One by one, blinking in the morning sunlight, his crew emerged. Russo stretched and rubbed his arms for warmth, producing a cloud of dust. In the east, the guns were still firing, a steady rumble that vibrated through the air and ground.
What a mess. Axis tanks were rumbling out of the passes, and here was Tank Sergeant Austin, without orders, cleaning up from a sandstorm.
“Get digging,” he said. “We need to be able to move fast if we’re called.”
“Cripes,” Clay said at the front of the tank. “Sergeant, check this out!”
The bog pointed at Boomer’s front plate. The storm had scoured swathes of paint off the turret and glacis, exposing gleaming, polished metal.
“We’ll give her a new coat later,” Austin said. “Let’s get to work.”
He and Clay grabbed shovels and dug while Swanson and Russo leaned into the engine bay and Wade cleaned the weapons.
His labors made him sweat, moisture that attracted every bit of sand still in the air along with black flies. After two weeks of being in the field, all he wanted was a hot shower instead of daily whore’s baths from the same helmet he shaved with. He missed the hot-spring Roman baths at Gafsa.
The lieutenant waved at him from his Betty, which once again flew the Texas flag from its aerial. The other sergeants had convened there. Austin dropped his shovel and made his way to them.
Whitley held his map attached to a clipboard. “It’s worse than we thought. The Krauts punched their way through our line, and now two battalions of the 168th Infantry are under siege on the hills overlooking the pass.”
Cocker bent to inspect the map. His eyes widened. “You’re shitting me.”
“That’s not even the worst part. The colonel says Kraut armor is rolling up out of Maknassy and coming straight at us from the south. Word is they’re the 21st Panzer, the best desert fighters on the whole goddamn planet. Lucky for us, they won’t get here for a while, so we can take our problems one at a time.”
Dunlap flicked his cigarette into the sand. “What do you want us to do, sir?”
“The colonel wants us on the move ASAP,” the lieutenant told them. “We’re going north to Lessouda and relieve the 168th and buy enough time that whoever is able to pull out can do it. Any questions?”
Nobody had any.
“Then get to it,” Whitley said. “This is it, gentlemen. Today, we’re going up against Kraut armor for the first time. Let’s do it right and kick Jerry in the balls.”
“Yes, sir,” Austin said.
The pow wow broke up. Cocker invited him over to Buckshot, where they had coffee brewing. Austin looked back at Boomer. His crew was doing fine getting the tank ready, working together like a well-oiled machine.
If I could just keep them working on the tank around the clock, they’d get along just fine, he thought.
At Buckshot, Cocker gave him a steaming mug. “What do you think, John?”
He sipped the hot coffee and sighed with satisfaction. “I’m starting to think the brass doesn’t know what it’s doing.”
“My sentiment, exactly.”
At the same time, Austin was happy Boomer would see some action. She was one of the most lethal machines ever built by man, and today she’d get her test. Her crew had trained a long time and come a long way to fight.
“They’re going to order us up there, and we have no idea what we’re going up against,” Cocker complained. “It could be a whole division.”
“No use wondering. We’ll follow our orders, and whatever we run into, we’ll make them sorry.” He chuckled. “You got to admire their balls, though. Launching an offensive in a sandstorm.”
“Yeah,” Cocker said, paling. “Well, good luck today.”
Austin gave him the mug back. “You too, Barney. Thanks for the cup of joe.”
After they shook hands, he headed toward Boomer, excited and scared and oddly happy at the same time. Just before he reached the tank, his legs gave out and he sank to his knees. He yelped in surprise at his body’s betrayal.
Burning with shame, he looked around, but his crew either hadn’t noticed or were pretending they hadn’t.
Deep breath, he thought. You can do this. These men are relying on you.
Your dad is watching.
He thrust his hand into his pocket and gripped the musket ball. His great granddad had gotten shot in the leg and didn’t go chicken; he wouldn’t either. He reminded himself he had Austin blood. He hauled himself to his feet and strode up to his tank. After each man walked him through a quick inspection of the systems he’d worked on, he dismissed him to get his chow and coffee.
Then the order came through to mount up.
Russo hand-cranked the engine and ran forward to climb into his seat and plug in. Austin said, “Driver, start the engine.”
The big engine barked but refused to turn over.
“It’s just cold.” Russo gave it more choke and started again. This time, the engine sputtered and then turned over with a snarl. “We’re good!”
“Let’s go kick some Kraut ass,” Austin said. “Driver, follow Buckshot.”
“You got it, Boss.”
The battalion and its attached armored infantry and artillery units surged north toward Lessouda, straight into injun country. The fury of battle sounded from all directions now. Pillars of black smoke leaned into the blue sky. Ahead, Betty’s Texas flag flapped and rolled in the wind.
“Hi-yo, Silver!” one of the tank commanders yelled. A flurry of whoops followed. After weeks of runaround, the tankers were itching for a brawl.
The radio burst with commanders calling out plane contacts. Austin saw them too, a wave of black dots in the sky that was approaching fast.
“Button up,” he told his crew. “Stukas!”
The squadron of gull-winged Luftwaffe dive-bombers arrived from the mountains in seconds. The leader waggled his wings before dropping into a vertical dive. Austin climbed out of the cupola, crouched behind the .50-caliber machine gun, and yanked its charging handle. Tracers were already reaching up for the Axis plane as it made its screaming banshee descent.
The other bombers also plunged out of the sky, sirens wailing as they dove for their targets like giant birds of prey. Graceful and terrifying.
The tanks scattered. Boomer lurched off the road and made for an olive grove. Austin fired a burst, corrected, and fired again. The planes were too fast.
Bombs whistled through the air as the Stukas pulled out of their fall, the machines’ engines howling to fight gravity. Austin dove into his cupola as deadly missiles exploded along the formation and tons of earth erupted from the road.
The very ground beneath him shook from the impacts. Shrapnel chunks the size of baseballs clattered and banged off Boomer’s armor. Bright green light flared through the scopes as massive fireballs sucked air from the crew’s lungs and left them gasping.
“What the hell was that?” Swanson roared. “Fuck!”
“We’re okay!” Austin said. “Everybody, shut up. Driver, stop.”
He emerged from the cupola to take in a scene of devastation covered in a massive pall of dust. A dozen tanks burned around the cratered road. The wrecks shuddered with internal explosions as ammo cooked off and spat tracers in random directions. Some of the trucks had been blown clear across a neighboring field, taking their infantry with them. The olive grove had been shorn to stumps surrounded by piles of smoking toothpicks.
Austin raised trembling hands to remove his goggles, as if this would help him understand the destruction he was seeing. “My God.”