We Were Soldiers
45. Give 'em Hell
Bucky lay staring at the lifeless body of Carrot until the BOOM! of a grenade recalled his wits back to him. His men were fighting back, and he was falling to pieces. Sergeant Weiss' words came trickling back into his mind, punctuated by each returning shot his men fired. "If you can't be a good man and a good sergeant at the same time, if you can't reconcile that, then choose to be a good sergeant, because that's what the men need most of all."
Right now, lying in the dirt, holding a picture of a woman for a dead man's eyes to unsee, he wasn't being either.
He tucked the picture of Samantha back into Carrot's shirt. After this was over, they'd take his body back to camp and bury them together. It seemed right. A man didn't deserve to be parted from his love, not even in death.
"Hall, circle around that gunner!" he heard Gusty call. "Franklin, let's draw their fire!"
And, off to the left, Jones yelled out his own instructions. "Another round of grenades! Let's show them what we think of machine guns!"
Good. That was good. They were working together. One team throwing ordnance, another making surgical strikes. And he was willing to bet Tex was somewhere under cover, taking what shots he could. Bucky pushed himself to his feet and made a dash for Gusty's last known position. It was time to fight back. HYDRA had taken enough good men; he'd be damned if he was going to let them take any more.
"Gusty, I'm coming up on your six!" he yelled so that his friends didn't accidentally shoot him, all the while expecting to be shot down by German machine guns. But the grenade diversion worked in his favour; the Krauts were too busy trying to target Jones' position to notice a lone man running.
He slid to a halt behind the cover of several small bushes, where Gusty, Hall and Franklin were crouching in wait. Some thirty metres from their position, a German machine gunner was firing at something off in the distance.
"Where's Carrot?" Gusty whispered.
Bucky shook his head as his stomach twinged unpleasantly. He'd seen dead men before, but this was the first time he'd seen a man die. The first time he'd sat with someone whose life had drained away, and he'd been utterly helpless, unable to anything but offer the final comfort of his presence. All he'd been able to manage was make sure his friend didn't die alone. Quickly, he blinked the unshed tears from his eyes before they could burn his vision.
"Shit." Gusty slammed a new clip of ammo into the chamber of his M1, and the bolt slid swiftly back into place. That familiar cold gleam was back in his eyes. "Guess it's one more death to make the sons of bitches pay for. Like we didn't have enough already."
"Looks like our guy's attention's fully on Jones," said Hall. He was at the edge of the cover, peeping out at the HYDRA machine gunner.
"Y'wanna give us a count-down, Sarge?" Gusty asked Bucky.
He nodded. Already had a full clip in his own rifle. "We'll give him a round, then Franklin and I will head directly over to that bluff and take cover behind it. Gusty, Hall, stay here and lay suppressing fire in case there are any more Krauts out there. One, two, three, go."
Gripping his rifle, he pushed himself up from the ground, peered down the narrow sight, and pulled the trigger as soon as the prone machine gunner was within it. Three other shots echoed his own, and the Kraut's body jerked and spasmed as a spray of bullets hit it. Bucky didn't wait to see whether the man died instantly from his injuries, or whether he bled out slowly, as Carrot had. He was already moving, hot on Franklin's heels as they made for the bluff. Bucky reached it and slid behind it like he'd slid into home base as a kid, just as the ground beside his head was chewed up by rifle fire. A quiet crack and a cessation of fire told him that particular move had drawn Tex's keen eye to the shooter's position.
This isn't supposed to happen.
It was a stupid, childish thought to have in the middle of a firefight, but he couldn't help it. This wasn't supposed to be the way these missions went. They were supposed to be… not easy, but routine. Bucky and his team were supposed to sneak in and catch the Krauts with their pants down, and make witty quips as they took out the enemy. They weren't supposed to be surprised. They weren't supposed to need a counter-offensive. They weren't supposed to lose men.
Belatedly, he remembered about the radio in his backpack. He pulled it out and decided the need for intel was greater than the distraction the radios might bring. He pressed the transmit button.
"This is Barnes. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've just about had enough of these damn Nazis. We've already lost the element of surprise, which means the men in that bunker have probably given away our presence by now. We need to deal with these guys and then get the jammers set up ASAP. Hope Stark and our German friend can perform damage control later. I can hear one machine gun still active out there, but I can't see it. I can hear rifles, too. Anyone got a head count on the targets?"
"This is Jones. We've got the attention of the machine gun, but we're pinned down. I think the rifles are trying to sneak around behind us."
Crack.
"One less rifle for you to worry about," said Tex. "Ah can see two more riflemen, but ah can't find the machine gun. Must be out of mah line of sight."
"Sarge, Hall and I can circle back around to Jones' position, catch the Krauts trying to circle around them," said Gusty. "That should free up you and Franklin for dealing with that machine gun."
"Alright. We'll rendezvous at the bunker, but don't forget about the machine gun position there too. Tex, if you can get ahead and take out that gun, that'd be a real help for when we get there."
"Mah pleasure."
Bucky gestured for Franklin to follow him, and they pressed cautiously on. Over the steady ratta-tatta-tat of a machine gun, and the regular blam! blam! blam! of rifle fire, he could just about hear his own heavy breathing and the blood rushing through his ears as his heart ran a mad race. The ratta-tatta-tat grew louder, and some fifty metres away they finally lay eyes on the second machine gunner. He had an elevated position, partially screened by low scrub, and his back was to the advancing pair. Bucky nodded at Franklin, and they raised their rifles.
Only a month ago, the thought of killing a man while his back was turned would have sat uneasy in his head and his stomach. Would've made the bile rise in his throat no matter how necessary the action. Now, it was easier. Now, he didn't see the life he was about to take; he saw the lives that would never be. Carrot, lying cold on the ground. Samantha, whose fiancé would never come home from the war to await her at the end of the aisle. The children they would never go on to have; two boys and two girls, carrot-topped like their papa, but with Samantha's beautiful smile. The lives stolen because Carrot had died at the hands of these murderers.
No more, Bucky promised as he pulled the trigger. I don't want to lose any more friends. I'll do whatever it takes to keep them alive, and I'll live with the consequences.
The gunner's body twitched in its death throes. Bucky put another bullet in him just to be on the safe side. He'd seen first hand the sort of sneaky, back-stabbing things Nazis were capable of, and by all accounts, this HYDRA lot were even worse than the regular ones.
"Franklin, disable that MG," Bucky told him. Then he picked up his short-range radio. "Tex, I'm about to head up to the bunker. How's it coming?"
"Ah got the detector in my sights, Sarge, but the place is crawling with Nazis. Ah count five, and there's some sort of truck up here, too. Ah think it's a resupply wagon. If ah take out that detector, they're gonna know ah'm here. Not that it'll do much good; their machine gun is manned, and they've set up a defensive perimeter. Ah can take out their gunner, but ah'll need you to signal me right before you attack."
"Alright. Hold for now. Gusty, Jones, how are you looking?"
"We're fine, Sarge," said Gusty. "Just dealt with those rifles, no injuries. Full team's ready to go."
"Good to hear. In that case, split up into two-man teams and advance."
"Err, what's the plan, Sarge?" Jones asked.
A grim smile tugged at Bucky's lips. "The plan is: give 'em hell."
And give 'em hell they did. Just as they reached the bunker, Bucky gave Tex the signal, and he took out the machine gunner before he could get off a single shot, followed quickly by the detector that Bucky feared would take over if the gunner died. The HYDRA troops fought as ferociously as ever, but, just like Bucky's dad had told him before he'd shipped out, it came down to a matter of numbers. The HYDRA soldiers were out-manned; one by one, they fell, covering their own retreat, until the last two backed into the bunker and slammed the door closed behind them.
"Gonna need the Universal Key," Bucky called, as he entered the clearing. He eyed up the gun turret as Gusty brought the key from his backpack. There was a hatch up there, one that led right to the HYDRA control room. Might be worth sending a few men through the front door, and one down the back door. Cover all bases. It was a crazy plan—he felt immediately that Wells would approve. "Someone run and fetch Stark up here. As soon as we've cleared out that bunker, I want him to do whatever he does in these places. We've got a hell of a lot of graves to dig today."
"Umm, yeah, about that," said Gusty, as he handed the key to Davies and stood back to let the Pfc. attach the key to the door. "Look, Sarge, I know you're all for respecting the murderous dead or whatever, but there's three guys out here, two or three in there, and a half dozen we left littering the forest floor. Why don't we just dig one grave? It'd save a bit of time."
"You wanna stick 'em in a mass grave?"
"Well, no. I wanna leave 'em out for the crows. But that's me. You're the one who wants to bury 'em, and they were happy to share a bunker in life, so why not a grave in death?"
"Individual graves," Bucky scowled. "Jones, you'll oversee it."
Jones licked his lips and fidgeted on the spot. "Yes, Sarge."
Bucky shouldered his rifle and slid the safety off his pistol. "Gusty, you'll take Hall and Biggs into the bunker once Davies has the door open. I'm gonna climb up to that hatch, up in the gunner's position, and sneak in to their control room. Jones, get those jammers deployed. It's probably much too late to stop them sending out an SOS, but at least we can stop them saying anything else."
Everyone knew what they were doing. Things had gone sideways, and they'd lost a man, but the team was holding together, mostly without any grumbles. Bucky left the two remaining corporals to their tasks, and climbed up to the gunner's position atop the bunker. For the love of God, Tex, don't shoot me, he mentally prayed.
He didn't wait for Davies' signal. He had to be in place before the bunker was stormed, so he reached for the hatch handle as soon as he got to the top of the bunker. He was lucky; the gunner hadn't had chance to lock the door behind himself before dying. The short, vertical tunnel was unlocked and unguarded. He climbed down the cold metal ladder and felt his eyes try to open wider as the light faded. Too bad those night-vision scopes on the SSRs couldn't be used down here; night-vision would'a come in mighty handy right about now.
When he reached the small door which opened out into the control room, he stopped and pressed his ear against it. A voice came from within, speaking German but tinged with panic that Bucky could hear despite not having a damn clue what the guy was saying. He guessed the jammers were in place. That the bunker's comms had just gone dark. For a very, very brief moment, Bucky pitied the guy. There he was, sat in a dingy little room, probably barricaded in by the guards, with no clue about what was happening outside and nothing to do but wait for certain doom and consider that little cyanide implant in his tooth.
The memory of Carrot's lifeless eyes chased all pity away. Pity was something he would reserve for the innocent. For the victims of murderers like these, not for the murderers themselves.
The signal to advance came in the form of a volley of gunfire. Gusty and his team had just gotten into the bunker. It would only be a matter of time before they reached the comms room. Bucky closed his eyes and prayed silently for a minute that they could end this without any further deaths. Then, he took a deep breath, gave himself a three-count, lowered the door handle, and kicked it open with a bang!
The man in the comms room reached for his pistol even before Bucky had fully stepped into the room, but, taken by surprise, he didn't stand a chance. Bucky fired three rounds into his chest. The first two shots elicited pained cries; the third was just a formality. The body stopped twitching, eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling as there came a pounding on the comms room door. Through the metal, Bucky heard Gusty's voice call out, "We're gonna need the key again!"
"Allow me, Corporal," Bucky said, as he opened the door from the inside. To his relief, he found Hall and Gusty standing in front of the mountainous Biggs, all three of them unharmed as they looked to the dead body on the floor.
"Thanks," said Gusty. "You're such a gentleman."
"Err, Sarge…" Biggs began.
"What information do you suppose they're sending?" Gusty asked, as he stepped into the room and kicked the dead Kraut's leg. It wobbled limply from side to side before falling still.
"Dunno," Bucky shrugged. He holstered his pistol glanced over the myriad flashing lights on the communications panel.
"Sarge…"
"I reckon it's intel about Allied locations and plans," said Hall. "Just like those Nazis, to go spying on people all the time."
"It's not like we don't have spies of our own, Hall," Bucky pointed out.
"SARGE!" Biggs exploded.
"What is it, Biggs?"
"What do you suppose this box thing is for, with the flashing red light, and all these wires coming out of it, and a timer that's counting down?"
Bucky crouched down in front of the box Biggs was pointing at with a trembling finger, and saw how long was left on the clock. He felt the blood drain from his face. "Gusty, go and fetch Stark."
"Why, Sarge? What is it?"
"Just go. And hurry."
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Fifteen minutes later, Bucky peered out from behind the resupply wagon—which Davies had driven further away from the bunker at Bucky's urgent request—and heaved the deepest sigh of relief he'd ever sighed as he saw Stark step out from the bunker. Capturing one of these things usually made the guy giddy as a kid who'd been given a bag of candy; now, his face was etched deeply with concern.
"Stay here," he told the men. He left his place of safety and jogged out to meet Stark. He hadn't even let them start digging graves yet; there was no point, if the bunker was going to explode.
The first words out of Stark's mouth were not the ones Bucky was expecting.
"I'm very sorry about Corporal Robbins. He seemed a good man."
"He wa—wait, you know his name?"
Stark looked affronted by the question. "Of course I know his name. We're talking about the man who drank my two-hundred dollar bottle of Balvenie."
"I… what?" Slivers of alarm threaded their way through Bucky's head, reaching down into his stomach to make it churn with guilt and a niggle of fear.
"Oh yes. I know all about that. Corporal Robbins came to me after your mission to reclaim our lost supplies, and told me he'd felt so shaken by his near-death experience that he'd drunk my entire bottle of Scotch to try and calm his nerves. Apparently, his theft had been sitting like a monkey on his shoulders, so after a little encouragement and divine forgiveness from the chaplain, he confessed everything to me."
"Oh." Carrot had done that? Bucky knew the guy had felt bad about the Scotch, but he didn't think Carrot would do anything so foolishly selfless. And now, Carrot was gone, and Stark would forever remember him as the guy who'd drunk his Scotch. It would be a stain on his otherwise wholesome, upstanding reputation. Bucky couldn't live with such cowardice. He looked Stark straight in the eye, and told him the truth. "Actually, he didn't drink it alone. In fact, he barely had more than a couple of swigs. I found the Scotch—thought it belonged to the brass, not that that's any sort of excuse—and the men had just lost another officer. I kept the bottle, and encouraged the men to drink it. That bottle of Scotch is on me. And also maybe Wells, just a little."
Stark merely rolled his eyes. "Well, of course you all drank it. Corporal Robbins was a good man, but he was a terrible liar; nowhere near as good as Sergeant Sarcasm, anyway. It was immediately obvious to me that he was covering for the rest of you, especially since his lie didn't tally up with yours. There's also the fact that drinking a whole bottle of Scotch would've left him violently ill, and he was clearly nothing of the sort."
"If you knew all along, why didn't you say anything?!"
"Because Corporal Robbins begged me not to tell his sergeants. Damn near ended up in a flood of tears about it. So, we made a deal. I wouldn't tell, and he'd put in a good word for me with the big man."
Big man? "You… needed Carrot to put in a good word for you with Colonel Phillips?"
"No, the other big man. I know Corporal Robbins was a keen sheep in the holy flock. I'm not much of a believer myself, but Robbins promised he'd put some extra prayer time in for me." He turned his dark eyes skyward. "Hope you're remembering your promise, Corporal. At least now you can do it in person."
"Right." He should'a known he wouldn't get anything resembling genuine sorrow outta Stark. There would be time for Carrot later. "Anyway, I take it from the fact we're still here that you managed to disable the bomb? Presuming that's what it even was."
Stark pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. "Yes, Sergeant, the device with a countdown timer and flashing red light and wires poking out of it was a bomb, and of course I diffused it, or we wouldn't be stood here now, would we? And by the way, the next time you find a bomb, you might want to order your men to withdraw by more than fifty metres. There was enough TNT in that thing to wipe out an office block; even cowering behind that truck, they wouldn't have survived."
"So, why the long face?"
"Well, it seems those additional troops here weren't just delivering supplies, but also upgrading the bunker's defensive perimeter, and also adding some extra safety features. Rather nasty safety features, actually."
Bucky felt his heart sink. "Let me guess; they have some sort of emergency mustard gas release button, in case their bunker is compromised? That's fine; we can use gas masks."
"Nothing so primitive," Stark said. "Remember, this is HYDRA we're talking about, not your regular run-of-the-mill Nazis; their scientists are pretty sharp. They tried to recruit me. Forced Doctor Erskine to work for them for years. Oh right, you didn't know him. Never mind. Anyway, the unpleasantness I'm talking about is a dead man's switch in the form of a code that has to be entered into the communications console once every three hours. If the code isn't entered, it transmits a signal probably right to Schmidt's secret headquarters, and that signal… well, I don't know what the consequences are. Maybe the bunker gets bombed, maybe it's rigged with more explosives, or hell, maybe it really is mustard gas after all. But I expect the result would be wholesale destruction of the facility, to stop it falling into enemy hands."
"And you don't know the code."
"What? Of course I know the code! That was the first thing I pulled out of the system." He pointed to his head. "Genius, remember?"
"Oh yeah," Bucky said drily. "How could I forget? But if you have the code, what's the problem?"
"The problem is, it needs to be entered every three hours, and this bunker was supposed to be manned by a five-man team. Have you ever witnessed or participated in experiments related to sleep deprivation, Sergeant?"
"No," he said with a sigh. Why couldn't Stark just get to the damn point, instead of lording his intelligence over everybody at every available opportunity?
"Well, if you want to try being woken every two hours and fifty-nine minutes to enter a twelve-digit alpha-numeric code into a console, be my guest, and lemme know how you feel after a few days of that. Simply put, one man isn't going to be enough to keep this place running for more than a couple of days. We'll need to leave additional men here."
"That's one for the colonel to decide." He sure as hell wasn't leaving any of his own men behind. "But how do we know our presence here hasn't already been compromised? We didn't have the element of surprise, and I'm pretty sure they radioed that they were being attacked."
"Our Teutonic friend has that in hand," Stark replied. "He assures me he's managed to pass himself off as one of the HYDRA guards here. He's told them the comms officer was killed, but that they managed to pacify the attackers. Reported it was French Resistance dressed up as American soldiers, to try and throw them off guard."
"And you trust him?"
"As much as I trust anyone who isn't me. And a hell of a lot more than I trust you and your rifle-bending, Scotch-drinking buddies."
"Right." Stark was gonna hold that against him forever. One more bullet for his arsenal. "So, the bunker is secure for now, and we'll need to report back to Colonel Phillips, have him assign some extra men to stay behind and keep their finger on that dead man's switch." Stark nodded at his assessment. "What about the supplies in this wagon? We've checked it out; food rations and weapons. I guess they were destined for the other bunkers. Do you think Phillips will want the deliveries sent on?"
"Probably not. Each bunker was supplied to feed five guys for three months. We have one guy in each facility, so their supplies should last a lot longer than that. Take the wagon back to camp; I'm sure Phillips will want to keep the supplies, and Hawkswell might finally stop complaining that we're all gonna starve before this mission is over."
Bucky nodded. He'd been hoping Stark would say that; they could use the wagon to take Carrot's body back to camp. It was more dignified than carrying him back. "What about you? Do you wanna come back with the first group and report to the colonel?"
"No, I've got more to do here. I'll leave that in your marginally capable hands. Did you get everything I told you? Do you need me to write anything down? I know there's a lot to remember, and a few big words in there."
Bucky stared blankly at Stark until he left, and then turned to the rest of the team, who were watching from behind the wagon, reading to duck in case the bunker—or their sergeant—exploded violently. "Jones, get the team digging graves. Gusty, prep that truck; we're taking it back to camp. I need to give the colonel a sitrep. By the time we're back, I want those Krauts buried. Now, hop to it."
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Bucky stepped outside the command tent and took a moment to order his thoughts. Phillips had been pleased about the supplies recovered, but less so about the loss of Carrot. The knowledge that the next and final bunker in the chain had probably already been upgraded with advanced defences had him positively glowering. But he'd took it all in, listened to Bucky's recounting of Stark's assessment, then assigned one of the 9th Infantry and one of the Engineers to return to the bunker and assist the German with the running of the facility. Bucky was just glad it wasn't his own men being ordered to stay behind.
Now, he had a harder report to make, one he was looking forward to even less than his official report.
He found Wells in the regiment's tent, attempting to prop open his usual book with his heavily bandaged hand. A few guys were stretched out on their beds, writing letters home, and they were so focused on their letters that they barely even glanced up when Bucky entered the tent. Wells smoothed the irritated scowl from his face as Bucky sat himself down on the edge of his own bed; he didn't seem to be having much luck reading.
"How's your hand?" Bucky asked him.
"Hurts. Those fiends won't even give me morphine. Said I'm not hurt bad enough. How'd the mission go?"
"There were hiccups, but we took the bunker intact."
"Then why does the look on your face say you just lost your childhood puppy?" Wells tossed his book aside and sat up on his bed, his eyes suddenly full of concern. "We lost someone, didn't we? Who was it?"
"Carrot. We were ambushed by HYDRA. He was shot."
Wells flinched as he was hit with the news. His face went as pale as Bucky's had when he'd first laid eyes on that bomb.
"But… it wasn't Carrot's mission. He wasn't supposed to be there. It was supposed to be me. I should'a been the one to get shot."
"Don't say that!"
"Why not? It's true, isn't it?" Wells scowled back at him. "If I hadn't been acting like an idiot, juggling knives, I wouldn't have stabbed myself, and Carrot wouldn't have gone in my place. It's because of me he's dead."
A small, angry fire flared within Bucky's chest. "What happened to not thinking about the men who die? What happened to putting them aside and dealing with them after the war? That's what you told me, after Tipper died. Guess it's easier to give advice when you're not the one feeling responsible for losing someone, huh?"
Wells pushed himself to his feet. "I'm going for a walk."
When Wells left, the angry fire went out. He shouldn't have said that. Already regretted it. Wells finally understood how Bucky had felt after Tipper died, and instead of being sympathetic and trying to allay his guilt, Bucky had snapped at him.
Mending that bridge—again—would have to wait. Bucky had to drive the two guys selected to stay at the bunker back to the facility, and oversee whatever digging and cleanup was left to do. For now, he had to put his own feelings of regret and guilt aside, and concentrate on finishing the mission. But it wasn't easy. Today he'd been a good sergeant, but for the first time since joining this war, he didn't feel like a good man.