He had a gun in his right hand. He laid the gun on the side of the train, then used both hands to push himself up. Once he was out of the door, he picked up the gun and stood on the side of the train, a shaky, dizzy survivor. I shot him in the head, and he fell behind the train.
“Shit, here it comes,” said Philips.
One of the cargo doors opened on the train that other Marines had knocked over. There was a moment of silent mystery, then three Targ Tanks rumbled out of that compartment.
Targs were an old model, antipersonnel tanks. They had smaller cannons and carried light armor, but they could scoot at speeds of up to 170 miles per hour. They were only five feet high. When they got going, their low-slung profile reminded me of spiders. These particular tanks would not need heavy armor, not with those Mogat shields.
In our rush to nail that first train, Philips and I had separated ourselves from the platoon. It didn’t seem important at the time; but seeing those Targs rush toward the station, I knew we were cut off.
“Philips, give me the launcher,” I said.
He handed me the rocket launcher, then took up his M27. “Master Sarge, I don’t like the look of those tanks.”
I fired a quick shot at one of the tanks. It was a perfect shot. The arc of the contrail ended right at the middle of the turret on the tank. There was a massive explosion. Flames and smoke filled the air, and the tank rolled through them untouched. The turret turned in our direction as the tank driver looked to return fire. Philips and I lay flat on the ground, hiding behind a waist-high wall.
“Should we hold the station?” Evans called in.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Philips said.
Marines fired a hailstorm of rockets and bullets at the three tanks, but the situation was getting worse. Another cargo car opened, and three more tanks spilled out. Down the alley I could see more tanks off-loading.
“We can’t stop the tanks!” Thomer yelled into the interLink. “The other platoon is clearing out.”
“Go with them,” I said. “You got that?” I added for Evans and Greer. I sent the communication over the platoon-wide frequency. “Fall back. Get back to the apartment building.”
“Got it,” Evans said.
“Yes, Sergeant,” said Greer.
“What about you?” Thomer asked.
“Fall back. You read me, Thomer? Fall back.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Safest place for us is in that train,” Philips said, pointing to the wreck he had made.
I knew he was right. “Stay down,” I said, as I pulled a smoke grenade from my armor and tossed it into the open area between us and the train. We would need to wait another twenty seconds for the smoke to spread. More survivors climbed out of the wreck. Someone back in the station shot a man as he rose out of a doorway. They shot another as he popped out of a window and started to aim his gun. Then a tank fired a round at the station. I could not tell if the shell hit anyone, but no one fired back. By this time the smoke from the grenade had formed a fairly thick cloud.
“Let’s go!” I yelled as I leaped from behind the wall and dashed into the cover of the smoke. “You there, Philips?” I asked.
“Right behind you,” he said.
“Run for the train,” I said. Once you start talking in battle, it’s all too easy to repeat the obvious.
“And here I was thinking I should run for the Mogat tanks,” Philips said.
A Targ fired into the smoke. It was a blind shot that missed us completely, but the force of the shell’s explosion sent me skidding just as I reached the train. I flew forward five feet and spun to the ground. The upended engine lay on its side, its roof facing in my direction just a few feet ahead. I lunged forward and hid behind its mass.
“That was close.” Philips said.
“It’s going to get a lot more exciting around here,” I said. I found a handhold and scaled the roof of the engine. We needed to find a way inside.
One of the tanks spotted me and fired a shell that struck the base of the train. The whole thing slid. I dropped flat against the engine and held on. Philips, who was trying to climb up behind me, fell off.
“Philips, you all right?”
“Yeah, just dandy,” he said.
I had climbed to the top of the train. Several cars ahead of us, a Mogat popped out of a doorway. His head, chest, and rifle stuck out of the train. He spotted me and started to bring his gun to bear, and I shot him. Another followed him. Philips nailed that one before I could get off another shot.
I found an open doorway just behind the gills of the train and jumped in. What a mess we’d created. With the train on its side, rows of seats hung horizontally in the air like padded shelves. Some bodies lay slumped in the seats. Others were thrown across the car. The ceiling of the train car was to my left. All the light fixtures along the ceiling had shattered.
Scores of men lay bleeding along the side of the car. Some were dead and lay as still as sardines in a can. Others squirmed. If they squirmed enough, I shot them. If they lay still with their hands on their weapons, I shot them—the logic of the battlefield: Only when an enemy truly looked dead did you spare him.
In some spots the bodies were stacked two and three men deep. I suppose I could have pushed them out of my way. Instead, I had to stretch my legs and step over them. An inch-deep stream of blood ran along the side of the car.
I saw a man lying facedown in a puddle of blood so deep that he could have drowned. His hand was wrapped around a gun, and his finger was on the trigger, so I shot him. Another man sat limp in a corner of the train. His hair was matted with blood, but he sat vertically and had a gun on his lap. He looked dead, and I saw no sign of breathing as I fired a shot into his chest. Either of them might have been alive enough to shoot me in the back as I passed.
I heard a crash, pivoted around and aimed my M27, then saw that it was Philips. “Don’t shoot, Harris, it’s me,” he said, holding his hands in front of his face.
I lowered my gun and started for the next car.
“I heard gunshots,” Philips said.
“I’m making sure there aren’t any survivors,” I said.
“You think any of these guys are alive?” Philips asked. He prodded a pile of bodies with the barrel of his M27. The man on the top slid over the other side showing no more signs of life than a sack of potatoes.
“Not in this car,” I said.
“What’s going on out there?” I called to my squad leaders.
“It’s getting ugly,” Thomer shouted. “They parked two trains out of range and off-loaded tanks. There’s a column headed right for us.” I could hear gunfire in the background.
“Targs?” I asked.
“Bigger. I think the Targs were meant to pin us down while they waited for the real guns to arrive.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“We’re still in the station,” Evans said. “They sent Targs around the building to cut us off.”
The door to the next compartment fell open and machine-gun fire sprayed across the wall above my head. I dropped to one knee and fired back, knowing I would not hit the gunman.
I snatched a grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it through the open doorway. The grenade exploded, blowing out most of the wall between our car and the next one. Nothing stirred when I got a look in the next car. I climbed over the remains of the door. With the train on its side, the doorway formed a horizontal stripe. It looked more like a window than a door.
“I’m not sure how long they’ll hold up against those tanks,” Philips said as he followed me into the next car.
I sighed. Maybe all of the bodies were bothering me. So much blood and carnage and no one left to shoot.
“Good news, gentlemen,” the colonel called over an open frequency. He had to be calling about the shields. If they were down, we could shoot our way out of this killing bottle. A rocket or two would take care of the Targs once the shields were down, and our grenadiers had plenty of rockets. If the shields were down, all we would have to do was hold out for a few more minutes, then the reinforcements would arrive—wave upon wave of soldiers.