By the Blood of Heroes (35 page)
Then again, maybe he was just tired.
He had just decided to return to the engine car and check up on the professor when a speck of motion out on the horizon caught his eye. He leaned farther out the door, staring at it, trying to make out just what it was.
The object grew larger as it came closer, but still he couldn’t tell just what it was.
Something about it troubled him.
Something about the size.
Or the color . . .
“Sonofabitch!”
Burke hauled the door open to the car behind him and shouted, “Stay sharp, Compton! Aircraft at 10:00!”
“I’m on him, Captain!”
Burke returned to his previous position on the platform between the cars and watched as the speck on the horizon resolved itself into a Fokker triplane painted a brilliant red.
Richthofen!
The German ace came in with guns blazing, which were answered a moment later by the stutter of the Hotchkiss as Compton returned fire. As the Fokker swept overhead, Burke joined the fray, unloading what was left in the Firestarter’s cylinder at the aircraft as well, hoping for a lucky shot that might send the undead bastard at the controls up in a blazing pyre of artificial fire.
The Fokker swept past, unharmed, and banked around, preparing for another pass.
That’s when Jack began screaming for him from the front of the train.
“Mike! You better get up here, Mike!”
Burke abandoned his position and made his way between the two cars to the engine, where he found Graves bent over the controls and Jack standing in front of one of the forward viewing ports, an expression of real fear on his face.
“What now?”
“You better take a look for yourself,” Jack said, stepping aside as Burke pressed his face to the viewing slit.
Squatting on the tracks ahead of them was a massive armored contraption the size of a small house. It rested on two large treads, each one nearly as tall as the troops standing next to it, and sprouted no less than six major armaments—a 57 mm cannon and five machine guns—all of them currently pointing in their direction.
Burke recognized the contraption as an A7V, the largest tank built to date and one the Allies were having trouble dealing with on the battlefield. If the damned things hadn’t been so prone to mechanical issues, they might have pushed the Allies all the way back to Paris. Its appearance here meant that the Germans had finally decided stopping the train was more important than stopping it intact.
Things were about to get ugly.
Burke had previous experience with the A7V, having faced down a trio of the massive vehicles during the fourth Battle of Ypres several months before. He knew that it required a crew of twenty to operate it at full capacity, but trained crewmen were in high demand, and odds were this one didn’t have the manpower needed to run it 100 percent effectively.
That might not help them much, though, because this one was parked with its treads straddling the train tracks, and even from this distance they could see a spotter standing up in the hatch, a small scope in one hand.
“I think he’s going to . . .”
That was as far as Burke got.
The forward-facing 57 mm cannon hurled a shell in their direction.
It wasn’t a difficult shot, as the train was headed right for the tank and all the gunner had to do was point the barrel of the cannon in the right direction.
“Everybody hold on!” Burke shouted behind him and then locked his mechanical hand around the nearest support, bracing himself for what was to come.
The shell screamed toward them, crossing the distance in mere seconds and impacting right against the sloping piece of armor that covered the front of the locomotive. Most of the explosion was forced aside thanks to the armor, but enough got through to really shake them up. Both Jack and Graves were thrown to the floor, though neither of them was hurt in the process.
“More speed!” Burke shouted. “We need more speed!”
Graves shook his head. “I can’t! That’s all she’s got!”
Burke didn’t think it was enough.
He sent Jack to fetch Williams and turned his attention to the furnace, feverishly shoveling wood into the feeder, hoping to raise the temperature of the fire and thereby produce a greater head of steam. When the others returned, they added their efforts to his, stuffing the hopper almost to overflowing.
He could hear the staccato shout of the Hotchkiss and the answering roar of the Spandau machine guns on Richthofen’s aircraft as it swept by on another pass, but there was nothing he could do to help Compton now. If they didn’t deal with the tank, it was all over anyway.
Another round screamed toward them, missing by inches and going past the train on the left side, so close that Burke imagined he could have reached out and touched it.
A glance at the gauge told him they were creeping up over sixty miles per hour now, which was faster than Burke had ever gone before.
“Five hundred yards,” Graves called out, and Burke rushed over for a quick look, his mind racing, trying to come up with a plan but knowing that their only hope was to ram the tank and pray for the best.
His gaze fell on the stretch of land behind the tank, and he was surprised to see the rolls of concertina wire and abandoned trenches that marked the edge of no-man’s-land, that boundary between the opposing armies that shifted back and forth as ground was lost, gained, and lost again.
If they could get past the tank and into no-man’s-land . . .
“More fuel!” Burke ordered. He reached past Graves and pushed the throttle all the way forward, trying to squeeze another few miles per hour out of the engine.
The tank fired again, scoring another hit on their front end, and this time it tore away the armor, exposing the bare bones of the locomotive underneath.
One more shot and it was going to be all over . . .
The distance between the two vehicles seemed to close in a heartbeat, and Burke was suddenly screaming for everyone to brace themselves as the front of the tank loomed in their windshield.
There was a tremendous crash, and Burke felt himself flying through the air only to slam into something less yielding than he was.
NO-MAN’S-LAND
T
he whistle of a mortar attack brought Burke awake with a start. The sound of the shells screaming through the air was one that any trench soldier learned to listen for, and hearing it now sent his heart hammering in his chest and his head swiveling from side to side, searching for a place to hunker down and wait out the attack.
That’s when he realized he wasn’t in a trench at all, but in some kind of metal bunker . . .
. . . the train!
It all came back to him in a rush. Freeman’s rescue. Charlie’s sacrifice. The seizure of the train and the long ride across occupied France to the front at Nogent. The battle with the tank and the collision that had ended it.
He pushed himself to his feet and shuffled his way over to the nearest window. Looking out, he could see the cratered earth and lines of barbed wire that were indicative of no-man’s-land.
And there, a few hundred yards beyond that, the first of the trenches that marked the Allied lines.
They were so close!
The sound of the mortars came again, the shrill screaming whistle of a shell moving at subsonic speed. He found himself ducking down as multiple shells slammed into the ground and exploded less than a dozen yards away from the train.
Something about their placement bothered him, but he was still pretty fuzzy from the crash.
He tried to puzzle it out.
Something about where the shells were landing . . .
Shit! We have to get out of here!
He glanced around the dim interior and saw the rest of the team lying in the wreckage. Worried that they had only moments available to them, Burke rushed over to the nearest man, who turned out to be Graves, and shook him awake.
“The Germans are firing on the train,” he said as soon as Graves could focus. “We need to move!”
The professor was still groggy, but he was able to function enough to drag himself over to Jones and begin to revive him while Burke moved to his brother’s side. Jack was just starting to come to when Burke knelt down beside him and saw blood on his brother’s shirt.
“How badly are you hurt?” Burke asked.
Freeman put a hand to the back of his head and when he took it away there was fresh blood on it. Still, he only grimaced slightly when he said, “Must have banged my head. It’s a bleeder, but I don’t think it’s too bad.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, on your feet then!” Burke helped him up, then slid an arm under his own and helped lead him out of the train car behind Graves and Jones. They took shelter in a large shell hole about ten feet from the wreck as Burke went back for the others.
The whistling came again, and Burke flattened himself on the ground just as the mortar rounds slammed into the earth nearby. The earth shook savagely, but the explosives did little more than throw a lot of dirt into the air. The shells were starting to zero in.
Time was running out.
Burke clambered back inside the wrecked train and hunted through the first couple of cars until he found Williams and Compton. He found Compton tending to his unconscious squad mate.
“Can you walk?” Burke asked him.
The other man nodded.
“The rest of the team are hunkered down in an old shell hole about fifteen feet to the right. Start walking and I’ll be there in a minute to help you; I’m going to get Williams out of here first.”
Compton struggled to his feet and began to shuffle in the right direction. One of his arms hung at an unusual angle and Burke realized that it was broken.
Still, a broken arm was better than being blown to bits in a mortar attack.
Burke slipped his arms underneath Williams’s unconscious form and stood up, taking the young private with him. He adjusted Williams’s weight, getting the grip right so he wouldn’t drop him along the way, and moved to follow Compton.
He heard the engine before he realized what it was, and by then it was too late.
Compton had managed to get halfway to the shell hole when the sound of the aircraft’s engine caught his attention. Burke was looking right at him when Compton looked up, caught sight of the aircraft, and then twisted and shook as a stream of bullets slammed into him, sending his body crashing to the ground.
“No!” Burke screamed, but he knew it was too late.
The plane roared overhead, the black Iron Crosses on the underside of its wings standing out sharply against the bright red paint that covered them.
The German ace wasn’t ready to let them go.
NEAR THE FRONT LINES
A
s Richthofen swept by overhead, Burke used the time to make a run for the shell hole where the others were waiting. He heard the scream of the incoming mortar rounds just seconds before he reached the hole. He threw himself and Williams over the side as the shells plunged to earth.
This time, the spotter got it right.
The shells slammed into what was left of the locomotive, sending shrapnel flying through the air in every direction. If they’d been out in the open, they would have been cut to pieces, but because they were hunkered down below ground level they managed to withstand the barrage without further injury.
Jack grabbed him by the arm as soon as the shelling stopped.
“Now what?” he shouted, trying to be heard over the ringing in all their ears.
Burke pointed toward the Allied lines a few hundred yards away. “We make a run for it.”
His brother stared at him. “Are you crazy? We’ll never make it.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
If they stayed out here, the enemy would eventually get them, be it Richthofen, the mortar operators, or the German troops who couldn’t be that far behind them on the other side of the wreckage.
Their only hope was to make it to Allied lines, and there was only one way to do that.
Run like hell.
R
ichthofen circled high above the battlefield, watching and waiting for the right moment. He had no intention of letting Major Freeman and his rescuers escape his grasp.
He’d already killed one of their number with his last pass, watching with satisfaction as the shells of his Spandau machine guns tore him apart where he stood. When the rest of his companions emerged from that foxhole they were hiding in, he’d dive down and eliminate them as well.
L
ook there!” Freeman said, pointing to a spot about halfway to Allied lines, between two large sections of barbed wire.
Burke looked in that direction, not getting what his brother was pointing at. There were a number of abandoned positions from when the British had retreated after an earlier strike, what looked like half-buried bodies of former soldiers, and . . . an empty machine-gun nest, complete with a Lewis gun still on its tripod!
“I see it, Jack,” Burke said. “What do you have in mind?”
Freeman looked skyward, searching for Richthofen’s plane but not seeing it. He knew the German ace wouldn’t be gone for long.
“Richthofen is going to swoop down on us the minute we leave the cover of this shell hole. There’s no way we can outrun his plane, not over rugged terrain and having to deal with barbed wire at the same time. We’ll never make it.
“But we can make that gun,” he said, eyeing it greedily. “And if it’s in working order, we can use it to defend ourselves until reinforcements come or until there is a lull in the fighting long enough to make a run for it on our own. What do you say?”
Graves and Jones were listening in, and they all agreed it was the best option available to them. Burke was ready to rush out and make a run for it, when Jones pulled him back into the hole.
“Hang on a minute, Captain,” the other man said. He fished around amid the debris near the edge of the shell hole and picked up a shiny piece of metal that must have come from some interior section of the locomotive. Jones settled on the edge of the shell hole, facing Allied lines, and began catching the sunlight with the metal and flashing it toward the infantry men in British uniforms that he could see manning the Allied line.
There was no response.
Jones tried again.
Still no response.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Burke began and just then it did. One of the soldiers in the trench flashed a message back to Jones, who read it with a smile before flashing out a reply.
“What did he say?” Burke asked.
“I told him we are Americans with my first message and asked him not to shoot us when we make a run for it. He must not have believed me. He asked me who won the World Series last year.”
Burke frowned. “But the Series was canceled last year.”
“Exactly. And when I told him so, he knew we are who we say we are.”
“So he’s not going to shoot?”
Freeman laughed. “I sure as hell hope not. Getting shot by our Allies after surviving all this would really put a damper on the postmission celebration.”
Burke definitely agreed.
They were getting ready to make a run for it when noise from behind them caught their attention.
Burke and Freeman turned around, only to be met by the sight of a pack of shambler hounds clambering up the side of the train’s wreckage.
“What the hell are those?” Burke asked.
“Hounds,” said Freeman, “now run!”
Without waiting to see if he followed, Freeman leaped to his feet and ran for it.