by James Rouch
‘That’s what we’ll be if we bloody stay here much longer. The Ruskies have got every bloody inch of this river zeroed.’ Burke swore.
‘Shut it, you miserable bugger…’ Hyde started to go forward, but never made it. A mortar shell scored a direct hit on the starboard engine and the craft staggered, throwing everyone about. Hauling himself to his knees, he looked down. The floor was awash. He turned to search for the damaged section of hull, and then the smell hit him and he shouted to countermand Revell’s order to their gunner to fire on a flak mount aboard a container ship settling by the bows in mid-stream.
‘No, hold your fire, hold it. A fuel line’s gone, we’re filling up with kerosene.’
THREE
Fighting the controls, Burke managed to bring the craft back on to an even keel, but even with the ride height reduced by half the demands being made on the remaining engine were almost too much, and one after another all but the most vital auxiliary systems had to be shut down.
The first was the air conditioning, and that left them with no alternative but to open the hermetically sealed ramp a fraction in an effort to dispel the dangerous accumulations of fumes from the spilt fuel. ‘Beach us.’
‘We’re OK, we’ve still got headway, I can get us back.’ Burke couldn’t understand the officer’s order. They had problems, big problems, but they weren’t on fire, and they weren’t sinking. ‘It’s OK, Major…’
‘Beach us. There’s an empty slipway ahead and to the left.’ Burke complied, juggling the controls to keep the fifty per cent power evenly distributed around the edges of the flexible ride curtain and battling to overcome the Iron Cow’s tendency to keep veering to the right.
Light litter flew from beneath the craft as it left the water and travelled on to the timber-strewn launching ramp. The enemy fire intensified, but the cannons could no longer be brought to bear and what mortar bombs came near had their effect smothered by the stacks of plate and mountains of drag chains among which they landed. A single machine gun continued to fire with results, peppering the hull at close range.
‘Get them out, Sergeant.’ Revell unfastened a locker and began to unpack the cased equipment he took from it. ‘I want a tight perimeter defence around this bus. Mutually supporting positions, all in good cover. I’ll leave the details to you. Boris stays with me.’
‘Me as well?’
The answer Burke got from the NCO was to be dragged from his seat and have his rifle thrust at him before being propelled through the exit.
‘Make this priority.’ Revell completed the assembly of the equipment as he called to the radioman. ‘Don’t route it through the command centre in the convoy, give it straight to GHQ. Be brief, use your own words and tell them the position, and then say they’ll have laser designation on the block-ships in two minutes. Better tell them we’re only half a mile from target. I hope they’ll bear that in mind when choosing warheads, otherwise we won’t be here to line up a second target for them.’
It was a tight squeeze working in the cramped confines of the turret. Revell pulled the co-axial machine gun from its mount, and with no time for finesse dropped its component parts on to the thinly padded bench below. The laser only just fitted into place, its power-pack actually nestling against the compact body of the Rarden.
Taking up position behind it, Revell aligned the sight on a tanker of about twelve thousand tons that formed the centrepiece of the obstruction, and waited. He was gambling that Command would have something in reserve capable of doing the job, and that the haste with which the Russians had been forced to complete their preparations meant they’d not had the time to install any sophisticated counter-designation equipment.
If they had, and they detected the invisible beam he was directing, then at any second they might retaliate and the eye he pressed to the rubber surround of the sight be boiled from his head. He had seen it happen, and it took conscious willpower to keep him there.
From beyond the ceramic and steel armour he heard the crash and clatter of the squad’s weapons going into action, and answering fire from Russian small arms. A grenade exploded, someone was screaming.
Without moving from the gunner’s set, Revell groped with his free hand for his assault shotgun in the rack below. His fingers found its barrel and he hauled it up to cradle its familiar bulk across his lap. Now he had two reasons for leaving the laser, but still he stayed, and waited.
Andrea saw her grenade blast the Russian’s body apart, and with careful deliberation put a second forty-millimetre shell into the chest of another. He went the same way, and took the men either side with him.
Trailing blue smoke from its burned-out rocket motor, an anti-tank missile flashed past to self-destruct over the river when it failed to find a target.
Another group of Russians charged from cover, shouting and yelling as they came. Once more they had to bunch to pass between piles of props and girders and once more they were slaughtered as they were channelled through those killing grounds.
From the top of a gantry walkway, Clarence took in the scene below. So far he had left the killing to the others, he was looking for different targets, and now he found them.
Behind a long brick-built workshop Russian military police and KGB troops were using sticks, boots and rifle butts to hurry soldiers being unloaded from packed trucks and field cars. Using the telescopic sight on his rifle the sniper panned across the new arrivals. Few of them carried weapons, some didn’t even have proper boots, and were wearing various types of footwear of obvious civilian origin. All of them were in rags, with the few insignia visible indicating that they were from all sorts of units: construction, pipeline and chemical, as well as artillerymen and radio-technical troops.
Some of them looked frightened, many bewildered; none of them looked happy. Weapons were being thrust at them, AKS-47s for the lucky ones, a couple of grenades for those less fortunate, lengths of angle-iron and chain for those not even that lucky.
Despite the rising dust clouds and scudding smoke from riverside fires, the sun was hot on Clarence’s back. If it brought him discomfort it didn’t register, when he was lining up on a target nothing ever did. Of more concern to him was the distortion caused by the heat haze shimmering from the piles of ships’ plates, and the confusing, near blinding, glint from heaps of swarf in bins outside the workshop.
It was not among the crowd of impressed Russian infantry that he sought a victim; he found his target standing a little to one side. The Russian officer might just that moment have come from the tailors. He was immaculate; jacket pressed, boots shined. At his side the wooden holster for his pistol had been polished until it almost glowed, and the metal fittings at its end, that enabled it to be used as a stock for the weapon it held, had been burnished to a mirror finish.
The staff car parked close by was less showy, but with its neat camouflage paint and unmarked bodywork stood out among the rougher forms of transport surrounding it as much as the officer did from his none-too-willing men.
Taking a fraction longer, Clarence sighted and applied a steady and growing pressure to the trigger. At the last instant another head was interposed between him and that he was aiming at.
The field-police sergeant lunged forward into the officer’s arms as the file-nicked head of the bullet mushroomed on impact and burst chunks of skull-casing and brain matter from the back of his head.
Disentangling himself from the slumping corpse the officer dived for the open rear door of his car. He was half inside the already moving vehicle when a second single shot rang out.
Starred where the bullet had punched through, the windscreen was smeared with dark blood as the driver collapsed forward onto the steering wheel.
Leaping in fits and starts as the dying man’s foot slipped from the clutch pedal, the car collided with the side of a Gaz six-wheeler, crushing and trapping several soldiers.
Ignoring the pain and confusion of the distant scene, Clarence shifted his aim back to the officer. Dust and s
cuff marks obscured the shining black leather of his boots where the Russian had been dragged, and the sniper put his next shot into the metal panel of the door just forward of them.
Clutching his side the officer tumbled out, and fighting the agony of his smashed hip tried to crawl away. A fourth bullet tore off his lower jaw and went on to break his breastbone and drive the sharp ends of jagged ribs into his heart and lungs.
A smattering of shots came his way, but the fire was uncoordinated and seconds later Clarence judged it safe to look again. The immediate threat of the mass attack had evaporated. The Soviet field-police were having their work cut out just to stop many of the assault troops from making a run for it. Their methods were brutal, and though effective, did nothing to encourage enthusiasm among their victims.
Settling down again, Clarence waited to identify whoever it was who would take over. Experience had brought even more patience to the task he already tackled with such dedication. He knew that if no other officer appeared than sooner or later one of the field-police, or perhaps an NCO among the handful of KGB troops, would emerge as the one taking charge. He chambered a round, and waited.
Twenty-seven minutes. Revell had heard every second of each one tick loud in his mind. They’d had nothing beyond a bare acknowledgement of their signal. In three more minutes he’d have to try the radio again, and if no support was coming, if Command had nothing with which to try to blast a hole in the blockade, then he’d have no alternative but to call the squad back inside and try and nurse the crippled craft back to the protective umbrella of the convoy.
Damn it, and they’d been doing so well, had almost been through. Intermittent small arms fire was audible outside. The Russians were probing their positions again. Soon they would dispense with the piecemeal attacks and go for a knockout punch. It could only be an absence of firm leadership that had prevented them from doing so before now.
To a God he didn’t believe in anymore he said a silent thank you for the rigidity of the Communist system that made every man terrified of losing his own initiative for fear of the consequences of getting it wrong.
‘Aircraft. IFF doesn’t function.’
‘Where are they coming from, how many?’ Revell couldn’t leave the designator, was forced to constantly realign it as blast waves shifted them, or the pressure of the backed-up river moved the block ships; he had to rely on Boris’s interpretation of the information on the screens. If the Identification-Friend-or-Foe equipment really had failed then their radio-man’s alert and swift observation might be the only thing to provide warning of danger from the skies.
‘From the north west. There are two, no three. Approach speed is very fast, mach two, no, closer to mach four. The set must be at fault, the picture is all wrong, they have no wings.’
‘Better secure everything. Warn the others to keep down, forget the Russians.’ The set was working perfectly, but Revell couldn’t blame the man for thinking it must be on the blink. Those fast approaching ‘aircraft’ could only be cruise missiles. Wingless, they relied on body-lift at high supersonic speeds to carry their payloads.
He made a final slight adjustment to the laser’s point of aim, centring it on the mid-section of the tanker. A telltale white dot on the lens of the designator told him precisely the place on the hull being turned into a laser emitter whose coded frequency would bring the warhead of the first cruise exactly to it.
Already he had risked a hurried glance through the turret’s periscopes to determine which should be his second and third choices. The cramp in his arm and fingers was forgotten, he slowed his breathing so as not to cause any deviation in the beam.
The cruise came in low over their heads and dived on to the tanker, in vision for only a tiny fraction of time as no more than a blurred white flash.
A huge fireball hid the tanker and from it soared giant portions of fabricated steel. Bow and stern of the ship were propelled in either direction, and lifted by the blast from the mud, were caught by the heaving water and born downstream until they turned over and sank.
Identifying his second target as the obscuration cleared, Revell was only just fast enough in switching aim to it. A deck cargo of rusted freight containers was thrown high into the air as the second missile struck, but unaided by the pent-up forces of unflushed gases that had rendered the tanker’s destruction so complete, this same sized vessel was not destroyed utterly.
Bridge and superstructure gone, its hull torn open to the water line, the vessel wallowed sideways from the line and settled once more into the bed of the river, still almost on an even keel. Revell saw the implication even as he laid the white spot on the side of an ore carrier. One more missile, one more ship, but even if its destruction was as total as that of the tanker, there still remained the hulk of the container ship obstructing the channel.
The explosion of the last of the cruise missiles failed even to envelop the container ship as it broke the back of the ore carrier, then as the broken ship began to heel over, Revell saw it heave and shudder as though being attacked by massive forces.
A wall of water had been building up behind the blockade, and now the Elbe set about clearing a way for itself. What three swiftly delivered ship-killing blows had failed to do, millions upon millions of gallons of pent-up water set about, re-opening its route to the sea.
They might only have been plastic boats in a bathtub for all they mattered in the face of that irresistible onslaught. The crack of the cruises’ detonations, the booms of their following sonic waves, were nothing compared to the din of metal on metal as one after another the block ships were tossed aside and into each other. Bows were lifted by the surge and sent like monstrous spears through the sides of other vessels. A large tug that rolled over offered its propellers like a can-opener to the side of a ferry and sliced a fifty-foot gash in its plates.
‘Get them back on board. We’re in business again.’ Without stripping down the designator, Revell hand-cranked the turret round until the barrel of the Rarden faced the direction from which an increasing volume of Russian machine gun fire was coming. It was a temptation to stay, to use it, but he vacated the chair for Ripper as the others backed aboard, returning the enemy fire as they came.
Rockets scored near misses on the debris beside them, and the laser bucked and twisted on its mount as an armour-piercing machine gun round found the aperture from which it had been aimed and destroyed the glass prism protecting it, and its complex lens.
Difficult to manoeuvre in the confined space with the power of only one engine to tap, the Iron Cow was taking more and more punishment. An antitank rocket scored a direct hit on the disabled engine, and only its tough construction stopped the jet of white-hot plasma generated by the hollow-charge warhead from penetrating the hull itself.
‘Cut in the air conditioning, clear these fumes.’ It was going to take them a couple of minutes more to get back on to the water; at their reduced speed, a couple more after that before they were out of range of the intense fire. Revell knew they didn’t have that much time. ‘Use the cannon.’
‘Now you’re talking, Major.’ Ripper pushed a clip of incendiary shells into the Rarden, and gave the pumps only a few seconds to begin flushing the stink of fuel from the interior before firing them.
Egged and bullied on, giving half-hearted cheers in ragged time with the cue from a few field-police pushing them, the ragbag assortment of Russian troops kept up their furious firing, as if they were eager to exhaust their ammunition as quickly as possible. Grenades were thrown, often over the heads of the front ranks of the advancing men, and they were the devices’ only victims.
‘Look at them go, you ever see anyone move that fast before?’ To complete the rout his first burst had started, Ripper unleashed a second. It was hardly needed. Throwing down their weapons the Russians turned and ran, trampling down the hardy few who tried to press on, and those foolish enough to try to stop them. Bodies smouldered and burned where the burst had plunged into the packed ranks. N
ot all of them lay still.
The recoil forces added another difficulty as Burke tried to steer the now underpowered machine around the many obstructions in its path. Jagged stacks of scrap metal plucked and tore at the reinforced rubberised fabric of the ride skirt, and each tear meant air spilt and another slight reduction in their hover height.
A cloud of spray told him they were over the water as he fought to correct a dangerous sideslip towards a buckled tower crane.
‘Take us straight through the middle. I think the Russians have just played their last card.’
Wrecked ships towered over the Iron Cow as they negotiated the channel between them. Masts and bows and funnels stuck up from the water like so many bizarre tombstones, and some of the bodies whose graves they marked floated beside them, those of the Russian scuttling crews and anti-aircraft artillerymen who had still been aboard when the missile impacted.
‘We sure did show those Ruskies, did you see me make ‘em run. I’ll beta few of them are halfway home to Moscow already.’ Ripper’s feet did a little soft-shoe shuffle as they dangled in the centre of the cabin. ‘I just can’t wait to sample the delights of Hamburg, I sure heard a lot about that place. I been given a few addresses.’
‘It will be interesting to see if you can find them.’ Through her periscope Andrea was watching the approaching fringes of the city centre.
All along the water’s edge there was nothing but heaps of rubble, with here and there the stumps of legs of a crane giving some reference point.
‘Doesn’t look like you’ll be needing a roadmap.’ Dooley had seen the same. ‘Looks like they haven’t got any roads.’
‘Aw, and I was looking forward to seeing the place. Hey, what the hell, I’m here, I’ll make the best of it. I’ll find something when I get ashore.’
‘Don’t put any money on it.’ Burke was watching his bank of dials and gauges.
