Body Count

by James Rouch

  Cover illustration:

  The ZSU-23-4 is a fully integrated, self-propelled antiaircraft system with four liquid-cooled 23-mm automatic cannons mounted on the front of a large, flat, armored turret. The chassis has many components borrowed from other Soviet armored vehicles, and the suspension system resembles that of the PT-76 and ASU 85 (six road wheels and no track support rollers). The driver sits in the left front of the hull, and the rest of the crew (commander, gunner, and radar operator) are located in the turret. The GUN DISH fire control radar mounted on the rear of the turret can be folded down during travel.

  THE ZONE Series by James Rouch:

  HARD TARGET

  BLIND FIRE

  HUNTER KILLER

  SKY STRIKE

  OVERKILL

  KILLING GROUND

  PLAGUE BOMB

  CIVILIAN SLAUGHTER

  BODY COUNT

  DEATH MARCH

  BODY COUNT

  James Rouch

  THE ZONE 9

  For Mark

  Copyright © 1990 by James Rouch

  An Imprint Original Publication, 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers.

  First E-Book Edition 2005

  Second IMRPINT April 2007

  The characters in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  THE ZONE

  THE ZONE E-Books are published by

  IMPRINT Publications, 3 Magpie Court

  High Wycombe, WA 6057. AUSTRALIA.

  Produced under licence from the Author, all rights reserved. Created in Australia by Ian Taylor © 2005

  ONE

  In the very centre of the city, if you listened carefully, you could sometimes hear the noise of the distant battles. Major Revell didn't make the attempt. These were the last few hours of his seven-day furlough. He would' be hearing the guns, from much closer, soon enough.

  Outside the window the constant stream of pedestrians was undiminished, but most of the tables in the little restaurant were empty. He had only to make a slight gesture to attract the attention of the fat waitress. A moment later another bottle of liebfraumilch stood beside his plate.

  The food was hardly touched. Revell pushed a cube of smoked pork with his fork, but could summon neither the appetite nor the enthusiasm to eat. He refilled his glass.

  A distant rumble of heavy artillery fire intruded on his enjoyment of the first taste. Now he wished he'd chosen a place where the roar of traffic would drown such sounds. The planners could never have known that freeing much of the city centre from the intrusion of vehicles would have brought that disadvantage.

  An elderly woman, with two tired grandchildren in tow, came in and returned the waitress's greeting. She made to sit at the next table, saw the officer's uniform, and hesitated almost imperceptibly. Instead she chose to sit at another, further away.

  Revell's smile at the little girl was rewarded with a shy but polite Gutan Abend, before she was pulled abruptly to her distant seat. He let the smile fade slowly. It was a reaction he was all too used to.

  When he entered the small establishment, there had been a hurried whispered conversation between the waitress and the unseen proprietor in the kitchen. Revell had been shown to a corner table, far from the door.

  Not that they could have refused to serve him. Even a few months earlier they might well have. The new laws had changed all that, if not the actual attitudes of the people.

  Munich was close to the borders of the Zone, but divorced itself from the reality of that great contaminated no-man's-land as much as it could. As if it could pretend that it did not exist.

  In the eyes of the civilian population - even those of the rear echelon staff who inhabited the city in seemingly vast numbers - combat soldiers carried the taint of the Zone with them.

  The stories - mostly wild, but many all too true, of nuclear, chemical, and bacterial weapons - made the fighting troops outcasts in the society they were defending.

  Idly he wondered if the wine was watered, but he knew it wasn't. At any other time the amount he had drunk would have put him under the table. Now it was having no apparent effect. His mind was too full of what awaited him in the days - and if he was lucky enough to live that long - in the weeks that lay ahead.

  “May I join you, Herr Major?”

  Revell hadn't notice the man enter. When he looked at him closely, he was hardly surprised. From his bland expression to his nondescript suit, the man was a walking nonentity. Out of habit, Revell tried to classify him. Perhaps he was the owner of a small and uninteresting business, or a bureaucrat in a minor state concern, the post office perhaps.

  “Is there a special reason why you should wish to join me?” “Let me introduce myself, however inadequately. My name is Otto. You do not know me.”

  Unbidden, he sat down across from the officer. Revell observed that even his posture was unremarkable. Slightly round-shouldered, a little stooped, but not sufficiently to provoke comment. The man would have melted unnoticed into any crowd.

  A dozen times in the last seven days, Revell had been battened on to by salesmen peddling everything from insurance to forged passports and replica medal ribbons. And there were others who approached men on leave. Usually they were relatives of refugees trapped in the Zone. They desperately clutched at any straw for information, interrogating with a pitiful intensity any soldier who spared them the time.

  Somehow Revell knew this man was not any of those. “Just Otto?” “As I said, Herr Major Revell, you do not know me, and there is no reason why you should. Not now, not ever.” “You know me though.”

  “Indeed I do. I would have contacted you before, but the city is so full at this time. We lost track of you for several days.”

  “I can't say I'm sorry. I don't like being spied on.” “I am sure, Major Revell. Actually we traced you through a lady friend of yours, of whom we learnt only today, Fraulein Sophia Pruller. I'm sorry, I see you take offence. Please accept my apologies. That was an unwarranted intrusion into your private affairs.”

  “I think you had better come straight to the point.” The German had Revell puzzled. Nothing in his voice or manner suggested any exceptional qualities, but he sensed that in him there were depths he did not care to explore. “And so I shall Major.”

  Otto waved away the waitress, then had second thoughts, and ordered a mineral water. He waited until it had been served before going on.

  “I represent certain interests, Major Revell. We have known of your Special Combat Company for some time. An interest has been taken in you and your recent - shall we say - problems.”

  “Would you like to spell that out.” Revell was not about to be tricked into revealing information, but he was intrigued. “Certainly. If I mention a mass grave, and a KGB disciplinary battalion,* and your raid upon them? Need I go on to mention the charges you faced for disobeying orders not to retaliate during a truce?”

  “So you seem to know as much as you say. Why your interest in me and my unit?”

  Again there was an interruption, with the entrance of a large group of Swedish tourists. Two of the women were unsteady, and there was much chatter and giggling over seating arrangements before they settled to read the menu.

  It was with surprise that Revell noticed his bottle was already half-empty. Perhaps the drink was getting to him.

  “I have a proposition, Major. The men I represent are very rich, very powerful. They need protection. You would be paid very well.”

  “They operate in the Zone?”

  “Some of their ventures are in that area, yes.” “And you want me to deliver my unit, compl
ete, as a freelance army. You want us all to desert, in one go.”

  “You are a blunt man, Major Revell, but yes, that is what I am proposing. The men of whom I speak have urgent need of your services. They offer an initial cash payment of two million marks, for you to split as you see fit. That is purely a token of their good faith, there would be much more to follow.”

  “And when would they want us to go to work for them?” “Right away, Major, right away. There is transport available to move you tonight. Your men are due to be assembled at the Hauptbahnhof at one o'clock tonight for the train at three, are they not?”

  Revell had heard that anything and everything was for sale in Munich. This was certainly proof of the truth of that rumour.

  “So you think my men will go for it straight off, just like that.” “They will follow you, Major, I am certain of it. But you do not have to tell them tonight. We have the buses and the papers all ready. You have only to say that the arrangements have been altered, and that they will not be going by train. Later you can explain in full. Each of them will make many times what he does at present.”

  Knowing his manner and expression were being carefully watched, Revell did nothing to betray his thoughts. He kept quiet, waiting to see what else this Otto had to say.

  “For years, Major, you have been fighting for a cause that most of your men barely comprehend. Let them at last reap the rewards that the risks they take should bring. Surely they deserve that at least?”

  “I think you're underestimating my men, and overestimating my powers of persuasion.” Managing to catch the waitress's eye, as she waited impatiently for the party's order, Revell called to her. “Fraulein, zahlen bitte.”

  He said nothing more until she had placed the bill on the table and he'd counted out the notes, waving the change away.

  “Herr Otto, or whatever your name is, I don't think we have anything more to discuss. You've been wasting your time.” Abruptly leaving the table, Revell went out.

  The German waited a moment, then threw down a coin and followed.

  Out in the crowded street, Revell checked the time by a clock above the town hall. There was no hurry. He would go back to the hotel and pack, then have a last leisurely shower. Sophia should already have left. He'd told her it was best that she was gone before he returned.

  Their affair had developed at the same frantic pace that characterized all that went on in Munich. But right from the start, he'd made it abundantly clear that those seven days would be all that there was for them. She had fully understood that. You can't plan a future with someone who doesn't have one. He hadn't, not once he was back in the Zone.

  There were no familiar faces in the crowd. Only a couple of times in the last week had he glimpsed any members of his unit. Ackerman he had seen deep in a conspiratorial conversation with an overweight staff-sergeant and two disreputable- looking Turks. That had been in a seedy cafe off of Leopoldstrasse.

  Dooley had been strolling through the Hofgarten with the bosomy young girl he had met and fallen for up north. Then she had been with Frau Lilly's travelling brothel. In the gardens she had been more demurely dressed, and the couple had been too absorbed in each other to notice anyone else.

  It was hardly surprising that Revell had seen so little of the others. The city was packed with tourists for the Oktoberfest, due to start in the morning. He was not sorry to be leaving before then. The crowds would be suffocating.

  The proximity of the war appeared to make no difference, though me hotel staff had told him that as the boundary of the Zone edged ever closer to the city, so attendance of the various festivals declined. This year, for the first time ever, there were still rooms to be had at most of the hotels.

  But if sheer numbers were down, consumption of alcohol was not. Preparation for the beer festival had meant a non-stop convoy of brewers' trucks rolling into town all week.

  Thinking of that reminded him of Andrea. He tried to imagine how she would have spent her seven days. Drunk almost certainly, but he couldn't picture her propping up a bar. She'd be a solitary drinker.

  Perhaps he should have tried to stay with her. No, that would have been pointless, and frustrating. Better to have met Sophia and enjoyed his brief freedom from danger and discomfort.

  Irritated by the jostling late-night crowd, Revell turned into a side street, out of the press. It ran between anonymous glass-fronted office blocks.

  The bellowing of drunks died away behind him, and he heard his own footsteps echo back from the reflective frontages. On each there seemed to be a softer, not quite synchronized doubled effect, as if his flickering shadow was just failing to keep pace with him.

  If he was hearing things, then the wine definitely hadn't been watered. To clear his head, he looked up at the sky. The towers of glass swung back and forth overhead.

  So he had drunk a skinful. What a pity that this was the first he knew of it, that he hadn't enjoyed the process more.

  Dizziness made him stagger a half-step back. He pulled up abruptly as something hard and cold was shoved against the side of his neck, just below his ear.

  TWO

  “You should have accepted the offer, Major.” Steered by the pressing barrel of the pistol, Revell went slowly towards the darkened ramp leading to an underground service area. He prepared himself to turn as fast as he could, but suddenly the gun was no longer there.

  “I think you were about to do something heroic, Major. For your abilities as a trained soldier, I have great respect. It would have been foolish of me to have remained too close. Even with a litre or two of wine inside you, I don't doubt your reactions would be much faster than mine.”

  “So what happens now?” Very slowly, Revell turned to face the German. “I am not so foolish as to work alone either. My comrade is fetching our car. Ah, and here it comes. If you knew who was driving, I think you would be very surprised. This is such a sad world. There is so little loyalty.”

  A Mercedes station wagon cruised slowly down the narrow street, until the edge of its dipped beams caught them. It pulled over to the curb and stopped. An audible ticking from its engine revealed that the diesel had not yet warmed up.

  “You want me to get inside?”

  “Oh no, Major. The transport is only for me. By the time you are found, I shall be far away. To the police, you will be no more than yet another unfortunate mugging victim. All too common an event in Munich at this time, I fear.”

  The crack of the shot was whiplash sharp in the confines of the canyon of glass. A muzzle flash was reflected a thousand times in as many panes.

  A scream replaced the report of the firing. At the roadside sprawled a figure, jack-knifing and straightening alternately in stomach-clasping agony.

  Revell saw the outline of the vehicle's driver moving towards him, an automatic levelled. At his feet, Otto continued to squirm and screech in a widening pool of blood.

  “That came as great a shock to him as I am a surprise to you, Major. Is that not the case?” Andrea swept back her long dark hair with her free hand. Casually aiming the Colt, she put a single round into the head of the wounded German.

  There came a babble of confused shouting from the far end of the street. Hesitantly, but gaining courage as numbers increased, a mob was spilling towards them.

  “So stupid they would walk toward gunfire.” Grabbing Revell, Andrea pulled him towards the car. “Do you want to stop and explain?”

  Feeling as though he was being jerked out of a dream, Revell barely got the passenger door closed before the Mercedes was thrown through a controlled handbrake turn.

  Facing back the way it had come, the station wagon fish-tailed as it roared from the scene towards the open end of the street.

  “What sort of double cross is going on?” A thousand questions raced in Revell's mind. “Were you with that character? Working with him?”

  “While it suited me to let him think so, yes. Where are you staying?” Revell told her. They had reached the junction with Brie
nnerstrasse. Andrea braked hard to take the corner at a sensible speed that would not attract attention. Once out on the main road, she matched her driving style to the fast-moving streams of traffic.

  “That murdering little creep offered me a couple of million to hand him the whole of the Special Combat Company on a plate tonight.”

  At his feet, Revell noticed a case. He picked it up. The lock was broken. The bag was stuffed full of bundles of banknotes.

  “Hell, he really meant it. When I wouldn't play ball with him, why didn't he simply go off and find another outfit? I can think of several up north that might well have taken him up on this sort of offer. And why try to bump me off? Didn't he like taking no for an answer?”

  He looked at Andrea as she concentrated on her driving. Dressed casually but attractively in denim, no one could ever have told by looking at her that she had just killed, brutally and quite coldly.

  Revell waited until they stopped for lights. “So what's your part in all this?” “He recruited me shortly after we arrived in the city. Everything there was to know about me, he knew. I was interested, so I let him think that I could be bought and blackmailed, and went along to see what would happen.”

  “What happened was that you were damned near an accomplice to my murder.” “You were never in any danger.” Andrea did not bother to look to see the officer's expression, but did allow herself a tight smile of amusement. “Although he was very professional, like most men he was also a chauvinist. He did not take the precautions with me that he would have taken with a man. I thought there would be a moment when he would be dangerous, so when an opportunity presented itself, I made sure his pistol would not function.”

  “Some professional. Are you trying to tell me that he didn't check his gun at any time tonight.”

  “Oh no. In fact his last act before going into the restaurant was to check the magazine and action. But there are other ways to insure a weapon will not function correctly. The chewing gum I pushed up the barrel would have set quite hard.”