Blind Fire (7 page)
Every crew-port on the vehicle was open, and from each projected the bullet- spitting barrel of the infantry’s AKM’s. The bullets chased Andrea as she threw herself down and rolled to a firing position, shouldering the rocket tube. Marching spurts of gravel and stone cut towards her as she took aim.
FIVE
Ignoring the bullets striking sparks from the stone about her, Andrea took careful aim and fired the rocket at the troop carrier’s hull side.
Capable of defeating twelve inches of solid armour, the APCs thin plate provided hardly any resistance to the high velocity jet of molten explosive, unleashed by the rocket’s impact and detonation immediately below the vehicle’s turret, the commander’s position.
As though it had struck a cliff face the APC stopped dead, and its rear doors flew open as a pillar of spiralling flame burst from the turret hatch.
Nerve-shredding screams came from the vehicle. Clarence could hear them clearly above the erratic crackling of ammunition cooking off. A figure staggered from the wreck, wreathed in hoops of flame. Levelling his rifle he brought the reeling Russian into his sights, and held his fire. The apparition collapsed and squirmed in the mud, vainly trying to defeat the rippling hell encasing it. A last arching contortion and it was still, only the guttering flame and ugly black smoke giving it movement.
Discarding the single shot rocket tube, Andrea ran to the cover of the house. ‘The other is close, I can hear it...’
Slinging his rifle, Clarence reached out to take her arm and propel her away, but instead suddenly ripped her M16 from her grasp and swung the butt at her head. As she half-ducked, half-stumbled aside, the crushing blow grazed past her and hit something soft and yielding.
The blow he had aimed at the apparition had stopped it, and now it stood stock still, the bone-exposing claws of its charred hands still extended towards Andrea. A desperate hooting noise compounded of agony and distress came from the sufferer, as he rocked on the burnt stumps of his ankles. Every stitch of clothing had been consumed by the flame that still played amongst hanging ribbons and lace-like pendants of sloughing flesh, and the white of exposed bone showed on the head and arms of the anti-tank rocket’s victim.
This time Clarence didn’t hesitate, bringing up the rifle to fire. Andrea’s hand clamped hard on the barrel and forced it down. ‘No, let him live while he can.’ She snatched the weapon back. ‘He has done it to others, let him feel what it is like.’
An imploring talon reached out for the sniper and he fended it off with a sweeping blow. It was too much for the furnace-roasted limb and the forearm snapped off at the elbow, eliciting a shrill screech from the Russian.
Clarence retched, thinking for a moment that he was going to throw up. Frantically, he scraped the wrist of his suit against the wall to wipe away the adhering blood-dappled soot-stained tissue. This wasn’t how he wanted to fight his war: he was a sniper, his war was clinically clean, precise, remote. It didn’t involve contact with walking corpses, loathsome spectres that had no right to be alive. Death for him was always at a distance, only on that messy job in the Hanover salient had he ever seen, close to, the faces of the men he was killing. Even then the action had been so wild, so fast, that the faces had blurred and merged until he couldn’t recall any individual one.
The burn victim took another tottering step forward, and before Andrea could move again to stop him Clarence unslung his rifle and pumped three fast shots into the sufferer’s upper chest and face. Blackened flesh and shards of bone burst from the Russian under the devastating impact of the big dum-dum bullets. They instantly and thoroughly completed the work of destruction the fire had started. Pink foam bubbled from the scorched cavity where the bottom jaw had been. A remaining eye stared accusingly at Clarence, made grotesquely large by the shrivelling of the skin about it, bulging out over the protruding splinters of cheekbone, restrained only by a fire-welded lid.
Shooting from the hip, Clarence put a last round into the unseeing eye. That entire side of the cadaver’s head ruptured and broke open, scattering lumps of white sponge and matted tissues of crisped hair. Andrea tugged at his arm. ‘We have little time...’
Beside them, the wall bulged and shed flakes of brick and mortar as a shell exploded inside the house.
Their escape route through the farmyard had been turned into an assault course. The deluge of high explosive had crudely dismantled and scattered the remains of tractors and harvesters, cluttering the area with razor sharp sheets of steel and blazing tyres. A row of silos spouted feed-pellets and fertiliser from irregular holes. Oil and fuel from split drums added another hazard. They passed between the dismembered components of a grain conveyer and then they were clear, racing across the pockmarked fields for the far trees.
As they ran and stumbled across the shell-churned ground the distinctive discordant sounds of a Soviet V6 diesel came to them, spurring them to greater effort. The engine note rose to a thundering bellow, accompanied by the grinding squeal of abused tracks. They were just halfway when bullets began scything the long grass beside them.
‘Hold it.’ Revell had to shout to make himself heard to the others, who were already plunging into the dense undergrowth. He’d held back on reaching the fringe of the trees, waiting for Dooley and Cohen to catch up, now he hurriedly brought his binoculars into use.
‘Damn it, I know they’re there, I saw them.’ Again and again he quartered the ground where he’d seen the two figures go down. Only the regular stabs of flame from the secondary turret armament of a troop carrier, partly concealed by the farm buildings, kept him searching after he’d otherwise have given up. The fact that the Ruskies were taking an interest in the same strip of pasture was all he needed to reassure himself that he could still trust his senses.
‘How much smoke can we make?’
‘Nothing like enough.’ Hyde too had seen the mud-plastered forms crouched in the shallow crater, and had anticipated the officer’s question. ‘Just three 40mm grenades. Even if we put them down right on the button, with this breeze...’ He didn’t need to elaborate.
‘Maybe they’ll get fed up waiting, and piss off.’ Having failed to beg the use of the sergeant’s binoculars, Dooley now hovered about the major. ‘Somehow I don’t think so. That load of Reds must be good and bloody sore at us by now. Looks like this bunch are staying behind to do a thorough job.’ He knew it was no more than a gesture, the weapon was useless at that range, but Burke set up the M60 anyway.
Having annoyed Dooley immensely by obtaining a loan of the glasses first, Libby examined the distant couple. ‘They’re not moving.’
‘There’s not much room for them to move, not without offering themselves as a target.’ There was no question of pulling out now, Revell knew that. Even when he’d felt certain Andrea and the sniper were dead, he’d been reluctant; now he was positive they were still alive, there was no way he was going to leave until he was sure she was safe.
And all the time the rest of the enemy column would be bulldozing its way towards Frankfurt. In two hours it could be out of the Zone, and by spreading terror among the West German civilian population, be clogging every road and railway and airport with refugees. The hand to mouth logistical support for the NATO forces fighting south of the city would be cut to a trickle virtually immediately. Defeat, and a further extension of the Zone, would follow fast. ‘We’ll wait for them to make a break, then we’ll try to draw the APCs fire and give what cover we can.’
‘Sounds good in fucking theory,’ Dooley kept his voice down as he spoke to Cohen, ‘but unless those Reds are gonna be obliging enough to get out of their battle taxi and stroll our way, it ain’t actually gonna amount to a whole lot. I’m as keen to save that broad’s sweet fanny as the Major, and even that head-case limey sniper has his uses, ‘Dooley glanced at Libby, watching for any reaction to that remark, finding none, ‘but I can’t see what we can do, not with these pea-shooters.’ The M60 looked toy-like in his huge hand.
‘What we could do with is a miracle.’ Taking a last look through the binoculars before passing them to Dooley, Libby could see the trapped pair attempting to leave the crater and being forced to duck back as the slight movement attracted machine gun fire.
‘I think maybe we’ve got one.’ Without offering an explanation, Cohen picked up the radio and ran to dump it beside Revell. ‘Major, one of the Thunderbolts is still hanging about. He don’t want to take no eggs home and wants to know where you’d like ‘em laid.’
‘Tell him thanks; dead centre on the farm. Tell him we’ve troops close-by.’ The jet was in sight before the noise of its approach could be heard. It flashed across the fields towards the cluster of buildings, now partially hidden by drifting smoke. As it closed it lifted to roof-top height and, two hundred metres from its target, released an unpainted silver pod from each outer wing-pylon.
Tumbling end over end, the big elongated teardrop-shaped canisters fell away from the aircraft and arced towards the farm. Their impact was invisible to the dis- tant watchers, but the wall of yellow fire that rose beyond the house wasn’t. To a man, they stood and waited, watching the giant bubble of flame as it grew to its full size and began to rise and turn boiling black at the edges.
Libby counted the seconds to himself… two, three... the ‘four’ was only part formed in his mind when the moment came. The instant the fireball began to shrink it was suddenly transformed, becoming a searing white and doubling, tripling, to envelop the whole farm, as the miniature cylinders of oxygen within it released their pressurised contents simultaneously. House, barns, silos, everything disappeared within the all-devouring glaring maelstrom of white fire.
He’d seen it all, there was not a weapon that Libby had not witnessed in action, nuclear, conventional or chemical, but there was something overpoweringly awe- inspiring about super-napalm. Whenever it was used on the battlefield men would stand and watch, thanking God, or whatever they believed in, that this time it was not going down on them. How many times had he walked through the ashes of those on whom it had, and the ashes of how many men? A hundred, a thousand? He didn’t know because there was never enough left to form even a rough estimate, just a crumbling fragment of bone here, a fused rifle mechanism there, and that would be all that was left of a section, a platoon, even a company.
For five long seconds the white fire hid the farm, then in a moment it was gone, and the smoke that replaced it swiftly rose into the low clouds, propelled by the colossal temperatures that had been generated. In that brief span of time the farm had been destroyed, utterly. Only one end of the house still stood, and that at an angle, as though impatient to join its fellows heaped below it. The big sheets of metal cladding had been stripped from the barns and the surviving skeletal frames were buckled and glowing. A remaining silo dipped suddenly and its flame- scorched metal crumpled like aluminium foil as it hit the cinder-smothered yard. In the midst of the ruin sat the hulk of a personnel carrier. Its armour was no longer the standard Soviet drab grey, now the exposed bare metal showed alternate\ bands of straw yellow and deep blue between smudges of black, like an inexpertly quenched machine-tool.
Kurt made no attempt to conceal his leering pleasure as he watched Andrea running towards them. Her camouflage jacket gave little evidence of the superb body beneath, but he could imagine it. The smooth round breasts would be bouncing at every step, fighting the restraints of her bra. She’d be sweating now, and he imagined what it would be like to rub his hard body down in the damp valley between them. Shit, he should have tied her down and fucked her when he had the chance. What tricks he could have taught her! But not now, not now they were with this crowd of Brits and Yanks - she had too many protectors.
Not that the bitch needed any, Ernst had found that out the hard way. Kurt still remembered the scream, and the sight of the would-be rapist as he staggered out of the house, his entrails hanging from his slashed stomach down into the trousers around his ankles. He’d have gone for her then, but none of the others would help. When Karl had almost met a similar fate a couple of nights later, and had been lucky only to lose the end of his penis, they had given up the idea of taking her by force and resigned themselves to a frustrating time, taking it out on the available women refugees when they could. Now he was the only one of the gang left.
They hated him, this lot. The major, the sergeant, all of them, just because he had been a border guard. He knew he was there on sufferance, and only because Andrea was. Still, it was better than a prison camp, that would have been the alternative, and they couldn’t watch him forever. No point in escaping now, let them protect him, he’d make his break when they were out of the Zone, that was the best plan. But plan or no plan, if the war came to a sudden end then he would have to get out fast, lose himself among the millions of refugees. Remote though such a possibility seemed, it was one he had reason to fear. To the communists he was a deserter, to the West Germans a war criminal, his fate would be the same whichever side won and got him in their clutches.
If he ripped off all her clothes now she’d be good and hot, nicely lubricated underneath, he’d be able to slip in easy, once her hands were tied. Just the thought made him leak...
Kurt took his eyes from the girl, as he realised the sniper’s were on him. Nasty that one, cold, emotionless; even the big man, Dooley, was wary of him. ‘Let’s move.’ Revell added his urging to Hyde’s. ‘We’ve got to find a clearing for the chopper to do a pick-up. Come on, shift.’ ‘I’d rather walk.’ Cohen felt ill at the prospect of another ride. ‘Just give me a call and tell me where you’re heading, I’ll meet you there.’ ‘If you can run at a couple of hundred kilometres an hour you’re welcome.’ Hyde wiped rain from his face, and left a smear of mud across his disfigured features. ‘Otherwise shut up and get moving.’ ‘You want me to take the radio?’ Dooley extended a hand to the corporal. ‘You can piss off. If I want help I’ll want it reliable, and at reasonable rates. I’ll stick to Avis.’
‘Suit yourself, just trying to be helpful.’ Giving Burke a nudge that pushed him an involuntary three steps sideways, Dooley lifted his own load. ‘That Major of yours is in a bloody hurry isn’t he?’ Burke rubbed his shoulder as they started off.