by James Rouch
Cohen was sending even before the sergeant had finished speaking. ‘ ...and we need it now, like right now.’ He sweated as he watched the T84 coming closer and closer. A burst punched through the crates above their heads and his pounding heart recorded every second that passed. Now the lead tank was only a hundred yards away, and he hugged the radio pack to his chest. ‘Isn’t that bloody shell ever coming?’
‘Another seven seconds I think,’ Hyde was perfectly cool, even sparing the time to answer a question to which the radio-man had expected no reply. The hawser- draped hull filled the viewfinder, the tiny green power-pack condition indicator in the bottom left-hand corner of the miniature screen was superimposed on a mud- spattered, crumpled track guard.
The tank burst apart as its own ammunition added its explosive force to the Copperhead’s pulverising impact. A blackened torso thudded on to the road, to be crushed by the tracks of the other tanks as they bulldozed past the hulk. ‘What are you waiting for? Let’s get the hell out of here.’ Revell grabbed the designator’s other handle and, with Cohen following, helped Hyde with it to the wire mesh fence on the far side of the yard.
As they ducked and squeezed through the gap the lieutenant had cut and held open for them, they could hear the packing cases tumbling and splintering before the Russians’ unchecked advance.
They were only halfway across the steel stockyard when the leading armour effortlessly flattened the fence. A man shouted and fell as it opened up with its secondary cannon. Hyde caught a glimpse of the machine gun victim’s face. It was the Yank with whom he’d shared the boiled sweets.
‘Set it up here.’ Revell darted in behind a huge bright yellow Lancing-Boss forklift, dragging Hyde with him.
‘How many rounds?’ Kneeling beside them, Cohen was already in contact with the battery.
Hyde stripped the covers from the Hughes equipment. ‘Four, at twenty second intervals; as soon as they’re ready.’
The giant side-loader had vast ground clearance, and Hyde took aim from beneath its chassis. Nosing into the yard, the lead tank had slowed to a more cautious pace, but it was still coming on, and now it enjoyed the partial cover of the steel billets and coiled sheet strewn around, as well as the legs of various gantries.
It was the jib of an overhead crane that intercepted the first shot, and as the thunder of its crashing to the ground died away, the second struck a rack of seamless tubing.
A 125mm shell exploded against the far side of the fork-lift, rocking it on its suspension and punishing the ears of the men in its shelter.
‘Bloody hell, they build these things tough.’ Using his teeth, Burke tied a knot in the improvised bandage he’d wrapped around a gash in his left forearm. ‘But for Christ’s sake clobber that Ruskie next time, Sarge, it might not soak up a second.’
Oblivious to everything else, Hyde concentrated on the approaching T84. The tank constantly had to dog-leg to right or left to find a route through the cluttered yard, and each time it did another stack of metal would take it from his sight. It was at such a moment that the third Blind Fire round came down, and blasted a tangled pile of scrap.
Revell had already passed the word, and as it emerged unscathed from the smoke the T84 was met by a hail of rifle and machine gun fire and a storm of 40mm grenades.
It came on through it all, shrugging aside the puny bullets and suffering no more than loss of paint and damage to some external equipment from the grenades. All three grenades that Andrea fired struck the vehicle’s turret front, and all three exploded harmlessly. She was prevented from firing her last by Dooley. ‘Go for the driver’s periscope. Blind the fucker.’
Taking the advice, and a fraction longer over aiming, she put the next round on to the target, and saw the tank suddenly veer off course and slow.
It was the chance Hyde had been waiting for, and he guided the last of the 155mm shells on to the T84s engine deck. The resulting explosion all but cut the tank in half, and the fire that followed lit the stockyard like day.
Climbing on to the forklift, Revell looked for the last two tanks. Their way blocked by their blazing companion, they had lowered their underbelly blades and were carving a way round it. Slabs and sheets of metal squealed and made masses of sparks as they were rammed and shoved aside. He’d hoped to have bought a longer respite from pursuit, but the Russians weren’t letting up pressure for a moment. All day he had been the hunter, now the roles had been reversed, and he didn’t like it. Jumping down, he was chased by a long burst of machine gun fire, and as he led his squad at a sprint through the yard the forklift was struck by two shells simultaneously and collapsed on to its nose as one giant wheel was wrenched off, and another flayed and set alight.
Behind them the tank engines boomed louder as they cleared the last obstruction and came on. Ahead of them...
‘Fucking nothing. It’s like the fucking moon.’ Dooley’s description wasn’t far wrong. In front of them stretched a vast tract of reclaimed land, broken only by low hummocks of spoil and a network of deep- gouged tyre tracks. On its far side loomed the towering outline of several cooling towers and the great box-like bulk of a power station. Pylons clustered in front of it, and marched away across the alien landscape. ‘Can we make it?’
‘We’ve got to damned well make it. Get rid of anything you don’t need.’ Running across the churned ground was punishing, the ill-spaced ruts left by the contractors’ vehicles making it impossible to avoid turning an ankle every dozen steps.
Behind them they left a trail of helmets, flack jackets and binoculars.
‘I can hear them.’ Dooley effortlessly kept pace beside the struggling radio-man. ‘You sure you don’t want to offload that flak-jacket?’ ‘Piss off.’
‘Dooley, carry that radio for him.’
‘Yes, Major, you bet, Major, right away, Major.’ Dooley snatched the pack and gloated. ‘Boy, is this going to cost you. Saving your hide from frizzling back in town, and now portering. Boy, is this going to cost you.’
The Russians were playing with them. Clarence didn’t look back but he knew that they were. They had the range to shoot them, or the speed to run them down and they were doing neither, just keeping up a couple of hundred yards back. He noticed one of Hogg’s men had thrown away his Ml6. His rifle bumped uncomfortably on his back but he had no intention of parting with it, absolutely none.
Sweat poured into his eyes and Libby could feel every square inch of the lining of his lungs burning, but he wasn’t going to drop. Not here, not now. He had to find Helga, had to find Helga... that thought kept him moving when every fibre of his body screamed at him to stop, give in.
Suddenly, towers of lattice steel were all around them. Transformers stood on thick poles topped by rows of porcelain insulators. They’d been invisible against the black bulk of the power station, still a long way off.
Cables looped overhead, lacing the masses of switch-gear together. There was an unfamiliar smell in the air, and buzzings and hummings and cracklings were all around.
‘Keep moving, keep moving.’ Revell knew the tanks were closing, not willing to carry the game too far in case they lost their prey. ‘Cohen, call down Blind fire. Everything they’ve got.’
As they emerged from the far side of the complex Cohen tried the set. ‘It’s no good.’ He swept an arm over the pylons. ‘I can’t get anything near these.’ ‘Then get over there.’ Indicating a battered car body shell away from the pylons, Revell turned his attention to sighting the designator. The only cover for it was a small heap of rubble topped by a sheet of corrugated iron.
The tanks were coming on at top speed now, their tracks sending out twin fans of dirt behind them. They had reached the far side of the power terminal. ‘I can’t see them.’ The eye-confusing clutter of the switchgear and pylon legs made it impossible for Hyde to follow the tanks’ progress. The first shells were on their way and he couldn’t guide them.
‘It doesn’t matter, just aim in there.’ The only cover for Revell and the others was the ba
re ground, and safety depended on how close they could get to it.
The first round hit the top of a pylon, and the flame and roar of its explosion was nothing compared with the terrible chain reaction that started as the severed cables snaked across the bus-bars and switches.
Another round followed, and a transformer burst open, spraying boiling coolant oil over a T84. More shells rained down, dramatically increasing the devastation. Tall pylons twisted and dipped as their legs were cut away, and each one that fell brought down more, the multiple impacts across the terminal producing cascades of sparks that rose like wild fountains.
Air-intake clogged, the saturated T84 stalled. Its driver’s hatch opened, then slammed shut as a transformer fell against the hull and flame engulfed the vehicle. The last tank was still moving, was driving on through the destruction, Copperhead shells blasting the ground about and behind it. As it came out into the open it halted, traversed, and fired its cannon.
Hogg heard the shell pass overhead and explode behind him. A large piece of metal came down amid a shower of soil. He looked up, he knew he hadn’t the strength or courage to stand, but he wasn’t going to die with his face in the dirt. High above the T84 a weakened pylon began to buckle, then progressively Collapse. It did so with little noise, corkscrewing round as the tension of the cable spans pulled it over. There was a brilliant flash as the high voltage cables fell across the tank, and a halo of blue fire rippled over it.
Slowly, feeling numbed, Revell got to his feet. The ground all around was sprouting other zombie-like figures.
‘We made it.’ Hogg began to laugh. ‘We made it.’ The laughter died, but went on inside him, racking his body.
The major felt someone plucking at his sleeve. It was Dooley, tears streaming down his face.
‘It’s Cohen, he’s gone.’ He fell to his knees and sobbed, holding his face in his hands.
‘He’s dead?’
‘He’s gone.’ Dooley tried to collect himself, wiped his face with his jacket sleeve. ‘That last shell, there’s nothing left of him.’ He almost broke down again. ‘All that money, the little shit took it with him.’
Document Outline
PDF THE ZONE 2 Blind Fire.bmp
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