Ortnahme's helmet crackled with angry demands from the east bank. He switched the sound off at the console.
Tootsie Six could burn him a new one if she wanted, just as soon as Herman's Whore reached solid ground again. Until then, he didn't give a hoot in Hell what anybody but his driver had to say.
They reached the central pier in a puff of dust and clanging gravel, debris from the towers. Task Force Ranson's previous vehicles had rammed a track clear, but the kid was moving too fast to be nice about what his skirts scraped.
The Yokel jeep halted on the solid pier. The major shook his fist, but he didn't seem to be ordering his guards to try buzzbombs where verbal orders had failed.
Via, maybe they were going to make it after all. That newbie crew in Blue Three had crossed, hadn't—
A cable parted, whanging loud enough to be clearly audible.A second whang!, a third—
The bow of Herman's Whore was tilting upward. The intake howl of her fans proved that Simkins had both throttle banks slid wide flat open.
It wasn't going to be enough.
The cables parting were the short loops every meter or so, attaching the main support cable to the bridge span. Each time one broke, the next ahead took the doubled strain of the tank's weight—and broke in turn. The asphalt roadway crumbled instantly,but the unsupported stringers beneath continued to hold for a second or two longer—until they stretched beyond steel's modulus of tension.
Thirty meters behind Herman's Whore, the span fell away from the central pier and splashed into the estuary. Froth from its impact drifted sullenly downstream.
The tank was accelerating toward safety at fifty kph and rising, but their bow was pointing up at thirty-five, forty, forty-five—
For an instant, Herman's Whore was climbing at an angle of 47° with the east tower within a hundred meters and the round, visored faces of everybody in the task force staring at them in horror. Then the spray of the tank bellying down into the estuary hid everything for the few seconds before her roaring fans stalled out in the thicker medium.
Warrant Leader Ortnahme lifted his foot to the top of his seat and thrust his panting body upward. His eyes had just reached the level of the cupola hatch when water rushing in the opposite direction met him.
Easy, easy. He was fine if he didn't bloody panic . . . . The catches of his body armor, top and bottom; shrugging sideways, feeling them release, feeling the ceramic weight drop away instead of sinking even his fat to a grave in the bottom muck.
The water was icy and tasted of salt. Bubbles of air gurgled past Ortnahme as Herman's Whore gave its death rattle. Violet sparks flickered in the blackness as millions of dollars worth of superb, state-of-the-art electronics shorted themselves into melted junk.
Ortnahme's skin tingled.His diaphragm contracted,preventing him from taking the breath he intended as a last great gurgling shivered past his body to empty the turret of air. He shoved himself upward to follow the bubble to the surface.
He was halfway through the hatch when his equipment belt hooked on the string of grenades again.
The warrant leader reached down for the belt buckle. The drag of water on his shirt sleeves slowed the movement, but it was all going to be—
The belt had twisted. He couldn't find the buckle though his fingers scrabbled wildly and his legs strained upward in an attempt to break web gear from which Ortnahme's conscious mind knew you could support a bloody howitzer in midair.
Air. Blood and martyrs. He tried to scream.
Herman's Whore grounded with a slurping impact that added mud to the taste of salt and blood in Ortnahme's mouth. They couldn't be more than three meters down; but a millimeter was plenty deep enough if it was over your mouth and nose.
Plenty deep enough to drown.
The darkness pressing the warrant leader's eyes began to pulse deep red with his heartbeats, a little fainter each time. He thought he felt something brush his chest, but he couldn't be sure and he didn't think his fingers were moving anymore.
The wire parted. A grip on Ortnahme's belt added its pull to the warrant leader's natural buoyancy.
Sunlight came as a dazzling explosion. Ortnahme bobbed, sneezed in reaction. Water sprayed from his nostrils.
Tech 2 Simkins was dog-paddling with a worried look. He was trying to retract the cutting blade of his multitool, but his face kept dipping beneath the surface.
One of the combat cars had just waddled down the bank. It was poised to lift across the water as soon as the man in the stern—Cooter, it was, from his size and the crucifix on his breastplate—unlimbered a tow line for the swimmers to grab as the car skittered by.
"Sir,"Simkins said.His face was wet from dunking, but Ortnahme would swear there were tears in his eyes as well. "Sir, I'm sorry. I tried to hold it but I—"
He was blubbering, all right, but the black water slapped him again when he forgot to paddle. Sometimes being hog fat and able to float had advantages . . . .
"Sir—" the kid repeated as his streaming visage lifted again.
"Via, kid!" Ortnahme said, almost choking on his swollen tongue. He'd bitten the bloody hell out of it as he struggled. "Will you shut yer bleedin' trap?"
Flamethrower roared as it moved onto the water.
"If I ever have a son," Ortnahme shouted over the fan noise, "I'll name the little bastard Simkins!"
Chapter Eleven
"I thought," said Dick Suilin, looking down at the silent trench line as Flamethrower accelerated past, "that we'd have to fight our way out of la Reole, too."
It must have rained recently,because ankle-deep mud slimed the bottom of the trench. Two bodies lay face down in it. Their black uniforms smoldered around the holes chewed by shell fragments.
The bruises beneath Suilin's armor itched unbearably. "I wonder what my sister's doing," he added inconsequently.
"The Consies were just tacking the west bank down," Cooter said, his eyes on his multi-function display. "Nothin' serious."
"Nothin' that wasn't gonna run like rabbits when the shells hit—thems as could," Gale interjected with a chuckle.
"All their heavy stuff this side of the river," the lieutenant continued, "that's at Kohang."
He shrugged. "Where we'll find it quick enough, I guess."
"Where's your sister?"Gale asked. The veteran gunner poked a knifepoint into the crust around the ejection port of his tribarrel. Jets of liquid nitrogen were supposed to cool and expel powergun rounds from the chambers after firing. A certain amount of the plastic matrix remained gaseous until it condensed on the outside of the receiver, narrowing the port.
Suilin unlatched his body armor and began rubbing the raw skin over his ribs. His fatigue shirt was sweaty, but the drenching in salt spray from the estuary seemed to have made the itch much worse.