Page 18 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm (An Isaac Bell Adventure #15)

F resh troops were arriving from the rear in ordered ranks.

The artillery barrage had halted the German advance, but the battle was by no means over.

The British needed to retake their primary trench in order to prevent the enemy from consolidating their gains across the no-man’s-land in this sector.

Officers were trying to organize a counterattack as quickly as possible.

Sergeant Major Everly stayed in the thick of it despite his wounded ear.

He’d at least allowed a medic to swath his head in white linen to prevent further blood loss.

He berated, cajoled, screamed, and commiserated in equal measure to get his men ready to take the fight back to the Germans.

He suspected resistance would be light since the Huns hadn’t had enough time to fortify their position, but he had to believe there might be booby traps and other acts of sabotage.

For his part, Bell felt like a third person on a two-person date.

He had no formal role other than to stick with Everly, and the NCO had nothing for him to do.

He finally told Bell to make his way to the rear and find Major Fleming.

Everly saw that Bell still wore clothes that had been soaked through.

It was one thing to borrow the helmet off a fallen soldier. It was another to plunder his uniform. Bell would rather freeze. Everly got some of the new arrivals to give up whatever spare clothes they had with them and soon enough Bell was wearing a mishmash of clothes, but at least he was dry.

“You put up a hell of a fight,” Everly said and held out a hand. “Any idea what you’re going to tell your President?”

Bell shook the man’s hand. “As of this moment I’m going to tell him that he really doesn’t want to know the truth, but he has to find a way to end this war.”

“Fair enough. Good luck, Bell.”

“You too, Evs.”

He acted as a stretcher-bearer on the way to the rear.

The going was treacherous because of so many men rushing for the front and their patient thrashed in pained delirium on the wood and canvas stretcher.

The doctors had tents just beyond the third trench, with light coming from a generator as well as several trucks parked facing the makeshift hospital.

There was no room inside for their patient yet and a medic directed them to a patch of grass where fifty stretchers were laid out in the darkness.

Through the open tent fly, Bell observed the doctors at work and thought grimly of how little medical progress had been made in the fifty years since the Civil War. The doctors were busy with bone saws, removing limbs they knew they had no chance of saving.

He took some solace that the wounded had been heavily sedated with morphine.

He moved along, asking the whereabouts of Major Fleming and getting enough clues to keep him going for a half hour.

He did pause when he was offered hot tea and a spot near a barrel filled with burning ammunition crates.

He would have preferred coffee, of course, but the dark tea was heavily sugared and warmed him immeasurably.

Bell found Fleming near where they had corralled the hundred or so German prisoners.

They had been stripped of all equipment and gear and stood huddled in their great coats, hands thrust in their pockets.

They reminded Bell of penned-up cattle. Their expressions were dull, their manner sullen.

A dozen Tommies watched the prisoners, plus there was a coterie of guards with Fleming as he moved among the Germans, searching for any officers.

With the battle turned so quickly by the artillery, it was doubtful the Brits caught any high-value prisoners.

“Major Fleming,” Bell called when the officer stepped out of the barbed-wire fencing surrounding the captured Germans.

Fleming’s eyes goggled when he saw the American. “Bell. Where in God’s name have you been?”

“Sergeant Major Everly and I were at an observation post in the first trench when the Germans came at us from tunnels dug under no-man’s-land.”

“And he got you evacuated right out of there, yes?”

“There was no time. We fought as best we could and then retreated to the second trench. He ordered me to keep heading for the rear, but I saw a need on the line and I filled it.”

“Need?”

“A Vickers gun crew was hit by a mortar round. Everly and I took over the gun until the artillery chased the Germans back. He’s still up there helping organize an assault to retake your trench.”

“Already done,” Fleming told him. “The Germans evacuated back to their own line and our sappers blew up their tunnels. Seems you’ve joined the ranks of Americans fighting for us here in France.”

Bell chuckled. “Call it temporary insanity. No matter what, this can’t reach my wife. She would kill me.”

“I’ll tell Winston, of course, but your secret is safe,” Fleming reassured him. “Any thoughts now that you’ve seen firsthand what we’ve been up to our necks in for the better part of three years?”

“Whether we enter the war or not, Europe is changed forever. There are rumors of revolution in Russia, and after this carnage no one will ever be willing to die for King or Kaiser.”

“Do you think Wilson will enter the war?”

“I don’t think he has a choice. Our humanity is at stake on these fields, and we need to find a way to claw it back.”

“Are you satisfied, then? I can get you on a train back to Le Havre within an hour. You can be in London by dinner.”

Bell gave the offer careful consideration.

He hadn’t been prepared to be thrown into the middle of a battle on his fact-finding tour for President Wilson nor was he expected to be.

He was here as an observer, nothing more.

He was tired, cold, and hungry, and he already knew what he was going to tell the President, but he didn’t consider his mission complete until he’d achieved his goals.

One was to see daily life in the trenches, for which he’d gotten a lot more than he’d bargained for, the second was to observe a large section of the front from the air.

He’d seen the war from an individual soldier’s point of view. He wanted, needed, he believed, to see the vastness of it all and how the front stretched for endless miles. To accomplish that he had to see it from the cockpit of a plane ten thousand feet in the air.

At last, he said, “As much as I’d like to accept, I can’t give Wilson my opinion until I’ve completed my mission.

It would be like making an arrest without first gathering all the evidence.

Just because I know someone is guilty of a crime doesn’t mean I can prove it in court.

I have to stay on this investigation, and to do that I need to head to the airfield Mr. Churchill mentioned. ”

Fleming nodded soberly. “I would have doubted my ability to read men if you’d said otherwise.

” He fished a creased piece of paper from an inside jacket pocket.

“Give this to Wing Commander Crabbe when you reach the airfield. It lays out your mission and gives Winston’s blessing.

Sorry things got a little hotter around here than anticipated, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing after all.

We need you Yanks, or this bloody thing will still be on when my sons are old enough to fight it. ”

Bell shook Valentine Fleming’s hand. “Good luck, Major. To you and all of your men.”

“Thank you. You too.” Fleming then directed a corporal to escort Bell back to the rear encampment to get his bag, and when he was rested to drive him to the headquarters of the 22nd Aero Squadron. [*]

Skip Notes

* (Author’s note: Valentine Fleming, father of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, died in an artillery barrage roughly two months after the events depicted in this book. He was thirty-five.)