by James Rouch
Reaction and flight time were only milliseconds, but the missile aimed at the tank’s bow impacted beside its rear-drive sprocket, on the hull side just below the top run of track.
The tank’s engine block burst through the deck behind the turret, and towing a coolant spouting radiator behind it, crashed into the road. Gushing flame, only its momentum kept the T72 going, but that was enough. Its forty-four tons smashed into the burning APC which formed half of the roadblock, tossing it aside, before veering to the left to follow its victim, and finally grinding to a halt against the side of the overturned and crushed-in hulk.
‘Reload now.’ The shout came almost too late.
Dropping the rifle he’d taken up in order to pick off any escaping crewmen, Kurt was slow in supplying the fresh round. The closely following T84 was dashing for the gap even as Hyde clipped the fibreglass tube in place.
‘Leave the crews for Clarence. We’re after the bloody tanks.’ There was seething fury in his voice, but the portion of his mind operating the launcher stayed calm and detached. When he fired at the fast moving tank he made no mistake.
The exploding round broke a track and the tank slewed to a broadside stop, its bulk more than replacing the APC that had formerly obstructed the main street. Taking his time, Hyde put a second round into the base of its turret. The tank dissolved in a steel spawning fireball, peppering the buildings on either side with a hail of red-hot fragments.
‘Reload. Damn you, give me a bloody reload.’ Hyde turned to lash out at Kurt, and checked himself.
The East German rocked on his heels, body shuddering, eyes bulging. He gesticulated, to elaborate on words that came out as no more than incoherent garglings. A jagged lump of track plate protruded from his chest.
Damn it, damn it, damn it. Revell had been about to fire at the T84 when Hyde’s missile had stopped it. Now he was almost tempted to put a round into the hulk out of sheer frustration.
‘They’ve gone, Major. Doesn’t look like they’re coming back.’ Boots scrunching on broken glass, Cohen re-entered through the back of the store. ‘Must have decided to cut their losses.’
‘We’ve a third of their force bottled up. They’ve got to turn back.’ Staying locked to the sight, Revell willed another Russian crew to attempt a breakout, but there were no more. His only contact with the fighting raging on the far side of the successfully improvised barricade was the sound of the many weapons in action, and the stink and swirling smoke from the numerous fires.
‘I reckon they didn’t even stop to think about it, Major, just kept right on going. Twenty-plus commie wagons are still going like bats out of hell for Frankfurt.’ Taking off the borrowed binoculars Cohen offered them back, then when the officer made no move to accept them put them down beside him. ‘These are good, and I climbed up high as I could. If they were doing an about turn, I’d have known for sure. You want me to get through to Command?’
‘Yes, get me a link.’ When he’d taken over the antitank weapon Revell had been sure, one hundred per cent certain, that the column’s vanguard would return to rescue its severed tail, and it hadn’t. He’d picked the hottest spot, and it had suddenly turned cold. The radio-man offered him the handset, he hesitated before accepting it. What the hell could he say…
‘...No. No we can’t disengage and chase after it again ... because my men are still dying here... Then if they’re in place what the hell are you beefing about? ...we’ve bought you all the time we can ... the best part of half the job is done for you...’
Cohen listened anxiously, trying to figure out what was being said at the other end from Revell’s responses. Now why did the major always have to stick his neck out?
Shit, it would take him forever to ingratiate himself with a new company commander, and that much longer to get his third stripe. Every time he thought things were lining up just right, something screwed it up. If Revell got the chop for insubordination… Shit, and he’d been looking forward to making sergeant. Chances were Revell might make it first. Shit, shit, shit. That third stripe would have really helped him improve his profits.
With deliberate slowness, Revell replaced the handset. If he hadn’t, he’d have slammed it down and probably broken it. He hated that, being chewed out by a staff officer, who was wetting himself a good hour before the forces he’d allocated even made contact with the enemy.
And the classy Boston accent got up his nose as well. Revell could imagine him: Old Family, Old Money, West Point and Staff College, with top marks and top people all the way. It would have been good to drag him out here, let him know real fear, facing the mindless ferocity of the Russians’ sledgehammer tactics.
‘So what now, Major?’
‘The rest of the column is not our business anymore. They’ve got sky-spies tracking it and a reception is being arranged. We’re to finish off here, so let’s get on with it.’ With a last look at the flame-stained wall of steel still holding back the Russian rearguard, he folded the Dragon’s tripod and picked it up, along with three reloads. ‘Bring what you can. We’ll take these upstairs, see if we can still find a use for them.’
A second-floor window gave them a view of the battle. The infantry fight seemed concentrated in the vicinity of a hotel further along on the far side of the street. As Revell watched, a squad of Russians sent several shoulder launched rockets into the ground floor, followed them with a flurry of grenades and then, hosing long bursts of automatic fire, charged inside.
Sporadic, and largely ineffective retaliation was coming from some upper windows, aimed mostly at the four armoured vehicles that were still in action.
Even as Revell aligned the sights on one, its hatches flew open and its crew scattered. Three rounds were required to ensure it was reduced to a condition that made re-manning out of the question.
Using a series of wrecks for cover, a pair of tanks made! a move towards the roadblock. Before Revell could fire at the leader, a flame-tailed Dragon round lanced out from Hyde’s location. It was a perfect shot, striking the base of the T84s turret immediately below its mantlet, but that was the extent of its success. Its fuse failed and it broke apart on impact like a frangible practice round. A few of the scattered lumps of explosive blazed fiercely on the road, some on the hull top, but the vehicle’s fighting qualities were unimpaired.
For this very reason, the crew’s behaviour seemed all the more incomprehensible. While the tank rolled on, they left its massively protected security and bolted in opposite directions.
To an unseen individual in the attic of the hotel the open hatches presented an irresistible attraction. One after another, four grenades were lobbed from the shutter-flanked garret. The last one bounced from the rim of the gunner’s hatch and into the turret. There was no sound of an explosion, all that happened was that a large grey smoke-ring rose from the opening, but the effect on the tank was both immediate and dramatic.
Lurching, shuddering, it began to follow an erratic zigzag course towards the roadblock. Unguided save by whatever malfunction was affecting its steering, it succeeded in missing every major obstruction, riding over or thrusting aside any minor ones.
It was almost like being back on the ranges, and Revell waited until it was within seventy-five yards before sending the missile on its way. With instruction manual precision, the shaped warhead struck the base of the turret, which was ripped off by the resulting explosion.
‘Still coming on, Major.’ Cohen could hardly believe it. With a tall pillar of fire gouting from the huge hole in its hull top, the unmanned target was maintaining its bizarre progress. ‘And I don’t like the look of it.’ - ‘I’m not wasting a round…’ Revell was already switching his aim to a Shilka flak-tank, that was trying to create a new side street by the brutal but effective process of crushing a picturesque half- timbered building.
‘You’d better, Major. Its next turn will bring it right to us.’ Revell couldn’t achieve sufficient depression to bring the missile tube to bear on the new danger, and as he
wrestled with the mount the burning tank clanked and squealed on to a heading that would bring it straight at them.
The masonry-topped hull of the embedded APC offered no real obstacle to the runaway. Without being deflected from its random course, the tank climbed the metal flank of the obstruction and, with its bow plate facing up to the sky and its steadily rotating tracks grinding great furrows in the carrier’s armour, hung there for a moment.
Though he at last managed to fire, Revell knew it was useless. At so short a range the flight time was too brief for the missile to arm itself, and with only a fraction of its burn-out velocity, it broke into its component sections when it hit the target. Warhead, motor and electronics fell harmlessly on to the sidewalk amid a tangle of guidance wires.
There was just time for Cohen to snatch the radio pack and hunch over to protect it, before the APCs hull collapsed under the crushing weight, and the T84 was cata- pulted down and forward through the front of their building.
Flame from the explosive and diesel-fuelled fire swept up the stairs. Revell felt his throat constrict as rasping super-heated smoke filled the room, then was blinded by it as the floor began to sag and long, widening cracks raced up the walls.
The smoke was making it more difficult to find and identify targets. And there were fewer of them. Clarence repeatedly scanned the ground laid out below, but the only Russians to be seen were the dead and dying. When a group of survivors were occasionally forced to change position by the imminence of a building’s collapse, they did so at the double, using every scrap of cover. Inevitably one of them I would fail to make it, and the sniper would add another to his score, but only rarely was there the chance of a second shot.
Andrea was always ready when it happened. As the frantic infantry and dismounted tank crews piled in through another doorway, she would give them just a moment, then send a fragmentation grenade in after them. It was she who spotted the three officers attempting to set up a heavy machine gun in the car park behind the hotel.
‘They are mine.’ She yanked on the sniper’s arm as he took aim. ‘We’ll take them on together.’ Clarence pulled himself free. ‘No, they are mine. This time it is you who will back me.’ ‘Get on with it then.’ He couldn’t keep the snap out of his words. This was the first time she’d asserted herself, and he didn’t like it. So far they had worked perfectly as a team, until now she had accepted the role of giving support fire without question; in fact they’d reached the stage where few words were needed between them. It was as if a form of telepathy had joined their minds, making it possible for them to function as though they were one.
Taking the grenade from her depleted stock, Andrea didn’t need to look as she dialled its fuse setting for an air-burst, and loaded it into the large bore tube below the rifle’s barrel. The sniper’s reaction to her demand had neither surprised nor bothered her; she had expected it. He could serve no further purpose, she had learnt all she could from him. It would take little to terminate their tenuous relationship. There had been nothing linking them beyond a shared interest in killing, and now there were other lessons to be learnt elsewhere - with another.
The 40mm grenade detonated right over the group, even as they brought the machine gun into action. Razor fragments scythed down from the grey smudge that banged into existence above the Soviet officers’ heads.
There was anger in Clarence, mostly from old memories, and more recent hatreds; but their recall had been triggered by Andrea’s new air of dominance. It prompted him to do something he’d never purposely done before. One of the Russians hadn’t gone down, he staggered about clutching at his stomach. The sniper carefully and deliberately put the 7.92mm bullet into the base of his spine.
At the impact the wounded man straightened up, arched backwards and flung his arms wide. A great mass of guts cascaded from the released wound, and the officer slipped in the dangling mess and fell to roll in them, before a final spasm sent his limbs into spastic jerks and he at last lay still.
Andrea had watched over the sights of her M16. A thin, tight smile turned up the corners of her beautiful mouth. ‘That was good. That was very good.’
His thoughts were in a turmoil. There was so much he wanted to say, to explain, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak to her. They might be fighting the same war, but they weren’t fighting it the same way. Before, he’d felt they had much in common, now he knew that was an illusion. And he also knew, without having to ask again, the answer to the question he’d put earlier, and which she’d so con- sistently and expertly parried. She was in the war because she loved the killing.
Clarence watched her snap three fast single shots at a Russian sidling down a distant alleyway. Down to the stance and style, she had copied his technique to the last detail. It was as if, leech-like, she had sucked every single shred of knowledge from him. With single-minded determination she had spent hours on the ranges, and the result of all that practice, that honing of all she had absorbed from his unconscious instruction, had paid off. A body sprawled in an alley three hundred yards off testified to that.
‘Who will it be next?’ It was something he had to ask. There was no hesitation, no surprise or mock confusion. ‘Perhaps the one who knows about heavy weapons, Libby. Or perhaps the big man, Dooley.’ ‘Yes, you’ll learn about fighting from him, and end up having to fight him off. Is that what you want? Or don’t you mind so long as you pick up some useful tips on bayonet work?’
‘Yes, I mind. But he will not touch me, I can look after myself. And if he should try, then I shall do something to him that will prevent his ever trying again.’
Not for a moment did Clarence doubt her, she meant every word. Perhaps he was fortunate that his sex drive was dormant. Had he not been restrained by the crushing weight of his memories, it would have been very easy to feel strongly attracted to this superb young woman. Perhaps in time he would have been.
He looked at the scratch marks on the wall beside him. It needed just one more, just one to bring his score to two hundred. The opportunity came almost immediately. Only two blocks away, a Russian tank commander was hobbling down a side street. There was lots of time, even more when the target stopped to rest and rub a leg that a torn pair of coveralls revealed as livid and swollen. The powerful telescopic sight allowed him to see the man’s face clearly as he grimaced from the pain of his wound.
Slowly and deliberately, Clarence aligned the cross-hairs on the man’s thorax, at the base of his breastbone. A bullet there would do terrible damage, smashing ribs and driving them through the stomach and into most of the essential organs. Very gently, the sniper crooked his finger around the trigger. At the instant he exerted the slight pressure necessary, he jerked the tip of the barrel upwards.
Its velocity unimpeded by the padded helmet through which it first passed, the bullet stoved in the top of the Russian’s head as he bent down. Coming out of the back of his neck, the now deformed round splattered hair and tissue and lumps of starred cranium across the wall on which he was leaning. The body slumped to a crouched position, head on knees, arms folded around them.
There was nothing special about number two hundred, nothing to mark the corpse as any different from the hundred and ninety-nine that had gone before, except that for a brief moment Clarence had come close to forgetting his real reason for doing it. Damn it, she had almost got to him. Well to hell with her, let her latch on to one of the others, he didn’t need her. He didn’t need anybody.
A movement in the graveyard caught his attention, and the faces of his children were before him as he took aim. He was remembering again, prepared to collect another payment.
TEN
‘We can’t just let him bleed to death.’ Ripper swabbed the deep red blood bubbling from the row of punctures in Wilson’s chest with an already saturated field dressing.
Libby made a quick inspection of the ground-floor front lounge of the little house into which they had dragged the wounded man. With the exception of the locked door they’d
kicked in to gain entry, it must have looked exactly the same as it did the day its owners had been forced to hurriedly abandon it. A large polished dresser appeared promising. Keeping low, and wedging the damaged door back into place as he passed it, he crossed the sculptured bronze-coloured carpet and tried each drawer in turn. From the third and fourth he took handfuls of napkins and a large white cotton tablecloth.
‘Here,’ he tossed them to the young American, ‘use these. Bind them tight around his chest. It might help.’
As Ripper stripped off the soaked jacket and shirt, Libby went to the window, and standing back from it, using the cover of the partially drawn curtains, watched the Russians working to separate the truck from the carrier.
They had not bothered with a pursuit. Apart from posting a few nervous-looking machine gunners in various doorways, they seemed far more interested in getting mobile again. While they worked with sledgehammers and crowbars to part the entangled metal, the vehicle’s turret constantly rotated to cover them with its heavy cannon.
With a final rain of massive blows, delivered by a hulking senior sergeant who had grabbed the hammer from a fast tiring private, the Russians were at last able to push the truck clear. A captain, who until now had not stooped to manual work, stepped forward and taking the implement from the sergeant, prodded the carrier’s broken track.
‘They’re not going anywhere in a hurry.’ Leaving the window, Libby went to where Ripper had at last succeeded in fastening the improvised bandage. A huge white bow stood up on Wilson’s chest, rapidly turning from pink to red, as it absorbed the continuing flow.
Wilson was unconscious. Each laboured breath brought another trickle of blood from the side of his mouth. The vivid streak running down his chin was in stark contrast with his pallor.
‘What d’yer reckon. He gonna make it?’
‘No.’ It was brutally abrupt, but Libby knew he’d be doing no favours by saying anything else, by holding out false hope. God only knew what had kept the Yank alive so far. He was hit in the lungs and must have lost the best part of four pints of blood already. It was everywhere, staining the carpet and Ripper and him.
