The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

By using gullies and the rolling terrain,three of the low-slung vehicles managed to get into position. The single loss was a tank destroyer that paused to spike a combat car five kilometers away on the Slammers' right flank. A moment later, the Legion vehicle vanished under the impact of five nearly simultaneous 20cm bolts from Slammers' tanks.

Tribarrels on the roofs of the three surviving tank destroyers ripped effectively at incoming artillery, detonating the cargo shells before they strewed their bomblets over the landscape. The tank destroyers' 15cm main guns were a threat nothing, not even a bow-on tank, could afford to ignore. The leap-frog advance of Slammers' units toward the gap in the enemy center slowed to a lethal game of hide-and-seek.

But it was still too little, too late. The Hashemite and Thunderbolt Division troops were broken and streaming northward. All the tank destroyers could do was act as a rear guard, like Horatius and his two companions.

There was no bridge on their line of retreat, but the only practical route down from the Knifeblade Escarpment was through the Notch. Task Force Kuykendall and tank H271 had that passage sealed, as clever-assColonelLuke Broglie would learn within the next half hour.

Des Grieux began to chuckle hoarsely as he watched beads ooze across a background of coherent light. The sound that came from his throat blended well with the increasingly loud mutter of gunfire from south of the Escarpment.

"Shellfish Six to all Oyster and Clam elements," Des Grieux's helmet said.

Des Grieux had ignored the chatter which broke out among the Slammers' vehicles—the combat cars were code named Oyster; the tanks were Clam—as soon as Carbury gave the alarm. He couldn't ignore this summons, because it was the commander of Shellfish—Task Force Kuykendall—speaking over a unit priority channel.

"All blower captains to me at Golf Six-five ASAP. Acknowledge. Over."

This was no bloody time to have all the senior people standing around in a gully, listening to some bitch with lieutenant's pips on her collar!

There were blips of static on Des Grieux's headset. Several commanders used the automatic response set on their consoles instead of replying—protesting—in person.