The lead tank was taking it easy. Less than a walking pace, tracking straight although the span slanted down at fifteen degrees to the left side. Flecks of gravel and dust flew off in the fan draft, then drifted toward the sluggish water.
There were cracks in the asphalt surface of the bridge. Sometimes the cracks exposed the girders beneath.
the Yokel major was shouting demands at June Ranson,but she heard nothing. Her eyes watched the bridge span swaying, the images in the top and bottom of her visor moving alternately.
"Just drive
The tank seemed to gather itself on a quivering column of air. "Like every bloody body else did!" Ortnahme added in a raised voice.
Simkins grabbed handfuls of his throttles instead of edging them forward in the tiny increments with which he normally adjusted the tank's speed and direction. The pause had cost them momentum, but
Larger chunks of building material parted to either side of the blunt prow like bayou scum before a barge. Dust billowed out from beneath the skirts in white clouds. It curled back to feed through the fan intakes.
Behind the great tank, wreckage settled again. The pile had spread a little from the sweep of the skirts, but it was built up again by blocks and bits which the
thunder of passage shook from damaged buildings.
"Sorry, sir," muttered Simkins over the intercom.
The kid's trouble wasn't that he couldn't drive the bloody tank: it was that he was too bloody careful. Maybe he didn't have the smoothness of, say, Albers from . . .
Via. Maybe not think about that.
Simkins didn't have the smoothness of a veteran driver, but he had plenty of experience shifting tanks and combat cars in and out of maintenance bays where centimeters counted.
Centimeters didn't count in the field. All that counted was getting from here to there without delay, and doing whatever bloody job required to be done along the way.
Ortnahme sighed. The way he'd reamed the kid any time Simkins brushed a post or halted
