Death March

by James Rouch

  “Stand up straight!” He glared at the escorted officer, who appeared to be on the verge of fainting.

  The young officer sagged, lolled first to one side and then the other, colliding with the military police. They closed on him and without seeming to do anything, shrugged him back to an upright stance with the minimum of effort and contact, as though they feared contagion.

  His fate in the balance, Pritkov began to slowly crumple at the knees and had to be supported by the escort who held him with distaste. Fear induced a delirious semi-conscious state. He babbling quietly, alternating that with suppressed sobbing and soft pleading.

  Beyond the men forced to support him, no one in the room had the slightest interest in him and his fate. It did not do to have any involvement with anyone who was so deeply in disfavour, beyond wondering if the special protection he enjoyed would save him from this latest severe error of judgement. Anyone else would most likely have been a corpse by now. It would just have been a case of precisely where the conversion from life to death was to take place. Judging from his colour, Pritkov looked like a dead man already.

  Zucharnin was ignoring him as well, was still barking down the telephone. “Well I bloody well know now but why wasn’t I told earlier? Are you still running this war just for your own benefit? Were you thinking to gain some credit by keeping this to yourself? In a few hours I hope I shall be rolling vital ammunition convoys through that location. I don’t give a damn if a few of them get vaporised but I don’t want their bodies forming part of a bloody great tangle of wreckage those following will have to go pussy-footing around. In future, if you have some, don’t withhold information, don’t hug it to yourself.” For a moment he listened, his chin jutting and his lips tight closed.

  The young staff officer was looking towards the door. How he would have loved to about turn and walk out through it. He edged a half pace backwards. The general noticed, slapped the telephone down and scowled.

  “Where the hell do you think you might be off to?” With an abrupt gesture he indicated for the military police to leave. Zucharnin had brought himself under control but there remained an edge in his voice, a clipped and icy tone.

  “ So, one of our patrols bumped into a parachutist. The oafs killed him. That was…” he consulted his watch, “…hours ago. And in all that time no one thought to inform me. And it was discovered he had a nuclear device, a demolition bomb, and still neither you nor Grigori thought to tell me.” Zucharnins eyes had locked on the young officer and they stayed on him as he waited for an explanation. None was forth coming.

  Pritkov might be scared but he was not fool enough to try and stumble through any excuses or explanations. That could only make it worse.

  “Very good. Gregori says he has a team working on the device. I am making you responsible for what happens…”

  “Surely the General does not intend I should go out there and personally…”

  “ A gutless wonder like you would not be of any use, so no. Simply inform me when my convoy route is safe. If they are unsuccessful there’s no need, I am near enough to see the mushroom for myself.”

  The General indicated for the room to be cleared, but he signalled the young officer to remain.

  The instant the door closed on the last of them, Pritkov collapsed in to a chair and dabbed at his face with a handkerchief. As the officers had filed out they had avoided looking at him. Some smirked when their backs were safely turned, others bit their lips thoughtfully. Sympathy did not feature in any of their expressions.

  “It was you to whom the field officers reported and you who elected to pass the information to Gregori

  “That is the correct procedure…”

  Closing his eyes and rocking on his heels, the General took a moment to maintain his self-control. When he had almost succeeded he reached out with both hairy backed hands and thumped them down on to the captains shoulders. It was not a blow but the heavy impact was sufficient to make the slightly built staff officer buckle and cringe. Zucharnins fingers closed about the his epaulettes and lifted his jacket so that its collar rose to hide his neck. “There are times when one does not go by the book.” He pushed his blotchy face close to the young captains. “There are times when one thinks of the consequences for others first. Not many, they are rare and few and far between but there are times. Do you understand?” His voice had dropped, so that there was no chance of his words being heard in the outer office.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good, because you are stretching to breaking point the special treatment I can offer you. I do not want to have to tell your mother and other relatives I have had you shot, though I would be merciful and of course tell her it was in the line of duty. Have you written to her this week?

  “No.”

  “Then write tonight without fail and do not forget this lesson. If you screw up again I can make life…uncomfortable… Now go.”

  “Thank you…Stepfather.”

  “And save that for when we are at home.”

  * * *

  For once Burke didn’t have to worry over much about conserving fuel. This wasn’t another of their long-range reconnaissance missions. It was a short distance smash and grab raid. He gunned the twin Alison’s to full power and they surged down the debris littered carriageway towards the bridge.

  As usual the port engine produced more thrust and he had to over-ride the hovercrafts own systems to balance the colossal surge of power. Within a hundred metres the thirteen tons of machine was moving at fifty kilometres an hour. Another two hundred metres, when they reached the approach to the bridge, they were hitting eighty-five.

  The downdraft from the beneath the armoured skirts blasted huge volumes of the choppy water in to the air. Before reaching the far side of the river they twice swept across the remains of dead bodies and sent the scorched cadavers skimming across the surface of the river.

  Then they were climbing the rubble slope where the dockside had been pulverised and showers of light debris flew into the air. It added to the dense fog already created by the deluge of smoke rounds. As they came up on to the riverside walkway twice they sideswiped the burnt-out shells of automobiles to send them spinning away, one of them to be left hanging over the river.

  “We’re there. Hold on.” If the Russians had been sufficiently alert to monitor the approach of the hurtling APC Burkes next move would take them out of any weapon sights they might have been levelling.

  A wrench of the steering column and he sent them through a wild skidding turn down broad steps and in to a pedestrian area running parallel to the river. Lampposts, phone kiosks and lottery booths were snapped off, crushed and hurled aside. They were still at full speed and approaching the limit of the shrouding smoke when Burke savagely threw the thrust into reverse and brought their speed to a crawl as he ploughed though a courtyard, under an archway and then across a compact area of garden.

  “Find us that hole.”

  Burke didn’t need the Majors order; he had already identified the shopping mall and sent the slab front of the hovercraft in through the wide glass doors. Swerving through turn after turn the iron Cow smashed and obliterated plate glass frontages and elaborate displays. At one turn, dead ahead, a group of Russian infantry were looting a store. They tried to run but in succession the five men disappeared beneath the craft and came rolling out at the back, bloody, broken bundles.

  Exiting the Mall, towing a plume of glass fragments Burke sent the APC down an alleyway so narrow that the steel reinforcements on the bulging ride-skirt struck cascades of sparks from the stone and brickwork walls on both sides simultaneously.

  Accelerating to near maximum speed again they raced out and across a wide boulevard and in to another Mall. This time, after penetrating the already derelict pedestrian area, Burke used reverse thrust to bring the hovercraft to a halt and set it down on the cream tiled floor.

  “Oh man. That has got to be one of the wildest rides.” Carson had been unable to resist t
he temptation and had knelt on a bench to try and catch a glimpse of their progress through one of the gun ports. His face shone with excitement as he turned back to sit facing the centre of the interior.

  Revell was looking at the map. The display on the control consol in front of their driver, and its flickered repeater on the command position he just ignored. Too often the electronic direction indicator had sent them the wrong way or failed altogether at a critical moment.

  “Might be useful for a Sunday afternoon driver looking for a picnic site but what ever command says, it is not up to battlefield situations.” Burke snapped down a toggle switch and the sat-nav system closed down. Lolling back in his seat he rested his feet across the panel. He felt someone nudging up beside him in his cramped position.

  “Oh man, you are one heck of a driver. They ever told you that? You reckon you’re appreciated?”

  Lieutenant Andy was grinning fit to split his face and pressing behind him was Carson. “You just got to join us man. You don’t want to be with this gung-ho combat outfit, Join us. We have so much fun…we’ve got this go-cart track and the brass give us all we want…”

  Carson pushed forward, his camouflage-adorned features just visible below Andy’s armpit. “We’re building this stock car based on one of those big Volvo command cars. We’re going to ship it back to Carolina and then we’ll blow every one else off the track…You’d be the perfect driver, we’d clean up.”

  Burke basked in the adulation and then found himself lugged back down to earth.

  “There’s a job to do.” Revell had seen the huddle about his driver. ”After that you can try for a transfer. Of course we might be spread across the landscape as radio active fragments first.” He could understand if Burke was tempted by the prospect dangled before him. The entire unit took their dour driver for granted. He was good, brilliant even, as the last two minute run had proved. Certainly he wasn’t used to being praised and fussed over, it would likely go to his head, but they had a mission to complete first.

  In the dull red glow of the crafts’ interior, Hyde and Revell checked their route.

  “We’re too far to the north” Revell gauged the distance from their present location to where they should have been. It was a tough route, a maze of city streets. Some places, particularly at intersections with long straight approach roads, they would be a sitting target. And any turn might drive them into the sights of a Warsaw Pact anti-tank gun or even those of a Soviet tank. Cities soaked up troops and armour like a giant sponge but the Warpac forces would be hurriedly setting up positions to cover main routes.

  “This way looks the best.” Sergeant Hyde pulled the map towards his lap and let his dirt stained broken nail trace an erratic path across the city. “We should avoid any Ruskie supply routes that way, assuming they’ll be using the uncluttered boulevards. Should take us around any positions they’re establishing.”

  “Life sure is getting complicated.” Dooley had put his feet up on the thermite container and was now crowding others out of that section of the bench as he made himself comfortable.

  Revell heard the muttered comment and though he ignored it he could understand the sentiment. Certainly the simplest thing would have been to blast straight through to the last known location of the ‘A’ bomb team. Take a chance on the enemy not yet having found it.

  “So, you think we should keep going in a straight line. That would make life uncomplicated.” Andrea could not keep the amusement out of her voice. Not for an instant had she ever comprehended the seeming debate on every important decision the unit had to make. She knew Revell had the last word, always, and that he was usually correct…at least he always had been so far…but with the East German forces she had been used to orders being immutable, fixed. “I do not see what the problem is about. We know the location, get us there and leave this,” she rapped the ribbon festooning case of thermite with her knuckles. ”You are surely not serious in thinking we can hang around in the middle of Warsaw Pact position, playing with an ‘A’ bomb until we are sure it is safe and then carry it back to our own lines.”

  She was not being subtle, she knew that, but the thought of carting a nuclear weapon across enemy territory filled her with dread. For the first time ever, that she could recall, she knew what fear was like.

  A staccato blast of noise came from overhead as Libby opened fire with a clip of three rounds from the 30mm Rarden cannon and then there was a long crackling burst from the co-axial chain gun as the turret made a fast three hundred and sixty degree traverse.

  The impact and detonation of the three high velocity shells at extreme close range shook the craft with sharp punching cracks from the blast waves.

  “I’ve got Russian infantry all over the place. Hit the gas!”

  As Burke responded to the call and set the turbofans screeching to emergency full power there were thuds and rattles on the exterior of the hull.

  “Grenades.” Andrea was the first to thrust the barrel of an assault rifle through a hull gun port and fire off the whole clip, then she slapped in two more magazines in swift succession and loosed those off in similar wild and un-aimed fusillades.

  The other five ports were also sending out streams of tracer that ricocheted from walls and storefront door and window frames to make a wild pattern of zipping lights. Cascades of shattering sheet glass fell in shimmering avalanches then were picked up by the viscous downdraft from the ride skirt and sent across the mall in a lethal hail that cut down the surviving Russian troops.

  Bursting from the building the hovercraft performed a broadside skid across the road to scrape along fifty metres of concrete bollards before Burke fully regain control and instinctively sent the APC plunging across a gas station forecourt, smashing down the pumps and then into a narrow service road behind it.

  In the turret, eyes locked on the gun sight, Libby just caught a glimpse of a flaring fire in their wake before the barrel took a hard knock on a street sign and the impact jarred his whole body. He heard the detonation of a couple of anti- personnel grenades in their wake and knew that the major was taking no chance on their being followed.

  The thin walled explosive devices went off in jagged brown puffs of smoke that filled the garbage can littered alleyway with dirty smoke and thousands of tiny razor sharp steel fragments.

  “Ahead, on the left somewhere…”Revell held the mike against his throat to make sure their driver heard…”There’s an entrance to an underground unloading bay. We can use it to make half a block.”

  “It will take us away from our destination.” Burke wrenched the controls; preventing the APC from more than occasionally slapping deluges of sparks from the walls and steel security doors of the buildings rear access.

  Ahead of them a rocket impacted amongst the convoluted pipe work of an industrial air-conditioning system and sent lengths of aluminium trunking down in to their path.

  Adjusting the ride so that the nose of the machine was lowered Burke sent the Iron Cow into the raining debris, giving it no chance to get underneath the ride skirt and do serious damage. The lightweight material was crushed and flipped above them, and then they were executing a turn that took them down a concrete ramp and smashing through a red and white striped barrier into the deep gloom of an underground service area.

  After a hundred metres Burke brought the APC to a halt and let the air spill out to rest the craft on the ground.

  “I want a close perimeter.” Revell hit the rear door release and felt a heavy draft as damp clammy atmosphere from outside swept in to replace the cordite-tainted air of the APC’s interior. He would not take the chance of their being jumped again. That they had been, he knew, was his fault. While his assessment was that the Soviets were still as yet unorganised he had not allowed sufficiently for the fact that some of the advance elements of the assault troops might have already been formed in to patrols. If that was the case then it was sheer bad luck that they had encountered one of the patrols, and an alert aggressive one at that.
Of course it was also likely that they had run in to what was no more than opportunist looters, but still he could have been more ready. Should have been. Now with a close perimeter guard at this new location it was far less likely they would be jumped.

  When he left the vehicle Dooley moved to its front plate, took ten paces forward and then settled down on one knee. He used his infrared sight to make the first sweep and then when that showed nothing more than patches of background heat from closed down machinery, resorted to plain eyesight. A long way off there was a small square of white light that had to be the exit. There were no obstructions between it and their location. He hoped it stayed that way. Anything blocking the distant opening was almost certainly going to be a Soviet foot patrol or reconnaissance vehicle.

  To his left, using a concrete pillar for partial cover, Andrea was snacking off a chocolate bar. To his right Clarence was methodically scanning the segment of the perimeter that was his responsibility. He would do it with dedication and mathematical precision until the order to re-board came.

  There were so many pressures on a man in this war. From its fifth day Dooley had been involved in the bitterest of the fighting. There had been the long and hard fought retreats with every day seeming it would be his last. Then the first wound, and a day after his return to combat, the second. Six weeks in all when he could surely have wrangled some way out of the front line, but it just wasn’t his way. Seven years of peace time soldiering had prepared him for action and now he was addicted to it. The Zone, as the newspapers called the ugly no-mans-land that was forming across Europe was, if not a home to him, where he wanted to be. No more Saturday night aggravation in garrison towns from hoodies, no more having to take their crap or in the event of his resorting to retaliation facing charges. Now if scum like that got in his way he took them out, and it felt good to be able to do it, to not have the weight of politically correct legislation bearing down on him.