Free Ralph Peters by The war in 202

given him a ridiculous fright. A second later the boy lay openeyed on the street, bleeding.
    " Pull in between the trucks, " Meredith ordered. He threw himself down beside the fallen machine gunner. " Hendricks, Hendricks, can you hear me? " He felt for the pulse in the boy's neck. But there was none. And the open eyes did not move.
    Meredith scrambled toward his vehicle, firing wildly into the distance. There was still no enemy to be seen.
    His pistol went empty, and he hurled himself over the back fender of the carryall, squeezing down between the machine gun mount and the radios. The driver and the rifleman had already dismounted and were firing from the far side of the vehicle, sandwiched between oversized delivery trucks. Shooting at phantoms.
    Meredith grabbed the mike. " All Tango stations, all Tango stations. Drill five, drill five. Watch for snipers. "
    The drill would bring his other platoon vehicles up along the convoy, working both sides and establishing overwatch positions so that the trail squad could dismount and rescue as many of the truck drivers as possible.
    The sound of weaponry continued to ring wildly along the street, accompanied by the breaking of glass and the complaint of metal struck by bullets.
    Meredith flipped to the ops net. " One-four, One-four—action, action. Multiple friendly casualties at last named location. We've got sonsofbitches shooting us up from all the buildings. "
    The squadron net came to life. " Battle stations , battle stations. " Meredith recognized Major Taylor's voice. It was a reassuring sound. There was no panic in that voice. It was absolutely in command, practiced and economical. Surely, things would be all right now.
    A spray of automatic weapons fire ripped across the front of the carryall. At the edge of Meredith's field of vision, the driver suddenly threw his arms up into the air, as if trying to catch the bullets as they went by. Then the boy crumpled out in the open, torso sprawled in front of the vehicle.
    Meredith launched himself over the side of the vehicle and lay flat in the street. He jammed a fresh clip into his pistol. His knee hurt badly, although he had no idea what he had done to it. He looked around for the rifleman.
    The boy sat huddled under the mud flaps of a delivery truck, pressed against the big wheels, weeping. Meredith scrambled over to him and grabbed the boy by his field jacket. " Get out of here . Head back toward the other squads. Stay on the far side of the vehicles. Go. "
    The boy stared at Meredith in utter incomprehension, as though the lieutenant had begun speaking in a foreign language.
    Meredith did not know what to do. No one had prepared him for this. Even at the worst of times in his earlier experience, he had been able to maintain control of the situation. But now nothing that he did seemed to make a difference. He low-crawled forward around the carryall, to where his driver lay. The man was dead. Punctured by a gratuitous number of rounds, as though one of the snipers had been using him for target practice. Meredith tried to drag the torso back behind the vehicle. But the action only brought a welter of bullets in response. Meredith threw himself back into the tiny safety zone behind the carryall and between the trucks.
    He caught an infuriating mental glimpse of himself. Trapped. Cowering. While street punks made a fool of him. In his anger, he raised himself and fired several rounds in the approximate direction from which the last wave of bullets had come. But the action only made him feel more foolish and impotent.
    When he looked around, the rifleman who had been weeping under the truck was gone. In the right direction, Meredith hoped. He already had enough of his men on his conscience.
    The quality of his anger changed. The bluster disappeared, and he felt very cold. His fear, too, seemed to change, turning almost into a positive force, into an energy that could be directed by a strong will.
    Without making a conscious