Thunder Run by David Zucchino Read Free Book Online Page B

time, and Conroy had been asking Schwartz, who had been asking Perkins. But now Perkins had heard enough. They couldn’t stay exposed any longer. The entire battalion was at risk, not just one tank. It was time to cut their losses. Perkins ordered that the crew prepare to abandon the tank. Charlie One Two would have to be left to fall into enemy hands.
    Diaz heard the order. Despite himself, he agreed with it. It was the right thing to do, given the circumstances. Now, after struggling for so long to save the tank, the crew thought they had to destroy it. They had been trained to destroy any abandoned equipment to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy. In this case, they certainly didn’t want the Iraqis to recover anything from a late-model Abrams tank. It was decided that Hernandez would try to burn it with thermite grenades—incendiary grenades filled with aluminum powder and metal oxide.
    After the crew had abandoned the tank, Hernandez threw open the ammunition doors to expose the main gun rounds and the ammunition for the coax and .50-caliber machine guns. He cut the fuel lines and turned on the heater. He knew the drill. He had taught the fire evacuation course. He scattered .50-caliber ammunition across the floor of the turret and stuffed a few rounds inside the gun breech. Then he sprayed everything with lubricating oil from the tank’s toolbox.
    The rest of the crew finished loading gear and weapons onto other vehicles. Diaz hauled himself up to the loader’s hatch of Lieutenant Gruneisen’s tank, followed by Diaz’s gunner, Sergeant Couvertier, who took Hernandez’s spot in the gunner’s mount. Private First Class Schafer, Gruneisen’s loader, jumped into the first sergeant’s personnel carrier along with Private First Class Shipley, the driver from the burning tank.
    The order came over the radio to pull out. Colonel Perkins wanted the column back on the move right away. But he didn’t want the tank destroyed; he planned to try to recover it in the next couple of days. He wasn’t aware that the crewmen, following the dictates of their training, believed they were supposed to burn it so that nothing could be recovered by the enemy.
    On top of the stricken tank, Hernandez had on his CVC helmet—his radio helmet—but he had no communications. He was on his own now. He was concerned about hustling back to his tank and getting away from the blast before the thermite grenades set off all the ammo and fuel. He was also waving to get the attention of the drivers of two armored personnel carriers behind him, trying to tell them to get out of the way because he was about to blow the tank. Finally, in frustration, he motioned furiously and showed them the thermite grenades.
    Perkins, meanwhile, was getting irritated by the delay. He had ordered the tank abandoned. What was taking so long? He had his driver pull up to the burning tank so he could find out what was holding everybody up. He saw Hernandez up top, clutching a couple of primed thermite grenades.
    â€œGet off the tank! Now!” Perkins yelled. Hernandez was shocked. No one had ever heard Perkins raise his voice. He was a calm, controlled commander with a dead level demeanor. Now his face was flushed and the veins in his neck were pumping.
    â€œLeave the tank, get your crew, get off—let’s move on!” Perkins yelled again.
    Hernandez took that as an order to blow the tank. He pulled the pin on the first grenade, lifted his fingers off the spoon—the cocked handle—and flipped it into the breech. He popped the second grenade and dropped into down onto the turret floor. The grenades hissed and smoldered for several seconds, giving Hernandez time to clamber off Charlie One Two and hustle back to his own tank, Creeping Death.
    He climbed aboard and saw that his friend Couvertier, the gunner from the burning tank, was now in Hernandez’s post in the gunner’s mount.