Hard Target (7 page)

‘Just two miles from the refugee camp now, Major.’ The sky was beginning to lighten, and Hyde couldn’t decide which was best, normal optics or the various imaging systems available to him. ‘The Russians have a dawn-to-dusk curfew on the place, so that still gives us twenty minutes before the first of the mobs will be leaving the shelters on foraging trips. Then they swarm all over the area, scavenging for anything they can find.’ ‘Where’s this place we can hide up? It’ll have to be good.’ ‘Isn’t it just.’ Burke’s words lacked enthusiasm. ‘You just drive.’
‘Sod it, Sarge, isn’t there anywhere else?’ ‘No, it’s dead ahead now. Take us in very slow and don’t put us down till I tell you.’
Burke brought the skimmer’s speed down to a crawl. ‘You’ve got to be fucking joking. Did you think I would?’

The Iron Cow began to climb a gentle slope towards the dense dark wall of trees at the perimeter of an area of woodland. Very carefully, Burke piloted* the hovercraft between two well-weathered stakes. Barbed wire grated beneath the belly of the machine and then the noise was gone and the tangled mass of undergrowth engulfed them.

Several times, despite the intense care he took, their driver couldn’t prevent the skimmer from nudging trees it had to squeeze past. Angular dark shapes, tantalisingly indistinct, were glimpsed at the edge of the screen as they drove in deeper. Sergeant Hyde stood behind the driver’s seat, scrutinising every inch of the woods and signalling slight corrections of course by tapping Burke’s left or right shoulder.

‘Forward a little more, left, left; a little more. Steady. Put her down.’ The engine note remained the same. Burke made no move to follow the last instruction, maintaining the same ride height. ‘I said put us down.’

Their driver still made no move to comply, finely balancing the controls to keep them hovering in the same spot.
‘Do as the sergeant says.’ Revell added his weight. ‘You do know where we are, don’t you, Major?’ With a slight movement of the left steering pedal Burke corrected a tendency on the part of the machine to drift to the right. ‘This is a bloody minefield. The place is stiff with the ruddy things. Those are wrecks out there.’ He pointed at the screen, to a vague squat outline some yards ahead of them.

Revell looked at Hyde. There was nothing in the man’s face to give him any clues, there was hardly any face, but the sergeant’s manner didn’t suggest he was contemplating suicide and intent on taking them all with him. ‘So put us down gently.’

For a couple of seconds Burke still stubbornly resisted, then began very gradually to reduce engine power to enable the craft to settle. All the time he made minute adjustments to keep the position Hyde had indicated.

Like all of the others Rinehart held his breath until the Iron Cow was safely grounded, then let it out in a sigh of relief. ‘What do you want us to do now, Sarge. Go for a stroll through the woods?’

‘This is the only place the refugees don’t come foraging for metal. They’re like a load of jackdaws, pinch anything...’
‘Hey, Dooley, you got a load of relatives around here some place?’ It was Cohen who interrupted the British NCO.

‘...that’s the reason the Commies don’t lace this area with ground radar surveillance dishes. They’d all be turned into frying pans by the end of the day. About the only things the refugees won’t go near is mines. These derelicts have been here two years and they haven’t been touched in all that time.’

‘How well do you know this camp, Sergeant?’ Revell got in first, before Dooley could take up Cohen on his remark.

‘Pretty well. I expect it’s changed shape a bit since the last time I was here, about four months ago, but the Reds don’t like them to get above a hundred thousand so overall it’ll be much the same. Certainly the inner areas will be. It’s the later additions, the most recently tacked on shelters that alter the appearance and can get you lost.’

‘At that size it’s going to be too big to scout on foot, even if we weren’t spotted as we roamed about. Do you have any contacts in there, who might be helpful with the right persuasion?’

He’d have to answer carefully, Hyde was fully aware of that. Both sides, in theory at least, enforced the Red Cross’s rules about no military interference in the camps beyond minimum policing; but Soviet commanders broke them when it suited them, and few soldiers on either side could resist the obvious attractions of the various ‘entertainments’ the camps offered. Many NATO troops made a point of carrying extra rations and similar temptations that could be exchanged for the frequently desperate refugees’ gold, or jewellery, or bodies. He didn’t know the major’s standpoint on the matter so he played safe, he wasn’t about to lose his stripes or get himself slung out of the army, just because he spoke without thinking.

‘I’ve heard of a couple of places where we might get information about any new activities the Reds have started in the area. I expect I can find them.’ ‘Don’t be cute, Sergeant Hyde. I know what goes on in the camps, I’m not trying to catch you out. Considering the mayhem we hope to let loose before the day is out, bending a few rules isn’t going to bother me. Now, yes or no ?’ ‘I’ll give it an hour. My best cover will be to mix and merge with the civvies. Better break out the rags, Collins.’

From a locker Collins dragged out a kitbag, and started to extract various articles of patched and faded clothing.
‘Fuck that.’ Dooley moved away. ‘I kept thinking someone had wind. It weren’t, it were those, phew.’ He held his nose.

Clarence toed a garment that was dropped. ‘If you go into the camps you not only have to look right, you have to smell right. You should feel completely at home.’

‘Don’t aggravate him, Clarence. You know he’s got a temper worse than yours.’ From the heap Hyde picked a large soiled windcheater. ‘Scruffy so it won’t draw attention, bulky enough to hide a weapon. Soap doesn’t figure anywhere on the list of priority supplies the Red Cross and Oxfam bring in, so it’s no good walking about with a well scrubbed look smelling of bloody violets.’ He pulled on an oversized pair of Levi cords.

‘You can pick me an outfit too, Sergeant. I want to see the ground for myself; and we’ll take one other man, your choice.’

About to secure the top of the jeans with a grubby polka-dot necktie improvised as a belt, Hyde paused. ‘That’s not a good idea, Major. The civvies won’t give us away if they spot us; the Ruskies never pay for information and in the camps everyone wants to be anonymous, not draw attention to themselves. But if they heard your accent... Well, they’d be down on us like a swarm of locusts and the Reds will spot a riot a mile away.’

‘You saying we ain’t popular?’ Dooley stuck his chin out in an aggressive fashion.

‘That’s just the point, you’re too damned popular. It’s been just us British, and the West Germans, in this sector for the whole of the war so far. We’re not exactly overburdened with luxuries to give away or barter, but the refugees think you lot are loaded with goodies. They’ll tear you apart looking for them.’

‘I’m still going, Sergeant. Pick our third man.’ Hyde knew before he looked round which of his own men would have his eyes locked on him. Sure enough it was Libby. Their turret gunner had ducked down from his perch and was sidling towards the old clothes. So why not? He had more experience than Collins, was more useful than Burke and more predictable than Clarence. And if he had a special reason for spending as much time as he could in the camps, what the hell, he didn’t let it interfere with his work.

With a slight inclination of his head Libby returned the nod that Hyde made to him.
‘Shit, why him, Major. What’s wrong with one of us, ain’t we good enough all of a sudden? You want I should make a list of our good points?’ Cohen’s protest was noisy.
‘Sure, if you’ve got ten seconds to spare. When you’ve finished you can do something useful. Open every hatch and port. I want this machine cooled right down. I don’t want it standing out like a come-and-get-us neon sign on the IR scanner of any Ruskie sky-spy.’

After a cursory inspection Revell put on the much repaired and ill-matched suit jacket and baggy worsted trousers he was handed. From their state he’d half expected them to be crawling, but they weren’t. After hitching the various components of the outfit closer about him, and fastening it together as best he could with a selection of rusty safety pins Hyde provided, he was satisfied that it adequately concealed the .45 automatic and grenades he carried.

This was the first time Revell had been into one of the big camps. In the Balkans the refugees had been scattered in thousands of tiny settlements, kept that way by the Yugoslav partisans despite the Communists’ efforts to the contrary, not herded together into carefully denned and controlled localities as they were here in the north.

The only advantage Revell could see in the ‘bigger is better’ policy, apart from the easing of distribution problems for the paltry amount of aid the relief agencies brought in, was the creation of large tracts of land that could be declared free-fire zones which particularly suited the Russian style of warfare. The only benefit to the NATO forces was that it released every gunner and bomb-aimer from the constraints imposed by the fear of unleashing barrages of bombs on to innocent heads.

Innocent heads. How easy the trite tailored phrases of the propaganda machine popped into his thoughts. There weren’t many innocents left among the refugees now, not after two years. Those who hadn’t been prepared to grab and cheat and lie and steal were gone: into mass graves, on to communal pyres. Those who were left were hardened by twenty-four months of deprivation, sharpened by the same length of time spent living by their wits. They could be as dangerous as the enemy to the unwary, the inexperienced, the soft-hearted. Revell had seen one of his own men die, trampled to death under the crush of women and children to whom he’d been trying to distribute spare rations.

That was what happened if you let the Zone get to you. He wasn’t about to let it happen to him, couldn’t afford to if he wanted to stay alive.

NATO Intelligence Report. 887\G2]75756 GRADE ‘A’ For distribution to all
 
Planning Staffs

The Soviet 97th Technical Support Battalion has now been positively identified in
 
the northern sector of the Zone. Limited satellite surveillance time for this theatre
 
has prevented precise location, but evidence indicates that the 97th have
 
established a workshop among, or close to the refugee settlements near Gifhorn on
 
the east bank of the river Aller, opposite the Hanover salient.

It is likely that the 97th is now engaged in a major re-fit and updating
 
programme on the armoured vehicles of the Soviet 2nd Guards Army.

Under Major I. V. Pakilev the 97th has come to be regarded by the Russian High
 
Command as their finest Field Workshop Unit. It has been featured on several
 
occasions in Pravda, and in both national and international propaganda.

The destruction of this unit would be a severe blow to the 2nd Guards Army’s
 
preparations for its next offensive against the salient, anticipated in late August,
 
early September. Its loss would also constitute a grave embarrassment to the Soviet High Command.

SIX
‘What in fuck’s name made him leave you in charge?’ As his booming voice filled the interior, Dooley dug Cohen in the ribs with a finger made only marginally less filthy than his others by its having been up his nose a minute before.

Cohen completely ignored the sarcasm and physical emphasis and went on with his work at the console. He’d accepted the responsibility thrown to him by the major’s parting remark philosophically. So all of a sudden he had a squad of his own, big deal. He hadn’t the stripes or the extra money to go with it, so what was thereto get excited about -nothing. All he could get out of it was trouble. Now he didn’t have just himself to worry about, now he had this assortment of hard cases, head cases and stretcher cases. That was a favour? Favours like that he could do without. He had enough work to do trying to lace together what was left of the electronics, without playing nursemaid to punks and deviants.

Failing to get their temporary section leader to rise to his clumsy bait, Dooley sought other fish. He cast round and found Burke. ‘How’d your sergeant manage to barbecue himself like that, was he too slow backing off the heat and friction caused by you rushing about?’

‘Could be.’ Burke stretched slowly, and when he’d finished went back to dreamily gazing at the banded green landscape on the driver’s screen.

Though he wasn’t achieving what he’d hoped, Dooley persisted. ‘Don’t you do anything that might strain you, wouldn’t like you to wear yourself out before your time.’
‘No danger, mate, no danger.’ Between yawns Burke looked at his watch, shook it, held it to his ear and then, finding his arm made an adequate pillow on the bulkhead, went to sleep.

‘Give up, man. You ain’t gonna get any of this crowd going, you’ll have to work it off some other way.’
‘Piss off.’ Ignoring the black, Dooley tried willing the pain in his back to go away, it wouldn’t. Shit, it was always the same. The doc had said it was just tension, fuck him, what did he know. There was only one way to ease it, beside going into action. Had they been anywhere but in the centre of a minefield he’d have gone out and smashed to pieces the first inanimate object he encountered. That had worked before. He couldn’t do that here, instead he roughly barged to the front of the compartment, and stepped out on to the ramp.

Collins heard the massive roaring bellow, and shivered. -Long ago he’d come to the conclusion that the world must be mad to permit such an insanely dangerous conflict; now he felt he was fighting it with men who were dangerously insane.

The war had taken them all, and turned them inside out. It was as though every last human trait in them, whether for good or evil, was being forced to the fore as their only remaining defence against the totally dehumanising effect of the Zone.