‘How many rounds did you bring? One burp of fire and that could chuck all the lead we’ve got.’
‘About six thousand, mostly armour-piercing incendiary, enough for a couple of minutes if we take it easy.’ Jumping into the back of the vehicle, Hogg pulled aside a sheet, revealing a pile of large ammunition cases and the small generator which provided power for the gun’s motor.
‘Good, that we can use.’ Revell looked down the street to where, several blocks away, the other two Dragon teams were set up and waiting. In his mind’s eye he pictured their field of fire, and then that of the weapon in the hardware store at the top of the street. ‘We’ll set it up here, but it’s too late to emplace it. Clamp it to the bed of the truck, then drive the whole rig into one of these side streets so it can fire out. I’ve got a man who’s expert with these. I’ll send him along. He’ll need two loaders, and there’d better be a driver in the cab for a quick shift of position if it’s needed.’
‘And where do you want me?’ It was a question whose answer Hogg couldn’t anticipate, but he wasn’t about to let the uncertainty hovering over his part in the ambush dampen his feelings. Hell, he felt good just being here, just being involved. Let the other guys build bridges, he was going to do some real fighting.
‘You’re in charge up this end. The Russians will pass you first. Keep your men out of sight, don’t open up until I do, then hit the rear of the column as hard as you can. If it all goes right, then between our two positions we should bottle-up about a third of the column. I can stop them going on, you can prevent them turning around and Hyde’s Dragon and the mini-gun can hammer what’s trapped between us.’
‘Sounds fun. We should be able to take care of them.’
‘You’ll have to. I’ll have my hands full taking care of the lead armour when it turns around and comes charging back to bail out what we’ve got trapped.’ By now Revell didn’t expect anything to wipe the idiot smirk off the lieutenant’s face. ‘Any word from the ECM platform yet?’
‘Got it now, Major. Just signing off.’ Cohen sat on a huge hi-fi speaker, the radio resting on its twin. ‘He’s got a full set of ferry tanks, so we’ve got him for another ninety minutes yet.’
‘That should be long enough.’
‘Hope you’re right, Major. The guys up there say they’ve been playing ring-a-roses with relays of Hind helicopter gunships for the last half hour. When he goes, they come. Can we be a few miles from here when they do?’
‘What makes you think we’ll be in any condition to travel by then?’
Cohen made to answer the lieutenant, but decided against it even as he opened his mouth. His stripes were new, they’d leave no telltale mark if they were removed, but he didn’t see any reason to invite their loss so soon. So the extra pay didn’t amount to much saved for a year, it wouldn’t equal what he could make in an hour in one of the refugee camps. But money was money, and he wasn’t about to throw it away. And besides, he liked being a corporal; maybe he didn’t rate a staff car and yards of gold braid, but it was a start. He tagged along as Revell led his contingent of the lieutenant’s men towards the south end of the main street.
Sergeant Hyde was putting the finishing touches to a carelessly piled barricade of shop fittings, concealing a missile launcher inside a gutted delicatessen. Next door, the semi-naked dummies in a dress shop window added a touch of absurdity to the war-like preparations.
‘I’ll be taking over Libby’s Dragon at the south end of the street. There’s a mini-gun up the road needs his touch.’ Without waiting for any comment from the British NCO, Revell set about dispersing the newcomers to the pre-selected positions.
Waiting until the last of his men had left to assume their fire posts, Hyde marched up to the officer. Before speaking he made it clear with a jerk of his thumb that he didn’t want Cohen nearby.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, Major? You can’t take out tanks and direct the action at the same time.’
‘Once the shooting starts, Sergeant, there won’t be any need for orders. The men have their places, all they have to do is hold them. This is our last chance to hit the column inside the Zone: if everyone does just that, hits it and hits it hard, then there’s nothing else to be added. And besides, I’ll be more useful on that launcher than I will be sitting on my butt trying to make out what’s going on through a pea-soup obscuration of smoke and dust, shouting orders that aren’t needed to soldiers who haven’t time to listen. You ever done street fighting?’
The question instantly put Hyde on his guard. ‘Yes, some, six weeks in Grosshansdorf, outside Hamburg.’
‘I heard that was a real rough house… so you’ll know what it’s all about. Was that before the Russians closed in, or had the siege already started then?’
‘We were rotated a couple of days before the Elbe was mined, got out just in time.’
Hyde knew what it was all about. Street fighting… grenades and flamethrowers, bayonets and booby traps. Fast, fluid and dirty, that just about summed it up, especially dirty…
SEVEN
Clarence put his hand out and pushed. The big gilded eagle rocked. He pushed again, harder, and this time the heavy cast lectern toppled and hit the floor beside the altar with a loud crash that echoed and rumbled through the church, bringing curtain-like falls of dust from the arched ceiling high overhead.
‘Does that make you feel better?’ Andrea stood in a small doorway set into a corner of the wall, partially concealed by a faded red velvet drape. ‘This leads to the tower. There is a good view, much of the main street, the side roads as well. Are you coming, or do you wish to break the windows also? Perhaps tear the Bible with your teeth, if it helps.’
There was no detectable mockery in her tone. Fitting one of the dum-dum clips into his rifle, the sniper put three fast shots into the richly illuminated brass-bound book making a tent on the floor. Despite its weight it spun away under the impact, the second and third bullets sending up a shower of torn pages and shreds of tooled black leather. ‘These are my teeth.’ He removed the magazine, replaced the spent rounds with loose ones from his pocket and snapped it back in.
‘They bite well. Shall we eat some Russians?’ She led the way up the narrow staircase.
The walls were cold and damp to the touch; cobwebs held away from the stones by the draught reached for them, clinging to their clothes and weapons. Andrea shied from those flapping at her face, turning them aside with the barrel of her M16. The angular automatic rifle looked huge in her small hands, against her slight frame, but she carried it effortlessly, in addition to fifteen grenades for its underslung launcher and the big 9mm Walther P5 pistol worn low on her right hip.
‘This’ll do.’ Clarence called a halt on reaching the platform below the bell chamber, and examined the town through the louvered windows. ‘We can go higher. It will give us a better field of fire.’
‘So it will, and make us better targets.’ He moved over to the next flight of stairs and blocked her way as she made to go on up. ‘As soon as those commies come under sniper fire, the first thing they’re going to do is look for our likely hiding place. It won’t take them long to include the tower among the list of likely candidates. And being Russians they’ll blast the top of it, just in case. That’ll be fine by us, because all we’ll be doing is sitting tight a couple of flights down, waiting for them to finish wasting ammo. Soon as the excitement is over, we pop up again and go on making life dangerous for them.’
‘I did not think you were concerned about living.’