“Got to work fast now, boys,” Dick said, as he finished putting away his first-aid kit. “For about five minutes they’ll try coming at us directly. Then they’ll send out a bunch to come down on us from above. But we can stop them before they get to that bare stretch. Then they’ll try crossfire from those two positions, and when that doesn’t work, they’ll begin tossing grenades and maybe get a few light mortars into action. That’s when we’ll really get it, and if possible we’ll want to get away before then.”
“Get away?” Max Burckhardt exclaimed. “How do you figure?”
“Wait and see,” Dick grinned, knowing that Max and the others had quickly figured out that they were pretty well trapped, and that they hadn’t the ghost of a chance to get away alive. “But first I’ve got to find out what’s going on back in the Pass. If they want us to hold this crowd here as long as possible, we’ll just have to do it.”
The corporal with a walkie-talkie pack on his back had already pulled up his aerial and turned on his radio.
“See if you can get Tony,” Dick said, and the radioman nodded.
“Got ’im,” he said in a moment, but his words were almost drowned by the sound of another exchange of bursts between the Germans and the Americans. Dick crept to the ridge beside his men and looked at the woods below. The Germans were really pinned down effectively about a hundred feet away, and the little hill gave complete protection to the Americans. He slid back down beside the radioman.
“He says Nellie went to town about fifteen minutes ago,” the radioman said.
“Swell!” Dick exclaimed. “That means the Rangers attacked and the battle is on. What else?”
“Nice tea-party at the Smith’s,” the radioman went on.
“Good fight at the ledge where we landed,” Dick translated.