Page 22 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
They were just about to start in again when the sky behind them flashed as though the entire horizon was ablaze with sheet lightning. A moment later came a thunderous roar unlike anything Bell had ever experienced. Seconds later came an even more fearsome sound; a thousand high-explosive shells landing one after the other on what had once been a no-man’s-land and was now the staging area for the continued German offensive.
The ranks of Allied cannons nestled safely behind the line had roared to life.
Bell had lived through the Great San Franscisco Earthquake of 1906 and thought it was a mild tremor compared to what the artillery shells were doing to the ground less than a half mile from wherehe crouched behind the Vickers machine gun. Flashes of fire and smoke came with the suddenness of popping corn. But these eruptions were building-sized and chewed apart the German advance before they could fully secure even a single Allied trench.
“About damn time,” Everly said with a mixture of frustration and pride.
The rolling artillery barrage went on for the best part of an hour, a tremendous pounding that reduced everything it touched into a sort of overworked loam made of earth and metal and men. Multiple shells exploded every single second, shaking the land as though the gods above were meting out their punishment. There was no pause, no lull. It was a slaughter on a scale Bell could barely wrap his mind around.
The Germans trapped between the current British defensive trench and the continuous pounding of artillery knew their war was over and broke from cover without their weapons and with their hands raised in the air, surrendering rather than face certain obliteration.
When it was over, Bell was left stunned, his ears aching from the sound and the increased air pressure caused by so many detonations in such a close area. Everly recognized the dazed look on his American comrade’s face. He’d seen it a thousand times when a new recruit got his first taste of battle. Bell handled it better than most, but the look was still there.
The older Brit said, “When we go over the top for the spring offensive, the barrage will last days, not hours, and on a twenty-mile front, not this localized fracas. And for all the good it does, there are plenty of Huns left to bloody our noses when we launch the attack.”
“What was this all about? Why did they do it?”
“To make us divert forces here and delay or even cancel our main assault. We got lucky that our lines held for as long as they did, so the gunners in the rear were able to re-aim their cannons. Had this trench fallen, the artillery wouldn’t have been able to hit targets so close and we’d likely get routed. Good work with the Vickers.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been at this since 1914,” Bell said. “It’s inhuman.”
“It’s war.”
11
Because of the elevated traintracks, daylight never really entered the bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. For that reason the owner never bothered washing the single plate window and thus the interior was a murky gloom that made the faces of the few patrons look ghostly pale as they sought answers or oblivion in the bottom of a glass.
Hanna watched the door as customers came and went. This wasn’t her regular place, or even neighborhood. She was here on her brother’s behalf, tasked with meeting a man and taking him to meet another man, a man Hanna loved more each time she saw him. She was nineteen, practically an old maid among her people, with raven-black hair and dark eyes. Her independent streak ran wide, giving her a devil-may-care attitude that had attracted suiters since she was fourteen. Her late father had been indulgent and let her choose her own husband rather than arrange a marriage to a man twice or even three times her age.
She’d known the moment Balka Rath arrived from Europe that he was for her, and yet when she was in his presence, she felt like a gawky little girl, with cheeks that blushed red through her normally dusky complexion. She was certain he only saw her as her brother’s little sister and not a woman who yearned to be with him.
She sipped from her glass of warm gin as two men who looked like regulars stepped inside and waved at the bartender. Finally the door opened for a single customer and Hanna knew even without the cheap cardboard suitcase clutched in his arms that this was her mark.
He had an innocence about him that she rarely saw anymore. He was maybe twenty, but had the wide eyes of a child and a coward’s tentative demeanor. He didn’t walk into the bar. He stood in the doorway as if he needed permission to be there. He glanced around, his eyes not making contact with anyone else’s, his hands very white against his case’s faux leather exterior. It didn’t appear that he saw who he’d come to meet and stood at the entrance unsure and awkward. Hanna waited another beat, judging how long he’d loiter before fleeing into the mounting dusk.
She timed it perfectly, sliding off her barstool just as the boy reached for the saloon’s door handle. She was at his side in an instant and spoke in an obscure Eastern language she knew he spoke. “Don’t leave. You are here to meet Balka Rath?”
He startled, his doe-like eyes widening even further. He nodded.
“I will take you to him. Wait a moment.” Hanna went back to the bar, downed the rest of her drink with a quick jerk of her head, and paid her tab.
Outside, she thrust her arm through the boy’s, startling him. She liked to pretend to be out on an evening stroll with her beau. “What is your name?”
“Vano,” he said in a soft voice.
“In America, that name is John.”
“John,” he said, as if tasting the word. He seemed to like it. “John.”
“I am Hanna Muntean. Did you arrive this morning?”
“I did.”
“And the crossing. How was it?”
“Not very good. The waves made me sick the entire time. I could barely eat.”
She glanced at him. Even with evening settling over the city, he looked gaunt and drawn, his cheeks sunken and his Adam’s apple protruding like a goiter.
