Fifty yards away, men spilled from a burning tank with its gun barrel chewed off. One of them was on fire and flailing on the ground.
His lips were moving. He was mumbling the Lord’s Prayer, stuck on a groove near the end of it. Deliver us from evil, he kept saying. Deliver us from evil.
Austin shook his head to clear it. He grabbed the radio and checked in with the lieutenant, who’d survived the attack along with his entire platoon.
“Bears 3 Actual to all Bears 3.” Whitley’s voice quivered. “We’re proceeding to objective—wait, one.”
“What do we do?” Russo said.
“We’re sitting ducks here!” Swanson fumed.
“LT said to wait, so we wait,” Austin said, hoping his voice sounded steadier than he felt. His crew was watching him to see how they should react. They needed to see him stay strong. “The Germans hit us hard, but we still have a job to do.”
“New order,” the radio buzzed. “The 21st Panzer is a lot closer than we were told. They’ll be on our tail in no time. And the 10th Panzer is coming down from other side of Lessouda Hill.”
The new order was to run before they were trapped.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE PINCER
PFC Russo dropped the clutch and stomped the gas, pushing full engine power to the treads. He worked the sticks to zig-zag the tank across the plain, his brain on autopilot, still in shock from the pounding that had wiped out twenty percent of the battalion in minutes.
At some point, he’d raised the hatch so he could see better and, therefore, drive faster, a steady fifteen miles an hour. He didn’t remember doing that, but he was grateful for it. If the tank was hit, he could bail that much more quickly.
The platoon zig-zagged west through an onion field while, everywhere he looked, panzers blazed in hot pursuit. Hundreds of vehicles swarmed the plain. They raised wakes of sand and dust as they rolled in a well-orchestrated pincer movement.
All Russo knew was he didn’t want those deadly machines anywhere near him. Otherwise, his training did the driving.
Nearby, Sidi bou Zid was ablaze. Panicking supply officers were detonating the fuel dumps while Luftwaffe planes fell screaming on the town to drop their payloads, intent on razing it to the ground. Russo felt the heat from here. The sky dimmed as waves of oily black smoke drifted in front of the rising sun.
Beyond, American vehicles and infantry choked the roads, a helter-skelter rush west to escape the Axis juggernaut. An amazing thing, seeing thousands of troops in flight. A company of light tanks, half their vehicles already a flaming ruin, stopped on the plain, their crews bailing with their hands in the air to surrender. On the road, a traffic jam of halftracks flew apart in a rapid series of flashes and thunderous detonations.
Oh, God, a body was cartwheeling over the explosion—
“Driver, march on that orchard on our ten,” Austin said.
“Stugats,” Russo said. How could the sergeant be so calm? He was talking like this was a parade, not a do-or-die race, and what was this about an orchard? They couldn’t be stopping! “Stugats, stugats, stugats!”
Nobody knew what they were doing, the brass calling the shots was too far in the rear, American planes were nowhere in sight, and they couldn’t even get the reports right about the 21st Panzer’s location.
He’d done his part. He’d driven the tank where they wanted and exactly how they wanted. Why wasn’t anybody else doing theirs?
He considered he might die for it.
Austin growled, “Keep it together, or I’ll put Clay in your seat. The command was to march on that orchard ahead of us.”
Russo glanced at the bog, who gaped back at him with wild eyes. Where’s your nagging to drive now, goombah?
Before his nano died, the old man had often called him that. What do you say, goombah? Calling him “man.” What did you do with your toy, goombah? Finish your manigott, goombah!
Thinking about his grandpa steeled his nerves. If he was going to die today, he wouldn’t be a coward. He wouldn’t let these men see him lose it. They’d tell mama and papa he died with honor, fighting for their adopted homeland.
I’m the Sicilian Superman, he reminded himself. These guys wanted him to prove himself to them. After today, they’ll be trying to prove themselves to me.
Then he burst out laughing, startling Clay, who probably thought he was losing it. He wasn’t losing it. It was just funny he’d actually thought he might die.
He wasn’t going to die today. It just couldn’t happen to him. No, he was going to survive, marry that Sicilian girl of his dreams, and go home a hero who’d earned his family a special place in America. One day, decades from now, he’d die a happy old man. Until then, he cursed death.
Mannaggia la mort!
“Driving for the orchard, Boss,” he acknowledged.
“We’re all going to form up and make our stand there,” the tank commander told the crew. “We’re going to stop the Germans.”
Russo clamped his lips shut to keep himself from laughing again. From the number of German tanks he’d spotted before their flight, nobody was going to stop them, not today. The remnants of 1st Battalion was heavily outnumbered and was going to take another beating.
Not Boomer, though. Again, that feeling of invincibility took hold. He wasn’t even going to get a scratch. He was insulated from all this, able to observe it with detachment. This was all a movie for his benefit.
If they didn’t stop the Germans, at least it would buy time for the rest of the American forces to escape. He liked that idea a lot more than just trying to take as many Germans with him as possible. That was something worth fighting for.
Russo checked the instrument panel and took in the tachometer and the oil and water gauges. Oil temperature was one-sixty, about right; water temperature was one-seventy, within acceptable range. Oil pressure was fifty-five pounds per square inch, fine for the current engine RPM. Boomer was running in good health.
The plain surrounding Sidi bou Zid was a patchwork quilt of farmland radiating toward desert. Even now, with the thunder of gunfire everywhere and battle rapidly approaching, the Berbers pushed their plows with the help of oxen. Boomer rolled into a plantation of scraggly almond trees, crushing part of some poor slob’s crop. Branches and almonds and a riot of petals scattered in her wake.
After the tank crossed an irrigation ditch, the commander said, “This is the place. Driver, clock six, right, and stop in the ditch.”
“Roger.” Russo pulled the right stick to turn the tank around in a wide arc. He downshifted and edged the tank into a shallow gully until ordered to stop. Boomer was now hull down, meaning only the turret was visible to the enemy.
Austin raised his binoculars. “Button up.”
Russo lowered his seat and closed the hatch. The tank was hull down, but he was able to raise his periscope to gain a front-row seat to Custer’s Last Stand. The German tanks came on out of the rising sun, churning sand, easy to mark as targets by their pronounced shadows.
He saw Mark IIIs and IVs, some the Special type with the oddly long barrel, along with a platoon of big tanks he’d never seen before, giants that looked unstoppable. In the flat landscape, they appeared closer than they were. He kept his hand on the gearshift, ready to reverse when Austin gave the order.
Boomer was in a solid defensive line of some forty tanks reinforced by a platoon of tank destroyers and artillery tubes and infantry. Russo thought maybe this could work. Maybe they’d take out enough enemy tanks that the Germans would hesitate or even withdraw.