Valentine had a soldier's eye for ground. His route to Beck's command post was determined by cover rather than directness. He scrambled through the fallen scrub oaks, along foundations of old buildings and then up a little wash to Beck's position on the north face of the hill.
Beck was at a viewing slit in his wood-and-earth bunker, looking west down the ridge pointing toward the train station. He had a band of dirt across his face the same size as the slit, giving him a raccoonlike expression.
"They're not having any luck from the east," Beck said. "Too much fire from the notched hill by the war memorial. They're coming up hard on the north side. Jesus, there it goes again ... They're using flamethrowers. Sergeant, call in more mortar fire where that flame's coming from."
Valentine looked at the little gouts of flame as the sergeant spoke into his field phone, binoculars in his other hand. Beck passed his own glasses to Valentine. Valentine surveyed what he could of the north side of the hill; there were mottled TMCC uniforms all along it, all lying in the same direction like freshly cut hay.
Some gutsy company officer fired a signal flare, and the aligned figures stood and began to run up the hill. Beck tore the glasses from his face and flicked a switch on a fuse box. Explosions blossomed across the hill as the signal traveled the wire, little poofs of smoke shooting down the hill like colored sugar blown through a straw.
"The claymores," Valentine said. He saw the Abica brothers moving forward, great belts of ammunition about their necks like brass stoles.
"They're turning around."
"Lieutenant Zhao is back in the machine-gun post," a soldier reported. "He says they're heading back down the hill."
They tried again. According to Beck the second attack showed nothing like the patience and skill of the first. Hamm concentrated all his gunfire on the easternmost tip of the hill, until a permanent cloud of thrown-up smoke and dirt hung at the end of the hill, constantly renewed by further shellfire. But the men there held; the machine guns weren't silenced. As fast as they came up, they turned around and went down.
"We broke the second wave!" Beck's forward observer shouted. "They're running!"
"And the Third Division's bad luck continues," Valentine said. "Cease fire. Cease fire."
"Why?" Beck asked.
"Let 'em run. I want the others to get the idea. So next time they come, they have to start from scratch, not from halfway up."
* * * *
"Hurrah for the Razors!" a soldier shouted as Valentine surveyed the devastated ridge. Stretcher-bearers braved sniper fire to bring in the wounded, and Valentine had come forward to see to those wounded. Pickups converted to ambulances were bumping across the shell-holed road to take them back to the hospital building.
God, and there's only one doctor.
"Valentine, time for me to be moving on," he heard, as he knelt beside a wounded man.
Valentine glanced up at Duvalier. "Interested in lugging a radio up Park Hill tonight?"
"No, sorry. Suicide isn't my style. I've got another assignment. They think Solon's outside Hot Springs. The Cats are concentrating. Someone'll get him."
"Is he so important?"
"Wherever he goes the Quislings do better, for some reason. He's like a lucky charm."
Valentine went back to cleaning the soldier's face. The man's elbow was torn up, and the skin on his forearm and hand already had a gray look to it. He'd never use his right hand again. "They won't try that again, will they, sir?" the private said, smiling.
"They're dumb, but they're not that dumb," Valentine said. "You taught them about touching hot stoves."
"It was them Bears, sir. They backed up our platoon. When the flamethrower burned out the machine-gun crew, they went down and got 'em, then held the machine-gun post, flames and all. We took the line back after that."
"Good teamwork, hero." He looked up at Duvalier. She stared at him, strangely intent. "Take off. It's getting dark. If you pass a TMCC mail pouch while you're sneaking through the lines, drop a note in for Xray-Tango; tell him I want to have a word."
Duvalier's lip trembled. "Val, if you guys get pushed off here ... make for the south bank. There's good cover in the hills."
"We're here to stay, Ali. In the ground or above it."
She hugged him from behind; he felt her lips brush the back of his neck. Then she was gone.
* * * *
There was a week-long respite from all save harassing fire. The Quislings were being careful with their shells, so only one or two an hour landed on the hill. Sometimes they would ratchet up the fire into a bombardment, so every time a shell landed Valentine tensed, waiting to see if others would follow. It was exhausting.