‘I don’t doubt that.’ He wasn’t quite certain how he’d got into this, but one thing was for sure, Burke was going to get out of it. Fifty! Ugh, it was bad enough growing old himself, without burying himself to his balls in something even older. Christ, he just had to get out of it somehow. Still, it was a worry he could shunt to one side for the moment; after the coming battle there might be nothing left for him to worry about: there might be nothing left of him.
Hyde could hear the machine gun crew moving about directly overhead. He hadn’t had much chance to talk to them, but he could tell they knew what it was all about. Tank busting was dodgy at such short ranges, a well manned support weapon for close-in defence was very welcome. There were two more across the way, and another lower down, flanking the major’s Dragon position.
The time dragged slowly; it would have helped if he’d had someone to talk to, but there was only Kurt. The Grepo was picking his nose, rolling the pieces between his filthy fingers, then inspecting them before flicking them out into the street.
They were two ugly people together, Hyde knew that. Kurt because of who he was and what he’d been, and himself because of the way he was now. He put his hand to his face. His face! That was a joke. It wasn’t his face, it was a hundred different parts of him, made up of the masses of tiny patches taken from all over his body during the twenty-five grafting operations. What a couple… a monster and a horror.
‘Why do you look at me?’ Kurt stopped his nasal excavations.
Hyde ignored him, not bothering to answer. It would probably have been futile anyway, the East German’s smattering of English wasn’t up to coping with anything more complex than simple commands. Not that he would have talked to him even if it had been otherwise; none of them had time for the Grepo. Beyond the unpleasantness of the individual himself lay the evil reputation of the outfit from which he originated.
The sergeant knew that Kurt had only been kept with the unit to justify retaining the girl. It was a price Hyde wouldn’t have paid for her continued company, attractive though she was.
‘I think we got business.’ Kurt strained forward to look out, and listened intently. He knelt and put his ear to the ground. ‘Ya, we got business. Now we open a meat shop, ya?’ His laugh was an ugly sound, as he drew his finger slowly across his throat.
EIGHT
The Soviet column was still travelling fast, making no concession to changes in the terrain or its surroundings. One after another, Revell watched the huge tanks and self-propelled guns thunder into his sights, saw the crosshairs centre first on their broad frontal armour, then on their threshing tracks and mud-spattered road wheels. He was counting, ticking off each one in his mind and waiting for the first of the personnel carriers.
Every component of the building’s fabric shook as the steel Leviathans pounded past. The last few shards of glass tinkled from the trembling frames and plaster fell from the walls and ceilings.
Twenty. Damn it, it had to be soon. Twenty-one, any moment now… the range was insanely short… it was a hell of a gamble…would the missile’s thirty-two miniature thruster rockets lift it high enough after it popped from the tube…would it climb close enough to the line of sight on which he was aiming to score a vital hit?
Twenty-two. A long gap that time, sloppy station keeping. Twenty-three, another confounded self-propelled gun. Twenty-four… this was it His thumb crushed down hard on the firing button and he felt the heat of the back blast
Filling the shop with dust, the roaring tongue of recoil-cancelling gas and flame sent a great cloud of it billowing out into the street. The Dragon’s position was instantly betrayed, but for the APC it was already too late.
Twin threads of wire unreeling behind it, the. anti-tank round skimmed the road towards its target, climbing and accelerating as it went. Revell had the command unit aligned on the vehicle’s front, just below the sharp angle made by its hull top and glacis plate: actual impact was a metre to one side of that, on its left track.
White smoke, giant orange sparks and flying fragments filled the street, and throwing its severed track out behind it the disabled vehicle slewed across the road and smashed into the front of a bank. Huge chunks of masonry fell on to the hull.
‘Go get ‘em, Major.’ Cohen snapped a reload into place as a second carrier raced out of the smoke, pumping high explosive shells indiscriminately from its turret gun and spitting tracer from every weapon port.
There was hardly time for Revell to aim. At even closer range than the first shot, there was little chance of the powerful warhead impacting against the APCs hull, and it didn’t. He watched it spurt into the dark gap between the road and the vehicle’s belly plate. The result was as spectacular as it was unexpected.
With a shattering report the APC was lifted high off the ground, to fall back and lurch a couple of metres on distorted track and buckled wheels, then stall and present a perfect sitting target. It was an opportunity the major wouldn’t pass up.
As hatches flew open and the escaping crew and infantry were met by a hail of machine gun fire, Revell took his time and, with the front feet of the Dragon tripod packed to give extra elevation, fired a third round.
The massive shaped charge effortlessly defeated the thin spaced armour of the APCs hull side and sent a jet of molten metal into its interior as the last of the Russians attempted to escape. Bodies, fuel and ammunition blazed.
From behind the flaming roadblock came further sounds of battle, as the other Dragon teams went to work on the concertinaed rear of the column. Clearly distinguishable above every other noise was the ripping-calico snarl of the minigun.
Cohen listened, as he offered the officer a further reload. ‘I’m glad I’m on this side of the roadblock. What they have back there is a problem.’
‘It’s nothing to the one we’ll have if the whole of the head of the column does an about turn and comes back. I counted more than twenty pieces of heavy armour. How many anti-tank rounds have we left?’
There was a pause while Cohen set aside two fragmentation rounds and a pair with high explosive warheads. ‘I make it ten, you want me to check again?’
‘No.’ Revell looked out at the bodies strewn about the burning APC, and at the thick black cloud swirling from it, carrying the repugnant stench of scorching flesh. ‘No, you couldn’t make it thirteen more, and you might make it one less. Let’s settle for what we’ve got.’
Beyond the knocked-6ut vehicles the fight was becoming fiercer, indicated by the growing crash and clatter of cannon and automatic fire. A single high-pitched wailing scream was briefly audible, only to be drowned by a closely spaced series of explosions, as a heavy tank gun opened up rapid fire on the buildings flanking the street.
‘Yeah,’ Cohen picked up his M16, ‘yeah, I’ll settle for what we’ve got.’
Libby hit the over-ride and sent a two hundred round burst at the APC, as it stopped across the entrance to the side road and its squat turret began to traverse towards them. He clearly saw the bullets’ massed impacts on the hull side and track-guard, marked by puffs of white smoke and short-lived spurts of flame.
‘Yahoo, you done got the bastard.’ Ripper leapt up and down waving his helmet above his head, then dived for cover and jammed it back on as the vehicle’s gunner snapped off a hurried shot that passed uncomfortably close. ‘Hey, shit. He ain’t supposed to do that, we got him first’ There was intense indignation in his voice. ‘You hit him again now, that fella’s cheating I tell you.’