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.His hair was unkempt, his eyes hollow and overlarge in his pale face, but even when he stood motionless, Chiao noticed, his body seemed vibrant with energy.Suddenly Mao jabbed a finger at the map and turned to look at the other men in the room.“Luting! That’s where we must cross.There is a bridge at Luting.What’s your opinion, Commander Lu?”Chiao shook his head dubiously.“Luting is three hundred and twenty li from here, Commissar Mao — that’s three days’ march over normal terrain.Local people say two regiments are already guarding the bridge.Several brigades of reinforcements must be on their way there too.”“What is the trail like on this side of the river?”“Almost impossible, Commissar Mao.The normal route north is along the eastern bank on the far side.This side, the trail sometimes runs through waist-deep mud at the level of the river; at others it climbs thousands of feet to the tops of the ravines Chiao hesitated.“Also, the bridge at Luting is made only of chains and planks.It stretches across a gorge a hundred yards wide — and the people of Anshunchang say the Kuomintang have machinegun emplacements in blockhouses at either end“Thank you, Commander Lu.” Mao turned his back to the map and faced the room.“We have no choice, comrades.Prince Shih delayed three days at Anshunchang to celebrate his wife’s delivery of a son.The delay cost him everything.We must not delay.We must march on Luting at once.”Mao spoke with a quiet forcefulness, searching the faces of the men before him one by one as though challenging each in turn to disagree: when none dissented he swung around quickly to Chiao again.“Commander Lu, are you recovered sufficiently from your wounds to undertake a hard forced march?”“My shoulder is still stiff, Commissar Mao, but I can march well enough.”“The assault group for the bridge must all be volunteers.Choose the men from the Fourth Regiment of the First Army Group.If you are well enough, why not march with them and take personal command yourself?”The chairman of the Military Commission looked hard at him, his eyes dark and unwavering.“It would be a great honor, Commissar Mao.”“Good.Then waste no time.We must cress within three days!”Without speaking further Mao strode out of the doorway and, turning his back firmly on the savage river, climbed away up the bluff toward his quarters.The set of his broad shoulders anti his quick.sure stride confirmed wordlessly that his mind had been emphatically and irrevocably made up.Watching him go, Chiao realized that under the almost hypnotic power of his gaze, he had accepted the dangerous mission to seize the bridge at Luting without giving the consequences any thought at all.2Thunder crashed through the blackness overhead, drowning momentarily the roar of the Tatu, and a new deluge of rain drenched the slippery boulders to which Liang clung as he edged along the narrow riverside trail.The hundred-foot drop to the river on his right was sheer, with only the outline of an occasional stunted tree jutting from the rock face against the paleness of the foaming water.The storm had turned the path to slime and his feet, shod now with steel-tipped straw sandals, slithered alarmingly at almost every step.Above Liang on his left, a sheer cliff rose perpendicularly, and torrents of rainwater rushing down its gullies buffeted him roughly every few yards as they passed.“The Fourth Regiment has a glorious battle record!” yelled a voice suddenly in the darkness ahead of him.“Our new mission is difficult — but we’re determined to maintain our good name!”“We’ll outdo the First Regiment, which captured Anshunchang,” roared another voice in response.“We’ll capture the Luting bridge in three days!”Liang, encouraged by the reassuring vigor and confidence of the shouts, peered ahead into the rain, searching for a hint of the white towel which each soldier in the Fourth Regiment had been ordered to drape across the back of his pack to make himself more visible.Seeing a patch of paleness begin bobbing rhythmically in the inky blackness, the former cook boy let go of the slippery boulder he was clutching and broke into a run again along the twisting trail.As he ran, he pulled the long peak of his eight-sided cap lower over his eyes to keep out the stinging rain and eased the webbing straps of his backpack and rifle to more comfortable positions on his chest.In the pack he carried a ration bag of five pounds of cold boiled rice issued at Anshunchang, a metal drinking cup, chopsticks, a quilt and two spare pairs of straw sandals.If the three hundred li separating Anshunchang and Luting were to be covered in three days, there would be no time for cooking, the Fourth Regiment’s political commissars had announced in their departure briefings at dawn.In the eighteen hours that had passed since, only two halts had been called, to bolt down a few handfuls of the rice and drink a cup or two of rainwater.“If you hear the Taiping water devils wailing from the river, don’t listen,” yelled another voice which Liang recognized as belonging to the Third Company’s political instructor.“Forget the tragic fate of Shih Ta-kai.We will change history! We are the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army!”“We are the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army!” chanted a chorus of voices, and Liang joined in eagerly as the shouted response was repeated over and over again in time with the jog-trotting pace of the troops.A flash of lightning rent the darkness and for an instant Liang saw most of the men of the Third Company zigzagging upward along the narrow path, running in single file toward a high bluff that overhung the river.The white towels hanging from their packs shimmered in the glare, and among the infantrymen, Liang spotted a mounted officer battling to control a horse that had become terrified by the storm.The lightning also reflected for a fleeting moment on the steel helmets of half a dozen enemy troops crouching behind a sandbagged rampart near the top of the bluff.Before the darkness swallowed them again, Liang saw two or three of them rise up, swinging their arms stiffly above their heads in the familiar bowling action of trained Kuomintang grenade throwers.“Watch out — grenades!”Liang yelled his frantic warning, unslung his rifle, and dived for the cover of a shoulder of rock jutting from the cliff.Because they were closer beneath the overhanging bluff, the company vanguard had not seen the enemy strongpoint in the darkness and they were caught unawares as the grenades exploded among them.Violent orange flashes lit the night and the shouts of the wounded and dying rose above the terrified neighing of a horse and the rattle of machinegun fire that followed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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