“Okay, Millican, get ready,” Sergeant Cole mutters, as if willing his corporal to strike at the right moment. “Wait till you’ve got ’em . . .”
“Unh?” Rio grunts, thinking he’s talking to her.
She remembers firing the bazooka a few times back at Camp Maron. They are surprisingly simple weapons, a 54-inch section of pipe just 2.36 inches in diameter, with a chunky wooden trapezium stock and a stubby grip for each hand. Two batteries hide inside that primitive wooden stock—a tiny bulb will light up if you pull the trigger when the launcher is empty. The light on means you have enough juice to fire the round.
Pang carries two bazooka pouches, each containing three cylinders that hold the 3.5-pound rockets. He’s already pushed one in the back of the tube and pulled the safety clip clear.
Suddenly there’s a hollow bang, like someone striking an empty steel barrel with a hammer, and a puff of smoke.
The rocket flies right over the top of the lead tank.
“Damn it!”
The bazooka round has knocked the casualness right out of the enemy. Rio sees them diving off to the sides of the road. They may be tired, but they run and jump with impressive speed.
Good. Just stay down.
But they don’t stay down, because now a German staff car, an open, gray-painted saloon, comes tearing up the side of the road, bouncing madly, and nearly driving right over cowering Italians, who have to roll from cover to avoid being hit.
A somewhat portly German officer in the backseat of the staff car yells a blue streak at the Italians, a shrill and tinny sound at this distance. He gesticulates furiously, gestures that very clearly mean, “Get up there in front of the tanks!”
Some of the Italians heed his demands, and some do not but instead stay flat on the ground, very much like Rio and Tilo.
A second round flies from Hark Millican’s bazooka. And this time it hits the side of the leading tank’s turret . . . and glances off. It explodes harmlessly two hundred yards off in the dirt. But it seems to have grazed or perhaps just frightened the lead tank commander who’d been heads-up in the hatch, because he drops out of sight, as does his counterpart in the second tank, both as fast as whack-a-moles. Now slowly, slowly but inexorably, the tank’s big gun comes swinging toward the bare bit of elevation where Millican, Pang, and Magraff squat. Magraff backs away fast, trips and falls, jumps up and runs.
“Millican! Get out of there! Move!” Cole yells. Millican jumps up, drops the bazooka, and hightails it after Magraff, but Pang snatches up the bazooka and run-hobbles away, trying to balance the long tube on one shoulder while pressing down on the ammo pouch to keep it from banging against his hip.
BANG! The tank fires. That flat, metallic sound is followed instantly by a larger explosion as the shell blows apart the ground where Millican was just seconds before. Dust hides Hansu Pang from view.
Is Pang hit?
“Fall back!” Cole roars through cupped hands, but falling rock and dirt from the explosion and the shouts of the Italian infantry drown him out. “Put some fire on them!”
It takes Rio several seconds to realize what he means. That he means that she should shoot. The sergeant is armed with a tommy gun, useless at this range: this is rifle work. This is M1 Garand work.
Across the road the cloud of dust from the tank round blocks Sticklin’s view, which means there are only two rifles in a position to be fired. One is in Rio’s sweaty hands, the stock pressed to her cheek.
She takes aim. They’ve taught her never to fire without picking a target. One individual target.
One man.
That one? The one to the left?
Her finger is on the trigger. The safety is off. The rifle has a two-stage trigger. Pull first to take up slack. Then just the barest movement to fire. Five pounds of pressure on stage one. The same but a shorter pull for the actual firing.
Her heart seems both too slow and too fast, like a car being run through the gears regardless of the engine.
The first pull.
Pull the trigger again and—
“Shoot!” Sergeant Cole yells.
Convulsively Rio pulls the trigger.
The recoil punches her shoulder, but she’s used to that. She does not see where her shot goes—no way to be sure since she has not really aimed. Not really. Not like she did when she earned her Sharpshooter badge.
Cole yells again. “Second Squad, fall back! Fall back!” and in a quieter tone, “Not you two.”