Prologue
The Trenches
Germany
September 1944
A shell exploded not ten feet in front of the fine.
Despite the days and nights the men had spent in their
hellish hole in the earth, some jumped at the sound.
Others barely twitched.
They'd been holding the line nearly a week, waiting for
reinforcements. Though word kept coming through that the
men from Airborne would be shoring them up, none had
arrived. Some of the men were bitter, but Brandon Ericson
shrugged at their comments without replying. He was
certain the men from Airborne had been sent out.
They just hadn't made it yet. Gut instinct warned him that
the paratroopers had been dropped from their planes with
all good intentions. Some of them had tangled in the
trees. Others had been shot down while their chutes were
still billowing in the absurdly blue skies. Some of them
had met death on the ground. And some were wasting away in
the enemy's prison camps. No lack of intent or valor left
them as they were now. Just the brutal determination of a
foe determined to conquer all Europe.
"Jesus! That was close!" Corporal Ted Myers muttered,
crossing himself. His pale blue eyes were bright against
their red rims and the dark grime on his face. Beside him,
Jimmy Decker started to shake. What began as a trembling
turned suddenly into a full-force spasm. Then Jimmy
slammed forward, crashing against the wall of earth that
shielded them, and back again.
"Better get him out of the line," the lieutenant said
quietly. "Back to the infirmary."
"Ain't no infirmary anymore, Lieutenant," Sergeant
Walowski said. He leaned back against the earth and sank
to a sitting position, drawing a cigarette from his
pocket. "Caved in last night."
"The medics have something else rigged up. Myers, get
Decker out of here," the lieutenant said. He stared across
the earth. Pretty soon, dusk would fall. Until then, there
would be another barrage of mortar fire. After that, the
enemy would make a run at their position again. He didn't
need anyone in the line who was cracking. They'd held here
now for nearly two weeks under impossible odds. They'd
done so because, for the most part, the men were crack
shots. They weren't budging, and from where they were,
they could have a field day with troops approaching them--
even the trained professional German soldiers who had been
ordered to root them out.
Still, they could only hold so long. The enemy powers had
ordered those soldiers--family men, many of them, like
their French and American counterparts--to give their
lives, as many as need be, for the Fatherland. They'd just
send more and more troops, night after night. Even if
fifty of the enemy were killed for every one of his men,
eventually, they would fall. Unless reinforcements could
reach them. And quickly.
A whistling tore through the air.
"Take cover!" the lieutenant ordered. Myers, running with
the shell-shocked Decker, ducked and kept running. The men
remaining in the trench flattened themselves. This one
didn't explode .quite so close.
"Keep down!" the lieutenant warned, and sure enough, the
first explosion was followed by a second, and then by a
third. On the last, great piles of earth fell like rain
upon the already filthy men, but there were no cries of
pain, no shrieks indicating an imminent death among their
shrinking number.
"They'll be coming through the dusk and fallout," the
lieutenant warned. "Remember that amino is low. Hold your
fire until I give the command."
"Don't shoot till we see the whites of their eyes," Myers
muttered.
"Hell, we'll never see the whites of their eyes in this
powder and dirt," Lansky said. Lansky was something of an
old timer. Forty-five when the war had broken out. He'd
joined up anyway, two days after his son was killed in
Italy. By then, the recruiters hadn't cared much about his
age. He was a damned good man to have on the line. He'd
learned to shoot hunting in Montana and he rarely missed
his mark, no matter what the conditions.
"Every shot counts," the lieutenant reminded them all. He
was less than half Lansky's age, but Lansky never batted
an eye at an order. Lansky had proven to be his best
friend out here. He'd seen action at the end of the First
World War. He'd learned a lot about digging into the
trenches, and he had a way of giving damned good
suggestions. Quietly. Without irritating even the officers
with higher ranks than the lieutenant's.
He saw Lansky's eyes now. "They're coming," Lansky
said. "I can feel it."
The lieutenant gave him a nod. And a moment later, Lansky
was proven right. From out of the dusk, powder, and
drifting dirt, the soldiers suddenly appeared. Knowing
that they were within sight, they let out strange cries,
like warriors of old. Maybe battle never changed, the
lieutenant thought. Just the time, the place, the
argument. Maybe men needed to scream, to run into a
maelstrom of bullets, even if they were armed and prepared
to deal out death themselves. Perhaps a battle cry was a
man's last roar to heaven or hell that he was, indeed,
alive.
"Fire!" the lieutenant shouted.
The earth seemed to split apart with the roar of the guns.
The line coming toward them stumbled and broke. The eerie
battle cries turned to screams of pain as men fell and
died.
And yet, where the line had been broken, new men came
rushing in, and the battle cry they had taken up seemed to
soar and echo into the darkening sky. "Fire!" he roared
again, and another barrage filled the night, and more men
fell. But like ghost soldiers, the enemy kept coming, more
soldiers filling in where the others had been. The line
was coming closer and closer, and the enemy soldiers were
firing as well, aiming blindly for the trenches.
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