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"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.
The only thing Valentine remembered about the period between the Third Division attack and the arrival of the Crocodile was Nail's recovery. Dr. Brough reported that one day the wounded Bear simply sat up and swung his legs off the bed, then walked downstairs for breakfast. He returned to command of the Bears and reorganized his tiny but ferocious group. With wounds from the Reaper fight healed, his teams were back at full strength.
Which was something that couldn't be said for the rest of the command. The bonfire they'd held to celebrate the victory was lit with the flames of Pyrrhus. The hospital overflowed with the bloody debris of his victory over his old general. Beck's line was a series of points; if the enemy came again as they had the first day of the attack, they would go through it like floodwaters through a screen door.
Then the first "railcar" struck.
The men called them that because it was what they sounded like as they roared overhead, looking like red comets of sparks. They may have sounded like railcars, but they struck like meteorites, causing the ground to writhe and shake in an explosive earthquake.
The shells landed all through the long night, every hour at the hour, precisely. The timing made the shelling even worse. Each man, Valentine included, dreaded the rise of the minute hand toward the top of the clock. One overshot the hill and splashed into the Arkansas River, while others killed men just from the concussion. Valentine saw one man with either a part of a lung or a stomach sticking out of his mouth. Others died without so much as a tooth being found.
The explosions drove man and animal mad. Max the German shepherd had to be put down after he attacked anyone who came near. The wounded in the hospital had to be tied into their bunks to keep from crawling under them, tearing out IV lines.
"It's the Crocodile, sir," a rummy-eyed old Guard said to Valentine in the blackboard-walled briefing room. Post stood next to him. "That's what we called it, anyway. They tell me from a distance it's all bumpy and green, and the tug tower sticks up like an eye."
"I've never heard of it."
"It's a Grog thing, out of St. Louis. She shelled us from twenty miles away on the Missouri, when we were dug in during the siege on the Bourbeuse in '61. She's naval artillery. She goes on the water and they move her around in an armored barge, like a battleship. I think they put the gun together on the banks, but nobody knows for sure."
"Solon's called in the Grogs? He must be desperate." Valentine wondered what kind of deal Solon had made to get the Grogs to aid him.
"You may get a chance to find out," Post said. "A messenger came forward at oh-nine-hundred, on the dot, under a flag of truce. He had a letter from Xray-Tango. I guess Hamm's been 'relieved' because it's signed General Xray-Tango, CINC New Columbia State, Trans-Mississippi. No demands, just a parley."
* * * *
"Colonel Le Sain," Xray-Tango said, when Valentine emerged from the lines. Nail and Ahn-Kha stood alongside, Nail carrying the white flag. They met on an old residential road at the base of the hill. The growth had been blasted and burned by shellfire.
"General Xray-Tango," Valentine said. The general's spasm-afflicted eye sent out mental distress signals like Morse code.
"Both still alive, I see," Xray-Tango said.
"I should have shot Solon and you when I had the chance on that hill back in March. Would've been a nice change; the commanders kill each other and the privates live."
"What are you suggesting, a duel? We both take our pistols, walk ten paces and shoot? The winner gets the hill?"
"Save a lot of blood, General."
"You know it's ridiculous. Change of subject."
"You sent the message, General. What are we to discuss?"
"Your surrender. Prevent the 'further effusion of blood." I believe that's the traditional wording."
"You're working for the experts in the effusion of blood, General."
