by James Rouch
The wait for his turn seemed to extend into forever. In the distance the Russian artillery fire was perceptibly slackening, with the last of it appearing to be going down about where the river would be. So they must have achieved most of their objectives. NATO forces had lost sixty miles of territory in a few days.
A brief concentration of shells went slamming into a far-distant hilltop. The Russian artillery always had plenty of ammunition.. That had been one constant during more than two years of bloody fighting.
Once the company had overrun an East German battery of super heavies. The gunners had been in rags, many of them barefoot and all of them hungry, but the stockpiles of shells for the guns and for its air-defence detachment had been vast.
When destroyed, the enormous mushroom of smoke and flame had given rise to the usual local rumours about nukes. The East German artillerymen had surrendered without a fight, after hacking to death their sleek and well-fed Russian commanding officer.
It was hard for him to be sure, but Hyde thought he saw movement on the road. The flames that belched from the hatches and engine-covers of the T72 made bizarre shadows dance between the trunks, and his eyes were tired and sore.
The rope came down and he hurried to secure it, but even as he did he continued to keep watch, and this time he could be certain that it was no trick of the light or his eyes deceiving him. Files of men were moving along the edge of the trees.
As the first harsh jerking tug lifted him off his feet and the rope cut in painfully hard across his back, he heard the sounds of more tracked vehicles. Trees were splintering, motors revving hard to overcome the resistance of mature spruce and fir.
He saw the occasional shaft of light from imperfectly shrouded headlamps and then had to turn all his attention to saving himself from being repeatedly dashed against the cliff.
The men above, on whom his life depended were growing weary and his progress became agonizingly slow. That, despite his efforts to find every hold he could to assist.
‘You are the final?’
Coming from just above his head in an accent so thick as to be almost unintelligible, Hyde was startled by the voice so close at hand. He got a grip on the crumbling edge of the path and experienced a surge of relief through his whole body. It would have brought tears if his face had been capable of producing them.
‘Yes…’ God, he was struggling, don’t let him slip now. ‘Yes, I’m the final. I’m the last.’
Strong hands gripped him and dragged him to safety. Panting from the exertion, aching in every joint, he weakly resisted attempts to make him stand. AH he wanted was just to rest a while, for a few moments.
They were urging him to get moving. He knew he had to, and began to force himself to his hands and knees. Again the hands grabbed him, some lifting, some pulling him forward. Others plucked at the rope still tight about his chest.
As they neared the door Hyde tripped and went sprawling, cracking his head hard.
Overhead, white light seared the night away as another huge star shell burst above the ruins.
In a far, vague distance, Hyde heard a heavy machine gun rapping out a long methodical burst. Something bumped clumsily against him and made a screaming cartwheel of hands and face and boots down, down toward the waiting mounds of sharp stone.
He saw it impact beside a lifeless rag doll, saw the puff of steam as it ruptured. Then the path, just inches from his face, made a slow-motion million-mile journey up toward him and brought oblivion.
SEVENTEEN
‘One more word out of you, man, and I’m not just going to sew your lips up, I’m going to sew them together.’ Sampson flicked a tangle from the surgical thread as he pulled the curved needle through for the last time. He snipped it off carelessly, leaving a long strand dangling.
‘You’re not going to win any beauty prizes, but in a day or two you’ll be able to sneeze without your head falling in half!’
‘Can’t you give me something? It hurts.’
‘That’s Andrea’s fault, not mine.’ Sampson dropped an instrument into a sterilizing solution. ‘You want me to go and ask her for you? After all, it’s her handiwork I’m repairing.’
The deserter waved a hand to signal a negative and went to lean with his head against the wall, cupping his face in his hands and moaning softly.
Sampson flexed his fingers. ‘Always thought sewing was a sissy game; never knew it could be so much fun. He’s all yours.’
From the deep shadow at the far end of the long room, Burke came forward. A blond-framed pale rounded face watched him from the corner.
‘Where you going to put him?’ Pouring surgical spirit over his hands, the medic took a swig from the bottle before recapping it. ‘Oh, man, that is one hell of a mouthwash. Seems pretty crowded down here. Where can you stash him where he can’t do any harm?’ For a moment he was about to step forward, thinking their driver was about to unleash violence on his patient, but was relieved to see him halt his menacing approach and make an effort to calm himself.
‘The major’s put a guard on the wine cellar. This specimen is going in there, but he won’t be enjoying himself.’ Very slowly and precisely Burke reached for, and between thumb and forefinger took a tight hold on the length of dangling surgical thread.
‘You’re coming with me, like a good little boy, aren’t you?’ Burke accompanied the last two words with jerks on the thread. ‘There, I knew you would.’
When they’d gone out, Sampson shook his head. ‘I don’t think the commies have got to bother with employing psychological warfare. Our boys are doing that sort of harm to themselves.’
‘It’s happening to their men as well.’ Hyde got to his feet. His head ached and felt as if it had been worked over with a large steel-shod boot. But he felt a lot better than he had ten minutes before, when he’d regained consciousness. He’d been reluctant to take it at the time, but now he was grateful for the medic’s advice to rest for a while. ‘So now will you tell me what’s been happening in the last hour?’
‘It’s two, actually, Sarge; check your watch. Now don’t get mad at me. Major’s orders were to let you come ‘round in your own good time, and I wasn’t to tell you nothing about the great big outside world until you’d rested.’
Hyde began to gather his equipment together. A new M16 and several pouches of magazines had been left for him. ‘So am I rested?’
‘You’re as fit as you’re going to be, without being pulled out of the line for a spell. I can tell you, though, it was as much your general physical state as the knock on the head that put you out cold. That was your body showing more common sense than your brain. You’ll know when you’re about to crash out the next time. When it’s due, the major and Andrea will collapse a few minutes before you.’
Without fuss or drama, Hyde gently pushed home the pin of a white phosphorus grenade that had become partially dislodged.
‘Sarge, that knock on the head must have made you stupid.’ Sampson breathed deep, looked hard and rose to his full height, his marine beret almost brushing the ceiling. ‘You ever do something so fucking half-witted as that again, anywhere near my patients, and sergeant or no fucking sergeant, I’ll ram that grenade up your ass and shove you out the door. And I’ll keep the pin as a souvenir.’
Hyde choked down his instinctive reaction to the tirade and threat. He knew the medic was right; it had been a stupid thing to do. A look around the cellar showed him the row of bruised and injured girls, some of them heavily sedated. The results of his action could have been horrific. ‘I wasn’t thinking. You get so used to ... sorry.’
Closing the door behind him, Hyde leaned his back against the wall and waited for the cold and damp to penetrate and ease the sudden prickling sweat that itched so much.
An ammunition detail passed, bowlegged under the loads of mortar bombs and belts of machine-gun ammunition. He followed them toward the surface. It would be good to breathe clean air. Down here it was foul, laden with dust, thick with imperfectly
vented exhaust fumes and heavy with the smells of gun oil, raw explosives and stale bodies.
Reaching the steps he had to be patient for a while longer as a ghostly file of sludge-coated pioneers trooped down. The door at the top was open but when he stepped through it the atmosphere was no better. Not until he had climbed the well- worn path through the rubble to the top of the ruins was he able to gulp a reviving breath quite free from taint.
‘Welcome back to the land of the living, Sarge.’ Garrett had jumped at the NCO’s sudden appearance, and pushed his half-eaten chocolate bar into a crack between two blocks. Inwardly he cringed as he heard it slide smoothly far beyond hope of retrieval. It was his last.
‘What’s been happening?’ Hyde experienced an unidentifiable type of shock. His first words had been barked; now he added, almost in a whisper, ‘What the fuck is happening?’
The quiet was unnerving, so totally unexpected. As he’d climbed up he’d been speculating with himself on what he’d find, but this he hadn’t even considered. It had never entered his thoughts.
Without the distant glow of artillery fire to offer reference points, the stump of the castle seemed to be an ugly pale grey island in a matt-black sea that stretched to eternity. Save for the gentle patter of rain, and that further muted by the universal coating of soft mud, there was no sound at all.
‘How long has it been like this?’ As though in a church or library, Hyde felt he had to keep his voice lowered.
‘Since about ten minutes after you were brought in.’ Fishing for the lost candy, Garrett gave up when his watch followed it. ‘Could be the war’s over, couldn’t it?’
‘Wishful thinking.’
As though reluctant to prove the sergeant’s pessimism correct, there came a hesitant low rumble of sporadic rocket artillery in action. The missile flame-tails made brief shooting stars of white light as they zipped skyward. It petered out apologetically, the last round to be launched departed like an afterthought, barely visible, hardly audible.
Making a round of the defences, Hyde came across Revell in a strongly roofed TOW position overlooking the road. The burning armour was almost extinguished, only occasionally giving off brief showers of silver sparks or a white smoke-ring from an open hatch. ‘Are they up to anything?’ He slid into the small irregular-shaped pit between the officer and Dooley.
‘Take a look for yourself. There’s movement, but not enough to present a target worth our giving away our positions for.’
Hyde could make out individual and small groups of Russians flitting between the trees. They represented too fleeting an opportunity for the missile weapon they possessed. If they’d been able to call down artillery fire ... ‘I suppose they’re still jamming?’
‘Yes, but they’re being rather more selective now.’ Revell stared out into the night. ‘I would imagine that our lot have managed to smear one or more of their big transmitters by this time. Those remaining are having to be a bit picky about what channels they choose to fuck up.’
Dooley unclipped a handset from a radio and passed it to the sergeant. ‘Here, have a listen.’
The frequency-hopping agility of the set was still being defeated by the colossal output of the enemy’s electronic countermeasures, but just as Hyde was about to hand it back he heard the radio find a clear channel. Before he could mention it, the jamming resumed across the wavelength. In that brief moment he’d heard a score of voices break in, and then be swept away.
‘If the interference stopped this minute,’—Revell clipped the handset back in place—’the backlog of radio traffic must be enormous. We aren’t the only ones cut off. Everyone is going to be screaming for priority. It’ll be like the Tower of Babel brought up to date by high technology.’
‘What happened to the barrage?’ After days of being drenched with the sight, sound and smell of shellfire, Hyde was having difficulty adapting to a world without it.
‘I don’t know.’ It was a question that had been burrowing in Revell’s brain, but he had as yet come up with no answer. ‘Perhaps the Reds’ jamming really is working against them as well. You know what they’re like for setting a timetable for an advance. If the barrage was prearranged and they got too far behind, they’d lose much of its advantage. And if they were steamrolling forward too fast, then it’d be landing on their own heads. In either case, without reliable communication they’d have problems. might have been simpler to stop it for a while until they got themselves sorted.’
‘Or maybe they’ve cleared our guys out all the way to the river and are digging in on this bank and don’t need it anymore.’ Spitting loudly, Dooley panned the launcher across the countryside below. ‘Not that I find that any sort of comfort, because if that’s the case then we’re a few kilometres and a wide, river away from home. Not to mention the mass of Warpac troops we’d trip over on the way.’
He jerked the mount back to examine an area more closely, but failed to identify a target. ‘It’s just an idea, Major, but if I let them have one of these down their throats,’-Dooley patted the fat barrel of the tube containing the missile—’it’s just going to make them dig in. Chances are anyway that I’ll more likely get one of them by having him run into the trailing wires afterward than by tearing him apart with a direct hit.’
‘Make your point.’
‘Well, I was thinking, one Red in exchange for a few thousand dollars’ worth of equipment seems pretty poor value. I guess that Clarence could achieve the same at a fraction of the cost.’
Revell could have kicked himself. Would have done if there’d been sufficient room. It made it worse that it was Dooley, of all people, who had brought the obvious to his notice. ‘Get him over here.’
‘... six so far.’ Ripper kept working on the machine-gun belts, adding tracer to some, substituting armour -piercing incendiary rounds in others. ‘One he hit right through a couple of bandoleers he was wearing. Turned him into a miniature Fourth of July.’
Frustrated at not being allowed up top to join the action, Ripper could at least enjoy the involvement of passing on stories he heard from the non-stop procession of ammunition haulers.
‘Shit, what must that take his score to?’ He began to strip tracer from a long belt of fifty-calibre bullets, replacing them with ball. ‘It’s a good thing he don’t carve notches in his stock; he’d be on his tenth by this time.’
‘More like his twenty-fifth.’ Burke had been only half listening. Sent out of the dispensary by the medic, he hung around in the corridor. ‘I lost count when his score passed three hundred, just after he turned down that medal.’
‘Is that for real?’ The reverberations of Ripper’s shrill whistle brought trickles of fine powder from between crumbling brickwork. ‘Pity we can’t infiltrate him into the Kremlin. War would be over in a day or two.’ He blew dust from a round and slid it home. ‘What the hell keeps him going?’
‘Hatred, pure and simple.’ Hearing footsteps, Burke hoped Sampson was about to leave the nearby room, but was disappointed.
‘That is a lot of hatred. Is that anything to do with the way he can’t bear anybody touching him? I’ve seen him scraping himself with a dry cloth fit to draw blood after someone brushed against him.’
‘Possibly.’ Burke had his hopes dashed again by the sound of more movement that came to nothing. ‘He puts up with Andrea though, but she’s the only one I know of. He’s been a one-man army since a commie bomber came down on his married quarters in Cologne, right back at the start of things. It killed his wife and kids. After that he was a machine, good one though.’
‘Three hundred plus!’ About to whistle again, Ripper remembered the consequences last time and thought better of it. ‘Hang on, though; I thought they were trying to weed out all the guys who’d got to like the killing, rotating them out of the line.’
‘He doesn’t enjoy it.’ Giving up waiting, Burke determined to return later when perhaps Sampson wouldn’t be so vigilant. ‘I’ve seen him retch after putting a commie down with a
clean headshot.’
‘Then how does he keep going?’ Finishing the last belt, Ripper flexed his blood- stained fingers and lounged back against the wall.
‘That’s a piece of information he’s never volunteered, but I can make a guess.’ Not wanting to go, Burke knew he’d soon be missed and Hyde would be hunting for him. ‘I think he’s set a price, in Russian lives, on his revenge. God only knows what it is, or if he’ll ever achieve it.’
‘Then what - he goes on killing? Like it’s become a habit?’
Reluctantly Burke began to move toward the stairs. ‘Could be, or perhaps when he decides he’s finally done hell stand up and make a target of himself, or put the barrel of that beautiful rifle in his mouth.’
The sniper waited, patient, unmoving; the rifle sights were aligned on a space between two trees where he knew the Russian would reappear. It was three minutes now, but still he maintained his unwavering pose. He ignored the dirt in which he lay, the cold, the rain trickling down the back of his neck.
At six hundred meters the gusting wind made the shot, with its short engagement time, a difficult one. If he missed, it could mean a long wait before another target presented itself.
Long experience of observing battlefield behavioural patterns had developed in Private Clarence almost a sixth sense, and for no obvious reason his trigger finger gently took up a fraction more of the precisely set one-kilo pull-weight.
He anticipated the recoil and the flash-hider saved his night vision. Panning downward he saw an indistinct hummock of camouflage material lying between the trees. It moved, sluggishly, and Clarence unconsciously made a mental calculation to make a further slight allowance for the wind.
Setting up again, this time the wait was much shorter. A figure appeared over the fallen man and the sniper saw a white face turned toward him as he lightly squeezed the trigger.
The bullet must have met minimal resistance, perhaps entering an eye, or the open mouth. In any event it was a killing headshot. But the target, his victim, didn’t fall.