by James Rouch
That he couldn’t argue with what she said made him angry.
‘I don’t give a fuck about your dangerous urges to destroy everything about you, but don’t do bloody stupid things that can drop the rest of the squad right in it, including me. If the commies have managed to push elements past that minefield they could be close enough to have heard that demonstration of mindless venom.’
His words were undercut by a ripple of blended cannon fire and secondary explosions. Though on that point his mind was put at rest, he still felt the rage burning inside him.
‘Get in the truck.’ If he couldn’t take it out on her, perhaps he could take it out on the enemy.
They needed a backup in case the fuel-air bomb didn’t function. He’d already fused several bar mines, and now he laid them on the bridge, just over the brow where an approaching vehicle wouldn’t see them until it was too late. Especially if they were closed down and racing to make up lost time.
But it wasn’t very likely they’d charge onto so obvious an ambush site without checking it first. There were times, though, when the obvious could be the hardest to deal with. The Reds wouldn’t be able to dispose of the bar mines by gunfire for fear of damage to the bridge, and removal by hand meant more delay. Even then he’d chosen mines with a variety of anti-handling mechanisms whose assorted difficulties would tax the ingenuity of the most experienced assault engineers.
The last in place, he ushered the pioneers on board and climbed into the high-set driver’s seat. ‘Right. We’re ready to start killing again.’
Looking straight ahead, Andrea’s lips hardly moved. ‘I did not know we had ever stopped.’
As the Scammel moved off, its tailboard clipped the brickwork and sent another of the coping stones end over end into the water.
With the truck parked just beyond the crest of the hill, they gathered about Hyde as he lifted the safety cover over the firing switch. His thumb was actually brushing the short slim stick of bright metal when they heard the approaching motor.
‘Say, someone has their foot hard down.’ Ripper screwed up his eyes to be first to see the lead element of the Russian column. ‘Hell, that ain’t no…’
‘Oh God. No, no!’ Hyde screamed at the top of his voice, but the effort was wasted. They were too far away.
The luck that had brought the bus around the minefield on its wildly circuitous journey had finally run out, and brought it to the bridge. There was no attempt to check its speed as it started across.
A massive explosion erupted beneath the driver’s position. The front of the vehicle burst apart, propelled outward by a huge bubble of flame. Aluminium panels, seats and showers of glass fountained high in the air. A legless body soared in a slow cart wheeling arc to be lost in the river.
Its impetus carried the shattered bus onward and a second bar mine was triggered by the impact of the tangled metal. This blast hurled the vehicle sideways, to slew in a mass of sparks into and almost through the parapet.
Through his field glasses Hyde could see that half the length of the interior was piled with bodies, some moving feebly. The rear window had been forced out by the blast and lay in the road unbroken, complete even to its rubber and chrome strip surround.
Survivors began to climb from the wreck, some handing out blood-covered children to those who had been first to exit.
‘Someone get the dressing pack from the cab.’ Hyde put down the control box. ‘Come on, we can’t leave the poor buggers.’
‘No, we haven’t the time. They will slow us.’
‘Piss off.’ Hyde tore Andrea’s fingers from their grip on his arm. ‘They’re your bloody people. Now get that first-aid kit…’
As she grudgingly obeyed, he looked again at the distant scene. Panic appeared to have set in among the injured civilians; some tried to claw their way back into the bus, others ran in frantic circles. One of them collapsed and lay still, and then another and another.
‘What…?’ Panning the ground with binoculars he saw the cause. ‘The Reds are through the minefield; they’re shooting the poor bastards.’
From the partial concealment of a bend in the road, where it emerged from the woods, a lavishly camouflaged, squat-hulled tracked APC was hosing long bursts of machine-gun fire at the refugees.
Trapped on the bridge, their escape blocked by the hulk of their earlier transport, the women and children flopped to the ground. Even when the last was down the firing continued, sending hundreds of rounds into the heaped bodies until there was no more movement.
‘No! They haven’t seen us.’ Barking at Ripper, who was traversing the Browning, Hyde choked down his own urge to retaliate, but not his revulsion at what they’d witnessed. He checked his watch. They had still a few minutes to spare before they’d have to start back. So they’d be cutting it fine, so be it. He wanted to pay those shits back tenfold.
The reconnaissance vehicle edged cautiously forward. Very slowly and hesitantly the turret roof hatch opened and its commander appeared. He seemed unwilling to expose himself to danger and stayed so low that his nose appeared to rest on the turret top. The hatch made an angled roof over his head.
Traversing slightly, the turret brought its main armament to bear on the bridge, but it was not with its 73mm gun that it opened fire, but with the anti-tank missile mounted above it. The commander ducked back hurriedly only a second before the launch.
Riding a bright tail of flame, a threshing coil of fine wire unreeling behind it, the chunky broad-finned rocket soared along the road. Twice it veered abruptly to correct its trajectory.
Powerless to interfere, Hyde watched and recognized the lack of training or experience of the operator controlling the flight. A good man would have kept the transit time shorter by manipulating the controls more smoothly. The fact that he was going for a stationary target at short range should have made it a textbook exercise. He was not surprised when at the end of the missile’s erratic course its impact was several meters short of the bus.
Lashed by the hail of fragments, the grotesquely stacked bodies leaped into macabre animation as the powerful warhead pounded a hole through the road deck.
Reappearing, the commander surveyed the damage. As the smoke drifted to give him a clear view, the vehicle’s co-axial weapon again sent ripples of tracer at the bridge. A crew member climbed from the loader’s hatch and began to reload the launch rail.
‘A perfect target.’ Andrea sighted for her grenade thrower, then turned and snarled at the sergeant as he punched the weapon toward the earth. ‘Why?’
‘Because, you stupid cow, the major may love you but I don’t. With me you get away with nothing. You try something like that again and I promise I’ll see that you go in the cage with all the other rubbish, the other East German border guards. Understand?’
His fist stinging from the hard contact with the barrel, Hyde was forcing himself to bide his time. From what he had seen of the overcautious, even timid, performance by the Russian advance guard he concluded they were either from a freshly formed unit, or an old one so leavened by replacement drafts as to be little better. And if he was right in that, then the losses they sustained in their recent encounter with Voke’s minefield would also be having a marked restraining effect on them.
But still it took an effort to hold back. He again had the control box in his hand. He longed to throw the switch, but after what they’d done simply blocking their route was not enough. Not by a long way.
That the bus had driven onto mines he’d laid he would have to live with for the rest of his life, but he’d never intended that as the outcome. The communists’ act of shooting down those wounded women and children had been cold-bloodedly deliberate. It was not something he would shrug aside as a fortune of war.
‘Better keep our heads down. They’ll start a bit of probing in a minute.’
‘I’m already underground, Sarge. I’ll send you a postcard with a kangaroo on it.’ Using an entrenching tool with more energy than was usual for him, B
urke had hollowed a scrap at the roadside. Sparks flew from the tip of the entrenching tool as it struck flint below the topsoil. ‘I hope they don’t use mortars. A couple of tree bursts and we’re all fucked.’
Ripper had to duck as heavy machine-gun fire stitched a path across the crest of the road. A ricochet zipped past, clipping the ring mount and sending splinters of fine lead particles into his hand. Blood welled instantly from the multiple flesh wounds.
‘Aw shit.’ Wiping the back of his hand on his jacket, Ripper examined the mass of almost invisible punctures. ‘I’m real cheesed off with using eyebrow pluckers. Last one like this was in my face and I was shaving out bits of metal for a week.’
He lowered himself into the cab and released the brakes, waiting for the Scammel to roll a little way before reapplying them. ‘Now the only thing they’re gonna see of me is the lead I’m throwing.’
Its tracks fanning spray and mud, a T84 rocked to a halt beside the APC. Hyde could make out the slab features of an officer who appeared immediately to start shouting at the APCs reluctant commander. The tank man unholstered a pistol and waved it wildly.
‘He’s giving the poor bugger hell, and I bet it’s not for killing civvies either.’
Perhaps it was his imagination, but Hyde thought he saw the commander’s face pale as he reluctantly climbed out and was clearly ordered to stand in full view on the tank’s engine deck.
‘Wouldn’t Clarence enjoy a target like that.’ Hyde could imagine the quick precision with which their sniper would have eliminated both men. He would hardly have needed to move to shift the graticle from his first victim to his second.
‘If he could be patient he would only have needed to fire once.’ With her sharp eyes Andrea could see almost as clearly what was happening as the NCO with his aided vision. ‘Watch for a moment and you will see what I mean.’
The tank man appeared to be working himself to a frenzy, making extravagant gestures with the pistol. Suddenly the APCs commander crumpled onto the deck of his machine.
‘Oh jeez, will you look at that.’ Ripper heard the faint report of the shot. ‘What the hell can we expect from them if they do that to their own?’
TWELVE
‘The Reds can jam us for all they’re worth, use any electronic countermeasures that take their fancy. It won’t make the slightest difference. We’ll still hack them down as fast as they appear.’
Revell tried not to appear so, but he was sceptical of the claims made by the lieutenant in charge of the Rapier battery.
‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ From a corner of the main barn, Lieutenant Sutton pointed out the dispositions of his men and equipment. ‘I hate to disappoint you but I should tell you we don’t have a battery here, nothing like it, just part of two detachments.
‘Actually just two launchers, but God knows how many reloads. But we also scrounged a towed Vulcan system from that marvellous Aladdin’s cave down there. That’s over by those old hayricks. One of the launchers is by the tractor shed and the other at the edge of that little copse higher up the hill.’
‘Wouldn’t you be better throwing in your lot with us? ‘Very kind of you, Major, but no thanks.’ Sutton waved to one of his men who was leaving his sandbagged post. ‘I say, where are you…’ The man waved a shovel.
‘Oh, yes, all right. Well, have a good one.’ Again Sutton turned his attention back to Revell. ‘As you can see, we’re very well dispersed and the component parts of a towed Rapier system really do make a jolly small target when they’re spread about. Plus of course we’ve dug in the generators and roofed their little houses over with turf to reduce their IR signature to almost zero. Would have been nice of course to have had some of those lovely armoured mobile versions instead. Then we could have flitted about and confused the commies even more, but what we’ve got will do.’
‘How will you manage with our radar blinded, though?’ Revell was surprised by, could even admire the skill with which the launchers and their ancillary equipment had been blended into the countryside, but for days his men had been hit by Soviet air strikes when jamming had rendered useless the most sophisticated air-defence systems.
‘You infantry chaps are all the same – got this sort of blind faith in technology, and when you find out it’s not working for some reason you dash about like chickens with your heads off. No offence, of course.’
The slightly sheepish grin on Revell’s face was sufficient unarticulated evidence of the truth of that.
‘If they persist in jamming, then we’ll simply wait until we can actually see them. Jets right down on the deck or choppers actually touching down, it’s all the same. Boom, instant wreckage. Mind you, if they come at us mob-handed it might present the odd problem.’
‘What do you call mob-handed?’ He didn’t want to, but Revell had to ask the question.
Lieutenant Sutton considered for a moment. ‘Well,’ – he paused again -’when we were up near Hanover, with the same number of launchers, we did take out five of those damned noisy helicopters inside three minutes. We can certainly engage and make problems for that number. But I tell you what, I have an absolute maniac of a gun-layer on the Vulcan who’d make sure that if a chopper did touch down nothing would get out of it alive. Does that set your mind at rest in any way?’
Overwhelmed by the RAF officer’s aura of self-confidence, Revel could think of no answer. ‘Have you got land lines to the castle?’
‘No, but then they’d hardly survive your dropping a few thousand tons of brickwork on them, would they? If you get lonely you’ll just have to wave.’
The lieutenant’s sense of humour was beginning to wear somewhat thin on Revell, but he realized the young officer might be using it as cover for nerves. ‘You can take care of your own close-in defence?’
‘I’ve forty men altogether. Working the launchers with minimal crews I can put most of them into my perimeter defences, and of course I’ve got the Vulcan. My problem has been persuading my chaps that not all of them can have GP machine guns. They all came back from that dump toting M60s and draped with more ammo belts than an army of Mexican bandits.’
Across the valley the castle still stood intact. It looked as though it had been there forever and as if it would continue to be, as if the very landscape had been designed around it. But there was nothing in the Zone that could be regarded as permanent, not even the landscape itself.
‘I have to get back. Good luck.’ Revell held out his hand.
Sutton hesitated a second, then accepted it. ‘You too, but it’s the Russians I feel sorry for. You wouldn’t believe the number of rounds we’ve got for the Vulcan.’
The top of the hill had been raked by cannon and machine-gun fire that had pulverized the road and slashed the pines to ribbons. There had been no need for Sergeant Hyde to insist on fire discipline. It would have been instant death for any of them to raise their heads and attempt a puny retaliation.
The probing fire slackened, and then ceased. Cautiously Hyde looked out, the act made less dangerous by the masses of piled bark and cones. ‘Here they come.’
A dismounted squad of infantry were moving toward the bridge. They crouched low, automatics levelled. Behind them came a pair of tracked infantry carriers. Half out of the open rear-deck hatches stood more soldiers, tightly clasping rifles and grenade launchers.
‘I should think it will be…’ Hyde gauged distances, ‘right about now.’
The second armoured personnel carrier was suddenly hidden by a shower of white sparks. Fire belched from the open hatches and its passengers were enveloped by scorching pillars of vivid flame. Hidden from sight within the pall of grey smoke, the APC shuddered off the road into the trees, and then simply dissolved in a tremendous explosion as its ammunition ignited.
Surging forward, the T84 opened up on the mill. A billowing mass of white dust marked the violence of the first impact. Slowly, a section of the building’s roof sagged and tiles slid from their place to shatter on the road and bounce fr
om the roof of the bus. A second shell followed but passed clean through the structure without exploding.
Machine guns and light cannon lashed out at the mistaken target. Bullets raked the walls and the few windows. Glass shattered and lengths of scaffolding were wrenched away and thrown down to land in a wild tangle.
Another mine was triggered, and this time it was the squad of infantry who took the force of it, every man being mown down by the inescapable blast from a claymore.
Trying to press on, the Russians brought on their own destruction. A fragmented steel scythe swept away another squad.
The T84 stopped and its commander waved on more APCs. The mines concealed among the trees silently ticked off the numbers, and then the verges were lit with a series of yellow stabs of flame.
Pierced by a jet of molten metal, another tracked carrier began to burn, its fuel tank’s contents boiled by the stream of plasma. Hatches flew open, but by the pressure of furnace-hot gasses, not by human hand.
With a track blown off and its turret torn away, an APC swerved into another alongside, crushing its hull and riding onto it.
Surviving crew leaped clear and made for the supposed safety of the trees. The first to reach them found no safety there. Shotgun mines cut them down and left those who had been lucky enough to escape that fate, as well, cowering in confusion in the middle of the road.
Another tank that moved forward shuddered under an impact against its turret rear, but boxes of retroactive armour neutralized the missile warhead’s power and it kept going. It moved in alongside the first T84 and both began to pound the far bank of the river.
‘Come on, you bastards, make a try for the bridge.’ Hyde had forgotten time. Finger poised over the activating switch, he waited for an attempt to force a passage past the mill. ‘They want that bridge.’ He held up his hand and made a small gap between thumb and finger. ‘I want them to be that close to thinking they’ve got it.’