Arc Light (55 page)

The president of France intoned in French, with the English translation coming a second later like a bad dubbing of a B-grade movie, the obvious outrage in the man's voice being translated in a monotone, “Mr. President, you cannot, you will not use European territory to conduct hostilities without the consent of the European Community. The day when you could sit in Washington and—”

“Any
attempt,” Costanzo interrupted, “to interfere with our operations will be deemed an act of war.” The room and the telephone grew quiet. “And furthermore, if I am informed by my field commanders that any further maneuvers by your and Chancellor Gerhardt's EuroCorps outside our bases are deemed to be hostile, I will order immediate air interdiction by the Air Combat Command. Let me make myself clear on this point, ladies and gentlemen. When you breached the North Atlantic Treaty, you ceased being an ally of the United States of America. Your betrayal of us in time of dire need puts you on the cusp of becoming our enemies. If you try to stop us, we'll take you down one by one or all together.”

Thomas leaned over from Lambert's right and General Fuller met him halfway from Lambert's left. “What was it you called him?” Thomas whispered. “ ‘California enviroweenie'?”

Fuller shrugged and shook his head in befuddlement. “Man's a politician. It don't take a weatherman to know which way the wind's blowin',” Fuller said in an ironic twist of the lyric from the two men's Vietnam days. “Mount Weatherman,” Fuller completed.

When the President was finished, he disconnected the line just as the French president's bluster began. Placing his hands down on the table, he said, “Now, let's see what the Brits think of the performance.”

The question was answered as soon as the technician switched lines. Their laughter had obviously been stifled for too long.

Sergeant Simmons squatted in front of Monk and the three men around him. “You exit right!” Simmons shouted. “Monk, you take your fire team to the far left! Get on up to the treeline, chop-chop! Make contact with Third Platoon, which should be to your left, and then we move on in, all three platoons abreast! Whatever you do, don't take cover behind the Amtrac! The driver's gonna back on off the beach to pick up the second wave, so clear out! Okay?”

Monk nodded, and Sergeant Simmons waited until he had gotten confirmation from Mouth, Cool J, and the new guy. It was Monk's fire team, but they all had to know what to do, just in case. Simmons moved on down to the next fire team.

Bong!
reverberated throughout the hollow shell of the Amtrac. The men jumped as the strange slamming sound pierced the hull. Monk looked at Mouth, who stared back waiting.

Bong!
They all jumped again. The sound, more a sustained deep whine than anything else, seemed otherworldly.

“What the fuck is that, man?” Mouth shouted. “Sounds like a motherfuckin' ray gun or somethin'!”

All of the sudden, the Amtrac echoed with a string of the sounds, random but continuous.

“Shit, man!” Mouth screamed. “What the hell
is
that? Hey! Cheesebreath!” Mouth yelled, and the Amtrac's gunner lowered his head out of the cupola to look back at Mouth. “What the hell is that?” Mouth practically screamed as the sounds grew louder.

“Shut
up!”
Gunny shouted, turning to face Mouth. “It's artillery! Now
can
it!” Both he and the gunner resumed a vigil at their fighting posts.

Monk's mouth went dry. Those were shells landing in the water, a sound they had never heard in training. Monk looked up at the huge flat ceiling of the thinly armored Amtrac. He pictured the incoming shell—
right through the roof like an old-style beer opener,
Monk thought.
Blow up in here, down below the waterline. It'd be over so quick you probably wouldn't even know what had happened.

“Shit!” Mouth yelled, jostling Monk as he could not keep still. The sounds were unbearably loud now. “We're drivin' right into a wall of that shit, man!”

Monk glanced up at Gunny, expecting him to ream Mouth, but Gunny was braced in his position peering out ahead.

Louder and louder, closer they drew. Finally, the men in the Amtrac jumped with every single blast, each so loud it sounded like a hit. The bongs did not sound like explosions—more like the inside
of a metal trash can with somebody banging on it from outside. Monk could feel them through the armored hull against his back.

Slowly the sound of the blasts began to recede. Although still loud, they were growing more distant with each passing explosion. And they seemed to be letting up some too.

“I bet the navy's pounding 'em right now!” the new kid said.

Monk pictured the artillery emplacements, themselves suffering a rain of death like that they had attempted to inflict, their wrecked guns smoldering in the dug-in positions.

“Missiles!” Cheesebreath shouted from the crew deck in front.

Mouth rolled his head and his eyes at the same time. “Oh, man! This is fuckin' ridiculous!”

“Stay cool, man,” Monk said more calmly than he felt.

But Mouth couldn't sit still; rolling his head and huffing and squirming in his seat, he began to bitch in a constant chatter.

The gunner in the Amtrac's new upgunned weapons station opened up with the M-279, its machine-gun-like spitting of twelve 40-mm grenades per second breaking the relative quiet of the Amtrac with a staccato burst. Another rip from the gun fired a half dozen or so bullet-shaped grenades at the shore, their velocity so low that the Russians should actually see them in flight. Obviously spotting individual targets on the beach, the gunner then switched to the rattling M-2 .50-caliber heavy machine gun, pouring out the thick bullets until shifting back to the grenade launcher in a more or less constant process of killing.

“The navy's firin' smoke! Switch to thermal!” Gunny yelled.

Time seemed to slide by. It could have been minutes, or it could have been seconds—Monk could not tell which. Mouth was silent now. Monk glanced over at him to see if anything was wrong, but Mouth just looked down at the deck. Monk looked down also, and when he did he could feel it. The beginning of the surge.

Monk looked at the other men. Several appeared ill in spite of the relatively calm seas. Right next to him Monk saw the new guy, his mouth wide open and head tilted back, his chin resting on the raised front sight of his M-16. Monk backhanded the kid's leg, and when he looked over Monk gave him a brief nod of his head. The kid smiled and licked his lips, looking around to see if anyone else cared to acknowledge his existence.

There was no bravado now, just men dealing with the Beast.

“Get your gear on!” Gunny yelled from in front.

Bumping and jostling accompanied the command as all of the men began moving at once. Monk realized just how difficult sitting there still and quiet had been, and it felt good to have a purpose and take action.

After Monk's field pack was securely placed on his back, he sat awkwardly on the front edge of the bench. He felt a chill, and his breath was ragged. Breathing did not seem at all natural anymore.

They were close, seeming to stop their forward progress as the surf washed back out to sea and then to rush forward with the next wave.
Three, maybe four more surges and we're on dry ground,
Monk thought as his senses monitored the ever more pronounced effects on the Amtrac of the currents near shore.

“Lock and
lo-o-oad!”
Gunny yelled, turning all the way around to face the eighteen marines in the back of the Amtrac, checking each out with his eyes like a mother before her kids headed for the school bus on a cold winter day. “Safe your weapons!” he yelled. “Unsafe 'em on the beach! Semiauto. This ain't the army!”

The sound of clicks and clacks, of metal on metal, filled Monk's ears as he pulled a twenty-round magazine out of his ammo pouch. Tapping the magazine on his helmet with loud thwacks to ensure that it was fully loaded and that the cartridges' bases were flush against the wall, he slid the magazine into the rifle's guide, slapping the end to hear the click as it seated. He then pointed the rifle toward the ceiling and pulled the charging handle fully back. Watching as the brass cartridge on top of the stack in the magazine appeared in the open bolt, he slid the charging handle forward. The bolt grabbed the top round and slid it into the chamber.

Monk felt for the selector switch with his thumb. It was all the way forward on safe, but he looked to make certain. Above the trigger housing was written
SEMI
, the real marine's setting. The drill instructors had pounded marksmanship into the recruits—making single shots count—in this day and age of full auto. They'd always preached that it was because real soldiers exercise fire discipline, as distinguished from the army where you just close your eyes when a twig snaps and spray everything and then call in artillery and air strikes. But Monk had always suspected that the real reason for marines' fire discipline was that their supply lines ran out to sea, and the navy couldn't wait to find an excuse to pull their ships out to the safety of “blue water”—away from the shore and the stupid jarheads who clung to the beachhead by their fingernails. Monk knew, as each marine was implicitly taught, that you carried what you needed on your back, and that was all the support you could expect.

“Don't waste ammo,” Monk said to the new kid, but loud enough for Mouth and Cool J to hear. He then felt another surge, and just as the Amtrac began to pull back away from the beach in the heavy surf its tracks found bottom, grinding against the rocks. The driver transitioned the Amtrac's drive train to its treads with a groan, and the vehicle lurched and roared up onto dry land to full height,
its tracks clawing into the rocks on the shore. That's when the high-pitched pings began to sound off the aluminum frontal armor. Monk's mind reluctantly admitted what they must be, yet another sound they had never heard in training. The Amtrac was able to withstand 7.62-mm fire and shrapnel, and Monk prayed for nothing heavier to come their way.

It suddenly seemed unreal. It wasn't happening. He wasn't where he thought he was. There was no war. There was nobody trying to kill him. He'd never have to leave his seat in the Amtrac.

The grenade launcher let loose what had to be an entire box of ammo, the gunner bowed over behind his weapon like a B-17 gunner in the old movies, slewing the gun from left to right.

Gunny pulled the trigger on the pistol grip that extended down from the ceiling next to his position, firing two dozen smoke grenades to the front of the vehicle roughly along the arc that the Amtrac's gunner was devastating. The ramp in back cracked open and the man-made crackling of small-arms fire and rips from machine guns and automatic grenade launchers made the roar of nature's surf seem trifling by comparison.

They also masked the crashing sounds that smashed through the Amtrac.
“A-A-A-A-A-H-H!”
one of the mortarmen screamed as he clawed at his pack and sank to his knees across from Monk. Another heavy-caliber round came crashing in, and smoke began to fill the compartment around the stooped and ducking marines.

The sound of shouting, a steady yell that was taught each marine from the earliest days, announced that the ramp had lowered sufficiently to exit. The strangled end to one marine's shout from outside presaged something else.

Monk stood and followed the two files of men past the wounded mortarman, each step an effort of utmost will. His voice joined the chorus as he trotted to the end of the bench, shouting to block out the reality of his feet touching the angled ramp and then the beach itself. Shouting at the top of his lungs, he turned into the confused crackle of gunfire. He was outside in the gray morning air, with nothing between him and the raging storm of fire from the smoky woods ahead. He was on the beach. His mouth dried, and his shout fell off. He broke into a labored run under the heavy pack to follow the receding forms of the marines through the smoke toward the faintly visible trees. His boots slipped on the smooth wet rocks.

ZING
Monk heard over the general roar of guns and explosions.
ZING . . . ZING-ZING-ZING.
He stooped to drop to the rocks but he tripped and fell instead.

Landing hard, he grunted heavily and grimaced at the pain that racked his body from a dozen places at once. He began to pat himself
frantically for a wound, but the pains faded quickly. He felt a hand grab his pant leg from behind.

Monk looked through the drifting smoke to see Cool J, a corpsman straddling his chest trying frantically to patch Cool J's neck as the blood spurted all the way up to the medic's face. The corpsman spit the blood away from his lips in a stringy spray and held the bandage pouch up to his teeth with one hand as his other hand pinched the artery in Cool J's neck closed. The corpsman's arms were coated and dripping dark blood, and Monk heard the screams of others whom he saw twisting under the weight of their packs, many with water washing onto their feet with each wave.

Cool J twisted the fabric of Monk's trousers and opened his mouth to say something, his eyes glassy and panic-stricken. Monk reached out to squeeze his arm as the corpsman fumbled in all the gore and another spurt shot up from his patient's neck.

A crushing shock thudded through Monk's body with a blast of heat and he felt the wind knocked from his lungs. A loud whining sound blared in his ears as he clawed at the pain, and then the world seemed to crash down around him.

Crushed to the ground by the thin upper branches of a fallen tree, Monk felt another huge thud, this one followed by bucketfuls of water that rained down.
Heavy artillery!
he realized through the dizziness and confusion.
That must be heavy artillery!
The Russians were beginning to pound the beach.