by James Rouch
Standing, and still appearing to stare up at the distant sniper, the soldier’s body wavered slightly from side to side as if held upright by a supernatural force.
Knowing that so strange a scene was certain to attract other targets, the sniper’s experience told him to wait, but he had three rounds remaining in the magazine and he emptied all of them into the standing corpse.
He didn’t watch the result, sliding back into concealment to reload. His hand was shaking as he slipped the carefully selected rounds into the magazine.
Nineteen targets to go, only that many more and he’d be free. It was a minute after midnight. This could be his last day. Even as the thought formed, his hands stopped shaking and a feeling of relief and calm flooded through him. It was nearly over.
EIGHTEEN
The first of the explosions came a little after two in the morning. They continued at erratic intervals until an hour before dawn. Sometimes they came singly, at other times in ripples. A few were from close at hand, most from various distances away in the circle of high ground about the valley. Often there were other sounds as well, the wail of pressure-driven flame, the stutter of automatic fire, and most frequently of all came the screams.
As Revell toured their positions atop the broken walls, he thought that he knew how the ancient Crusaders would have felt, waiting for first light and the onslaught of the Saracens. The weapons were more modern, could strike farther and harder, but you were just as dead from a hit by a crossbow bolt as from the lashing shrapnel of a Russian 155mm airburst.
The wind had abated and finally died away completely, and the rain had eased until it was no more than a feeling of saturating dampness in the air. Together the changes signalled the chance of a better day, but they threatened a danger as well.
By imperceptible degrees, fingers of mist began to creep between the hills and ridges. Thickening rapidly, they merged to form a fog that filled every dip and hollow and began to climb the confining slopes.
‘I don’t feel nature is on our side.’ For the tenth time in as many minutes, Dooley wiped condensation from the lens of the TOW sighting unit.
Scully passed him a mug of coffee and sat down to drink his own. ‘Be bloody fair. If you were Mother Nature and you’d been mucked about like she has in the Zone, would you be on anybody’s side?’
‘That’s not the point.’ Using his finger to draw the skin from the top of his drink, Dooley tried to flick it away, failed, and wiped it down his front. ‘We’re the fucking goodies. We didn’t go marching into commie territory; they came crashing in here yelling provocation. I’d love to know how that poor old granny they hung in Munzenberg had ever provoked them. They only had to kick her Zimmer away to do it.’
A sharp explosion, slightly muted by distance and the shroud of fog, was followed by a secondary detonation, and then another.
‘How many tries is that they’ve had at getting through the minefields?’ Scully listened intently. Faint shouts could be heard, shrill and panicky.
‘Lost count.’ Dooley wrung out his cloth and wiped the launch barrel once more. ‘What I can’t understand is why they haven’t had a crack at us yet.’
‘They don’t realize we’re here yet, not in numbers.’ Hyde crawled in beside them and tilted the can to examine the dregs of coffee. ‘Far as the commies are concerned there’s one sniper operating from here and that’s it.’ He waited to be offered the residue and when he wasn’t, took it anyway. That it was cold he didn’t care; it sluiced the taste of ground stone from his throat.
‘That’s better. I can swallow now without sandpapering my tonsils. One bit of good news. The major’s torn up standing orders and put Boris back on the radio. Garrett’s a bloody clown, worse than useless.’
‘No luck yet though, I take it.’ Scully dropped the mugs into the can, and cringed at the noise they made. ‘Sorry, Sarge.’ He hastened to change the subject. ‘So we’ve not got through then, yet.’
‘Picked up a few snippets from a Russian field commander in the area. Reception is terrible, but according to Boris the commies are having a rough time in those minefields. They were expecting to virtually walk in unopposed through the main entrance; seems we rather screwed that up for them.’
‘Shame.’
‘That’s not quite the word they’re using.’ Hyde watched Dooley wring drops from a cloth he’d have considered bone-dry. ‘They’ve lost two companies of assault engineers and four mine ploughs so far. Had to call for the divisional reserve. Boris says there’s a few threats flying about.’
‘So what they going to do next, bugger off and leave us in peace or start chucking nukes, like they usually do when they’re narked about something?’ He said it lightly, but Scully knew that when the Russians became upset and frustrated by unexpected reverses those were real options. The first was one rarely employed.
Dooley blew his nose, then swore when he realized he’d done it on his wiping cloth. ‘I know what they’ll fucking do, same as always. The man on the spot has tried the sledge-hammer tactic; now his boss will apply typical Russian logic and finesse and try an even bigger hammer.’
There was nothing further to be said, and they just sat there, each alone with his thoughts and his fears. Occasionally they would hear a voice from one of the other positions. It grew lighter, but the rising fog made the castle as isolated in the day as it had been during the night. There was nothing more they could do; their preparations were complete. Everything was as ready as it could be to withstand an attack from any quarter.
A powerful explosion lit the fog and sent it into twisting eddies. Six minor detonations followed so closely as to blend with the first.
‘Fuel-air. Nothing else has that punch.’ Hyde looked over the rough rampart, but there was nothing to be seen, except a patch above the hill about a half a kilometre away where the natural obscurity was thickened by black smoke. ‘Too far off to have been meant for us; they’re trying new tactics to crack the minefields ... Shit.’
Howling noise accompanied a Russian gunship that loomed from the fog, its whirling blades chewing the air hard as it sought lift.
Torrents of small-arms fire lashed toward it. Every detail of its construction was clearly visible as it slashed past the top of the ruins so close they could have reached out and touched the tips of its rotors.
Storms of debris and mud were whipped into their faces stingingly hard, and it was that hail that saved the helicopter. It banked steeply and offered only its armoured underside to the streams of bullets as it clawed its way to safety. Belatedly the sights of a Stinger were wiped and the missile launched, but by then the air was full of decoying strips of aluminium chaff, bright flares and every type of decoy device. There was no loud report from a successful interception.
‘They know we’re here now.’ Scraping his eyes clear, Dooley hurled a rock after the gunship. The futile act didn’t make him feel any better, but he felt he had to do something.
Another of the vapour bombs was heard, but it didn’t share the slight success of the first. Built to resist the shock of the massive over-pressures, most of the buried mines remained sentient, waiting for their intended victim.
The trees, though, could not withstand the onslaught and fell outward in great swaths from the centre of the ignition. For some seconds after the beat of the second, unseen, gunship had receded, the creaking, tearing and splintering of their collapse continued.
A Rapier missile skimmed past an angle of the wall and clipped a projection. It tumbled out of control and broke up under the tremendous G-forces exerted on its thin casing.
‘Slow off the mark.’ Scully ducked as pieces of fin and motor components zipped over his head. ‘But I’m glad to see the guys at the farm are at least awake. But who the hell are they aiming at?’
The stump of a leg beneath his hand trembled as his patient went into a spasm; and Sampson lost his grip on the protruding rubbery length of artery. A pulse of dark blood was hosed at the wall, and then the man on
the table went limp and the rapid flow became a sluggish ooze.
Stepping back, the medic swore. He’d known in his heart he had no chance of saving the man, but not to have the time to even try... The terribly punished body had given up its fight for life seemingly willingly, with hardly a struggle.
A rocket’s warhead had stripped clothing, flesh and limbs from him indiscriminately and burned most of what it had left otherwise untouched.
That was the first he’d lost who’d lived to reach him. Sampson closed the staring eyes and covered the blackened face. He put his hands palm-down into a bowl of tepid water heavy with the smell of disinfectant. It was soothing, until he looked down and saw that the solution had turned as red as the many drops and splashes on the walls and floor.
‘Karen, will you find someone to take him out?’
The little blonde put down the mop with which she’d been attempting to swill away the worst of the blood and went out.
Sampson noticed that the mophead, contents of the pail and floor were all a muddy pink. He took hold of the long handle to finish the work and found that it too was sticky with blood.
Shells were hammering the ruins, and even deep below ground the concussion of the impacts could be felt. Sometimes a monstrous 182mm round would impact, and then the shock would travel down through the walls and be transmitted by the rock itself to the floor beneath his feet. The lights would dim and then flare once more to full strength, to highlight the dribbles of dust and floating cobwebs shaken from the ceiling.
He’d lost track of time; all he knew was that this was the first moment since the shelling had started that he’d not had a victim of it waiting for attention. Sampson did a round of those already treated. They were all quiet, making no complaint or fuss. It was something to be grateful for that the Russians had not as yet used chemical weapons. Working in respirator and full NBC suit with his patients at constant risk would have been a nightmare.
Most of the girls were still among the injured, but Karen and to a lesser extent a couple of the others had been a great help. Their presence, even that of those who were laid out in the far corner, had played a large part in controlling the situation when the trickle of wounded had suddenly become a flood.
Men with gaping cuts, broken limbs and extensive burns had been calmed by the sight of the girls going quietly about their work. Those who had been forced to wait for attention found new reserves of endurance while the girls moved among them, and their presence had not had merely a cosmetic effect.
As each man was brought forward in his turn, Sampson found them already prepared for him, clothing cut away, the wound cleansed.
But all their efforts could not rid the room of the smells that permeated it. There was no ventilation and the air was becoming foul.
Carrington entered, followed by a Dutchman who appeared reluctant to breathe the fetid atmosphere.
‘Got a stiff you want carted?’
As they struggled out with their awkward burden, Sampson followed, holding doors open for them. Along the branch passageway, into the main corridor to the steps and up into a ground floor room that was unrecognizable since the last time he’d seen it so shortly before.
Sections of the ceiling had fallen in, bringing masses of plaster that had been crushed to a fine white powder beneath heavy army boots. Against a wall was a close-packed line of jacket- and blanket-shrouded bodies.
Lowering the latest addition to the growing tally, Carrington didn’t flinch as a shell struck the outside wall and sent a fresh scattering of pulverized plaster over the corpses.
‘Why doesn’t the major bring you all down into the cellars?’ Sampson hunched his head down between his shoulders as a big shell pounded another crater in the mercifully thick fabric of the castle.
‘Can’t.’
Sampson found himself bobbing up and down while Carrington remained unmoved by the barrage. ‘All we’re doing is taking stick and casualties, for nothing.’
‘The commies are pushing a road through the minefield; we’re trying to put them off. We let them have it every time the dust clears for a second.’
A giant blow against the wall of the room marked the impact of a 182mm ‘concrete buster’ shell. Cracks radiated from a point a meter above the row of dead. Shards of carved stonework skittered across the floor and a drop of molten lead splashed on the dusty tiles and solidified into a ragged star.
Clutching a face opened from brow to chin, a figure stumbled toward the medic. Dashing forward, Sampson caught him as he sagged, and started down the stair with him.
Reaching the bottom step he saw Karen running forward to help. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got him, I’ll manage. You and the other girls start to get another room ready.’ He felt the man’s blood soaking into the shoulder of his jacket, warm and sticky. ‘We’re going to need it soon.’
An airburst seeded the weapon pits with razor-sharp slivers of steel. One carved a long groove in the Kevlar material of Dooley’s helmet; two more punched effortlessly through the launch tube of the TOW and crudely stapled it to the body of the missile itself, reducing them effectively to scrap.
Dragging a replacement forward, he noticed the lieutenant was pushing a wad of dressing inside the shoulder of his jacket.
‘You hit?’
‘I felt it pass right through.’ Withdrawing the pad, Voke showed that it had only a tiny spot of blood on it. ‘There was a burning sensation. Perhaps it has cauterized itself. That will save our overworked medic more work.’
‘Better get it checked.’
‘I shall, later, when there is time.’
Dooley made no response to that. If an officer wanted to be a hero, then he was quite prepared to let him. But if he got a scratch himself, he’d be down those cellar steps before you could say ‘napalm.’ As yet he’d not been that lucky; all he wanted was a little nick, just a cut that looked worse than it was, anything that would get him down there among those girls.
There were several columns of smoke rising from various locations in the circle of hills. Working through the night to find or push a path through the minefields, the Russians must have taken fearful casualties. When the sun had broken through the midmorning it had revealed the main enemy effort. A freshly bulldozed track led from the road to the area flattened by the gunship’s fuel-air bombs. The scar of turned earth had swarmed with Warpac assault engineers and their tracked and wheeled equipment, presenting a dream target.
Every weapon for which a space could be found on that side of the castle had fired until its barrel became too hot to touch.
Trapped by the mines ahead and to either side, the enemy’s stampede back to the road had turned into a slaughter. The safe track became a killing ground as mortar bombs, anti-tank rockets and streams of fire from Brownings and mini-guns and grenade launchers saturated the area.
When Revell had finally called a halt there were no more targets to be seen. The armour and earth-moving machinery was wrecking and blazing and bodies were sprawled in literally a carpet of camouflage material across the bare soil.
Retaliation had come quickly, but by then most had made it to the comparative safety of the lower rooms and cellars before the first deluge, of artillery rockets, had plummeted down.
For half a minute they’d received the undivided attention of a battery of multiple launchers. Half a minute in which a pounding blasting, searing five tons of high- explosive drenched and pulverized the exterior walls and the layer of rubble overhead.
A single nineteen-kilo 122mm warhead had detonated against a lower floor window. The full force of the blast caught a group of pioneers on their way to the cellars. Those directly in line with the opening had stood no chance. Seven had died instantly, four more been so desperately injured that they lived only minutes, and another three were terribly wounded.
Mercifully for the first rescuers on the scene, the worst of the carnage had been hidden behind a swirling maelstrom of dust and smoke.
NINETEEN
Anticipating the Russian commander’s next move, the instant Revell sensed the barrage was finished, he rushed a heavy machine gun to their best-protected position and had it range with tracer on the partially completed route.
He was only just in time. Smoke shells began to fall and rapidly masked its location. The near-silent eruptions of burning phosphorus fell so close to the truck that they must have caused casualties among the first of the combat engineers sent to restart the work, and the asphyxiating pall, forcing the men to wear respirators, must have made their dangerous work that much more difficult.
As the concealing cloud began to spread and thicken, the Browning began to fire short bursts on fixed lines.
Now death came upon the toiling Russians when they thought they were safe. Those hit by the blind-fire died without hearing or even realizing they were under attack.
They couldn’t stop the work completely. Revell knew that, regardless of the cost in lives, but the MG fire, combined with such heavier concentrations as they could put down during lulls in the shelling, would reduce the pace of the work to a costly crawl.
As an added touch, he had the tracer rounds removed from the fast-consumed belts of fifty-calibre slugs, to enhance the demoralizing effect on the Russian troops. Now the powerful armour -piercing rounds would arrive and slice through men, trees and light armour without warning.
In answer to the harassing fire, the communists replied with their own, turning some of their biggest guns on the castle. Only the sheer scale of the target they were punishing enabled it to soak up the bombardment. The big artillery shells impacting on the enormous table of rubble could do little more than grind it into smaller and smaller pieces.
A near miss blasted the abandoned transport parked short of the gate and started fires that made an acrid cloud full of floating particles of lampblack from tires and synthetic cab fittings and upholstery. Gas tanks ruptured and sent showers of blazing fuel over the walls, but their great thickness made them impervious to the ferocious heat generated.