The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [81]
The shooting stopped, shouts from the lieutenant, others, and Adams felt for the knife, unsheathed it, his heart exploding, held the knife close to his chest, stared up into the darkness, waiting for whatever was coming. Welty was crouched low, motionless, and Adams wanted to get to his own knees, but there was no room, and there could be no sound. After a long moment, a voice broke the silence, Porter.
“Whose foxhole?”
“Yablonski here! Son of a bitch fell in on us! We got him! Gridley’s hurt!”
Adams heard a low curse from Porter, and the lieutenant said, “Bad?”
“No! Stuck me. I stuck him back!”
Adams knew Gridley’s voice, deep, thunderous. Yablonski said, “Got a cloth on it. Shoulder! Can’t see!”
“No lights. I’m coming up! Corpsman!”
“Here! Lollygag!”
Adams eased his head up, heard the scamper of boots, a shadow rushing toward Yablonski’s foxhole. There were low voices now, another shadow from behind them, and Adams thought, the corpsman. Around Gridley’s foxhole the men lay flat, no profile. Adams heard a hard groan from the big man, the talk around them low, intense. There were whispers in every direction, every man up, focused, searching the dark. One man crawled away from Yablonski’s hole, disappeared into the dark, and now the other man, a low slither to the front, and Adams knew it had to be Porter. The passwords came now, each man making his way back to his own place, no other sounds. Ferucci called out, several yards to Adams’s right.
“How bad?”
The voice that responded was deep and furious, Gridley.
“Bayonet in my shoulder! Son of a bitch just dropped on us. He’s lying out here, next to the hole! We stuck him good, both of us. Got his stinking blood all over me.”
“Shut up! If there’s one, there’s more!”
“Quiet! Stay sharp!”
The streaks of fire came now, white tracers, scattered, a flurry high above, some lower, ripping into the ground. Adams had rolled to his knees, kept his head below ground level, saw a line of blue-white light directly overhead, fading quickly, and Welty said, “Jap tracers!”
No one spoke, the machine gun fire coming from far away, different from the woodpecker tapping. Adams knew from the briefings it had to be the heavier pieces, something close to the fifty caliber. Welty whispered, “This is good! No infiltrators now. They wouldn’t fire if they had a squad of guys out here crawling around. As long as they keep this up, we can get some sleep.”
Adams stared at him in the dark, saw faint reflections from the tracers, Welty pulling himself down into the corner of the foxhole. And then the firing stopped. There was no sound at all for a long minute, every man waiting for what might happen next. Adams had forgotten the problems in his gut, the cramped misery replaced by the sudden reality. That Jap was … right here. He could have come into our hole … probably would have. Stay alert, dammit! Welty was sitting again, a low whisper.
“Damn them anyway. I need some sleep.”
Adams eased his head up, trained his eyes on the terrain, tried to recall the familiar lumps and bulges of the low brush. Out in front of the foxhole, something seemed to move, a larger bulge, something new, and he reached for Welty’s arm, missed, and out front came a sharp thump. He brought the rifle up, and now the darkness was blasted by a flash of fire, a thunderous explosion. All around them M-1s responded, and Adams closed his eyes, blinded, fired once, Welty doing the same, then Welty’s hand on his arm, pulling him down again.
“Jap grenade! Stay down.”
The streaks of fire came all across the field, more shouts, farther away.
“Got him! Got him!”
“Shut up! Cease fire!”
Again the firing died down, the panic passing. Ferucci shouted, “Grenade! Anybody hit?”
“Just missed us here!”
Adams knew now what the thump had been, the one part of the briefings that the veterans had repeated often. Japanese grenades were primed by a hard knock straight against the fuse, Japanese