Blind Fire

by James Rouch

  Its muzzle rammed hard against the Russian, the weapon’s kick was vicious. Prepared though he was, Dooley’s arm was momentarily numbed as the bayonet withdrew.

  A whistling sigh escaped the blade’s victim, cut short as the big man’s boot crushed his kneecap and sent him tumbling down the stairs. It was a body that hit the landing below, almost falling on another Russian who was making ready to hurl a grenade. The snap shot that Dooley followed up with didn’t hit him, but whined past the grenadier, close enough to startle him and cause him to hold on to the bomb a fraction too long.

  ‘Hey, that was an own goal, how about that?’ Dooley realised that the celebration might have been a little premature when a long burst of machine gun fire came up through the boards beside him, and slivers of wood lanced into his calf. ‘Fuck that. Ain’t you broken through that wall yet?’ There was no answer. He backed up a few paces along the corridor, and another crackle of fire came through precisely where he’d been standing. ‘Come on, it can’t be taking you that long. If they can shove stuff up through the floors, you must be able to get through to next door.’

  Lieutenant Hogg came down from the staff quarters. ‘Things getting too hot for you?’

  ‘I ain’t chucking my life away while Cohen could be out cold and cashable.’ A grenade bobbed over the top of the stairs and rolled to Dooley’s feet Without hesitation he reversed his rifle and, using it like a five-iron, sent it back. ‘Fuck this, they’re beginning to cheese me off.’ He took a blast grenade of his own, and tossed it after the other.

  Coming almost together, the detonations shook the building and as a wall of dust rushed at Hogg, he became aware of a new noise. It grew louder, a splintering tearing sound. He grabbed Dooley and pulled him back as the stairs and several yards of the corridor vanished, raising still further clouds of dust as they crashed to the floors below. A strong smell of burning came to their noses, and with it the groans and shouts of trapped men.

  ‘Did you mean to do that?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  Disbelief shaded Hogg’s expression, but he said nothing further as they made their way to the attic rooms.

  ‘How’s that?’ York stood by an irregular hole hacked in the gable end. ‘I said I’d make a good job.’ The praise he’d been expecting didn’t materialise. ‘Well I reckon it’s a good job.’

  ‘All we want is a way out, not a triumphal arch.’ Burke and a two man machine gun team went first.

  Hogg supervised the departure of the others. The roof space had filled with smoke, and the floor was growing hot as he made a last check.

  The adjoining property was one floor lower, and there was a ten foot drop to its steeply pitched tiled roof. Dooley and a couple of others had already set to work smashing an entrance through it.

  ‘Here, let me have a go, I’ll show you.’ Attacking the growing opening enthusiastically, York smashed his rifle butt up and down, sending shards of grey tile skittering off the roof on to the road below. ‘Just once more.’ Raising the weapon above his head, he brought it down with pile-driver force. It missed and went straight through the hole, and York went with it.

  ‘Jesus, hell do anything for a laugh.’ Dooley went next, exercising more caution and making a feet first landing on the bed that had broken York’s fall. ‘You damned near landed on my head.’ There were several cuts on York’s face. ‘With a head that size, I’d have had trouble avoiding it wherever I fucking landed.’

  Machine gun fire from the street was breaking tiles as the last man swung in the hole for a moment before dropping down, then his brains showered over everybody and he plummetted to the floor sickeningly hard. There was no need for anyone to check, the top of his head had been shot off.

  Lieutenant Hogg shouldered his AKM, and took the rocket launcher from beneath the body. ‘OK, so what are we waiting for. Come on, the Reds know we’re in here, do you want to fight your way out of here as well?’

  A tank shell passed through the room a moment after they left and another shower of powdered plaster chased them down the stairs. Letting the rest of the men pass, Hogg ducked into a small front room and crossed to the window. On the far side of the street a T84 had its main gun trained on the building. The nearest turret hatch was open, and a crewman was using the anti-aircraft machine gun to hose long bursts at every window in turn. Hogg just had time to duck when one of the fusillades came his way. Incendiary rounds lodged in the walls, window frame and furniture and began to give off white smoke as their phosphorus content ignited.

  It was the first time Hogg had ever used one of the M72 launchers, except for a dummy during basic training. Now he prayed he’d remembered all he’d been told. The safety pins securing the waterproof end seals came out easily, and he gingerly extended the telescopic launch tube to cock the firing mechanism. Supporting the front end with his left hand, the back of the tube on his shoulder, he approached the window again. His right hand played over the top of the launcher, seeking the trigger button. He found, it, and his index finger rested lightly on it as he aligned the flip-up sights, This was what he’d been waiting for, the chance to dish out a bit of what he’d been on the receiving end of for a year. How many times had he watched truckloads of infantry driving over the bridges he’d built, and wished he was going with them as he saw the cluster of improvised crosses in a nearby plot? How many times had he and his company of combat engineers dug in around the approaches to one of their fabrications, waiting for an enemy attack that never came? It had always been the other companies that’d had the heroic struggles. Well if the mountain wouldn’t come to him...

  ‘Aim for the base of the turret.’

  Taking Burke’s advice, Hogg shifted his point of aim. ‘Why haven’t you got out with the others?’

  ‘For a start I can’t stand that bloke York, and I reckon if I’m going to be lumbered with having to do a bit of the swash and buckle lark, I might as well do it in front of an officer and make sure I get a gong.’

  Detecting an unexpected ring of truth in the answer, Hogg didn’t pursue it any further. He held his breath, gently increased the pressure of his grip, and then felt the heat of the rocket’s blast on his back.

  A flurry of smoke which quickly drifted clear was all that marked the hit. Hogg felt disappointed, he had hoped for something altogether more impressive and spectacular. He hadn’t even scratched it.

  ‘Nice one, Lieutenant, you sure you haven’t done this before?’ At Burke’s compliment Hogg took a second look. The T84 still looked the same... or did it? There was no sign of the machine gunner, and grey exhaust no longer blew from the vehicle’s rear. Then he noticed a tiny flicker of flame coming from the turret hatch. It grew as he watched until it was a swirling pillar of orange and yellow, reaching past the tops of the buildings, as though the tank had begun to consume itself in its moment of death. The driver’s hatch flew open and another spiralling tongue grew. ‘Hey, I got it. Will you look? I got it.’

  ‘If we don’t get out of here he’ll have got us.’ A stamp of his boot, and Burke temporarily checked the advancing small curling flames licking along the edge of the carpet.

  ‘I really got it.’ Hogg was hardly conscious of Burke propelling him from the room, past the blazing furniture and down the stairs. He felt elated. He’d done it, he’d done it. This must be how a fighter pilot felt at his first kill. It made up for all the mud the commie shells had shovelled over him, all the times they had forced him on to his face and pummelled his body with series of concussions. ‘I got a tank.’

  ‘Great.’ The tone Burke used conveyed no enthusiasm. ‘That’s just great That leaves about seventeen thousand still to go.’ Hogg stopped his repetitive chant. ‘OK, let’s go find them.’ ‘Don’t be in such a hurry, Lieutenant. You can save a lot of energy by waiting right where you are. It’s the Ruskies who come looking for us.’

  Horrible bubbling noises were coming from Kurt’s chest as air found its way into his body cavities, past the deeply embedded fragment
. Fighting the pain, his face contorted in ugly grimaces, his head lolled from side to side, and there was a constant trickle of blood from the side of his mouth. But still the Grepo clung to life, even hauling himself to a sitting position in the dark corner where Hyde had dumped him. A trail of blood marked where he had been dragged. With both lungs damaged, Hyde hadn’t expected him to last more than a minute. He was drowning in his own blood and the smashed ribs and breastbone must have been agony, so why hang on, why fight it?

  Hyde knew what it was like to hurt that bad. He’d made an attempt to kill himself before the pain and the shock of his burns had made him unconscious. And when he’d come round it had been worse, and when the suffering had become so great he thought it could only get less, they had started the grafts. Month after month, piece by piece, they had given him back something that would pass for a face. The new eyelids had been the worst. After the first stage of rebuilding those he’d almost tried to take his own life again, and Kurt was hanging on in spite of something as bad as that... ‘Wasser, wasser.’

  It was a temptation to ignore the plea for water, pretend he hadn’t heard the faint words that came with pink foam from Kurt’s mouth. But he didn’t. Leaving the Dragon, Hyde took his water bottle over.

  ‘No, don’t bloody gulp it. I said don’t… Just a sip, a bloody sip.’ The urge to hit Kurt was almost overwhelming. It was something Hyde had always wanted to do, and now the constantly clutching and clawing greedy hands wore at his patience, and he nearly did.

  With a final wrench he pulled the bottle away. It was sticky with blood. ‘Here, have the bloody lot if you want.’ Hyde thrust it back at the East German. ‘Go on, kill your ruddy self. Do us all a great big favour.’

  Through the pain Kurt heard the words, and with a weak fling of his arm knocked the water from Hyde’s grasp, sending it clattering and bouncing to spill behind an overturned counter and irrigate the draught-drifted dust.

  ‘Playing the tough bastard are you, reckon you’re going to make it?’ Hyde stuck his face close to the wounded man’s. ‘Now why should a piece of shit like you pull through, when a load of decent blokes never do? Have you seen the hole you got in your gut? It’s as big as that.’ He held his fist in front of Kurt. ‘I can see your lungs, what’s left of them. You’re not going to make it, so why try?’ He tried hard, but Kurt couldn’t manage to articulate again. Instead he made a familiar gesture with two fingers of his right hand. Blood ran down into his sleeve as he did so.

  Once again, Hyde had to fight down the desire to hit out. He knew if he stayed there he would, and forced himself back to the Dragon. There was no target in sight on which he could vent his feelings. Every one of the dozen armoured vehicles Uttering the street was either burning or severely damaged, and there was nothing to be seen of their crews, save for a few smouldering and dismembered bodies scattered about at random. Fighting was still going on further along the street, in the vicinity of the hotel, but the hazy atmosphere made it impossible for him to be certain of any of the fleeting targets he glimpsed.

  The machine gun upstairs still chattered intermittently, sending tracer zipping away into the smoke, but at what and with what effect Hyde couldn’t tell. That was one of the crazier aspects of war in the Zone. Even now, with all the modern communication aids available, even in the midst of a great set piece battle that might involve whole armies of men, it was still possible to be alone, feel totally isolated. It was eerie to hear the conflict raging all around, occasionally glimpse some part of it and yet to be completely cut off from what was happening. All you could do was kill, and keep on killing in the hope that enough of your side were doing the same to gain a victory. Not that there were many of those in the Zone.

  A mass attack by Russian divisions would be met with a stubborn NATO defence. There’d be breakthroughs, local counteroffensives, withdrawals to previously prepared positions, spoiling attacks, raids ... a whole alphabet of jargon phrases would be trotted out for the media and for ‘morale’. And all too often the end result was a further widening of the Zone, a million more refugees, fifty thou- sand dead, a couple more points on the radiation scale and both sides claiming victory.

  This was a stinking little scrap. Messy, probably costly by now. No medals, no headlines, but maybe a few days’ leave, with luck. Not that he ever went far from the Zone. The civvies who lived with it on their doorstep were more tolerant of the freaks and monsters it produced, like him. And there were women too, who were used to the rough usage of camp followers. Last time he’d even found one who’d taken his money and performed with him while sober. Usually he had to wait until late, find a drunken prostitute and get her into a dark alley; and even then pray she wouldn’t see his face by the light of a match or passing headlights. But it had been good the last time, good by the standards he had to accept.

  God, he had to admit it, she’d been ugly. Not just plain, but really ugly. To a face pockmarked by acne had been added the embellishment of a long razor scar. And she was fat, not obese, but well beyond plump and she’d smelt of cheap perfume, sweat and stale tobacco; but for all that he’d enjoyed her.

  The flat she’d taken him to matched her perfectly, mostly scruffy, the few decent pieces in garish bad taste. By then he’d been in a hurry, two months of enforced celibacy and a huge erection urging him on. Following her into the tiny bedroom, he’d switched off the light and grabbed her as she started to undress.

  Two giant breasts had filled his hands and his fingers had sought the nipples to knead them to hardness. She’d tried to break free, to remove the rest of her clothes, but he hadn’t been able to wait, had pushed her face down on to the bed. He had thrown her skirt up over her back, then grabbed the waist of the tights and knickers and tugged them down together, frantically fast.

  Forcing her legs wide apart, he’d knelt between them and released his erection. For an instant he’d held it in his hand. The pale light filtering into the room through threadbare curtains revealed enough for him to savour the moment. His hot flesh reaching well out beyond his tightly clenched hand, the big twin mounds of her backside, and the long dark crevasse between them; the deep indent left by her bra strap, just visible above the bunched-up material of her skirt. He had forced one other delay on himself, lowering his body until the hard rod of muscle lay between the cool smooth hummocks of fat.

  Then he’d felt himself beginning to pulsate and he’d slid down to bring its tip into her bush of pubic hair. At the fourth hard prod she’d complained, fractionally lifted her belly from the bed, and slid a hand down to her crotch. Questing fingers had sought and found him, guiding his moisture-crowned penis inside her.

  The memory of that never-ending orgasm was still with him. It had seemed as though the sperm was going to pump from him forever. Beneath him, the fat legs had clamped together, trapping his body inside her and, as she fingered herself from the front, her hips had gyrated wildly and she’d matched his experience with a climax that had soaked them both. They’d coupled twice more, and between each one she’d encouraged him to use a vibrator on her, and in return she’d gone down on him and sucked him to new hardness.

  Hyde removed an anti-tank round from the Dragon and replaced it with one fitted with an anti-personnel fragmentation warhead. There were infantry moving about on the other side of the road. Smoke from burning buildings made it difficult to identify them. He switched the sight-unit to infra-red, then held his fire as he recognised the distinctive weapons and helmets of NATO troops.

  So it was nearly over, mopping-up had begun. It wouldn’t do any harm to sit tight a little longer, just in case some Reds had decided to play dead for a while and were now thinking of springing a surprise. If that happened, then by not giving his position away he’d be able to catch them at their own game.

  And besides, there was still Kurt, he’d need help shifting him. How on earth the Grepo was hanging on to life was a mystery, but he was, and showed no sign of letting go. It would have been easy for Hyde to take advanta
ge of the situation and finish him off. God knew the runt had enough ugly crimes against his name to warrant summary execution, but that wasn’t his way. But if he wouldn’t kill Kurt, there was no reason why he should help keep him alive. Maybe he’d take his time about getting help, he could square that with himself easily enough.

  Sporadic shooting was still to be heard, but no more heavy calibre weapons were in action. How many would there still be at the final roll-call? Not many of that green mob the officer of engineers had brought with him, that was for certain. Clarence would come through, he always did, he was one of the great indestructibles, seemingly a permanent feature of the Zone. Even the Russians had found out about him somehow, and had posted a reward for his capture. The others, probably, but the fighting had been close and bloody, not all the advantages in the world could have entirely made up for the disparity in fire-power between themselves and the section of the column they had cut off and carved up.

  And it wasn’t only the Russian armour that had taken a beating. Further along, a large flame-enveloped building suddenly bowed outwards, sagged and collapsed across the road, partially burying a disabled self-propelled gun. Other shops and houses were beginning to burn, whole blocks in some cases. A few premises had already been reduced to heaps of smouldering rubble. The centre of the town had been gutted and the devastation would be spread over a larger area by the unchecked fires.

  One of the machine gun team came clattering down the stairs. Hyde noted that the only sign of the mass of ammunition they had carried up was the short length of belt actually hanging from the M60 he had over his shoulder. ‘Where’s the other one?’

  ‘Tracer round from that flak-wagon got him. Cut him in half.’ The machine gunner brushed a length of intestine from his boot. ‘I didn’t even know he’d bought it until I called for another belt, and all of a sudden he wasn’t there. Will your guy make it?’ He bent over Kurt and reached out to touch the lodged fragment, then stopped when the wounded man raised his Ml 6 to point it, waveringly, alternately at his chest and throat. ‘OK fella, if that’s the way you want it.’