Some of the bodies lying about had been caught by the devastating blast and were piled grotesquely together in a small front garden. Chunks of flesh decorated leafless trees, an arm had come to rest in a window box.
‘Stick your stupid head out like that and you’re liable to get it shot off.’ Libby was about to drag his companion back inside, when the carrier’s nearside rear door slowly began to open. ‘I thought I’d got them all.’ He watched, the squeal from the grating metal of the distorted hinges making him clench his teeth.
The door opened a little way, and after a pause a light coloured cloth was flapped from it. Bloodstained fingers were just visible clutching a corner, and the movements were weak.
‘No, let’s wait and see. Even if it’s a trick, we’ll be better off with them out in the open.’ It had taken an effort on Libby’s part not to fire. Almost from the first days of the war, the NATO troops had learnt never to trust the offer of surrender by Russians. Time and time again they had used it as a ploy to gain an advantage, and now Libby never bothered to even consider if a capitulation was genuine. He’d seen too many good men die while they took time to give it thought, tricked into dropping their guard for an instant.
After a moment the gesture was repeated, and then the door began to open further. Another pause, and then three badly wounded men crawled and stumbled from the APCs dark interior. The first could hardly stand, in his right hand he held the makeshift flag, with his left he supported the smashed remnant of his bottom jaw. The two who followed were in a worse condition, and bled from several penetrating wounds of the head, chest and thighs, where they had been caught while sitting down, by the overhead burst. They moved slowly away from the APC, until they came to the centre of the road, then stopped and, like cattle uncertain of a reprieve from slaughter, stood or sat as they were able, waiting for the initiative to come from elsewhere.
Ripper was all set to fire, had his finger on the trigger, but held back. ‘You know, I kinda hate wasting good bullets on them. If I had a dog in that sort of state back home, I’d finish it with a length off the woodpile.’
‘That’s one of their tricks, among others. One way and another the medics get saved a lot of work in the Zone.’
‘What’d yer think then, do I finish them, or do you want first go? I’m easy.’
‘Leave them.’ That surprised Libby himself, those weren’t the words he’d meant to say. He rationalised it. ‘They’ll not last long, leave them to bleed. Like you say, why waste bullets.’ Not since they’d discovered the enemy were using dum-dum and explosive bullets had Libby knowingly spared a Russian, and even before that there had been few occasions. The fighting was always too fierce, too fast moving to admit the taking of prisoners. There was no certainty about those three succumbing to their injuries, terrible though they obviously were, but still he didn’t fire.
Oh what the hell, let them go, they’d be taking no more part in the battle. Maybe he was beginning to have had enough of killing. It was a certainty he’d stop the moment he found Helga, and it would be without any regret, without any guilt either. Two years fighting the Warsaw Pact Forces in the Zone had taught him to expect no quarter, and he in turn had given none. But those three out there, they no longer presented any threat, so what was the point? Let them live, at least the few minutes they had left. He was doing them no favours, judging by the state they were in; yes, let them live. He put his hand out to push down the barrel of Ripper’s M16.
The rattle of the rapid automatic fire went on a long time and echoed all about the street. Each of them hit by several rounds, the wounded Russians jerked and rolled and doubled-up.
‘From over there.’ It was Ripper who had pinpointed the spot from which the firing had come. His bullets smacked dust from the doorway, but the Russian officer had already ducked back out of sight. There were three more dead in the road. One of them still clutched a large pale piece of cloth, now spattered with his own blood and soaking up more that flowed about it. Puddles turned red as they mingled the separate streams coming from the bodies.
‘That guy killed some of his own. What’d he do that for?’
‘Could be any of a dozen reasons.’ Libby started out of the room, talking back to Ripper over his shoulder as he followed. ‘Most likely reason is fear. The same thing that’s driving that column on. A Soviet officer can lose ninety, a hundred per cent of his men in battle and so long as the objective is achieved, who cares, sure as hell his superiors won’t, all they want is results.’ He led the way out through the kitchen. ‘But let the same poor bugger have a single man desert and God help him. So, when they have to, they prevent their men from going over the hill, or surrendering or changing sides by ways like you just saw. As a system it works, and it suits the commie mentality. If they can’t terrify a poor sod into blind obedience, they kill him. Bang, no problem.’
‘They sure ain’t too nice, not by half.’
‘You haven’t seen anything yet.’ Checking each alleyway and side street they had to cross with extreme caution, Libby led as they worked their way towards the main street. ‘The real beauties are the party officials, the ones with GLAVPUR, the Red Army’s political directorate. Now those specimens really know all about being nasty. If we get out of this, go and see one of the POW cages where they’re kept, you’ll find it an education.’
‘Kinda seems like that’s what I’m getting at the moment.’ Ripper covered the Britisher as he sprinted across the corner of a small square, then followed as soon as Libby had taken up a position to cover him in turn.
‘No, this is just a pre-school playgroup, kindergarten. Wait until you get to college, one of the big set piece scraps with nukes and all.’ They were getting close to the scene of the fiercest fighting. Overlapping waves of compressed air from grenade and shell explosions made Ripper’s ears pop, and brought cordite-heavy smoke to bite into his throat and lungs. His eyes began to water. ‘I can wait, all of a sudden I ain’t chasing medals no more.’
ELEVEN
The bayonet was stuck fast, gripped by the ribs between which it had penetrated. Shit, he’d been thrusting for the gut. Dooley could tell from the commie’s slack-jawed glazed expression, and from the increasing downward drag on his rifle that a second blow wasn’t needed, but his immediate problem was freeing the M16. He braced himself against the inevitable recoil, and fired.
Its muzzle rammed hard against the Russian, the weapon’s kick was vicious. Prepared though he was, Dooley’s arm was momentarily numbed as the bayonet withdrew.
A whistling sigh escaped the blade’s victim, cut short as the big man’s boot crushed his kneecap and sent him tumbling down the stairs. It was a body that hit the landing below, almost falling on another Russian who was making ready to hurl a grenade. The snap shot that Dooley followed up with didn’t hit him, but whined past the grenadier, close enough to startle him and cause him to hold on to the bomb a fraction too long.
‘Hey, that was an own goal, how about that?’ Dooley realised that the celebration might have been a little premature when a long burst of machine gun fire came up through the boards beside him, and slivers of wood lanced into his calf. ‘Fuck that. Ain’t you broken through that wall yet?’ There was no answer. He backed up a few paces along the corridor, and another crackle of fire came through precisely where he’d been standing. ‘Come on, it can’t be taking you that long. If they can shove stuff up through the floors, you must be able to get through to next door.’