Sky Strike tz-4

by James Rouch

  That the girl was right, Revell didn’t doubt for a moment What the Russian character lacked in capacity for initiative was more than compensated for by an ability to apply sheer mindless persistence to any situation. And if the cause of that determination was a vindictive lust for revenge then it became all the stronger. When the Soviet NCO got over his first burst of passion, and stopped darting about at random, he was going to commence a very thorough search of the area.

  ‘Into the carrier.’ Revell knew they had nothing to lose, were as good as dead if they didn’t burst out. They would still have the element of surprise on their side for a few minutes longer, but as the hue and cry spread that would vanish. It had to be now or never.

  The others wasted no time in boarding, clambering up the APC’s hull and climbing in through the small side doors and roof hatches. Two of them had to assist Boris, who was incapable of doing anything for himself, so great was the state of shock he was in. Hyde held back, to help with the heavy doors.

  Starting at the third attempt, the armoured vehicle’s engines filled the shed with noise and pungent black exhaust fumes. As they did, the pair threw themselves at the doors and a growing wedge of bright sunlight flooded in, making beams through the smoke.

  Burke set the APC rolling as the last man boarded. ‘You hear these motors? This crate must belong to someone very fussy, or very special. The mechanics must have spent hours on them. They usually run like asthmatic steam engines.’

  Having boarded by a rear hatch, Revell went forward to the commander’s seat beside the driver, and was slowed by having to thread his way past the gunner’s seat suspended from the turret above the middle of the single narrow compartment, and already occupied by Libby. By the time he got his first look out through the forward vision port, their driver was already setting an erratic course among the various vehicle parks and workshops.

  ‘I’m bloody lost, this place all looks the same to me. Where’s the fucking perimeter?’ Having to brake hard and swerve to avoid a petrol tanker that pulled out in front of them, Burke recognised a feature and got his bearings as they turned on to the new heading. But it wasn’t the one they wanted, and with serried ranks of close-spaced huts and parked trucks and field cars to either side, there was no way he could turn off.

  Having at last in the cramped confines of the turret managed to feed a belt of mixed armour-piercing and incendiary rounds into the 14.5mm heavy machine gun, Libby looked out through the sight aperture, and immediately chambered around.

  Ahead was the gate by which they had involuntarily entered. The scout car had been joined by a pair of T62 tanks, and as the gun crew manning the flak-position on the roof of the guardhouse saw the APC approaching they began frantically traversing their weapon.

  SEVEN

  Russian troops were pouring from the guardhouse as Libby made ready to open fire on the flak-mount There was nothing he could do about the tanks, but by Christ he’d take some of that gun crew with him. ‘Hold your fire.’

  The major’s order crackled over the headset at the same moment as Hyde shook his ankle to get his attention, and shouted the same thing. When Libby looked again the scene at the gate was transformed.

  In front of the guardhouse an officer was hurriedly marshalling a line of troops, while the gun crew had all stood to attention. One of the tanks was backing off to make more room at the gateway.

  As the APC neared, the officer called his men to attention and they presented arms and he saluted as the stolen vehicle swept past and out on to the open road. This wagon is done up like a mobile whorehouse.’ Dooley tried one of the leather-upholstered bucket seats that replaced the thinly padded benches normally a feature of those spartan vehicles.

  ‘Hey, now there’s a real neat idea. I heard of a floating crap game, but the idea of sex on wheels, I like that.’ Ripper thumbed through a rack of magazines. Several were western publications. Between the latest copy of Pravda and Red Star were a Playboy and two Mayfairs.

  ‘I think this might explain things.’ Clarence took a bright coloured square of embroidered cloth from a small locker and held it out for the others to see. ‘Pretty. What is it?’

  Clarence snatched it out of Ripper’s reach, to prevent it being covered with filthy fingerprints.

  ‘You ought to do your homework.’ Dooley leant forward, to try to look in the locker. ‘That is a general’s pennant. It could explain why we got the red carpet treatment, in fact I guess it does. Anything else in there?’

  ‘Help yourself.’ Clarence moved aside to let the big man rummage excitedly through the contents.

  ‘I can get a fortune for these, and look at this, it’s…’ Suddenly Dooley became secretive. ‘I ain’t sharing.’ Items he took from the locker were transferred to his pockets with clumsy attempts to conceal them. He kept alternately chuckling and peering round suspiciously, as if expecting the others to attempt to pilfer his trophies.

  Most of the traffic on the road was military. Burke was careful to keep to the same speed as the vehicles around him and they weren’t bothered by the traffic police who constantly patrolled on noisy mud-plastered motorcycles.

  Not all the other road users were so lucky. Twice they passed trucks that had been ordered off the road for checks, and saw their drivers being pushed and bullied about while papers were scrutinised.

  They were forced to slow as they passed a field where a Chinook helicopter had crashed. The cabin had broken in half on impact, leaving the rear portion little more than a low ash white hump at the centre of a circle of scorched grass. Only the remains of the engine stood above the fused and melted aluminium of the airframe.

  From the shattered front portion of the craft a group of laughing East German pioneers were dragging the bodies of the flight deck crew, using meat hooks.

  The drivers and passengers of other vehicles on the road were leaning out of their cabs and shouting encouragement, and Hyde had to physically restrain Cline from firing his rifle from one of the side gun ports.

  ‘We can’t help them now. You want something to do, then take the radio over from our gibbering Ruskie. He’s in no fit state to use it at the moment.’

  Dooley made a great show of sympathy towards the bombardier, spoiling it by grinning broadly as he did so. His words also lacked sincerity. ‘Now ain’t that a shame, Bomber, and just as we were getting used to your funny little medal-hunting ways.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Not made happy by what he saw as relegation to a less than glamorous job, Cline was in no mood to put up with Dooley’s sarcasm.

  ‘Oh nothing, nothing much. It’s just that this unit gets through radio-men like you wouldn’t believe. Mind, with your self-destructive urges maybe you’ll last longer that way. You’re hardly likely to charge the Ruskies, threatening to deafen them with a burst of static.’

  Gradually the traffic flow built up speed once more. As the APC neared the top of a gradient it gave a jolt, and the note from one of the twin rear engines faltered. As they topped the crest it happened again, and this time both units cut in and out erratically.

  ‘Hang on.’ As Burke called the warning he wrenched the steering wheel hard over and the APC rolled on its suspension as it left the road to turn on to a deeply rutted and potholed farm track.

  With the squad all shouting, and trying to secure handholds to prevent themselves being hurled about, their driver put the eight-wheeler through another tight turn.

  Bodies and equipment crashed about filling the crew compartment with noise and confused movement and loud cursing and swearing. Only Libby in the turret gunner’s seat managed to hold on, and he made several hard contacts with the many angles and projections in the steelwork about him.

  With a final pounding bounce the APC stopped. ‘Everybody alright?’ Burke had to duck a barrage of water bottles, magazines, helmets.

  ‘You mad sod.’ It took three attempts before Cline managed to regain his sense of balance, his feet and something of his dignity. ‘What the bloody hel
l were you trying to do?’

  ‘Don’t fucking blame me. The major said to get off the road when we ran out of fuel. Just be grateful we’d made it to the top of the hill. It would have been a bugger sight more hairy if I’d had to do it backwards.’

  ‘OK, quiet. Let’s see where we are.’ Revell unfastened the hatch above his seat and stood to look out.

  Considering they’d had little choice in its selection, their situation was quite a good one. They were out of sight of the highway, in the centre of a strip of woodland running beside a dirt track, that led to a cluster of neglected barns and machinery sheds grouped about an old stone farmhouse, lower down the steep hillside. He was about to duck back when he heard the squeal of approaching tracks, and the creak and crack of trees going down before a heavy vehicle.

  ‘Diesel. Wouldn’t you know it’ Dooley tossed the filler cap away, not bothering to replace it on the elderly Blaw-Knox bulldozer.

  Utterly confused, and obviously not understanding a single word that was said to him, the machine’s equally ancient driver at last got some glimmering of the meaning of Cline’s urgent pantomime and climbed down from his roll cage protected seat to join the two middle-aged surveyors who were already having their hands tied.

  Andrea was doing a thorough job of securing their bonds. She felt a tap on her shoulder, it was Revell.

  ‘Go with Sergeant Hyde. I want you to get us some gas. We can hardly trot along to the nearest Commie fuel dump and ask for a few cans, so you’ll have to try a spot of highway robbery. It’ll have to be done without attracting attention. You’ve the equipment that should enable you to sucker a couple of truckers.’

  ‘Shall I expose my… equipment, or do you prefer I simply flaunt it.’ She was taunting him, Revell knew that. ‘Just get the gas, I don’t care what you do.’

  ‘I do not believe that, but I will get it for you.’ The bitch. The damned bitch. She must by now know how he felt about her and yet, at best, she still treated him with mild amusement. More often she ignored him, though he’d never known her refuse or be slow to act on any order he gave. There were some he’d like to give her that weren’t in any drill manual. Probably, though, she’d end up ordering him. Maybe that would be… No. No, his thoughts had strayed that way before and he didn’t like the dark depths to which they led. He didn’t go in for that sort of thing, hadn’t ever… wouldn’t… but if he did…

  There was a loud excited whoop from the APC. Damn it, what the hell was Dooley up to now? He hurried over, before the big clown made more noise. I’m rich, Major. I’m rich. Oh, look at it, look at it.’ Dooley was huddled beside a small safe that had been concealed behind a false locker front. From it he had taken, and spread on the map table beside him, several large bundles of bank notes, each a different currency and most from the neutral nations around the Zone; a small collection of stone-jet jewellery, among which a superb diamond cluster ring stood out; two shin carved figures in what looked like near-flawless jade, and a gold bar.

  The bullion had been cut in half in order to fit the hiding place, and the residue from that operation had been carefully preserved in a corked test-tube. Tm rich I’m rich I’m rich. Oh, I’m rich…’

  ‘Shut up you big oaf.’ Revell was interested in the find, but not for the same reason. His interest lay in the fact that the discovery of the handsome nest-egg tended to confirm the mental image of the vehicle’s owner that was forming in his mind.

  The pennant already told him the man was a general, but the way the APC was fitted out with luxury touches told him that the Russian officer was also a man of ambition, who wanted the good things in life. His cache of various currencies also betrayed the fact that he was a realist, and not the sort to go down with a sinking ship. Not that the Warsaw Pact forces were losing the war, but this man was prepared for any eventuality.

  Having examined the compact but powerful radio equipment on board, Revell also knew that the general had some Western tastes. A radio operator, perhaps one with a less than perfect memory, who did not want to incur the commander’s wrath by being slow, had carefully marked certain frequencies on the dial. Revell knew them, they were British and West German civilian radio station frequencies.

  ‘I get to keep it, don’t I, Major?’

  ‘Take the notes and jewellery if you want, but leave the bar where it is. Even you can’t tote that much extra weight around with you.’

  Like a child who had just had the cherry stolen off the top of his cake, Dooley looked very unhappy. He pocketed the other items. ‘Maybe just one half, Major?’

  ‘Don’t get greedy, Dooley. You’ve enough there to get that pig-rearing farm when you get out, with something left over to treat your jaw.’

  Although he brightened a little at the thought, Dooley still cast wistful glances at the safe as the portions of bullion were replaced and the buckled door slammed to wedge it tight closed.

  ‘Truck coming, Major.’

  In response to Clarence’s call through the open hatch, Revell climbed out, in time to see Hyde steering a trailer-towing fuel tanker down the track. Andrea rode on the front fender, holding on to a headlamp bracket. Her jacket was open and her breasts bounced noticeably at each bump.

  While a hose from the bowser was being unreeled to the APC, Revel took the sergeant aside.

  ‘Fast work. How did you do it?’

  ‘I didn’t, she did.’

  As he moved to walk away, Revell tackled Hyde on the subject again, trying desperately to be casual, not too insistent, and knowing he was failing.

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She took off the combat gear and ran in front of the first truck that was travelling on its own. It just happened to be a bowser.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It stopped.’ Hyde tired of the game, he’d known what the officer was after all along. ‘She had on just a pair of white knickers and a tight white T-shirt; she doesn’t wear a bra, and what do you think? It stopped, a bloody armoured regiment in full cry would have stopped. She’s the most beautiful bloody thing I’ve ever seen; I nearly went to help her.’ Hyde couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘Next time you want her to do something like that, send her with someone else, not me. I got a face that still upsets nurses in plastic surgery wards. I don’t want to see what I can’t have.’

  Hyde turned away, then back. ‘Oh yes. When the truck stopped she jumped on to the step and cut the driver’s throat from ear to ear. He’s still in there, that’s why she rode on the front.’

  They had turned off before what looked like a security checkpoint about a mile ahead, and on the quiet side road were now making better speed, and at last heading in the right direction.

  Ripper had fastened the general’s pennant to the front of the APC, and the few military vehicles they met coming the other way on the narrow road went to extraordinary lengths to get out of the way. In the case of an Airforce truck that included a hundred-yard detour through a freshly ploughed field.

  Their better progress was having a therapeutic effect on Boris. He still looked ill, appeared to have aged ten years in the last few hours, but had now gathered himself sufficiently to try mumbling apologies for his previous behaviour to anyone who would listen.

  ‘…you do not know what it is like,’ Boris kept shifting position so that he could keep looking Clarence in the face, ‘to live every moment of your life in fear, and then after once making a decision that takes courage, to find yourself hurled into the clutches of the monster that gave rise to the terror in the first place.’ He caught hold of the sniper’s arm, to prevent him from moving away, and then had to nurse the bruised hand that was knocked aside by a sweeping blow with a rifle barrel.

  ‘I am sorry, it is just that I want you to understand. I deserted during an air-raid. It is likely that I am listed as killed. If I now fell into the hands of the KGB, then my family… my family…’

  Clarence watched the Russian as his head dropped into his cupped hands and he broke down
and cried. He put his hand forward, to touch the man on the shoulder; for him, so loathing physical contact, it was an unnatural action. His fingers stopped just short of contact, and went no further.

  The poor devil. Clarence had been wrapped in his own memories of sorrow and thirst for revenge for so long, he had almost forgotten that the war, the Zone, had brought the same to others. Perhaps for Boris it might even be worse. Clarence had already suffered his loss, there was nothing else that could touch him after that Russian bomber had crashed on his wife and children, nothing that could inflict greater misery, greater torment of mind. But Boris, he knew the Communist system, knew what it could inflict, and knew that he could be the cause of those horrors touching his loved ones. It was a cruel refinement, worthy of the KGB itself.

  ‘Everybody to your position.’ Revell left his seat and went back to the Russian. ‘There’s some sort of traffic snarl-up ahead. Looks like a queue waiting to cross a bridge. I want you up front. If there’s any talking to be done then it’s down to you. We’re relying on you.’

  The members of the squad stationed themselves at the firing ports either side of the hull, as they slowed to stop fifty yards short of the tail-end of the waiting line of mixed civilian and military transports.

  The single lane pontoon bridge across the Elbe had been blocked by a field car that had jumped the guide rails, and now hung over the swirling muddy water, in imminent danger of falling in.

  A recovery crew had backed a truck as close as they could, and were in the process of securing a tow-rope, while the endangered vehicle’s driver was being pushed and prodded to the far bank under armed guard.

  Burke had closed down his front port, and now with Boris looked out at the scene through the thick, scratched and dirt-smeared armoured glass prism filling the vision slit in its metal shutter.

  On the far side of the river a group of smartly uniformed Russian soldiers had jumped from a tracked armoured personnel carrier, and as prisoner and guards approached they grabbed the man under escort, forced him to his knees, and a single shot rang out.