by James Rouch
‘Can’t risk the damage of a collision. Let’s take the scenic route.’ At extreme range a hail of automatic fire struck the side of the APC as it turned off the road, crushing a rusted tubular steel gate into the soft earth. Great lumps of turf and loam smacked on the roof of hull and turret as shots from the BMP’s 73mm guns added their weight, An RPG-7 anti-tank rocket flashed past, another self-destructed overhead and deep dents appeared in vulnerably thin top plates as most of that surface’s paint was charred away or blistered by the fireball.
Libby sent retaliatory fire at the enemy infantry but without noticeable effect, the fields soaking up the tracer that didn’t ricochet wildly into the sky. Even using all his skill and strength, he couldn’t hold the unstabilised weapon steady for more than a couple of seconds at a time, against the savage bucking of the ride.
The BMP’s started from concealment, pluming grey exhaust. Burke saw them and began to cut back towards the road. On the rough terrain the wheeled vehicle was at a disadvantage against its tracked opponents, whose better cross-country performance was already enabling them to close the gap as they took short cuts through patches of ground that Burke had to avoid for fear of bogging down.
A 73mm shell blasted a crater in the meadow fifty yards to their left, and shortly afterwards a second impacted against a tree even further off. Libby watched the guns on both BMP’s go to maximum elevation immediately, as they had to in order for the breeches to be aligned with the feeding ramp of the semi-automatic loaders. That added the problem of re-sighting the unstabilised gun after every shot to the Russian gunners’ other problems in their severely cramped turrets and slowed their rate of fire to once a minute at most.
Libby kept watch on the lead vehicle, and as its smoothbore gun depressed to the horizontal called a warning to their driver. The violent course correction was hardly needed, as two more shells fell little nearer than the first. And then the APC thundered back on to the metalled surface of the road and, picking up speed, began to pull away from its pursuers.
Almost the instant they reached top speed, an engine began to misfire, and Burke could no longer ignore the temperature gauge beginning to push into the red.
‘What now, Major?’ Hyde had been reading the map over the officer’s shoulder. ‘No turnings off this road, and we can’t lose those Ruskies by outpacing them. Could be we’ll be thinking on our feet again soon.’
‘How long we’ll be stood on them is what bothers me. At my best pace a BMP can catch me in bottom gear.’ By slowing Burke had managed to keep the tell-tale needle hovering just short of the danger point, but even that was not enough. At that temperature the coolant would soon be boiled away and when the engine seized there would be no point in trying to continue on the remaining one. Its ninety horsepower would be insufficient to hold their lead, and the moment they hit a serious gradient the APC would be slowed to a crawl. Then with the enemy machines closing fast it would be no better than a barely mobile crematorium, for the impact of the first high explosive anti-tank shell would turn it into a pyre.
To underline his thoughts a round crashed into the road behind them, and another scorched past, carrying away a headlamp and setting ablaze a truck parked further on.
An oncoming ambulance convoy scattered as shells followed the APC’s swerving progress. A cross-marked Tatra fell apart as it was side-swiped by the lead BMP, turning over into the ditch and spilling its bandaged occupants into the stagnant water amid a tangle of drip-feeds and broken stretchers.
Aiming straight back down the road, Libby saw his tracer bounce from the sharp raked front of the BMP’s without effect. The range was down to four hundred yards and on the smoother surface the Russian gunners had improved their rate of fire. Still not accurate, the weight of fire would eventually tell. Libby knew that his chances of getting out were so slim as to be non-existent.
If the hit was on the turret then he would never know about it. Capable of punching through a hundred millimetres of armour, the turret’s fourteen would provide no impediment to the shell’s tungsten tip. And at the moment of penetration the round’s explosive filling would destroy the turret, very likely setting off the fuel and ammunition, and accounting for most of the others as well. But if the hit were elsewhere, perhaps on the engines, or through the side of the hull, then the interior would be flooded with fire and, trapped in his seat, he would suffer the most terrible of deaths, being burnt alive.
Three hundred yards, and now the shells were falling so close they rocked the vehicle. Fragments of casing hammered the armour, the tip of one piece piercing the turret wall and sending sparks into the side of Libby’s face.
Above the roar of another near-miss he heard a scream, too high-pitched for a man: Andrea had been hit. Keeping the machine gun firing until the barrel smoked, Libby sent an endless line of bullets at the Russian driver’s vision slits, and saw the leader skid and almost caused a collision before control was regained.
When it was the gap had opened again, and stayed open. Towing swirling steam, the APC reached the outskirts of a village. Better kept than many they had passed, they raced into it along its single main street, and were close to its centre when Revell saw what lay ahead.
Heavily armed KGB troops were pushing and herding civilians into the road so that they filled it from the buildings on one side to the other. As Revell spotted them the Russians, with kicks and threats, began to force the people to the ground.
At forty miles an hour the APC was driving straight at a human roadblock. Having traversed forward at the officer’s shout Libby sent a long burst over the civilians’ heads. A couple jumped to their feet, and were felled by shots from KGB machine pistols. The others stayed down, and Libby saw them closing their eyes and hugging each other in small family groups.
Down to twenty miles an hour, the terrified people only yards ahead and the BMPs closing fast, Burke looked for a side turning and saw none. The front wheels were almost upon an elderly couple when he threw the steering hard over and sent the APC ploughing into a shop front.
Its mass carried it through the windows and splintered the counters, crushing the pathetically few goods on display, and then it struck the rear wall and a deluge of debris rained down.
The wheels spun on the loose rubble, then Burke shifted down into the lowest gear and the APC began to grind forward, climbing the heap of rubble that had been the back wall. It thumped down into the brick-strewn back garden as the roof caved in, leaving only the shell of the building standing.
A succession of fences collapsed before the APC, then it swerved back on to the road, taking away the corner of a house as it negotiated a narrow alleyway to do so.
Knowing there was a possibility of a breech explosion if the barrel had become blocked or bent, Libby tried a single shot, then a short burst when that proved safe. He forced his aching arm to work the traverse mechanism and had a clear view of the road just as the Russian vehicles reached the civilians.
Minds numbed by the threats and violence, most of them still sat or stood in the road. The BMP’s didn’t stop, didn’t even slacken speed.
‘They’re driving through them… there’s kids there.’ To Libby it looked deliberate when the second BMP made a separate lane of its own through the East Germans. ‘Get them, get the bastards.’
Burke hurled the eight-wheeler through a turn that put it in behind a whitewashed greenhouse beside the road, as the leading vehicle raced past.
At point-blank range Libby put fifty rounds of armour-piercing and incendiary into the BMP’s bulbous rear doors. Jets of fuel hosed the road in its wake, then became tongues of bright flame. Out of control, gorging fire from every hatch and vent and port, the vehicle jerked and bucked and swerved until, hitting steep steps at the front of a house, it canted over and toppled on to its side, tracks still thrashing round in the centre of a growing lake of blazing fuel.
The greenhouse shattered as the APC charged through it and rammed the second BMP amidships. Whipping lengths
of track ripped away sections of the enemy vehicle’s thin aluminium track covers as it was broken by the pounding impact.
Applying full power, able to see only the two-tone grey side of the BMP, Burke pushed the crippled vehicle across the road into the corner of a house. The substantial stone structure resisted the charge and the APC was backed off to repeat the tactic.
Crewmen were struggling to escape through buckled hatches when the APC struck again, and were hurled back inside by the avalanche of masonry that came down as the wall collapsed to bury them and their transport.
‘Hold it.’ Libby came down from his seat as Burke began to turn the APC on to its original heading. ‘We’re not leaving.’
‘Don’t be damned stupid.’ Temporarily trapped by loose equipment the collisions had piled about him, Revell could only twist round in his seat to confront the armourer. ‘Reinforcements could be here any moment.’
‘I’m with Libby.’ From his weapon port Clarence could see the remains of the civilians. ‘Leave us if you like, but we have a score to settle with half a dozen KGB thugs.’
‘And I stay also.’ There was a livid brown scar on Andrea’s cheek, where a red-hot fragment had struck. The area around it was heavily bruised and there was blood at the corner of her mouth.
‘Then we’d better deal with them quick as we can.’ Pushing aside the last of the packs, Revell stood and reached for his hatch lock. ‘Well, come on then.’
Leaving the APC unattended they sprinted along the side of the street until they reached the stomach-wrenching site of the slaughter. Most of those mowed down had been killed immediately, but a few clung to life. Among them a pregnant woman whose left leg had been crushed to a bloody pulp; and worse, a child, perhaps ten years old, a pretty blonde girl whose face was now distorted with suffering as she lay with her back broken in the middle of the road.
Clarence went over to her, despite attempts by others to hold him back. As he reached her and bent to lift her slight frame a shot rang out and a bullet aimed for him missed and finished the girl’s suffering.
Two bellows blended as one. Side by side Clarence and Libby raced for the building, while a fusillade of fire from the others gave them cover.
Hitting the door first, the sniper shoulder-charged through it, and as he went sprawling Libby fired over him to bring down the Russian who had just reached the bottom of the stairs.
Jagged bone protruded from the KGB man’s shattered leg, but he still managed to snarl at Libby before his mouth was ruined by a savage blow with a rifle butt. Again and again the weapon was driven down with pile-driver force, joined by a second as Clarence caught up.
Hearing a back door slam they ran through the house, and had to duck back as bullets gouged into the doorpost and lintel.
Libby had glimpsed a field car being hastily boarded by several Russians, and when he and Clarence appeared at the opening again it was to hurl grenades.
When they looked up only one man was still at the vehicle. Hands tight-locked on the steering wheel, the driver stared rigidly ahead, oblivious of the fire on the back seat. Blood spurted from a hole in the side of his head, then slowed to a trickle, then stopped as he fell forward.
Two others lay dead, but a third, a captain, had only been dazed by the blast and as he shook himself back to full consciousness the first thing he saw was the barrels of two rifles.
He screamed as his elbows were smashed, then without stopping shrieked louder still as more bullets did the same to his kneecaps. His agony ended abruptly as his heart failed and he vomited blood, went blue in the face and died.
‘I hate the Communists for what they are doing to me.’ Turning away from the body, it was an automatic action for Clarence to reload his Enfield Enforcer.
Taking a last look at the Russian officer, Libby trailed behind the sniper. ‘I hate them for what they’re doing to everyone.’
‘Any luck?’ Hyde joined their radio operators.
‘Luck doesn’t enter into it, Sarge, this is skill I’m using.’ Cline winced as loud static assaulted his ears. ‘Well, is your skill getting us anywhere then?’
‘Eh, not yet’ Thinking to salvage something of his self-proclaimed reputation, Cline added, ‘It’s this Russian equipment, we can’t use it to broadcast because it’s incompatible with the Jaguar sets NATO uses, and it’s hoping for a bit much to expect our radio intercept units to monitor it by chance.’
‘So what are you tinkering about with?’ Cline held up their man-pack radio. ‘We’re, I’m,’ seeing no reason to share any laurels, Cline changed from the plural to the singular, ‘using the Ruskie equipment to boost this thing’s short-range.’
‘A combination of British brains and Russian brawn, I like it. OK, keep at it.’ Hyde hauled himself from the vehicle, and joined Revell at the edge of the copse in which they’d concealed the APC. ‘Quite a view, Major.’ He ducked into the undergrowth and accepted the field glasses from the officer.
On the NATO side the Zone tended to peter out, with only the insubstantial barbed wire fences to mark its boundary, but on the Soviet side it was precisely and starkly marked by the old Iron Curtain; the snaking tract of wire and steel and concrete that had separated East Germany from the Free World in pre-war days. The walls and towers and some of the tank obstacles were still visible, but the ploughed strip to either side had long been overgrown, though beneath the breeze-swayed grass, flecked with the first spring flowers, still nestled the anti-personnel mines and man-traps. Once denuded of trees, even the first of those was making a comeback and the pliant young trunks hid some of the directional mine-topped stakes that had been the last cruel innovation, before the Russian armies had swept into West Germany and made them obsolete.
‘You said this was a quiet sector, Major.’ Hyde panned the glasses from one enemy concentration to the next, ‘I’m glad we’re not going to be busting through one of the busy ones.’
‘I’ll admit it looks a lot, but look again. Most of the vehicles are soft-skins and the camps are for the pioneers working all the dumps you can see.’
‘That’s still a lot of Ruskies. There’s only one road through the minefields and the wall and it’s blocked to traffic’ Adjusting the focus, Hyde concentrated his attention on a checkpoint where the road passed an observation tower.
Apart from a dozen or more armed military police and a couple of scout cars, a troop of T62s sat at the foot of the ribbed concrete column.
As he watched, Hyde saw the troops swarm about an eight-wheel APC that had halted at the barricade. A T62 nudged forward, its cannon aimed at the vehicle’s hull front. The crew were rousted out and searched, and their papers taken for examination at a nearby hut.
‘It’s for certain we won’t be able to force our way through that, not as it stands now.’ Hyde returned the glasses.
Boris came up behind them. ‘Bombardier Cline’s compliments, Major. He says he has established the link you required.’
‘Don’t you want your share of the credit?’
A shake of the head and a small smile was Boris’s only reply.
Revell knew what the Russian was up to. The bombardier would be in his debt now, and in war if you can’t have friends, people who owe you favours can be just as valuable. Boris was building up a stock.
‘Wait ‘til the major puts in our request. He’ll soon regain his old form.’
‘Colonel… Colonel,’ Revell was having trouble breaking into the flow. ‘Yes, Colonel… Like you say, Colonel, I must be a real crafty fucker. Colonel… I want a sky strike…’
The swearing from the other end intensified four-fold and Revell was able to reduce the volume still further.
‘He’ll get us one.’ Dooley sat back, nodding sagely. ‘I know OF Foul Mouth, he’d have got nasty if he weren’t going to do it.’
Listening to the language being used, Cline couldn’t understand how Dooley knew that their commanding officer hadn’t turned nasty. He asked.
‘That? That’s nothing.
When the colonel gets into his stride he can go on for twenty minutes without repeating himself, but with him what you’ve got to watch out for is when he stops cussing. Then he gets really dangerous. If he ever smiles at you and says a polite good-morning, you might as well go back and shoot yourself.’ Dooley leant close again to catch a few words. ‘Oh yeah, we’re getting our sky strike, he’s still going strong…’
While Cline made a great show of fussing about with minor and mostly unneeded adjustments, Revell put on the headset. The voice on the other end was instantly identifiable. He turned down the volume against the torrent of shouted obscenity, and even then had to hold the earphones away from his head.
‘That’s our colonel Lee J. Lippincott, OP Foul Mouth himself,’ Dooley offered to an astounded Cline, by way of explanation, as the bombardier’s mouth dropped open on hearing the tirade come over the air. ‘He must be glad we’re still alive, must be all choked up; he’s usually a lot more fluent than that.’
Hyde joined Dooley in craning forward to listen in. ‘Just himself obvious as it was. No, if there had to be another with her then he’d pick a man he could trust…
ELEVEN
‘They want us to mark the target. What have we got?’
‘Nothing with the range to do it from here.’ Hyde was already aware of the Airforce’s requirement, and had been working on it. ‘The three closest dumps are the best part of fifteen hundred yards off. We could hit them with the turret machine gun, but there’s not much chance of starting fires at that sort of range. What it needs is a grenade or two plonked into the middle of each one.’
Andrea pushed between the officer and NCO. ‘From the bottom of the hill I could hit them with this.’
She held up her grenade-launcher-fitted M16. Her words were slightly slurred as she tried to talk with her damaged mouth.
He really did admire her; Revell just couldn’t help it. Even the puffiness of her face around the injured cheek couldn’t detract from her basic beauty, and her determination clearly came through her painful impediment.
