Sky Strike tz-4

by James Rouch

  It was more than admiration though, perhaps not love yet, desire definitely, but not love. But the word love was always one that figured in his thinking about her.

  ‘Well, do I go?’

  Her piercing blue eyes were on him, startlingly pale when the sun was directly on her face, adding to her intensity of expression. He didn’t like her being away from him, but couldn’t deny she was the best they had with that weapon and could do the job if anyone could. Someone would have to go with her, to give supporting fire if she was spotted. If only it could be him, but it couldn’t be. He felt he was making. They slipped and slid on the damp grass of the steep hillside from one patch of sharp-needled hawthorn to the next Being lighter and nimbler, Andrea set a fast pace for each sprint, and Libby had to work hard to keep up.

  ‘This will do.’ Libby drew the girl into a thicket where the white flowered bushes were mixed with ivy-draped stunted oaks. ‘It is not close enough.’ She made to go on. ‘We are at the weapon’s maximum range.’

  Keeping hold of her arm, Libby pulled her to the ground behind a toppled oak. ‘If we go any lower we won’t be able to see the targets as clearly, or observe our fall of shot.’

  Andrea said nothing, but signalled her acceptance of the argument by unslinging her depleted bag of rifle grenades. She pushed three explosive rounds into Libby’s hand. ‘Hold these, set them for impact detonation.’

  ‘As you ask so nicely, certainly.’

  For a couple of minutes they worked in silence, using the edges of coins to dial the correct settings on the nose tips of the fuses. ‘Do you really still expect to find your girlfriend?’

  Coming out of the blue, her words caught Libby totally unprepared, and astounded him. He had never exchanged more than a few dozen words with Andrea, and all those had been essential, in action. Until now he hadn’t even realised she knew anything about him, she had never shown any interest.

  ‘My fiancée? Yes, I’ll find her.’ That was the first time he had ever said the words out loud. Their sound did not reflect the confidence he’d always felt he had. He sought to reinforce them. ‘Of course I will, it’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘It has become an obsession, yes?’

  That wasn’t so easy to answer. His immediate reaction was an honest, spontaneous ‘yes’, but he curbed it In a sense his quest had become an obsession, but its cause was still the same as it had always been, to restore to him the one person who meant something to him, who had meant everything, who still did.

  ‘You might think so.’

  ‘But you do not.’ Andrea toyed with an armed grenade, looking at but not seeing its colour-coded body. ‘To you it is much more than that, but the words do not come easily. It is love?’

  ‘More than you could ever comprehend.’ These were things Libby had never talked of with anyone before. Even with Helga he’d become tongue-tied on the subject, and a thousand million times since the start of the war he’d wished he’d said to her more often what was in his heart. And now he was talking about it with a hard-faced East German bitch who used and discarded men like she might a paper handkerchief, with no more thought.

  Andrea slowly loaded the launcher. ‘In that you are right. I cannot comprehend what it is like to have a man so devoted, so dedicated…’

  ‘What? You could have any man you wanted.’

  ‘Could I have you? No, I do not mean it that way, but perhaps you see what I mean. A woman does not want any man, no more than a real man wants every woman.’

  ‘Is it that you don’t like men?’ Libby tentatively, and in a roundabout way, put the question that most members of the squad had speculated on at some time.

  ‘Why not ask the question directly. What you want to know is do I like women. It is not a question I can answer yes or no. I have loved a woman, a girl, but it was a long time ago and it was not a physical relationship. Does that disappoint you, were you hoping for details?’

  Libby hadn’t, but couldn’t find the form of words to express what it was he’d really meant to say. Reaching out, he put a finger lightly on her injured face. ‘Does it hurt much?’ In the manner in which she’d repelled advances from others, Libby had expected her to knock his hand away, but she didn’t, allowing him to run his finger down her cheek, skirting the bruising, to reach and pause, still touching, at the corner of her mouth. With Helga he’d been able to convey his feelings more often by a caress, than by words.

  ‘My cheekbone may be broken, a tooth has been loosened and another is sharp: yes it hurts, but I can bear it. I can still do my work.’

  ‘How come you’re talking to me now, what’s changed?’

  ‘Nothing has changed, yet. I… I have a feeling… that you will not be with us for much longer… I felt I could talk to you…’

  ‘Because I won’t be about to blab it to others. Thanks.’

  ‘You can think that if you wish.’

  She turned her back on him and didn’t speak again. He almost grabbed her and asked her what she meant when she said he wouldn’t be with the squad for much longer, but didn’t. Damn it, he was as superstitious as the next bloke, but that was taking it a bit far. Stupid, there couldn’t be anything in it… couldn’t be.

  The party starts in ten minutes.’ Revell turned the glasses towards the nearest dumps. ‘Andrea should be doing her bit right about… now.’

  From the foot of the slope came the muted crump of a grenade thrower, and a second later there was a burst of flame close to the perimeter of an area littered with stacks of wooden crates. A mushroom of smoke that rose in the cool air was swiftly dispersed in the freshening wind.

  Another shot landed dead centre among a park of handling equipment just beside a guard hut. The smoke cleared to reveal the flimsy structure swaying in the breeze with its end wall collapsed. A forklift truck had been overturned, but there was no sign of the hoped for conflagration.

  ‘Shift target, girl. Shift target.’

  As though she could hear him, the third grenade detonated among a group of Russian pioneers seeking shelter beneath a tracked ammunition carrier. Cases of shells close by were pushed over by the blast and spilled their contents, but there was no chain-reaction in the ammunition dump.

  Revell heard the fourth shot fired, but there was no following explosion, and he cursed the faulty fuse. Now he switched his attention to the only other target within range of Andrea’s launcher. Of the three it had looked the least promising, just a few stacks of boxes that rated only a bare three-strand barbed wire fence, and that unlike the other depots off the main road didn’t even warrant a guard on its entrance.

  Number five was as disappointing as the earlier attempts, being just too long, and falling over the far side of the dump and blasting an unoffending shed that disintegrated without a single splinter taking flame.

  The ground between the foot of the hill and the wall was like a seething ants’ nest viewed from above. Pioneers and construction troops were rushing about to find cover and fighting each other when any place of imagined safety was found. What had been a fairly orderly forward staging area was now a confused mass of panicking Russians.

  Striking a patch of clear ground in an obscure corner of the third dump, Andrea’s last grenade looked to be even less successful than those that had gone before, but as the dirt settled back and the last wisps of smoke were whirled away and lost, a pillar of fire leapt from the shallow crater.

  ‘No bloody wonder they weren’t bothering to guard the place.’ Hyde watched the tall gout of flame turn to a spitting fountain that spawned a mass of other fires. Another underground storage tank was ignited and consumed in a single giant bubble of red and yellow that soared upwards. ‘Even Dooley wouldn’t try to pinch napalm.’

  ‘Kinda looks like you got your target marker, Major, and with time to spare. Planes ain’t due for another five minutes yet.’ Ripper was enjoying the spectacle. A sharp prod in the back from Hyde dissuaded him from repeating the rebel yell with which he had greeted the first
fiery eruption.

  ‘And it also looks as if Libby and Andrea have been spotted.’ Using the powerful telescope on his rifle, Clarence kept track of the T62 that was moving towards the hill. The tank’s co-axial machine gun was already in action and now the main armament commenced a slow rate of fire, its shot landing among the belt of dense trees and undergrowth a little above the foot of the slope.

  ‘In the APC, and draw their fire.’ Much of the effect of the T62’s shooting could not be seen, but now and again a high explosive round would burst among the tops of the trees and lengths of smouldering bough and bark and trunk would sail spinning through the air.

  Revell only knew the pair’s approximate position, but he could see the shells falling all about it and his mouth went so dry he found it hard to catch a breath.

  The vehicle’s turret machine gun clattered loudly and sent a line of tracer at the advancing tank. A second followed, then another: and then Revell saw its cannon traverse towards them and elevate.

  A solid shot struck the hill lower down, the following high explosive round came no nearer.

  ‘They can’t elevate enough.’ Hyde could imagine the Russian commander’s frustration, then saw it demonstrated as the man brought the tank’s anti-aircraft machine gun into play.

  Already having the range, it was an opportunity Clarence did not neglect. He fired twice, short bursts whose arcing trajectory was marked by dashes of bright green tracer. Before the tank man could settle behind his weapon he was hit, threw up his arms and collapsed to drape his upper torso over the side of the turret.

  Burke didn’t hear the Harriers’ approach. One moment the sky was clear save for the thick column of smoke from the dump, the next they were hurtling at zero feet over the wall, unleashing salvo after salvo of 68mm air to ground rockets from their underwing Matra pods.

  The effect was devastating. Traffic that wasn’t blasted off the road collided with the blazing debris, as truck and transporter drivers abandoned their still-rolling vehicles. A carpet of destruction preceded the jets as they swept over the area.

  All four aircraft banked to scream past the hill in succession, so close that Revell could see the pilots and feel the buffeting effect of their slipstream and the pungent heat of their exhausts.

  The second pass was more selective and saturation tactics gave way to precision bombardment. Both T62s were singled out and in turn were pounded by direct hits that reduced both to burning hulks. The scout cars, checkpoint and watch tower received the same attention. Several rockets fell into the minefield and initiated a chain-reaction, while still others blasted holes in the wall.

  Among the inferno of devastation, individuals and groups of Russians ran from place to place seeking shelter from the howling flame-tailed warheads, but there was nowhere to go and many were cut down as they ran or threw themselves into some imagined place of safety, only for it to be obliterated by a direct hit.

  They were gone as quickly as they had come, using their unique vectoring ability to execute impossibly tight turns at the end of their second run to set them on their course for home.

  In that short space of time, not more than half a minute from their appearance to their departure, the Harriers had pulverised the area of the wall and its defences, and wrought bloody havoc among the troops and dumps flanking the road.

  There was no need to order the others to board, when Revell reached for the grab-rail on the side of the APC he was the last to do so. Burke was tackling the, in places, near-sheer decline even before he was in his seat.

  Even when at times he locked all the wheels, their driver could not prevent their transport gathering speed. In desperation, as it threatened to run out of control, he deliberately steered it through the clumps of coarse growth dotting the slope and as, one after another, the tough twisted trunks of hawthorns resisted before yielding to the vehicle’s progress, its headlong career was checked, and its speed reduced to a level where he at least had the chance of maintaining some degree of control.

  Revell stood peering out of the open hatch as they neared the place from which the grenades had been launched, searching the cratered terrain for Andrea and Libby.

  The air still held a strong smell of cordite, now being reinforced and at times swamped by the stink from the many fires among the tussocks of spark-generating grass and felled trees. To them was added the smoke and stench of the fires among the dumps, and together the pall was being thickened to a state that compared with the fog they’d endured around dawn.

  When he saw them, Revell found his thoughts and emotions crowding him with conflict. She seemed unharmed, and at that realisation he felt exaltation. Then he saw Libby extend his hand to her, to assist her over a tangle of fallen wood, and saw her take it, without hesitation.

  Seeing it made him think of his ex-wife, of how the cold cow had eventually come to reject the physical aspects of their marriage, how in the last six months before they’d separated she’d never once let him touch her. And then he remembered how he’d felt on the day of their divorce, when she’d thrown at him the news that she was having an affair, and was already pregnant by a salesman she’d met only weeks before.

  The turmoil in his mind at this moment was something like that. Andrea, with whom he’d never got anywhere, who was so untouchable and had frozen him out, being familiar with someone else. The sight brought him pain and anger and he had to struggle to keep the feelings from his voice when he called to urge them on.

  Closed down tight, with every weapon port manned, they drove towards the fires, and as they steered between two blazing dumps, heading towards the road, a human tide of screaming Russian infantry rushed towards them.

  TWELVE

  Every single man was on fire. Some flapping at burning sleeves and jacket fronts as they ran, others were no more than animated balls of flame from which hands and feet projected.

  Several of them deliberately threw themselves under the APC to put an end to their suffering and the suspension couldn’t damp the jolting and bouncing as skulls and rib-cages made unnatural obstacles for the wheels.

  A few tried to cling to the hull, pounding with blistered fists at the armour as they begged for help, but most just ran, heads down with their teeth clenched and their jaws set in expressions of utter determination, as though they could win the race against the flames the draught spread over their bodies.

  Those too severely injured to move sat, or lay, and waited for the tides of liquid fire to roll over them. Among the petrol fires ammunition dumps began to erratically explode and added a further ingredient to the boiling hell.

  The hull of the APC was becoming too hot to touch, and there was a strong aroma of burning rubber as the tyres steamed in the roasting air.

  Libby had climbed into the turret seat their sniper had vacated for him, but there were no targets. When the vehicle slewed on to the road there was no opposition, no living Russian in sight. Twice they had to bulldoze wrecks aside, but there was no other obstruction to their progress.

  Bodies sprawled about two damaged scout cars and a knocked-out T62. A crudely painted black and white striped pole lay splintered at the roadside. Short lengths of barbed wire impaled the APC’s tyres and were carried round several times before being dislodged, making scraping contact with the hull at each revolution.

  ‘We’ve made it’ Burke steered the vehicle around a chicane of tank obstacles and through the gap in the wall.

  ‘Oh yeah, out of the frying pan…’

  ‘Into the Zone.’ Hyde completed Dooley’s sentence for him.

  ‘Well at least the bloody roads won’t be stiff with sodding Commies.’ Following the major’s instructions, Burke took a right fork, then turned on to a narrow side road that barely admitted the nine-foot-wide eight-wheeler.

  ‘Back there we could see the fuckers.’ Dooley jerked his thumb over his shoulder, towards East Germany. ‘This is the Zone, from now on we won’t see sodding nobody until we drive into the middle of a Ruskie Battlegroup
, or an ambush by armed civvies.’

  ‘Hope not.’ After counting his spare magazines twice, Ripper replaced all three in his pouch. ‘We tackle anything more than a bunch of wild dogs and we is gonna be in real big trouble. Anybody else noticed we’re getting a mite short on ammo?’

  The APC frequently brushed both sides of the road at once. Grass and weeds were making a strong bid to reclaim the road and had already carpeted large patches. Every gate, every wall and abandoned farm was the object of an assault by nature. Winter might have imposed a temporary halt to the encroachment, but the first days of spring were bringing reinforcement and fresh vigour to the one-sided contest.

  Only rarely were there any signs of the violent warfare that had ranged and raged across the fields and hills in the early days of the war. The most obvious were the occasional glimpses of rusting tanks and other armoured vehicles, and once, the tail plane of a MIG-21, suspended by the scorched branches of a giant elm, above a wide, shallow, water-filled crater, at the edge of which some of the tree’s roots were exposed.

  As they drove further in though, they began to come across more recent evidence of fighting, or of bombardment. Such an instance was the small town of Liebenburg. It had virtually ceased to exist.

  On the outskirts a few buildings survived, most without roofs, and none with windows or doors, but as they drove further in, bricks and splintered window frames crunching under the wheels, there was less and less to see: less and less that was even recognisable as the remains of what had once been a prosperous and bustling town.

  Ground zero of the nuclear demolition device was marked by the fused stump of a church tower, standing only a couple of feet high, with the runs of molten stone, now long solidified, radiating from it. Every tombstone of the graveyard that had flanked it on all sides echoed the star-like pattern, pressed down into the baked earth by the irresistible blast, their deep etched inscriptions wiped away by a heat greater than the heart of the sun that now glinted on the glassy slabs.