Читать книгу Blitzkrieg in the Past - David Wright O’Brien - Страница 5
ОглавлениеGeorgia Disappears
Half an hour later we were making a maximum twenty-five per along a smooth enough dirt straightaway. But the day was a scorcher, and the dust kept sifting through the front vision slot with choking monotony.
I was beginning to agree with Rusty as to his first wish for the deluge Leeds had promised. My back was drenched with sweat, and the perspiration cascaded down my forehead like a miniature Niagara.
Up above me, getting plenty of fresh, clean air on his lean face, Leeds McAndrews had the gall to keep up a cheerfully incessant whistle. And to my right, Rusty accompanied him with a steady monotone of profanity.
Rusty interrupted his blasphemous monotone long enough to chant despairingly.
"Cool," he said. "Clean ... fresh ... cool ... clean ... fresh ... cool!"
"What's eating you?" I demanded loudly.
"I was thinking," he said, "of how nice it wouldda been had I joined the Air Corps insteadda this outfit."
I silenced him with a glare.
"What about that damned rain Leeds promised?" Rusty yelled after a minute or so.
I knocked Leeds' leg with the side of my head. I looked up as he peered down at me.
"Where in the hell's that rain?" I asked.
Leeds grinned. "Another twenty minutes," he promised.
I looked at the operations map at my elbow. Another twenty minutes would find us in rough enough terrain without mud to mess through. I sighed. Maybe Rusty was right. You never really win.
But Leeds had miscalculated, for once. We got our rain in fifteen minutes, not twenty. Got it while we were still traveling the smooth dirt straightaway.
I heard it patter on the tank, lightly at first. But the drops were big, and pretty soon they were coming harder and faster, and all of a sudden the smooth dirt straightaway was covered in a sheeting downpour.
"Turnabout!" Rusty grinned, yelling. He pointed his finger up toward the tower where Leeds was now taking a drenching. "First we bake—then he drowns!"
Leeds kicked my shoulder in a stop signal. We halted a few yards forward. I moved aside, and he clambered down.
"How about Rusty taking the crow's nest while I get a look at the radio device we're lugging?" Leeds asked.
I looked at Rusty, whose face had suddenly gone dark.
"Nuts to that noise!" he protested sharply. "The minute it gets wet up there you decide to change places with me. Yah!"
"There was no squawk when I first mentioned it," Leeds reminded Rusty.
"It seemed like a good deal, then," Rusty countered. "Thought it would give me a little pure air for a change."
Leeds grinned. "In other words you had no objections to it when we were getting started, is that right?"
Rusty nodded, starting to say something.
Leeds cut in. "And in other words you sanctioned a bargain then, but want to back out now."
"Yeah, but—"
"Unforeseen circumstances can't make an agreement any less binding, ethically," Leeds cut him off again.
Rusty muttered something hot. Then he sighed. "Every time I try to argue with you, McAndrews, I lose my shirt." He stood up and moved around, permitting Leeds to slide into the position he'd vacated.
"Up you go," I grinned.
Tight-lipped, Rusty clambered up into the tower. And when he gave my shoulder the starting nudge with his foot you'd think he'd wanted to root a field goal from the fifty yard line.
"Hey!" I yelled. "A little easy there!"
We rumbled off once more, and through my vision slot I could see the rain slashing down even more viciously than before, while the sky grew ominously darker and the first splitting explosions of thunder sounded in the distance.
Above me, I could hear Rusty's faint, wrathful grumblings. Leeds was busy in his inspection of the special radio apparatus, lost in blissful fascination at the intricate arrangement of it.
We clanked along the dirt straightaway in that fashion for another fifteen minutes, while the fury of the rain and the crashing reverberations of thunder grew greater with every passing minute.
Jagged flashes of lightning were now splitting the sky on an average of once every two or three minutes.
Then Rusty was kicking my shoulder hard in a stop signal.
I slowed the tank to a halt.
Rusty's head peered down.
"Do I have to stay up here and be top man on a lightning rod?" he demanded plaintively.
I glanced at Leeds. "How about it? Had enough look-see?"
Leeds looked up. "Eh? Oh—" He grinned. "Tell that red head I'll relieve him in another five minutes."
I passed on the information. Rusty glowered.
"Okay," he said sullenly. "But I'll be counting off them five minutes like a clock."
I glanced at my operations map, and peered out to see our road position.
"That next fork up there," I told Rusty, "is where we go off over the bounding hills and dales. Don't let me miss it."
Rusty muttered something indicating none too pleased agreement and sat back up in his perch.
I started up again, just as a particularly brilliant flash of lightning whitened the darkened sky. I heard Rusty curse angrily in his discomfort.
Leeds looked up. "Wonder if they counted on an electrical storm playing hell with this device?" he asked.
"I don't suppose so," I answered. "Why? Something wrong?"
Leeds shook his head. "It's skittering around like a water bug in a whirlpool," he announced.
I shrugged. "That's not our worry."
"No," Leeds admitted. "No, it isn't." He went back to his study of the device.
I got the turn kick from Rusty, then, and wheeled our M-3 down off the straightaway across a rutted field. The going wasn't too bad, although now and then we made a camel-like lurch as we crossed a narrow ditch or gully.
The thunder was crackling almost constantly, now, and its din, plus the incessant deluge of rain on the tank structure and the noise of the M-3's motor itself, made further conversational exchanges—even shouting at the top of our lungs—more than impossible.
Mentally, I was hoping that the terrain over which we were headed would not become bog and mud too quickly; for the operations map at my elbow indicated that this was just a brief stretch and that we'd emerge on a straightaway again in another few miles.
I shot a glance at Leeds occasionally, and from the expression on his somber, studious pan, he seemed still worried about the operation of the radio device our run was testing.
But that was Leeds, of course. He was that type of guy. Always stewed and fretted over everything, feeling responsible for the perfection of the smallest details of anything remotely connected with our assignments.
Up above me Rusty had subsided. Or perhaps he hadn't. At any rate the din of the storm and the usual clanking cacophony of our M-3 drowned out whatever profane observations he might have had on our progress.
I was just figuring that the fury of the electrical storm was getting to be more than anyone, even Leeds, had expected, when it happened.
The black storminess of the sky became a sudden, blazing sheet of white flame; and hell exploded with the tremendous crash of a thunderbolt.
I remember the force of the shock throwing me from my seat, and that, with subconscious forethought, I snapped off the power on my way to the tank floor.
Vaguely, Leeds' voice, raised shoutingly, came to me; and I seemed to hear Rusty's angry yelling in the background of fog that was settling over me. It was only later that I found out I'd cracked my head with tremendous force against a turret panel on my right, and that merely the presence of my safety helmet saved me from splitting my skull in two.
Then the lights were out for me completely.
"Here ... no ... rub his wrists first ... yes ... that's ... right. Let me ... better ... beginning ... open his eyes.... Coming around ... now."
Those were the words that hammered at the back of my brain as I began to blink through the fog and regain consciousness. I was aware of Rusty's mug, and Leeds' somber pan both bending over me.
I sat up suddenly.
"Jeeudas," I yelled, "what time is it?"
I must have been blinking foolishly as I gaped around at my surroundings.
"You're not in the barracks," Rusty said, "and reveille hasn't just sounded. Calm down. You're all right. We were just struck by a lightning bolt, that's all."
"Lighting?" I gasped.
"Sure," Leeds McAndrews said dryly, "that's all."
"Wheeeeeeeeew!" I ran a shaky hand along my face.
Rusty was grinning now, and he rose, half bending, making me suddenly realize we were still inside the tank.
"How about you guys?" I demanded. "How come you weren't knocked silly?"
"We were knocked flat," Leeds remarked. "Rusty was just clambering down inside to beef about getting relief when the bolt hit. I was banged face forward on my button. Rusty hung on for dear life."
"But the tank," I protested, looking around at the somehow undamaged mechanism inside our M-3, "should have been cindered!"
Leeds nodded. "Thank God it wasn't," he agreed, "even if it should have been. It was just knocked ahead, literally through the air, for a distance of no less than fifteen yards."
I whistled. "Honest to God?" I demanded, shuddering.
Leeds held up his hand. "Honest Injun," he said.
"What about the precious equipment?" I asked suddenly.
Leeds shrugged. "Seems to be undamaged. Can't be sure," he told me. "But I have a funny hunch that it was the cause of attracting the bolt in the first place."
Rusty knotted his red brows in disbelief. "How?" he challenged.
Leeds gave him a look. "I could explain," he said flatly, "but I'd be wasting my breath."
"Yah!" Rusty said scornfully.
I clambered to my feet, aware suddenly that my knees were all of a sudden very rubbery indeed, and stood there in a half bend.
"I better get out and make a check of this blitz box before we try to go any further," I said.
Leeds nodded. "That's a good idea."
Rusty's face was a portrait of disappointment. "You mean you figger on going ahead?" he demanded.
"Why not?" I asked him.
"And get hit again by a bolt?" he demanded.
"The thunder's stopped," I said, cocking my head to one side, "and, if my ears and sixth sense aren't wrong, our storm is clearing up."
Leeds nodded in sudden surprise. "Damned if you aren't right," he agreed. "No more rain spattering the sides. Let's pile out and look around while you check the M-3."
Leeds was first up and out. Rusty followed him, and I brought up the rear.
So we got Leeds' choked exclamation of astonishment first.
Then Rusty's hoarse, bewildered bellow.
And then I was looking at it.
Looking at the terrain surrounding us, I mean. The thick, tangled, semi-tropical jungle that stretched for miles to either side. The chalk-cliffed mountains miles in the distance. The utter absence of anything remotely hinting of civilization.
All that—when we'd been crossing the sparse woodland pasture of a southern county before the lightning had struck!
Rusty's choked words formed the first coherent sentence.
"Listen," he grated hoarsely, "this ain't Georgia!"
Leeds got the next sentence loose. "For once in my life, Rusty," he declared, "I agree with you perfectly!"
Nobody cracked wise.
Nobody felt like it. For this was screwy, frighteningly screwy. And all of a sudden there was a fine, cold sweat on my brow ...
