And found that I was on the wrong side of the river; Jelly’s star showed up on the compass ring inside my helmet far south of where it should have been — I was too far north. I trotted toward the river side of the roof as I took a range and bearing on the squad leader next to me, found that he was over a mile out of position, called, “Ace! dress your line,” tossed a bomb behind me as I stepped off the building and across the river. Ace answered as I could have expected — Ace should have had my spot but he didn’t want to give up his squad; nevertheless he didn’t fancy taking orders from me.
The warehouse went up behind me and the blast hit me while I was still over the river, instead of being shielded by the buildings on the far side as I should have been. It darn near tumbled my gyros and I came close to tumbling myself. I had set that bomb for fifteen secondsor had I? I suddenly realized that I had let myself get excited, the worst thing you can do once you’re on the ground. “Just like a drill,” that was the way, just as Jelly had warned me. Take your time and do it right, even if it takes another half second.
As I hit I took another reading on Ace and told him again to realign his squad. He didn’t answer but he was already doing it. I let it ride. As long as Ace did his job, I could afford to swallow his surliness — for now. But back aboard ship (if Jelly kept me on as assistant section leader) we would eventually have to pick a quiet spot and find out who was boss. He was a career corporal and I was just a term lance acting as corporal, but he was under me and you can’t afford to take any lip under those circumstances. Not permanently.
But I didn’t have time then to think about it; while I was jumping the river I had spotted a juicy target and I wanted to get it before somebody else noticed it — a lovely big group of what looked like public buildings on a hill. Temples, maybeor a palace. They were miles outside the area we were sweeping, but one rule of a smash & run is to expend at least half your ammo outside your sweep area; that way the enemy is kept confused as to where you actually are — that and keep moving, do everything fast. You’re always heavily outnumbered; surprise and speed are what saves you.
I was already loading my rocket launcher while I was checking on Ace and telling him for the second time to straighten up. Jelly’s voice reached me right on top of that on the all-hands circuit: “Platoon! By leapfrog! Forward!”
My boss, Sergeant Johnson, echoed, “By leapfrog! Odd numbers! Advance!”
That left me with nothing to worry about for twenty seconds, so I jumped up on the building nearest me, raised the launcher to my shoulder, found the target and pulled the first trigger to let the rocket have a look at its target — pulled the second trigger and kissed it on its way, jumped back to the ground. “Second section, even numbers!” I called outwaited for the count in my mind and ordered, “Advance!”
And did so myself, hopping over the next row of buildings, and, while I was in the air, fanning the first row by the river front with a hand flamer. They seemed to be wood construction and it looked like time to start a good fire — with luck, some of those warehouses would house oil products, or even explosives. As I hit, the Y-rack on my shoulders launched two small H. E. bombs a couple of hundred yards each way to my right and left flanks but I never saw what they did as just then my first rocket hit — that unmistakable (if you’ve ever seen one) brilliance of an atomic explosion. It was just a peewee, of course, less than two kilotons nominal yield, with tamper and implosion squeeze to produce results from a less-than-critical mass — but then who wants to be bunk mates with a cosmic catastrophe? It was enough to clean off that hilltop and make everybody in the city take shelter against fallout. Better still, any of the local yokels who happened to be outdoors and looking that way wouldn’t be seeing anything else for a couple of hours — meaning me. The dash hadn’t dazzled me, nor would it dazzle any of us; our face bowls are heavily leaded, we wear snoopers over our eyes — and we’re trained to duck and take it on the armor if we do happen to be looking the wrong way.