I didn’t know what it was I had cracked open. A congregation in church — a skinny flophouse — maybe even their defense headquarters. All I knew was that it was a very big room filled with more skinnies than I wanted to see in my whole life.
Probably not a church, for somebody took a shot at me as I popped back out just a slug that bounced off my armor, made my ears ring, and staggered me without hurting me. But it reminded me that I wasn’t supposed to leave without giving them a souvenir of my visit. I grabbed the first thing on my belt and lobbed it in — and heard it start to squawk. As they keep telling you in Basic, doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later.
By sheer chance I had done the right thing. This was a special bomb, one each issued to us for this mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): “I’m a thirty-second bomb! I’m a thirty-second bomb! Twenty-nine!twenty-eight!twenty-seven! — “
It was supposed to frazzle their nerves. Maybe it did; it certainly frazzled mine. Kinder to shoot a man. I didn’t wait for the countdown; I jumped, while I wondered whether they would find enough doors and windows to swarm out in time.
I got a bearing on Red’s blinker at the top of the jump and one on Ace as I grounded. I was falling behind again — time to hurry.
But three minutes later we had closed the gap; I had Red on my left flank a half mile away. He reported it to Jelly. We heard Jelly’s relaxed growl to the entire platoon: “Circle is closed, but the beacon is not down yet. Move forward slowly and mill around, make a little more trouble — but mind the lad on each side of you; don’t make trouble for him. Good job, so far — don’t spoil it. Platoon! By sectionsMuster!”
It looked like a good job to me, too; much of the city was burning and, although it was almost full light now, it was hard to tell whether bare eyes were better than snoopers, the smoke was so thick.
Johnson, our section leader, sounded off: “Second section, call off!”
I echoed, “Squads four, five, and six — call off and report!” The assortment of safe circuits we had available in the new model comm units certainly speeded things up; Jelly could talk to anybody or to his section leaders; a section leader could call his whole section, or his non-coms; and the platoon could muster twice as fast, when seconds matter. I listened to the fourth squad call off while I inventoried my remaining firepower and lobbed one bomb toward a skinny who poked his head around a corner. He left and so did I — “Mill around,” the boss man had said.
The fourth squad bumbled the call off until the squad leader remembered to fill in with Jenkins’ number; the fifth squad clicked off like an abacus and I began to feel goodwhen the call off stopped after number four in Ace’s squad. I called out, “Ace, where’s Dizzy?”
“Shut up,” he said. “Number six! Call off!”
“Six!” Smith answered.
“Seven !”
“Sixth squad, Flores missing,” Ace completed it. “Squad leader out for pickup.”
“One man absent,” I reported to Johnson. “Flores, squad six.”
“Missing or dead?”
“I don’t know. Squad leader and assistant section leader dropping out for pickup.”
“Johnnie, you let Ace take it.”
But I didn’t hear him, so I didn’t answer. I heard him report to Jelly and I heard Jelly cuss. Now look, I wasn’t bucking for a medal — it’s the assistant section leader’s business to make pickup; he’s the chaser, the last man in, expendable. The squad leaders have other work to do. As you’ve no doubt gathered by now the assistant section leader isn’t necessary as long as the section leader is alive.
Right that moment I was feeling unusually expendable, almost expended, because I was hearing the sweetest sound in the universe, the beacon the retrieval boat would land on, sounding our recall. The beacon is a robot rocket, fired ahead of the retrieval boat, just a spike that buries itself in the ground and starts broadcasting that welcome, welcome music. The retrieval boat homes in on it automatically three minutes later and you had better be on hand, because the bus can’t wait and there won’t be another one along.