Something clicked.
"Jesus, Artie, they're coming!"
Art Johnson's eyes took on a faraway look. His fingers loosened their
death grip on the gun. He shook his head.
"_Artie!_"
"Shut up, Tooey!" Reaching out, he slapped the boy's face. "You're
imagining things."
"But they're up there, Artie!" whimpered the boy.
"Sure they're up there. But not where you think they are. They're dug
in, in the caves. And it's going to be up to us to dig them out. Now
snap out of it!"
* * * * *
Suddenly a flare shot up from somewhere to their right. It whistled,
then popped, the white light hurting their night-adjusted eyes. A
moment later, Stebbins whistled and the men started moving up the hill.
They paused at the timber-line, and Stebbins cursed, moving from man
to man and urging him out of the false protection of the trees and
onto the broad expanse of boulder-pocked snow. Above them, another
two hundred yards, black dots against the snow showed where the caves
were waiting for them. Johnson could visualize the little slant-eyed
men within. He flopped to his belly and wriggled forward. Suddenly he
stood up and dashed twenty yards, then flopped again as bullets whined
through the space occupied by his body bare instants earlier.
He lay there, face pressed into the snow, until the muscles of his legs
started tensing of their own accord. Then he was up again, and running
for dear life.
Gun fire was bursting all around now, a seemingly solid screen of lead
pouring down from the caves. But the men were getting through the
barrier; one slammed into the rock wall beside a cave mouth and started
unlimbering grenades, tossing them in as quickly as he could pull the
pins. Seconds later a vast tongue of fire roared out, melting the snow
and scorching the barren earth beneath.
The fire probed down the hill as the side around the cave shook and
roared. The fire reached and passed over Art Johnson, lying in the
snow, fingers digging at the rock beneath.
By its orange light, the spreading circle of red around the soldier
blended into the artificial coloring of the snow.
* * * * *
"Just think of it!" Cavendish pounded his hand on the desk. "The
chance to go back and correct our mistakes, live our lives over again.
The opportunities missed, the chances passed up, the decisions made
wrong--all can be changed."
The man in the chair swirled the dregs of the whisky in the bottom of
the glass. "Go on, Cavendish," he said. "You're keeping my interest."
Cavendish flushed. "Thank you, Mr. Blackwell. I knew a man of your
position would not pass up an opportunity like this. Why, this is
another chance to make the world! A second chance!"