Kat's Rats

by Michael Beals

  Dore wagged his finger. “We’ll get there soon enough. In quite a hurry in fact, if we don’t get more grappling hooks. These aren’t enough.”

  “Here you go, sir!” Dore spun around at the voice squeaking behind him, spotting Kat propping her leg on the bumper and sticking extra blades in naughty places.

  “Is that enough, sir?” Two frail little arms shoved a mound of giant fishhooks into his waist. Dore stared down and scooped up the pile with one hand, smiling at the curly-haired pipsqueak barely reaching his elbow.

  “Thanks, kid. So, Captain, who’s manning the decoy jeep? Should we draw lots?”

  “I’ll drive, sir!”

  Dore glanced down at the teenager perched on his toes, bringing his eyes over Dore’s forearm. “What are you, the drummer boy? We need someone who can actually reach the pedals.”

  “I’m an infantryman, sir! Who the fuck are you?”

  Dore guffawed at the scrawny chest, bumping up against his and bouncing off. He turned to the snickering Captain while snapping a grappling hook down the barrel of his M1.

  “Is he one of yours? I’m pretty sure child soldiers are against some rule.”

  “Nah, that’s Private Audie Murphy, division runner. He’s always following us around like a puppy, waiting for some action. Just one of those orphans with a chip on his shoulder and a fake birth certificate. Audie’s a good egg though, even if annoying as hell.”

  “I’m standing right here, sir!” The little guy hopped up and down before freezing. He stuck his ear to the horizon. “Incoming!”

  Five seconds later, two Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloped high overhead, followed by a pair of krumps in the city center to the west. No one paid any attention to the devastation. All eyes focused on the massive dust cloud rising on the eastern horizon, a few hundred meters from the beach.

  Far off at sea, a giant battleship silhouette zigzagged in every direction. Several smaller warships raced in circles, vast fountains of water spewing up in their wake. Niels raised his binoculars and moaned at the flotilla doing everything except stopping the exposed land cruiser. “Lordy, I’d love to borrow those guns for a minute... The commodore seems a bit preoccupied.”

  “U-boats tend to do that. The Navy’s gonna be busy for a while.” Captain Darby turned away from the silent naval battle and focused on the land ship ahead. “We’re wasting time, Sergeant.”

  “Eh, too right, sir. Ok, cowboys. Saddle up!” Dore snagged the scrawny youngster crawling into his jeep by the belt and chucked him aside. “Next time, sport. When you’re all grow’d up, you’ll find a nice little suicide mission of your own.”

  Dore hopped on the machine gun mount, glancing right and left. All six jeep drivers flashed a thumbs-up.

  Kat yanked on his thigh. “Mind if I man the guns? For old time’s sakes.”

  “Have it, Lassie.” Dore moved over while Kat massaged the twin .30 Caliber breaches. “This isn’t Tripoli though. Try not to blow up the city.”

  Straddling Atkins and Master Sergeant Niels in the front seat, Dore held on to the windscreen and slashed a knife-hand towards the target. The jeeps shot forward in one wave, swinging wide through the partially-irrigated fields and thin strips of woods for a modicum of cover.

  With less than five kilometers to go, Atkins pulled ahead of the raiders and cut back towards the coastal highway. A few hundred women and kids dashed off from the endless throng of fleeing civilians clogging the road, pleading for salvation with the green war machines racing towards the danger.

  Kat gritted her teeth and hollered down through the wind as the Forward Observer clicked his wireless mic. “Too many civvies around. We should use regular smoke rounds until they’re clear!”

  Atkins shrunk behind the steering wheel. “Weird for me to be the heartless bastard for once, but smoke won’t hurt those escorts!” He never let off the gas as a couple of dozen French trucks and half-tracks peeled off from the miles-long armed centipede…

  Spilling out hundreds of men, all training their barrels on the jeeps flittering across the open plain.

  “Rounds are already in the air. Don’t worry. They’ll land right where I tell ‘em to.” Niels delved into his coat pocket and stuffed his mouth with another handful of seeds.

  “Pick up the pace!” Dore howled, still standing tall and waving the others on.

  “Are you mad? We’ll be in range in seconds, and there’s still no artillery yet!” Atkins swatted away the stinging salt overflowing the sweatband in his helmet and risked a glance at the forward observer beside him.

  The man spit out a wad of sunflower seed shells and cocked a finger at the French skirmish line. “Two… one… Bang.”

  Thirty-six black clouds erupted in a perfect line above the French dismounts. Instead of striking the dirt and expending most of their blast in the ground, each popped seven meters high and shredded the line with shrapnel. Niels nipped at his canteen as the booms and shrieking echoed over the wind.

  “Shake and bake. Gotta love these new phosphorus rounds. Think of it as a smokescreen, with a kick.” Atkins peeked a single eye over the steering wheel in time to catch thirty-six sets of angel wings spreading over the Vichies. Each arching tip of the scorching hydra blazed white-hot as the incendiary shards torched the shrapnel-whipped survivors.

  Atkins kept the speed up, ramping the jeep over a little dune a kilometer out from the slaughter. A green bundle bounced over the spare tire on the rear and crashed into the back of Dore’s knees.

  “You! Ya numpty…”

  Private Murphy hauled himself upright. He snagged one of the grapple hook rifles and whistled, a grin of pure contentment spreading across his busted lip. Kat shrugged with a laugh and shooed Dore out of the away.

  “We needed a 20th man anyway. Bad luck to run a mission with an odd-numbered crew. Now if you don’t mind moving that hairy bum of yours…”

  Dore crouched on the side bench as Kat dropped the hammers, chopping apart three surviving Vichies righting a knocked-over machine gun. While the jeeps flashed through the shattered line, a Frenchman crouched behind a burning truck and chucked a black ball at their Willy. Dore seized Kat’s bouncing elbow, rocking back and forth with the recoils.

  “Get dow—”

  He dropped her arm and leaned back, tipping his brow at the blazing-fast American kid. In one fluid move, Murphy swung his rifle stock and bunted the grenade right into the Vichy’s front teeth.

  Dore shook his head at the kid bouncing in his seat, smirking from ear to ear. “This is such a rush! Do we have time to go back and finish them off?”

  “Stay focused. The big leagues are coming up.” Dore suppressed his chuckle. “Maybe you can beat the SS to death with those brass balls of yours.”

  Kat let up on the trigger as the last smoldering French body slipped behind them. She snapped the guns back to the front, puffing out her cheeks while loading a fresh belt into each.

  A new column of French vehicles spread out in a line five times as long as the last.

  “How many of those ‘zooka things do we have?”

  Dore flicked the loose, flimsy safety pin out of the rocket and shoved it into the tube. Yanking the final plug out between the fins, he hefted the odd weapon to his shoulder and grunted. “Not nearly enough.”

  His aim bounced around while he tried to figure out which of the hundreds of French vehicles leaving the road and racing their way was the closest.

  In the passenger seat under the tube’s snout, Niels rubbed his seed-shell coated hands together. “Save the grenades for the Ratte’s secondary guns. I told you I got this.”

  He propped his binoculars on the jarring windshield
with his right hand, then crushed the mic switch against his shoulder. “Linear target alpha, grid…” He read off a long series of numbers from the map strapped to his left wrist before signing off with a giddy, “Fire for effect, over.”

  Kat squatted down as a 76mm shell from one of the advancing French tanks whistled inches overhead, booming fifty meters behind them. Another shell plowed a fountain of earth up fifty meters ahead of their jeep. “Too late, we’re bracketed. Fan out!”

  “O ye, of little faith.” The Forward Observer waved bye at the nearest battalion of tanks, less than a kilometer away. Dore howled and tightened his grip on the bazooka trigger, just as Satan’s broom swept the field halfway between the rushing jeeps and the French force.

  “Follow the smoke-brick road.” Niels elbowed Atkins, who kept gawking at the steady domino chain of white geysers bursting ahead. With only a millisecond delay between each blast, a screen of billowing white smoke rounds detonated every fifty meters. The cloudy wall kept growing, tracing an unbroken line from their position to the Ratte grumbling along two kilometers at their 10 O’clock.

  Atkins spun the wheel while everyone in the back clung to the machine gun mount to stay inside. The other five jeeps shadowed him at max speed, running parallel to the smoke wall and always keeping the screen between them and the French horde.

  “Pretty neat, huh?” Niels twisted around and whooped. “Rock steady!”

  Dore whipped his neck backward and then forwards, not glancing at the unhinged artilleryman. “Not even close to being out of the woods yet!”

  Behind them, several dozen French vehicles swung like a door through the smokescreen. Up ahead, the Ratte finally halted and pivoted, swiveling all its firepower their way.

  “Who said I was done?” The Forward Observer never stopped muttering into the radio as he cocked his finger and pulled the trigger on his air gun. Half a dozen white phosphorus rounds slammed into the land cruiser’s impenetrable top deck. No one could enjoy the fireworks show though, as the second line of smoke rounds landed right on top of the raiders.

  “Gah—are you bloody mad!” Kat slouched low and gagged on the sulfuric haze. She kicked her leg out in the Forward Observer’s general direction, not seeing past her knee.

  The only thing slightly visible was the still glowing incendiary fragments, burning at 4,000 degrees a kilometer and a half ahead. Atkins hooted in the whiteout and nudged the wheel towards the gleaming lighthouse in the distance.

  Dore laughed and slapped his knee.

  Kat hunched down as the random machine gun, and cannon fire from both sides sawed through the clouds above. “Something funny about this?”

  “Just brings me back. I remember clinging fog like this when I was duck hunting with pa out on the Highlands.”

  “What?”

  “Now I know how the ducks felt.” Dore craned his neck as the last jeep in the convoy disintegrated in a fireball. “Sure hope that wasn’t Darby.”

  Niels hollered over the crackling fire and the growl of diesel engines encircling their smoky refuge. Faint dings from the little flashes of fresh Willy Pete blasts striking the Ratte wafted overhead. The Forward Observer counting each second from the flash to boom. “Say, how fast you goin’?”

  Atkins pressed his nose to the instrument panel and shouted. “Uh, fifty-two k.”

  With only the briefest pause, Niels grunted. “Forty-five seconds until we’re clear. I’ve got smoke running all the way up until the last 100 meters, so we don’t ram headfirst into—” Atkins shoved the wheel left as a shadow the size of a half-track swerved through the fog and sideswiped the jeep.

  “Stay undercover!” Atkins jerked the wheel back to the right. He cringed over his shoulder at the dozen French gunners firing directly at his face in that brief second he dipped his toes in the open.

  With steel treads sparking on the jeep’s sidewalls, Kat swung her .30 Caliber muzzles… only to hang on some rod in the smoke. She yanked on the triggers and shoved the stocks into her shoulder for leverage, just as a third muzzle flashed in her face.

  The strange .50 Caliber barrel wedged between her guns scorched her eyebrows, spraying a train of lead slugs a foot past her head. The invisible gunner on the other vehicle grunted as he heaved on his gun, shoving the crossed swords down and his barrel into Kat’s face. Murphy jumped up and added a pillow’s weight of force to the struggle, while two more shadows on the half-track joined their gunner.

  “Sergeant!” Atkins leaned back as a shot splintered the steering wheel and ricocheted off his helmet. In the passenger seat, Niels wrapped both hands around the French driver’s outstretched 9mm, sending the rest of the shots into the windscreen instead of Atkins’s nose.

  “Quit playing with that thing and help!” Dore eyed a shadow closing in from the left and fiddled with his rocket launcher. Kat screeched as the giant man ignored her red face and stood back to back with her. He whipped the bazooka to his shoulder, the wrong end jutting past her nose and facing the half-track to their right.

  “You daft—”

  Kat squinted through the burst of scorching exhaust, the guns suddenly swinging free in her hand. A flaming silhouette replaced the French gunner’s shadow. The armored car turret erupting in a Roman candle to their left lit him up.

  “Bloody ‘ell… I’m in love!” Dore kissed the launcher and squatted to load a fresh rocket, completely ignoring Kat’s pouting face. She flopped loose hair out of the way and leaned on both MG42 triggers.

  “Fifteen seconds…” Niels dropped the severed arm of the Vichy driver as Kat chewed the half-track apart. He tossed a handful of seeds in his maw and grinned…

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The kernels splattered his open jaw as the smoke cleared way too fast. In the eye of the storm, the Ratte pivot-steered in place, both marine diesel engines squealing at max power. A hot dust storm pelted the slowing jeeps as the wall of exhaust ports, pumping away at 17,000 horsepower, swept the smoke cloud away.

  The Forward Observer dipped his head at the wide-open killing field ahead. “So damn close.” He punched the switch on his wireless mic. “Fire mission, Grid 930871. Broken arrow… out.”

  Kat cut her eyes through the last wisps of cover. “What did you just do?”

  “Called in everything on our position. Fifteen seconds until the world ends. We can at least take most of these escorts with us.” He twisted around and shook Atkins’s sweaty palm. “Thanks for a hell of a ride.”

  The smoke had faded so much that Dore could make hand signals at the third jeep idling in the line. Captain Darby shook his head. “Negative. Fall back!”

  Before his driver even put the jeep in reverse, machine-gun tracers lanced out from the smog behind him as the Vichies closed the trap.

  “Everyone shut up and stay close!” Kat took a step forward and slammed her boot on Atkins’ knee, clutching the shattered windshield as he rocketed forward. In the second jeep, Capson hit the gas and followed without hesitation, dragging the remaining Rangers along in a tight file.

  “Get us under that thing. That’s the only cover around.”

  Leaping over the screen and onto the hood, Kat ripped her steel helmet off and shook out her ponytail. She tiger-crouched on the engine cover as one of the Ratte’s quad flak guns lit up. Kat only raised both her middle fingers as the 20mm troubleshooters struck 30 meters short, then walked a straight line towards her.

  She only snarled as the jeep played chicken with the thumping shells, even as the gap between fire and fender closed to half a meter.

  Then disappeared as the guns swung skyward.

  “You blinked, Papa. I won’t.”

  Kat blew a kiss as the land cruiser hit
the gas and lurched forward. Atkins hung a sharp turn and lined up on the rear between both towering treads. His foot slipped a bit on the pedal. “We won’t fit…”

  He slammed the pedal as the clear sky darkened and the heavens boomed. The heavy artillery orchestra faded under the ear-splitting screeching when the machine gun mount sheared clean off.

  “Not so fast!” Kat flopped on the hood as the beast’s steel underbelly skinned her shoulders. Atkins massaged the brakes, only to get rear-ended by Capson’s jeep. As soon as he steadied the wheel and matched the Ratte’s 20km/h pace, a chunk of rock from the grinding treads inches to his left smacked his cheek. His jittery hands couldn’t help drifting the wheel a smidgen to the right, which only stopped his heart when he rubbed tires with Captain Darby’s jeep centimeters to his right.

  “This is bloody insane, even by your standards! I’d rather take my chances with the artillery storm.” Atkins didn’t risk taking a hand off the wheel. Kat grinned from the middle of the hood and stuck her hand against his gushing cheek. Her shout was little more than a whisper over the rampaging shrapnel ricocheting off the relentlessly grinding treads.

  “Relax, all part of the plan. Master Sergeant! You can cancel that iron thunder at any time.”

  Niels unclipped the radio mic from his chin for the first time all day. “No dice. It’s almost like there’s a thousand tons of steel blocking the signal. They won’t stop firing now until I come back on or the guns run out of ammo.”

  Colonel Trufflefoot shouted something from the jeep behind them, with endless booming outside drowning him out. He waved a demolition satchel bag while stabbing a finger at the treads.

  Dore shook his head and bellowed. “We’ve tried that before. They can fix the treads without even getting out of the…” Kat tugged on his arm, forcing him to glance up at what Trufflefoot pointed out. In the darkness of the recessed drive train, a thin sliver of white light peeked out in a box shape, half a meter above the Landkreuzer’s three clanking treads.

  “He’s right! We just need to get them to open that repair hatch. Darby!” The Captain nodded and flashed a thumbs-up her way while jingling his satchel charge. He shot some hand signals at the last two Ranger jeeps and reached for the nearest track.