Killing Ground

by James Rouch

  It was growing dark, and for Revell the gathering gloom was an accurate reflection of his mood. ‘How many have we got who are fit to fight or carry?’

  ‘A lot of those still on their feet will need frequent kicks to keep them moving.’ Hyde had made the count himself. With the men dispersed about the various defence positions it had taken that to bring home how depleted their numbers were. ‘But if you want me to include everyone still with the strength to pull a trigger, seventeen.’ He looked at the lieutenant.

  ‘Thirty-nine of my pioneers are still on their feet. Using the sergeant’s methods I could persuade another eight to make the effort. We lost sixteen men when the door was blown.’

  ‘No luck with the radio yet?’ Revell made no comment on the figures; they spoke for themselves. The radio was a forlorn hope, but he’d insisted Garrett keep trying.

  ‘Nothing yet.’ Hyde had made the same report every ten minutes for the last couple of hours.

  Dooley pushed his way into the group. He thrust a bulky pack at the major. ‘You should see this.’

  Taking the bag, Revell noted it was Russian and sticky with blood. Inside was a signal gun and a selection of variously colour-coded cartridges for it. There was also a large wooden case, strongly fastened with leather straps. Resting it on his knee, he undid it to reveal a compact microwave dish complete with all its related equipment, right down to spare batteries.

  ‘I found it under the body of a Spetsnaz who didn’t make it past the door.’ Dooley wriggled fingers through holes in the pack’s carrying strap.

  ‘Get Garrett over here on the double.’ Revell turned to Sampson. ‘And I want Boris up here. Before you say it I know he’s in a bad way, but from now on your main task is to keep him alive for as long as you can - that’s if you want to go on living yourself.’

  The sun set early, behind a bank of bluish-grey clouds that were growing on the western horizon. As the tops of the hills caught the last of the pale light a sharp breeze sprang up and added a distinct chill to the air.

  From across the valley came the occasional report of a mine being triggered. No flash was ever visible inside the dense smokescreen but it gave notice that the Russians were making no faster progress over there, even without harassment.

  At what would have been sunset, if the changing weather had not brought it forward, they heard a pair of gunships circling. For half an hour they maintained an erratic search pattern, but if the castle was their target, they never found it.

  Gradually the beat of the rotors faded in the distance, and some kilometres off, an inoffensive, unoccupied hilltop received a deluge of fuel-air bombs, and as it burned was repeatedly strafed with cannons and rockets.

  The Russians didn’t dare take their loads back and admit failure. Revell could only hope their report of a brilliant pinpoint attack would allow them to be left in peace for a while.

  It was shortly after that, as he wrestled with the problem of what ttrdo with the wounded, that they established a radio link through a satellite relay.

  Boris lay back, ignoring the discomfort of the broken surface. It was nothing compared to the throbbing in his head and the agony of drawing each breath. There was a curious bubbling sensation in his chest, and a growing numbness down his right side.

  They had explained why he could not have more pain-killers and he had accepted their reasoning. Laid beside Garrett, he had directed the necessary modifications to the equipment to enable it to operate on NATO wavebands.

  The clumsiness displayed by the young PFC, his impetuous rush into every task at the risk of doing irreparable damage, had driven Boris to the verge of distraction. Fortunately no serious damage had resulted from his frequent dropping, knocking and gouging of components.

  He’d made every allowance for the work being done under difficult conditions, in the dark and cold and with only the fitful illumination from a small flashlight held by their shivering’ medic, but still the PFC’s reckless ineptitude had made him despair at times.

  ‘You lay down like that, you fool, and you’re going to drown in your own blood.’ Sampson wadded a jacket and placed it under the Russian’s head and shoulders.

  ‘You want that jab now?’ Even as he asked, he produced a hypodermic.

  ‘Pozhalusta, da.’ Boris wrestled with his swirling memory, but the English words would not come. But he’d been understood, and as he felt the tip of the needle enter his arm he experienced an overwhelming sensation of relief, so strong that the comfort it brought merged imperceptibly with the effect of the drug.

  He knew he was very likely one of hundreds who would breathe their last this night in the Zone. But he did not see it as a personal tragedy; he had been marked for death for too long, had come to accept the idea, and now the fact.

  Lying at the bottom of the gun pit, he could see the crescent of the microwave dish resting on a plinth of broken stone. Vaguely he was aware of people gathered about the nearby radio. The only sound he could hear was his own blood rushing through his ears, in a hurry to find the holes in his body, to escape and take his life with it.

  There was a face above him, and he was being gently shaken. They should leave him alone, he had done all he could…

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Garrett turned to Sampson. ‘How much have you pumped into him?’

  ‘Enough to take away the pain. In his case that’s quite a lot. The poor little creep is in shock. I’ll lay money he can understand you, but he may not be able to answer.’

  ‘Boris, Boris, can you hear me?’ Garrett felt like he was touching a corpse, the man was so pale and cold. ‘Boris, the signal is fading. The set is all right, but the signal is fading.’ He repeated it again, talking loudly and slowly. ‘What do I have to do?’

  From a depth only a shade away from deep unconsciousness, Boris struggled to articulate. He could manage only a single word and it took forever to form and virtually the last of his breath to utter.

  ‘Batereyka.’ He was still being shaken and the question persisted, going on and on. By an effort of will he dragged his mind back from the plunge into blackness it had commenced and tried again. ‘Ak-kumulyator... batareyka…battery, the battery...’

  The last word blended into a deep sigh. In the narrow segment of night sky that he could see, Boris watched the stars being snuffed one by one as the leading edge of a large cloud drifted in front of them.

  He did not think it strange that he had no fear of death. How can a man who has known fear all his adult life be afraid of being released from that?

  There would be no more KGB, no more GPU, no more foul prisons, no more brutish interrogators, no more thugs of the Commandants Service. And no more Andrea with her scarcely veiled threats and ever-present menace.

  Pain was returning, but still as only a pulsing burning sensation so far. He was glad his last act had not been one to bring death to his fellow countrymen. Making the set function had been an act to save life, not destroy it. It no longer mattered that help would come too late for him.

  ‘At last.’ Andrea bent over the blanket-wrapped form. ‘He is dead. Good.’ Revell paused as he was about to replace the headset. ‘Andrea.’ Her features were indistinct in the darkness, but he knew she had heard him. ‘Fuck off.’

  TWENTY THREE

  Scully had to steel himself for each journey down to the cellars to help with bringing up the wounded. Even the difficulties and sheer exertion of the task couldn’t override entirely his abhorrence of the cramped passageways and low ceilings.

  Manhandling the litters through the narrow doorways, around sharp corners and up steep staircases, and all the time trying to ensure that a drip needle wasn’t dislodged, or that a fractured limb wasn’t knocked against the wall. The work was exacting and exhausting for the patients, as well as the bearers, as they were tilted and jolted.

  Several times Scully had seen Andrea stalk by, a look of savage determination on her face as she hunted for the missing deserter. A gruesome check of the remains scattered
below ground had positively confirmed he was not among those killed. She had appointed herself to conduct the search among the warren of storerooms.

  ‘Don’t fancy his chances if she finds him.’ Dooley hefted his end of a litter higher and took the weight as two others supported its front end and started up the cellar steps.

  ‘What the hell did the major say to her?’ Scully staggered, but managed to maintain his grip.

  ‘No idea.’ Arms aching, Dooley would have preferred to move faster but the pace had to be set by the men in the lead. He had to tap with his toecap to determine the exact height of each step before moving onto it. ‘Whatever it was it’s broken the spell. I reckon she won’t be twisting him ‘round her little finger anymore.’

  They finally shuffled into the ground floor and under Sampson’s supervision lifted the Dutchman off the litter and laid him on the bare stone floor.

  The whole of the good-sized room was filled with wounded. Some were sitting but most were laid still, making no sound except for an occasional low moan as pain broke through the heavy doses of painkillers.

  ‘That the last?’ Sampson made an adjustment to a drip, working with his nose almost touching it, by the light of a carefully shielded match.

  ‘That’s it.’ Dooley flexed his muscles to rid them of the cramp induced by the prolonged strain of the hard work. ‘Only thing still down there is Andrea and that deserter.’

  ‘They deserve each other. Maybe they’ll’ run off together and we’ll all be happier and safer.’ Looking about him, there was little Sampson could see, and less he could do.

  Karen had the flashlight and was moving among the wounded quietly. The small circle of illumination flicked from drawn faces to dressing, to drips and then on to the next.

  ‘Are we really ordered to stay put, and keep the dump in one piece?’ Dooley couldn’t make sense of the rumour that was flying about. ‘We can’t hold this place now. We’ll just be handing all those goodies to the commies on a plate.’

  ‘All I know is that I was told to get the wounded up to the first floor, ready for evacuation at first light or soon after. Won’t take so long to get them into a chopper from here. Guess, as usual, the casevac boys don’t want to be on the ground longer than they can help.’

  Checking the pulse of the last man brought up, Sampson felt it falter, pick up again, and the cease.

  ‘Oh shit. I lost him, and I really thought he was in with a chance. You never can tell.’

  ‘That all you know?’

  ‘Look, Dooley, you’re so keen to find out, go ask the major. I’m busy, trying to stop people from dying.’

  Sampson disconnected the drip. He knelt beside the body and pulled the blanket up to cover the face. ‘Yeah, I’m trying, dear God I’m trying, but I’m not always succeeding.’

  There was no doubt he’d heard the orders clearly, but in the short transmission time he’d been allowed, Revell had been given no more than the barest facts. They were brutally brief and precise. Stay put, don’t destroy the dump, casualty pick-up at first light. That was it.

  It wasn’t orders, it was a death sentence. They were a tiny NATO island in the middle of a surging communist sea. At best from now on they could be of no more than nuisance value to the Russian troops intent on capturing the valley and its contents.

  By this time the communists would be confident that the handful of troops holed up in the ruins did not possess the means to destroy the dumps. Their mine-clearing effort had only to remain beyond the reach of the comparatively short-range weapons emplaced among the ruins and shortly all would be theirs.

  It was only the fate of the wounded that deterred Revell from disobeying orders. Once they were away he would take matters into his own hands. It was more than likely that HQ did not understand the implications of the situation. Just because he’d had an acknowledgment of his signal did not mean that the staff officer dealing with it had fully understood precisely what was at stake. Shit, how could he? He wouldn’t have seen the lives lost, the bodies broken and torn apart...

  ‘The Reds have lost another bulldozer, by the look of it.’

  On the far side of the valley a bubble of flame rose through the piled smokescreen. Hyde watched it tuck in its tail as it climbed until it was a disembodied ball of dull fire, and then it was gone.

  ‘Yes.’ Revell noted it absently. ‘But they haven’t far to go.’ ‘They’ll have thrown away a lot of lives.’ Hyde beat his arms across his body to combat the cold. ‘Did the powers-that-be say if we’d be reinforced after the wounded are away?’

  Flecks of sleet blew in the wind and Revell pulled his collar higher. ‘They didn’t say anything. I don’t know whether they don’t know what they’re doing or won’t say what they’re doing. We stay, that’s all I got.’

  ‘You going to speak to the men? There’s a lot of rumours flying about.’ ‘They can’t be any worse than the truth. Pass on what we know. I’ll talk to them after the casualties are lifted out.’

  ‘There won’t be a lot you can say, will there, except to tell them to check they’ve filled in their will forms.’

  Revell knew his sergeant was right, echoing his own thinking. Perhaps they were being left behind purely for their nuisance value. They could tie up quite a few Russian troops for some time. It was a tactic the Russians themselves had frequently used. Stay-behind parties could inflict damage out of all proportion to their numbers.

  Hell, and he’d thought by defending this place they were making a real contribution to the NATO effort, giving the Russians a hard kick in the teeth. The truth was they were no more than pricking them with a pin, and would be brushed aside and destroyed as an afterthought of the main Warpac advance. Perhaps the NATO staff wanted the tempting stores in the valley to remain intact for the time being so as to act as a honey-pot, drawing more and more troops onto them.

  Another airburst cracked overhead. The flak tank that had been quiet for an hour joined in, hoping to catch anyone going to the assistance of wounded. Orange tracer flashed above the ruins to arc away in the distance and finally self-destruct at the limit of their range in tiny points of light.

  ‘Sunrise in thirty minutes,’ Revell had to brush a snowflake from his watch to read it. ‘We’ve got about six-tenths cloud. Let’s hope it stays that way.’

  ‘I’ll get Scully to pass ‘round hot drinks.’ Hyde wiped his face with the back of his glove. The leather was sodden.

  ‘Good idea. might be the last chance for a while. Then I want all weapons manned. When we hear that chopper coming in I want to hit every commie flak position with all we’ve got.’

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Dooley scrambled up on top and hurled himself into the nearest weapon pit. He had to bellow at his loudest to make himself heard by Clarence.

  ‘How should I know? I’m only fighting this war, not running it; that’s if anybody is...’

  ‘Shit.’ Dooley threw himself flat as a flight of Harriers screamed past so low that they felt the blast of their slipstream and tasted the exhaust from their jet pipes. ‘The whole world has gone fucking mad…’

  The rest of his words were lost as a pair of MIGs followed the Harriers. Tracer was coming up from among the trees, among them the 30mm from the flak tank.

  ‘Hit it.’ Revell jumped up and yelled to the mortar crews. ‘Take it out now.’

  ‘Fire!’ Thorne and his men dropped bombs down the waiting tubes in a never- ending procession, pausing only to realign on fresh targets as they were called. Every location in turn was drenched by the deluge of explosives, and the anti- aircraft fire rapidly diminished.

  Masses of tracer and whole swarms of anti-tank missiles ploughed through the trees, and soon there were several fierce fires sprouting from unseen sources, and the crackle of exploding munitions.

  More NATO ground-attack aircraft were visible in the distance, peeling out of formations to make diving attacks with rockets, bombs and cannons. Almost every time they were rewarded with dense pillars of
black smoke denoting burning vehicles. The columns rose straight up in the still, pale dawn.

  ‘This is fantastic. I thought we didn’t have any aircraft left.’ Dooley sent yet another TOW missile on its way and gave it his full concentration until it blasted the camouflage from a self-propelled gun. He grabbed a reload.

  ‘Some clever shit has been saving a few by the looks of things.’ Carrington had hefted his mini-gun onto the top of a broken wall and was expending ammunition at an incredible rate against a distant ridge. After a thousand rounds, showers of random tracer marked the destruction of his target.

  From close at hand came the distinctive heavy double beat of a Chinook. The downdraft from his blades accelerated the sleet to stinging speed that hurt exposed hands and faces. As it reduced forward momentum and began to drop toward the ruins, its gunners were putting down a massive weight of fire from four mini-guns and as many grenade launchers. The machine was plastered with red-cross emblems.

  The rear loading ramp was already half-lowered when it made an uneven touchdown. By the time it made contact with the broken stone the first of the wounded were lining up to board.

  A loadmaster, linked to the flight deck by the umbilical of his intercom lead, did a double-take as he saw the girls. ‘Can’t have been all that bad, Major. I wouldn’t have minded ...’ His words tailed off as the line of wounded kept coming in a never-ending line from an opening among the piles of rubble.

  ‘It’s not been a party.’ Revell ducked as a cannot shell passed through the arc of the forward rotors and a shower of metal and carbon fibre fragments slashed past. ‘Have you got a combat air patrol? Can you get hold of them?’

  ‘No problem. What do you want and where?’

  ‘Everything they’ve got. Right under the castle walls and back along the road.’

  Less than a minute elapsed and then the air was filled again with the roar of jet engines as a line of A-10s dipped from the clouds and swept low over the trees.