Skimming the ground, the Thunderbolt pilots used every tree, every fold in the terrain to aid their getaway. They had almost made it when there was a vivid yellow flash from the leader’s port engine tailpipe.
‘He’s hit.’ Cohen watched as the aircraft shed fragments of panelling and, towing a streamer of unburnt fuel, dipped to almost touch the ground. ‘He’ll make it.’ The sight of both aircraft, still in formation, hopping over a far hilltop added weight to Hyde’s prediction. ‘I’ve seen those, buggers flying with one engine shot away and half a wing gone.’
‘Better get ready, Sergeant.’ It wasn’t immediately clear to Revell precisely what the Russians were intending to do, as every piece of amphibious armour began to roll forward. Then, when every weapon aboard them opened up on the bank, he understood.
The last of the mines was detonated by the barrage, and the APCs surged ahead, each choosing its own crossing point.
‘Hit them as they climb out.’
That was the order Hyde had been waiting for. The banks were steep and slippery, and the personnel carriers were soon in trouble, all of them having difficulty in hauling themselves from the river. The first one to succeed took long enough for Hyde to put a precisely guided rocket into its exposed and highly vulnerable thin belly armour.
The front mounted engine bore the brunt of the powerful charge, and as the vehicle slid back into the water, burning fuel gushed from its buckled hull, withering the rain-soaked weeds and briefly swirling on the fast current. It began to founder immediately and, as wounded infantry tried to hoist themselves through opened roof hatches, turned turtle and sank, forming a second obstruction to the flow.
Even as Hyde aligned on another tempting target, the farmhouse shook to a giant hammer blow, and the room was filled with dust as the door was torn from its hinges and the windows blew out.
‘Where the sodding hell did that come from?’ Snorting to clear dust from his nostrils, Burke picked himself up from the floor, then voluntarily consigned himself to it again as two more shells plunged into the paved area fronting the house.
Slabs of concrete and masses of gravel pounded and peppered the farmhouse, smashing every last pane.
‘I’ve got them.’ Swivelling the command box, Hyde brought it to bear on the T84 arid pair of APCs that were fast closing in on them. His index finger stabbed down, and nothing happened. He got the same result from the other buttons he tried. ‘They’ve got the cables.’
Supported by fire from a battery of self-propelled guns on the far side of the river, the infantry vehicles and their attendant tank were still coming on. The T84 opened up, its stabilised gun staying locked on target as the hull followed the undulations of collapsed field drains. A two-storey wing was struck by the shell, and had most of its roof lifted off by an explosion that filled its windows with flame. At eight hundred yards the APCs joined in, rounds from their 73mm main guns punching into the outbuildings. A large greenhouse dissolved in a cascade of shining shards as a shell detonated inside.
Kurt and Libby tumbled into the room. They were white with powdered plaster and their NBC suits were scorched and slashed. The German was swearing passionately and incomprehensibly as he extracted a long sliver of lathing from his arm.
‘One minute we were looking out of the attic,’ Libby had to pause to spit dust, ‘the next the ruddy floor had gone and we were coming down faster than we went up.’
‘We can’t do any more here.’ Hyde began pulling the leads from the box. ‘Might be an idea to pull back while we still can. Once those battle taxis start dropping their passengers it won’t take them long to cut us off. This place is pretty isolated.’
The men were hanging on his next words, Revell knew that. In effect the decision had already been made for him. Their teeth had been drawn and now it was only sensible to get out while they could. A broad stretch of open farmland behind the house would have to be traversed before they made it to the comparative safety of distant woods. For a short while, the Russian infantry’s preoccupation with the farm would give them that chance.
But he hated having to retreat, the job only half done. With the remaining ten missiles they might have inflicted sufficient damage to force the column to turn around. Instead, they had to be the ones to turn and run.
‘Smash what we can’t carry. We’ll be moving fast.’ The major ducked instinctively as more shell fragments smacked into the house. A seat from the Volvo had come to rest on the window box, and hung precariously for a moment, filling the room with white smoke as it smouldered, before falling off to complete the journey the explosives had started it on. ‘We’ll pick up Clarence, and Andrea on the way.’
Five hundred yards away the tank had stopped, and was maintaining a steady fire in support of the APCs which were still coming on, making good use of their own armaments as they did.
The corridor and stairs were filled with the wreckage of smashed furniture, sagging plasterboard and broken beams. Debris cluttered most of the rooms they passed, but others were curiously untouched by the devastation, save for their broken windows.
A still-settling heap of rubble filled the porch, almost completely blocking the door. Accurate bursts of heavy machine gun fire raked the house front and ricocheted wildly from the surface of the drive in showers of gravel.
Revell found a downstairs window from which he could make a safe reconnaissance of the stable block where the couple had set up their post. Sparks flew thickly about it from a burning woodpile close by. There was no way out of the place that was not swept by the Russian automatic fire.
The troop carriers had slowed, but were still advancing; the couple would have to make their move soon. Receiving no acknowledgement of his urgent instructions to them, he put the respirator mask to his face again and repeated it. Clarence briefly appeared at a doorway, waved, and disappeared inside again.
Revell watched the seconds flickering by on his Omega. What the hell was keeping them? Would the sniper send her first, or would he make the run to test the dangers? It was fruitless to speculate. The miniature liquid crystal bars built and destroyed the seconds, telling him he would know soon enough.
Arriving in a flat trajectory at virtually point-blank range, the round fired by the T84 gave no warning of its approach. It scored a direct hit. The stable block fell apart, collapsing in a welter of shattered bricks and beams.
He wasn’t conscious of any noise. To Revell’s eyes it seemed the single-storey structure broke up in silent slow motion, first bulging outwards as the shell exploded in its heart, then disintegrating as the roof that had been lifted off fell back and found no walls to support it. Only a half-buried saddle and horseshoes nailed to jutting splintered rafters gave any clue as to what the mound of rubble might once have been.
‘Bugger,’ Hyde had witnessed the destruction as well, ‘he was a bloody good sniper. Stupid way for him to go, after all he’s been through. Pretty much the same way as his wife and kids.’
It took an effort, but Revell fought down the urge to rush out and claw at the mound. It would serve no useful purpose to add his body to the ruin. He scrutinised the tank. There was nothing he could do now, but he would know it again. If the opportunity arose… and he’d make it… he’d extract a bloody revenge…
‘Get them moving, Sergeant. Don’t let them bunch.’ Kurt was the one who set the pace as they ran towards the trees a good half a kilometre away. Behind them, the shelling and machine gunning roared to a crescendo as the APCs closed on their objective.