The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Des Grieux chuckled through a throat burned dry by ozone and the other poisons he breathed. His hands rested lightly on the two joysticks. The pippers were already locked together, solid in circle, where they needed to be.

The left-hand tank destroyer backed, then began to accelerate toward the Notch at high speed. The other Legion vehicle moved forward also, but at a relative crawl.

The right-hand tank destroyer had made the one-shot kill on the tiny sensor pack two kilometers away.

It happened the way Des Grieux knew it would happen. The tank destroyer rushing through the left side of the Notch braked so abruptly that its skirts rubbed off a shower of sparks against the smooth rock. The other tank destroyer, Broglie's own vehicle, continued to accelerate. It burst into clear sight while H271's gunner was supposed to be concentrating on the target ten meters to the side.

But it was Des Grieux below, and Des Grieux's pippers filled with the mass of iridium that slid into the sight picture. His tribarrel and main gun fired in unison at the massive target.

The interior of H271 turned cyan, then white, and finally red with heat like a hammer. The shockwave was not a sound but a blow that slammed Des Grieux down in his seat.

The cupola was gone. Warning lights glowed across Des Grieux's console. Screen #3 switched automatically to a damage-assessment schematic. The tribarrel had vaporized, but the main gun was undamaged and the turret rotated normally the few mills required to bring the hollow pipper onto its remaining target.

Luke Broglie was very good. He'd fired a fraction of a second early, but he must have known that he wouldn't get the additional instant he needed to center his sight squarely on the tank turret.

He must have known that he was meeting Slick Des Grieux for the last time.

Broglie's vehicle was a white glow at the edge of the Notch. The other crew should have bailed out of their tank destroyer and waited for the Hashemite surrender, but they tried to finish the job at which their colonel had failed.

Three 15cmbolts cut the night, two shots before the tank destroyerhada sight picture and the last round thirty meters wide of H271. Des Grieux penetrated the tank destroyer's thick glacis plate with his first bolt, then sent a second round through the hole to vaporize the wreckage in a pyre of its own munitions.

They should have known it was impossible to do what Luke Broglie couldn't manage. Nobody was as good as Broglie . . . except Slick Des Grieux.