Eureka by William Diehl Page A

ground, it’s about artillery and machine guns and bodies. We’re expendable because we can be replaced. The guy back on the production line cranking out those howitzer shells and firing pins and cannon barrels, he’s the one who’s important.”
    â€œSo whoever runs out of ammo, guns, and bodies first loses?”
    â€œThat’s about it,” Merrill said. Then added: “I’m giving you a battlefield commission. You’re the best Marine I ever met.”
    They finished their coffee in silence. Somewhere to the west, they heard a shell scream to earth and explode. The tin cups jittered for a moment and some dirt dribbled down from the ceiling of the bunker.
    â€œI’d like to pass on that. The reason you don’t have any comms left is they’re the first ones the Krauts knock off. I’ll do whatever you call on me to do, but I’ll keep my stripes if it’s all the same to you.”
    â€œYou’re a lifer, Brodie. Do you realize what life will be like for a Marine officer when this is over?”
    â€œI may not stay in. If I’m not rat meat by the time this is over, I’m thinkin’ of taking a crack at civilian life again.”
    â€œYou’re throwing away what, fifteen years?”
    â€œCloser to sixteen. I lied about my age. But I think it’s time I went back to the hole I left.”
    â€œWhere’s that?”
    â€œCalifornia. Called Eureka. Sits right on the Pacific. That’s where I first learned to hate mud.”
    â€œWhy go back to it, then?” Merrill asked.
    â€œMy best friend lives there.” Brodie smiled and added, “I’ve got a godson I’ve never seen.”
    â€œWhat’ll you do there?” Merrill asked.
    â€œThere’s a sheriff there, an old-timer. He was kind of a mentor to me. Taught me to ride and shoot, do things with a sense of style.”
    â€œYou thinking of taking his place?”
    â€œNobody’ll ever take Buck Tallman’s place,” Brodie said. “Better get back. Dawn’s just around the corner. Thanks for the dry boots and the coffee.”
    Merrill stood up, offered Brodie his hand, and they shook. Saying good-bye, just in case.
    â€œJust remember,” Brodie said as he brushed through the burlap doorway, “once it starts you’ll have ten minutes. And not one minute more.”

    Rusty Danzig huddled against a battered sandbag in a shallow trench forty or fifty yards in front of the machine-gun line. His eyes were closed and his legs were curled up beside him. His rifle was resting against his legs. He could have been mistaken for dead or asleep, but he was neither; he was listening.
    He had his ear pressed against a piece of burlap to keep it dry, and he had been listening for two hours in the darkness. Not for sounds he knew. Not for the sound rats make skittering across a board or chewing on a corpse, or the
thunk
of a shell as it splattered deep into the mud before exploding, or the sound barbed wire makes when the wind rattles it. Danzig was listening for the unusual. The sound of boots slogging through the mud, or a metal canteen accidentally scraping against an ammunition belt, or someone trying to muffle a cough. The sounds of life in a field of death.
    Danzig was a South Boston tough guy who did not take well to orders. He would nod, say “Yes, sir,” and then do it his own way. He was a short, burly, black-haired man who had great ears. He claimed he could hear a fly clear its throat from a hundred yards away. He was fifty yards in front of Culhane’s foxhole, in a trench that was mined on both sides of him. The second most dangerous position in the planned ambush.
    The most dangerous spot was reserved for Big Redd, whose father was a Chiricahua Apache, his mother a white schoolteacher from Minnesota. The big Indian was the forward sniper. Redd had once told Culhane that he had joined the Marines just to get off the