by Dana Fredsti
“Come on, into the truck! Go!” As soon as they were all in, she pounded on the cabin, signaling to the English driver. “We’re in!”
Loaded up, the three trucks roared across the open marketplace, peeling away from the main road and down the twisting harbor lane. In a matter of seconds, as the column of tanks rolled in out of the smoke, the agora was completely deserted.
* * *
In the lead tank, Oberleutnant Dietrich halted the column and opened the hatch, taking a moment to scan the city with his own eyes. The boulevard before them was impressively wide and open, a hundred meters across. Good: that meant no getting boxed in and fewer places from which guerrillas could strike. No one was in sight, and the houses and buildings were buttoned up tight. That suited him fine as well. Lifting his binoculars, he scanned the rooftops for snipers.
So far, so good.
Retreating back inside, he secured the top hatch again before giving the order to advance. Empty streets or no, he wasn’t ready to take any chances. With any luck, their next stop would be the palace itself.
* * *
In the underground warren of tombs, the men were still and silent, as though trying on the idea of the grave. Singh had turned his periscope away from the massacre, watching for the second wave of the German attack Blake had predicted. He stood motionless except for an occasional thoughtful tug on his beard, until finally he broke the silence.
“Tell me something, Blake.”
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever heard of Saragarhi?”
“Should I?”
“No reason you would, I suppose. Saragarhi’s no more than a speck on the map—a tiny outpost near the Afghan border, out in the North-West Frontier Province. Back in 1897, when the Empire and the Russians were wrapping up the Great Game, there were twenty-one Sikh soldiers of the 36th Bengal Infantry stationed there. And then one morning, ten thousand Pashtun tribesmen attacked.
“Saragarhi signaled to the closest British fort that they were under attack. No help was forthcoming. So, to prevent the enemy from reaching the other forts, the garrison decided to fight to the last. The Pashtuns in their thousands broke through their pickets, and twice tried to rush the gates, but were beaten back. The Afghani chieftains made sweet promises to entice them to surrender, but the Sikhs would have none of it, and the attack resumed.”
MacIntyre and the other men gathered around, listening closely to Singh as he continued his story.
“The Pashtuns tunneled until they breached the wall, and then the battle raged the fiercest. The Sikhs fought hand-to-hand until their sergeant ordered his men to fall back to the inner guardroom, while he remained behind to fight. The onslaught continued all day, until only one man remained. The last survivor, Sepoy Gurmukh Singh, personally killed twenty Afghans before the Pashtuns set fire to the post to kill him. The official report said as he was dying, he was yelling the Sikh battle cry to the very end.”
“That was a brave man,” Blake said.
“Yes,” Singh nodded. “That was my father. I just wanted you to know the kind of fighting men you have with you.”
Blake nodded. “Good to know.”
“And by the way,” Singh added, “you were right. The second German wave is coming.”
14
First came the screaming of a panicked horse, echoing somewhere in the clouds of gun smoke to their south. The terrified creature emerged from the surreal scene like a waking dream, rider gone and flanks bloodied as it raced away from the German guns. More hoofbeats followed. The cataphracts— those few who still lived—were in full retreat, bolting back toward the city.
Sporadic gunfire sounded from the dusty haze behind them. Spectral figures of Afrika Korps soldiers materialized out of it, stalking the fleeing horsemen and any other targets of opportunity. Then, with a grumbling roar of mechanical treads, the lead tank of the second wave appeared out of the smoke, flanked by two more. And more.
Hunkered down in their spider holes at the edges of the necropolis, Blake’s anxious snipers kept hidden as they waited for their real target to appear. The German troopers were everywhere, some marching past close enough that the snipers could reach out and grab them by their boots. But they refrained, remaining frozen, trying to hold their breaths in the hope that their hiding places were camouflaged well enough.
* * *
“What do you see, Singh?” Blake hissed.
The Sikh panned across the field with his concealed periscope. “Looks like the rest of the Panzergrenadier battalion approaching on foot. More Panzers, too, P-IIIs mostly, I’d say. Three… no, six. No, wait. Twice that—a full dozen of them.”
“Forget them,” Blake said. “Just tell me where that fat Dorchester is.”
Singh made another sweep. “No sign of their HQ. Though they’re kicking up a great deal of dust back there. Even a bloody great bus like that could be anywhere south of us and we’d never know.” He gave a sharp intake of breath. “Ah, blast them, here they come.”
“Climb down,” Blake ordered. “If the ground troops spot us, we’re done for.”
The men huddled together silently in the near dark, the acrid smell of fear-sweat sharp and strong. They could hear the Germans stomping above them, calling out to one another. A spate of excited yelling broke out, followed by the sound of machine-gun bursts. The sound echoed through the tunnel leading to their hiding place.
No, not echoing, Blake realized.
“Move it! They’ve found us!” he shouted.
Blake bolted from the room. Up top, a pair of German soldiers began to pry away the gravestones and rubble which concealed the entrance into their subterranean passage. Before either could drop a grenade, Blake fired a burst from his Schmeisser, catching them both.
Two of the New Zealanders, a white Kiwi and a Maori, rushed to the fresh breach and popped their heads up, laying down heavy bursts of suppressing fire at the closest enemy troops, a trio of Germans who scrambled to find cover. The entrance had originally been the floor of a great mausoleum— what little remained of its blasted walls barely sufficed as cover for one, let alone three. The trio ducked under the low strip of ragged limestone, lying flat. One trooper pulled out a potato masher, while the others signaled to their comrades.
Releasing the pin, the Nazi pulled back his arm, counting down for the throw. At this range he couldn’t miss, but at the perfect moment he froze, struck by a sniper’s bullet to the forehead. The grenade exploded, killing all three soldiers.
The sniper’s victory was short-lived. He had taken an indefensible risk by exposing himself for the shot, paying for it a second later when a hail of German bullets cut him down. Worse still, giving in to the perverse urge of something unspoken and unplanned, the other snipers opened fire, as well.
The pair of New Zealanders continued to lay down heavy fire before a shrill whistle needled through the air.
“Incoming!” one yelled, but the mortar landed before they could even duck.
* * *
The explosion up top, thunderous in the subterranean tunnels, sent a cloud of acrid smoke and a hailstorm of rocky shrapnel skittering their way. Blake lifted out of a crouch, choking on the fumes as he and Singh moved further into the tunnel.
Slices of light angled in from the enlarged opening, its ragged edges still smoking. There was nothing identifiable left of the two New Zealanders, and the four soldiers who moments ago had been standing closest to the stone steps now lay twisted and unmoving. Singh moved to take up the dead men’s position, but Blake grabbed his arm, pulling him back.
“Wait.”
They stood in silence, listening intently for the whistle of a second mortar attack. When the sound of shouts and heavy footfalls came instead, both men rushed the entrance, emerging to open fire point-blank on ten charging Panzergrenadiers. The hail of bullets slashed the German squad to pieces.
Troopers further back dove for cover and returned fire. Blake and Singh hunkered down for the firefight, takin
g cover behind the remains of a stone wall.
Moments later a grenade came sailing through the air at them. It dropped a few inches away from Blake’s ear. He snagged it on the bounce and slapped it away, an instant before it exploded on the other side of the wall behind them— just as a second one came hurling their way, bouncing off the stony floor and skidding to a stop just out of arm’s reach.
Singh was already pulling Blake down when the explosion rocked the mausoleum ruins, so close that even in the relative safety of their cover, the deafening roar jarred their teeth and bones, rocky fragments raining down on their backs. The din of battle, so ear-splitting a moment ago, became muted. Though dazed and shaking, the two men wasted no time coming back up into firing position, ears still ringing.
Blake thumbed his MP-40 from full to semi-automatic. His ammo was already running low—he had to make every shot count now. In the tunnel below them, MacIntyre and the last two remaining soldiers looked up with pale faces, ready to take his and Singh’s place if they fell. Smoke and the smell of cordite surrounded their embattled island.
The buzzing in their ears suddenly gave way to the creak of tank treads, and a Mark IV Panzer came rolling out of the yellow-gray mist at their flank, no more than a few meters away. The steel behemoth rumbled to a halt, coming around to better bring its guns to bear on them. For a split-second, Blake’s heart froze up even as he switched his Schmeisser back to full auto.
“Aim for the viewports!” he yelled as he opened fire. Singh followed his lead and blasted away at the narrow slits, both men hoping to hit the chink in the armor.
“Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal!” Singh roared. The closest of the guns stayed quiet—maybe they’d scored a lucky hit on a gunner. Then the Panzer opened up with its remaining 50-caliber machine gun, sweeping the floor of the ruins with a blaze of heavy fire that chewed up the ground. The tank rotated its turret, lowering the main cannon at its targets.
* * *
Inside the Mark IV, the smell of the forward machine gunner’s blood filled the claustrophobic space. The tank’s commander, a seasoned Prussian veteran with a seamed face, peered through the thick glass viewport, ignoring the overwhelming copper tang and what it meant.
“Give me suppression fire, and bring main gun to bear,” he ordered coolly as the turret rotated with a soft electric thrum. Their loader shoved the heavy shell into the breech and slammed it closed again, while the main gunner targeted the two Allied soldiers who were firing at them.
On the other side of the cramped space, unable to see through his bullet-cracked view-slit, their radioman began blindly sweeping for them, raking the ground with his own 50-cal. The main gunner watched the pair of opponents drop back down into their burrow and finished lining up his crosshairs on the opening.
“I have the target,” he confirmed.
“Fire!”
An odd trembling rocked the cabin. The gunner frowned as he lost his mark and hurried to re-align his aim.
“Gottverdammt, fire!”
“Trying, sir!”
But the shaking would not subside. The tremor continued, growing worse with each passing second. A sudden sharp jolt caught the commander by surprise, and he steadied himself against the turret walls, his anger souring into fear that he fought to keep under control.
Was it a bombing run? From whom? Had the British returned to the war? An earthquake? Whatever it was, it was growing stronger. He braced himself against the viewport and looked outside. His eyes widened in astonishment.
“Sir! What is it?” the main gunner asked, his voice cracking. The commander did not respond or move a muscle, transfixed at the view-slit.
“Sir!”
“Turn the main gun around.”
“Sir?”
“Do it now!”
* * *
The horrendous booming had greatly alarmed the brontosauruses—they’d retreated to the center of the lake, circling their young for protection. Then, without warning, the largest male broke ranks and stormed off toward the marshes at the edge of the water. Another followed, then another, and another, until the entire herd charged forward.
Hugging close to the city walls, a man and a young woman on a German motorcycle watched the gigantic reptiles stampede. Each elephantine body was bigger than a London double-decker bus, with long whip-like tails and serpentine, tree-trunk-thick necks twice as high as a telephone pole. Amber wasn’t sure exactly which species these were, but “brontosaurus” felt close enough.
“Good work,” DeMetta said. “Now go back to the big guy, but this time replace the fear with anger.”
A sense of awe rose at what she had just accomplished under DeMetta’s direction, but she shook off the distraction.
She focused her mind on what looked like the herd’s alpha male. His reptilian mind felt alien, raw, and crude, vibrating with overwhelming terror. Reaching out, she stimulated a neighboring portion of the brain, setting off a different but equally primal cascade of chemicals. Terror transformed into rage. Gently, she directed the beast’s attention toward the tanks to the south.
“Defend the herd,” she suggested, pointing out all the tiny, scurrying, hairy little bipeds. “Egg-stealers,” she whispered. Then she did the same to the next biggest male, and the next. It went easier and faster each time.
* * *
Having penetrated well into the flattened remains of the necropolis, the Afrika Korps troopers in the frontmost Panzergrenadier squads halted their advance. They had found a grisly surprise.
All around lay a forest of fletched shafts. Patches of rust-stained earth lay alongside the contorted bodies of their ambushed predecessors in the first-wave infantry. Hardened as they were, the troopers were horrified to see so many of their fellows brought down by such a primitive method. A few glanced about warily, sussing out where any surviving archers might be hiding.
“Wie cowboys und Indianer…” muttered one. He spat on the ground in disgust, and gasped when the earth seemed to bristle at the insult.
Then came another jolt, and another.
“Erdbeben!” a trooper shouted.
An earthquake would have been less terrifying. The tremors continued nonstop, accompanied by a new rising sound—the bellowing calls of animals on the rampage. Then the Afrika Korps troopers saw it—a stampede, bursting out of the dust clouds, coming right for them. Most of the men turned and ran. Some froze where they stood, while a few raised their rifles and fired. If any of the enormous saurians felt even a sting, they gave no sign, and the shooters quickly joined the others in trying to flee.
It was useless.
The lead brontosaurus dipped his neck down to snap up one of its targets, flinging the pieces away through the air behind it. Without slowing, it brought its pulverizing feet down on more of the fleeing soldiers. The herd stormed past them all, flattening stone and flesh alike.
* * *
The Prussian commander screamed near-incoherent orders to bring the Panzer’s main gun to bear. The turret had never moved so damnably slow. As the tidal wave of moving targets swung into his field of vision, the main gunner stared in shock for a millisecond, then fired off a hurried shot that went wild.
The other tanks fired as well, sending hot streaks blazing past the straining necks of the giant reptiles. A nearby Panzer scored a lucky shot, hitting a charging dinosaur square. Its torso exploded like a dynamited whale carcass.
“Reload! Now, damn it!” the commander howled. The loader was already scrambling to get the shell in place.
Watching in horror as the bull dinosaur in his view-slit grew larger by the second, the gunner fired the instant he sensed the slam of the breech—the point-blank shot blew the enormous neck clean off. Its massive decapitated body smashed into the Panzer with the force of a runaway locomotive, crushing vehicle and crew.
* * *
The fastest of the oncoming reptiles, one of the smaller adults, fell into the last of the pit traps meant for the tanks. It gave a terrible cry of agony as t
he anti-tank mines exploded beneath it, but the rest of them overwhelmed the closest Panzers.
One enraged brontosaurus body-checked its mechanical enemy, first knocking the tank on its side, and then muscling it over onto its back. Bellowing its victory, it reared up on its hind legs to stomp the Panzer’s underbelly into a crumpled heap of metal before storming off to do the same to a new victim, pounding the earth with each thundering step as the second tank struggled to bring its gun about in time. It failed.
Another tank managed one last fatal shot at the dinosaur coming straight for it before being side-slammed by another, the impact nearly ripping off the turret. A fifth Panzer careened wildly away to escape, but broke a tread, grinding to a halt. The crew struggled to bail out, only to be trampled along with their crippled tank.
With all guns blazing, the last Panzer fought to bring its cannon to bear on the dinosaur attacking it. Slipping its neck under the barrel of the main gun as though it were a rival male, the brontosaurus levered up and sent the tank crashing backward. Within seconds, nothing was left of the entire front formation but a mess of torn metal scrap, and the infantry battalion had been reduced to a tiny handful of badly shaken survivors.
The six remaining Panzers rallied, quickly maneuvering to re-form a single flying wedge and launch a new barrage. Blasting away at the dinosaurs from a safer distance, they set to work turning the battle into a one-sided slaughter once more.
15
“Get those tanks!” DeMetta yelled over the roar of the motorbike as they tried to keep up with the herd.
Sitting up high in the sidecar, Amber closed her eyes concentrating on the bright spots of human minds inside the Panzers. Training was all well and good, but this was the real thing. She had to succeed—lives depended on it.
Going to the tank furthest back on the right arm of the V-formation, she identified the strong-willed commander, and took the path of least resistance instead, honing in on the main gunner. Since she had neither the skill nor experience to overwhelm his mind by force, she used the psionic equivalent of judo. The man was already on the raggedy edge of panic— all she had to do was redirect it. She kept the thought simple and primal, just as DeMetta had taught her.
