by James Rouch
The three hovercraft personnel carriers that would carry them on their mission were almost ready. Sergeant Hyde suspected that the flare-up had occurred as a result of Dooley’s constant attempts to pilfer pieces of equipment from the Iron Cow. Libby and Burke had spent weeks gathering together a complete set of accessories for their transport, from wrecks and other unofficial sources and Libby in particular had been steadily growing more irritated with the big American’s jackdaw tendencies.
Revell sat on a packing case, occasionally glancing at the map board resting in his lap, but most of the time watching the final preparations going on about the skimmers. Working conditions inside the ruined block of shops that served as a camouflaged company HQ and vehicle repair shed were appalling. The air was permeated with the stench of bleach that failed to lay the taint of cordite from the frequent conventional long-range bombardment missiles with which the Russians pounded the salient. There was only such natural light as filtered in to work by – the generator had been yet another casualty of the current spares shortage -and the floor was littered with debris, grease and broken glass.
Casually, on the transparent cover of the map of northern Germany, the major drew a broad arrow with his blue marker pen, from their present position five miles east of the centre of Hanover, to a point about thirty miles closer to the old East German border, near Gifhorn. He looked at the line, so easy to draw, taking only a second to do. How long would the real journey take, racing from one piece of safe ground, to another, constantly probing for holes in the Russians’ network of ground surveillance radars? It would take all of the remaining few hours of darkness to reach the target area. Most of the way they would be travelling through territory controlled by the Russians. There were gaps in the defences, but the deeper they went the harder the gaps would be to find, and with radio silence ordered they could expect no help if they ran into trouble, and the chances were that they would.
There would have to be ten minutes set aside for a final briefing, it certainly wouldn’t take longer than that. They had their weapons, a mission and a circle on a map. And that was it.
For two weeks his men had been holding defensive positions, with nothing to do but grow bored and become irritable. And now suddenly it was all rush again. All the preparations for a mission that called for meticulous planning were having to be completed in eight hours.
‘We’ve finished loading now, sir.’
Revell looked up. Master Sergeant Windle was stood casually in front of him. Good dependable old Windle, with the emphasis on old. He should have been rotated back to the States a year ago, but he’d played on the shortage of experienced sergeants, and wangled one extension after another. Still, while Windle was around, all was well. He’d come through so many actions without a scratch that the men had begun to believe he was immortal and regarded him as the embodiment of their luck. It was a theory that the next thirty-six hours would put severely to the test.
‘OK, have everyone muster by Hyde’s skimmer. Was there something else?’ From Windle’s perceptible hesitation before turning away he knew there was. ‘This British bunch, Major.’ Windle needed no second opening. ‘Their sergeant’s got a face like the phantom of the opera; their driver is the laziest creep I ever set eyes on, and the one who goes round with a sniper rifle substituting for a security blanket, well he’s off his head.’
‘Are you saying we… you can’t work with them? ‘No, sir, that’s not what I’m saying, it’s just that…’
‘Listen, maybe we’ve been too insular, too self-contained for too long. Take a real look at our men; Dooley and that mercurial temperament of his, and Nelson with that doll…’
‘His mascot, sir.’
‘…and Cohen, he believes in Martians.’
‘He says that’s because he’s given up believing in the human race, sir.’
‘You get my point though. The main thing is these British are good, damned good or they wouldn’t be coming with us. Now let’s get this briefing over with.’ Revell eased his aching backside off the rough wood of the crate and followed the sergeant. Well, this would be the last of the preliminaries. In twenty minutes they would pull out, to have the benefit of last light when they passed through their own lines and then he would be doing what he did best, fighting.
Dooley was forced to admit, at least to himself, that the driver of the Iron Cow was good, damned good. Private Burke might be an all-time record gold-bricker, but Jesus, could he throw that thing around. For the first time since the major had told him he’d be travelling with him and Cohen in Hyde’s skimmer he began to feel less unhappy. If he had to be going into battle again, and with the major they always seemed to be, then he might as well go in with a combat driver good enough to get them back out again.
The interior of the vehicle was lit by a dull red glow from a single bulb over Howard’s radar console, and more faintly at the front end of the compartment by the pale green glow given off by the screen of the driver’s image intensifier.
With most of the mission’s stores on board, stacked in the narrow centre aisle, there was little room for the passenger’s legs. Libby and Cohen had their feet up on cases of incendiary grenades.
There was little talking among the men sitting cramped together on the benches. The salient was behind them now. Ahead lay thirty miles of what was a free-fire zone after dark. Surveillance radars, intruder alarms and sophisticated night sights having made fighting after sunset a practical reality, had also just about brought it to an end.
At night the battlefield belonged to the technicians. One man at a console could do the job of fifty sentries, and could call down in seconds a weight of fire sufficient to halt and smash a regiment of tanks.
So Howard sat at his board, watching for active radars focused on them, ready to jam any he found, and monitoring the compact but powerful electronic devices the Iron Cow carried to blanket her own emissions and avoid their detection by enemy passive detectors. Most of the tasks were handled by the on-board computer, but the equipment could fail and then his speed of action would be their only protection.
Science had given Burke the means by which to drive at approaching the vehicle’s top speed at night, but it could do nothing to smooth the route they were forced to take if they were to avoid the Russians’ most likely points of concentration. War in the Zone was a giant game of hide-and-seek with a deadly booby prize for the losers.
And so the three carriers wove a complex snaking course through the fields and woods, sometimes taking to the beds of streams for a distance, mud and water splashing up their hulls and turning to puffs of steam in the exhaust from their turbines. At other times they would use a stretch of road or lane, and the hurtling trio would skim through an abandoned village ®r past a huddle of refugee shelters and slew back on to the fields beyond.
And that was the final horrific ingredient of the Zone. Few of the civilians whose homes lay within it had moved out. Areas existed where rural life went on much as before, but they were shrinking green oases in a dying landscape. Many would willingly have gone, a lot had tried, but the population beyond the Zone’s boundaries feared contamination; from the chemicals they knew were being used, from radiation brought about by the many small-yield tactical nuclear weapons that had been used, and most of all from the mythical bacterial weapons that featured so strongly in each new rumour: and so the civilians caught in the Zone were literally forced to stay.
It was worst in the big camps in the north of the Zone. There civilisation had collapsed and even the armies avoided them, save as now when the Russians were using a settlement as cover for activities they didn’t want disturbed.
Revell had been watching Clarence take the cartridges from a spare Enfield magazine and clean them one at a time, before inspecting and replacing them. He reached across and took one of the long slim bullets from the cloth in which they nestled, and held it up against the light. Two small nicks were visible, just below its pointed tip. ‘How long you been using dum
-dums?’
Clarence went on with his work, not bothering to look up. ‘Since I found out the Russians were using them, about three months. You don’t approve?’
‘My men have known a bit longer.’ Revell handed the round back. ‘We’ve been using them nearer six.’
Tucked up in a corner, his slight frame wrapped in cumbersome body armour, Abe Cohen closed his eyes and tried to sleep. It wouldn’t come. Hell, he felt awful, like his stomach was about to climb his throat and hurl itself out of his mouth complete, in one great heave. It was worse than being seasick. At least at sea there was some sort of regular motion; it was still horrible but at least you knew what was coming. These skimmers were something else. He hugged his arms across his stomach, not that he could feel the contact through an inch of laminated fibre-glass and metal mesh, and tried again. He didn’t care how tough the job they were going to do was, he’d happily have taken on the whole of 2nd Guards Army if only it meant getting out of this bucking bucket.
‘There was a beam on us then,’ Howard called out. ‘Take what evasive action you have to, but stay on this general heading.’ Hyde had given their driver the order before he remembered the major. He looked to see the officer’s reaction.
Revell understood, and nodded. ‘Don’t forget we’ve got a brood bringing up the rear.’
‘Another one. The Ruskies are looking for us now.’ A tight skidding turn almost threw Howard from his seat.
If Burke was making life uncomfortable for Cohen, he was also making it very difficult for the distant Russian radar operators who were trying to pick them up and plot their course.
Hedges and fences collapsed before the skimmers’ onslaught. A small group of houses that couldn’t even be glorified by the name of village were grazed and shaken as the racing hovercrafts scraped by, using their outline as cover and to confuse the enemy radar.
It worked, but the gap had widened between the Iron Cow and the following vehicles. They chased after the British craft, almost nose to tail, as their drivers pushed themselves to the limit to keep up with Burke’s fast progress between the houses.
Seven hundred yards from the hamlet, from a spot not quite within the fringes of a plantation of pines, there was a rapid succession of stabs of light as a multi-barrelled Russian ZSU-23 anti-aircraft tank opened up with all four of its 23mm cannon. Tracer arced through the night towards the ill-spaced file of NATO machines.
THREE
A fifty-round burst of mixed explosive and armour-piercing shells struck the side of a brick-built tractor shed in front of the leading American skimmer. Part of the structure’s corrugated iron roof was blasted off, and the second vehicle of the racing pair had to plough through an avalanche of falling bricks and beams as the decayed fabric of the building collapsed into its path.
The enemy gun-layer made a fractional adjustment to his aim, and his second burst caught the tail-end vehicle of the file as it turned into a narrow alleyway between a row of houses and a church.
Six of the high velocity shells smashed into its port engine, two more gouged their way across the skimmer’s roof behind the turret. An explosive round self-destructed amid a tangle of externally stowed equipment, sending saws and hawsers and shovel handles spinning away into the night. The last three armour-piercing shells plunged in through the vehicle’s rear plate, between the engine exhausts, their impacts marked by showers of white sparks.
Its remaining engine screaming at full power the hovercraft, towing thick white smoke, careered through a wild tight turn and thundered into the front of a boarded-up store. Its speed took it right inside and clouds of dust hid where it came to rest. A massive explosion lifted the building and bright flame bubbled from every window. The roof sagged, and then the whole property crashed down to bury the wreck.
‘You’ll have to pull forward. I can’t see the bugger.’ Burke made no move to do as their turret gunner urged, and drive the Iron Cow from the cover of the derelict cottage so that Libby could retaliate with their cannon armament.
Revell was standing looking out of the command cupola, just forward of the main turret. He watched as the other remaining skimmer took up a position across the street, nestling against a row of deserted houses. ‘We’re not going anywhere while he’s out there.’
Hyde had been watching the scanner console over Howard’s shoulder. ‘Might be an idea to try though, Major. That flak tank is calling for help.’
Revell surveyed the country ahead. It was half a mile to the next substantial cover, a belt of woodland flanking the road.
‘Aw, Major,’ Dooley had been listening, ‘we ain’t gonna get in a fire fight with a flak wagon, are we? Jesus, that thing fires four thousand rounds a minute. All we’ve got is one barrel against their four, and three-round clips against their belt feed.’
Now that he had at last realised that they had stopped moving, Cohen began to take an interest in what was going on. ‘Yeah, and they’ve got micro-wave radar. So it’s not too hot in the ground mode, but we ain’t got any.’
The mound of blazing rubble that marked where the last skimmer had come to rest illuminated a considerable and expanding area in the centre of the settlement. Buildings adjoining it were already steaming and were liable to add their fuel to the conflagration at any moment.
‘I don’t think we have any choice.’ Even as Revell made up his mind, there was a massive detonation and the cottage alongside dissolved inside a roaring ball of fire. Bricks and slates crashed on to their hull and turret and rained down in the road.
Two more similarly massive concussions cratered the road behind them and blasted out the end wall of the church.
There was just time to grab a handhold before, on the major’s command, Burke sent the machine surging forward. Like the others, they knew that those first gigantic blasts were just the ranging shots, the precursors of a much larger salvo of 240mm rockets to come.
Through a rear-facing periscope Revell saw that Windle’s skimmer, though slower off the mark, was following.
More of the huge fin-stabilised rockets began to fall as they cleared the last of the straggling buildings. The houses were torn apart, their roofs lifted off and their contents scattered across the streets and gardens. Trees and telegraph poles caught by the blast were scorched, shredded and toppled to the ground. The air was filled with flying leaves and whipping lengths of wire.
Libby opened up with the cannon an instant after the last obstructing corner of a house was cleared, so fast it seemed he could hardly have had time to sight his target, let alone take aim.
Slower by a couple of seconds, the flak tank replied to the three armour-piercing incendiary rounds sent against it with a ripple of twenty of its own.
The skimmer’s wild gyrations, as Burke threw it through a rapid succession of sharp turns to avoid craters that suddenly gaped in front of them, proved no problem for the stabiliser holding the 30mm Rarden on target. Libby got off another clip as the last shell from the flak tank scooped a gob of metal from an angle of the roof, before exploding with an eardrum punishing roar on the side of the turret.
At the moment he mentally predicted, and at precisely the correct range, Libby saw on his thermal imager the pinkish shimmer of a distant angular outline blossom into a tall column of chasing shades of bright red. A check through the day-sight confirmed that, seven hundred yards away, the edge of a small wood was being brilliantly lit by a rising shower of incandescence, as the Russian vehicle’s ammunition burned in spectacular fashion.
‘It’s just there, at the side of the road, by the burning tree.’ Hyde backed off the periscope and let Revell look. ‘I knew this was going to be a shitty job.’ Dooley smacked a large fist into a dirty palm, as he and Cohen waited to hear what had happened to the other skimmer. ‘Is it a direct hit, Major?’
‘Pretty close. There’s a hell of a big hole in the road, right under their front end.’ The other carrier lay a good three hundred yards back along the road. It was prominently lit by the fires
among the branches of the tall tree, and stood in the middle of a tract of featureless land that didn’t offer a scrap of cover. There was the possibility that it was under enemy observation already. Taking the Iron Cow back there could kill them all.
‘There’s no sign of movement.’ It was at moments like this that Revell felt the full weight of command responsibility.
‘Two or three men might make it safely on foot, just to check it out.’ Hyde realised what was going through the officer’s head, and offered an alternative. ‘We’ll send two.’ The choice as to which two took Revell only a moment. ‘Dooley and Clarence, off you go. And move. I don’t want to be hanging about here for long.’
The flames from the distant houses threw long tongues of light and shadow across the fields, and the road stood out as a curling grey ribbon against the mixed and shifting shades of the farmland.
Hugging the hedgerow, the pair worked their way towards the stricken vehicle. The erratic circle of light from the guttering flames in the oak showed it standing just the other side of a wide steaming crater. One of the engine pods had been ripped off and whirled away by the blast.
‘Christ, it’s taken a belting.’ As they drew nearer, Dooley could see where the near miss by the powerful missile had shattered the vehicle’s front as far back as the commander’s cupola. The ride-skirts had been slashed and holed by fragments, and a couple of panels had gone altogether. There was a strong smell of kerosene, and hydraulic fluid spurted from a distorted ram attached to what was left of the ramp.
Smoke was curling from beneath the hull as Clarence crouched and kept watch, while Dooley tackled the buckled metal barring entrance to the crew compartment. Above them the breeze fanned sparks from the burning tree. With a loud creaking and rending the warped panel suddenly ceased its resistance. The floor was slippery, and the passengers lay locked together in a tangle of arms and legs. Dooley tugged at a limb and someone groaned. ‘Give me a hand.’
