Wilson Tucker - The Long Loud Silence

“Thank you, sir.” Gary's face was expressionless. “The grub, Lieutenant?”

“Oh, yes.” He tossed out two boxes of C-rations. “I'm sorry I can't give you more, but we are short. Just where are we, do you know?” He looked around as if expecting guideposts.

“Thank you, sir. This is Ohio — pretty close to the Indiana line. And Lieutenant, I wouldn't stay in any of the towns overnight — they'd probably gang up on you. Keep to the open country.”

“Thank you, Corporal. We've already found that sound advice. And now, don't recover your weapon until we are out of range.” He gunned the motor and put the truck into reverse gear, pulling it back onto the road. An impatient beat on the horn urged the other truck forward. “Good-bye, and good luck.”

The two vehicles rolled away.

Gary watched them go. “So long, you scurvy sonofabitch.” The machine gunner in the rear truck tossed a package of cigarettes through the broken window. Gary bent over to pick up the rations and turned to get the gun. When he straightened again the swiftly moving trucks were some distance away. He walked along the pavement, retrieved the cigarettes and stuffed them in an inner pocket. When the vehicles vanished from sight he quickly abandoned the road and took to the field, to follow. If he had guessed right on that leaking tire, he should overtake the convoy when they stopped for the night.

The trucks were parked back-to-back in a small grove of trees. That would mean a machine gunner sat in each cab, covering three avenues of approach. Gary studied the scene. They had stopped for the night in a small roadside park built and maintained by the state highway department, a stopping place originally installed for tourists. A gravel road curved off the highway and through the clump of green trees; there were two or three picnic tables that somehow had been overlooked in the search for firewood, a drinking fountain Probably fed by a fresh-water spring, and a pair of rusty cans for trash. The graveled path made room for a half dozen cars beneath the shading branches before completing the arc back to the highway. The trucks were but shapeless masses in the night; he might have missed them altogether had he been traveling along the paved road.

Gary waited in the underbrush on the far edge of the grove, wondering how to take the convoy.

They were green troops — they had allowed him to come this close undetected, but he knew they weren't so green as to permit him to simply walk up to the trucks. He had been lying at the edge of the grove for two hours, watching and waiting, and still he lacked a plan of action. Each cab held a man — they had betrayed themselves earlier and many times as they held matches to cigarettes. The flare of the matches revealed no other faces beside them, and although he could not be certain, he thought he could distinguish the shapes of men lying on the ground beneath the trucks. There may be one man in the rear of each vehicle, stretched out on the boxes. Maybe. If so, that left two on the ground.

He was still there, patiently waiting an unknown time later, when a noise from one of the trucks alerted him.

The sentry of one truck put his head out the window and called back to the other cab. Although he kept his voice low, the words carried quite clearly.

“Hey — Jackson!”

“Yeah?” The second head appeared in the opposite cab.

“What time is it? My damned watch stopped.”

“Almost midnight.”

“That's close enough — let's wake these guys up and turn in.”

“I'm ready — damn near asleep now.”

There was a scuffling noise from the interior of the nearer truck, and hushed voices in the other. Gary crept closer. The sentries changed places in the seats of the cabs with noisy movement, awakening one of the figures on the ground. The man put his head out from under the truck and spoke sharply.

“What's going on up there?”

“Midnight, Lieutenant. Changing watch.”

“Well be more quiet about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The officer lay back on the ground, moved about as though he were hunting the spot where he had been sleeping, and abruptly rolled from beneath the truck. He stood up.

“I'm going to take five. Keep your eyes open.”

“Yes, sir.”

The lieutenant walked toward the spot where Gary lay, fumbling with his clothes. Gary hugged the ground and let him approach, waited until the man paused beside a tree. He rose up silently and smoothly when the officer's hands were occupied, and reached for him.

After an interval Gary tautly stalked into the clearing and slid under the truck, ready to open fire if he were challenged. He rooted about on the grass, sighed, and lay still. Above him the newly awakened sentry scratched a match on the dashboard to light a cigarette. Gary hugged the lieutenant's automatic under his shirt and waited for time to pass. His first act was to eliminate the other sleeping man beside him, and two were out of the way.

It required another half-hour to reach the sentry sitting behind the wheel, a tedious half-hour of creeping along the rocky ground without noise, of hugging the side of the truck and raising his body toward the window sill. He held a pebble in his hand. When he was standing upright slightly to the rear of the open window, he tossed the pebble over the truck and heard it strike the ground beyond. Clutching the barrel of the automatic, he curled his left arm around and through the window to catch the sentry on the back of the head. He caught the man before he could slump forward into the horn, and lowered his body to the seat. There was no other sound, no movement from within or from the second vehicle.

Slowly and carefully he opened the door to let himself inside. The sentry of a short while before was sleeping soundly, and then he wasn't sleeping at all. There remained only the two in the other truck.

He needed information, needed it badly if he hoped to cross the river alive. After turning over the problem in his mind, he suddenly opened the door of the truck with no attempt at concealment, and climbed out to walk back to the other cab.

A head appeared before him. “Keep quiet, dammit! You want the lieutenant on your tail?”

Gary rammed the automatic into his face. “Come out of there, slow and clean.”

The face stared at him in the night, moved back to look down at the gun. “For Ch—”

“Shut up and come out — now!”

The sentry scrambled out. “Don't shoot!”

“Get your buddy out here. Make it fast.”

The sentry beat on the panel of the truck and after a moment a second face appeared in the open door. “What the hell is—” He stopped, staring.

“This is going on,” Gary retorted. “Come on, outside.” He stood the two of them against the side of the truck, facing away from him, their hands atop their heads with fingers locked together. “ Now you're going to give with the information or you're going to be dead ducks. Which is it going to be?”

“I don't know nothing.”

“You know where you're going,” Gary contradicted.

There was a moment of silent hesitation. The two exchanged glances.

Gary prodded one with the automatic. “Where?”

“There's a bridge at a place called Fort Madison, Iowa,” the soldier told him sullenly. “We—”

Gary chopped him short by reversing the gun and bringing the butt down on his head. The man crumpled to the ground. His companion stared down at the unconscious form.

“The bridge at Fort Madison,” Gary said smoothly, “has a hole in it a mile wide. Now I'll ask you.” He stepped close to ram the barrel in the man's spine. “Where are you going?”

“It ain't Fort Madison,” the other answered shakily. “It's a bridge called the Chain of Rocks, or some name like that. It's around St. Louis someplace. They're waiting for us there.”