Austin said, “Good work—”
Buckshot screamed with strain as a track snapped and peeled off from the wheels. In his cupola, Cocker ducked as the track cracked in the air like a giant whip and tore off the radio antenna before slapping into the muck. The sergeant let loose a string of obscenities as his M4 slowly sank up to the turret.
Swanson couldn’t help but laugh. “That tank is good and screwed.”
“Roger, sir,” Austin said into the radio. “All right, boys, grab a shovel and pitch in to get her out. We’re stuck here for now.”
“Looks like we’re all screwed,” Wade pointed out.
Soaking wet and bitching, the platoon tramped over and started digging Buckshot out. Swanson said he still had a touch of dysentery and found some juniper shrubs to hide behind. There, he squatted with his roll of Army Form Blank, lit one of his pungent rosemary cigarettes, and planned to sit out most of the digging. The Army had taught him to never volunteer for work, while his upbringing had taught him to avoid it altogether. Work was for suckers.
Through a gap in the junipers, he watched the men scrape at the mud with their tools. Even the lieutenant chipped in. Wade really went at it, giving it everything he had, venting his frustrations with a pickaxe. Swanson suspected something more than the mud, cold, reduced rations, and anxiety over the Germans was eating ol’ Wisenheimer.
Thunder boomed in the east, echoing tinny and distant among the peaks and valleys. Only it wasn’t thunder; it was big guns shooting. The men gaped east like a startled herd and returned with renewed vigor to their shoveling. There was fighting ahead, and they were stuck here missing the party.
Look at them, Swanson thought. Everybody’s in a big hurry to get killed.
Holding his gut and wearing his best hangdog expression, he emerged from behind the bushes. Austin gave him the stink-eye but said nothing. The sergeant had a good read on men, and he could smell a shirker a mile away. Swanson grinned as if they shared a secret, grabbed a shovel, and made a big show of adding his muscle to the war effort.
Sergeant Cocker ran a cable between Buckshot’s rear and Boomer’s front plate. “You ready, Shorty?”
The driver gave a thumbs-up.
“Then clear out, everybody. Get back!”
Boomer crawled backward until the cable stretched taut between the big armored vehicles. Then she hauled Buckshot from the muck with a colossal sucking sound.
Panting and covered in mud, the tankers leaned on their shovels. Looking angry and exhausted, they rested as the overcast sky darkened by the moment.
“It’s just mud,” Lieutenant Whitley told them. “Mud ain’t gonna stop us.”
This rousing speech finished, he ordered Cocker to get the maintenance platoon to fix his tank. Then he told his platoon they’d RON in place. Swanson and his crewmates tramped off to Boomer and mounted up. Between the mud and fear of Berbers cutting their throats in the dark, nobody wanted to sleep outside. Even though it was tempting to sleep under the tank in the engine’s fading warmth, they had no interest in being smothered if it settled overnight.
At suppertime, the tankers lit their stove inside the turret, probably not the brightest thing to do in a cramped space surrounded by ammo and gasoline, but nobody cared anymore, not even their by-the-book sergeant. They left the commander’s hatch open to vent the smoke. With the eggs and Algerian wine they’d stowed long gone, dinner was cans of cheese and biscuits the men called dog bones, its unpleasant smell providing welcome relief from the worse stink of body odor.
Swanson accepted his hot food and pulled his spoon from his breast pocket. Army chow never bothered him. “Any word on what we’re doing here besides slowly turning into mud, Sarge?”
“Our orders are to drive east to support General Anderson,” Austin said. “What kind of support we’re talking about depends on when we get there.”
“Any word on what’s going on, though? All I keep hearing is how the Germans are using poison gas, the Arabs are eating our dead, and Axis planes dropped a hundred prisoners on Algiers.”
“I heard the Germans upgraded their guns to longer barrels,” Wade said. “With a stronger muzzle velocity, they can easily put a round through our armor.”
“I heard they have huge tanks that can’t be killed,” Clay chimed in.
“All that’s just latrine talk,” Austin said. “None of it’s true.”
“So enlighten us,” Swanson said. “What do you think is going on?”
The commander gave it some thought while he chewed. “We’re in the western dorsal. Anderson is facing off against Axis forces holding passes in the northern part of the eastern dorsal. South of us, the French are holding the rest of the eastern dorsal. So what happens next depends on the Germans.”
The Germans had chewed Anderson up and seized the initiative. They might hang tight onto what they had, expand their pocket to seize all the passes, or drive straight into Anderson’s scattered forces.
None of it sounded good to Swanson.
Wade spoke up. “We’ll either be thrown straight into the fight around Tunis or pushed south to get between the Axis army at Tunis and Rommel’s Afrika Corps.”
“How do you know?” Swanson said.
Wade shrugged. “It’s common sense. There’s no other option. If the weather’s bad, they may keep us as a reserve for a while first.”
“Great,” Swanson muttered. As opposed to stories about Axis planes dropping war prisoners on Algiers, the gunner’s theory sounded all too plausible.
“I guess we’ll know when we get there,” Austin said. “Which could take a while at the rate we’re going. Things could change a lot between now and then.”
Outside, trucks rolled into the area.
Clay opened his hatch to inspect the newcomers. “Supply train made it through!”
They scrambled out and joined the tankers crowded around the deuce-and-a-half trucks, a motley army of mud men clamoring for smokes, chow, and letters from home. The trucks had brought hundred-octane aviation gasoline in five-gallon cans and heavy oil for the M4s’ thirsty engines. There was a water barrel to refill their depleted supply.
Otherwise, the truckers had plenty of soap, razors, shaving cream, and hair cream to choose from. No food, PX rations, cigarettes, or mail, though, which were still stuck in the mud miles away.
The tankers growled in frustration.
“They ain’t doing without in Algiers, I can tell you that much,” Swanson spat. “Goddamn Army and its goddamn Army officers.”
Too tired to argue with him, nobody said anything. After topping up the tank on gasoline and oil, they returned to their stations and wrapped bedrolls around their shivering bodies. Clay stayed up in the cupola to take first watch.
Within seconds, they were all snoring.
Swanson awoke in the dark, quaking from the cold. “Who’s that on watch?”
“We’re all awake,” Russo said. “The cold woke us up.”
“I thought Africa was supposed to be fucking hot.”
“Can we light a fire outside, Sergeant?”
“No,” the commander said. “Light discipline.”
“Everybody else is doing it.”
They opened their hatches and looked around. The cold had woken the rest of the platoon up. The tankers had filled tire ruts in the ground with gasoline and lit them to make fires. Hot, beautiful, amazing fires.
“Bad idea.” Austin let out a resigned sigh. “All right, we might as well get warm. Clay, you stay here on the .50. I’ll come back and spot you as soon as I defrost. Let’s hope it’s too cold for Axis pilots to be flying around tonight.”