tree, but no trees were in range. “Get one of the logs.”
Ahead, Buckshot was similarly ditched in the mud, its crew grousing as they dug themselves out. Too exhausted and focused on their work, nobody called out a greeting or even the usual grab-ass taunts.
With his arm plunged into the mud searching for his missing boot, Clay was no help. Swanson shoveled and scraped while Wade untied a log from the side of the tank. Austin had insisted they cut some of these and strap them to Boomer’s side in case they ran into this kind of situation. Using the log as an anchor, the tank would be able to pull itself out on its own power.
“Okay, now drag—”
In front of them, Buckshot gunned its engine and gained traction, spraying a rooster tail of mud that splattered across Boomer and her crew.
The loader clenched his eyes in silent rage. “Help me get it under the tracks.”
Wade did as he was told. “Okay.”
Swanson derived at least a small satisfaction in ordering the gunner around and seeing him get his hands dirty for a change. “I wonder if old Dido had to put up with this shit.”
Wade laughed. “Hannibal probably did when he crossed the Alps to invade Rome. We have tanks, he had elephants.”
The loader wanted to know more but bit his tongue. Once Wade got started, there was no stopping him. “How come you know so much about history, anyways?”
“I studied then taught it for a year at the University of Minnesota.”
“No shit?”
“No shit,” Wade confirmed.
“So you really are a professor. You wasn’t a factory foreman, like you said.”
“I’ve never been in a factory. I’m a college-educated city boy from a well-off family, everything you hate.”
The guy was coming clean. He just didn’t care anymore about appearances, which Swanson could respect.
He snorted. “I don’t hate you for that.” He hated him because he was snooty. “I take it back home your nickname ain’t Hawkeye, neither.”
“No. I’ve always been Charles. My wife’s the only one calls me Charlie.”
“I’ll call you Hawkeye,” Clay said, cleaning mud out of his recovered boot. “You’re a deadeye behind the gun.”
Wade ignored him. “Anything else you want to know, Swanson?”
“Yeah. Why you always talk and act so stuck up?”
“I talk the way I talk. It just sounds stuck up to you. Why do you care?”
Swanson shrugged. “Give it some gas, Mac.”
Boomer’s four-hundred-horsepower engine revved. The driver threw the transmission into granny gear, where the tank had maximum power. Boomer clawed up and over the log, which sank into the quagmire.