Hard Target

by James Rouch

  ‘You don’t need crystal balls or trances or any of that junk.’ Between puffs at his cigarette, while watching the large clouds of blue smoke slowly spreading to fill the upper regions of the interior, Dooley had come to the conclusion that here was yet another subject in which he could join. ‘I know where they are and what’s going to happen. I bet you any amount they’re in a whore house, they’re screwing everything in sight, and we’ll get there just in time to be told it’s time to be moving on.’

  ‘What an imagination.’ Cohen poured scorn on the big man’s prediction. ‘Those three might well have their hands full, but it won’t be of tit and bum. But since you’re so sure I’ll let you win some of your money back. I’ll take you on. Fifty says not one of them has so much as seen, let alone had, a handful of whore. How’s that, is that fair?’

  There was a loud smack as Dooley crashed his palms together in satisfaction. ‘You’re on, fifty bucks.’

  ‘It’s a bet’ Cohen made a record of the wager in a notebook taken from one of his many pockets. ‘It’s almost a shame to take your money. Does anyone else want to back Dooley’s wishful thinking?’

  ‘No way, brother, no way.’ Rinehart gave up his attempts to administer a drink of water to Nelson. ‘I know why you wear that armour. I’ve seen you poke more cash and loot in those pockets than I thought there were in the whole of the Zone. I ain’t about to add another bulge to it. Mind you, I’m tempted to take you on. Maybe it’s stupid, but I got this hunch that there’s just a chance friend Dooley might be right for once. Who knows, maybe he’ll even take a few bucks off you yet.’

  A momentary look of doubt flickered across Cohen’s tanned features. It didn’t last long. What was he worrying about? Since when had he ever bet on anything other than a sure thing? Dooley already owed him four hundred and fifty, this would make it a nice round number. So maybe he’d never make general, but with a little more luck, god willing, he’d come out of the war with enough cash and goodies to make a three-star’s retirement plan look like peanuts. He patted the multitude of flap secured compartments in the flak jacket’s front in turn, and checked that each was buttoned down, lingering a little longer over the one with the diamonds in it.

  That fifty bucks was as good as his already. There was no way Dooley was going to win, no way.

  ‘Sit down. SIT DOWN.’ Libby shouted at the old scrubber. With ill grace she plonked back down, turning off the act immediately she was rebuffed, as the three before her had been.

  Libby knew what they were up to. They wanted out, the same as the East Germans, and if anything their reasons were stronger. After the attack it wouldn’t take the Russians long to figure out who had visited The Farm and, with suspicion and brutality an inbred facet of their nature, they would be sure to turn on the girls. The whores knew that, hence the clumsy, continuous attempts at seduction.

  All he had to do was mime his needs and there’d be a rush to fulfil them. The thought revolted him. In such a struggle, bound to be heard by the others, he’d have little to say in which of the tarts got to him first, and the older ones with their layers of ill-matched cosmetics’ and flaccid bodies nauseated him. Old women always made him feel ill. Elderly female relatives had thought him ‘cold’. He had thought them hideous, and had been obliged to force himself to give even the briefest of pecks on cheeks when it had been customarily expected of him on special occasions. Even now, the recollection of that oft repeated and much loathed duty made him cringe.

  ‘I told you to bloody sit down.’

  This time the woman didn’t choose to be cowed so easily. Though she could not have understood the words, their tone and the action that accompanied them had been abundantly clear. The insinuating smile she turned on was complemented by a deliberate loosening of a bow at the neck of her already gaping nightdress. Her body oozed from the threadbare material, and a large brown nipple with hairs sprouting around it was shoved into plain view by the weight of a balloon-like breast.

  ‘I said sit down, get back.’

  She kept coming, while the others looked on, leaning forward to see what would happen.

  A million thoughts, images, emotions flashed in rapid sequence through Libby’s mind. Oh God he hated this place, this war, the Zone. Helga, that was all he wanted, just to find her, then none of this would matter any more. He’d desert, go East, West, even stay in the Zone just so long as he could be with her. He needed her, hadn’t been with another woman since the war had taken her from him, swept her out of his reach. Frustrations that masturbation had done little to relieve were welling up inside him. All those hours over the last two years spent in finding moments alone and then frantically working himself to a climax.

  ‘You like this?’

  A hand was pulling at his trousers, expertly unfastening them, seeking his erection.

  ‘It is wet. You want me?’

  Waves of sickly sweet perfume filled his nostrils, and through the several layers of clothing he felt the twin hummocks of flesh dangling to the woman’s waist rolling against his own stomach. A fat sweat-sticky leg was thrusting between his thighs.

  ‘NO.’ He hadn’t meant the shout to be so loud or the blow so hard.

  The pistol pinned between their bodies swept up and the butt of the weapon caught the whore under the chin. Too heavy to be lifted off her feet by the blow, she reeled back, blood from a tooth-pierced bottom lip already staining her naked front, and collapsed among the other women.

  ‘I... I...’ Damn it, he couldn’t say he was sorry, he wasn’t. ‘She shouldn’t have kept bothering me... it was her own fault.’

  The words were understood, or heard, or were ignored as the others gathered around the victim and helped her to a sitting position. She made no complaint, dabbing at her swelling lip with the inside of the hem of her garment. All of them bore marks and bruises on various parts of their bodies, some on their faces. The elderly whore had had longer than most to get used to the inevitable punishments that went with her trade. Once the bleeding was staunched her concern turned to her fussily trimmed nightdress and she checked it over inch by inch, heedless of how much she exposed herself in the process, until she was satisfied that no outward facing material was marked.

  To conceal what he felt sure must be the still huge and obvious mound of his erection, Libby leant in a corner and crossed his hands in front of himself. There was still six hours until last light. It was going to seem a lifetime if he had to stay in here. When the attack commenced time would speed up a hundredfold.

  The thought of the fighting didn’t worry him, he was certain he’d come through it. God had screwed up his life enough already, the bugger couldn’t be so bloody spiteful as to bring it to an end before he found Helga again. Only the Communists practised nastiness of that order.

  Libby fished out and threw the woman a bar of chocolate he’d been saving for later. He now regretted having used so much violence, the desired effect could have been achieved by using less, or perhaps none at all. It’d been partly his own fault that the situation had got so far out of hand. Despite himself he’d been fascinated as well as repelled by the sight of the plump body offered him. He pushed the idea from his thoughts, shuddering to physically aid its departure.

  Perhaps sometime, not now, it wouldn’t hurt just to have one woman. He’d do it very quickly, seeking nothing but swift gratification of a very basic need, Helga would understand, he knew she would. He’d held out so long. Yes, perhaps he would, the present might be easier with that future to think on. And now he had that to look forward to, the afternoon would pass all the sooner and bring the future, and Helga, nearer.

  ‘It’s not a lot to go on, Major.’ Hyde looked at the sketch. The pencilled outline, looking rather like a plump bullet, that was the detached section of the camp in which they were interested bore very few details, and those had question marks against them.

  ‘You might as well say it, it’s damn-all. We’ve got the right place. These deep churned tracks leading to
it,’ Revell shaded in a mass of lines that converged on the head of the bullet, ‘they scream tanks. That area down there that looks like any other piece of the camp is just a shell, outer camouflage for the 97th’s workshops, and we can’t find out a damned thing about it.’

  Beads of sweat were trickling down from Hyde’s hairline, making glistening lines on the pinkly unreal tissue of his reconstructed face. It was sweltering in the attic. The two tiles they had prised loose and sent skittering down the roof to land with shattering crashes behind the house had done nothing to aid the flow of air, bring any cooling draughts. He took another look out of the hole.

  They were only five hundred yards from the place, and with the advantage of a couple of hundred feet of elevation over it, and still apart from the probable location of the main entrance they knew nothing, except that they had been right about the minefield going all the way around. A wide belt of untrampled and rampant grass testified to that.

  There was no doubt at all that the workshop was a very juicy target. Packed into those few acres was a battalion that would normally have spread its valuable vehicles and machinery over several times that area to avoid making a concentrated target. Nestling under the wide false roof were engine shops, armouries, assembly lines, machinery trucks, welding bays and masses and masses of stores the Russians could ill afford to lose.

  ‘So what do you think?’ The major waited for Hyde to finish his inspection of their target.

  ‘I think we’ll need an awful lot of luck to do any real damage if we go at it without knowing which part is which.’

  ‘I agree. One of the main problems is that they won’t keep much in the way of fuel and ammunition there, those will be in dumps elsewhere, so we can’t even hope for a lucky hit on one of those helping us out.’ ‘There is one thing though.’ A thought suddenly struck Hyde. ‘The Russians are a sloppy lot of buggers when it comes to safety measures, and I can’t believe the 97th will be any different.’

  ‘So?’ the point eluded Revell.

  ‘So the workshops are accepting tanks straight from the frontline, fuelled and armed. When a tank reaches a REME workshop the first thing that happens is that the ammo is removed. If the Ruskies stay true to form and don’t bother, then every tank in there will be better than a one-ton bomb.’ ‘It’s a good idea, we go for the tanks as well as the machinery and personnel...’

  ‘And if just a few of them brew up and their racks blow, they’ll gut the place.’

  ‘Very neat, I like it, but we still come back to the fact that we don’t know where the tanks, or the machinery or anything is. It’s a pity Libby was so fast on the trigger, we could have used those...’

  ‘Russians. There are Russians coming.’ It was Andrea, calling from downstairs. ‘How many, and where?’ Revell was the first back down. ‘Just two.’ Keeping well back from a yellowed net curtain, she indicated the pair of brown clad, black booted soldiers who were surreptitiously working their way towards the rear of the farmhouse. Their pistols were holstered, and all they carried was a haversack each.

  ‘They’re not after us. They’re coming to visit their girlfriends.’ The major watched as the Russians cautiously peered out from behind the cover of a rusting farm tractor at the back door. The nervousness they displayed at every move they made and noise they heard indicated that they were breaking a lot of regulations by being there. ‘I want them alive, one at least. Andrea, tell Kurt and the others not to fire, not unless a lot more come running, but I think these two are very much on their own. OK, Sergeant Hyde, let’s you and me go and prepare a welcome for our visitors.’

  Masses of half-eaten scraps of food littered the kitchen floor. Hyde slipped and almost fell when his boot skidded on a slice of cucumber, as the two of them took up places of concealment. They had to wait several more minutes before a shadowy outline showed behind the frosted pane in the door’s upper half, and there was a tentative, almost apologetic knock. It was repeated a little louder though still timidly, and then again. Slowly the handle began to turn and the door opened just a crack.

  ‘Sophie?’

  The accent was abominably thick, the word only just recognisable as a name. Squeezed into a narrow space between a dresser and a far corner of the room, Revell watched the door gradually open further and a boyish looking junior sergeant hesitantly step into the stone floored room. He clutched the haversack to his chest, and bore a look that suggested if anyone said ‘boo’ to him he’d die of heart failure on the spot. He listened. The absence of an expected reception, and of noises elsewhere in the establishment that might have explained it, obviously puzzled him. A few muttered words were exchanged with the second man, still just outside the door, and then he too came in.

  Growing more confident the junior sergeant put his pack down on the table dominating the middle of the room and made a joking remark to his friend, who was quietly closing the door.

  Both whirled round as Revell leapt out and Hyde crashed back the door of the storeroom where he’d been hiding. For a second they stared, uncomprehending, at the strange figures that had surprised them, then the last to enter, faster on the up- take or more stupid than his companion, reached for his holster. He never even touched it.

  The barrel of Hyde’s pistol smacked into the back of his neck and he went down as if pole-axed. His helmet flew off as his face hit the floor sickeningly hard.

  Sheer terror, partly from the fright he’d received and partly from the expectation of having the same treatment meted out to himself, had immobilised the young NCO. All colour had drained from his face and he was visibly shaking. Eyes wide, mouth opening and closing soundlessly he raised his hands and clamped them together on top of his helmet without being told. Revell took his pistol. With the toe of his boot Hyde nudged the head of the man on the floor. It lolled back and forth without any resistance, revealing a sluggishly forming pool of pink bubbled blood. ‘Broken neck, I didn’t think I’d hit him that hard. Must have been when he nose-dived.’

  He bent down and turned the corpse over to investigate an expanding pool of what looked like water, issuing from the haversack lying partially hidden under the body. Broken glass chinked as he picked up the dripping bag. He caught some of it on his fingers, and tasted it. ‘Vodka. Looks like they were planning a party.’

  From the bag on the table he took out two long plump sausages, a loaf, ajar of what appeared to be apricot jam and two more bottles. ‘Funny isn’t it. Now and again we get Ruskies coming over to us just so they can get a decent meal, what food they get is rotten; but they can always manage to get hold of a little extra when it suits them. They’re a crafty lot of buggers, I wouldn’t fancy one for a neighbour or workmate.’

  The surviving Russian swallowed loudly as for the first time he caught a full view of Hyde’s .horror mask, and he clenched his eyes as if in the hope that the apparition would go away.

  ‘How is your command of Russian, Sergeant?’ ‘What little there is, rather rusty. Like I said, we haven’t taken prisoners in a while.’

  ‘Well between us we should be able to cobble a few relevant questions together and understand the answers, if we get any.’

  Hyde gestured threateningly with his pistol. The junior sergeant’s gaze followed every movement. ‘If we start right away I think the problem will be slowing him down, not getting him to talk.’

  ‘Right, so let’s get him up to the attic where we won’t be disturbed. Time’s getting short. And bring the bag. I’m not too keen on that firewater of theirs, but I don’t want Kurt’s men getting hold of it. They’re a big enough risk already.’

  Browning automatic in one hand, bag of food and drink in the other, Hyde herded the Russian ahead of him as they followed Revell back to the attic.

  They passed Andrea on the way up. Revell noted the taut line of her mouth, accentuating her high cheeks, as she watched the Russian. He wouldn’t be putting her in sole charge of their prisoner, certainly not until they’d got what they wanted from him, and possibly not
even then. There was cruelty in the lovely face, as much as he had ever seen in any man, and more than in any woman. Seeing her he understood a little more.

  It wasn’t love or passion or jealousy that would bring animation and intensity into those superb dark brown eyes: hatred might do it, fury could, killing would. She wasn’t with Kurt and the other East Germans, they were with her.

  ELEVEN

  Organisation and equipment scales of Soviet 97th Technical Support Battalion. Commanding officer Major I. V. Pakilev Officers 27 Men 460

  This is regarded among the Soviet forces as an elite unit of its type. All of the officers, and most of the senior sergeants are known to be drawn from the staffs and top graduates of Technical Training Academies in the USSR. All of the personnel are Russian nationals.

  Equipment scales for this unit are lavish by Russian standards. 24 ZIL-157 six-wheeled trucks fitted out as mobile workshops. 12 heavy trailers similarly equipped.

  2 MAZ-535 eight-wheeled trucks fitted as mobile radar/radio repair shops.

  2 ZIL-135 eight-wheeled trucks fitted as mobile cranes. Rated 20 tons.

  6 URAL-375 six-wheeled trucks fitted with comprehensive gas and arc welding kits.

  3 BTR- 50 eight-wheeled armoured personnel carriers converted for medium recovery work.

  2 T72 armoured recovery vehicles.

  87 other vehicles and trailers.

  The 97th is unusual in that it has a light anti-aircraft battery permanently attached for low level air defence. For medium and high level defence it comes under the umbrella of whatever Division it may be attached to.

  The sketch plan of the workshop layout looked a lot more informative now. A mass of detail had been added to it, and while there was no way they could check the veracity of the Russian’s answers, if he had made it all up on the spur of the moment he had done a quite remarkable job, the whole dovetailed together very neatly.