The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

The net wobbled outward for several seconds,shuddering in the flame-spawned air currents. It settled, covering 500 meters of pavement, the road's left shoulder, and the fronts of most of the buildings on the left side.

Muzzle flashes continued to wink from the stricken ruins of Happy Days.

The charge detonated with a white flash as sudden as that of lightning. Dust and ash spread in a dense pall that was opaque in the thermal spectrum as well as to normal optics.

Hundreds of small mines popped and spattered gravel. The explosive-filled cavity whose image, remoted from

Deathdealerand frozen for reference on Wager's Screen Three, didn't go off.

Fuckin' A.

Hans Wager shifted Screen Two to millimetric radar and gripped his gunnery control."Holman,drive on,"he ordered, aware as he spoke that Blue Three was already accelerating.

Holman hadn't waited to be told. She knew as sure as Wager did that if the big mine went off, it was better that a tank take the shock than the lesser mass

of a combat car.

Better for everybody except maybe the tank's crew.

Wager triggered the main gun and coaxially locked tribarrel simultaneously, throwing echoing swirls onto his display as the dense atmosphere warped even the radar patterns.

"Tootsie Six," he said as he felt the tank beneath him build to a lumbering gallop. "This is Blue Three. We're going through."

Flamethrowercleared the rise. The settlement was a scene from Brueghel's Hell, and Dick Suilin was being plunged into the heart of it.

Cooter looked back over his shoulder at the reporter. His voice in Suilin's earphones said, "Watch the stern, turtle. Don't worry about the bow—we'll go through on Ortnahme's coattails."

Gale, the veteran trooper, had already shifted his position behind the right wing gun so that he was facing backward at 120° to the combat car's direction of travel. Suilin obediently tried to do the same, but he found that stacked ammo boxes and the large cooler made it difficult for him to stand. By folding one knee on the cooler, he managed to aim at the proper angle, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to hit anything if a target appeared.

Flamethrowerwas gathering speed. They'd crawled up the slope, matching their speed to that of the tank ahead of them. That vehicle in turn was trying not to overrun the combat cars pausing at the hillcrest.