by James Rouch
One other person among them exhibited outward signs of his emotions. Boris was sweating. The Russian deserter frequently had to dab at his face with his cuff to wipe away the beads of moisture that formed faster than the cold draught from the open door could evaporate them. He had not said a word to anyone since the final briefing, when they’d learnt their objective, and now the terrors that churned inside him were draining him of colour.
Leaning forward, Revell tapped the Russian on the knee to get his attention. We’ll be down soon. I’m not all that keen on flying myself.’
Shaking his head, Boris stumbled over words he could normally select and speak with impeccable fluency. ‘It is not… not the flying...’ The major’s words sunk in, belatedly, and he hastily corrected himself, grasping at the excuse offered. This time the words came out in a jumbled torrent. ‘Yes ... yes it is ... the flying. I will feel better... yes better, when we are down. We will be down ... soon.’ That last word came very quietly, was lost in the scream of the engines and the beating whirr of the rotor blades. His face fell, like a man who has just announced his own execution. He had to wipe the sweat away again.
Ahead Libby could see the shining silver parallel strips of railway tracks. They crossed one set, then another, and now they were over a built-up area.
The pilot banked them to a new heading and they began the final approach to the drop zone, having to gain height as they did so, to be sure of clearing power lines, chimneys and radio masts.
A scorching wave of compressed air shoved Libby back into the cabin and he had to grab hold of the mini-gun to keep from falling as the helicopter alongside, that had kept them company for so many miles, dissolved inside a huge orange ball of flame as it was hit by a SAM missile.
Only the blazing hulk of the cabin, with one engine still attached, struck the ground as a recognisable piece of debris. The rest of the Black Hawk and its crew fell as a burning rain on to a waterlogged football pitch.
Further along the line another of their number was hit and began to fall, trailing a sheet of flame. Just before it exploded against the base of a giant cooling tower, Libby saw its door gunner jump. On fire from head to foot, he landed close by a line of tracked missile launchers. A dashing field car deliberately swerved to run over the body.
Their pilot was throwing their transport about the sky, at the same time dropping a series of flares, in an attempt to decoy missiles homing by infra-red.
The evasive tactics were giving Libby little chance to use the mini-gun to effect. He managed to put most of a hundred-round burst across the hull front of a quad-barrelled Shilka flak-tank, but had no chance to see what result he achieved.
Another helicopter cut in front of them, and as it did Libby could clearly see the pilot desperately wrestling with the controls, and the terrified expression of a young door gunner; then there were more targets before him, and he wasn’t able to see what sort of landing it made.
Successive curtains of anti-aircraft gunfire sent shells and machine gun calibre bullets smacking into and bouncing off the underside of the reinforced floor. More passed through the arc of the blades, making strange shrieking, zinging noises as they nicked or flattened themselves against the armour rotors.
A lone F-4 appeared from nowhere and unleashed a hail of rockets against a battery of SA-6 missiles and then-radars, parked in a railway goods yard alongside a row of four cooling towers. The whole lot blew apart and the fighter-bomber flew through the smoke of their destruction then climbed and turned for a second run across the front of the depleted line of helicopters.
This time the aircraft used its 20mm gatling cannon to lash a group of gun pits, before dropping a pair of iron bombs that straddled a line of parked trucks loaded with spare missiles. Two of them were tipped over, and another began to burn.
Constant vibration made Libby’s hands tingle as he sent burst after burst at the never-ending series of anti-aircraft positions.
Another Black Hawk plunged to earth, exploding on impact and giving its crew and passengers no chance of escape.
Tracer of every hue zipped past the cabin door, a large green one passing so close that Libby felt he could have put his hand out and touched it. Bullets beat against the chopper’s armoured underside, and ricocheted from its fuselage, making long scars in its camouflage paint scheme.
One mile to go. Libby heard it over his headphones; sandwiched between the constant list of targets the flight crew were feeding him. Not that he had time to search for those the pilots saw, nor did he need to. It seemed that every open space they flew across held its quota of SAM launchers or anti-aircraft guns. It was a concentration of defences the like of which he had never seen before.
A loud bang filled the cabin with deafening noise. Suddenly it was full of smoke and every panel in the fuselage began to shudder violently. Loose fittings bounced and tumbled about the cabin floor, some finding their way out through the doorway. Cline and his stack of bullet-proof vests went different ways. Fumes from the engine’s automatic fire-suppression system flooded down into the cabin through rents in the plates.
The helicopter was yawing from side to side and losing height. An apartment block flashed past on one side, an electricity pylon on the other.
With the shaking becoming still more violent, Revell was forced to hang on to a bracket with one hand, while the other he stretched out to Andrea.
She had lost her grip and was sliding towards the open door. Twisting round she managed to grasp his extended hand, and as she did Dooley also managed to reach her, and between them they hauled her to safety.
Buildings blurred past Libby as he kept his ringer hard down to fire off every round he could before they crashed. There was no aiming, no distinction between military and civilian targets. All he wanted to do was hand out to them, all of them, everything he could, before they got him. They were down very low now, and still with a lot of forward momentum. There was a fire somewhere above his head. An engine, or perhaps a fuel line, was burning, and blow-torch-like feathers of yellow flames kept dipping in through the top of the door to lick at his helmet and visor.
Out of control the Black Hawk side-slipped, the rotors sliced across the front of an office building and the ground raced towards them.
THREE
At the last instant the nose of the helicopter came up, but it was still travelling too fast when it struck the road. There were loud reports as the tyres burst, then the undercarriage was ripped off. The chopper’s broadside progress across the intersection was accompanied by the scream of grinding metal on stone and billowing clouds of sparks and smoke, through which scythed lengths of splintered blade and shattered panes of glass.
With a final jarring collision the cabin came to rest, and as it did the unchecked racing howl of the twin turbo shaft engines died. The silence was short-lived. Even as Libby’s sound-saturated eardrums began to recognise the fact that they had stopped, their deafening racket was replaced by another that played on a wider range of nerves. A hideous, nerve-shredding, distressed howling began to emanate from the cockpit.
‘Out. It’s starting to burn.’
The hefty shove Hyde gave him in the back helped Libby shake some of the shock from his mind, and he leapt down from the doorway to start helping out the others. A fierce fire raged over their heads as the flames fed on the punctured tanks of aviation fuel. Every breath was filled with the stench of kerosene and burning rubber.
Ripper and Clarence joined Libby in trying to salvage some of the demolition charges. Roasting smoke filled the cabin, and molten aluminium was dripping from the flames overhead.
Attempts to free the trapped co-pilot were hopeless. The concrete lamp standard that had crushed the other flight deck crew had wrapped the metalwork of the cockpit tight around his legs. But it wasn’t that pain that prompted the man’s ghastly yelling; slashed by scalpel-sharp slivers of glass, the flesh and muscle of his face hung down into the torn hands he cupped to hold them. Like bloody steaks, the flaps
of tissue flopped back and forth at his every move.
Taking the kit Revell pushed into his hand, Hyde extracted the syringe, and with the force of a knife-thrust plunged the long thick needle in through a tear in the co-pilot’s tattered flak-jacket as close to the heart as he could get, and rammed the plunger home.
As though it mattered against the other agonies and fears he was experiencing, the man jumped and mewed at the sliver of metal’s penetration, then the huge overdose hit him and every fibre of his suffering-wracked body relaxed and he died.
Another helicopter passed overhead. Others could be heard, and so could the rattle and crash of automatic and cannon fire. Even as they had been going down, Revell’s mind had been interpreting the wild flitting images he’d glimpsed through the cabin windows. The rail junction and marshalling yard could only be a few hundred yards off. Maybe the raid wasn’t as big a shambles as it had looked from the air, maybe most of the first wave had got through, and even if they hadn’t, the second was due soon, and then they’d have enough men on the ground to do the job and still hold a perimeter against the time when pick-up would be possible.
A decrepit Tatra truck rattled around a corner two blocks away, and several half-dressed East German Militia snapped off a wild fusillade of automatic fire from its back as it rocked to a stop across the road. Cline and Dooley sent several disciplined short bursts in return, and the truck crashed through a clumsy, tyre- stripping, five-point turn before roaring off the way it had come, its passengers tumbled into a heap.
‘We got them, Major.’
‘Fuck off, Bomber, they pissed off because they were shit scared.’ Dooley fitted a fresh belt to the M60, letting its loose end hang free down to his knees.
The heat drove Libby back, forcing him to abandon his attempt to save a case of ammunition. A moment later machine gun rounds began to cook-off inside the Black Hawk, and they all had to duck as some came out through the bubbling alloy skin of the fuselage.
Revell tossed a sack of rifle grenades to the armourer. ‘We’ve got all we can carry. Everyone take a maximum load. If things are as screwed up as they look, then we won’t be able to count on much in the way of re-supply.’
They were fifty yards from it when the helicopter’s fuel tanks ruptured and exploded. Libby saw the mini-gun, the section of floor to which it was bolted, and a shower of ammo boxes sail across the street to crash into and through the wall of a warehouse.
A gunship spun into the road ahead of them, disintegrating and filling it with fire that instantly spread to the timber yards on either side. Sergeant Hyde struck off down a side alley, and the others followed. They had to step over a man-sized depression in the asphalt that was filled with a stinking red pulp. Tangled white silk draped a stack of oil drums close by, linked to the remains by twisted rigging lines.
The alley ended at a wire mesh fence. Through it, made indistinct by the clouds of drifting smoke, Libby saw their objective. It looked different from the aerial photographs. The bare cement walls had been toned down by the application of a wash of camouflage paint, but the control-tower-like glass top was unmistakable. Steel shutters had been added, but had been left folded back. From where they stood, at ground level, it was impossible to be sure, but at least ten, and possibly twenty or more long lines of assorted railway wagons separated them from the signal cabin.
‘Sure is a pity the major can’t do a Moses, and get these freight cars to part for us.’
‘Just get us through the fence.’ Cline slapped his cutters into Ripper’s hand. ‘Shit, how come you’re always giving me the work?’ ‘Every time you open your mouth, you draw attention to yourself.’ Clarence volunteered the answer as he worked at the other side of the opening, cutting through the woven intersection of the wire to work at twice the young infantryman’s speed. He had to brush aside Boris’s attempts to help.
The Russian was nervous and, hampered by the whipping aerial of his man- pack radio, only managed to get in the way. His nervousness showed in the taut lines in his slab face and his fumbling eagerness to get the squad moving once more.
From the far side of the yard came the sounds of small-arms fire, and further away, the fast punching crack of multiple cannons.
‘In we go.’ Revell went first, and stood guard as the others and their loads were fed through. His first glance had told him there was no choice of route. To go around the long lines of wagons would have taken too long. They would have to thread through them, squeezing between each row into what was a potential killing ground if there were any more militia in the area. And by now there was a strong chance there would be.
Andrea sent a long burst at a brown-uniformed figure that sprinted from a small shed. The last few bullets caught him, and the man went down, kicked once then lay still. ‘A Russian. They said nothing about Russians.’
‘Probably just railway troops, bound to be a few. Burke, get me his jacket.’ ‘I’ll get it.’ Before Burke could act Dooley had set down his machine gun, and was running towards the body, spare belts flapping about him.
A second figure appeared at the door of the shed, then ducked back as Libby fired from the hip, a brief burst that went nowhere near its target, but drove the Russian back out of sight before he could take aim with a pistol.
Not bothering even to attempt to remove the jacket, Dooley grabbed the corpse by the wrist and began to tow it back, sweeping a broad stroke on the damp ground that was marred by the indents made by the trailing boot heels.
The shed blew apart, first being lifted from its foundations, and then collapsing inwards like a card house, as Andrea’s 40mm rifle grenade went in through a window.
Mud and blood had to be wiped from the corpse’s sleeve patch before Revell could decipher its design.
‘Well, is he railway troops?’ Burke pushed forward, trying to see past Sergeant Hyde.
‘No, artillery.’ Turning the body over with his boot, Hyde reached into an unbuttoned pocket and took out the Russian’s pay book. He handed it to Boris. ‘Does this tell us any more?’
Flicking over the well-thumbed pages, Boris stopped at those detailing the soldier’s specialist training. ‘He is with an air defence regiment.’ ‘No bloody wonder they’re hacking our choppers out of the sodding sky. This shit must have a load of mates around here. No one said anything about all this bloody flak. A bloody milk run they said. It’s fucking Arnhem all over again.’
Burke watched as Dooley roughly cut away the badges from the dead man’s jacket. ‘I wondered what had made you so keen. You started souvenir collecting?’
‘Yeah, sort of. Fetch a good price do these, from the typewriter warriors back at HQ.’ He cursed at having to leave the belt buckle, as Hyde shoved the M60 at him, and pushed him after the others.
As Libby moved from the security of one line of wagons to another his mouth was dry and his breath came faster. Beneath the big steel-bodied cars nothing could touch him, but each time his turn came to wriggle into the open, drag his rifle and pack out after him then dash the few feet to the next sanctuary, before repeating the same frantic process in reverse, fear struck him in a way that was almost physical. He watched Clarence when his turn came. The sniper’s coolness made him as devoid of expression as the hideously disfigured Sergeant Hyde, but there was nothing in his actions, no extra caution, no hesitation, to betray even a suggestion of fear.
There were fewer choppers going over now, but the sounds of battle around the yard were increasing, with several more heavy weapons coming into action. The crash of grenades was becoming more frequent, and then they heard the first thunder of demolition explosions, and mushrooms of smoke and debris soared high above the yard from the direction of the engine roundhouse.
The concealment offered by the rolling stock ended a good seventy-five yards from the signal cabin. Between it and them gleamed several sets of tracks, woven into a complex junction at the throat of the yard. Stray shots had chipped the reinforced structure, making a couple of star-surrounded hol
es in the smoked glass windows, but the indicator lights on the modern control board inside could still be seen, blinking on and off.
‘We’ll put down smoke.’
‘Hell, Dooley, you hear the major? Ain’t enough your big feet are gonna have to trip the little o’l light fantastic over ah’ that ironmongery, he’s gonna make you do it with your eyes tight closed, or as good as.’
‘Shut it, Ripper.’ Hyde had been scrutinising the wagons of a train standing some fifty yards on the other side of the cabin. ‘I think we can save some rounds, Major.’ He pointed out from beneath the bulk cement carrier to a pair of unmarked matt-black tanker wagons.
‘It’s worth a try, and the wind’s in the right direction.’ Revell nudged Libby, and indicated the cleaner of the two wagons. ‘Five rounds.’
‘Like shooting at a barn. Reckon he’ll hit it?’ This time Ripper didn’t need to be told, he saw Revell looking his way, and shut up instantly.
Five sparkling spouts came from the evenly spaced punctures made by the high-velocity bullets. ‘Looks like aviation gas. Try the next in line, same again.’
This time the spurting fluid was darker, splashed less where it landed.
‘That’s what we want, some nice heavy stuff. OK Andrea, put an incendiary grenade into the side of the first one.’
It was almost point-blank range, and she had only to elevate her rifle a fraction for the tube of the grenade thrower slung beneath the barrel to put a phosphorous round into the centre of the target.
The detonation of the leaking kerosene mixture was instantaneous. There was a rippling flash of pale flame, barely visible even against the dark paint of the tanker, and then a massive report as the wagon bucked violently and twisting pillars of fire sent its top-mounted valves and inspection hatches hundreds of feet into the air above the marshalling yard. Almost the entire contents were consumed in that moment, but where the gushing liquid had mixed with the glutinous mass from the next wagon it burned longer.