by James Rouch
Revell knew that Hyde’s section would not be back on time. There was no mistaking the growing sounds of battle from the direction of the bridge. The sweep hand of his watch was brushing away the last moments to the expiration of the hour.
They were heard by Clarence also, and his thoughts as he listened were very different from the major’s. It was two weeks since he’d had a live target in his sights. He wished he were with the section getting to grips with the enemy, actually fighting, not forever standing about waiting for something to happen. And then frequently being disappointed.
The last fractions of the hour ticked by, and still Revell did not close the firing circuit. It was Andrea who made him delay. He couldn’t bring himself to be the one to cut her off from hope of survival.
All the men, pioneers and combat company, stood in the village street, turned to look at the castle. There was something else they were looking for as well, but it didn’t appear. A man had been posted to watch, to signal with a flare if he spotted the ambush group on their way back.
Handing the detonator box to Voke, Revell knew it could not be his act that sealed Andrea’s fate.
Voke lifted the safety cover. ‘It is a pleasure to do this for more than the reason you might think, Major. The castle was marked as an auxiliary storage facility for the main dump. Once it is destroyed I shall have no difficulty explaining what happened to a great deal of clothing and equipment. I shall write it off as lost in battle.’
Five minutes past the hour, and still no flare, nor any diminution of the cannon- and automatic-weapon fire. If anything it appeared that the tempo of the exchange was increasing.
‘It must be done, Major.’ Voke looked to the American for confirmation. He waited for an answering nod before crushing his thumb down hard.
There was a delay, a short one, as the impulse ran through the great length of wire. To Revell it was an eternity. A thousand times he’d wished he could be free of his obsession with Andrea, and now with this he was, and in his heart he knew it wasn’t what he really wanted. With this he was not just cutting himself off from her, he was signing her death warrant.
A long plume of dust was driven violently from an upper window of the castle. It came out horizontally, its formation making no concession to the wind and rain until it had sprouted fifty meters from the wall. Then in rapid sequence it was joined by a dozen more. Feathers and bursts of the same leaden cloud gouted out from between tiles on the roofs.
The crack of the firing of the first charge was lost among the ripple of others that followed. With an almost absurd slowness a massive featureless slab of wall began to bulge as turrets began to collapse. It burst outward and a monstrous pall of dust rose to engulf the whole structure. As it rose it was stirred to wild turbulence by turrets and towers plunging to destruction inside it.
It did not rise far, beginning to spread in the wind and be beaten down by the rain before it was twice the height of the now-scattered walls. Lighter particles fanned out to merge with the storm clouds; most of the airborne debris began to roll down the vertical walls of rock, following the huge slabs of shaped stone and giant splintered roof beams that were already settling at their foot. A dull rumbling was all that had accompanied the spectacular avalanche, and that died quickly, without echo.
Standing aside from the others of the audience, Boris pushed his balled fist against his mouth and bit hard on his knuckles until they bled.
He felt as though his mind were going to explode, it was in such a turmoil. Overriding everything though was fear. That was it: sheer, stark-naked terror. Always until now the communists had been in front of them in attack, or more often behind them in pursuit. With this action they had deliberately cut themselves off, locked themselves into a position that, no matter what delaying tactics were employed, would shortly be surrounded.
His hand went to his holster and unconsciously he unfastened it and felt the comforting bulk of the Browning automatic. He pulled it out and released the magazine. Ignoring the blood running down his fingers, he thumbed a round out, rolling it between his stained fingers. Deliberately he put the bullet into his breast pocket. He would save that one for himself.
THIRTEEN
From the scanty concealment of the litter on the road Sergeant Hyde watched the Soviet combat engineers working to clear the mines. Smoke from burning vehicles masked much of their activity, but twice he saw fountains of dirt that marked where two of them at least had not been using sufficient caution.
He could have slowed the process even more with a few well-directed bursts, but that would have drawn attention to him and his section. As it was, the T84s sometimes came uncomfortably close with the random suppressive shelling of their side of the river.
‘I think they’re doing that on a ‘just in case’ basis.’ Hyde spat soil that stank of raw explosive. ‘If they thought they were really facing an opposed crossing they’d have called down artillery support by now.’
Coming forward in short rushes from cover to cover, a squad of assault engineers reached the bridge and, edging along hugging the low parapet, they reached the back of the bus. The last few meters they came on more confidently, walking on the bodies of the dead. They all froze, and then laughed when one of their number slipped on a blood-covered arm and landed abruptly on his backside, without triggering any mine or booby-trap.
‘They’re getting a bit cocky.’ Burke checked that he had a round chambered in his rifle, then took out another magazine and laid it by his side.
Timing was everything. Hyde subdued the strong urge to trigger the fuel-air device immediately, and waited. It was then they heard the dull rolling rumble of the castle’s destruction. There was quite literally no going back now.
A Russian engineer climbed into the bus and worked his way forward, threading between the stacks of mangled seats and bodies. Reaching the front, he scanned the rest of the bridge, then called on the others before jumping down and making for the mill.
His squad followed, passing gingerly between the jagged projections of metal and plastic that was all that remained of the passenger vehicle’s front third.
By this time their attitude was casual, almost light-hearted with relief at another dangerous task completed, and they stopped and took out cigarettes.
They sat on the parapet, legs dangling above the broken remains of a bar mine. Split open by flying wreckage, its contents lay scattered and useless.
Grinding and rumbling its way past the battle tanks came the huge angled ‘dozer blade of an armoured engineer’s vehicle. The turretless machine lurched through a turn, and as it reached the bridge, elevated a powerful-looking hydraulic arm. As it extended, it deployed a four-pronged grab that swayed wildly from side to side. A final, less violent, course correction and its tracks bit into and climbed onto the civilian corpses, tearing them and crushing them into the road surface.
The T84s moved up behind it, waiting to cross, and with the mines in the woods at last neutralized, more APCs threaded their way between the ruins of those that still blazed and were decorated with the burned remains of their crews.
‘Looks like a lot of our stuff down there.’ Burke noted the several captured NATO transports among those backed up at the rear of the tanks.
‘So the major was right.’ In a row beside her, Andrea placed five 40mm grenades. She hesitated before returning one of them to her belt. Long before she had taught herself that overkill was wasteful, but it was a lesson that by self-discipline she had to keep drumming home. ‘If the Soviets are using captured equipment in the front line, they must be suffering shortages that would make the capture of the valley very tempting.’
Casually, not out of suspicion or interest, a Russian strolled to the wall concealing the pressurized container. He looked around, then swung over the wall and, planting himself with feet apart, began to unfasten to relieve himself.
Hyde threw the switch and then dropped the box to grab the glasses from Burke, snapping the strap. A moment to refoc
us… and there it was.
A gushing cloud of sickly yellow vapour enveloped the Russian and he collapsed from sight. It expanded, doubling and redoubling in circumference. It grew to the height of the mill and to a breadth that encompassed the bridge and the leading tank.
‘It ain’t gonna work.’ Ripper watched the rapid expansion of the fuel-air mixture, saw it start to spill over the sides of the bridge.
For that instant Hyde thought he was right, the automatic ignition sequence had failed…
A monstrous concussion lifted the sergeant and jammed the binoculars savagely hard into his eyes. The force broke open scar tissue that squirted tears of blood down his cheeks.
Mill, bridge and tanks were hidden inside an orange fireball of colossal size. From it hurtled a blast that snapped trees and stripped the ground about them down to bare earth. As it reached its maximum extent it began to rise, sucking upward with it masses of forest debris.
It revealed the old mill, slates and window frames and doors gone, slowly twisting to the right and folding in upon itself. Tons of brick broke away to reveal the skeleton of its machinery, and then the tall structure was collapsing faster into a pile that could not be contained within its narrow site.
Much of it deluged across the bridge, sweeping before it the flame-sprouting hull of the combat bulldozer. Every external fitting had been ripped from it, even its tracks. There was no longer any parapet to offer resistance, and with the wreckage of the bus it was tumbled over the edge and down into the raging water. Violent clouds of steam leaped after the ascending fireball as the furnace-heated hull of the ‘dozer and the semi-molten shell of the bus made a temporary dam.
Such a weight of water was not to be resisted for long. Beating spray high above the bridge, first the passenger vehicle and then the military were swept away.
Save perhaps as calcinated fragments, the Soviet engineers had been blasted from existence. There was no sign of life from either of the T84’s. Both had obviously had their turrets dislodged and they now sat at odd angles to the hulls. Dark smoke wreathed from every hatch and port. And in front of both lay their broken tracks, stretched out almost to their full length, illustrating how far they had been shoved back by the force.
The mountain of rubble and giant cast-iron and oak gears and wheels were settling on the bridge when that overburdened arch began to produce harsh grating sounds interspersed with sharp cracks as load-bearing blocks fractured and crumbled to powder. When it failed it happened suddenly, the whole width of the span falling almost in one piece.
All of them dazed by the violence they had experienced, they stumbled back to the Scammel and clambered aboard.
‘Where to?’ Wiping dirt and grime from his face, Burke found he’d been cut by flying splinters.
‘There’s only the one road, back toward the castle.’
‘It’s not there anymore, Sarge. You heard it go down, same as we all did.’
‘It’s still the only road we’ve got. Maybe there’ll still be a way back into the valley.’ Hyde dabbed at the cuts about his eyes with a wad of cotton torn from a field dressing. It came away saturated. ‘And if there’s not we’ll find some farm track that’ll enable us to put a bit more distance between us and the Reds. Maybe that one.’ He pointed at a narrow dirt road that was almost hidden beneath the trees. ‘Remember where it is in case we have to double back to…’
Burke had to brake hard. A tree lay across the road. He was reaching for his M16 even as he noticed that its base was sawn through.
A burst of automatic fire slashed across the cab front and punched star-edged holes in the windshield. There was a cry of pain from the back seat and blood spattered the cab’s interior.
Wheels locked, the Scammel screeched to a stop and its doors flew open. Another single shot rang out from the woods and a Dutchman framed in the doorway let go his hold and pitched onto the road.
Firing from the hip on full automatic, Andrea sent the contents of a magazine spraying across the trees. From the ring-mounted fifty-calibre above the cab, Ripper hosed armour -piercing incendiary rounds into the woods. His face was set in a grimace of pain and he kept his finger down hard, not ceasing until he had a stoppage. He cleared it fast, finished that belt and quickly reached for another.
Hyde saw the powerful rounds chewing and slashing the standing timber, and added the weight of his own fire. They’d been caught by surprise, completely off guard, but had fallen instantly into the anti-ambush procedure that was drilled into them. ‘It’s coming from over by that forked tree.’ He ducked into cover to reload and came out again to see the girl send a grenade toward the area he’d indicated.
The white phosphorus burst in a dazzling spray of white smoke and golden globules of chemical fire. A scream soared up the audible scale and off it.
More automatic fire came from beneath the trees, but it was ragged and passed overhead. Burke hosed the general area of the direction from which it came and as he fired his last shot, Ripper laced the spot with a whole belt fired without pause. There came a yelp of pain and the sound of a body thrashing on the ground.
From within the smoke generated by the grenade staggered a blackened travesty of what had once been a human. It clutched an AK-47 that fountained a sparkling ball of incandescence from its ignited magazine. Two steps were all it managed; then it toppled and lay still.
‘Is that it?’ About to bring down the dying man, Burke held back when he saw it wasn’t necessary. It passed through his mind how weird it was that seconds before the man had been trying to kill him, yet when he’d appeared in that appalling condition he’d been prepared to put him out of his misery.
In answer to his question a burst of sub-machine-gun fire punched bark from the pines about them.
‘Can anyone see him?’ Hyde tried shifting to a better position and had to dive back when the move attracted another and more accurate short burst. ‘Come on, someone must have seen where that came from.’ Hell, they had a Russkie column behind them that by now was mad as could be, and they were being held up by one cunt behind a tree. He looked around. Andrea was close by, looking to him and toying with a grenade.
‘Put two HE into that tangle over there, fast as you can.’
She nodded, slipped the shell in, sighted and fired in one fluid motion. A second was on its way before the first struck.
The explosions, both tree bursts, blended together, and as their sound died away it was followed by the drawn-out creaking and splintering of falling timber.
‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.’
A scrap of cloth was waved from behind a toppled fir.
‘Look, I’m unarmed. I’m coming out.’
A Sterling sub-machine gun was tossed out, followed by a pistol and a long glittering hunter’s knife.
Taking no chances, Hyde stayed behind cover. The figure that stepped cautiously from among the smoking fragment-scarred trees was heavily bearded and dressed in a style that betrayed its inspiration as the uniform of several nations, but the predominant effect was British.
Moving his weight nervously from one foot to another, the man held his hands high. His fingers clenched and unclenched spasmodically.
Searching him quickly and expertly, Hyde emptied his belt of spare magazines and hurled them away. He was about to do the same with a well-made clasp knife, but changed his mind and put it in his pocket instead.
‘Can I put me arms down now?’
The gesture from Andrea made him jerk them back up again.
‘Look, I’m sorry if there’s any harm done. We thought you were commies. Just doing our bit you might say.’
‘Who are you with?’ Hyde more than suspected he knew the answer before he asked it. He wasn’t surprised when the man became vague and evasive.
‘Yeah, well, we’re not sort of like with anybody, not as such, that is, if you see what I mean.’
Walking behind their prisoner, Hyde let him worry for a moment and then barked an order. The man sprang to atten
tion, though even as he did it he tried to stifle the reflex reaction. He looked furious with himself as he tried to assume a more relaxed stance, but it was too late.
‘Give us a break, Sarge, you know what it’s like; we aren’t all fucking heroes.’
‘Put your hands behind your back.’ To emphasize the instruction, Hyde jabbed his rifle forward, making sharp contact with the base of the man’s spine.
With strips of cloth his hands were tied tight, and as an added measure were fastened to his belt. Hyde jerked hard on them to make certain the bonds were secure. ‘There’s no breaks for you, chum, but I’d like to give your neck one at the end of a rope.’
Knowing that he was not about to be shot out of hand, the deserter gained confidence. ‘No chance of that, Sarge; only the Reds top their own.’
‘Who were the other two?’
‘Just a couple of Turks I fell in with. The ambush was their idea. Honest, Sarge, they were the bosses. I told… I thought you were commies.’
‘Clever of you then, if they were running the show, to wrangle the safest position for yourself, wasn’t it?’ Turning away in disgust, Burke went over to where the second victim of their return fire had fallen.
The frantic initial thrashing had slowed, but he went forward cautiously and was parting some bushes when a single shot rang out. Burke ducked, hesitated, then stepped behind the undergrowth.
An ugly splashing, gurgling noise was audible. He knew what it signified and relaxed his guard. Unable to withstand the agony of the stomach wound from which his punctured intestines protruded, the Turk had finally managed to get the barrel-tip of his AK into his mouth and pull the trigger.
In the fading light Burke couldn’t see it, but he knew the pulsing blood would be coming from a massive wound in the back of the ambusher’s skull. Turning back toward the others, Burke made a cutting motion with his finger across his throat.
