Reincarnated: Vive La France-Chapter 351: Fuck your smoke

"AA up!" a Polish corporal bellows near the field.

He's got one gun alive and two crews who were potato farmers three days ago.

The first burst is wild, the second finds its rhythm.

On the third, a Stuka jerks, lists, limps away with smoke coughing from the engine.

"Good, good...again!" the corporal yells, eyes bright with a joy that scares him.

A shell pops right of the barrel.

The gunner flinches and loses the bead. "Stay on it! Goddamn it, Staś, stay..."

The fourth burst never comes.

The second Stuka's bomb lands two houses over and the shock swallows the road, shakes the gun off its mounts.

Men stumble like drunks.

Someone says very politely, "I think I've lost my hearing," and pukes black.

The corporal blinks gritty tears.

He hears the world come back in pieces. "Reload," he croaks, and his guys good boys, stupidly brave do it with hands that don't feel like theirs.

They fire again.

They live through that minute.

That's all.

---

The bridge.

The tank's on, the planks bowing, the water licking at the stone.

The pioneer on Kulesza's side Staszek, with the crooked front tooth has the detonator in his fist.

His hand shakes.

"Staszek," Kulesza says, not shouting. "Hold."

Staszek swallows. "Sir, if they bring a second..."

"Hold," Kulesza says.

Białek is flat under the lip of the ditch, rifle tucked, cheek to wet earth.

He watches the tank pass ten meters away and feels the weight of it in his bones.

He wants to bite.

He wants to wait.

He doesn't know which want is braver.

"Now?" whispers Lewandowski, the youngest.

His mouth is white.

"Not. Yet." Białek tastes blood; he's bitten his tongue.

Across the bridge, a German officer stands in the hatch, scanning the houses with a pair of glasses.

He points with two fingers, not the whole hand door, window, roofline.

His radio murmur is steady. "Left clear. Right possible. Keep the line straight. No bunching."

A shot from the orchardpops and chips the cupola.

The officer jerks down. "Son of a..!!! Smoke left!" he barks.

A canister clanks off the fender and hisses.

White flowers crawl along the ditch.

"Fuck your smoke," Białek mutters, eyes watering. "I can still see you."

He can.

The second tank noses up.

Staszek's eyes meet Kulesza's.

Kulesza shakes his head a hair's breadth.

"Sir," Staszek says, and the word is a plea and a curse.

"Not yet," Kulesza says. "We don't drown ourselves for their timetable."

A Polish runner stumbles up from the road, clutching a note, blood black on his sleeve.

"Orders...orders from HQ," he pants. "Hold bridges if possible. Destroy only...only if...."

He doesn't finish.

The tank's coax rattles a line of dust at the top of the ditch.

The runner's cap jumps off his head like it's surprised.

He flops back into the reeds, shocked face suddenly empty.

Lewandowski makes a small sound.

Białek bears it, quiet. "He's gone," he says, blunt, then puts another round into the road by the tank's track to remind himself he's alive.

"Smoke!" the German officer barks again, angrier.

His driver answers in a flat monotone.

The world goes white and stinging.

"Staszek," Kulesza says through his sleeve. "If the second tank commits, you take the pins out."

"Yessir," Staszek whispers, and touches the little plug like it's a saint's bone.

Far right, at the hedgerow, a German squad hits the Polish foxhole and gets hit back.

The first two Germans tumble in like furniture being thrown down stairs.

The third drops into the hole with a bayonet and a terrible, surprised look when it meets a man who does not panic.

He stabs.

The Pole shoves the rifle away with the heel of his hand, grabs the German's collar, and headbutts him hard enough to ring bells in two languages.

The fourth German shoots down into the hole.

The Pole spasms, huffs, and then, weirdly, laughs short, offended. He slumps.

"Clear?" the fourth asks, voice too high.

"Clear," the first one still breathing croaks, and crawls out, gagging.

They leave the hole.

No one says a prayer.

No one says anything.

A Polish sergeant crawls along the backside of the ridge with a satchel on his chest and a knife in his teeth.

He reaches the corner of the wall where the German MG42 is chewing the lane to paste and rests his forehead against the brick for one breath, two.

"Ready?" he whispers.

The boy behind him the one with the too-big helmet nods because the alternative is to cry. "Ready."

"On two," the sergeant says. "One. Two..."

He goes.

The boy goes.

The sergeant pops up at the corner like a jack-in-the-box from hell, rips the pin, and pitches the satchel into the window.

The gunner turns too late.

The blast snaps the frame out of the wall.

The gun falls.

The boy laughs once, hysteria pure.

A bullet from somewhere else slaps him out of the moment.

He sits down hard, blinking at the red splotch on his jacket like it's paint.

"Up, up," the sergeant grunts, dragging him. "You can moan later."

At Bielin, three Polish fighters make it up.

The second has his landing gear half-stuck; the pilot curses and leaves it as it is.

He clears the field by a foot and a half and wags his wings like he's apologizing.

A Stuka slides past; he drops in behind it and squeezes his trigger.

Tracers stitch the tail.

The Stuka stumbles, bleeds smoke, then keeps flying as if offended.

The Polish pilot whoops and then sees the Heinkel to his left and goes pale. "Oh hell," he says, and banks.

The Heinkel's return fire takes his wingtip off like it was never there.

He punches out curses that sound like prayers and drags his bird toward the trees. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Ground comes in fast.

He rides it in, bounce, screech, scream, the world a handful of teeth.

When he stops he's looking at a patch of sky and a twig has poked through his glove and his hand hurts, which means he's alive.

He laughs. It's awful.

He unclips and staggers out.

The engine coughs once more, sighs, and dies like a thing relieved to be done.

The tank is fully on the bridge now.

The planks say ugly things.

Staszek's thumb strokes the detonator, back and forth.

Białek can't see for the smoke, so he closes his eyes and pictures the tank where it must be.

He pops up and fires blind.

The shot walks.

Someone inside the steel yells.

"Hold!" Kulesza's voice is sand.

"Fuck holding," Lewandowski says, not loud, and a wild shot goes high. "Sorry," he mutters, then breathes through his nose and gets back into himself.

A German in the second tank's hatch points and shouts something too fast to catch.

The first tank grinds, hesitates a driver's bad thought then inches. "Move!" the German officer snaps, voice sudden and human.

"Move, you idiot!"

"Sir!" Staszek gasps. "Now?"

Kulesza can't hear his own voice over the engine.

He nods once.

Staszek pulls the first pin and feels the weight change in his palm.

His hand doesn't feel like his.

"Second," Kulesza mouths.

Staszek pulls it.

The wire hums in his bones.

Nothing.

He stares at the little box like it betrayed him.

"Again," he says to it.

He yanks, hard.

The wire bites his palm, a mean little kiss.

Nothing.