Killing Ground (8 page)

Looking back as he instinctively closed the street door behind him, Revell could see nothing about the property, even at this distance, that would betray its real purpose.

Voke noticed the inspection. ‘It is good, isn’t it? As far as we know it has fooled all the Warpac sky-spies, surveillance satellites and reconnaissance aircraft. Certainly they have made no attempt to destroy this very tempting target.’

‘You think they still don’t know it’s here?’

‘Well, perhaps by now they do. I understand their interrogation techniques are crude but effective.’ Voke shrugged. ‘I expect by this time our man has told them everything. We shall have to hope they do not arrive quite yet. It would spoil my preparations.’

‘What are your plans for getting out?’

‘We were due to be picked up at about the time the jamming became so bad.’ Rain plastered to Voke’s face the long blond hair that made a fringe below the brim of his helmet. ‘The chopper did not arrive, so we altered our plans.’

‘Reckon they forgot about you?’ Revell noticed that the road was not the soft asphalt it appeared, but concrete thick enough to take the biggest trucks. It had been washed over with tone-down paint, but a small patch that had been missed revealed its true colour.

‘Forgot? Yes, certainly it is possible. At this time a company of pioneers will not rank high in the list of transport priorities, especially as many of my men are too old for combat duties. Old William admits to fifty-six, but I think he could well be sixty, or even more. There are about five of us under the age of thirty, out of ninety-six. No, it is ninety-four now, isn’t it?’

‘So what are you going to do, gas up a few of the Bradley’s and make a run for it?’

‘Surely you are familiar with the ways of the Dutch army, Major.’ Voke laughed. ‘Even in battle they have to vote on everything. My men discussed the position this morning, when it became obvious the pick-up was not going to happen. I was not invited to the meeting. There I was kicking my heels expecting them to produce a demand for overtime pay, and instead they said that they wished to stay and defend this complex.’

‘With less than a hundred men?’ Revell tried to keep the amazement out of his voice. ‘This place is vast. You’d be spread far too thin. Sure you’ve got limitless ammunition, and if it was just a case of holding that narrow pass we entered by I’d say you could hold out for some hours. But there’s nothing to stop them pushing infantry through these hills at any one of a dozen points. The ground may be rough, but it’d only delay them, not stop them. Or they could come in low and fast and drop a few chopper loads before you could get Stingers on to them.’

A smug look came over Voke’s face. ‘For air-defence there is an RAF regiment battery dug in at that farm. They too were due to be air-lifted out this morning, so we are not alone in being overlooked.’

Revell had forgotten the Rapier they’d seen chasing the MIG. He had to concede that point. ‘But you still haven’t the manpower to defend the whole area. You’re just wide open.’

There was disappointment in the lieutenant’s expression. ‘I had hoped we could persuade you and your men to stay, but we cannot force you to join us. Look, Major, I know that time is precious, but will you give me just thirty minutes, that is all I ask? Just thirty minutes to show why I believe we can defend this place against whatever the Russians throw at us.’ He could see he was not winning the argument. ‘Listen, it will take at least that time to bring some transport to the surface and fuel and load them with ammunition. Tell me what you need and I will have my men do it right away. When we get back, if you still wish to go, then no time will have been lost.’

‘I suppose I’ve nothing to lose.’
‘You just can’t fucking do it.’
‘And why the bloody hell not?’ Scully resented Garrett’s objections. ‘What’s so fucking wrong with it, that’s what I want to know?’

‘It’s ... it’s wrong. It’s not decent. You can’t cook a meal in the oven of a mobile crematorium.’

‘You are picky, aren’t you? Look, this place has a cold store the size of a house. It’s packed full of food I had forgotten existed. The only kitchens I can find here are run off a ruddy great LPG tank that’s bone-dry.’ Scully patted the steel flank of the trailer-mounted field crematorium. ‘This little beauty has its own bottle already connected. It’s never been used to burn bodies, so where’s the harm in me using it to womp up a meal?’

‘Like I said, it’s not proper.’

‘Well then, you don’t have to eat what I cook, do you?’ Refusing further discussion, Scully finished levering apart great slabs of frozen steak. He threw the last frost-covered chunks inside. Partially closing the heavy semi-circular door, he played with the setting controls until he had a low steady flame.

He turned his attention to hammering the contents of the sacks of frozen vegetables into more manageable-sized lumps. ‘Same as usual.’ He grunted as he swung another over arm mallet blow. ‘All welded together. Those civilian contractors must make a fortune out of pushing the old stuff onto the army. It’s probably from the bottom layer of one of the first EEC food mountains.’

‘How long is it going to take?’ Hyde tapped the metal tip of his toecap against a portion of meat that had fallen into the mud. It rang, as if it too was metallic. ‘Looks like they’ll take a week to thaw.’ ‘This is not what you’d call a standard catering kitchen.’ A slight touch on the flame control and Scully jumped as they instantly transformed to roaring blue jets. He made a hurried readjustment.

‘I asked how long.’

‘Give me a chance, Sarge.’ Having finally satisfied himself that the flame was about right, Scully carefully closed the door and secured it. He had to go on tiptoe to see that all was well through a small thick glass porthole in the side of the oven.

‘When the major went swanning off he said thirty minutes. I’ve still got twenty left.’ Filling two buckets with assorted lumps of glistening vegetables, Scully added a gallon- of water to each and then they too went in. ‘This lot should be done just before he gets back. It won’t be
cordon bleu,
but it’ll be done. Salmonella special coming up,’ he muttered under his breath, and then out loud, ‘It was never like this at The Dorchester.’

The rest of the company were asleep in an underground barracks. A couple of the hardiest had showered but the others had not bothered when they’d discovered there was no hot water. They’d been content with clean clothing. 

Scully had left them down there as soon as he’d kitted himself out. Even in the lift going down he’d experienced the all-too-familiar sensation of claustrophobia. Volunteering to prepare a hot meal had got him out without having to explain. As much as any of them he needed rest, but not in that stark warren with its hollow sounds and the perpetual thumping of the air conditioning.

Satisfied he’d done all he could, he sat on a pile of boxes containing more of the ice-encased steak, shifting to an upturned pail when the cold struck through to him. In under an hour they’d be trying to’ fight their way out through a tightening ring of communist armour and artillery, groping almost blindly in closed-down APCs from one desperate situation to the next. And then there was still the river. At least the Bradley’s’ new water-propulsion system might give them a chance in the strong currents, if the bridge was down, as by now it most likely was. In the elderly M113s they wouldn’t have had a hope. Pushed and spun by the currents, they would only have been target practice for Warpac gunners on the banks.

Shuddering at the thought, Scully tried to blank it from his mind, but failed. All he could see was the cramped inside of that horrid aluminium box as they were tossed and drenched and hurt and gradually sank. ‘God, don’t let me die in one of those tin cans.’

‘I know exactly how you feel.’
Scully hadn’t realized that in his abstraction he’d been staring past the sergeant at the first of the Bradley APCs to be brought above ground, and had spoken out loud.

‘I learned to hate them a long time ago.’ Tentatively, Hyde put his fingertips to his face. The scar tissue and layers of grafts meant that he sensed rather than actually felt the touch. It was unreal, not a part of him, feeling as it might have done after a local anaesthetic. Only he lived with that sensation all the time. He gave a start as fat spat loudly in their improvised field kitchen. There was a slight tremor in his right eyelid. That always came on when he was exceptionally tired.

Hyde looked for a distraction. He walked down a pathway between the church and a house whose ground floor appeared once to have served as a small general store. From that side of the hamlet a narrow road ran between unkempt fields and pastures to the slopes beneath the castle. It then climbed steeply through a series of hairpin bends to the gate of the ancient fortification.

Looking that way, he could see the West German countryside as it used to be and could imagine himself back in time. Back to when you could drive all day and not see a single burned-out tank, a ruined town or masses of decaying bodies. A time when men were not astounded by green leaves on trees, a time before shells, nukes and chemicals had transformed almost every part of it into a land fit only for the warriors of hell, and him into one of them.

Revell wasn’t in the least surprised when the lieutenant drove the unissued Range Rover staff car straight up to the castle. He’d been more than half expecting it.

The steep and twisting approach road was the only way to it. With a sheer drop of at least a hundred meters on every other side, combined with the building’s massively thick walls and commanding situation, it certainly had an air of impregnability. But it had been constructed in another and far distant era. It was possible the architects might have envisaged future wars when ways might be discovered of delivering blows against the fabric from a greater distance off, but in their wildest dreams they could never have imagined the power of those new projectiles.

They drove through a narrow double gateway and into a small courtyard. Voke was the first to alight. ‘If you will come with me, Major.’

‘You two stay with the transport.’ Revell made to follow the Dutchman. ‘And Dooley, don’t go wandering off on one of your famous scavenger hunts.’

‘Who, me?’ Dooley adopted his hurt look, but at the same time could not resist casting a speculative eye over the property.

Andrea didn’t even bother to acknowledge the order. Pulling the hood of her rain cape forward over her helmet like a monk’s cowl, she cradled her rifle and, not bothering to take shelter, watched them enter the ground floor.

Checking his watch, Revell resisted the urge to hurry his guide. He was led through a series of spacious panelled rooms, through a magnificent oak-beamed banqueting hall and into what must once have been the kitchens.

‘Nearly all of the furniture has been removed, quite legitimately, but I understand a few choice pieces did disappear between here and the West. I find it amusing that perhaps there is somewhere a refugee hovel furnished with priceless antiques.’ Voke took a large key from an inside jacket pocket. ‘More likely, though, it has already passed through the hands of several dealers in London and New York.’

The door he unlocked was set in an angle of the wall at the back of the kitchen. Despite its obvious age and heavy construction it swung open smoothly and almost silently on well-lubricated hinges.

Reaching into a small recess just inside, the lieutenant flipped a switch, and from deep below them came the sputter of a generator coughing into life. A widely spaced row of lights glowed into life to illuminate a steep stone stairway.

Taking another quick look at the time, Revell then had to give his undivided attention to the worn and slightly damp steps. ‘We’re running out of time, Lieutenant.’

‘I know that, Major. For me and my men it is running out very fast.’

NINE
There were at least thirty cellar rooms and vaults, ranging from little more than a cupboard-sized space to the three or four that would have garaged comfortably a brace of Challenger main battle tanks.

Most were lined with racks of small arms of every description, including mortars and anti-aircraft missile launchers. All were accompanied by stacks of the appropriate ammunition. The largest was filled with anti-tank weapons TOW’s, already uncrated and assembled.

Several times Voke talked down the major’s comments or criticisms. ‘Wait until I have shown you everything, then tell me what you think. I am being as quick as I can,’ he added to forestall that objection.

‘There is ample fuel for the generator, and its standby. Water, rations, chemical toilets - even a well-equipped dispensary. See, you can enter the cellars from several places inside the castle, but this is the only entrance or exit outside the walls.’

Drawing back three huge bolts on a studded door, Voke pulled it open with an effort and a gust of wind slapped rain into their faces.

For the first time Revell didn’t mind; it was very cool and refreshing after the exhaust-filled fetid atmosphere of decay in those catacombs.

As they stepped out, behind and above them soared the castle wall. To their left a narrow path hewn from the rock started down across the cliff face. It was slippery, and overgrown in places. Between them and a long drop to the trees far below was a ruined wall that bore faint signs of once having been crenulated, to offer its defenders firing positions. Now it was mostly gone. Unlike the main body of the castle this small outwork had been allowed to deteriorate. As they cautiously worked their way lower they passed several small towers built around natural fissures and caves in the face. Covered with creeping weeds, walls sagging, their interiors were dark, forbidding caverns they did not investigate.

Once Revell fancied he heard something behind them, but though he paused to listen, the sound wasn’t heard again and they restarted.

The path ended in a tower more substantial than the other, set with a gate made of timbers that could have been hewn only from whole trees. With some difficulty they scrambled up the inside of the tower until, by bracing their feet against the stubs of roof beams projecting from the stonework, they could look out over the parapet.