by James Rouch
“Maybe, but very likely not.” Samson had been looking at their prisoner, taking his temperature, checking his pulse. He turned and made a slight negative move of his head to the Major. “They would have checked for booby traps first, that’s why Thorne set the timers so fine everything would have gone up almost before they started checking. But I tell you one thing. I bet they are real pissed off. Now everything depends on them getting to the next service centre and finding it safe and sound. They are going to be in desperate need of gas for their big guns by the time they get there.”
“Let us hope they are so desperate by that time that they throw caution to the wind.” There was satisfaction in Andrea’s voice. “It would be nice to catch a lot of them.” She pushed deeper in to her bench to get further from the demolition bomb. “I know I shall be glad to get away from that thing. But I shall be happier still if we can catch the Russian spearhead with it.”
Carson patted the bulky pack. “Actually I have been kind of getting attached to the little fellow. But I know what you mean, he’s been threatening to take us with him for so long it would be good if in fact somebody else gets dusted over the landscape.”
Lieutenant Andy took a swig from a can of coke and elevated it in a toast. “Amen to that, Amen indeed.”
* * *
“And what do you hope to gain?” General Zucharnin could not keep the snarl out of his voice, and didn’t try. He hoped his voice conveyed the venom he wanted. He had expected his Second-in-Command to gloat, but that there was a hint of doubt, a lack of confidence in his manner that suggested events had not gone entirely the way he had wanted or expected.
Although he was the one who had made the arrest, Lieutenant General Gregori did not feel the overwhelming satisfaction he thought he should have done. There was still no elaboration on that first instruction from Moscow. At the very least he would have expected that by now the place would swarm with KGB investigators and political officers, confiscating papers and computers, rounding up officers, clerks and signallers of every grade. Anyone who might have by the furthest stretch of the imagination been involved in whatever Zucharnin was plotting.
“How long had you been scheming, how long had you been sucking dry that dolt of a stepson of mine? Oh yes, I know what you have been up to.” Zucharnins’ tone was contemptuous. “Did you think I did not know what you were doing? I was well aware of your conniving but never thought you would be so stupid as to make a move with out knowing all the facts. Your precipitation could cost you dear. I think you will be in for a disappointment if you hope to step straight in to my shoes.”
Gregori found himself irritated by Zucharnins confidence. He was not acting like a man on whom an axe could be about to fall, on whom it had already started to descend. Could his confidence stem from knowledge of the success his unconventional assault was having. If indeed it was successful.
Gregori had his own staff moving heaven and earth to find out what was going on. The first step had been to order Zucharnins people to reveal what they knew, but the line of questioning had puzzled them all. None appeared to have any knowledge of what was happening, share any degree of responsibility for it. But how could they not know. The general could not have organised the whole thing on his own. Especially not with the time he had available, not when he was spending so much time away, on fishing holidays.
He looked at his prisoner again. If anything he was smiling more. What did he have to smile about? There would be no more cosy little fishing trips…Oh, no. That was how he had done it. Gregori could have pulled his hair out. What he had seen as a weakness had been the general taking the opportunity to organise the whole affair. If he could scrape together a couple of dozen decent staff men from among the dregs he had siphoned off then licking a division in to shape would have not been difficult. A brutal regime, an iron fist and it could be done. That was how it had been done. The men under command would never have suspected anything, would never have dared question anything and officers he selected for senior positions would be too scared of losing the chance to escape the horrors of penal battalions to rock the boat. The whole thing would have policed itself, established by fear and maintained ignorance.
But still, he seemed so sure of himself. For all he knew the attack could have failed, Zucharnin could have no way of knowing.
Outside the door Gregori heard the guard being changed. Ah, of course, the men of the commandants service, the military police, they where just as open to persuasion. There were a thousand ways a senior officer could get a man in to his pocket, outside of regular orders. Every man wanted something, sometime. Compassionate leave, promotion, a posting. There were so many ways to get people to do what you wanted them to do, and doubtless, despite appearances one or more of the guards must be in his private employ.
“The only way you can do yourself any good is to talk. I need to know everything about the attack you have launched.” Grigori would have liked to make a threat but he strongly suspected it would do no good. “Your staff here are being interrogated but they appear to know nothing. As far as your assault division is concerned I can find no chain of command.” It was a severe temptation to strike the general, wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face. But Zucharnin was not scared, and in any case there were things to be said and heard that should not be spread about.
He had declined to have a guard in the room. Now Grigori wished one of the burly police NCO’s was present. The General was several years older but he was heavier and still a very fit man. He exercised every day and would likely hold his own in any exchange of blows. A fight between them might not necessarily end to Gregori’s advantage. It would take a couple of minutes for the guards to unlock and come in to separate them.
“I will only tell you that the troops have their orders and will carry on until they are stopped by the enemy or until they have achieved their objectives. They have been trained to keep going, whatever the cost.”
“Are you insane?” Gregori could hardly believe what he was hearing. “You just push men in to battle with no control over them? You must be mad. And did you not think the Kremlin would object to your creating a private army, setting it a mission without having in place an accountable command structure.” It was wildly infuriating but Zucharnin maintained his satisfied expression He had, unusually, been allowed to keep cigarettes and he lit one now, blowing smoke up at the naked bulb overhead. Further evidence that at least one of the MPs was subservient to him.
“A private Army? Is that what you have told them, were those the words you used?” Zucharnin’s smile broadened a fraction. He was enjoying its effect on his second in command. But perhaps best not to employ its full effect immediately. “I should not be surprised. As you knew little, I suppose your signal was in the broadest of terms. It was a signal, wasn’t it? Some how I cannot imagine you having the courage to use the telephone. That is an indication of the difference between us, I would have done. But I have to admit, not yet. It does not do to be precipitate in such weighty matters.”
“If you think to make trouble for me by with-holding information about the attack you secretly arranged then you could not be more wrong.” Gregori would have liked to adopt the threatening tone he felt appropriate to the situation, but something about his superior was jarring with him. “I shall soon discover the true situation and you will not be smiling then.”
“If I was you Gregori, I would be a worried man. Not because you have not kept track of activity within your own head quarters, not because you have spent more time trying to lick boots than doing your job properly but because…
There was a long pause. Zucharnin lit another cigarette, stubbing out the first before it was finished.
“Because of what?” Gregori ignored the knock at the door.
Finally Zucharnin got up from his chair and smoothed his jacket straight, brushing away ash. “Because you are not as well connected, because your wife’s father is not a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Mine is and without detailing any c
harges against me you have presented the Kremlin with nothing more than a snippet of gossip. You were so eager to usurp me that you grabbed at the first straw my stepson seemed to offer you.”
“But you have formed a strike force of your own and initiated an assault without advising higher command.” Gregori knew his voice was too high, that he was almost screaming.
“So it may appear, but things are not always what they seem.” Zucharnin shouted for the clerk to come in and snatched the sheet of signal pad paper when the men looked undecided to whom he should give it. He read it, then put it on the table, not even offering it to the Lieutenant Colonel. “While those men have been grouped together for an operation all are still technically on the strength of their original penal battalions. Far from being a private army they could be regarded as a piece of neat administrative tidying.”
“This is just playing with words.” Gregori did not reach for the paper. He put off picking it up. “You sent them in to action without official sanction.”
“I told you, you spent too much time plotting and not enough doing your job. There is a sentence, buried deep within the original battle plan for the assault on Nurnberg that a flank attack would be required to distract the NATO forces from their defence of the river crossing. Just small print I know. But it is there, some where in among the need for troop hygiene and sanitation arrangements.”
Gregori lifted the message and read it. Almost as cryptic as the first, it ordered the correction of an administrative error, Zucharnin’s release. It told Gregori nothing more, but it didn’t have to. The general was about to commence making his life a misery. There might be one tiny glimmer to be extracted. “What about Captain Pritkov. Surely the fault lies with him, the information he gave me…”
“Was quite good in what it was, not his fault you jumped to conclusions.”
“But it was his fault. You know he is a fool, no use to anyone. And it was he who tried to ruin you.” Shit, if he could bring down the boy with him he would almost suffer willingly.
“Possibly quite true but do you seriously think I would make trouble for a grandson of a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Do you?” Zucharnin looked about the little office. “There will be matters that will require rearranging. Before I give consideration to how best to employ you in the future, and at what rank, perhaps you might move in to here. It will be more than adequate for the level of responsibility you can expect, the amount and type of furniture you will be allowed to have.”
When the door closed behind the general, Gregori looked about. There was not even a telephone. The single bulb was weak, its faint illumination barely reaching to the corners of the room. The desk and chair, the only furnishings, were of the cheapest utilitarian quality. There was no floor covering, only the bare board and those heavily pitted and splashed with paint. Everything was gone, all the trappings, all the comforts. Doubtless there would be a cut in pay. That would make it impossible for him to hide events from his wife. She’s find out anyway, the officers wives had a grapevine as effective as any KGB network.
He sat at the desk and put his head in his hands. There was nothing left to hope for, beyond at best marking time until retirement. Even that possibility must be precarious now. Would his wife stay with him as their home standards dropped? It wasn’t likely. Dam her; her hen-pecking ambition was as much to blame for this situation as anything he had ever done.
There was only one thing left to hope for. That Zucharnins assault would fail, that somehow the weight of blame would do him harm. After all, the man who threw away a division would not be looked on favourably by the powers in the Kremlin. It was a straw but in his heart he dared to hope.
* * *
“Easy, we don’t want an accident now.” Carson supervised the removal of the nuclear device from the interior of the hovercraft.
“Like you really need to tell us that?” Dooley set the pack down and kept one hand on it for a moment to make sure it was not going to topple over.
“Chuck out that thermite as well.” Revell looked around the vehicle park. Apart from a couple of abandoned low-loader trailers it was empty.” So where do you want to set it up.”
The autobahn service centre covered a vast area. All of the fuel pumps were on one side of the carriageways. Crossover ramps and bridges brought the vehicles from the far carriageway.
“Just there will do fine. We can certainly be sure it will not be a place the Reds will poke about. They’ll be more interested in grabbing goods from the gift shops and restaurants.” Indicating a compound close by, Carson took one side of the pack and waited for some one else to take the other. “Come on you guys, it won’t bite you.”
“No, it’ll bloody vaporise you.”
“Stop complaining Simmons. You’ll never know about it.”
“Thank you Sarg’, from that I am supposed to draw comfort.”
“Grab it and move.” Sergeant Hyde walked behind them as the two men struggled with the load and stopped before a locked gate.
“Can’t we just dump it here? No one is going to see it.”
Pushing Simmons aside Sergeant Hyde broke the gates small padlock with a couple of blows from his rifle butt. “I don’t want any Commie discovering it when he strolls off for a pee. They’d never disarm it but they could drive on and hope for fuel elsewhere. We’d only knock out that part of the column passing by. Not good enough.”
The compound held perhaps thirty vehicles of every make and type, but many were totally unrecognisable. All were wrecks recovered from accidents on this stretch of the autobahn. Some had burnt out; some were roofless where bodies had been removed. All were severally damaged.
“We’ll put it in the cab of that tractor unit.” Carson had to stand on a piece of wreckage to reach the door and tug it open. “A few feet off the ground will do a lot to enhance the effect.”
“Bugger the theory, lets just get it in place.” Simmons needed help from the other two in order to lift the bomb on to a burnt-out seat frame.
Lieutenant Andy had joined them and with Carson climbed in to the cab.
“Will this take long?” Far away in the night sky there was the faintest of glows. Hyde wondered if it was the first gas station they had burned. It was in the right direction.
“Five minutes, less if you stop interrupting.”
“What yield do we want?” Lifting a plate Carson shone a torch down in to the bombs interior. He could see a punctured and buckled bulkhead where a bullet had passed through.
Andy looked round. The site was several hundred metres across and right in the centre was row upon row of islands each holding four pumps. Between each pair was a steel beam that rose high to support a wide canopy. “There’s fifty pumps at least, I guess we can reckon on their being a queue lining up within thirty minutes and there will be a load more on the approach road and coming along”
“So how hard do we hit them. We going to try and get them all?” Hand poised over an open-faced dial, Carson’s finger rested on the red pointer that stood out against the white face and black division of the surround.
“Let’s do a thorough job, make sure the gas station owners can put in a real good insurance claim. Let’s go for point two of a kiloton. That should chuck the commies all over the landscape.”
“Point two it is.” Applying slight pressure to the arrow on the dial Carson moved it around until it indicated the intended setting, and then nudged it further. “If you’re going to do a job…” He muttered to himself.
“OK, check list.” Producing a clipboard Lieutenant Andy went down a page of single line instructions.
To each as they were uttered Carson muttered “Check.” He opened another plate, dropping and losing the fastening as it fell open. “ So, just the timer to do, what do you reckon.”
“The Major wants forty five minutes.” Sergeant Hyde had stood and sweated with Simmons as the device had been worked on. “Will that get us far enough away from here?”
“That’s for sure, as lon
g as we don’t have a break down.” Twice dropping the torch in the confines of the cab and having both times to retrieve it from among the exposed and soot covered springs of the seat Carson finally confirmed everything was done. “I gave it just forty. Ample if we shift and we’ve wasted at least five here anyway.”
“Then let’s not waste any more. Hyde thought he heard a vehicle approaching, but it was too soon for it to be the enemy. It had to be another idiot ignoring the ban on motorway traffic.
“Initiate sequence, now.”
“Doing it Lieutenant. We’re all set to spoil the Commies party. I bet that pretty little Andrea will be pleased we’ve got rid of the thing.”
“I reckon they all will.”
Carson still had his hand inside the panel, He looked up at Andy. “We have a problem. The trigger switch depresses but doesn’t engage. I can’t turn the bugger on.”
“How long will it take to fix it?” Hyde had been about to lead the way back to their transport. He could hear the engines already running up to speed and feel a waft of hot air from the exhausts drifting past them.
“No way of knowing until I lift it out and then I don’t carry any spares. To improvise a spring and put it back…maybe a half hour.” Carson was already unscrewing the switch housing.
Hyde calculated times and distances. “That’s about how long before the Commie advance guard arrives.”
* * *
“OK, no one gone off for a leak?” Revell looked about the interior to make a last check that every one was back on board. As he did the vehicle took a pounding hit from a cannon shell.
Equipment flew about and the craft went over at an acute angle before Burke managed to get it back on the level. Even as he did heavy machine gun fire smacked across the ride skirt at an acute angle, slashing holes in it.
The first of the Soviet reconnaissance armour had arrived. An APC clanked across the concrete surface of the gas station and its stubby gun barrel belched a long jet of fire as it snapped off a high explosive squash head round. Had the anti- tank round hit them square on it would have destroyed them, the concussion of its detonation pounding great scabs of metal from the hulls interior and killing them all.
