Scott frowned at this. The emplacement was too near the bridge. Why have the detonator there? Why not the pillbox?
Scott lowered his glasses. In Tunisia he’d had to booby trap a forward position that he knew would be occupied by the enemy. He wanted it to be command-detonated, so he set a charge and ran the wire to a concrete bunker. But the firing slits were so narrow
he couldn’t tell when to fire off the charges and the ambush was botched. Maybe the German commander knew that he’d have to trade visibility for safety. Also, if he was incapacitated, his men would see this and take his place. Maybe he didn’t have enough wire to run it to the bunker.
Scott looked behind him. Kalk and his mortar team, huffing and puffing, had just finished dragging the heavy components of the 60-millimeter mortar up the hell and were setting it up in a flat spot.
“How many shells do you have?”
“A dozen HE rounds. Half a dozen rounds of smoke.”
“We won’t use smoke. They’re liable to get nervous if they can’t see and set off the charges.”
Kalk stopped his work on assembling the mortar and let one of the team take over. He sat down on the dusty rock, looking up at Scott. He shrugged.
“Okay. No smoke. What’s the plan then?”
“Come up here.”
Kalk crawled up next to Scott on the ridge overlooking the bridge. Scott handed him his field glasses. “I’m going to need you to take out the emplacement nearest the bridge.”
“The sandbagged one?”
“Yeah. You’ll have to be quick. If you drop smoke in, you won’t be able to see if you took it out.”
“Understood.”
“You think you can do it in 12 rounds?”
“Yes sir. But that’ll leave you wide open to fire from the pillbox.
And what if they have a way of setting off the charges from the pillbox?”
“Then we’re all screwed. We’ll go in five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Scott slid over to Mazis, who was sitting with his squad against the opposite slope of the ridge. They crawled to the crest and Scott pointed to the pillbox.
“I’m going to need your team to pour fire into that slit. Keep their heads down. Pizzo and I will make the run to the near side of the bridge, then get under it to find the charges.”
“Okay. How the hell are you going to get to the bridge?”
“We’ll just have to run for it.”
Mazis looked at the sixty yards of open terrain between the base of the ridge and the bridge. He turned to look at Scott, and his normally solemn expression turned to amazement. He even stopped chewing his gum.
“You’ll get shot to pieces, sir.”
“Don’t wony about me. Just get fire on the position, okay?” “Well it’s a simple plan at least. Yes, sir.”
Scott slapped Mazis on the shoulder and scrambled down to get his weapon. He couldn’t resist glancing one last time more at the ring his finger and summoned his will power to bring forth the power. If there was any chance of it coming alive, it would have to happen now. But the ring remained cold and inanimate.
Scott got ready to lead his charge.
As he ran, Scott could see everything sharply: the angiy blinking light of the muzzle of the MG-34 firing, the puffs of powder and
concrete chips flying as the Mazis’ squad tried to suppress the machine-gun with their own gunfire. Scott noted that the German gun was continuing to fire despite the accuracy of the suppressing fire, and he saw dirt and sand kicking up in lines towards him, then to one side of him. He could feel something tug sharply at his pant leg, and he could hear himself breathing as he ran forward, towards the bridge.
Mazis’ squad continued to fire on the pillbox, but the soldiers inside grimly continued to try and kill Scott.
Scott saw a line of German paratroopers emerge from one the small village’s buildings and make a run for the sandbagged emplacement at the bridge. As they trotted bent at the waist toward the position, some armed with machine pistols, others carrying boxes of ammunition, an explosion erupted among the five men, sending two of them and pieces of a third flying sideways through the air, their limbs flailing and breaking under the concussion. Scott could see this clearly. The other two made it to the emplacement without looking back at their fallen comrades, and quickly prepared to fire the machine-gun.
Just then the entire emplacement blew inside-out, knocking the men, machine-gun and sandbags forward. A moment later another mortar hit in almost the same location, obliterating the position.
Scott continued to run forward, and as he allowed himself some hope he felt something kick his left foot out from under him and he fell. He guessed that a bullet hit his leg or foot, but he did not feel pain. He looked down at his left boot to see that the rubber heel had been shot off.
German fire was hitting all around him and the steady roar of automatic gunfire was deafening. Unfortunately, it all seemed be coming from the German side.
Scott was consumed by the resolve and single-minded purpose of the mission. He would try to keep the bridge intact, or he would die trying, and the certainty of that pushed out fear, and doubt. The success of the mission was distilled to one action: to stop the German officer he knew would either give the order or actually blow the bridge. Everything else-the bridge intact, the reinforcements, the amphibious invasion and the critical linkup along this road leading to the capture of Sicily making real the possibility of invading the Italian mainland-was forgotten, or rather, reduced to the action of Scott stopping this one man.
Scott became mechanical, feeding all energy and focus to the goal, and it was literally what he was living for at this very moment. His future was in the next two minutes of his life. Nothing else mattered.
As Scott was accustomed to, time slowed down in the chaos of combat and for a brief moment he looked down at the band of alien metal on the ring finger of his left hand. He could see that it was glowing.
Scott brought the ring up—the intensity of the power as great as he’d ever seen it. It was astonishing to him, and it had been so long he had to think how to channel and use the power. He had belief in himself again, through the mission. He knew he could save the bridge and this belief was activating the once-dormant ring. Now, with his focus honed to this task, the power of the ring awakened within him.
But as he was about to use this power, something made him turn his head. When he did he saw Pizzo a few yards back, lying on his stomach, legs and arms spread, completely relaxed as if he were asleep, which told Scott that Pizzo was dead.
The fight suddenly went out of Scott. Pizzo was dead because of him—another death at Scott’s expense. Was it worth it? Was he doing the right thing and was it worth the cost? As Scott’s uncertainty grew, the glow on the ring began to wane.
Scott looked at Pizzo’s body for a long time, so long that the Germans eased their fire on him, thinking he was incapacitated. Scott turned forward and began to get to his feet. As he did so he saw a huge muzzle flash erupt from behind a house and the concussion of a shell flying past slapped at his ears. A split-second later he heard the impact of that shell on the ridge behind him, and he turned to see a plume of dust and crater where Mazis’ squad was.
In a moment he knew the battle was lost. The Germans had an 88 gun hidden in the village and it was more than enough to switch the momentum in their favor. The German gun would decimate Scott and his men.
Scott saw the German commander emerge from the pillbox and make a run for the emplacement. Scott knew that he was going for the detonator and he was powerless to stop him.
But he knew he had to try. Scott got to his feet and began moving forward. The bullets slapped around him and he could hear them crack as they flew by him, but he continued to move forward until he was trotting, then running at his enemy counterpart.
Scott could see that the officer had stopped and was looking at something. In the town, the flash of flame from the barrel of the 88 erupted again
and another artillery round ripped past Scott in a flat trajectory towards the ridge behind him.
Yet the German officer did not seem to notice this and stood staring.
Scott had seen much odd behavior in battle. Men standing up and walking away, or into Fire, others laughing, caught up in the insanity of the moment, and he was not surprised that this German officer would freeze. So he took the opportunity to bring his rifle up to shoot him. He was just forty feet away from the emplacement, and he stopped and aimed carefully.
In that same moment, he became aware that something was drawing the German fire away from him. He turned to look behind him.
On the ridge was a large, muscular man wearing a green uniform. Like the Germans, Scott stopped and stared.
The man’s uniform was a suit veiy much like the one Scott wore as Green Lantern. Scott had a flash of the day he obsessively and meticulously created the suit: the urge to do so was a base instinct driven by some force or purpose that he resented as it propelled him, like a man going through the motions of marrying a woman he didn’t love.
Yet when he wore this outfit that defined the super hero he hoped to be, he found that while the cape and the mask gave him the stronger belief in purpose of the character of the Green Lantern, it drew him away from being Alan Scott.
And here was this other man in a similar suit standing in a way Scott recognized to be supremely confident in his super-hero role. He could see this the same way an alcoholic can look across a
crowded room and spot the same traits in another. By just setting eyes on him Scott had absolute knowledge that he was here for Scott.
Because he was standing near the top of the ridge, the stranger was taking the fire from the Germans. Scott could see that the bullets were hitting his skin, pushing the flesh in and welting it for a moment, but otherwise making no effect. The spent bullets were dropping to the dirt around the stranger like rain drops.
The stranger strode down the ridge slope towards Scott. The impact of the bullets pushed at him as if her were being sways be a gentle wind.
“You are Alan Scott.”
A question? A statement.
Scott nodded.
He man looked down at Scott. “I am Malvolio.”
Scott stared. This was apparently meant to have meaning to him.
“Look, this is a really bad time for introductions,” Scott said.
Malvolio reached out and grabbed Scott by the shoulders and brought him up to him, peering into his eyes as if to discover some code or reason.
Across the ravine the Germans opened fire, a huge ferocious ripping sound. Malvolio quickly turned his back on them, his broad back absorbing the fire, the bullets impacting against his skin and muscle then falling or ricocheting to the dirt and rock around them.
Malvolio was buffeted by this but was otherwise oblivious to the Germans’ efforts to kill him. He kept his crushing grip on Scott.
For some reason, Scott was not afraid as much as curious.
Malvolio spoke. “I’ve come to destroy you.”
Scott smiled. “What took you so long?”
Malvolio’s look went quickly from ferocity to surprise, then to confusion and rage. Malvolio raised Scott up and threw him to the ground the way a child would slam a doll to the floor in a fit. He walked a few steps away, mulling his options. Frustrated, he raised his leg and stomped on a boulder the size of a bowling ball, pulverizing it to a mist of dust.
He walked back to Scott, as the frenzy of gunfire continuing around them. Scott lay back and watched as Malvolio walked next to him and raised his foot up, cocking it to bring it down onto Scott’s head.
Scott watched: there was nothing else he could do.
Still, bullets impacted and fell from Malvolio’s chest, buffeting him slightly.
Malvolio and Scott made eye contact.
Malvolio brought his heavy leather boot down with a full and crushing force but with inhuman quickness stopped the heel a fraction of an inch away from the bridge of Scott’s nose.
“It can’t be,” Malvolio said.
Scott blinked. “What?”
“This easy. To defeat you.”
“Leave me alone. There’s a war on.”
Malvolio swept his arm, gesturing at the sporadic firefight. “This?”
“This,” replied Scott.
Scott turned to see Mazis and what remained of squad, with Kalk’s men, coming down the ridge, firing from the hip, some sort of crazy charge right out of a Kipling poem.
A boom as the German 88 gun in the village fired at the Americans.
Scott heard the slap of flesh on metal and suddenly Malvolio was holding the shell of 88 millimeter projectile in his hands, the shell glowing white-hot. Malvolio held it for a moment, then turned and whipped it at the American soldiers. It exploded among them. Scott saw his men shredded by the metal shrapnel, tom apart like raw meat from the force of the blast.
Scott did not have to look to see if the ring on his hand in the dust was glowing. Scott’s desire to avenge the deaths of his men fueled his willpower, making the ring come alive. Scott flew from his prone position in a burst of green flame towards Malvolio, the air cracking from the force of his body moving faster than sound.
In the split second Malvolio began to look back down to turn his attention to Scott, he sensed that something had changed and he was in danger. In that same moment he felt a shock of pain to his chest and he was tumbling backwards through the air for a great distance, then smashing into something heavy and metallic.
His chest heaving from the blow, he turned to see that he was on the bent wreckage of the cannon that had just fired at him.
He pushed himself up through the fresh wreckage of fallen roof tiles, wood and plaster to get his bearings. He spotted Alan Scott standing across the ravine, staring at him. Then soldiers were coming at him, their guns belching rapid fire, but through the force of his will he blocked them and their bullets, and with a gesture of his hand swept them away and into the ravine.
Alan Scott could see Malvolio in the village among the Germans, who in their panic turned their attention to killing him. But Malvolio used his power like a great broom to sweep the squad of paratroopers off their feet and send them tumbling down the road and over the ravine’s edge.
Scott walked toward the bridge. The mission for him had changed.
The German officer emerged from the wreckage of the gun and turned to Scott. Intent on fulfilling his duty, he ran to the sandbagged emplacement and pulled out the detonator to the charges on the bridge.
Scott shot ten delicate tendrils of green energy from his fingertips through the air to the bridge, sparking along the girders like little spiders until they crawled over the wires leading to the charges. Then, growing pincers, Scott’s energy spiders sliced through the wires. The energy spiders then scuttled toward the German officer, the severed wires in tow, and scrambling up the soldier’s legs, wrapped the officer with the wire. The German looked incredulously at Scott with an expression of someone who’d caught a cheat at a card game: it wasn’t fair what Scott was doing to him, but it was war in every sense, which meant that fairness had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Scott felt the ground rumble beneath him and turned to see hundreds of tons of rock and dirt coming down on him from the ridge. Scott realized that Malvolio had willed this to happen, so Scott countered, using his power to push a space between the rock and dirt, keeping the road to the bridge open.
The two Green Lanterns flew toward each other, each gathering his power, harnessing and focusing it in a psychic test of brute will.
Neither could tell if they were locked in struggle for a moment or hours. Time froze for them, and they were only aware of each other’s power.
They rose from the ground thousands of feet into the atmosphere, weaving in and out of billowing clouds, chasing each other as the air cracked with sonic booms of their flight, green bolts lashing through the darkened sky as they launched streams of charged plas
ma at each other. The crackling power of their fight brought rolling thunderheads and within moments the countryside was thrown into darkness by threatening clouds and humid, heavy air. The weird darkness was sometimes challenged by blinding flashes illuminating the landscape with green light, like gigantic flashbulbs, freezing the image of the two men in combat with each other in kinescope-like tableaus as they deflected each other’s attempts to capture or destroy with their power.
Scott was surprised to see Malvolio wielding the same energy as his and as they flew at each other, intent on inflicting maximum violence, neither was able to physically touch the other. The parrying and shielding was all done with the power of their rings.
Malvolio tried to weave a web of power around Scott, who countered with a slicing blast through the fabric of energy, but Malvolio quickly tightened around Scott like a cocoon. Scott felt himself being pulled downward, unable to move his arms and legs. As they dove towards the ocean, something caught Scott’s attention: a squadron of B-25s, probably from the base at Pianosa, was flying northward. Summoning his will, Scott pulled against Malvolio’s rope of power, and the two Green Lanterns altered their trajectory slightly toward the bombers.
McWatt, the pilot of the lead bomber, keyed his throat mike. “Do you all see what’s coming at us, eleven o’clock high?”
The bombardier replied back over the intercom, “Looks like... two men. Maybe they bailed out.”
McWatt keyed his mike again. “What’s that they’re all wrapped up in? That shimmering green stuff?”
“Maybe it’s a new kind of parachute,” one of the gunner chimed
“They’re falling kind of slow.”
“What do we do?” the bombardier asked.
Seeing that he and Malvolio were close to the formation, Scott summoned his energy to project an enormous symbol around Malvolio.
McWatt gasped as he saw a giant swastika circling around one of the falling men.
“Do you see that?”
Green Lantern - Sleepers Book 2 Page 14
