by James Rouch
To Revell’s relief the Bundeswehr colonel didn’t require any reason. He didn’t care where the major’s men set up home, so long as they could be found quickly in an emergency. He testily declined to take seriously the suggestion that he might like to move his own men from the theatre also, when no logical explanation was proffered to back the idea.
Hyde had to work hard and constantly to quell the mutinous muttering among the men when they left the great building and trudged off down the dusty road. Most of his threats had to be directed at Burke, who maintained a dirge-like monotone of complaint.
‘Comes back from the bloody dead ... drags us from our fucking dinner ... four shitty rows of upholstered seats ... nearest things to bleeding beds inside of a week ... proper chemical bogs ... even shit paper ...’
‘It were separated layers of corrugated cardboard.’ Ripper injected a qualifying note. ‘And we’d have had to knock the arms off the chairs before we could have laid on ‘em, and then they’d have probably tipped up and folded away with us inside of them.’
‘I’d still like to know why he’s dragging us away from a cosy billet...’
The air-raid sirens commenced their wailing, as they heard the approaching jets and dived for cover. A pair of MIG-27’s ripped the air apart with the staccato crackle of their turbofan engines as they passed overhead at only a few hundred feet.
From the fronts of their belly packs came the rapid clatter of their 23mm Gatling cannons delivering the maximum rate of fire. The mixed tracer and explosive and incendiary shells marched across an intersection, over the front of a gutted cinema and plunged in through the side wall of the theatre. At the same moment the aircraft released the contents of their under fuselage and inboard wing pylons.
Miniature parachutes deployed from retarded bombs began an arching descent towards the building, and falling with them were the tumbling teardrop-shaped canisters of napalm bombs.
Three of the six iron bombs fell short, blasting an avenue of destruction through an area already hit many times. The others straddled their target, and the walls and the whole fabric of the theatre were beginning to crumple as the napalm struck.
Fire made giant bubbles through the smoke of the earlier detonations and the building was completely hidden as thousands of gallons of petrol-jelly drenched and consumed the ruins.
For once, though, the city’s flak guns were putting up more than a token resistance. Lines of tracer, almost invisible in the bright sky save where they rose against the background of a smoke pall, chased the jets that, with their after- burners roaring, were climbing as fast as they could. For the trailing aircraft that wasn’t fast enough.
Pieces flew from the jet and the smoke trail it left suddenly turned darker. Its undercarriage began to extend, further decreasing its rate of climb, and then a plume of white vapour poured from its fuselage side. For another four hundred feet it towed the twin trails, then an explosion threw it sideways across the sky and the white trail turned to a long feather of flame. The outer section of its port variable-geometry wing broke off and the MIG went into a stalling turn that became a flat spin towards the ground.
At three hundred feet an anonymous chunk of wreckage falling with the aircraft resolved itself as the ejector seat. It towed the slashed and burning remnants of a parachute.
Aircraft and pilot struck the ground near enough together, somewhere over towards the docks.
‘You got second sight, Major?’ Gaping, Ripper watched the fires taking hold of the flattened theatre.
Revell didn’t have to answer; the incident had restored his stock, put him firmly back in charge again. But there was a question he was going to have to ask Inga, and he wasn’t looking forward to insisting on an answer.
‘Must be that nuke we found the other night.’ Revell re-read the order. ‘Looks like the city fathers have been scared to learn the Commies are ready to drop big ones on the city itself, so they’re bringing forward plans for the breakout.’
‘About bloody time.’ Dooley’s gut signalled its emptiness from both ends of him at once. ‘Another day and we’d have been classed as residents and then we’d never have got out.’
‘We’d never be residents, not anywhere.’ Attempts Burke was making to suppress wind from his small intestine were failing, and he joined the big man in a repulsive duet. ‘We’re cannon fodder. They’ll let us do the dirty work for them, but they wouldn’t have us as ruddy neighbours in case we glowed in the dark and frightened the kids.’
‘Same back home.’ Taking the sensible precaution of moving up wind of the other two, Ripper continued reassembling his rifle. ‘Got a letter from my Aunt Emma just before we came on this jaunt, and from the tone of it I got the distinct impression she thinks I’m in danger of growing two heads. Mind you, the jars of home-made wine she gets through I reckon she sees two of most things.’
‘If your second bonce is no improvement on the first, in looks or brain power, I wouldn’t bother if I were you.’ Burke signalled the finale of the obscene double act with a thundering fart that almost lifted his backside off the ground.
Dooley just had to top that, and lifting each buttock rapidly in sequence contrived to turn a long burst of pungent wind into an almost recognisable tune.
‘If you two carry on for much longer, then the Communists are going to think we are using poison gas.’ Boris sniffed the air.
‘Take care, mate, one whiff of that and you’ll be pushing up the daisies.’
‘Can the rest of you not smell it?’
‘I hesitate to ask, but smell what?’ Cautiously Clarence sampled the evening breeze, taking care to first check the reading on the chemical level indicator attached to his belt.
‘Food, no not just food, meat, cooking meat.’
‘Our pet Ruskie is going off his trolley.’ Clarifying his meaning by tapping the side of his head, Burke suddenly stopped, and began to copy the others who were also testing the air. ‘Christ, I must be going dotty as well. It must be the hunger.’
‘Then we can all smell it. Either we’re down wind of a Russian officer’s preparations for a private party, or they’ve come up with a new stunt to drive us all crazy.’
‘Not very likely, Clarence.’ Revell was also enjoying the aroma of roasting meat. ‘The Reds gave up subtlety long ago.’
A green star shell burst overhead and bathed everything in a ghastly light that turned healthy flesh a putrid colour.
Ripper held out his hands to examine the effect. ‘Can’t say I’m keen on what it does for me, but on Burke I reckon it’s an improvement.’
‘Silence from now on. We’re moving up to our start line, that was the signal. There will be a barrage of sorts to cover the noise of the move, but the guns are short on ammo and we can’t count on its smothering everything, so if you’ve got any last words, out with them now.’
‘Or forever hold your...’ A look from their NCO and Burke cut it short. ‘... Amen.’
‘Can I just say you might have used a better form of words, Major.’
Corporal Thorne was unimpressed when Hyde turned his disfigured face to him.
Revell let it go. He could afford to, there was scant chance that the sapper would come through the night of fighting that lay ahead. Only the order to take up positions for the breakout had saved him from being handed over to the military police on a string of charges. But he was paying a price for that reprieve. The satchel he carried contained five homemade limpet bombs. Utilising a shaped-charge principle they were to be used to finish any disabled armoured vehicles that continued to resist, or any pill-boxes the flame throwers could not subdue.
From close behind them a battery of field guns opened a steady if none too rapid fire, managing to send another shell on its way as the echoes of the previous died.
There were other groups moving through the dusk. Some, like themselves, were armed with an assortment of weapons, a supply clerk’s nightmare; others were equipped exclusively with Patchette submachine guns, or
anti-tank rockets, or engineers’ stores. Most of it had been produced in Hamburg’s own underground factories, and much of it, long held back against this day, was being tried for the first time.
Down a side street they passed several M60 and Challenger tanks. They were far too precious to be thrown blindly into the first assault on the enemy forces. The infantry and engineers would probe the Russian defences first, and then, and only then, when the ground was known and the enemy anti-tank weapons accounted for, would the tanks be unleashed.
The same did not go for some improvised armoured machines that stood hidden under thick camouflage netting immediately behind the start line.
Multi-wheeled civilian commercial vehicles had been fitted with rudimentary armour over their cabs and vulnerable tyres, and where their cranes or cement mixers had been there were now quick-firing cannon of every calibre.
Two huge bulldozers had also been fitted with sheets of plate and now waited with their accompanying engineers for the order to advance. Most poignant of all among the strange assortment of vehicles in which so much faith was being put, was a tiny Daimler Dingo scout car of World War Two vintage. Retrieved partially restored from some enthusiast’s garage and fitted with a single general purpose machine gun, it was going to lead.
They were directed into a house whose suspended floor had been removed by fuel scavengers long before, and settled to wait again.
Spiders and other bugs and insects came to bother them, making them itch and adding to their cramped discomfort. Revell hardly noticed them. As he looked around his men his greatest satisfaction was that Andrea wasn’t there. She was safe elsewhere, like Inga.
Those two were so different, so completely opposite each other in every conceivable way that it was impossible to imagine any grounds on which they might come together.
One by one the guns were falling silent, leaving as the only sound the far distant boom of some Russian heavies firing on another part of the perimeter. It was clear the Russians had no clue as to what was about to be unleashed on them.
The attack was planned to go forward and peel away the successive rings of enemy positions, pushing them back and away to either side to widen the gap until it was impossible for them to re-close it. Then they would dig in and hold that cleared ground until they got help from outside. There would be none until then.
The NATO High Command had not been told of the breakout, there had not been the time to involve them, or the wish to take the security risk of the lengthy communications that would have been necessary.
It was the desperate plight of the city that prompted so desperate a plan. The toll in human lives had been terrible so far; with the food situation becoming chronic it was going to get rapidly worse. They had nothing to lose.
FOURTEEN
The old man noted the readings, and made a pencil dot on the plastic cover of the map. With irritating slowness and deliberation he took a ruler from a shelf, dusted it on his sleeve, and used it to join the last two marks. Halfway along, the line he made intersected another, and he ringed the junction.
‘Now we must get the police.’ He peered at the girl over the top of his cracked glasses.
‘There is no need. Wait here, I will deal with it.’ Andrea climbed from the back of the radio location vehicle and breathed deeply to clear her lungs of the foul smoke the operator’s pipe had been giving off. She had not asked him what he was burning, she could guess.
The building so clearly indicated by the search aerials on the van’s roof looked to be severely damaged, virtually uninhabitable. Slowly, to make as little noise as possible, she climbed the rubble-strewn stairs. A stray chink of light escaped from beneath a soot-stained door. She leant her rifle against the wall and unholstered her pistol. A gentle push confirmed that it was locked, but a glance at its charred surround gave her reason to believe it might not be all that strong.
Taking a step back, and preparing for the pain that would come when for an instant her damaged leg took all her weight, she took a deep breath and kicked out at the wood just below the lock.
Pain was forgotten as it crashed open and Andrea levelled her pistol at the only person in the room.
‘I do not have a gun.’ Inga reached for the headphones and carefully took them off, letting them fall on to the radio that had been pulled from its place of concealment beneath the sofa.
‘That is a great pity, I had hoped you had.’ Without taking her eyes from the blonde, Andrea reached for her rifle, and used it to wedge the door shut. ‘But now I think that this is best. Did you learn much from him?’
‘From your Major Revell? No.’
‘What did he do with you, I want to know all the details.’ Andrea took the girl by the wrist and pulled her in through the open bedroom doorway. The sheets had not been changed, they were near transparent with the oil that had soaked into them. ‘I see you played games. Now, everything. Tell me everything.’
Revell led his men at the head of the second wave, and they met little opposition as they passed through the first belt of defences. Broken guns and bodies lay everywhere. Sandbagged positions burned along with the machine gun crews that had manned them, and there were screams coming from a burning armoured bulldozer.
The tiny Daimler had driven into a crater, and now the spitting barrel of its machine gun, firing over the rim, marked the furthest point of advance.
A monstrous eight-wheeler had been knocked out close by, but while its pulverised cab meant that it would be driving no further, the automatic weapons firing from its cargo platform were doing bloody execution among Russian troops trying to escape from isolated trenches where they found themselves trapped.
The hold-up was caused by a pair of anti-tank guns flanked by a complex of zig-zagging trenches from which enemy riflemen were keeping up a heavy protective fire against any infantry attempt to take the guns.
At fifty yards from their objective the squad had been forced to go to ground, and it seemed the attack had stalled. Every second’s delay gave the Russians a longer breathing space in which to make hasty preparations for a counter-attack that must succeed if the Hamburg forces were caught in the open.
‘We’ve got to have the tanks up in support.’ Revell was trying to make himself understood over the radio, but he wasn’t the only one calling for help, and the Russians were already beginning to jam many frequencies.
‘They’re waiting for us to get those guns first.’ Hyde watched the muzzle flashes of the 122mm pieces as they proceeded to systematically destroy every vehicle that came within their range.
‘And we need them to do something about those trenches before we can close enough.’
‘Major.’ Thome crawled to join officer and NCO. ‘If I can blow the guns, will you drop the charges, let me stay with this outfit?’
‘You sure there’s nothing else you want? OK, you got it, good luck.’
Thome ran off, dodging mortar bursts and sprinting between the lines of tracer.
‘We’ll not see him again.’ Snapping off a shot, Hyde brought down a Russian gunner who had been careless enough to show himself around the side of a gun shield. The action brought a storm of retaliatory fire that forced the men to hug the slight cover the low mounds of rubble offered.
Gradually the incoming fire grew in volume as the Russians became more confident of holding the position, and began to feed men back into it.
A high revving engine became audible, and the Daimler leapt from the crater, tossing into the air the lengths of steel mesh that had assisted its escape. Hyde expected to see it turn and race for cover, leaving the battlefield to more thickly armoured vehicles, but it didn’t, instead it picked up speed as it weaved and jinked towards the guns. Heavy calibre shells flashed past the darting scout car, small arms fire beat a tattoo on its thin armour. As it churned through the tangle of barbed wire fronting the weapons’ pits a figure leant over its side and slapped block-like objects on to the steel walls of its hull, then with the driver threw himself out
.
The driver was caught by a burst of automatic fire even as he jumped, Thorne went the other way and tumbled into a foxhole on top of a Russian sergeant.
Only the sapper reappeared.
Leaping a trench, using the rampart fronting it as a ramp, the Daimler crashed through the sandbag wall about one of the guns and came to a stop nose down among the split sacks only a yard away from it.
Several explosions ripped through the pit as the limpet bombs detonated, killing the weapon’s crew and starting fires among its ready-use ammunition.
It was too much for the men on the other anti-tank gun. They ran. Seeing that they had been abandoned, the enemy infantry decided to follow and the jams their panic created at the exits from the trench system made them easy targets for the men who stormed the fast disintegrating defences of the second line.
There was no stopping them now. They kept close on the heels of the fleeing Warsaw Pact troops, giving them no respite, driving them on to create more confusion, more uncertainty further back.
And now the tanks came forward and added their long-range firepower to that of the handheld antitank weapons that had been all they had available so far, and they arrived just in time to engage the first Russian armour to appear.
T72s and T84s were stopped and began to burn as the powerful cannons of the British Challengers and the 152mm combined gun and rocket launchers of the M60s punched rounds through their armour as fast as they appeared. An M60, worn out by long months spent racing about Hamburg to bolster weak parts of the defences, threw a track, and instantly the infantry formed a defensive perimeter about it while the repair was effected. And while that was going on the tank’s main armament and cupola machine gun continued to give support fire.
When they reached an abandoned, carefully camouflaged anti-aircraft missile site, Revell knew that they were almost through. Beyond that lay a last major ring of defensive works, but they faced the other way, were intended to fend off NATO attempts to relieve the city, and by now the number of men available to man them would be far fewer than was necessary to make their interlocking fields of fire truly effective.