Vaccaro glanced over at him, probably wondering what Cole meant, but he knew better than to say anything when he saw the expression on Cole’s face.
“Let’s get the hell off this road and into the ditch,” Cole shouted.
Cole went first, rolling out of his hole and running at a crouch for a roadside ditch. He tumbled in with Vaccaro and the kid right behind him.
To his relief, he saw that Lieutenant Mulholland had also made it into the ditch. He looked around for the greenbean from the truck and spotted him, dead in the road, his new uniform soaking up the mud and blood.
The fusillade of enemy fire increased. Bullets plucked at the dry winter twigs overhead, making them dance and twitch like the fingers of a guitarist moving over his chords. Bits of clipped branches dropped onto their heads or fell to the road.
Sheltering in their holes, they returned fire.
But the column wasn’t here to fight Germans. Their orders were to get to Bastogne. Getting bogged down now fighting a small unit of the enemy wasn’t in the cards. The front part of the column hadn’t been hit, and those trucks started rolling out, leaving the sniper squad to deal with the attack and fight a rear-guard action.
“There can’t be more than a handful of those bastards, but they’ve been waiting for us to show up,” Vaccaro said. “They’re dug in like my old girlfriend’s fingernails grabbing my arm at the Spook-a-Rama ride on Coney Island.”
“You sure it was the ride she was scared of?”
“Yeah, yeah, very funny. I keep forgetting that your idea of a date was taking your sister to a hog butchering. You’re such a damn hillbilly.”
“Hey, fellas, what are we supposed to do about these Germans?” the kid asked, watching nervously as the rest of the convoy slowly disappeared from sight around the next bend in the road.
Nearby, the lieutenant was shouting something about suppressing fire. It was going to take more than that. As Vaccaro had pointed out, the Germans were simply too well dug in from hidden positions. Meanwhile, they had the Americans right where they wanted them — cowering in a ditch. It didn’t help that the slush and mud had soaked through their uniforms. Even though they were down low, the cold wind had still managed to find them.
As soon as the sun had disappeared behind the hills, the temperature had dropped steadily. Without doubt, the slush and mud on the road would freeze solid tonight.
Beside him, Cole could hear the kid’s teeth chattering. Staying in this ditch too long meant the cold would kill them if the Krauts didn’t.
“I’ve got an idea,” Cole said. “Pop some smoke and cover me.”
As soon as enough smoke began to screen his movements, Cole slipped back onto the road and made a beeline for the dead GI from the truck. It looked as if the man had been unlucky enough to be killed as soon as he had leaped down from the vehicle.
“Sorry, buddy,” Cole said, then grabbed the dead greenbean by the back of the collar and dragged him the short distance to the still-smoldering wreckage of the truck. He positioned the body under the truck, using the man’s helmet under his chin to prop up his head. He found a rifle and tucked it into the man’s grip. From a distance, it would look as if the GI was making a valiant last stand.
Cole had long since given up any notion about being disrespectful of the dead — as long as he didn’t know them. Nonetheless, he found himself offering the dead man an explanation. “Sorry about this, fella. But if killing a few Krauts after you’re dead ain’t revenge, I don’t know what is.”
Cole skedaddled back into the ditch.
Once the smoke started to clear, the Germans began firing at the corpse. As their muzzle flashes in the twilight’s gloom revealed their positions, Cole and Vaccaro picked them off one by one. Soon the enemy fire ceased altogether. Either they had finished them off, or the survivors had managed to slink away into the trees.
“All right, I think we got them,” Mulholland said. “Let’s go catch up to those trucks. I sure as hell don’t want to hoof it to Bastogne — or be out here on our own once it gets dark.”
Crawling out of the ditch, dripping wet, they double-timed it. It didn’t take long before the column came into sight. The trucks weren’t exactly speeding down the road, but the convoy would keep moving through the night. It was a maddening snail’s pace, but it was progress. Cole had to admit that the dead greenbean had been right about something. Riding in the trucks sure beat walking all the way to Bastogne.
Incredibly, the jeep that Cole had spotted earlier was still gamely trailing along in the wake of the convoy. By some miracle, it still hadn’t capsized, even though it had picked up a couple more men, survivors of the ambush. The thing had picked up so many men that it looked like a bunch of grapes with wheels.
But there was no room for the snipers on the jeep, so they kept going.
