by James Rouch
Now they were right over the source of the smoke. Below, Revell could make out the burning tanks and trucks. A bubble of flame rose from a ditched command vehicle as its fuel ignited, mushrooming in the air behind them, before the wash from the helicopter’s passage scattered and dispersed it.
‘Looks like those poor shits took a hammering.’ The co-pilot unwrapped a piece of gum and popped it into an already full mouth.
‘Yeah, the babies we’re looking for sure passed this way.’ At fifty feet the pilot levelled out, and the countryside flashed past beneath the chopper. ‘You ain’t answered me yet, Major. I said how close? It ain’t that I’m pressing, it’s just that I’ve got kinda attached to this body of mine. I’d like to keep it in one piece for a mite longer, like ‘til I kick off through old age.’
‘Just keep us as low as you can. Give it another ten minutes at this speed and then let’s take it real easy. So long as we don’t overshoot, we should stay out of trouble. They’ll be concentrating their radar watch forward.’
A glance was enough to tell Revell that Sergeant Hyde had everything under control in the back. The British NCO had woken Burke by the simple expedient of whipping away a vital component of his nest, causing the remainder to collapse and deposit him on the floor.
The others were already gathering their equipment together. With every move that Dooley made, small squares of folded paper fluttered out of the bottom of his jacket, until he fastened it tighter. His plunder of the decorations had been extensive.
Twelve times in fifteen kilometres they flew over wrecked NATO supply trucks, and once glimpsed the blazing guard shack of a small roadside dump.
‘We were pretty fast off the mark.’ With unconscious skill the pilot skimmed the unwieldy helicopter over the telephone wires and occasional power lines. ‘But those Reds must be going like bats out of hell to have got this far. They ain’t being held up by anything, just smearing anybody who gets in their way.’
They whirred over a lone Mack tank transporter. It looked as if it had been bulldozed off the road. A fire was growing in the cab and the bodies of its crew lay beside it.
‘That fire hasn’t got a hold yet. We’re right on their tail.’ Straining to catch a glimpse of the enemy column, Revell spotted it as the Chinook banked round the side of a wooded hill. ‘Down, put us down.’ At the shout, the pilot brought the helicopter to a virtual standstill, then let it drop fast until it hovered only a few feet off the road. ‘So what now, and remember, this ain’t no gunship.’
‘There are no important intersections for about fifteen kilometres.’ Revell studied the map. ‘Then the road forks and they could go either way. Get us ahead of the column, well wait for them there, and in the meantime we can drop a few presents.’
A loud groan from Cohen was smothered by the howl of the engines, as the chopper soared vertically into the cloud before whirling on to a fresh heading, then, nose down, began to pick up speed. ‘So can we go back for my stomach later?’
‘Never mind your gut, get on that radio. I want that ECM platform now. The rest of you, we’ve got work to do.’ Scanning the various loads that had been hurriedly thrown aboard before their rushed departure, it was with relief that Revell saw the crate he wanted was the one nearest the rear door. ‘Get it ready for a drop.’
A blast of cold damp air struck at them as Hyde lowered the ramp. ‘Are we letting the whole lot go at once, or a handful at a time?’
‘We’ll make four drops at irregular intervals. That’ll stop them anticipating and keep them nervous. Put down a hundred at a time, on my signal.’ The view the major had out of the open rear of the chopper was unreal. The whole world was a uniform grey, devoid of any feature that would serve as a reference point. That insubstantial wall of cloud could be a hundred yards away, or just at the end of the ramp.
Dooley used a swing of his boot to free the final reluctant catch, and the side of the case fell away to reveal the loaded racks within. ‘All ready, Major.’
‘Right, make sure they go down on the road...’ Revell saw the puzzled expression on Dooley’s face. ‘Well there wouldn’t be any damned point in hiding the things in the fields if the Reds are barrelling straight down the road, would there? I want them nice and conspicuous.’
‘Funny thing war, isn’t it, Sarge?’ Dooley watched the officer making his way to the cockpit. ‘Some dumb shits back home must have spent years developing these, figuring out how to make them camouflage themselves when they’re dropped. Just when they’ve got it right, we come along and start scattering the bloody things out in the open.’
‘He’s not getting fucking philosophical again is he, Sarge?’ Burke yawned. ‘The last thing I want after a rude awakening from you is a load of bleeding waffle from him.’
‘Just get ready to drop two racks when I tell you.’ They were descending again, Hyde could tell that, as he waited for the signal, by the feeling in his stomach and the colour of Corporal Cohen’s face. It went from flushed pink to white to green in as many seconds, then disappeared as the radio-man ducked down, stuck his head in a paper bag and made repulsive noises while his shoulders heaved.
Suddenly they were out of the cloud and only a hundred feet above the road. Rain swept in gusts at them, stinging their eyes. The chopper levelled out and its speed fell rapidly, so that the road was no longer a blurred black ribbon. Details could be made out. The patches of old repairs, sprouting clumps of weeds, individual puddles and longer flooded stretches where neglected ditches and field drains had overflowed.
‘Now.’ Hyde’s hand slapped down on Dooley’s shoulder as he saw Revell wave
from the cockpit.
In swift succession Dooley tripped two releases, and a pattern of bowling ball sized objects arced over the ramp and down towards the road. Some of the spheroids landed on the verges but most, prevented from bouncing and brought immediately to rest by their special ribs and fins, settled on the road.
As the Chinook disappeared into the distance the antitank mines sat quietly ticking, mindlessly counting the seconds to the moment when they would arm themselves. It came, and a brief tinny buzzing signalled the activation of fuses and booby trap devices.
From that moment, until they self-destructed twelve hours later, nothing was going to get past that stretch of road while they sat there.
TWO
‘For the last twenty bloody minutes the Sarge has had me rushing about like a ruddy blue-arsed fly, lugging these fucking heavy missiles around until the sweat’s pouring off me. Now he wants me to sit down in the wet grass.’ After aiming a savage kick at the droplet-laden seed heads, Burke squatted down beside the mortar and began unpacking rounds.
‘I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you.’ Dooley took off his helmet and wiped the rain from his face with a scrap of filthy rag. ‘Chances are you’re not gonna live long enough to catch a cold.’
‘Piss off. How do you want these fused?’
Dooley considered the question. ‘Well there’s not much fucking chance of knocking out armour with 60mm HE, so let’s go for air-bursts. Might knock some bits off the flak-wagons and…’ he grinned, ‘...besides, they look pretty.’
‘You all ready here?’ Major Revell stood behind the two men and looked down on the gentle slope of the meadow to the stretch of road a thousand yards away.
‘Checked and double checked, Major. Any Ruskie who sticks his head out of a hatch for a look-see after the action starts is going to get his ears pierced the hard way.’ As the officer departed, Dooley sighted again through the RCA laser rangefinder.
From the far side of a belt of defoliated woodland came the dull boom of a powerful explosion, followed by the crackling ripple of multiple mine detonations.
‘Not long now.’ Burke rested his hand on the mortar’s barrel cover. ‘Christ, I’m cold now. This bloody rain is going right through me.’
‘What you want is something to cuddle up to, like your buddy Clarence, with his little fraulein.’
&nb
sp; ‘He’s not my mate. The only thing we have in common is that we’re British. I don’t want nothing to do with that headcase. Anyway, I don’t reckon there’s anything between them. I’ve never seen him touch her.’
‘You’ve never seen me screwing, but I do it.’ Having wiped the rangefinder, Dooley stowed it in its compact carry case. ‘Nice little toy, saves a ranging shot, but when things warm up there won’t be much time for pissing about with gadgets. It’ll all be down to how fast we can stuff those little bastards down the tube.’ Dooley’s broad features creased into a wide grin again. ‘If the shits get close enough, we can chuck the crappy things. How’s your pitching arm?’
From his position among the clump of thistles on the crest, Revell could see the rest of his squad scattered about the slope below him. From behind, at the bottom of the reverse slope, came the constant throbbing of the Chinook’s engines. He’d kept Cohen with him, and maintained radio contact with the pilot. They might need a fast getaway soon.
‘Any sign of that ECM aircraft yet?’
‘Still on our own at the moment, Major.’ ‘OK, let me know the moment it’s on station.’ Hell, they were on their own alright. A full major, and his command consisted of six men, seven if he counted Kurt -and he wished he didn’t have to - and Andrea.
Another week and he’d have been putting together his new Special Combat Company, but this had come along first, a task more suited to a regiment than a squad. The rain was easing at last, that was something.
Away to his right he could see Sergeant Hyde, his face locked to the tripod- mounted Hughes sight-and-command box. Black threads of cable snaked from it in all directions, to the various launchers and missiles scattered across the ground between them and the road. Kurt lounged beside the sergeant, smoking, with one arm draped nonchalantly over an M60 machine gun.
Libby was off to the major’s left, manning the command box for the decoys, and down the slope from him were Clarence and the girl. Andrea had her favourite M16, with a grenade launcher clipped under the barrel. Through his binoculars, Revell could see her jacket pulling in at the waist and stretching tight over the backside it didn’t quite cover. Yes, she was quite something. He’d not told the colonel of his suspicions about her being the one who’d incinerated the Russian prisoner; though if he was honest with himself, he knew that they were more than suspicions. Lippincott would have privately applauded the action, but for the sake of appearances he’d have been forced to hook her out, and into a POW camp.
He couldn’t help himself, Revell was fascinated by her. Not just because she was so incredibly beautiful, not even because her aura of hardness made her such a challenge; it was something else, something much deeper. Maybe it was a reflection of a submerged facet of his own make-up. If they ever should make love, however willingly she did it, he could imagine it being a fight. His body confirmed what his mind wouldn’t admit - the prospect excited him.
That bitch of an ex-wife of his had never been prepared to explore new ways of making love. How many times had he offered to do anything she wanted? It must have been hundreds, and she’d called him a pervert. There had been a time, in the early days of the marriage, when he’d have happily been the bitch’s slave, done anything to please her, but all she’d ever wanted, and he’d suspected not even really wanted, was sex rarely, quickly and cleanly.
She’d always kept a box of Kleenex by the bed, and almost before he’d withdrawn she’d thrust a handful at him, telling him to ‘wipe yourself, you’re dripping on the quilt.’ Seconds later she’d cork herself with more of the same and disappear into the bathroom for half an hour.
It was no more than wishful thinking, but he could imagine it being very different with Andrea...
There was another dull boom followed by a ripple of minor explosions, closer this time. The Russians were clearing another pattern of mines. He had perhaps five more minutes to himself. It seemed that it was only in the last moments before an action, when everything had been done and checked and all there was to do was wait, that he ever really got the chance to spend a few minutes exploring his own thoughts.
His gaze flickered to the mortar, and Dooley and Burke. An unlikely pair: Dooley, the big mercurial scrounger from New York, and Burke, the oldest member of the squad, from an unfashionable part of London, who had a complaint for every occasion and an excuse for avoiding work just as often. Still they got on well enough. Pity the whole of NATO couldn’t manage such harmony. If they could, then weapon standardisation would be progressing faster, and the M60s might get changed for the excellent British light support weapon.
Again he saw Andrea. She’d shifted position slightly, bending one leg so that the material of her camouflage suit was pulled tight into her backside. What sort of underwear would she have on, if any? Hell, she was turning into an obsession, he was concentrating on the wrong things ... but he felt he was right, about her putting up a fight to add spice to intercourse. He’d not mind getting hurt, not if she did it; it’d be worth it, perhaps he’d enjoy the pain. There had been one occasion, years ago, before he was married, when he’d run a girlfriend’s mother to the airport...
He’d always thought Karen’s mother attractive, had indulged in an occasional fantasy when a long petting session with Karen had got him worked up, and he’d had to relieve the throbbing pain of frustration on getting back to his room. Heck, he’d always felt guilty about it. She must have been at least twice his age, getting on for forty, and anyway, you don’t think that sort of thing about your girlfriend’s mother ...besides, it was Karen’s fault for not letting him go all the way.
It was his first decent car, and he was proud of it, had paid for it himself, well was paying for it, gradually. They’d started out early, and they’d had lots of time in
hand.
Perhaps it was her maturity, she never giggled or sulked; or maybe it was her looks, her make-up was always perfect and her figure impressive. That day she’d been wearing a T-shirt and tight jeans. His eyes had kept straying to the front of her jutting top.
‘You like my new shirt?’ she’d asked.
He’d plunged, and known he’d blush as he did. ‘I like what’s in it.’
Christ, in the long twenty seconds after that he’d gone through agonies while she’d fixed him with a look he couldn’t comprehend. The breath she’d taken had only made his eyes stray more.
‘Pull over here.’ Her voice had sounded different, huskier. There had been no need to park right in among the trees, but he had. If she was going to make a scene he didn’t want anyone seeing, not until he’d had a chance to say sorry, cool her down.
‘That was naughty of you. Don’t you think I should punish you, or do you think you should punish me, for not being angry?’
Her hand was in his lap, kneading his erection. Shit, at that moment he’d have swapped the flashy red coupe for any clunker that had a bench front seat.
The way they clambered into the back, the clumsy tangling of arms and legs, were all a merciful blur. The next clear image was the soft white breast being crushed into his face, a hard pink nipple pressing against his lips until it gained entry, when he had to gasp for breath. And all the time she’d whispered, ‘You can hurt me, you can hurt me.’ Then the frantic contortions to reach buttons and fasteners, and she’d come before he was ready, clutching painfully hard at his body. Nails had raked his back and thighs. He’d slipped out, been unable to re- enter, and had finished on her smooth warm belly, ignoring the biting soreness as he rubbed against her body hair.
He’d broken up with Karen soon afterwards, and they’d moved that summer. The bruises had faded, but the deep scratches took longer to heal and he’d often examined them in the mirror. There had not been a second time, though he’d tried to make opportunities, driven past often enough...
The T84 driving cautiously into view looked squat, ugly and powerful. A second followed several lengths behind, and then a third. Revell lifted his respirator from where it hung about his neck,
and used its built-in short-range radio.
‘OK everyone, take it easy. This is just the advance guard, we’re waiting for the main body.’ He saw the lead tank stop a good way short of the last lot of mines they had scattered. ‘Meanwhile, let’s see how they deal with that little problem.’
‘Same way as the others.’ Dooley’s voice was easily recognisable on the radio. ‘Too fucking fast for comfort.’
‘Shut the yakking, just listen.’
Hyde had been quick off the mark, getting in before Revell. That was why the major wanted him in the outfit. The hideously disfigured British NCO might resent having been drafted into the American squad, but he never let that interfere with his combat efficiency. When it came to tank busting, he was one of the best.
His record said nineteen Soviet tanks destroyed. It was possible that unconfirmed kills doubled that, and when an estimated number of APCs, armoured cars and ammunition trucks was added on, it made for one hell of an impressive total. Men like that were more precious than gold to their commanders, and no CO in his right mind was ever going to let one go. Well he’d got Hyde for a one-off special mission, and he was going to hang on to him, whether the sergeant liked it or not.
‘Now what the hell is that?’ Cohen parted the nettles for a clearer view of the strange vehicle motoring past the tanks. It halted a hundred yards from the highly visible mines.
‘I think it’s the reason for Dooley’s discomfort.’ For a moment the radio-man’s question had echoed one in Revell’s mind, then he examined the newcomer through his binoculars. It looked for all the world like an armoured fueller on tracks. A suspicion began to form.
Thick white vapour was hosed at tremendous pressure from a small remote controlled turret, set above the heavily protected cab. The artificial cloud swept forward over the mines, feathering in the light wind. There was a distant ‘crack’, as a flare bobbed from a discharger set into the turret front beside the stubby tube of the projector, and the dense floating mist became a roaring wall of yellow flame.
