Sky Strike (14 page)

Muttering under his breath, Dooley hauled himself on top of the APC. The boxes the officer had mentioned were non-standard additions, welded to the roof beside the escape hatch just forward of the engine compartment. Fabricated from mild steel sheet, they had suffered considerable damage.

One was already hanging open, its lid all but ripped away and the sides crushed to half their proper height. A few spanners and wrenches lay amongst the brick dust and broken masonry lining its bottom.

The other had not suffered so badly during their progress through the village store, but a large chunk of brick was wedged in a bent-back corner. It was also scorched, and a fragment of rocket casing had pierced and lodged in the lid.

Employing one of the wrenches, Dooley smashed its lock, and reached in to lift out its contents. ‘Look what I found. A new toy for Libby.’ He held up the launch tube of the shoulder-fired Grail anti-aircraft missile. ‘Think we’ll find a use for it, Sarge?’

Hyde looked up from assisting Burke with the unfastening of the engine access panels. ‘I don’t think, I know we can.’

At a call for silence, all movement in the building ceased and they strained to listen for the sound that had alerted the NCO.

It was faint, but distinctive and unmistakable, the sound of a large helicopter, flying a methodical search pattern.

‘Not that it’s my nature to be a prophet of doom,’ from the window of the garage office Ripper watched the chopper turning to begin yet another sweep, ‘but I been taking a long hard look at the major’s map, and it kinda seems to me that the pilot of that there whirlybird is hovering plumb over the top of a patch of ground we got to pass through. Don’t you think there’s a better than fair chance that he is going to do something right unsociable to us?’

‘He’s going to try.’ Having checked the Grail as far as he was able without comprehensive test equipment, Libby began to reassemble it, cleaning and making a final check of every component as he did so.

‘I knew a girl once...’
‘Another cousin?’

‘Funny you should ask that, ‘cause as it happens she was, about four times removed. Anyway, she were right uppity ‘bout just about everything. Not a single fella I knew had ever got near her. You know she were going on sixteen and still a virgin. Where I come from, a girl who gets to that age and ain’t been treated to a roll in the hay, she’s either got to be ugly as sin, sewn up, or a damned fine runner. Like I were saying, nobody had got nowhere, not until her folks got a TV.’

‘Perhaps to your yokel mentality the connection is obvious,’ dine had tried, and failed to work it out for himself, ‘but do you think you could explain that?’

‘Sure. She couldn’t read.’

‘So help me, I’m going to hit him in a minute.’ Making a special effort, dine persevered. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Just about everything. See, she had this problem, not the one your friends won’t tell you about, the sort you can’t ask your friends about, you with me? Jesus, you guys are thick. She had this itch, now you with me? In a kinda personal place, like underneath. Not being able to read she’d not seen no ads in the papers, didn’t even know she could get anything for it until they tuned into a commercial station for the first time. Must have went straight out and bought a case of ointment Last I heard she was screwing like a rabbit, had ten kids and was trying to catch herself a husband.’

‘God, they get worse.’ dine stepped aside to let Dooley in. ‘Shit, have I missed story time?’

‘I could tell you the one about my Aunt Martha, who had the accident with the billy goat and the broom handle.’

‘Save it.’ dine backed out. ‘I can only take so much of this at a time.’ ‘That’s what Aunt Martha said.’

Dooley took Libby aside. ‘What was the major saying about refugees?’

‘He wasn’t. Why, are you thinking to make their misery complete by diddling them out of the little they’ve got?’

‘Alright, don’t get touchy, I only asked, no harm in that, is there?’

It took little imagination to figure out what the big American was after. Libby wouldn’t be a party to any crooked schemes he might be hatching. Not that all the refugees were lily-white. Among them there were some of the nastiest individuals alive. The bunch Andrea had been with were prime examples. Russian deserters, ex-border guards, criminals, all had formed armed gangs and preyed on the weak and defenceless civilians trapped in the Zone. By stealing food, by brutality, by reducing the people’s will to live, they were responsible for as many deaths as the shells and mines and bullets.

‘You got that stovepipe working?’ Dooley changed the subject. He knew that Libby’s knowledge of the refugees was extensive, there was always a chance he could milk him of it piece by piece, provided he stayed on his right side.

‘Far as I can tell, yes. Since when have you been interested in anything except making the next buck?’

‘Think what you like. I just thought you might like to know I heard Hyde and the major talking things over. Seems you’re going to hand the turret over to Clarence, and then sit out the top with that thing, ready to do a spot of chopper hunting.’ Dooley waited for a reaction - there was none.

Expecting some such arrangement, the news came as no surprise to Libby, would not have bothered him even if he’d been unprepared for it. In a way it was as though he were packing months of combat into a few hours, an unconscious last fling. The girl’s words came back to him. He hadn’t spoken to her since, and didn’t feel he could now.

The rage had passed, a calm filled his mind, totally unlike his usual mental state in battle. It occurred to him that perhaps in some strange way he was being made ready for death, but he couldn’t believe that. Not that he was unready for it. When it did come it would be almost welcome, though his last moments would be a torment if Helga’s fate was still unknown.

From the workshop came the growl of the APC’s engines being restarted. Picking up the launcher, Libby followed dine back to their transport. The bombardier was putting on his keen and eager act for their officer’s benefit. Let him. A week ago it would have annoyed Libby, now he didn’t care.

He stood half out of the rear hatch as they backed away from the workshop, having to duck the low doorway. There was no sign of the chopper, and the noise of their own engines drowned any distant sound of it.

They were racing towards the area it had been quartering, making up time, putting in distance. The sun was sinking low in the sky and, only partially filtered by the dust in the air, glowed a bright vision-blurring orange straight into his face. Libby set the missile tube to his shoulder, braced himself against the’ rough ride and just waited. There was no need for him to strain himself. The gunship would come to them.

THIRTEEN
Coming at them out of the sun, Libby heard the helicopter gunship before he saw it At two thousand feet it swept overhead, and swivelling round to keep tracking it over the open sights of the launcher, Libby felt the rough metal of the hatch opening cut into his leg.

It made a tight banking turn for a second pass, and he had to pan fast as he applied light pressure to the trigger, activating the missile’s own seeker-system. The top mounted warning light turned from red to green as the tracker locked on to the chopper’s hot jet pipe, and Libby pulled the trigger back all the way.

The boost charged fired, and burning out almost instantly, propelled the slim grey-painted missile several yards from the mouth of the tube before the solid fuelled sustainer ignited and accelerated the five and a half pound warhead on its way.

It was immediately obvious that the pilot or one of his crew had seen the launch, as the gunship turned even tighter in an attempt to bring itself head-on to the missile, when the infra-red homing device would have the smallest target, only the extreme tip of the jet pipes.

For a moment, as the missile wavered in its arcing course it looked as if the standard tactic would work, and it almost did. Had the warhead not been fitted with a fuse activated by grazing contact, it would have.

Helicopter and missile closed fast, with the aircraft speed far exceeded by the projectile’s one and a half times the speed of sound.

Exploding alongside the starboard turbo shaft engine, it caused the helicopter to lurch and then roll almost on to its side. Trailing smoke and shedding fragments of metal it began to fall, then partially recovered to commence a staggering descent that was still far too fast.

At five hundred feet the pilot succeeded in regaining a degree of control and the rate of descent slackened and the drunken side-slipping began to diminish. Then a damaged rotor blade snapped off halfway along its length, and before whirling clear sliced the tips from two others.

Violent shudders shook the craft as it stalled, and then it began to drop. The last four hundred feet it plummeted vertically, impacting on the top of a hill.

Crushed by the weight of the twin Isotov engines the cabin collapsed, and then its ruin was hidden as fuel ignited and the ammunition started to cook-off.

‘How come he didn’t let us have it?’ From the next hatch Cline had watched the engagement. ‘He had a full load, rockets and gun pods. The bugger could have smeared us over the landscape at the first pass.’

‘That is not so difficult to explain.’ Boris elbowed his way up to see the spectacle for himself from the same hatch. ‘Someone wants us alive, there can be no other reason.’

Libby tossed the launch tube over the side, following its progress down a steep embankment to land among large stones at the edge of a stream. ‘That gives us an advantage then, if the Ruskies are going to be pulling their punches.’

‘For a moment, yes.’ Boris pushed back, resisting the bombardier’s attempt to cram him into a corner of the opening. ‘But it is likely that as we near our own lines the orders will be changed. If whoever wants us cannot have us alive, then he will be happy to settle for us dead.’

Well, it was only a bloody makeshift repair.’ Burke resented the carping from Dooley and the others, as the APC struggled to climb the hill on one engine. ‘What sort of job do you think I can fucking do with a couple of spanners, a wrench and some ruddy string?’

As the gradient grew steeper, their progress became slower and slower, until it was obvious that the transport was not going to make it to the brow. ‘It’s all damned hills from here on in.’ Revell folded his map and tucked it into his pocket. ‘There looks to be a track, or a fire-break up ahead. See if we can make it to that, then take us in.’

They were only inching forward when Burke turned them on to the conifer- lined, deeply rutted track. Grass had long since hidden the wheel marks, but the corrugations remained and the long vehicle rose and fell as though in a swell.

‘Hold it.’ Half-hidden among trees that had grown to envelop it, a notice board stood at the side of the track. There was an indecipherable symbol at its top, and his scant German was no help in reading the near illegible words beneath, their lettering also victims of the sun’s fading, and the weather-induced flaking of the red paint. ‘What is it, mines?’

Andrea squeezed forward, and allowed herself a tight smile as she let the tension build a little longer. ‘There is a penalty if you go beyond this point, but only if you leave litter on the picnic ground.’

‘Hey, now that ain’t funny.’ Ripper pulled out the flak-jacket he had been sitting on from beneath him. ‘Next time just come straight out with it Thinking you might lose your balls is damned near as unpleasant as doing it,’ ‘And what would you do without your nuts?’ Hyde laid the sarcasm on thickly.

I’ll tell you, Sarge. Afore I came out here, I asked my doc’ what would happen if I lost my little bag of marbles. A fella ought to know about these things, it pays to be prepared.’
‘So... go on.’

‘Seems if your tool ain’t included in the damage, you still got a mite of screwing time left, before your hormones start to get real mixed up, and you end up getting screwed yourself.’

With the last ounce of power, Burke parked the APC beneath the canopy provided by a stand of mature pines, as the temperature of their remaining engine finally crossed into the red under the loads that had been imposed on it When he switched off, the smell of hot oil filled the compartment.

‘All change.’ Ripper’s loudly proclaimed reference to their earlier form of transport earned him a growled, spanner-waving threat from their driver, which he ignored.

Burke paid for his display of ill-humour, dropping the rusty tool as he climbed out, and having to scramble on his hands and knees to look for it in the gloom, among the heaped needles of the forest floor.

Taking off his helmet, and resting his rifle against a tree, Ripper breathed deeply and did a few gentle setting-up exercises. ‘Now this is a better place to break down. Will you get a load of that air.’

Even as he had climbed from the APC, the heavy scent of the pines had struck Libby, washing the taints of stale sweat and cordite and oil from his lungs. It was intensely quiet, the trees and springy surface underfoot absorbing every sound without echo. When the engine covers were thrown open the disturbing noise was of short duration, as though the forest had dampened and abbreviated it.

With every step large cones rolled beneath his feet, crunching and crackling as they were crushed into the carpet of slim brown spikes. But that, like the distant call of a wood pigeon, did not disturb the sombre mood of the place.

‘Be a nice place to live, up here.’ Through the stiffly standing trunks Libby could see along the track where it curved down the hillside. The trees lining it framed the sunset, now made a blotchy red by the dust clouds it shone through. Fog was hiding the details of the lowlands, only a few soft-contoured hills standing like islands upon it to give any point of reference.

Bending down to pick up a handful of the deep covering of needles, Dooley let them run out through his fingers as he straightened. ‘Yeah, you could be right. Ground like this would soak up a lot of slurry.’

‘Don’t you ever think about anything but pig shit?’ Dooley treated the sniper’s question seriously. ‘Of course I do, sometimes, when I’m on a forty-eight hour. But right now we’re in the Zone. While we’re here, can you think of anything better?’