The Bullet Garden by Hunter Stephen

Author:Hunter, Stephen [Hunter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thrillers, thriller, Mystery, Historical, Fiction, War, Suspense, Political
ISBN: 9781982169763
Google: XlGkEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1982169761
Goodreads: 61273757
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2023-01-24T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

They squat-walked 150 yards, pausing every few seconds, following the line of the hedgerow—it was a border-line hedgerow, not as thick as those that hid paths—to the bushes that marked the presence of the sunken road. This time Swagger led, followed by Goldberg, then Archer, then the lieutenant.

Archer carried the—what? Device? Bomb? Demolition? Anti-tank thingamajig? Okay, “baseball” seemed to be the term of art.

It was strictly improvised. Swagger had directed them all to lay their pineapple grenades on the ground. Then, taking his watch cap off and opening it up to form a pouch, he untaped each lever, unscrewed each Mk 2 fuse cap, and poured from each of the eight 1.5 ounces of flaked TNT, making for a total of twelve ounces of explosive, which he carefully poured into the cap, then gathered it up into a ball. Then, of course, duck tape, the war’s most efficient weapon. He wound it about the clump of explosive and wool adroitly until it was about the size of and could therefore be called a baseball. Not enough to blow a tank in the sense of destroy, but enough, if placed carefully, to disable.

“They’ve run some barbed wire around the thing,” he explained. “I’ll squirm through and get up on its back. Weakest point of any tank is the side of the turret. I’ll tape the baseball to the turret low, left side. The armor’s only about fourteen millimeters—”

How does he know all this shit? Goldberg and Archer wondered, but not Leets, who knew that in his off-hours Swagger went to the 70 Gros library and read technical intelligence manuals on German weapons and tactics.

“—and it’ll blow right through. More important, that’s where the turret traverse motor is located. It rotates the turret. I’m going to blow it to shreds. Without that, they can’t aim the big gun; with no big gun, they are dead if they run into anything from thirty-seven millimeters up. That means they will withdraw to make repairs.”

“How to detonate, sir?” asked Leets.

“I’ll push one of these grenade fuses through the tape and material of the hat, jamming it down into the shit. I’ll pull the pin, then roll off and cover low to its tracks. It’ll go in four seconds. Should rip open the turret, send the traverse motor to the shithouse, seriously maim the seventy-five gun, tear out wiring and stuff, set small fires everywhere, produce a lot of smoke.”

“Earl,” said Leets, “I don’t think the Germans are going to let you do that.”

“That’s where you come in. When I move to the tank, you go with me and get to the other side of the road and cover up. After the blast, you turn your attention to the Kraut bivouac a few yards out. Should be lots of confusion there, but to make it more confusing, you open up and spray the area with suppressive. That gives me cover to get across to you, and when I get there, we take off. Gotta move fast.

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