Shadows, стр. 1
Shadows
Book Three of Murphy’s Lawless: Watch The Skies
By
William Alan Webb
PUBLISHED BY: Beyond Terra Press
Copyright © 2021 William Alan Webb
All Rights Reserved
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Get the free Four Horsemen prelude story “Shattered Crucible”
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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To Kathy
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Cover Design by Shezaad Sudar
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
About William Alan Webb
Find out what’s coming from CKP!
The Caine Riordan Universe
Excerpt from Book One of the Chimera Company
Excerpt from Book One of the Revelations Cycle
Excerpt from Book One of the Salvage Title Trilogy
Excerpt from Book One of the Singularity War
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Chapter 1
Lieutenant Tyree Cutter figured it wasn’t a coincidence when Colonel Murphy entered the mess hall scant seconds after he finished breakfast. Unlike their previous meetings, where Murphy appeared more friendly than serious, Murphy was all business. The colonel’s reflective scowl meant the moment Cutter dreaded had arrived.
After waking up in a world he barely comprehended, he’d assumed the moment would come when he found out why somebody had gone to so much trouble to save his life. Cutter didn’t kid himself that they wanted him for anything other than his combat experience, so he suspected he knew why Murphy was there, and that the colonel wouldn’t like Cutter’s answer.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Murphy said, sitting across from him.
“Is it, sir?”
Not only didn’t Murphy fall for the bait, downturned corners of his mouth made it clear he didn’t appreciate subordinates laying verbal traps for him. In 1944, Cutter would have cared about a superior officer’s response. Now he didn’t.
“Yes, Lieutenant Cutter, it is both good and morning. And you have just wasted ten seconds of my time. Don’t do it again, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“I doubt very much that you’re sorry, Lieutenant. You certainly don’t sound like it. Nor should you think I’m unaware of what your answer will be when I give you your first mission orders. You plan to say no and that response is unacceptable, so be advised.”
Cutter used his thumb to scrape at his front tooth, a nervous habit he’d picked up early in the fighting after coming over Omaha Beach on D-Day plus five. The hedgerows of the Normandy bocage country made for claustrophobic warfare that only grew worse at night, when a man could only grab sleep in brief snatches.
“May I speak freely, Colonel?”
“Yes, but be quick.”
“If you’ve come to give me a combat assignment, I’ll take it and do my best. But if it’s a combat command assignment, I’m not the man for the job.”
Murphy’s scowl softened into something more akin to an empathetic frown. He clenched and unclenched his left hand several times before he glanced down and realized what he was doing. “That answer is no more acceptable than it was ten seconds ago. You’re willing to fight and perhaps die, but not to order others to do the same thing?”
“That’s the size of it.”
“Do the circumstances matter?”
“No, sir, not really.”
“In France, you fought an enemy that was among the toughest on Earth: well trained, well led, well armed, and, for the most part, highly motivated. The losses your platoon suffered were not your fault, Lieutenant Cutter. Other American units suffered worse than yours.”
“No offense, sir, but it’s hard to suffer worse than ‘wiped out.’”
“And now you have survivor’s guilt, is that it?”
“Something like that, Colonel. I was entrusted with the lives of thirty-seven men who followed me into France on June 11, and, two months later, they were all gone. I assume you want me to repeat that failure with a new bunch of guys, because, otherwise, why are you here?”
“What were you doing when you were rescued?”
“We’ve already discussed this, sir.”
“Discuss it again.”
Cutter shrugged. Why not? “Pre-dawn on August 7, we were dug into a little hill east of the French town of Mortain, right in the path of a German counterattack. My platoon was down to twelve men at that point, one squad, and we were supposed to pull back later that day to absorb replacements.
“The morning was warm, and there was the usual mist hanging low over the countryside. We heard German tanks coming, lots of ’em, down this lane that ran straight below our position. I radioed company HQ, and they told us to hold as long as we could and then pull back.
“We didn’t have a bazooka or any heavy weapons, but we’d captured a German panzerschreck with some ammo, so I ordered two men to get it and cover the road. The first tank that came into view was a Panther. The man with the panzerschreck asked permission to open fire at forty yards, but I told him to wait until the range was down to