The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

door was open. A splotch of blue uniform marked the driver huddling in the ditch beside his abandoned charge.
    The combat cars maneuvered violently, engaging the weapons shooting at them. Explosive shells raked the road train, igniting the two upright segments. Margulies thought part of the cargo was ammunition. Tracers or rocket exhaust trails fanned from a position at the treeline.
    The second road train had tried to pass on the right side of its disabled fellow, but the ground to that side was apparently even softer than that on which Margulies lay. The vehicle had sunk in over its running gear, hopelessly mired. The gun crew jumped from the tub and hid between the bogies.
    The driver fired a pistol from his cab doorway. Machine gun bullets sparkled on the armor, starred the windscreen opaque, and punched the driver’s lungs out through the back of his rib cage.
    Margulies had lost her 2-cm powergun and her commo helmet. She didn’t wear a pistol because it got in the way in a jeep’s tight seating. Anyhow, she couldn’t hit anything with a handgun. She wished she had one now. Her legs ached so fiercely that she had to look down to be sure that they hadn’t been blown off at the knees.
    Angel Tijuca ran toward her. A guerrilla machine gun combed for him, aiming low and making the black soil spurt upward. Angel tumbled, slapping at his pelvis.
    Powerguns and automatic cannon fired at the rear of the convoy, out of sight around the curve. Small arms were probably involved also, but the sound was lost in the blasts of the heavier weapons.
    Margulies tried to crawl toward the center of the convoy. Ash on the ground made her sneeze violently. The machine gunner shifted his aim toward her. The guerrilla wasn’t very good, but it could be only a matter of time before he found the range.
    Angel jumped to his feet, scooped Margulies up, and staggered toward the road with her in a packstrap carry. “Fucking ricochet,” he said. “Knocked me—down!”
    Margulies’ toes dragged the ground. The pain in her shins was indescribable. Angel’s normally olive complexion had paled to a jaundiced yellow, and his skin gleamed with perspiration.
    “Not there!” Margulies cried. She wasn’t sure if she was speaking audibly. “That truck’ll blow any minute now!”
    “That’s—” her driver gasped “—the next—thing, M-Missie.”
    He tumbled into the mine crater with his burden and released her. The pulverized soil was pillow-soft, but the reek of explosive residues clung to the pit chokingly. The machine gun sent a last spiteful burst of white tracer over the jeep’s crew before casting off for other targets.
    Angel had lost his helmet and sub-machine gun, but the butt of a pistol projected from the left cargo pocket of his trousers. He drew the weapon as he lurched out of the crater.
    Margulies tried to follow her sergeant, using her knees and elbows for purchase on the loose soil. It was like swimming through molasses. Every pulse tightened a red-hot vise on her lower legs.
    Angel ran to the coupling which linked the overturned third segment to the pair whose running gear was undamaged. The machine gun and the guerrillas’ light cannon traversed toward the motion, but the Frisian was fairly well covered by the bogies of the second segment. Cannon shells fanned the flames already snorting through holes in the cargo box.
    The coupling was torqued and immobile. Angel aimed his pistol at it point-blank, covered his eyes with his right forearm, and fired. The 1-cm powergun bolt sprayed blazing steel in all directions.
    Angel’s battle dress smoldered in a score of places. He squinted, fired again, and again, and again.
    At the fourth bolt, the coupling parted with the sound of a shattered bell. The overturned segment slid a meter from the remainder of the burning vehicle.
    Margulies knelt at the top of the mine crater and waved her arms. She knew what Angel intended to do, knew also that she couldn’t stop him as she