M3C39/40 - Grenade

I swooped down to land beside my friends. I suppose we must have looked like vultures arriving at the scene of death.

I closed my right talon around a grenade. I lifted it experimentally. It was heavy. Not as heavy as a salmon, though. I would be able to fly with it.

Marco and Ax each tried to lift one as well, but they were much smaller birds.

<One is all it will take,> I said. <Or at least one at a time.> I grabbed the grenade firmly and began to fly. Taking off was hard, not impossible, but hard. I scooted across the bloody sand, flapped hard, turned into the breeze, and still barely became airborne.

(...)

Ax spun over on his back, reached, a sharp yank against my talons and a loud “Pop!” The grenade top dropped away.

I glanced back and saw the ring and pin hanging from Ax’s talon. I looked ahead. A tank rolling past Cassie.

I had perhaps three seconds.

I was giddy. Filled with wild joy. I wanted to scream and laugh all at once. Maybe I did because as if from far off I heard Marco say, <She’s crazy, Ax-man. Look at her. She loves this stuff.> I looked toward my target. The hatch was open. The young, cocky soldier was shoulders up and out of the armored safety. He was turning a swivel machine gun toward the side of the road. Aiming at-

(...)

A flash of movement overhead. I was still hawk in my mind and I knew that movement intimately well.

An eagle!

Flying low and slow, dropping …

FWUMP!

A muffled explosion.

The German officer jerked in surprise.

Then, the ammunition inside the tank caught fire.

Pop!Pop!Pop!Pop!

BOOOOM!

Flames shot from the tank hatch. Flames shot from the tank’s gun barrel.

It stopped moving.

Flames erupted from the engine in the rear.

I climbed to my feet. A flash of Cassie with her jaws on Visser Four, holding him as he stretched futilely to reach the Time Matrix.

And then, a second explosion.

BOOOOM!