by James Rouch
There seemed no reason for the destruction, the town had not lain in the path of any major axis of the first Soviet advances, no river or road or railway gave the place strategic or even tactical importance. Then as they drove out on the far side, they understood, and could only wonder at the courage, and the fate of the atomic demolition troops who had returned to the town after the first disorganised retreats and set the device that had inflicted such a blow on the Warsaw Pact armies.
In street after street, or where the streets had been, sat the rusting fire-ravaged hulks of Soviet missile launchers, more than they could count. Tracked launch and reload vehicles with their attendant mass of support equipment, even mobile radar units had been caught and now rested on their axles or padless tracks.
It was as the APC cleared the desolation of Liebenburg that they saw the feather-like contrails, and were warned in time to change course.
Revell saw them first, and knew they weren’t those of aircraft. The lines of vapour made three upright dashes in the clear sky, and each was hooked at its top, marking the apogee of each bombardment rocket’s trajectory. He ordered their driver to pull over, and with the engines switched off, they waited.
Impact must have been all of five miles away, but the missile’s conventional warheads delivered a crashing punch. Bright crescents flared over the hills, followed by the distinctive frosty-white haloes of blast waves. A short count later there came the crack and rolling boom of each explosion, one fast upon another.
‘NATO Command doesn’t drop Pershings on road repair gangs.’ From the rear hatch Libby watched the mushrooms of smoke soar upwards. Almost immediately they were chased by other darker clouds that could only come from burning fuel and ammunition. ‘Those three babies have stopped us from running into a Ruskie armoured regiment or battle group.’
He dropped back down to let Boris and Cline take his place. The pair kept jostling each other for most room and the best position. The major had already taken a heading on the explosions, and was consulting his map.
‘There’s a decent route through here, Major.’ With his little finger Libby traced a path into the Harz nature park area. ‘Means striking south for a while, but we’ll avoid whatever’s ahead, and north is no alternative, that’ll only take us towards the Hanover salient. Things are still pretty hot up there, it’d be easy to drive into trouble.’
‘It couldn’t be that you have an interest in going south, could it?’ Hyde had overheard the suggestion. ‘Wouldn’t be because you know there’s a few refugees that way, would it?’
Libby didn’t respond, just watched the officer, intensely, as though by concentration of sheer willpower he could hope to influence his thinking. He hung on his words as he spoke.
‘Whatever, it makes sense. We turn south.’
Relief surged through Libby, though he didn’t understand himself why the decision was so important to him. It was a feeling he had; no, not even as concrete a concept as that, it was just something inside him, telling him to go there.
At the sound of the engine starting, as they began to move and he returned to the turret, for the first time in two years he felt his spirits lifting, a heady almost drunken feeling. There was no way he could tell, nothing to go on, but he felt now he was drawing nearer to Helga. The sickeningly bumpy vehicle that he had come in two days to hate now seemed the sweetest, smoothest conveyance ever made. Taking him the way he wanted to go, he would not have complained, would hardly have noticed, if it’d been fitted with square wheels.
Now they were passing through an area that had repeatedly seen heavy fighting. No field was without its quota of abandoned Leopard, Chieftain, M60 or T84 tanks. Most had burned, and those that hadn’t the engineers had destroyed.
From the first day this had been an unrelenting war of attrition, and as the fortunes of battle swept back and forth neither side had allowed the other to capture its vehicles, or recapture its own. If a. tank was knocked out, then the special squads of either side raced to be first to reach it. What could not be immediately towed to the rear for repair was blasted apart. Battle damage or breakdown, it made no difference, all that mattered was that nothing salvable should be allowed to fall into enemy hands.
As the war had progressed the engineers of both sides had grown highly proficient, as the extravagantly twisted metal-work of the hulks testified.
And it wasn’t only tanks that littered the fields and roadsides. For each knocked-out tank, three or four armoured personnel carriers and twenty or more soft-skin vehicles fell victim to close range attack, or missile or gun bombardment, or to the fighter-bomber and helicopter gunships.
In places where no one had bothered, or had time to deal with route clearance, long sections of highway were blocked by burned-out or overturned transport of every description.
There were other indications also, of how fast and fluid the battles had been, and how the sites had not been visited since. Everywhere there were rag-garbed skeletons, in jeeps, draped from tank turrets, laid about guns and collapsed in the bottom of shallow slit-trenches. Only a few of the dead had found even the temporary haven of a roadside grave, and by one unnatural hummock lay several spade-clutching corpses in the last stages of decomposition. On the modern battlefield it was dangerous, often lethal, to delay even long enough to bury a fallen comrade.
After a third nerve-racking halt to take on water for the overheating engine, Burke watched the temperature gauge needle climbing even more rapidly than before.
‘If you don’t let me stop, Major, and have a look for the trouble, then we are going to lose an engine. It’s rough now, and burning oil, another ten miles and either something is going to melt or we’re all going to fry. I’ve got the heater turned up full to circulate the water as much as possible, and I don’t know about you, but I’m already to tuck up me toes with heat prostration.’
‘OK. I got a glimpse of a place from the top of that last hill. Should be around here somewhere.’ Revell scanned the seemingly never-ending vista of conifers to either side. ‘We’ll pull in and have a look at the trouble.’
‘We might be lucky if we can do that.’ Easing back on the speed, Burke watched the needle inexorably rising into the red. ‘I’ve had a look inside a few Commie engine compartments. They weren’t ever designed with maintenance in mind. I thought the early Chieftains were pigs to work on until I saw the guts of a T72. This bugger has two engines, and that ain’t going to make it no easier.’
They were almost past the small petrol station before they saw it, and Burke had to slam on the brakes and turn tightly to pull on to its forecourt. The doors to an advertisement-plastered corrugated iron workshop were open, and Burke drove straight in, parking the APC over an inspection pit.
‘Where are you off to?’
Revel had spotted Dooley’s unsuccessful attempt to make a hurried and quiet exit, something that his bulk and nature made nearly impossible.
‘Thought I’d check the place over, Major, make sure there were no Ruskies around.’
‘More likely to see if there was anything worth pocketing.’ Enjoying the welcome sensation of stretching, after the long hours of confinement in the uncomfortable command seat, Revell gazed about the shed. From the look of the place it appeared unlikely that Dooley could find anything of value, even a large compartmented rack that must previously have held thousands of nuts, bolts and washers had been emptied, and not a single tool or grease gun was left on any of the illegibly labelled racks on the walls. ‘You want to play jackdaw, then check those two tool boxes on the roof of this wagon. If they’re as lavishly equipped as the rest of it, we should be able to do anything short of a rebore or engine change.’
Muttering under his breath, Dooley hauled himself on top of the APC. The boxes the officer had mentioned were non-standard additions, welded to the roof beside the escape hatch just forward of the engine compartment. Fabricated from mild steel sheet, they had suffered considerable damage.
One was already hanging
open, its lid all but ripped away and the sides crushed to half their proper height. A few spanners and wrenches lay amongst the brick dust and broken masonry lining its bottom.
The other had not suffered so badly during their progress through the village store, but a large chunk of brick was wedged in a bent-back corner. It was also scorched, and a fragment of rocket casing had pierced and lodged in the lid.
Employing one of the wrenches, Dooley smashed its lock, and reached in to lift out its contents. ‘Look what I found. A new toy for Libby.’ He held up the launch tube of the shoulder-fired Grail anti-aircraft missile. ‘Think we’ll find a use for it, Sarge?’
Hyde looked up from assisting Burke with the unfastening of the engine access panels. ‘I don’t think, I know we can.’
At a call for silence, all movement in the building ceased and they strained to listen for the sound that had alerted the NCO.
It was faint, but distinctive and unmistakable, the sound of a large helicopter, flying a methodical search pattern.
‘Not that it’s my nature to be a prophet of doom,’ from the window of the garage office Ripper watched the chopper turning to begin yet another sweep, ‘but I been taking a long hard look at the major’s map, and it kinda seems to me that the pilot of that there whirlybird is hovering plumb over the top of a patch of ground we got to pass through. Don’t you think there’s a better than fair chance that he is going to do something right unsociable to us?’
‘He’s going to try.’ Having checked the Grail as far as he was able without comprehensive test equipment, Libby began to reassemble it, cleaning and making a final check of every component as he did so.
‘I knew a girl once…’
‘Another cousin?’
‘Funny you should ask that, ‘cause as it happens she was, about four times removed. Anyway, she were right uppity ‘bout just about everything. Not a single fella I knew had ever got near her. You know she were going on sixteen and still a virgin. Where I come from, a girl who gets to that age and ain’t been treated to a roll in the hay, she’s either got to be ugly as sin, sewn up, or a damned fine runner. Like I were saying, nobody had got nowhere, not until her folks got a TV.’
‘Perhaps to your yokel mentality the connection is obvious,’ dine had tried, and failed to work it out for himself, ‘but do you think you could explain that?’
‘Sure. She couldn’t read.’
‘So help me, I’m going to hit him in a minute.’ Making a special effort, dine persevered. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Just about everything. See, she had this problem, not the one your friends won’t tell you about, the sort you can’t ask your friends about, you with me? Jesus, you guys are thick. She had this itch, now you with me? In a kinda personal place, like underneath. Not being able to read she’d not seen no ads in the papers, didn’t even know she could get anything for it until they tuned into a commercial station for the first time. Must have went straight out and bought a case of ointment Last I heard she was screwing like a rabbit, had ten kids and was trying to catch herself a husband.’
‘God, they get worse.’ dine stepped aside to let Dooley in. ‘Shit, have I missed story time?’
‘I could tell you the one about my Aunt Martha, who had the accident with the billy goat and the broom handle.’
‘Save it.’ dine backed out. ‘I can only take so much of this at a time.’
‘That’s what Aunt Martha said.’
Dooley took Libby aside. ‘What was the major saying about refugees?’
‘He wasn’t. Why, are you thinking to make their misery complete by diddling them out of the little they’ve got?’
‘Alright, don’t get touchy, I only asked, no harm in that, is there?’
It took little imagination to figure out what the big American was after. Libby wouldn’t be a party to any crooked schemes he might be hatching. Not that all the refugees were lily-white. Among them there were some of the nastiest individuals alive. The bunch Andrea had been with were prime examples. Russian deserters, ex-border guards, criminals, all had formed armed gangs and preyed on the weak and defenceless civilians trapped in the Zone. By stealing food, by brutality, by reducing the people’s will to live, they were responsible for as many deaths as the shells and mines and bullets.
‘You got that stovepipe working?’ Dooley changed the subject. He knew that Libby’s knowledge of the refugees was extensive, there was always a chance he could milk him of it piece by piece, provided he stayed on his right side.
‘Far as I can tell, yes. Since when have you been interested in anything except making the next buck?’
‘Think what you like. I just thought you might like to know I heard Hyde and the major talking things over. Seems you’re going to hand the turret over to Clarence, and then sit out the top with that thing, ready to do a spot of chopper hunting.’ Dooley waited for a reaction – there was none.
Expecting some such arrangement, the news came as no surprise to Libby, would not have bothered him even if he’d been unprepared for it. In a way it was as though he were packing months of combat into a few hours, an unconscious last fling. The girl’s words came back to him. He hadn’t spoken to her since, and didn’t feel he could now.
The rage had passed, a calm filled his mind, totally unlike his usual mental state in battle. It occurred to him that perhaps in some strange way he was being made ready for death, but he couldn’t believe that. Not that he was unready for it. When it did come it would be almost welcome, though his last moments would be a torment if Helga’s fate was still unknown.
From the workshop came the growl of the APC’s engines being restarted. Picking up the launcher, Libby followed dine back to their transport. The bombardier was putting on his keen and eager act for their officer’s benefit. Let him. A week ago it would have annoyed Libby, now he didn’t care.
He stood half out of the rear hatch as they backed away from the workshop, having to duck the low doorway. There was no sign of the chopper, and the noise of their own engines drowned any distant sound of it.
They were racing towards the area it had been quartering, making up time, putting in distance. The sun was sinking low in the sky and, only partially filtered by the dust in the air, glowed a bright vision-blurring orange straight into his face. Libby set the missile tube to his shoulder, braced himself against the’ rough ride and just waited. There was no need for him to strain himself. The gunship would come to them.
THIRTEEN
Coming at them out of the sun, Libby heard the helicopter gunship before he saw it At two thousand feet it swept overhead, and swivelling round to keep tracking it over the open sights of the launcher, Libby felt the rough metal of the hatch opening cut into his leg.
It made a tight banking turn for a second pass, and he had to pan fast as he applied light pressure to the trigger, activating the missile’s own seeker-system. The top mounted warning light turned from red to green as the tracker locked on to the chopper’s hot jet pipe, and Libby pulled the trigger back all the way.
The boost charged fired, and burning out almost instantly, propelled the slim grey-painted missile several yards from the mouth of the tube before the solid fuelled sustainer ignited and accelerated the five and a half pound warhead on its way.
It was immediately obvious that the pilot or one of his crew had seen the launch, as the gunship turned even tighter in an attempt to bring itself head-on to the missile, when the infra-red homing device would have the smallest target, only the extreme tip of the jet pipes.
For a moment, as the missile wavered in its arcing course it looked as if the standard tactic would work, and it almost did. Had the warhead not been fitted with a fuse activated by grazing contact, it would have.
Helicopter and missile closed fast, with the aircraft speed far exceeded by the projectile’s one and a half times the speed of sound.
Exploding alongside the starboard turbo shaft engine, it caused the helicopter to lurch and t
hen roll almost on to its side. Trailing smoke and shedding fragments of metal it began to fall, then partially recovered to commence a staggering descent that was still far too fast.
At five hundred feet the pilot succeeded in regaining a degree of control and the rate of descent slackened and the drunken side-slipping began to diminish. Then a damaged rotor blade snapped off halfway along its length, and before whirling clear sliced the tips from two others.
Violent shudders shook the craft as it stalled, and then it began to drop. The last four hundred feet it plummeted vertically, impacting on the top of a hill.
Crushed by the weight of the twin Isotov engines the cabin collapsed, and then its ruin was hidden as fuel ignited and the ammunition started to cook-off.
‘How come he didn’t let us have it?’ From the next hatch Cline had watched the engagement. ‘He had a full load, rockets and gun pods. The bugger could have smeared us over the landscape at the first pass.’
‘That is not so difficult to explain.’ Boris elbowed his way up to see the spectacle for himself from the same hatch. ‘Someone wants us alive, there can be no other reason.’
Libby tossed the launch tube over the side, following its progress down a steep embankment to land among large stones at the edge of a stream. ‘That gives us an advantage then, if the Ruskies are going to be pulling their punches.’
‘For a moment, yes.’ Boris pushed back, resisting the bombardier’s attempt to cram him into a corner of the opening. ‘But it is likely that as we near our own lines the orders will be changed. If whoever wants us cannot have us alive, then he will be happy to settle for us dead.’
Well, it was only a bloody makeshift repair.’ Burke resented the carping from Dooley and the others, as the APC struggled to climb the hill on one engine. ‘What sort of job do you think I can fucking do with a couple of spanners, a wrench and some ruddy string?’
As the gradient grew steeper, their progress became slower and slower, until it was obvious that the transport was not going to make it to the brow. ‘It’s all damned hills from here on in.’ Revell folded his map and tucked it into his pocket. ‘There looks to be a track, or a fire-break up ahead. See if we can make it to that, then take us in.’