We had crossed the fast-running foamy little river higher up, where it dropped down from the steep mountain ridges. Now, in the cleft below, I could hear the deeper growling as it fought for space among the heavy boulders of its bed. I was tired after the march; tired enough to quit right there. A few feet away, over the reverse slope in a little hollow, Lim On was concentrating on his demolition charges, his skeleton face immobile and thin fingers working surely as he fixed the special fuses. He had finished three, with two to go. Anders had told us there were five tank cars. We had to get them all.
I rolled over a little, the better to reach my pants pocket where I had a pair of tiny Japanese field glasses. The sun was warm and, under the special steel of the American-made Russian model helmet, my forehead was wet where the headband touched. Like all the others, I was wearing one of the new lightweight plastic body armor suits under the uniform. It was good to know that even a burp gun bullet would bruise but not penetrate. Only high velocity rifle fire could cut through the flexible weave but I wondered momentarily if it was worth all the sticky discomfort to wear it. The glasses were up to my eyes now and I waited, propped on my elbows. The round magnified world was blurred by the heat waves and the exhaustion which blunted my concentration and sent quick tremors through my tired arms. A fly found me, his feet tickling my face as he sucked the sweat drops. The crawling became intolerable and I had to brush him off. When my eyes adjusted again to the glasses I saw Makstutis and Kim, with seven men. They were filing down the edge of the cutting in full view.
As they neared the abutment, a soldier came out of the bushes at the side of the bridge. Seeing the officers, he saluted smartly and, a moment later, called to a companion who joined the group. Then Kim and four men moved off across the bridge to where another pair of guards had come out of hiding. Thirty seconds later it was all over. At the near end of the bridge, two of my men had moved casually behind the enemy soldiers as they talked to Makstutis. Suddenly they wrapped their left arms around the victims' faces to stop a shout. Their right arms came up and the commando knives flashed down into that soft triangle behind the collar-bone. It was done almost in rhythm, like some hellish ballet. The dying men writhed a little and then went limp. By the time I swung my glasses to the other end of the bridge, the scuffle there was already over. I lowered the binoculars. My stomach churned a little as it had done on my first visit to a slaughter-house. The rest of our men were now out of hiding and working furiously on the bridge, setting up the charges. Up from below, his face covered with sweat and breathing quickly from the climb, came Makstutis. He sat down beside me.
"Dead easy, Doc," he said, as he got his breath.
"Dead, easy, is right," I said grimly. Killing of any kind always depressed me.
He glanced sideways at me, "Feel OK?"
"I'll make it," I replied quietly, with much more optimism than I felt.
We zigzagged down to the bridge. Kim was dispersing his section along the rim of the gorge and up on both sides of the cutting. We would have to eliminate any Commies who were stranded on our side by the explosion but we wanted to leave a line of retreat open for the rest. None of our men would stay on the other side. Any who survived on the far side of the ravine were welcome to go home ... and I hoped they would. We settled down in the brush to the left of the bridge—Makstutis, who was to set off the charges and then go where he felt he was needed, Lim, who would be with me, and Sergeant Kang and Corporal Hip Sing who were to cover us as we blew up the remaining tank cars.
The sun was lowering to the hills now and soon would drop behind them. The waves of its heat shook the rails in the cutting, the mirage twisting them in fancy as the explosives would soon do in fact. A weak little breeze came fitfully up the tracks and cooled my face. The soft sad whistle of a locomotive drifted with it and seconds later a dull thudding noise. I thought I heard a faint crackling of rifles.
"And away we go," I said inanely.