Body Count

by James Rouch

  Stadler exchanged glances with Revell. “The major has already suggested that.”

  “Yes, yes, of course you would. Sorry, Major, must learn to leave military matters to the military. Great, isn't it? Here I am, holding the position I've always dreamed of, and when it comes to a situation like this, I'm as useful as a tit on a nun.” An agonized look crossed Gebert's face. “Oh Christ, I've got to go again. You know where I'll be if you need me.”

  “As the mayor has so much, eh, on his mind,” Stadler waited until he was out of hearing, “there is something else you should know, Major.”

  “I figured things were sounding too good all of a sudden. So what's the problem?”

  Stadler punched up a display. “Here you see all the locations where my men are engaging the Russians, but there is one fire fight in which none of my men are involved.”

  “A group of officers who've lost contact? Maybe They’ve no radio.” “I cannot believe that several sets would malfunction at the same time. Impossible. The volume of gunfire reported is considerable. Too much for my men to get close enough to determine what is happening.”

  “Then we're getting help we didn't ask for.” “That's the trouble. We did ask for it, or rather Col. Klee asked for it.” Stadler threw a notebook across the room. “I don't know who they are, or how they got here, but I suspect that the garrison commander's invitation to a free-for-all has been accepted.”

  “And your men are unable to determine who's involved?” Revell wondered how hard they had tried, in the face of heavy fire.

  “I know what you think. Two were wounded while trying. I feel like I am sitting on a powder keg.” Stadler blanked the screen. “A measure of control has been restored, but there are still half a million civilians trapped in the shelters. There is one right under this private battle. It holds over a thousand. If they should flood onto the streets...”

  “The Russians would use the opportunity to shift position in the confusion. That's what they're like. They'd certainly not hesitate to use the crowd as human shields.” That was a tactic Warpac troops had grown skilled at using. Revell had often seen them employ it in battles in the Zone. They would advance, driving a wall of refugees before them, and frequently they had deliberately situated supply bases and static units in among the scattered settlements.

  “I also believe they would do that. For many of the civilians, their breaking point must be close. It will not take much to generate mass hysteria in a crowded shelter. They will run out onto the street like so many lemmings. Others will hear what is happening, and there will be a chain reaction.”

  “It'll result in a bloodbath.” It needed no great feat of imagination on Revell's part to picture what such an event would be like. The blind stampede and its accompanying frenzy would kill and maim thousands, many more than the Russian bullets.

  Even with the infiltrators eliminated, the result would be a mass exodus from the city and the total dislocation of vital war work. Demoralization on such a scale could even bring the West Germans to sue for a separate peace, when its inevitable domino effect had rippled through the whole country.

  Stadler felt very tired, and knew he looked it. In the run up to the Oktoberfest, he had been working eighteen hours a day. Like the city as a whole he had been looking forward to the beer festival as an outlet, a chance to unwind. Instead, this had happened.

  “Major Revell. I will do anything to save this city from the fate the Russians are trying to bring about. I will not see it ruined or its people slaughtered through enemy action, or through their own panic. We must bring matters under control. We must do it very quickly.”

  “I’ll take my best men and find out what's happening.” Stadler made ready to put on his headset again. “While my men cannot get near that fighting, it is not possible to reassure the civilians in the nearby shelters. If the only way you can stop the battles is to fire on our own side, then don't hesitate to do it.”

  “It won't come to that, I hope.” Already it had crossed Revell's mind that it might, but that would be a last resort.

  The police chief wanted control of the army and police forces in the city. To give him that, Revell and his men might first have to unleash a lot of controlled violence.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Vehicles parked in the narrow street were riddled with bullet holes. Several sat low on the ground, or at odd angles, their tires shot to ribbons.

  For the first time in the city, they, had seen tracer employed. A long stream of it had poured from a window in a department store and into a drugstore opposite. Some had missed the mark. Striking the stone wall,- they had flown off at wild angles to cause more random damage.

  “It's like something out of a fucking western.” From a safe distance, Scully watched the exchanges of fire. “Pity there isn't a sheriff who can come galloping into town and clean it all up.”

  “No sheriff. Just us, with you as Deputy Dog.” Sgt. Hyde fingered a long tear across the shoulder of his flak jacket. His ribs still ached where another stray bullet - most of its energy spent - had thumped into him.

  They had learnt little from their reconnaissance, except that both buildings were well defended and impossible to approach. He and the major had seen no sign of the men holding out. Attempts to establish contact from a distance had been hopeless, only bringing fire down on them.

  Now, with Scully and Andrea, Hyde waited to give covering fire while the drugstore was rushed. The seconds ticked away on his watch. The butt and barrel of the grenade launcher had warmed in his hands. The unit had worked their way as close as possible to the rear of the building. Sheltering in the angle of a wall close behind them was the assault party, led by the major.

  Andrea would fire first. Her high-explosive round would blast down the back door, then the three of them would put batton rounds into the opening as fast as they could. Right until the instant the squad reached it.

  The 40mm grenade soared the fifty meters to the target and scored a direct hit. There was a roar of noise from the detonation that blended with the crash of falling brickwork and splintering wood. Loading and firing as fast as they could, the three concentrated their aim on the smoke-wreathed opening.

  A burst of light machinegun fire from an upper floor made spurts of dust beside the running group, then ceased as blunt-nosed plastic slugs shattered the remaining glass and tore into the room.

  Revell leapt the fallen remains of the scorched and splintered door. At the far end of the passageway beyond a figure knelt on its knees, clutching its face.

  “What unit?” There was not the time for gentle methods. Revell jabbed the barrel of his submachine gun into the side of the man's neck. “Who are you with?”

  “You're fucking NATO.”

  “Too bloody true.” Revell didn't remove the submachine gun. “Who are you, what unit?”

  “Two hundred ninety first Infantry. Our captain heard there was a flap on and sent us in to have a scout round, see the position before he brought the rest of the company. Only we got ambushed, and had our radio knocked out. We dived in here and have been trading shots for the last hour.”

  “How many of you are there?” Revell handed the man a field dressing to apply to a wound on his cheek.

  “We lost a couple, including our sergeant, when we got hit. Only five of us left, I think.”

  “Okay, you go on up ahead of us.” Revell helped the soldier to his feet. “Make sure they know who's coming. From what I have seen and can hear, there's a lot of trigger-happy people about.”

  Every inch of floor was smothered in spilt pills and broken medicine bottles. They crunched underfoot. Cases of ointment and syrups had been punctured. Their pungent, sticky contents oozed through the rows of holes in their cartons and dripped from shelf to shelf, then to the floor. The same mess was on the stairs, Tablets beneath their tread, acting like ball bearings, made every step difficult.

  When they reached the upper floor, they found only two men still on their feet. Or rather, on th
eir hands and knees. They were searching through scattered magazines for ammunition. A third soldier lay unconscious with a bad head wound. The fourth was dead. He had taken several bullets in the throat.

  As if at a signal, the firing from across the road had ceased. Using a fragment of broken mirror like a periscope, Revell examined the department store.

  “Whoever they are, I think they've skipped.” Using the view in the reflection, he made another survey before radioing in his findings. He stayed low, waiting until they were away from the front of the building before standing. “Well have to check it out though.”

  “What about us?” His face swathed in bandages, the infantryman found it hard to speak.

  “You can't move that head wound case, and you're not in any state for fighting. Better if the four of you hang on here, until an ambulance can get through. There's a police team following us, they'll take care of things. Sit tight, you've done all you can.”

  “Yeah, but who have we been fighting?” His face becoming swollen, the infantryman was hardly able to articulate.

  “If you don't know, then sure as hell I don't.” As they left the building, Revell waved on a squad of police who were cautiously approaching. From a slow, painstaking pace, hugging a wall in single file, bent almost double, they immediately straightened up and began to bunch as they walked at a normal speed.

  A spent bullet cracking a window nearby restored them quickly to their former caution.

  Revell led the squad a good way up the road before they broke in through the rear of a building and, with extreme caution, out through its front.

  Crossing the road drew no fire, and they began to edge towards the department store. At the far end of the street, safely out of any likely line of fire, several more police stood anxiously waiting for the moment when they could dash to the entrance of the shelter.

  As they passed its dark opening, Revell could hear crying and swearing from below, and what he thought might be a sharp smack. That was followed by violent shouting, and the sounds of what could be a fight. Two bodies lay just outside the entrance. That of an elderly man bore no trace of a wound. Beside his was that of a young woman. Her wrists had been slashed and her flesh had a pallid hue. Both looked as if they had been pushed out.

  “Suicide and heart attack case most likely.” Hyde had also heard the noises. “Can't blame them for chucking these two out. Bad enough down there without sharing the accommodations with the dead.”

  The smell of oil and gasoline was strong in the street. Most of the vehicles' fuel tanks had been punctured, and the gutters ran with the mixture.

  “One tracer in this lot and the whole road would have gone up.” Dooley had come forward at the major's beckoning.

  “The front door is still in one piece.” Revell had had a quick look at the store's entrance. Set slightly back from the sidewalk, it had survived the blitz of bullets. “If we use a grenade, we might ignite this mess. Reckon you can take it out with a shoulder charge?”

  “I’ll give it a try. Need a bit of a run up though, Major.” With slow deliberation, Dooley paced out his run, turned, and charged.

  His collision with the stout teak frames made all the plate glass windows vibrate. The glass in the doors didn't break, but the double lock couldn't survive the impact, and the doors burst open inwards.

  Dooley tumbled headlong into the store, rolling into painful contact with a counter. A shower of lipsticks and other cosmetics came down on top of him. By the time he'd brushed them aside, the others had already dived in past him.

  It was too huge a place for them to search really thoroughly, but by the time they returned to the ground floor, they could be fairly certain that none of the mysterious machine gunners remained.

  On the third floor they found heaps of empty cartridge cases and evidence of blood. There was more on a stairway, and by an open fire exit out onto a loading bay.

  “So what do we do, Sarge.” Dooley nursed his sore shoulder. “Track them down?”

  “As we don't have a red Indian tracker in the section, I don't really think that's a starter, do you?”

  Dooley shrugged, wincing as it aggravated his soreness. “I suppose we just wait for them to surface, and then we go haring off after them again.”

  “Something like that.”

  Revell returned with Andrea and Scully from a search of the rear service road. “They're long gone. It's like a rabbit warren out there. They could be virtually next door or on the other side of the city by this time. We'll go back the front way, let the police know its all clear to contact the civvies in the shelter.”

  They had reached the front door and were about to pass through it, when there was the report of a muted explosion. A ripple of fire streaked beneath the parked traffic.

  An instant later a wall of red and yellow flame rose in front of them and black smoke billowed into the store.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A ferocious heat struck the walls of glass flanking the entrance, and there was a sharp crack as one wall split with the sudden dramatic expansion.

  Tires quickly fuelled the blaze, and then the plastic and doth of the vehicle interiors. Another window snapped from top to bottom, and then fell apart. The window displays began to smoulder and crisp.

  “Hope the fire brigade get here quick.” Scully lifted a hand to shield his face from the waves of roasting air. “They could lose the whole street.”

  “Dooley, look about for fire hoses.”

  “Aw, come on, Major. Let's leave it to the experts.” Even as he complained, Dooley saw a blackened figure lurch past the door, collapse, and burst into flame.

  “The shelter...”

  Revell needed to add nothing more. It took several long minutes to locate a fire hose, another to unreel it and run it to the door. The first precious moments after the water surged through had to be used in spraying the burning window, before they could move forward to tackle the heart of the fire.

  “Which is best?” Dooley had to grip the nozzle hard as the surging pressure of the water threatened to buck it from his hands. “Do I use jet or spray?”

  “The jet.” Even behind the shield offered by the cascade, Revell could still feel his face scorching. “It'll reach further.”

  The windshields of the nearest vehicles exploded into millions of fragments as they were suddenly quenched by the stream. Masses of steam rose from interiors and panels as the water hit them, but still flames flared to the height of the first- floor windows.

  Paint was blistering and shrinking to expose bare wood on doors, as lead was beginning to drip from downspouts. Every time the direction of the jet was switched to flush the burning fuel from under the vehicles, it was almost simultaneously replenished by that still running from the punctured fuel tanks. Re- ignition followed immediately.

  Another civilian, head covered by a jacket, made a run from the air-raid shelter. A gas tank in an Opel ruptured beside him, and he was hidden in the resulting explosion. It lifted as a great red flaring tongue of flame, to reveal a smouldering body hurled against a street sign and draped around it like a perfectly tossed horseshoe.

  Others jammed the shelter entrance. Revell could sometimes glimpse them through the thick smoke. They would edge forward a shuffling half step, then be driven back by a fresh outbreak. Two fell forward across the sidewalk. No one attempted to pull them back and they began to burn. A further tank explosion close to them hid the scene from sight behind impenetrable flame and smoke.

  “Get up to the next floor, find another hose up there.” As fast as they subdued the fire aboard one vehicle, it would break out afresh as they switched the jet to another. Revell could hear screams now, very clearly, above the roar of flame and the constant banging of bursting tires. Showers of fiery rubber droplets carpeted the sidewalk and started outbreaks in litter bins and among the bubbling paintwork of the storefronts.

  From above, a second hose added its efforts, and under the combined drenching the flames began to recede, unti
l it licked only from the interior of vehicles whose glass had resisted the jets.

  There was no help that could be given to the victims who had fallen in the street. The two bodies they had seen earlier were charred beyond recognition and no longer human in appearance.

  The shelter entrance was deeply layered with black soot that was greasy to the touch. A few steps down the lighting still functioned, but the globes over the bulbs were similarly coated and gave no light until Revell dragged his hand across them and removed some of the residue.

  As he went deeper, the air became roastingly hot and foul with the trapped stench of the smoke. It looked as if the shelter had once been the basement area of the store. With benches fitted and an exit made to the street % it was obviously intended to serve both shoppers and pedestrians alike.

  This time it had served no one. Huddled together at the foot of the stairs, in corners, even on and beneath the benches, were hundreds and hundreds of people.

  None of them moved. Smothered in yet more of the soot, they were like dark apparitions. At points in the otherwise blank walls—where heavily barred doors presumably led to the store—were heaps of bodies. Here alone the universal covering of adhering black particles had been disturbed.

  Where hands had scrabbled and torn at the strong metal, masses of finger marks exposed the paint beneath. The desperation of those frenzied efforts was illustrated by the many daubs and streaks of blood.

  Andrea had followed the major inside. She looked around at the row upon row of dead. Many were still in the evening clothes they were wearing when the air raid sirens had sounded in the small hours.

  “The fires sucked all the air out, replaced it with this.” Running his fingers along the top of a ledge, Revell rubbed the residue between his fingertips.

  “They had no other way out?” Andrea stepped over a corpse, that of a young girl in an expensive leather coat. She avoided contact with any surface.

  “Apparently not. Another result of the cuts in the civil defence program, when Gorbechev’s PR men spouted off about more Soviet cuts.”