Page 19 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
Everly stood next to him, pouring on devastating firepower of his own. He had a belt of ammo pouches slung over his shoulder. Bell pulled two magazines, slapped home a fresh one into his rifle, and took aim at the onrushing swarm. No matter how many they scythed down, two more were ready to fill their place. The range was becoming ridiculously close. It felt as though the muzzle flashes would sear the Germans’ greatcoats.
Bell spotted movement out of the corner of his eye in a place where there should be none. It was on the top of the trench to his left, but inside the rows of sandbags placed along its rim. It was a man, lying prone, tucked up against the bags like a spider in its lair. He had a pistol in his hand, tipped with a long silencer, and he was turning his aim to Everly. This was the assassin who’d silently killed the sentries, the tip of the German attack.
With only a second to react, Bell twisted and fired just in front of Everly’s face, doubtlessly stippling his skin with red-hot unburnt powder, but saving his life in the process. The .303-caliber bullet shattered the assassin’s jaw and punched clear through his neck. He was dead even before he tumbled from his hiding spot and fell to the filthy trench floor.
“Thanks, mate. I think,” Everly said, rubbing at his irritated eyes.
The enemy wasn’t just taking the brutal onslaught of fire from the British. They were firing back, usually from the hip, as they tried to overwhelm the defenses, so their accuracy wasn’t great. Yet so many rounds were screaming past Bell and Everly and all the other brave Tommies who were trying to hold off the attack that lucky hits were inevitable.
Bell felt a round pass through the sleeve of his jacket, and another grazed his thigh like a hot thin wire was laid against his skin. The side of Everly’s head was slick with blood from a partially shot-off ear. It didn’t slow him at all. They were holding back the Germans in their immediate front, but off to their right, in the light of freshly launched flares, part of the Allied line was collapsing. German soldiers reached the top of the trench and were firing down at the men scrambling below them. One Tommy managed to fire off one of the Lewis gun’s pancake magazines like a reaper cutting through wheat, but he was soon struck down as more Germans appeared.
With rifles too long to wield in the tight confines of the trench, the men fought with knives, sharpened edges of small shovels, or with their bare hands. It was a fight of such savagery that these were no longer men, but mindless animals relying on instinct alone to stay alive.
Bell didn’t dare shoot into the pack of brawling men for fear of hitting one of the British soldiers. He again focused on the Germans advancing to their left. They would soon overwhelm the British defense on that side as well. It wouldn’t be long before the German forces would split around their position and then meet up behind them in the trench, blocking any chance of escape. Everly recognized the fight here was lost.
“Come on,” he grunted and leapt off the observation platform, the second sentry’s rifle in his left hand while in his right, his reloaded Webley fired at any German foolish enough to challenge him.
Bell jumped down and together they battled their way through the scrum. Bell abandoned his borrowed rifle, knowing there were plenty more to be had judging by the number of dead Englishmen lying on the bottom of the trench. He concentrated on using his Browning pistol, holding it in a double-handed grip and firing only head shots as he twisted and turned his way toward the trench that led back to the second line of defense. His boots sloshed through standing water turned red by blood.
They had just made it clear and into the communications trench when a grenade sailed over his head. He threw himself at Everly’s knees as he ran ahead. Both men splashed into the mud and felt the explosive force ripple over their backs. Bell got up a second slow and barely parried a bayonet thrust at his gut by a German who’d followed them. He avoided being run through by swinging the tough leather sack for the gas mask he’d been issued.
He backhanded the unbalanced German and felt the mask’s metal canister connect with the man’s jaw. Dazed, the soldier almost dropped to his knees, but kept himself upright and started bringing the long knife to bear again. Bell pulled the trigger on the Browning only to realize the slide was racked back against an empty magazine. He was defenseless.
The German forcefully slashed at him as his wits recovered. Everly was still down on the ground, having taken more of the grenade’s overpressure, and would be no help. Bell tried to block with the gas mask bag again, but this time the German stabbed right through it in a lightning thrust that nearly impaled Bell in the stomach. The bag ripped apart and the clunky mask, with its full-head hood, long flexible hose, and chemical container at its end, fell free.
In a move even faster than the German’s knife thrust, Bell took hold of the hood and whipped the two-pound metal filter around the German’s neck. He caught the book-sized tin in his left hand while smashing his foot into the German’s right knee. The joint buckled with a slurping pop and the soldier spiraled to that side as he went down. He was now facing away enough so that when Bell tightened the hose around his neck, the vulcanized rubber and canvas crushed in on the man’s airway. By the time he tried to stab back at Bell, the veteran detective had placed a knee against the man’s spine to better control him and to exert even more force, ratcheting up the tension until the soldier was clutching at his throat with hands that grew weaker and weaker. Bell didn’t ease up until the German had gone still for fifteen seconds.
He rolled off the man and lay on the trench floor, panting with exertion and raw emotion. He took only a second for himself before remembering Everly. He scrambled over to the short noncomjust as the man groaned and pushed himself off the ground with his hands.
“Are you all right?” Bell asked, loading his last magazine.
Like Bell, Everly needed only a second to recall their dire situation. “Doesn’t matter if I’m not.”
He lurched to his feet, staggered a few steps until Bell steadied him with an arm. Bell left behind his rifle because he was out of spare clips, and so with pistol in hand, he and Everly shuffled down the trench, following its zigzag course for what seemed an eternity. The air was thick with the sound of constant gunfire and reeked of gunpowder, while overhead dozens of flares burned brilliantly as they drifted under their chutes.
Over the din of battle, Bell heard soldiers running up behind them. Everly heard them, too, and both men turned as an advance patrol of German soldiers appeared around a sharp bend in the trench. The three-man patrol was surprised by the unexpected encounter, but Bell and Everly were ready.
With Bell on the right and Everly to his left, they each fired at the man on their side of the trench, putting them down with a single shot, and then both men fired at the soldier in the middle, blowing him back in a swirl of his greatcoat.
The two men turned and ran on. A few hundred yards later, Everly began shouting “Pomegranate” over and over. Bell realized it was a recognition code to the men stationed at the central defensive line to warn them that friendlies were inbound and not advancing German troops.
Bullets suddenly peppered the sandbag wall over Bell’s shoulder, showering him with grit. He dropped flat as the sound of two rifles firing at once crashed against his ears. Everly had just roundedanother tight bend and rushed back. Two Germans were above them and were about to jump into the trench. One was in the air when the sergeant major’s Webley roared.
The leaping soldier changed direction in midair when the heavy bullet hit him center mass, as though he were a rag doll in a terrier’s mouth. He landed in a contorted lump. The second German didn’t look like he’d been hit at all, but struck the ground face-first without any attempt to protect himself. He lay completely still, his spine severed by a lucky shot.
“Pomegranate,” Everly shouted again as he and Bell continued their race back toward a modicum of safety.
A hundred yards ahead, the earth began to erupt, great clots of mud soaring into the artificially lit sky to be joined by dazzling blooms of rolling fire. The concussion knocked both men off their feet despite the distance and the protection of the trench walls. Seconds later, clouds of dust boiled down the trench’s confines, a billowing malevolence that engulfed them in a filthy haze.
“Sapper charges,” Everly shouted and coughed at the same time. “They’re blowing the trench.”
Another pair of blasts shook the night, closer than the first, and then a third and fourth.
“Come on,” Everly said and began running back toward the advancing Germans.
Another blast jolted the earth out from under them, the biggest of the night, and once again they were sent sprawling. Bell looked back to the west and saw the connecting ditch had been collapsed by the specifically laid charges in order to prevent German forces from using it as a means of breaching the second line of entrenched fortifications.
“We can’t stay here,” Everly told him as they got back onto their feet.
