“Beagle, we are now in contact with a Navy carrier. Stand by.” The ground shook again. The round fell less than thirty feet in front of his position, but he was well shielded. “Beagle, the Navy carrier is now on your frequency. Go ahead and transmit. Their call sign is Starbase, and they know where you are.”
“Starbase, this is Beagle, over!”
“Roger, Beagle, we show your position five klicks west of hill 1064. Tell me what’s happening.”
“Starbase, we are under attack by a squad of Russian infantrymen, with reinforcements on the way. Their observation post on 1064 has a mortar and we’re getting fire from that. We need help fast.”
“Roger, copy, Beagle. Stand by . . . Beagle, be advised we’re diverting some help your way, ETA two-five minutes. Can you mark your position?”
“Negative, we don’t have anything to do it with.”
“Roger, understand. Hang in there, Beagle. We’ll be back. Out.”
Edwards heard a scream to his left. He stuck his head up and saw mortar rounds falling near Nichols’s position-and Russians less than a hundred yards to his front. Mike grabbed his rifle and sighted it on a moving shape, only to have it drop out of sight again. He picked his walkie-talkie up with his free hand.
“Nichols, Smith, this is Edwards, report in.”
“Nichols here. Whoever has that mortar knows what he’s about. I have two wounded men here.”
“We’re okay, skipper. We seen two Russians go down hard. I sent Garcia to cover you.”
“Okay, guys, we have air cover on the way in. I-” The shape came up again. Edwards dropped the radio, aimed his rifle, and fired three rounds, missing the shape that dodged out of sight. Back to the radio. “Nichols, you need help?”
“Two of us can still shoot. I’m afraid your Rodgers is dead. There-” The radio went dead for a moment. “All right, all right. We killed one, and the other is backing away. Look out, Leftenant, there are two fifty yards to your left front.”
Mike looked around his rock and got shot at for his trouble. He shot back without hitting anything.
“Hi, skipper!” Garcia crashed down next to him.
“Two bad guys, that way.” Edwards pointed. The private nodded and moved left behind cover of the hill crest. He got thirty feet when another mortar round exploded four strides behind him. The private fell hard and didn’t move.
It’s not fair, it’s not fair. I got them this far, and it’s not fair!
“Smith, Garcia’s down. Get back up here. Nichols, if you can get to my position, move!” He switched radios. “Starbase, this is Beagle. Tell your birds to hurry.”
“Two-zero minutes out, Beagle. Four A-7s. We have some other help coming, but they’ll get to you first.”
Edwards took his rifle and moved over to Garcia. The private was still breathing, but his back and legs were peppered with fragments. The lieutenant crawled to the crest and saw a Russian crouched thirty feet away. He aimed his rifle and fired two bursts. The Russian went down, firing his own weapon in a wide arc that missed Edwards by a scant yard. Where was the other one? Mike stuck his head up and saw something the size of a baseball flying through the air. He scrambled backwards as the grenade went off ten feet from where he’d been. Mike rolled to his right and went back uphill.
The Russian had disappeared again, but Edwards saw the others had reached the foot of his hill on a dead run and were starting up to his position. He strained to look and keep his head down at the same time. The other one-there! He was clambering down the hill, apparently dragging a wounded man with him. Mortar fire started to drop behind him, covering the man’s retreat.
“You okay, Lieutenant?” It was Smith. He was wounded in the arm. “Whoever’s working that Goddamned mortar must be the Russian Davy Crockett!”
Nichols arrived three minutes later. He was unhurt, but the Royal Marine private with him was bleeding from the abdomen. Edwards looked at his watch.
“We got air support coming in about ten minutes. If we stay here at the top in one place, they can drop all around us.”
The men took position within fifty feet of Edwards. Mike grabbed Vigdis by the arm and set her between two boulders.
“Michael, I’m-”
“I’m scared, too. Stay here no matter what happens, stay here! You can-” The whistling sound came again, and this one was close. Mike stumbled and fell right on top of her. A hot needle seemed to penetrate his lower leg.
“Shit!” The wound was just above his boot. He tried to rise, but the leg wouldn’t take any weight. He looked around for the radio and hopped over to it, cursing all the way. “Starbase, this is Beagle, over.”
“Nine minutes out, Beagle,” the voice said patiently.
“Starbase, we’re all on top of this hilltop, okay? We’re all within fifty feet of the summit.” He stuck his head up. “We have about fifteen bad guys coming towards us, maybe seven hundred yards away. We beat off the first attack, but we’re down to-four, I guess, and three of us are wounded. For God’s sake, get that mortar first, it’s murdering us.”
“Roger that. Hold it together, son. Help is coming.”
“You’re wounded, Leftenant,” Nichols said.
“I noticed. The planes are eight or nine minutes out. I told them to take the mortar position out first.”
“Very good. Ivan’s in love with the bloody things.” Nichols cut the pants away from the wound and tied a bandage on. “You won’t be doing much dancing for a while.”
“What can we do to slow them down?”
“We’ll open fire at five hundred. That will make them more cautious, I think. Come on.” Nichols grabbed his arm and pulled him to a position on the crest.
The Russians were moving forward with great skill. Men alternated brief rushes with dives behind whatever cover was available. The mortar was quiet at the moment, but that would change as soon as the paratroopers got close enough for their final assault. Nichols had discarded his submachine gun, and was aiming a semiautomatic rifle. When he figured the range at five hundred yards, the sergeant took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. He missed, but every Russian on the hill dropped.
“You know what you just did?” Edwards asked.
“Yes, I just invited more mortar fire on us.” Nichols turned to look at his lieutenant. “Bloody poor choice we have, isn’t it?”
“Michael, you need this.” Vigdis came down beside him.
“I told you to stay-”
“Here is your radio. I go-”
“Down!” Mike yanked her beside him as a mortar round dropped thirty feet away. A series of five dropped across their position.
“Here they come!” Smith yelled.
The Marines opened fire, and the Russians returned it, dashing from one piece of cover to another in a two-pronged advance that threatened to envelop the hilltop. Mike got back on the radio.
“Starbase, this is Beagle, over.”
“Roger, Beagle.”
“They’re coming in on us now.”
“Beagle, our A-7s have you in sight. I want to know exactly where you and your people are-say again exactly.”
“Starbase, there are two secondary summits on this hill, about three miles west of hill 1064. We are on the northern one, repeat northern one. My group is all within five-zero feet of the top of that hill. Anything that moves is the enemy, we are all sitting tight. The mortar is on hill 1064, and we need that taken out quick.”
There was a long pause. “Okay, Beagle, they’ve been told where you are. Get your head down, they’re one minute away, approaching from the south. Good luck. Out.”
“Two hundred yards,” Nichols said. Edwards joined him and leveled his M-16. Three men rose at once, both men fired, but Edwards couldn’t tell if he’d hit anyone or not. Bullets kicked up dirt and stone chips a few feet away, and the whistle of more mortar rounds came down again. The group of five landed right on the crest as Edwards caught the shape of a haze-gray fighter-bomber diving from his right.
The stubby A-7E Corsair pulled out a thousand feet above the mountaintop three miles away. Four canisters of cluster bombs fell, splitting open in the air. A small cloud of bomblets cascaded on the Russian observation post. From three miles, it sounded like a loud string of firecrackers as the hilltop disappeared in a cloud of dust and sparks. A second aircraft repeated the maneuver twenty seconds later. There could be nothing left alive on the hilltop.
The attacking Russians stopped cold in their tracks and turned to see what had happened to their base camp. Then they saw that more aircraft were circling only two thousand yards away. It was clear to everyone that their best chance to stay alive another five minutes was to get as close to the Americans as they could. As one man, the Russian squads rose firing their weapons and ran up the hill. Two more Corsairs wheeled in the sky and darted in, their pilots drawn by the movement. They swept in level only a hundred feet above the slopes and loosed pairs of cluster bombs. Edwards heard the screams over the thunder of the explosives, but could see nothing through the cloud of dust that rose before his eyes.