Chapter 7 - The Ambush
Bullets cut through the hedge at chest height.
Sergeant Hale shoved Tommy into the ditch.
“DOWN!”
Eli hit the ground.
Soil jumped around him.
Frank screamed.
For one terrifying second Eli thought Frank had been hit.
Then Frank shouted, “I’m good!”
The German machine gun fired from a farmhouse across the field.
Another opened from the left.
Crossfire.
Jack crawled toward a stone wall.
“Hale!”
“I see it!”
A mortar shell landed behind them.
Mud and branches rained down.
Eli pressed his helmet against the earth.
Somewhere a man cried out.
“Medic!”
They had no medic.
Another shell fell.
Private Lewis Turner was thrown into the ditch.
His leg bent wrong.
Tommy grabbed him.
“Lewis! Lewis, look at me!”
Hale shouted, “Smoke!”
Frank threw a grenade.
White smoke began spreading.
The machine gun continued firing.
Eli looked at the farmhouse.
Upper window.
Muzzle flash.
Then a separate flash from the church tower beyond it.
Sniper.
“Sniper!” Eli yelled.
A shot cracked.
Sergeant Hale jerked backward.
Blood appeared on his sleeve.
“Hale!”
“Shoulder,” Hale grunted. “I’m fine.”
Jack crawled to him.
“We need to pull back!”
“Our route’s covered!”
Eli scanned the field.
The enemy had anticipated them perfectly.
Too perfectly.
A recon patrol should have been invisible.
Unless someone had been watching the road.
Or unless their route had been compromised.
Another shot.
Private Collins fell without a sound.
Tommy froze.
Eli grabbed him.
“Don’t look.”
“But—”
“Don’t look!”
The words came with the authority of another Eli.
The Sparrow.
Eli pointed toward a ruined stone house thirty yards away.
“We need that building.”
Jack stared. “Across open ground?”
“Smoke covers half.”
“Half gets you killed.”
Eli looked at Hale.
“Sir.”
Hale was pale from blood loss.
“Do it.”
Jack cursed.
Frank threw another smoke grenade.
They moved.
Jack carried Turner despite the wounded man’s screaming.
Tommy dragged ammunition.
Eli fired toward the farmhouse while moving.
Not to hit.
To force heads down.
They reached the ruin.
Eleven men had left.
Ten remained standing or breathing.
Collins lay in the field.
Nobody could reach him.
Inside, the building smelled of wet stone and smoke.
Hale slid against a wall.
Jack examined his shoulder.
“Bullet went through.”
“Then stop touching it.”
Jack almost smiled.
Another mortar shell struck outside.
The roof shook.
Eli moved to a window.
Jack grabbed him.
“Don’t.”
Eli pulled free.
He looked through a crack.
Enemy infantry were advancing behind hedges.
The sniper remained in the tower.
Machine gun at farmhouse.
At least one mortar team farther back.
Their radio operator, Private Beck, opened his set.
“Dead.”
“What?”
“Set’s dead. Fragment took it.”
Hale closed his eyes.
No radio.
No artillery support.
No safe retreat.
Turner groaned on the floor.
Tommy whispered, “We’re trapped.”
Jack snapped, “Shut up.”
“He’s right,” Frank said.
Jack turned on him.
“You want to die scared?”
Frank answered, “I don’t want to die stupid.”
Eli kept watching.
The enemy was not rushing.
They were tightening a net.
Then he saw a shape in the corner of the ruined room.
Gray uniform.
A German soldier lay half-covered by fallen plaster.
Dead.
Beside him was a rifle.
Long barrel.
Scope.
Eli stopped breathing.
He crossed the room slowly.
Jack noticed.
“What?”
Eli pulled debris away.
Karabiner 98k.
Scoped.
The dead German had likely been a sniper, perhaps caught by the same mortar barrage now pinning them down.
Eli touched the rifle.
His hand trembled.
Hale watched from the wall.
“Carter.”
Eli did not answer.
Jack stared at the weapon.
“You can use that?”
Eli checked the bolt.
Five-round internal magazine.
The scope was intact.
Ammunition pouch still on the dead soldier’s belt.
“Yes.”
Tommy looked between them.
“Then use it.”
Eli froze.
Samuel’s face rose in his memory.
Dust.
Blood.
The white flash.
The awful silence afterward.
Eli put the rifle down.
Jack stared.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t.”
“You won the damn competition.”
“That was paper.”
Jack’s face changed.
Outside, the German machine gun fired another burst.
Stone chips flew.
Turner screamed.
Jack grabbed Eli by the jacket.
“All those stories. The Sparrow. Was that real?”
“Yes.”
“Then we need him.”
Eli shoved his hand away.
“He died in Tunisia.”
“So did Collins five minutes ago!”
The room went silent.
Jack’s voice cracked.
“We are going to die here.”
Eli stared at him.
This was the man who had beaten him in the mud.
The man he hated.
Now Jack was afraid.
Not for himself.
For all of them.
Jack continued quietly, “You told me strength wasn’t fists.”
Eli said nothing.
“Show me what it is.”
Another sniper round punched through the window frame.
Frank dropped flat.
Tommy covered Turner with his body.
Eli looked at them.
Then at Samuel’s photograph inside his pocket.
Slow down.
He picked up the German rifle.
Checked the scope.
Adjusted the focus.
The reticle settled on the farmhouse.
His hands stopped shaking.
The Sparrow had not died.
He had only been waiting for a reason to come back.
The man Collins had been covering crawled toward him once.
Eli grabbed his belt and pulled him back.
“He might still be alive!”
“He isn’t.”
“You don’t know!”
Eli looked across the open field.
The sniper’s sight line covered Collins perfectly.
“I know.”
The soldier began sobbing.
“He has a kid.”
Eli’s throat tightened.
“How old?”
“Two.”
“What’s the kid’s name?”
“Danny.”
Eli forced himself to remember.
Daniel Collins.
Son named Danny.
Baseball cards.
Peach preserves.
He hated himself for cataloging details while bullets struck stone around them, but experience had taught him that memory disappeared quickly after battle. Faces blurred. Voices became stories. Stories became a line in a report.
“Say his full name,” Eli ordered.
“What?”
“Say it.”
“Private Daniel Joseph Collins.”
“Again.”
“Daniel Joseph Collins.”
Eli nodded.
“Now we remember him.”
The soldier stared at him as if he were insane.
Maybe he was.
Then another bullet cracked through the room and there was no time for grief.
That was war’s ugliest trick.
May you like
It did not merely kill people.
It denied the living enough time to understand that someone had just disappeared.
