by James Rouch
Blinking to try and see through the tears that filled his vision, he could only distinguish the blurred wavering outline of the helmeted Russian who sprang to his feet, discarding a scrawny chicken and grabbing for a rifle.
Another of the group was standing, moving across his dimly-seen target, and Libby held his fire as he recognised a female form. The Russian had the rifle, was aiming, and then pitched forward on to his face as Revell buried a bayonet in his back.
The other who died, his neck broken by the crashing impact of the butt of Dooley’s M60, had hardly begun to get to his feet, and the half-empty bottle of vodka he clutched was smashed as he fell.
Herded into a corner by Cline, the East German black-marketeers were a strange assortment of types, and their reactions to their suddenly changed situation were as diverse.
Dooley searched them. The shabbily-dressed old man proved to be only half the width the bulk of his heavy overcoat suggested, once he had been relieved of the twenty or more pounds of cooked sausage he had crammed into various pockets. From the woman, Dooley received a stinging slap across the face when he twice went over her matronly bust. In contrast to the senior citizen her mood was one of annoyance, with no trace of fear.
It was the last of the trio Libby found most interesting. He was young, still in his teens, and well dressed in a flashy way. A smell of cologne wafted from him and his suntanned fingers showed tell-tale white bands, where rings he’d thought it prudent to leave behind had left their mark.
Like the woman, he didn’t appear scared, but there was something in his manner, a suggestion of nervousness. For a second time Libby noticed the dance he directed towards a distant door.
The others were busy, and leaving Ripper to guard the trio, Libby crossed quietly to the door. Easing it open, ahead of him he saw a long passageway, with several rooms leading off to either side. The first had glass walls, and he could make out drawing-boards and rows of dusty shelves. With the others came more risk, and he listened carefully at each before looking inside.
Reaching the last door he paused, and put his ear to the peeling paint. He knew what it was he could hear, knew, and at one and the same time wanted to burst in and put a stop to it, and stay where he was, listening. In a moment one of the others would follow him. Every cell in his body was pounding as he eased down the door handle and gently pushed it open.
Eyes clenched in straining concentration, the Russian didn’t see him. The girl bent over the table did. Between grimaces as the Russian thrust into her backside, she gave a half-smile, that was wiped instantly from her face as she recognised the NATO uniform.
Her scream alerted the Russian, but he only had time to open his eyes before Libby was on him. A fist swung savagely hard broke his nose and spattered blood on to the girl’s rump even as his fast-shrinking erection was withdrawn. A second even harder blow burst his right eyeball from his head.
One hand trying to haul up the hampering pants about his knees, the other attempting to palm the squashed mass back into its socket, the Russian sergeant reeled, tripped and fell against the side of a battered filing cabinet, nearly severing his left ear on its razor-sharp edge.
Using his boots and the butt of his rifle, Libby laid into the man as he tried to squirm into a corner and protect himself by drawing up his knees and tucking his shattered face into a foetal position.
Everything that had been inside him for so long poured out of Private Libby. All the frustration and hate was unleashed in a frantic torrent of violent rage that went on and on. He heard bones break, saw spongy brain matter exposed as the skull was crushed, felt firm flesh give like latex foam beneath the crashing fury of his attack.
Wild hysterical screaming from the girl as her half-naked body was splattered with the blood fast smothering the room made a hellish background symphony for the ugly noises of the butchery. Libby only stopped when he had no further strength to inflict damage on the long-dead Russian.
Standing over the sprawled body he could see no unmarked inch of flesh, no recognisable feature on the face, or where the face had been. Turning to the girl Libby realised she had stopped screaming, and now stood whimpering, clutching ineffectually at herself as she involuntarily urinated in sheer terror.
‘I won’t do it to you, I won’t’
She didn’t understand his words. Libby wanted to tell her why he had done it, explain. Now she fell to her knees, clenched her wet hands together and with sobs punctuating every word, began to beg.
Oblivious to the foul smells in the room, Libby reached out and gently pulled her to her feet. The action came naturally. He put down his rifle and took out his pistol. He set the safety to ‘off’, chambered a round, and pressed the heavy, warm metal into the girl’s hand.
Her body still heaved with sobs as Libby drew her to him, held her close and cradled her head on his shoulder. Feeling her move against him he closed his eyes. She was bringing up her hand, he felt the tip of the barrel brush past his ear, and then the world burst apart with a shattering roar.
SIX
The office was painted with blood. It covered the floor and ceiling, was daubed on every wall and smeared over the few pieces of furniture.
Libby was supporting the limp body of a girl. Half of her head had been blown away and an automatic pistol, held by a crooked ringer in the trigger guard, dangled at her side.
Revell crossed the room and took the weapon from her nerveless grasp as Libby let her slide to the floor, where she flopped half on to her side, exposing the gaping hole made by the heavy bullet’s exit.
‘There isn’t the time now, but I’ll want an explanation later.’
‘You can have whatever you bloody want.’ Absently, Libby brushed tufts of matted hair from his jacket front. The action made no discernible difference to his appearance, smothered as he was in the evidence of the violence.
‘We’ve got visitors.’ Clarence didn’t step into the room, delivering the information from several paces outside the door. ‘A couple of Russian field cars, packed with Commandants Service troops.’
‘They must be after this crowd.’ Indicating the flayed Soviet NCO, Revell rubbed grime from a cracked pane and looked out at the pair of open-topped vehicles. They were still the best part of a quarter mile off, picking their way carefully through the broken masonry and debris on the road. ‘Everyone into the truck.’
As Dooley kicked the last of the vegetables from the back of the Gaz, and set up the M60, he found a moment to glance admiringly at the hefty buttocks of the East German woman as she pedalled furiously away from the foundry, then Burke crunched the truck into gear and it took all of his concentration to hang on.
Boris sat between Revell and the driver, his state of mind betrayed by the sweat beading his face, and his nervous compulsive clutching of the radio pack in his lap, so hard that his knuckles whitened.
‘Not too fast. I want them to think we’re going to stop.’ Revell had clipped a fresh magazine to his assault shotgun, and now cradled it with the muzzle only a fraction from the open passenger window.
The cars had stopped, blocking the road, and several of their passengers had dismounted and now stood about waiting for the truck. Every one of them was heavily armed, and each held his automatic weapon ready for instant use.
A dwarfish Russian captain stepped forward and held up his hand, a slung machine pistol bumping against his barrel chest. His expression of thuggish arrogance was wiped from his face, at the same second as his confident stance gave way to a hurried backing movement.
The collision hardly caused any check to the accelerating six-wheeler’s speed. As the heavy duty front off-side tyre mounted and caved in the chest of the captain, one of the sturdily built field cars was bulldozed away and the other flipped on to its side to trap the three men still in it.
White fire spread among the Russians who had leapt aside in time, as Revell’s incendiary rounds sprayed phosphorous and hideous death. To its effect was added the massed fire from the men in
the back, and then as they passed, short precise bursts from Dooley on the machine gun.
Wreathed in acrid smoke, the site of the would-be roadblock presented a horrific spectacle, with several of the military police reeling in circles, every inch of their bodies being consumed by the unquenchable flames.
Two or three ill-aimed bursts were sent after the Gaz, but the closest passed safely overhead, and only a single bullet actually scored a hit, grazing past the cab to smash a rear-view mirror.
‘Turn coming up, Major. Which way?’ Burke crunched down through the gears as he slowed the elderly truck. ‘Christ this thing is knackered. Can we stop and swap it for something else?’
Having at last managed to unwind the twists of wire securing the broken catch of the roof hatch, Revell stood on the seat and looked out. The whole of the horizon to one side was a curtain of variously coloured smoke, occasionally lightened by an ascending fireball as fuel or ammunition cargo ignited in the marshalling yard.
‘Keep the pall on your right, and nurse this clunker as best you can.’ Dropping back into his seat, Revell didn’t bother to re-secure the hatch, so that it clattered at every bump in the road. ‘Getting a replacement might not be all that easy.’
‘If the smoke is on our right,’ Boris dabbed at his face with his already perspiration-dampened sleeve, ‘then we are going north. The Zone, and our own lines are to the west. That is the way we must go.’
‘No.’ Using his last reloads, Revell replenished the 12-gauge’s half-emptied magazine. ‘It won’t take the Ruskies back there long to figure just what’s been going down. Soon as they put two and two together and come up with the conclusion that it’s us, and not some panicking black-marketeers who did them the damage, they are going to come after us with a vengeance. They’ll be expecting us to head west, so we’ll try to motor north for a while, until we’re clear of the action, then we’ll head for the Zone using minor roads.’
‘Problem up ahead.’ There was no civilian traffic moving on the roads, but Burke had been forced to reduce speed several times while he negotiated partial roadblocks unintentionally formed by East German drivers who had hurriedly abandoned their vehicles at the commencement of the raid, and had not yet summoned up the courage to return to their charges. Several large articulated trucks had simply been left where they had happened to brake to a stop, with their long semi-trailers sprawled across two-thirds of the width of the wide road.
‘Ease back on the gas. We don’t want to get tangled up with them.’ The line of twenty or more well-spaced trucks had also been seen by Revell, but what he had noticed almost as quickly, and had given him much more cause for concern, was the half dozen motorcyclists escorting it. Not content to hold their station, the riders were flashing back and forth along the slow-moving file, constantly waving and signalling to the crews, apparently urging them to greater speed.
‘If those wagons are in the same state as this one, it’ll take more than a few shouts to get them to roll any faster. Shit, one of the cocky sods is taking an interest in us. Let’s hope he can count, and realises we’re not one of his.’
The motorcycle roared past, executed a tight skidding turn behind them, and suddenly appeared alongside the driver’s window. Its rider gesticulated wildly, and shouted at the top of his voice, but was barely audible above the bellow of the Gaz’s holed exhaust.
‘He wants us to catch up with the others. He thinks we are with them.’ Boris gave the translation out of sheer habit, he was beyond reasoned thought as he watched the two-wheeler dart ahead, and saw the machine pistol slung behind the rider’s back. ‘I feel sick.’
‘Then do it in your damned helmet. Not over me.’ From the floor Revell retrieved one of the helmets they had pushed beneath the seat as the escort had drawn up alongside, checked it was the Russian’s own, and pushed it at him. ‘And don’t do it on the radio either.’
Every few moments the motorcyclist would glance back at them, twice making a beckoning gesture.
‘You better do as he says. Just keep as much distance as you can between their tail-end Charlie and us, without giving them reason to take an interest in us again.’
‘What happens if they turn east, or stop for a brew?’ Burke was trying to judge the distance just nicely, close enough to the convoy to keep the escort happy, but not so close that they’d be under constant scrutiny.
‘If and when, we’ll play it by ear.’ Revell looked out of the side window, and pretended not to hear the sounds of their Russian emptying the contents of his stomach.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’ Near-bending the gear lever in his effort to shift to a lower ratio, Burke eventually had to settle for the jerking snatch of dropping two, as the convoy slowed to a crawl ‘They’re turning off. Oh bloody Christ, look where we’re going.’
There was no chance to make a break. The first five trucks had already turned into the camp, and half the escort had dismounted to direct the rest of the vehicles off the road. A heavily armed group of military police stood by a BRDM scout car beside the gates and were taking a bored interest.
Boris was sick again, as their turn came to drive into the huge sprawling vehicle park beside the serried ranks of bleak barrack huts, but had nothing left to bring up, and could produce only ugly retching noises and a little spittle.
The guardhouse beside the entrance was a single-storey concrete structure that doubled as a pillbox. A light flak-gun stood on its roof, surrounded by a low rampart of sandbags. Once past it Burke had no choice but to tag behind the last in line of the convoy. The whole place swarmed with Russians, and a large concrete building, unremarkable save for its extreme ugliness, indicated that the place was a headquarters of some sort.
‘Flak-outfit.’ As they motored past rank after rank of soft-skinned transports, further back, outside a large hanger-like shed, Revell noticed two tracked missile systems receiving attention from fitters. ‘No, keep going.’
Burke didn’t need any urging. Instead of parking in line alongside the other trucks, he kept straight on. ‘Have you seen the fence around this place? There’s no way we can crash through in this crate, all we’ll do is pull up a few posts, wrap ourselves in barbed wire and make a hell of a lot of enemies.’
‘We’ve got those already. Steer for that building at the end of the next block. The one with the green roof, standing a bit on its own.’
Bringing the truck to rest beside a huge radio van that looked as if it was either in the process of being built from spare parts, or itself being cannibalised for spares, Burke had a twenty-second fight with the gears to find neutral, and eventually gave up and turned off the engine, keeping his foot on the clutch until the last shuddering over-run had ceased.
‘Someone is coming to tell us off for parking in the wrong place.’ The clipboard waving junior sergeant was shouting at the top of his voice, and going red with the effort of doing that at the same time as jogging towards them.
Waiting until the man was only a couple of yards from the cab, Revell hurled the contents of Boris’s helmet from the window. A little spattered back inside, but most of it went over the clipboard, and the junior sergeant’s boots.
For a long moment the insulted individual just stared, then whirled on his heels and ran back the way he had come.
‘He’s gone to fetch us trouble.’
‘At least it’s bought us time. Get Boris out, I’ll collect the others.’ Time; they needed more than time. Now a miracle would have been useful. Revell recalled his own words to Sergeant Hyde, earlier in the day, about thinking on their feet. Well, look where it had got them, not to safety, but right into the heart of an enemy camp. It was too late now, but maybe Hyde had a point, about the need to find the time for at least a degree of planning. But that wasn’t Revell’s way, oh no, he just went charging on… well the charging was about to end.
Any moment now the Russians would wake up to what was happening in their midst, and then the end would be swift and bloody. He would have to make a point of
staying close to Andrea, save a bullet or a grenade for her. She would not do it for herself, not while there was still a chance of one Russian presenting himself as a target.
‘Looks like we jumped out of the frying pan and locked ourselves in the oven, Major.’ Hyde was already ushering the others from the back of the Gaz. He indicated Boris, who, in a state of collapse, was having to be supported by Ripper and Burke. ‘What’s the matter with him, has he been hit?’
‘Just scared silly.’
‘Ain’t we all.’ Ripper’s helmet was knocked back, to reveal his spotty forehead. ‘Reckon you’ve found a cure for my acne, Major. Pretty soon some Ruskie is gonna come along and blow my head off.’
‘There’s a squad of heavies coming.’ First to spot the approaching Russians, Clarence looked about for a useful place of concealment.
Hyde had already found one, an empty vehicle workshop… well, almost empty. When the others squeezed through the narrow opening between the tall sliding doors, they also had to step over the corpse of a fitter whose head lay at an unnatural angle to his spread-eagled body.
‘What a beauty, what a bloody beauty.’ Going up to the big BTR-60 armoured personnel carrier that was the only vehicle in the place, Burke ran his hands over the meticulously applied three-colour camouflage finish, then walked round it, touching each of the eight brand new tyres in turn and enthusing about its lavish equipment. He completed his tour of the massive battle-taxi. ‘Have you ever seen one of these brutes in this condition, ever seen any Ruskie or Warsaw Pact transport in this condition?’
‘It’d make short work of the fence.’ Libby was more practical in his appraisal of the eight-wheeler.
‘The search seems to have moved away,’ Clarence made his report from the door.
‘They will be back.’