Blind Fire

by James Rouch

  ‘Aw shit. This weren’t supposed to happen.’ Ripper made minor adjustments to the absurd bow, now losing its shape and collapsing as it blotted up more and more blood. ‘We only came out here for a spot of fun, to get a medal. What am I gonna tell his wife? He only got married just afore he came out here. Sally’s expecting in the spring.’

  ‘You want to tell her anything you better concentrate on keeping yourself alive, that’s unless you want to end up like him.’ It wasn’t the casualty on the floor Libby was referring to. He jerked his thumb towards the scene of the collision. ‘Did you know him as well?’

  Not taking his eyes off his friend, Ripper shook his head. ‘First time I seen him was today. They gonna do that to Wilson as well?’

  It always came as a shock to the new men, the first time they saw the treatment meted out by the Russians to the bodies of NATO troops. Libby had seen it too often to still be deeply affected, but now and again some communist NCO or officer would come up with a new idea, and then the atrocities listed against the Warsaw Pact forces would be lengthened by yet another degrading obscenity.

  The body of the truck’s driver had been extricated from the crushed metal of the cab, and a couple of Russians, directed by the hammer-wielding senior sergeant, had roughly nailed it to a door before dousing it in fuel and setting it alight.

  Now the corpse’s bullet-shattered head drooped to contemplate with empty soot- filled sockets the charred ruin of its body, dose-by, the APC’s crew worked on their damaged track, apparently oblivious to the appalling stench.

  ‘If they find him, I expect they’ll make the time. They don’t ever get leave, or much free time come to that, so they look on it as a sort of entertainment, light relief. That’s nothing to what they get up to if they get hold of our wounded.’

  ‘That’s sick. Hell, where I’m from we got some real mean guys. The sort of fellas who’d stamp you into the ground, then come back and sue yer for damaging their boots, but that lot out there, they’re sick. I heard the stories, but that...’

  ‘That’s nothing.’ Libby got out another tablecloth and pulled dust sheets off the furniture to make blankets. A spasmodic shaking gripped the wounded man and his hands and forearms were cold to the touch. He draped them over him, tucking them in about his chin.

  ‘Ever since the revolution, they’ve been doing a bugger sight worse things to their own people. How many did Stalin get through, twenty million? And how many was it that Brezhnev starved in the labour camps, or had tortured in the Lubianca, or turned into cabbages by sticking them in. mental wards and pumping them full of drugs? The civvies back home think they’re such a fucking clever crowd, keeping the war in the Zone. All they’re bloody doing is giving the commies more time to practise. If they gave us the weapons and the men to do the job once and for all, we could shove them all the way to bloody Siberia, and back into the fucking dark ages.’

  ‘Seems to me as some of them reckon they’re still there.’

  ‘They are.’ Slowly and carefully, Libby slid another cushion beneath Wilson’s head as pink bubbles formed at his nostrils. ‘The commies are at about the same level as the Japs were at the start of World War Two, and you know what they got up to.’

  ‘He feels awful cold.’

  Libby moved Ripper’s hand, and felt for a pulse. It was hard to find, weak and fluttery. ‘Not long now. Better get ready to move out. Sounds like there’s still plenty of fighting going on in the centre of town.’ ‘I’m not leaving him, no way.’ There was aggression in Ripper’s abrupt announcement.

  ‘That wasn’t what I said…’ The bubbles had stopped growing and popping at Wilson’s nostrils. Libby sought the pulse again. ‘…but there’s no point in staying now. He’s gone.’

  ‘Give me a grenade.’ Ripper held out his hand. ‘Are you thinking of doing something silly?’ Without giving it a second thought, Libby had reached for one of the fragmentation grenades attached to his webbing. He paused, and didn’t unclip it.

  ‘I’m gonna get me a commie battle taxi. I owe it.’ The long thin bony fingers were still held out towards him, making opening and closing grasping gestures. ‘You can’t take out an APC with one of these. The best you’ll manage is to stir up a bloody hornet’s nest.’

  ‘OK, so tell me how I do it then.’ He’d withdrawn his hand and was now stripping Wilson’s body of its spare ammunition. ‘I reckon it’d please him if I used some of his lead for this job. That’d be a kinda justice, don’t you think?’ ‘I suppose so. Alright, we’ll do it together, but we do it my way.’ Libby handed over two grenades. ‘You remember that. My way.’

  ‘Don’t matter a cuss to me which way, so long as it gets done.’ Before standing up, Ripper removed Wilson’s dog-tags. They were wet and sticky with congealed blood. ‘I sure do wish I could take him home to Sally, for a decent Christian burial. Don’t seem right, leaving him here, like this.’ ‘You can tell graves registration. Make a note of the address, otherwise he might lay here for years. They’ll take care of him. He’ll have a proper burial, eventually.’ ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’ Ripper flicked the edge of a dust sheet over the pale face. ‘Now how about we go kill ourselves a whole parcel of commies?’

  All the houses on the road had been locked, a symbol of the touchingly hopeful faith of the town’s fleeing inhabitants in the possibility of returning one day. It was difficult to quietly gain access to one close by the scene of the collision, and when they at last resorted to breaking a pane of glass, the sound of its falling on to a tiled kitchen floor seemed monstrously loud, coming as it did during a short lull in the battle.

  There was a smell of decay in the house, strongest near the expensive fitted units in the kitchen. Green mould filled the shelves of an open fridge and spread across the floor, following the course the melted ice had taken. On a worktop, there was evidence that a meal had been in the midst of preparation when the alert had sounded.

  ‘You looking for something?’ Expecting to head straight for the front of the building, Ripper couldn’t work out what was going on, when Libby lingered in the kitchen to rake and rummage through every cupboard.

  Stuffing an assortment of clinking bottles and various garish plastic containers into a pedal bin liner he hastily emptied of stale rubbish, Libby ignored the question, then led his companion at a fast pace through the dining room and lounge and up the stairs to the top floor. They barely made it in time.

  Some of the Russians had begun to take an interest in the contents of the houses about them, and one after another front doors were collapsing before determined shoulder charges.

  ‘Better get ready. They could try here soon.’ Taking one of the containers from the bag, Libby ripped a sheet into strips and began to bind a grenade to it. ‘Give me a hand then.’ He pushed a selection across the double bed to Ripper. ‘Now what’s this supposed to do?’ Ripper examined the label on a two litre bottle of lavatory cleaner, an illustration making its application obvious. ‘You want to make them clean round the bend?’

  ‘Funny, ha, ha. Just bloody do it.’ Finishing the first, Libby picked up a bottle of bleach and gave that similar treatment. Tm fed up with being on the receiving end of that chemical muck the Ruskies are forever chucking about, it’s our turn to have a go with the stuff. Or at least make the buggers think we are. Soon as they catch a whiff of this, you watch them panic’ Cautiously, he moved to the window.

  The Russians were beginning to emerge with their booty from the houses they had already looted. As they sorted it, deciding what to keep and what to abandon, their decisions were frequently peculiar, prompted more by whether or not it was possible to get a particular object aboard their transport than by the value of the article.

  Their officer strolled about with an affected attitude of disinterest, but now and again he would pounce on one of the piles and appropriate some piece for himself, handing them to a private staggering along in his wake, burdened with a bulging valise.

  As a pair of junior sergeants approach
ed the house, there came a shout from the men working on the damaged track. They had completed the repairs. With their officer deeply occupied with gaining a larger than fair share of the strangely assorted loot, the enemy machine gun teams began a hasty and incautious withdrawal back to the APC.

  ‘There won’t be a better chance than this.’ Libby took a grenade and attached bleach container, and pulled out the pin. ‘Lose that window when I tell you.’

  Down below, spurred on by the continuing sounds of bitter fighting from elsewhere in the town, the Russians were forgetting rank and manners as they made a crush at the carrier’s rear doors.

  ‘Now!’

  Twenty rounds from Ripper’s assault rifle shattered the still rain-dotted panes and broke apart the peeling frames. Through the hail of spinning fragments the ill- balanced contrivance tumbled end over end. It struck the road a few yards short of the carrier and went off immediately in a great cloud of steam and spray.

  The sudden and overpowering stench sent the Russians into a panic as it washed over them. The scramble to get into the carrier ceased abruptly and every man snatched frantically at the pouch holding his respirator, elbowing others aside to lift it to his face.

  A fight broke out as a soldier without his mask tried to snatch another’s. The struggle was short and violent and the respirator’s new owner stood on his victim’s body to put it on.

  The deception was reinforced by two more of the devices. Both exploded in the air, sending a drenching cloud of pungent household chemicals towards the Russians. At that their nerve broke, those already aboard slammed the doors on the men still trying to get in, and the APC began to lurch through an ill-judged turn that brought it into collision with several houses in turn. The succession of jarring impacts gave its turret gunner no chance to bring his weapons to bear, and as the carrier completed the manoeuvre it passed right under Libby’s window.

  Concentrating on bringing down the last of the abandoned infantry, Ripper only caught a glimpse of the bundle of grenades Libby tossed out. He brought up his rifle after fitting a fresh magazine, and levelled it an officer who appeared hesitant, uncertain whether to seek cover, or chase after his vehicle. A group of five bullets aimed at the Russian’s chest went wildly astray as Ripper was bowled over by a heavy tackle about his knees.

  ‘What are you up to? You made me miss the bastard.’ ‘Keep your bloody head down.’ Cradling his head on his arms, and opening his mouth wide Libby waited for the blast. The air was thick with the fumes of diesel exhaust and bleach, then it was broiling hot as well, as a huge shock caught the building and shook it. First the floor slammed up into them, then as a fireball passed the windows the walls shed great slabs of plaster and the ceiling fell in. It became almost impossible to breathe in the choking dust that reduced visibility virtually to nil.

  ‘Jesus, what was that, you got some pocket-size nukes?’ Dazed, spitting out dust and pieces of carpet pile, Ripper needed the support of an overturned coffee table as he got shakily to his feet. ‘Hey, those commies ain’t the only ones who play for keeps.’ He stuck his head out of the window. At first glance the APC, now immobile with its motor still running raggedly, hadn’t been all that badly damaged. Most of the force of the blast had been borne by the hull top, just to the rear of the turret. But as he looked harder he could see strips of rubber beading hanging down the armoured side of the vehicle. They came from the bottom rim of the turret, now lifted off its ring. There were dents and buckles in the roof of the carrier and it had been holed in several places.

  Some of the bodies lying about had been caught by the devastating blast and were piled grotesquely together in a small front garden. Chunks of flesh decorated leafless trees, an arm had come to rest in a window box.

  ‘Stick your stupid head out like that and you’re liable to get it shot off.’ Libby was about to drag his companion back inside, when the carrier’s nearside rear door slowly began to open. ‘I thought I’d got them all.’ He watched, the squeal from the grating metal of the distorted hinges making him clench his teeth.

  The door opened a little way, and after a pause a light coloured cloth was flapped from it. Bloodstained fingers were just visible clutching a corner, and the movements were weak.

  ‘No, let’s wait and see. Even if it’s a trick, we’ll be better off with them out in the open.’ It had taken an effort on Libby’s part not to fire. Almost from the first days of the war, the NATO troops had learnt never to trust the offer of surrender by Russians. Time and time again they had used it as a ploy to gain an advantage, and now Libby never bothered to even consider if a capitulation was genuine. He’d seen too many good men die while they took time to give it thought, tricked into dropping their guard for an instant.

  After a moment the gesture was repeated, and then the door began to open further. Another pause, and then three badly wounded men crawled and stumbled from the APCs dark interior. The first could hardly stand, in his right hand he held the makeshift flag, with his left he supported the smashed remnant of his bottom jaw. The two who followed were in a worse condition, and bled from several penetrating wounds of the head, chest and thighs, where they had been caught while sitting down, by the overhead burst. They moved slowly away from the APC, until they came to the centre of the road, then stopped and, like cattle uncertain of a reprieve from slaughter, stood or sat as they were able, waiting for the initiative to come from elsewhere.

  Ripper was all set to fire, had his finger on the trigger, but held back. ‘You know, I kinda hate wasting good bullets on them. If I had a dog in that sort of state back home, I’d finish it with a length off the woodpile.’ ‘That’s one of their tricks, among others. One way and another the medics get saved a lot of work in the Zone.’

  ‘What’d yer think then, do I finish them, or do you want first go? I’m easy.’

  ‘Leave them.’ That surprised Libby himself, those weren’t the words he’d meant to say. He rationalised it. ‘They’ll not last long, leave them to bleed. Like you say, why waste bullets.’ Not since they’d discovered the enemy were using dum-dum and explosive bullets had Libby knowingly spared a Russian, and even before that there had been few occasions. The fighting was always too fierce, too fast moving to admit the taking of prisoners. There was no certainty about those three succumbing to their injuries, terrible though they obviously were, but still he didn’t fire.

  Oh what the hell, let them go, they’d be taking no more part in the battle. Maybe he was beginning to have had enough of killing. It was a certainty he’d stop the moment he found Helga, and it would be without any regret, without any guilt either. Two years fighting the Warsaw Pact Forces in the Zone had taught him to expect no quarter, and he in turn had given none. But those three out there, they no longer presented any threat, so what was the point? Let them live, at least the few minutes they had left. He was doing them no favours, judging by the state they were in; yes, let them live. He put his hand out to push down the barrel of Ripper’s M16.

  The rattle of the rapid automatic fire went on a long time and echoed all about the street. Each of them hit by several rounds, the wounded Russians jerked and rolled and doubled-up.

  ‘From over there.’ It was Ripper who had pinpointed the spot from which the firing had come. His bullets smacked dust from the doorway, but the Russian officer had already ducked back out of sight. There were three more dead in the road. One of them still clutched a large pale piece of cloth, now spattered with his own blood and soaking up more that flowed about it. Puddles turned red as they mingled the separate streams coming from the bodies.

  ‘That guy killed some of his own. What’d he do that for?’ ‘Could be any of a dozen reasons.’ Libby started out of the room, talking back to Ripper over his shoulder as he followed. ‘Most likely reason is fear. The same thing that’s driving that column on. A Soviet officer can lose ninety, a hundred per cent of his men in battle and so long as the objective is achieved, who cares, sure as hell his superiors won’t, all they want
is results.’ He led the way out through the kitchen. ‘But let the same poor bugger have a single man desert and God help him. So, when they have to, they prevent their men from going over the hill, or surrendering or changing sides by ways like you just saw. As a system it works, and it suits the commie mentality. If they can’t terrify a poor sod into blind obedience, they kill him. Bang, no problem.’

  ‘They sure ain’t too nice, not by half.’

  ‘You haven’t seen anything yet.’ Checking each alleyway and side street they had to cross with extreme caution, Libby led as they worked their way towards the main street. ‘The real beauties are the party officials, the ones with GLAVPUR, the Red Army’s political directorate. Now those specimens really know all about being nasty. If we get out of this, go and see one of the POW cages where they’re kept, you’ll find it an education.’

  ‘Kinda seems like that’s what I’m getting at the moment.’ Ripper covered the Britisher as he sprinted across the corner of a small square, then followed as soon as Libby had taken up a position to cover him in turn.

  ‘No, this is just a pre-school playgroup, kindergarten. Wait until you get to college, one of the big set piece scraps with nukes and all.’ They were getting close to the scene of the fiercest fighting. Overlapping waves of compressed air from grenade and shell explosions made Ripper’s ears pop, and brought cordite-heavy smoke to bite into his throat and lungs. His eyes began to water. ‘I can wait, all of a sudden I ain’t chasing medals no more.’

  ELEVEN

  The bayonet was stuck fast, gripped by the ribs between which it had penetrated. Shit, he’d been thrusting for the gut. Dooley could tell from the commie’s slack- jawed glazed expression, and from the increasing downward drag on his rifle that a second blow wasn’t needed, but his immediate problem was freeing the M16. He braced himself against the inevitable recoil, and fired.