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"You." Gordunov singled out the grenadier. "Come with me. Svirkin, you stay here and make damned sure we don't get cut off."

The lieutenant nodded. But Gordunov had no confidence in him now.

He was familiar with the pattern from Afghanistan. Men who had Ralph Peters

performed reasonably well suddenly reached their limit, triggered into a near-stasis either by an unexpected, demoralizing event or simply by nervous exhaustion. No one was completely predictable. And few were consistently brave.

Gordunov expected to get shots into the rear of the tanks. But as soon as he and the grenadier reached the target intersection, a third tank appeared, bringing up the rear. The two men were caught in between the lead tanks and the trail vehicle.

"Shoot that one, get the bastard," Gordunov screamed.

The grenadier knelt, shaking. He balanced the weapon on his shoulder and fired. The round struck just below the mantlet of the gun, near the turret ring. But the huge trail tank kept coming, firing its machine guns.

The grenadier jerked up from his knees, then collapsed. The machine-gun fire kicked his body backward, rolling it over.

Gordunov pressed himself as flat as he could against a covering wall.

As the tank passed him, impossibly loud, it concentrated its fire down the side street up which Gordunov and the grenadier had come. But the vehicle had its hatches sealed, and its field of vision did not include the spot in which Gordunov lay. As the tank rumbled past he dashed for the grenade launcher, scrambling the last few meters on knees and elbows. He ripped at the dead boy's pack, from which the trails of two more antitank rounds jutted. Each moment, he expected gunfire to strike him. But he managed to work the pack off the heavy, bloody body. He slung it over one shoulder and rolled back toward the slight cover available. It was foolish to commit tanks into a built-up area without infantry support, and Gordunov was determined to make the enemy pay for it.

He thought he remembered how to work the device, how to sight it. He loaded a round, snapping it into the launcher with a reassuring click. He remembered that the logical order of the hands had to be reversed for a proper hold and balance. He slung his rifle around crossways on his back so that he could pull it quickly into a firing stance. Then he rose and ran for the intersection again, moving as swiftly as his crippled leg would carry him.

The rear of the tank that had killed the grenadier was completely exposed. Beyond it in the distance, Gordunov could see that the lead tank was smoking. The scene elated him. His men were still fighting.

Someone had killed the lead tank. Gordunov shouldered the launcher, aimed for the back of the trail tank's engine compartment, and fired.

The target was so close that he could feel the shock of the impact through his body. As a minimum, he figured that he had gotten a mobility 240

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kill. And the tank did, indeed, lurch to a halt, smoke rising from its rear deck. Gordunov scuttled to a nearby doorway, laying down the launcher and tugging his assault rifle around into his arms. He took aim, waiting for the crew members to emerge.

The crew appeared reluctant to abandon the tank. They attempted to traverse the gun to the rear. But the narrowness of the street would not permit it, even with the gun at maximum elevation. Gordunov grew so involved with the spectacle of the turret's attempts to turn on him that he almost missed the movement beneath the tank as the crew slipped out of an escape door in the bottom of the hull.

Gordunov waited for a second man to drop to the street. When no other crew members appeared, he swept the area between the tank's tracks with his assault rifle. He could see the reaction of the trapped, stricken men, like nervous puppets. He emptied an entire magazine into them, then reloaded. When the bodies remained still, he reloaded the antitank grenade launcher.

The middle tank in the column continued to fire wildly, aware that it had been trapped. Gordunov approached in bounds, closing to where he could get a clear shot. They had tried to take his bridge. But it was not going to be that easy. He felt wonderfully capable again, unbeatable.

He positioned himself behind the cover of the flank of the vehicle he had just killed, angling the grenade launcher for another shot. In the moment of aiming, his location in time and space blurred. He was back on the road to Kandahar, and fighting his way out of mountain ambushes, and soldiering in a thousand places he could not recognize.

There was only the enemy, a timeless thing, waiting. Gordunov tightened his finger on the trigger.

A surviving crewman from the wrecked tank shot him in the back with a pistol.

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