Sky Strike (6 page)

‘You want me to scout it, Major?’
‘No.’ Revell took no time to consider the sergeant’s question. ‘No, there isn’t the time for refinements. We’ll have to hope they’re keeping their heads down because of the raid. We’ll go in at the run, well spread out just in case they have got a sentry. Some of us will get through. If we reach the building without being seen we’ll regroup to cover as many of the doors and windows as we can. There’ll be civvies in there so I want a clean job, use knives where you can. Let’s go.’

There was a hundred yards to cover. A hundred yards of muddy, rutted ground that was littered with foot-catching rubbish invisible among the sprouting weeds and grass. Twice Libby almost fell; the second occasion actually going down on one knee before he recovered his balance. It put him a little behind most of the others, with only Boris lagging further back. There was taut, colour-draining terror on the Russian’s face. Terrified of being in the front line, with the chance of sustaining a disabling wound that would mean his being left behind, he was equally frightened of losing contact, of being left on his own behind enemy lines and so he ran at a constantly varying pace, first lagging, then catching up as, in turn, the whirling conflicts of the opposing decisions surged to the fore.

On the far right of the line, Libby saw Hyde run close to Clarence, and then watched the sniper veer further to the flank and drop into cover, already fixing the silencer to his Enforcer as he did so.

Their pace slowed as they neared the objective, first to a jog, and then to a series of low-crouched lopes.

Cline was first to reach the truck, checked its cab and then moved to its rear. With the tip of his rifle barrel he parted the canvas flaps closing the tilt, and jumped back as a, dozen large scrubby-leaved cabbages rolled out and fell loudly into the mud.

Seeing the building’s side door start to open, Libby leapt forward, but Andrea was nearer, and faster.

Expecting nothing more than East German sneak thieves, the Russian private held his Kalashnikov threateningly, but did not have his finger on the trigger. The surgically sharp blade swept upwards and the soldier’s expression was transformed from menace to shocked intense agony.

Already buried to the hilt beneath his chin, Andrea gave the knife a wrenching half-turn and the flow of blood from the soldier’s mouth and nose became a torrent that carried with it his severed tongue and shreds of brain matter.

As body and rifle tumbled noisily to the ground there was a shout inside the building. Hurdling the girl, pulled down by the Russian’s death throes and still trying to extract her knife, Libby plunged into the dark chill of the foundry.

Great shapes loomed over him; lumps of soot from the furnace walls showered down as he collided with cobweb-decorated chains hanging from a gantry, unintentionally sending them clanking and jangling against the chipped and heat- coloured brick. The place was filled with the deafening echoes of the multiple collisions; dust, soot and rust fell as a dark rain from the beams high overhead.

As he grabbed at them, and succeeded in reducing the sound to a gentle rhythmic clinking, he heard the shout again. It wasn’t a call of alarm, and the words were heavily slurred. Whoever was doing the shouting was too lazy, or more likely too drunk, to come and find out for himself what was going on.

Hearing the others moving into the building behind him, Libby cautiously edged forward into the cavernous interior. Ahead he could see a group of figures squatted about a stack of food on the floor: stepping into the open to challenge them, he was instantly blinded as a far door was thrown open and a brilliant shaft of light streamed into his eyes.

Blinking to try and see through the tears that filled his vision, he could only distinguish the blurred wavering outline of the helmeted Russian who sprang to his feet, discarding a scrawny chicken and grabbing for a rifle.

Another of the group was standing, moving across his dimly-seen target, and Libby held his fire as he recognised a female form. The Russian had the rifle, was aiming, and then pitched forward on to his face as Revell buried a bayonet in his back.

The other who died, his neck broken by the crashing impact of the butt of Dooley’s M60, had hardly begun to get to his feet, and the half-empty bottle of vodka he clutched was smashed as he fell.

Herded into a corner by Cline, the East German black-marketeers were a strange assortment of types, and their reactions to their suddenly changed situation were as diverse.

Dooley searched them. The shabbily-dressed old man proved to be only half the width the bulk of his heavy overcoat suggested, once he had been relieved of the twenty or more pounds of cooked sausage he had crammed into various pockets. From the woman, Dooley received a stinging slap across the face when he twice went over her matronly bust. In contrast to the senior citizen her mood was one of annoyance, with no trace of fear.

It was the last of the trio Libby found most interesting. He was young, still in his teens, and well dressed in a flashy way. A smell of cologne wafted from him and his suntanned fingers showed tell-tale white bands, where rings he’d thought it prudent to leave behind had left their mark.

Like the woman, he didn’t appear scared, but there was something in his manner, a suggestion of nervousness. For a second time Libby noticed the dance he directed towards a distant door.

The others were busy, and leaving Ripper to guard the trio, Libby crossed quietly to the door. Easing it open, ahead of him he saw a long passageway, with several rooms leading off to either side. The first had glass walls, and he could make out drawing-boards and rows of dusty shelves. With the others came more risk, and he listened carefully at each before looking inside.

Reaching the last door he paused, and put his ear to the peeling paint. He knew what it was he could hear, knew, and at one and the same time wanted to burst in and put a stop to it, and stay where he was, listening. In a moment one of the others would follow him. Every cell in his body was pounding as he eased down the door handle and gently pushed it open.

Eyes clenched in straining concentration, the Russian didn’t see him. The girl bent over the table did. Between grimaces as the Russian thrust into her backside, she gave a half-smile, that was wiped instantly from her face as she recognised the NATO uniform.

Her scream alerted the Russian, but he only had time to open his eyes before Libby was on him. A fist swung savagely hard broke his nose and spattered blood on to the girl’s rump even as his fast-shrinking erection was withdrawn. A second even harder blow burst his right eyeball from his head.

One hand trying to haul up the hampering pants about his knees, the other attempting to palm the squashed mass back into its socket, the Russian sergeant reeled, tripped and fell against the side of a battered filing cabinet, nearly severing his left ear on its razor-sharp edge.

Using his boots and the butt of his rifle, Libby laid into the man as he tried to squirm into a corner and protect himself by drawing up his knees and tucking his shattered face into a foetal position.

Everything that had been inside him for so long poured out of Private Libby. All the frustration and hate was unleashed in a frantic torrent of violent rage that went on and on. He heard bones break, saw spongy brain matter exposed as the skull was crushed, felt firm flesh give like latex foam beneath the crashing fury of his attack.

Wild hysterical screaming from the girl as her half-naked body was splattered with the blood fast smothering the room made a hellish background symphony for the ugly noises of the butchery. Libby only stopped when he had no further strength to inflict damage on the long-dead Russian.

Standing over the sprawled body he could see no unmarked inch of flesh, no recognisable feature on the face, or where the face had been. Turning to the girl Libby realised she had stopped screaming, and now stood whimpering, clutching ineffectually at herself as she involuntarily urinated in sheer terror.

‘I won’t do it to you, I won’t’
She didn’t understand his words. Libby wanted to tell her why he had done it, explain. Now she fell to her knees, clenched her wet hands together and with sobs punctuating every word, began to beg.

Oblivious to the foul smells in the room, Libby reached out and gently pulled her to her feet. The action came naturally. He put down his rifle and took out his pistol. He set the safety to ‘off’, chambered a round, and pressed the heavy, warm metal into the girl’s hand.

Her body still heaved with sobs as Libby drew her to him, held her close and cradled her head on his shoulder. Feeling her move against him he closed his eyes. She was bringing up her hand, he felt the tip of the barrel brush past his ear, and then the world burst apart with a shattering roar.

SIX
The office was painted with blood. It covered the floor and ceiling, was daubed on every wall and smeared over the few pieces of furniture.

Libby was supporting the limp body of a girl. Half of her head had been blown away and an automatic pistol, held by a crooked ringer in the trigger guard, dangled at her side.

Revell crossed the room and took the weapon from her nerveless grasp as Libby let her slide to the floor, where she flopped half on to her side, exposing the gaping hole made by the heavy bullet’s exit.

‘There isn’t the time now, but I’ll want an explanation later.’ ‘You can have whatever you bloody want.’ Absently, Libby brushed tufts of matted hair from his jacket front. The action made no discernible difference to his appearance, smothered as he was in the evidence of the violence.

‘We’ve got visitors.’ Clarence didn’t step into the room, delivering the information from several paces outside the door. ‘A couple of Russian field cars, packed with Commandants Service troops.’ ‘They must be after this crowd.’ Indicating the flayed Soviet NCO, Revell rubbed grime from a cracked pane and looked out at the pair of open-topped vehicles. They were still the best part of a quarter mile off, picking their way carefully through the broken masonry and debris on the road. ‘Everyone into the truck.’

As Dooley kicked the last of the vegetables from the back of the Gaz, and set up the M60, he found a moment to glance admiringly at the hefty buttocks of the East German woman as she pedalled furiously away from the foundry, then Burke crunched the truck into gear and it took all of his concentration to hang on.

Boris sat between Revell and the driver, his state of mind betrayed by the sweat beading his face, and his nervous compulsive clutching of the radio pack in his lap, so hard that his knuckles whitened.

‘Not too fast. I want them to think we’re going to stop.’ Revell had clipped a fresh magazine to his assault shotgun, and now cradled it with the muzzle only a fraction from the open passenger window.

The cars had stopped, blocking the road, and several of their passengers had dismounted and now stood about waiting for the truck. Every one of them was heavily armed, and each held his automatic weapon ready for instant use.

A dwarfish Russian captain stepped forward and held up his hand, a slung machine pistol bumping against his barrel chest. His expression of thuggish arrogance was wiped from his face, at the same second as his confident stance gave way to a hurried backing movement.

The collision hardly caused any check to the accelerating six-wheeler’s speed. As the heavy duty front off-side tyre mounted and caved in the chest of the captain, one of the sturdily built field cars was bulldozed away and the other flipped on to its side to trap the three men still in it.

White fire spread among the Russians who had leapt aside in time, as Revell’s incendiary rounds sprayed phosphorous and hideous death. To its effect was added the massed fire from the men in the back, and then as they passed, short precise bursts from Dooley on the machine gun.

Wreathed in acrid smoke, the site of the would-be roadblock presented a horrific spectacle, with several of the military police reeling in circles, every inch of their bodies being consumed by the unquenchable flames.

Two or three ill-aimed bursts were sent after the Gaz, but the closest passed safely overhead, and only a single bullet actually scored a hit, grazing past the cab to smash a rear-view mirror.

‘Turn coming up, Major. Which way?’ Burke crunched down through the gears as he slowed the elderly truck. ‘Christ this thing is knackered. Can we stop and swap it for something else?’

Having at last managed to unwind the twists of wire securing the broken catch of the roof hatch, Revell stood on the seat and looked out. The whole of the horizon to one side was a curtain of variously coloured smoke, occasionally lightened by an ascending fireball as fuel or ammunition cargo ignited in the marshalling yard.

‘Keep the pall on your right, and nurse this clunker as best you can.’ Dropping back into his seat, Revell didn’t bother to re-secure the hatch, so that it clattered at every bump in the road. ‘Getting a replacement might not be all that easy.’

‘If the smoke is on our right,’ Boris dabbed at his face with his already perspiration-dampened sleeve, ‘then we are going north. The Zone, and our own lines are to the west. That is the way we must go.’

‘No.’ Using his last reloads, Revell replenished the 12-gauge’s half-emptied magazine. ‘It won’t take the Ruskies back there long to figure just what’s been going down. Soon as they put two and two together and come up with the conclusion that it’s us, and not some panicking black-marketeers who did them the damage, they are going to come after us with a vengeance. They’ll be expecting us to head west, so we’ll try to motor north for a while, until we’re clear of the action, then we’ll head for the Zone using minor roads.’

‘Problem up ahead.’ There was no civilian traffic moving on the roads, but Burke had been forced to reduce speed several times while he negotiated partial roadblocks unintentionally formed by East German drivers who had hurriedly abandoned their vehicles at the commencement of the raid, and had not yet summoned up the courage to return to their charges. Several large articulated trucks had simply been left where they had happened to brake to a stop, with their long semi-trailers sprawled across two-thirds of the width of the wide road.