by James Rouch
If the Russian screamed he wasn’t heard. The deep treaded tyres crushed him into the hard earth and the tent was ripped to shreds by the tangled mass of barbed wire and broken stakes the truck bulldozed before it.
As Hyde hauled the encumbered vehicle back on to course, a wheel ran over the parked motorcycles and the wire was dragged from the truck as it straightened up again behind the command car.
Ahead of them the track led right up to the camp. Burke had seen the tank drive into the motley collection of shelters and appear to melt away. For a moment he had the wildly illogical thought that he’d follow it and find it had crushed a bloody course over hundreds of refugees.
‘Keep going.’ It was hardly noticeable, but Revell’s senses were tuned to such a pitch that he instantly noticed the tiny check to their speed. ‘Follow the tank.’ What, from his vantage point up in the roof of the farm, had looked like the start of just another of the many paths that wound through the camp, as they got closer revealed itself to be wide enough to comfortably accept the car, and the truck behind it.
Immediately it started to slope steeply and, as it levelled out again, the false roofs of the camp were forty feet above them, supported by lattice girdering. It was a very different view to the one from outside.
‘I’ll have to put the side lights on, I can’t see a sodding thing.’ Fumbling about with the unfamiliar controls, Burke managed to turn on the wipers and interior light before he pulled the correct knob. He found it just in time. The faint illumination they provided showed a curtain of what looked like thick black canvas blocking their way.
‘It’s just a black-out screen.’ Revell punched Burke on the arm. ‘We’re committed now, drive on.’ He brought up his combat shotgun and levelled it out of the window. Six more of the big twenty round drum magazines were attached to his belt, another lay in his lap. ‘Just take it slow, don’t lose contact with the truck.’
Burke shoved the gear lever across and down, and they began to nudge forward into pitch darkness. The coarse material parted in the middle and scraped and flapped down either side of the car, then slapped together behind them.
The six-wheeler was halfway through the first curtain when the car reached a second, twenty yards ahead. Cohen, riding in the back of the Ural, heard the frayed edge of the material as it brushed along the steel hooped canvas top. He’d rejected the small window of smoked Perspex in the tilt and was looking out of the weapon slit he’d made below it. There was nothing to be seen in the inky blackness.
Dooley had a better vantage point, looking forward, over the truck’s cab roof. ‘I can see the car’s lights, looks like there’s another of these doors, he’s driving into it now… Jesus Christ.’
A blaze of white light, a blast of noise and roasting hot air burst over them. ‘Got you, you ugly bastards.’
The second anti-aircraft position wasn’t so immediately obvious, but he knew it would show up soon. Several layers of camouflage netting offered some cover in the daytime, but at night they gave up their small amount of stored heat very rapidly, and the ground below them, in the shade all day, quickly showed up against the still warm surrounding open slopes.
From the direction of the workshops came the dull boom of an explosion. Clarence ignored it and went on with his survey; he was looking for targets of his own.
Clarence watched both vehicles until they disappeared from sight, and then began to assemble the tripod supporting the high-powered night-sight. The light was failing fast now, though the sky was still a uniform mid-blue, tinged in places with speckles of reddish-brown, a trace of the contamination spreading out from the centre of the Zone.
He brought his attention back to earth, to the dark slopes of the far hills. There was nothing to be seen with the naked eye, nor with the pocket image intensifier he tried. Its definition was poor compared with the larger ones aboard the skimmer, but it was good enough to confirm that what he sought lay under heavy camouflage.
It was already noticeably cooler now that the sun had gone down, there was even a suggestion of a breeze ruffling the grass. Clarence loosened the locking nut on the tripod, sat behind the sighting unit and panned along the hillsides. Near the top of one almost opposite, some eleven hundred yards away, he saw what he’d been expecting to find. It didn’t look much, but the infrared view showed a patch of distinctly colder ground.
FOURTEEN
Andrea threw her arms across her face to shield her eyes. After the pitch black of the entrance ramp, the glare from the arc lights set in the high roof of the workshop complex was intense. She felt Revell lunge past her and grab at the wheel.
Quickly recovering from the temporary blinding, Burke brushed aside the officer’s hands and made the sharp left turn himself. He hardly needed to remember the layout of the place, he held a map of it in his hands; the steering wheel rim was the perimeter road, the four spokes the radial service lanes, and the boss the massive bunker of reinforced concrete that held the main tank repair facilities. He caught a glimpse of it over the top of intervening blast walls and stacks of crated spares.
The total area was vast, like four gigantic hangars sunk together into the ground, and high overhead a web of steel supported the artificial roof of the refugee camp.
They drove almost immediately into what looked like a reception and dispatch area. Ten or eleven main battle tanks were parked close together, mostly T72s and the latest T84s, with a couple of elderly T62s, both fitted with heavy mortars and bulldozer blades for demolition work. A swarm of fitters was working on them, attaching or removing auxiliary fuel tanks, infra-red searchlights and anti-aircraft machine guns. Close by, two Russian officers discussed details on an engineering drawing. They did a double-take as the command car drew level with them, and died. A burst of five rounds from Revell’s automatic shotgun cut both down, and tumbled three fitters from the T72 behind them.
Hyde didn’t hear the firing above the din of generators and machinery that filled the place, but he saw the victims go down, and anticipating the car’s increase in speed, put his foot to the floor.
Fire from the automatic weapons aboard the car and truck hosed the fitters from the tanks and smashed every un-armoured fitting on them. From the back of the truck, Collins and Rinehart lobbed thermite grenades at each AFV in turn. A few rolled from the armour, but most came to rest on the engine decks, or went in through open hatches. A dazzling white hell washed over the tanks and the bodies strewn about them.
A mountain of packing cases that could only contain new engines or whole transmissions received several more of the destructive grenades, and just two were sufficient for a stack of spare radiators. Molten copper and aluminium flowed as the bursting contents burned at two thousand degrees.
‘Look for the machinery trucks. They’re near here somewhere.’ It was almost impossible for Revell to make himself heard to Andrea, or for her to pass it on to the Grepos in the back. Generators and machinery still thundered on around them, and the crash and clatter of automatic fire was virtually continuous as all the weapons lashed out at every target that presented itself.
‘They are there.’ Andrea smashed out the windscreen and sent a tracer-laced burst towards the dozens of machinists jumping from the row of heavy trucks and trailers.
Revell used a whole magazine as they motored along the line, pumping a shot into the radiator of each precious vehicle. As he did, he could hear the blast bombs Hyde’s passengers were using tearing the guts out of the cabs and machinery decks. Lathes, drills and milling machines were smashed and toppled from their beds.
Panic was all around them. Time and time again, fleeing Russians would run straight into their fire. The terror and confusion was precisely what Revell had counted on. They were almost halfway round the perimeter road and not a shot had been fired against them so far.
The concussion from the grenades was punishing, threatening to burst their eardrums as waves of pressure from the blast bombs washed over them and rocked the vehicles. An explosiv
e grenade Revell tossed at the side wall of a Song wooden hut had an unexpected effect. The entire side of the light structure collapsed in a shower of planks and splinters, to reveal the interior of a radar and radio repair shop. It was too good a target to miss. Ordering Burke to stop, the major used two flame tubes on the racked equipment and test benches. The single-shot weapons threw their charges of red phosphorus over everything, and the precious sets immediately began to explode in the heat.
As he sent the second on its way, before there was time to see the effect of the fountains of blazing chemicals, a bullet struck the roof of the car. It might have been careless shooting from Dooley, hosing bullets from the front of the truck as he fired the M60 from the shoulder, but in any case they had been stationary for too long.
Now they were passing welding and lubrication bays, and the sets of grease guns, gas bottles and arc welding kits, along with the AFVs parked by each, received their full share of attention. An eight-wheeled mobile crane and two armoured recovery vehicles parked nearby were given the same treatment.
Every blast wall and stack of stores they passed revealed new targets, but they brought fresh dangers as well. A burst of automatic fire came at them from between two Shilka flak tanks. They missed, and before the Russian could reload he was flushed from cover with a snap shot from a flame tube, and sent running with his clothes ablaze.
Thick smoke obscured the roof, dimming the powerful lights. It rose from a score of fierce fires in their wake. The pillars of curling flame marked their route, and it was that chain of beacons that gave away where they would be next.
Revell looked back to see that the truck was still with them. It was spitting bullets and incendiary materials from every side. As he turned back he barely caught a glimpse of the giant fork-lift truck bearing down on them, and then the shock of the collision threw him from his seat.
Twin broad spears pierced the unarmoured bodywork of the car and he heard a terrible high pitched scream, then the fuel spilling from the ruptured tank ignited and the vehicle was filled with glaring red flame.
Intent on finding the other flak gun, Clarence paid only scant attention to the nearly continuous crash and roar of explosions from the camp. He was determined, and certain, that he would be successful, and experienced no surprise or elation when on the seventh IR sweep he found it.
Shortly afterwards, both anonymous patches resolved into much more clearly defined configurations, and when he looked again through the image intensifier he was able to confirm that the Russian gun crews were removing the camouflage netting. He examined both with an expert eye. Neither was an easy target.
Gun crews, especially when they were in a pit, or behind sandbag walls as these were, were always difficult to hit. The most important member of the crew, the gun-layer, was inevitably behind armour, and the same shield gave cover to the loaders as they served the weapon. And when they weren’t actually at the gun, they were forever bobbing up and down. It would have helped if his elevation had been greater than theirs, but if anything both gun-pits were a little above him.
The first he’d seen uncovered was a single mount, about… yes, 57mm. A weapon that carried a lot of punch, with a decent rate of fire. And the other… wasn’t easy to make out. It was a multiple-barrelled mount, machine gun calibre by the look of it, most likely a quad 14.5mm. That was no toy either, it had a long reach and an incredible rate of fire if it was well served.
Which to tackle first? The crew of the 57mm piece had been first to uncover and prepare for action. He’d take that as an indication of their keenness to get into a fight, so he’d oblige them, but not with the sort of fight they were expecting.
The gun was elevating. The crew obviously believed the attack was coming from the air. Well, that suited him. Until they figured out, or were told the actual circumstances, they’d be whirling round and round and looking up. That would give him a perfect clear shot at their unprotected backs.
As though it were a match at Bisley, he carefully laid out his equipment on the groundsheet beside him and began his customary meticulous check on ammunition and rifle. In the next ten minutes or so he’d be finding fresh targets for them, adding further kills to his score.
As he worked he experienced a feeling of calm satisfaction. If he had just one regret about the whole business of being a sniper it was that his targets could never know, could never appreciate, the care he took over each shot. Unlike others whom he knew, he did not leave a trail of cripples and mental defectives in his wake. He aimed to kill and usually achieved just that; he could count on his fingers the number of times he had seen a man he’d hit crawl or stagger away and that was out of almost two hundred. It was a lot of lives, it was a pity it wasn’t more.
Higher and higher soared the screaming as the impaled Grepos threshed about, making his agonies infinitely worse. Fire was everywhere, flaring about the inside of the car, licking from its windows.
Revell struggled up from the floor beneath the steering wheel. Through the flames he glimpsed a Russian major slumped fiat-nosed against the bullet-holed glass front of the fork-lift’s cab. Andrea was just scrambling clear, and together with Burke she reached for Revell to help him out.
The back of the car was hidden by swirling flame that engulfed the East Germans. As Revell was hauled clear the last of the petrol exploded with a roar, and a jet of fire licked after him, scorching his jacket and the fabric covering of his helmet. A blistered hand thrust from a window made a mute despairing appeal for help, and then was lost in the smoke and boiling flame.
‘Into the truck.’ Letting go the last eight rounds in his magazine at a group of Russians trying to bring an unwieldy dismounted tank machine gun into action, Revell saw that the girl and driver had got in the back before jumping into the Ural’s cab.
‘We’ll never make it the rest of the way round! Make for the main workshop. Move!’
Hyde had already seen a road-block being prepared ahead of them, and had swung on to one of the radial roads even before Revell shouted.
A Russian standing precariously on a blast wall got off several shots at the truck, before being hurled from sight by a well-aimed burst from Cohen. Another tried rolling a grenade, but fell with a bullet through his neck before the bomb exploded harmlessly behind the vehicle.
It was packed in the back of the truck, with everybody trying to keep low and fire at the same time. Bullets kept striking the bodywork and high canvas top above it, but no one was down, although there were splashes of blood on the floor and the inside of the tilt.
Hyde drove the truck straight into the huge repair shed, and braked to a halt in the middle of the thick walled structure. In long closely spaced rows on either side of them stood forty Soviet tanks, as well as some armoured missile and radar carriers.
The instant they stopped, a brisk fire opened up on them from a glass-walled office set high up on scaffolding at the far end of the workshop. Revell and Libby tumbled out to provide fire as Collins, Cohen and Rinehart set delay charges on each tracked vehicle, placing them inside open engine compartments or below turret overhangs. The electric motors of an overhead crane and the steel cradles holding replacement gun barrels received the same treatment.
It was as Collins sprinted across an open stretch of floor to reach a Ganef missile carrier that the unseen gunner on the balcony caught him. The bullets cut his legs from under him and he went down hard, lay still a moment, then gathered up the haversack he had dropped and crawled on.
Revell had only one magazine left; he’d been saving it for the generator on the way out. He snapped it into place,’ shouldered the weapon and fired a short burst. On hitting the balcony the rounds broke up, scattering phosphorus. The pellets ignited immediately on exposure to the air. The remaining glass in the office walls shattered in the tremendous heat and the rapid clatter of the AKM ceased immediately. A moment later a figure appeared, smothered in rippling hoops of fire from the waist up. It beat the air with flame-dripping fingers, tottered
forward and dropped over the edge to the floor twenty feet below.
Cohen was first to reach Collins, as he finished setting the last of his charges behind the Ganef’s drive sprockets.
‘OK kid, we’re getting you out of here.’ Collins didn’t hear. He was in deep shock and both his legs were terribly shattered. Blood formed a large puddle about him, and marked his route from the middle of the floor. More of it soaked Cohen and Rinehart as they carried him to the back of the truck.
Revell slung the last satchel of explosives under the belly of an SA-8 missile launcher. ‘That’s it. Let’s go.’
Hyde didn’t look to see what speed they were doing, but when they hit the massive steel shutters that had been closed across the end doors of the drive-through workshop they crashed through them with hardly any check to their pace. The impact crushed in the Ural’s front panel work and friction-induced smoke began to pour from beneath a wheel arch.
A crowd of Russians scattered before them as they burst out and ploughed over them. Those not crushed beneath the wheels were mown down at point-blank range.
Seventy-five yards ahead lay the ramp by which they’d come in. Choking smoke swirled about them, now so thick that at times they could hardly make out the black-out curtain at its mouth.
Sixty yards to go, fifty, Hyde hunched over the wheel, willing greater speed from the engine. Forty and they had to make it, thirty, almost there, twenty, they’d almost done it, ten, nine…
Travelling fast, the jagged metal of the cab’s front struck the material, smacking one flap aside, tearing another down as it caught on the projecting torn metal of a fender.
‘Fuck it.’ There was no time for anything else. Libby threw up his hands to protect his face as the Ural thundered into the huge armoured recovery vehicle coming down through the outer doors.
Rugged as it. was, the six-wheeler was no match for a modified T72, with its inches of armour and a weight more than four times that of the truck.
