Michelangelo_s Notebook

36

They began moving out of the camp with the last of the night. The moon had set long ago and tattered clouds shifted from the north, fading the dim light from the stars. Most of the men except Reid and the sergeant were city boys; the depth of the darkness still spooked them. That velvet night was like something otherworldly, too close to the shadow of death that always hung looming in the back of their thoughts each and every moment of each and every day.

They moved through the woods quietly, keeping to the paths, pausing at the small depressed clearing that marked the fork of the trails. The men split into two groups there. Winetka, Bosnic, Biearsto and Terhune, armed with the bazooka and the two-inch mortar, took the south path leading to the road by the sniper’s tower. The rest, with the sergeant bird dogging the artsy officer types, headed for the burnt-out old tank at the top of the rise.

The plan the sergeant had put to Cornwall was a simple one. Their raggedy little group was made from the remains of a 2nd Ranger Battalion from the Normandy invasion. They’d inherited most of a company’s worth of ordnance. Terhune and Biearsto would take out the sniper and his tower with the bazooka while Winetka and Bosnic would use the two-inch mortar to lay down covering fire over the main entrance. When the sergeant heard the first bazooka round being laid down he’d open up with the twin 7.92mm machine guns, softening the flank for the squad made up of Patterson, Dorm, Teitelbaum and Pixie Mortimer, led by Reid and followed by the three officers. If necessary, the sergeant could also provide covering fire if they had to retreat, which he doubted would happen. As well as the bazooka and the two-inch mortar, Teitelbaum and Dorm made up gunner and assistant for the Browning Automatic Rifle. The others carried an assortment of relatively heavy weapons including a couple of Thompsons, a Johnson light machine gun, an M3 grease gun and Patterson’s beloved Pah-pah-shah 71-round Russian machine gun: more ordnance by far than the Krauts in the farmhouse were likely to have.

The sergeant led his group north through the thinning trees, stopping finally within sight of the ditch. Taking Reid with him again, he scrabbled out to the old Panzer for a final reconnaissance of the farm. It was false dawn, a bare sheen of dull lightness on the eastern horizon. There was no light at all from the farmhouse or any of the outbuildings. Swinging his binoculars around to the abbey tower he looked for the slightest flicker from the sniper’s position. The sergeant gauged the distance between the tower and his own position. A good five football fields, but nothing for a talented rifleman with one of those zs4 scopes on a Krag or even a 43. He figured it would take them the better part of two minutes for his bunch to get down to the side wall of the farmhouse with no real cover in between except a few depressions and one big boulder. Jeez, the sniper could take them all out with ease.

“You better take the cocksucker like I told you,” muttered the sergeant.

“You say something?” Reid asked.

“No. What about Cornwall and his pals?”

“They know enough to stay back until we open things up.”

“Good. I figure two minutes to get down to the wall. See the boulder?”

“Yeah.”

“Keep everybody left of that on the way down. I won’t traverse the guns on the tank any farther than that.”

“Gotcha.”

“I’ll stop firing when you reach the wall. Hit it with a couple of those potato mashers you took off that Jerry a few days ago. Open up a hole.”

“We take the place?”

“Not unless Terhune and the others have softened them up, and not until you’re sure the sniper’s out of it. He’s the key. He manages to get out of the tower and find some other spot we are uckfayed. Understand?”

“Sure.”

“All right. I’m going to load the belts into the gun now. At six on the dot-that’s ten minutes-we should hear Terhune and Winetka opening up. When you go in send Teitelbaum and Dorm on point with the BAR, maybe get them in one of those depressions. Then Patterson with that Russian gun of his, then you and the rest. The loos still got their Thompsons?”

“Cornwall’s got a great gun.”

“Probably blow you all away the first time they fire. Christ. Who came up with the idea of giving officers weapons?”

“Not me.”

“Get going.”

“Right.”

Reid slipped away into the darkness and the sergeant snaked his way up to the open turret of the abandoned German tank and slithered inside. Trying to be as quiet as possible, he began feeding the long belts of ammunition into the twin machine guns. The rounds had different colored tips, so they were probably a mixture of tracer, ball and incendiary, just like their American counterparts, but it would have been nice to know which was which. It took him less than two minutes to load both guns with 250-round belts. He peeked out through the gradually brightening slot in the turret. He glanced at his watch; all hell was going to break loose out there in about five minutes. He grinned. The sergeant could hardly wait.