Pat Frank - Hold Back the Night

A commander in the back row stood up and said, “Here, sir,” as if answering roll call at school.

“How many pinwheels you got?”

“Well, right now, sir, all of them are out on air-sea rescue, or gun-laying for the cruisers. Except I think there’s a one-place job standing by on the Leyte .”

“What can it do?”

“I’m afraid not much for this job, sir. It’s only designed for short-range reconnaissance, and spotting. It doesn’t carry anything except a second lieutenant.”

“Can’t it drop anything?” the admiral asked. “Medical stores or anything?”

“Not very well, sir. The pilot’s all by himself in a plexiglass bubble in the bow. He can’t do much except look.”

“Well, what in hell is it good for, except spot?”

“That’s about all, sir. But it does have a couple of basket litters rigged on the outside, to pick up wounded. It’s picked up quite a few wounded.”

The admiral scratched his chin again, and then he scratched the back of his neck. “If it can bring back wounded,” he said, “it can bring up supplies. Ever think of that, commander?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, have those basket litters filled with supplies, and send it out. At least we’ll find out whether that company is still there, or not. What kind of supplies do you think they’ll need, general, that is, if they’re still on the road?”

“Ammo,” said the general of Marines. “Ammo and food and cigarettes.”

“What kind of ammo?”

“Rifle, M-1.”

“Okay, get going,” the admiral told the air controller, and the conference turned to other business.

In the Combat Intelligence Center on the Leyte, Second Lieutenant Slaton Telfair, III, who his friends called Pinky, listened closely to his briefing, and when the briefing officer finished he asked a question, tracing a pencil along the secondary road as the map showed it. “Who owns this real estate?” he asked.

“Reds. The Chinese.”

“Then what’s that company doing there?”

“I personally don’t think it is there any more,” said the briefing officer, “but higher authority thinks it’s there. Higher authority thinks it sent out some sort of a radio message last night. On a walkie-talkie.”

“So I stick my neck out along that road, in this weather, looking for some people who probably aren’t there? Sir, do you have the correct spelling of my next-of-kin?”

The briefing officer grinned, and so did Slaton Telfair, III, and the briefing officer said, “If you run into small-arms fire you’re to come back. We don’t want to lose that pinwheel.”

In a few minutes a helicopter rose straight up off the deck of the Leyte, like a noisy blue fly, and headed towards the unseen land.

When he was sure the captain had reached the ridge line, Sergeant Ekland ordered his men forward. Occasionally he looked behind him to make certain his men kept a good distance. To the Chinese, his detachment must look like a patrol, a considerable patrol. “Loosen up,” he commanded over his shoulder. “Take it easy. Pretend like they ain’t there.”

Mackenzie had reached the nose of the hill, with Ostergaard puffing behind him. “Load it!” the captain said.

Ostergaard loaded it. Beany Smith and Heinzerling and Kato spread out, along this nose, to cover the captain. They wormed themselves into the ground until they were solid. They made sure their grenades were at hand.

From this point the captain could see the road, and the heavier road that crossed it, and which had been macadamized, and although pitted and worn, in this part of the world could be considered a main road. Far below him, to the left, he could see nine men of his company, four of them carrying Tinker’s litter, marching steadily. He could also see the enemy tank and ambush, exactly where he had placed it in the map of his mind. Men were swarming over the tank like ants over a beetle. He put his glasses on it.

It was a Russian T-34, sleekly stream-lined. Its armor would deflect most projectiles fired from ground level. But Mackenzie wasn’t on the ground. He was on top of them. He wriggled forward on his belly until he came to a place where he could steady the bazook upon a rock. “Don’t let ’em see you,” he whispered.

His men crept up beside him.

Mackenzie watched. He watched the sergeant and his men approach the crossroads. If I ever get back, he thought, I’ll make the colonel commission him. I’ll scream and shout until he gets shoulder straps. It sounded ridiculous. If he ever got back. He was lucky to have come as far as this. He aimed the bazooka until the sights steadied exactly on the spot where the turret joined the chassis. Then, hardly breathing, he marked the progress of his men.

He saw Ekland’s tightly knit figure come to the crossroads, and Mackenzie said his luck aloud:

Ostergaard, working up beside him with an extra rocket, said, “What was that you said, sir?”

“I didn’t say a damned thing.”

“Yes, you did, sir.”

“Okay, Ostergaard, so I said something. And if you are smart you will be quiet and when I let this bazook loose you’ll say something with that M-1, and also keep that extra bazook round handy.”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain watched. The erect, miniature figure that was Ekland reached the cross of the road, and walked on, from this distance cocky and confident as if he were leading a patrol into a waterside bar in Dago. Behind Ekland came Tinker’s litter, and behind them, well strung out, the four good riflemen. The captain held his heart for them. He waited for the Communist burp gunners, now invisible in their hiding places around the tank, to open up. They didn’t, and he held fast to his fetish. What a ridiculous thing, the captain thought, that his fetish was a hunk of poetry—an old double couplet written by Montrose, the Scotsman, the wild and brash Scotsman. He supposed every soldier must have a fetish of some kind, to be consulted like a Haitian ounga before battle. It was a picture in a wallet, a coin, a charm, a six-sided star to keep a man from harm.

And all he had was four lines, written three hundred years back.

Ekland’s detachment passed through, all of them, without drawing fire.

Mackenzie’s finger tightened around the trigger of the bazook, slowly and carefully, as if he were instructing a squad back in boot camp at Lejeune.

The bazook said, “Shooo!”

The tank shuddered and buckled, and Mackenzie heard an explosion, muffled, for the shaped charge had exploded inside the tank. Then he saw that what had been a T-34, sleek, fast, and dangerous, was now an iron coffin leaking smoke. “Okay!” the captain said. “Off your butts. Let’s go!”

They charged down the slope of the hill, yelling. It was ridiculous. It was like an old film of the U.S. Cavalry, pennons flying, routing the redskins. It was San Juan Hill, and Hill 609, and Washington’s ragged Continentals rallying at Trenton. It made no military sense at all.

It seemed to Mackenzie that he simply floated down the hill, and it was not until he was almost at the bottom that he realized he still carried the bazooka, which he didn’t need at the moment, while his carbine banged against his back. It was too late to stop, and do anything about it, and anyway the bazook might be needed again, so he kept on running. When he was almost to the tank he saw a figure rise up in front of him, and this figure had a gun of some sort and Mackenzie tried to swing his bazooka like a bat, but it was too big and unwieldy. Anyway the figure backed away.