Page 14 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm (An Isaac Bell Adventure #15)
B ecause of the clouds, it was a near-moonless night, not so cold considering it was still March and tranquil for the exhausted men resting against the trench’s far wall while a few of their mates manned the observation posts.
Everly’s shout shattered the quiet as he erupted from the underground bunker. Men who’d been half asleep roused themselves. They were owl-eyed and blinking as they reached for their nearby weapons.
Bell was right behind the sergeant major, his Browning already out of his haversack.
Everly’s big Webley was in his hand, a lanyard connecting it to his gun belt.
He ignored the soldiers coming awake and ran for the elevated observation platform.
Something wasn’t right about the men manning their posts.
They stood unnaturally with their heads and shoulders resting atop the sandbag parapet.
Everly threw himself up the ladder and grabbed the nearest man’s upper arm.
There was a little resistance, but the man was sudden dead weight and he toppled lifelessly off the platform.
Bell caught a glint of something metallic in the man’s hand, but quickly realized it wasn’t in his hands but through them.
A long knife had been used to pin his hands in place so from a distance it looked as if he were still watching over the no-man’s-land.
A moment later the corpse of the second lookout tumbled to the floor of the trench in an untidy heap. He’d been shot with a silenced small-caliber bullet between the eyes.
Everly fired the six bullets in his break-action revolver, aiming generally into the no-man’s-land, but not having a specific target in the darkness. The sound was what he wanted. He needed to alert his men to the incoming tide of German soldiers he knew were approaching.
Bell clambered up next to Everly. It was so dark, they dared look over the top of the fortifications rather than limit their vision by using the periscope. There was nothing to see. The landscape appeared black and lifeless, not even a glimmer of starlight flashing off the coils of barbed wire.
A vigilant soldier twenty yards down the line fired a flare pistol into the sky with a whoosh like fireworks.
When the shell exploded hundreds of feet into the inky night it lit up with the radiance of a small sun.
In the flat light it cast as it drifted downward on a small parachute, Bell and Everly saw a horde of Germans moving across the no-man’s-land no more than fifty feet away.
Bell had heard the Brits talk about Germans tunneling close to the Allied lines and popping up so close that they achieved near-perfect tactical surprise.
He assumed that’s what these men had done.
They were fully kitted out for battle and had rifles at the ready, their barrels fitted with razor-sharp bayonets.
With the night torn open by the flare, the Germans dropped all pretense of stealth and bellowed in berserker fashion as they broke into a running mob.
Bell gave himself a fraction of a second to let the gut-sliding fear he felt at that moment turn into a surge of adrenaline that gave him clarity of thought and more courage than he realized he possessed.
His were the first shots fired at the advancing tidal wave of enemy soldiers.
The range was close enough, and the wall of men packed so tightly, that every bullet struck a target, and Germans began to fall.
His first shots unleashed a floodgate of fire from the British line as first riflemen and then machine gunners manning the Lewis and Vickers guns added their overarching thunder to the battle’s opening salvo.
Sergeant Major Everly tossed a rifle left behind by the dead sentry into Bell’s hands.
In one smooth motion, Bell swung the buttstock to his shoulder, turned to face east, and loosened the first round at the closest of the approaching Germans.
The bullet snapped the man’s head back so viciously that his helmet continued forward for a moment while he collapsed behind it.
Bell worked the Lee-Enfield bolt without taking the stock from his shoulder and continued firing until the ten-round magazine was empty, and ten Germans lay dead on the field.
Everly stood next to him, pouring on devastating firepower of his own.
He had a belt of ammo pouches slung over his shoulder.
Bell pulled two magazines, slapped home a fresh one into his rifle, and took aim at the onrushing swarm.
No matter how many they scythed down, two more were ready to fill their place.
The range was becoming ridiculously close.
It felt as though the muzzle flashes would sear the Germans’ greatcoats.
Bell spotted movement out of the corner of his eye in a place where there should be none.
It was on the top of the trench to his left, but inside the rows of sandbags placed along its rim.
It was a man, lying prone, tucked up against the bags like a spider in its lair.
He had a pistol in his hand, tipped with a long silencer, and he was turning his aim to Everly.
This was the assassin who’d silently killed the sentries, the tip of the German attack.
With only a second to react, Bell twisted and fired just in front of Everly’s face, doubtlessly stippling his skin with red-hot unburnt powder, but saving his life in the process.
The .303-caliber bullet shattered the assassin’s jaw and punched clear through his neck.
He was dead even before he tumbled from his hiding spot and fell to the filthy trench floor.
“Thanks, mate. I think,” Everly said, rubbing at his irritated eyes.
The enemy wasn’t just taking the brutal onslaught of fire from the British.
They were firing back, usually from the hip, as they tried to overwhelm the defenses, so their accuracy wasn’t great.
Yet so many rounds were screaming past Bell and Everly and all the other brave Tommies who were trying to hold off the attack that lucky hits were inevitable.
Bell felt a round pass through the sleeve of his jacket, and another grazed his thigh like a hot thin wire was laid against his skin.
The side of Everly’s head was slick with blood from a partially shot-off ear.
It didn’t slow him at all. They were holding back the Germans in their immediate front, but off to their right, in the light of freshly launched flares, part of the Allied line was collapsing.
German soldiers reached the top of the trench and were firing down at the men scrambling below them.
One Tommy managed to fire off one of the Lewis gun’s pancake magazines like a reaper cutting through wheat, but he was soon struck down as more Germans appeared.
With rifles too long to wield in the tight confines of the trench, the men fought with knives, sharpened edges of small shovels, or with their bare hands. It was a fight of such savagery that these were no longer men, but mindless animals relying on instinct alone to stay alive.
Bell didn’t dare shoot into the pack of brawling men for fear of hitting one of the British soldiers.
He again focused on the Germans advancing to their left.
They would soon overwhelm the British defense on that side as well.
It wouldn’t be long before the German forces would split around their position and then meet up behind them in the trench, blocking any chance of escape.
Everly recognized the fight here was lost.
“Come on,” he grunted and leapt off the observation platform, the second sentry’s rifle in his left hand while in his right, his reloaded Webley fired at any German foolish enough to challenge him.
Bell jumped down and together they battled their way through the scrum.
Bell abandoned his borrowed rifle, knowing there were plenty more to be had judging by the number of dead Englishmen lying on the bottom of the trench.
He concentrated on using his Browning pistol, holding it in a double-handed grip and firing only head shots as he twisted and turned his way toward the trench that led back to the second line of defense.
His boots sloshed through standing water turned red by blood.
They had just made it clear and into the communications trench when a grenade sailed over his head.
He threw himself at Everly’s knees as he ran ahead.
Both men splashed into the mud and felt the explosive force ripple over their backs.
Bell got up a second slow and barely parried a bayonet thrust at his gut by a German who’d followed them.
He avoided being run through by swinging the tough leather sack for the gas mask he’d been issued.
He backhanded the unbalanced German and felt the mask’s metal canister connect with the man’s jaw.
Dazed, the soldier almost dropped to his knees, but kept himself upright and started bringing the long knife to bear again.
Bell pulled the trigger on the Browning only to realize the slide was racked back against an empty magazine. He was defenseless.
The German forcefully slashed at him as his wits recovered.
Everly was still down on the ground, having taken more of the grenade’s overpressure, and would be no help.
Bell tried to block with the gas mask bag again, but this time the German stabbed right through it in a lightning thrust that nearly impaled Bell in the stomach.
The bag ripped apart and the clunky mask, with its full-head hood, long flexible hose, and chemical container at its end, fell free.