by James Rouch
‘Think we did much damage to those warships, Sarge?’ Burke had failed to find an excuse for stopping work for a moment, and now struck up a conversation with his NCO in the hope of inventing one.
‘Enough to have scared the shit out of their admiral, I should imagine. The poor sod must have thought he had a safe run until he left Swedish waters. By now he won’t know what to bloody do. He can’t turn back, he hasn’t got the room to manoeuvre without taking his ships into open water, and our subs and mines will be waiting for him there. And the bastard doesn’t even know if he can take a swipe at us or not. If he does and the Swedes kick up a stink, then muck will fall on him from a great height. As I will on you if you don’t get digging.’
Regretting that the ruse had not worked for longer, Burke resumed his excavations. Frost had bound the root-woven earth together to give it a granite-like consistency. His entrenching tool had to be lifted high and driven in repeatedly before a decent size lump could be hefted on to the parapet. He noticed Dooley taking rests at frequent intervals, trying to conceal a grimace at every effort.
‘What’s the matter? Has the big hard man got cramp?’
‘Shut it. If that hole of yours were ever likely to be deep enough, I’d bury you in it. As it is, you open your trap again and I’ll likely turn you inside out and bury you in your own mouth. It’s big enough.’ With pile-driver force, Dooley sent the blade of his shovel into the soil, until it was hidden by the ice-bound earth. He paid dearly for the gesture, feeling the blood ooze again from his punctured shoulder.
‘That’ll have to do. Everyone under cover.’ Between attempts with cold hands to pile the fruits of his labours on the edge of his slit-trench, Hyde caught a glimpse of movement among distant trees. Waiting a moment to see that the others had gone to ground, he got down himself. It was probably a delusion, but huddled into the all too shallow hole, he felt warmer. After carefully cutting a vee-shaped cleft in the ragged parapet he looked again. There could be no doubt about it, there was the main body of the Russian patrol, perhaps another forty men. It wasn’t their loping progress that had first caught his attention. Trees were falling, being toppled and crushed by the advancing bulk of a crudely whitewashed T72.
Even before he could see the details of its raked frontal armour and turret, Hyde had calculated its course. As the tank cleared the tree line, the Soviet marines fanned out behind it, facing him across the half mile of bleak open ground, and started purposefully forward.
THIRTEEN
‘Well it had to turn up sooner or later. The rumours have been doing the rounds long enough.’ The third battle group showed bright and clear on Cline’s screen. Several of the traces were as large as the biggest they had already seen, but one in particular stood out, dwarfing them and shaming the other blips that swarmed about it.
‘Seventy thousand tons. The pride of the Russian fleet.’ Revell couldn’t take his eyes off the image. ‘It’s just got to be the Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, that carrier’s the biggest hull ever launched from the Leningrad yards. Hell, it’s even bigger than anything the Commies have ever laid down at Nikolayev on the Black Sea. York, I want to know if it’s operating aircraft, rotary or fixed-wing.’
‘I’m already monitoring it, Major, and it’s not, but someone is. I’ve got what sounds like a Swedish fighter controller, seems our neutrals have heard the fireworks going off in their back yard. I can’t tell what they’re yacking about, sounds like the Swedish chef out of the Muppets, but I’m betting the sky gets rather full in the next couple of minutes.’
‘It is already.’ Manually activating the automatic IFF interrogator, Cline double-checked the Identification-Friend-or-Foe system. ‘And the pair of birds coming our way aren’t ours, and they aren’t Russian. He could be right.’
‘Of course I’m fucking right. Only a genius like me would have checked that channel.’ Unable to resist, despite his confidence, York leant over to see his interpretation of the radio-intercept confirmed by two fast-moving traces on the air-watch radar.
‘Our fellow islanders have seen them too, they are getting excited.’ Over his headphones, Boris could hear the commander of the Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries on the island desperately trying to establish whether or not he could, or should, engage the fast approaching targets. ‘In the Red Army it is always the same. Without a specific order to follow, a Soviet officer is terrified of doing the wrong thing, afraid to use initiative.’
‘I hear small-arms.’ Fraser paused and listened, as he attended to the Swedish woman. His words received immediate attention, and the room was suddenly quiet.
It was unmistakable. The cold, still, air brought the sound of fighting into the room. Revell could discern the brurring chatter of machine guns, the occasional crack of single shots and, more worrying, the sharp smart crash of cannon fire.
‘Warn the gunners at the launch sites that the Ruskies are inside the perimeter. And I want the Lance ready to go on a ten-second countdown.’
This was it. Now he felt the sensations that tied Dooley in knots before a fight. Total surprise and confusion among the Russian land and naval forces had kept them safe so far, but now that slight edge was gone. Having shown their hand, they could expect the pressure to build up fast. They would have to do as much damage as they could before the Soviets hit back hard. The marine infantry attack was just the start, the Russian elite troops were, to the barrage that was inevitably coming, what the first loose flake of ice was to an avalanche.
‘Major.’ York found frequency after frequency jammed with traffic, much of it in code, but a lot of it in clear, as he tapped into the third battle group’s ship-to-ship and fire-control communications. ‘They’re getting ready to chuck hardware, I’m sure of it.’
‘How long before the Gorshkov is in range?’
‘Ten minutes at present course and speed, but some of the escorts are really piling it on. We can have a go at some of them inside five.’
‘Hold your fire, Bombardier. Forget the secondary targets, we’re waiting for a chance at the jackpot.’
‘Think we’ll still be around to collect, Major?’ Revell didn’t answer York’s question. None of the men would have been likely to believe an instant and positive ‘yes’, and nothing else would have done any good. Already they had done more, much more, than 01’ Foul Mouth or any of the brass had probably expected them to. But even if they’d wanted to, there was no way they could cut and run. They had nowhere to go to, the best they could hope for was to survive whatever the Russians, and perhaps the Swedes, threw at them, and hang grimly on to await a pick-up that might never materialise. This, more than any other mission he’d led the unit into, was taking on all the appearances of a one-way trip.
There was a series of smacks against an outside wall. Fraser fumbled with the sacking he was drawing over the woman’s face. Doing so uncovered her blackened legs.
‘Just spent rounds from Hyde’s fight.’
‘That’s OK, sir.’ Fraser tried to control his shaking hands. ‘Just as long as we don’t get an ‘over’ from that Ruskie tank.’ He moved away from the fresh corpse. ‘I’ll go back to our casualties now.’ Had that one not been available, he would have had to fabricate another excuse to leave the control room. His stomach churned, and for a brief instant his bowels had been about to empty. The sweat that broke from his body instantly seemed to turn to pellets of ice. Though he walked carefully and deliberately, his feet tripped on the stairs and he almost fell, as another group of bullets hit the roof and brought down a tile.
‘The kid’s shit scared.’ York didn’t bother to check if he was out of hearing before offering the remark.
‘Only a head-case wouldn’t be.’ It was only partly for the youngster’s benefit that Revell said it. There were times when the truth needed to be spoken aloud. None of them were there to throw their lives away. Each of them had passed up a hundred opportunities to do just that in the last few months.
No two members of the unit had t
he same reason for going on, but the reasons they had were strong, and drove them to fight to stay alive just one more day. In the Zone that was the best you could ever hope for, to see the next day, and there were never any guarantees.
Only ten of the Russian marines were still coming on. They moved in a huddled mass, close behind the slowly advancing bulk of the T72. Their fallen comrades dotted the ground they had already covered, almost impossible to discern in their winter clothing against the backdrop of snow, no more than untidy hummocks marring the pristine white coating over the landscape.
Clarence had held his fire, forcing himself to sublimate the nearly overwhelming urge to take aim, and stayed hidden. But even if he was not as yet involved in the fighting, there was still another battle for him to fight. The. air he filtered to his lungs through several layers of scarves struck bitterly cold, but he had the measure of it now. He wasn’t about to be caught a second time. Willpower was the only weapon he possessed to aid him in the struggle, and it took all he had to help prevent him closing his eyes and giving in.
‘A long burst from the tank’s co-axial machine gun smacked into the ground beside him, two of the rounds ploughing into the enemy corpse that constituted much of his protection. Made brittle by the cold, the body broke under the impacts, falling apart like a china doll. Unchecked by clothing that snapped as easily as sugar-glass, chunks of face and torso were scattered. An eye and a section of cheek and nose came to rest of the back of the sniper’s hand. The contact made him feel sick, had his flesh not been separated from the human debris by the thickness of his gloves he would have vomited. As it was, he flicked his wrist, not watching to see what new resting place the flesh found.
He cradled his head, flattening himself into his excavation as the tank fired its main armament. Flame and noise and red-hot fragments lashed the trees behind him, and as that died away it was followed by a burst of automatic fire.
Another of the Russian infantry fell, picked off by a single shot as the jostling of his companions forced him fractionally beyond the shielding steel.
A hundred yards. Clarence chambered the first of the two special bullets he’d taken from the lead-lined container. Seventy-five. He laid the barrel gently in the notch he’d carved in the parapet, and aimed over open sights at the T72. It wasn’t a side-on shot, the bullet would impact at an angle of about forty degrees: that increased the thickness of metal it would have to penetrate.
The tank’s cannon roared again and sent another shell over their heads. Once more it was the unoffending trees. that took the extreme punishment. Far from helping its crew pinpoint their position, the sledgehammer tactics only served to conceal the squad more, adding to the eye-confusing litter of debris about them as smouldering bark and lengths of shattered timber rained down.
Fifty yards. Clarence waited. Forty. Clouds of smoke billowed high above the tank, the multiple exhaust pipes emitting the beat of the big V12 diesel.
A pencil-slim spurt of white and blue flame from the side of the tank’s hull, dead centre, just below the top run of track, was the only and unspectacular evidence of the lead-sheathed round’s place of impact. Clarence chambered the second bullet and sighted once more, but it wasn’t needed.
With its engine screaming at maximum revs, the tank’s left track locked and it spun through a half-turn before lurching to a stop as its motor cut.
Suddenly deprived of their mobile cover, the marines hesitated a moment. That cost two more of them their lives as Hyde and the rest of the squad let fly with every weapon. The survivors fell back, firing off hesitant ill-aimed bursts, then turned and began to run.
Standing up and taking her time, Andrea put the last of them down, her M16’s magazine emptying as their final cries echoed back.
There was no smoke or flame coming from the tank, it just sat there, silent and immobile. Libby glanced at it frequently as he worked to deepen his slit-trench. Just as he looked up to check it once more, he saw the distinctive flame-tails of missiles rising from the north of the island. He pointed them out to Sergeant Hyde.
‘Could be SAMs, nothing to do with us anyway. Probably some Commie wetting himself and short-circuiting a firing switch.’ Hyde grabbed Andrea’s rifle, and prevented her from sending a second burst at a wounded Russian who was attempting to crawl away. ‘Don’t waste ammo. That bugger has got mates who’ll be along soon. He won’t be taking any more part in the scrap. Let him go, save your bullets for Commies who can hit back.’ A single shot ploughed into the ground between the NCO and the girl, and Hyde made no fresh attempt to stop her when she fired on the casualty they’d spared, and who now supported himself against a tree, aiming with a clumsily held AK74.
Hit by several bullets the Russian threw up his arms and fell backwards. A spurt of flame rose from his body as the contents of an ammunition pouch ignited. Cartridges in the broken magazines began to cook-off, and the corpse jerked with each volley.
‘Stupid sod.’ Libby went back to his digging.
‘Maybe he was trying for a medal.’ Through borrowed binoculars Ripper watched the burning corpse jump and twitch. Some of the rounds were going into the body and smashing what wasn’t already being consumed by the flames.
‘More likely the poor shit was scared of going back arid reporting failure. Either he was deliberately committing suicide, or he was using up the last of his ammo to make his story more convincing…’
‘Or maybe he was a party member,’ Dooley added to Hyde’s speculations.
‘Could be.’ Surfacing from the pit he’d made, Burke lodged the blade of his shovel between the upper thighs of a Russian corpse. ‘Could well be. Those bleeding card carriers take the cake. Me, I don’t reckon any Ruskies, but those real Commies, the party members, nastiest lot of fuckers you’ll ever meet. If they hadn’t started this bloody war we’d have had to do something about them some day.’
‘Here’s your chance to do something about them today.’ Jumping back into his trench, Hyde tried to count the number of enemy troops pouring from the far woods. He couldn’t, there were too many… hundreds, and another tank. And this time the Russians were using their classic tactics. As armour and infantry charged, showing none of the slow-paced caution displayed by the earlier patrol, 120mm mortar shells began to fall.
There were no individual ranging shots. The first salvo of five shells fell a hundred yards short, the second, fifty. Hyde ducked down in his trench, clamped his hands over the welded flesh of what had been his ears, and waited for the battery to zero in on his squad’s position.
‘I couldn’t track the SAMs, not with this equipment, but one of those planes is gone from the screen, and there’s nothing else to account for it.’
Revell had to accept the bombardier’s explanation of the Swedish aircraft’s disappearance. The Russians must have gone mad, or if they hadn’t, then a battery commander had. Perhaps the Swedes might put up with having one of the islands scorched and battered, and their coastline littered with wrecked shipping; but there was no way they’d shrug off the deliberate destruction of one of their fighters.
‘Those three ships left behind by the second battle group are moving.’
‘Forget them. Do we have the Gorshkov in range yet?’ Pacing didn’t bring the moment nearer any faster, but it gave Revell something to do. He almost tripped over the woman’s body, catching his foot in the sacking draping her, so that it moved and revealed her staring face, spotted with the first marks of frostbite. Even had she survived the wound-Ripper had inflicted, she would have almost certainly have lost her legs, and parts of other extremities.
‘She’s slowed a lot, must be jamming like mad, but if I’ve picked the right image from among the ghosts on this screen then we can have a go any time.’
‘Tell the gunners we’re going for broke. Every tube at the carrier. We’ll give the Ruskie admiral thirty seconds after we open up. If the crud hasn’t retaliated against Swedish territory by then, commence count-down on the Lance. You can use all t
he remaining decoys this time, York. After this we shan’t be needing any more.’
Revell would have given everything to be able to tap, understand and absorb the deluge of radio traffic between the carrier and Moscow, and between the radar-direction, fire-control and reload crews aboard each vessel. That would have told him if something would be coming their way, and when, and how much – but maybe it was better not to know. Only the need to keep Sweden neutral as long as possible had prevented the battle group from wiping the island off the map. The fact that there were Russians on it meant nothing. A single battalion of Soviet marines and their equipment was worth less than nothing in the eyes of the High Command in the Kremlin, when balanced against a vitally needed fleet, and a ship that carried the prestige of the whole country.
There was some small consolation for Revell in knowing that, at the short and still closing range between the island and the battle group, some of the warship’s heavier missile armament would be less than effective. Designed to operate against targets fifty or more miles away, it would be almost impossible for the ship’s radar to gather and set the missiles towards the island, when their sonic or high subsonic speeds would put them over the dot of land even before the first course correction following launch could be transmitted.
But it was only a very small consolation. Those powerful vessels each had a secondary armament of missiles and conventional weapons capable of delivering a torrent of explosive on to any target, at any distance. Certainly more than enough to saturate the two or three square miles of the island several times over.
The surface radar screen put everything into perspective. To the north, the tail-end of the second battle group, the stragglers whose speed or control or both had been affected by the attack. Nearer the island, the three slow-moving dots of the crippled vessels trying desperately to get out of the path of the approaching carrier and escort, and closer still the slowly fading blip that was the sinking Ivan Rogov. But it was the third battle group on which Revell concentrated all his attention.
