by James Rouch
Instead it struck at the joint between two reactive armour blocks, setting off both. Inside the Iron Cow the noise was colossal and again the craft was thrown sideways, almost turning through a hundred and eighty degrees.
From the turret Libby unleashed a stream of cannon shells and sent them in to the side plates of the Russian armoured personnel carrier. The turret had been swinging to bear on them again but now it stopped and the barrel drooped to a useless maximum depression.
From their co-axial machine gun came a long stream of armour piercing rounds and Russian infantry staggering from the Rardens victim were chopped down. Libby switched his aim and concentrated another burst from the cannon on a patch of armour just below the rocket launcher of a scout car that had rocked to a stop at the side of the buildings.
For an instant the metal glowed under the stream of impacts and then from inside came a muted explosion that burst up through the top of the vehicle to dismount the loaded launch rails and out of the front through the driver’s vision port
“The buggers are all around us.”
The turret guns continuous fire was matched by the storm of tracer that hosed from the gun ports along the sides. Two motorcycle combinations raced into the area and both spun and fell over as machine gun fire slashed their tyres and killed their drivers. The shaft drive machines bucked as the spinning wheels of bike and sidecar came down on the hard surface, throwing out the passengers.
Getting in behind the two low-loader trailers the weapons on the Iron Cow slugged it out with the increasing numbers of Soviet vehicles. Twice shells struck fuel pumps on the forecourt. Both times there were spurts of flame but no fire followed. A tungsten cored round from the hovercraft missed its intended APC target and went on to strike a scout car that drove around the side of a building straight in to it. Flame spurted from every hatch and an internal explosion sent its four missiles and their launch rails spinning away.
Tracer lodging in a huge spare wheel attached to the front of the closest trailer set it alight and illuminated the Iron Cow. Revell ordered their driver to back away in to the darkness. Shot and shell followed them and external fitting were smashed and torn away. Unequal from almost the first moment it was now becoming more so. Had they been a conventional vehicle with wheels or tracks they would already have been immobilised.
“Get us out of here.” Revell could see even more enemy vehicles arriving and fanning out to face them.
By the light of a blazing APC a line of trucks could be seen crossing the overpass from the far carriageway. Troops, many armed with rocket propelled grenades, were jumping down and being sorted into lines by their officers. It was Boris who had drawn the officer’s attention to the time. “Major, only eight minutes before detonation.”
“We need every ounce of speed, now.” Burke heard the officer’s urgent voice through his head set. For the duration of the fire-fight he had crouched in his seat, watching the enemy tracer coming straight at him, so it had seemed. All the time he was able to do nothing, except call out when he saw a target he imagined their turret gunner might have missed.
Burke had the hovercraft in motion bare seconds later, was racing for the covering darkness of the autobahn beyond the service area. Machine gun and cannon fire followed them. A single round penetrated the thinner rear plates beside the door and zipped across the interior before flattening itself on the floor of the turret basket. Smoke from the unburned tracer element when it finally came to rest.
The fleeing machine was bracketed by explosions as more low velocity guns aboard armoured personnel carriers sent high explosive at them. Again it was the Kevlar ride skirts that absorbed most damage and the hovercraft took on a list.
“If we keep up this speed the panels will rip away.” Burke was having to wrestle with the controls to keep direction as air spilling out made the craft pull to one side.
“Then let them. Just keep us going as long as we hang together.” Revell could hear a panel drumming as the slipstream threatened to curl it back and rip it from it securing strips.
They reached the top of a long climb. The countryside was invisible around them but they knew they were climbing, through the straining of the motors and the continual presence along side them of a lane marked for heavy vehicles. They passed under a road bridge and then began to ride down the far side of the hill.
“If we keep going, in a few minutes we could be back on a hill top, in line of sight of ground zero.”
Revell knew that Carson was right. For another minute he sensed the hovercraft was motoring downwards, then it levelled out. “OK, find us some shelter around here.”
“Two minutes Major.”
Boris’s voice came over the headset, cracking with fear.
“Turn off all the electrics, everything. Secure all gun ports” The interior became jet black as the faint illumination from the panel and the dull red glow from the single small bulb behind the turret basket died.
Burke tried to use the headlights but nothing happened, they had been destroyed along with every other external fitting. They were on a rough track he had found after turning off the autobahn and driving through a tough over-grown hedge that plucked hard at the torn sections of the skirts thick material. Something big and showing only as a jet-black structure against the dark sky loomed ahead and they drove into a farmyard. A hard right turn and he took the doors off a modern barn as they drove in to the cavernous interior. A storm of grain and chaff arose from the floor and made a storm of particles about the interior.
“That’s about the best I can…”
Pure white light lanced through the interior and lit it like day as it found a way in past a buckled gun port and a pinprick hole in the armour where a round had just failed to penetrate. Instinctively they ducked and huddled together, covering their heads with their hands. There was a sound like an approaching express-train multiplied ten fold and then a blast wave struck the farmyard. The building they were in leaned over and the ribbed metal panels of its covering squealed and cracked under the pressure. Several of the curved roof sections whirled away in to the night. There was a continuous rumble for a long moment as the roof of the half- timbered farmhouse near by collapsed into ruin, unable to withstand the blast wave. There was a moment of silence, just the sound of the over pressure diminishing in the distance and then the back wave struck and the panels about them were punished again, several more being torn off and others partially removed, being left ripped and hanging by corners. They flapped back and forth crashing and grinding together and against the steel beams to which they were now only partially secured.
Outside there was the noise of other loose items being thrown about. The sheet steel shelter became almost a stark girder frame with only a fraction of its corrugated panels remaining. The Iron Cow, its skirt fully deflated, letting the hull rest hard on the ground, was moved bodily sideways. A long ripping sound signalled the loss of a complete skirt panel and the stripping away of at least one securing strip of spring steel.
Outside objects finally stopped moving about. The only sound was the last fragments of debris falling from shattered roof into the heaps of ruin below.
In a corner, holding tight to their prisoner Andrea was sobbing. Boris tried the electrics and some of them functioned. He groped in the darkness for a spare bulb and screwed it in to the socket. Faint red light lit them. It felt strange after the momentary flash of pure white light that had washed darkness from every corner, even though it had found only two tiny holes by which to enter.
Dooley put his arm around Andrea and pulled her away from the body. She was shaking violently. No one had noticed when the Russian had died. His eyes were open, slightly hooded and there was a bead of blood in the corner of his mouth. Lieutenant Andy was bent double on his bench, not moving.
“Hey buddy, it’s all over now. No need to assume the position.” Carson reached out to shake his officer, then carefully lifted his head instead. He was dead. “When, how…”
“N
othing you can do. Samson stood, having to bow his head to do so. He took the corpse by both shoulders and pulled it forward. There was an ugly sound and the remains slid off of the jagged point of broken steel that had been sent spearing through the hovercrafts side.
“I was sure I set it to only point two.” Carson stared uncomprehendingly at the body, now laid out on the floor of the vehicle, the face covered with a spare jacket.
“You know what freaks those pressure waves are. They do the most weird things” Samson had removed the mans dog tags and was now entering the details in a little notebook. “I thought we were going to hang onto our Russian though. Lonely way to go, among strangers. I never even got his name.”
It could have been a lot worse.” Burke started up the engines, previously stopped so they would be less likely to ingest flying rubbish that would damage the blades. “We were only on forty-five percent power coming up that long drag. The damage to the skirts must be pretty bad to be spilling that much air.”
“Good job we made it over the top, or we’d have got an almighty shove that would have dropped us right down in this valley.” Revell used the cupola to view outside. It was starkly black. A long way off, across the far side of the farmyard something was burning but the flames were small and lit only their immediate area. Looking back above the hill that had sheltered them though the whole sky was illuminated. The detonation had opened the many fuel tanks at the gas station, like slicing the tops of eggs and their contents were blazing.
“I reckon we stopped them.” Libby had obtained the same impression through the turret sights.
“Between what we’ve knocked out and the fact that the remaining armour is going to run out of fuel I think there is a fair chance we have.” Dropping down from the cupola Revell rummaged for a bottle of water and took a swig. “A pity it could not have been stopped before those refugees were driven on a death march across the minefields and on to the guns of the NATO line. I wonder what happened to that woman, the dark haired one we met in the underground service area.
Corporal Thorne looked vague. “Don’t remember her. I was wondering what will happen to the Russian commander who sent those poor sods in to battle. He spent a lot of lives to get no-where.”
* * *
General Zucharnin. listened on the white telephone. He made no comment as he paid rapt attention and his thoughts could not have been judged from his expression or stance. Finally he put it down, perhaps just a touch harder than was necessary.
So the gamble had not worked. An entire reconnaissance battalion had been utterly destroyed, down to the last man and vehicle. Along with it more than a third of the division had become casualties, mostly with damaged vision and lung injuries from the over-pressure. Many armoured vehicles were immobilised by ruined electrics and blocked engine filters. Seven of the precious self-propelled guns had been wrecked and others partially buried or over-turned. The remaining troops were going nowhere. A few might trickle back but most could only wait until they were mopped up by NATO forces or if they held out, eventually destroyed by air strikes or artillery fire.
No provision had been made for recovery of battle damaged vehicles or wounded men. They were as much a loss as though they had been killed or burned out. Many of the survivors would die over the next few weeks, from the massive doses of radiation they had absorbed. Better the British, Americans and West Germans should nurse them rather than clutter his resources. But overall the cost was not too high. The men had been quite expendable and their equipment was just a drop in the ocean. The refugees, he hardly gave them a thought. They had served a slight purpose in the opening moves of the assault but beyond that they had no value.
Without further thought he ticked boxes and scrawled a signature on the returns his clerk had left for him. The figure for the losses among the infantry were likely about right. The number of armoured vehicles was more exact but that could eventually be modified if an effort was made to bring in crocks from the battlefield.
There was no figure for the dead among the refugees, it didn’t matter. They were of no consequence. There would always be more when he needed them.
* * *
A dark haired woman carrying a child limped into Bayreuth, making her way towards an aid station that flew a large Red Cross flag. She paused on the bridge to move the child to a more comfortable position before going on. As she did she felt the bulk of the mobile phone in her pocket.
She took it out and looked at it. Stepping between two corpses and avoiding the debris littering the road surface around a gutted armoured car she crossed to the parapet. Slowly, deliberately, she dropped it in to the water.
Document Outline
THE ZONE 10 Death March.bmp
THEZONE10 06APR07.pdf ��
THE ZONE Back Cover.bmp
