Taylor made hand signals to the LCA ahead of them. “All right, boys. Rudder just signaled us. All three companies will land on the east side of the point rather than dividing up. Makes sense. It’d take too long for D Company to round the point and land on the west.”

Clay nodded. The narrow beach would be more crowded, but they’d make do.

“I saw a DUKW go down,” Brady said. “Took a Jerry shell.”

Several men swore. Somewhere along the way, they’d lost one of the supply LCAs too. Now Force A had only nine assault craft, one supply boat, and three DUKWs. That left about two hundred men, with no reinforcements coming.

Clay blew out a sharp breath. Lord, please don’t let me die until after we meet our objectives. We need every man.

The remaining water wasn’t worth scooping, so Clay strapped on the assuring weight of his helmet. Chilly rivulets tickled down his scalp, but he couldn’t get any wetter or colder.

If the cliff facing him were in England, Clay wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Sure it was steep, but at one hundred feet it wouldn’t challenge the Rangers.

However, it was in Nazi-occupied France, and the USS Texas had lifted her fire a half hour before. Any Germans who had survived the bombardment would have had time to recover and man their positions.

Motion at the top of the cliff caught his eye.

“They’ve seen us,” Taylor called. “Prepare to return fire.”

Clay shrugged his rifle strap off his shoulder and hefted the familiar twenty pounds of dark wood and steel. After he flipped off the safety, he poked the rifle barrel over the bow ramp. He didn’t want to kill. He didn’t. But he had to climb that cliff, disable a 155-mm gun, and set up a roadblock to protect the troops on Omaha and Utah.

That sound—the ripping sound of the German Maschinengewehr 42 that Clay had heard at Camp Ritchie and in his recurring dream. Yellow flashes lit up the far left of the cliff, and Clay fired eight rounds in that direction, slow and steady, the recoil of his M1 rifle thumping into his right shoulder. The clip pinged out, empty, and Clay slipped a new clip out of his bandolier and snapped it down into place in his rifle.

To the left, Rudder’s LCA dropped its bow ramp, and men poured out. The rockets fired, and six grapnels shot into the air, trailing ropes and white smoke behind them. The grapnels arced midair—and fell to the beach.

Taylor whipped around and cupped his hand to his mouth. “MacNab! Wait until—”

Two rockets fired at the rear of the craft, deafening Clay.

Taylor waved his arms frantically. “Wait until we’re closer!”

“This is as close as we get, mate,” the coxswain said.