‘You’re warped.’ The conversation had been overheard by Clarence. ‘Yeah, that’s possible, but if I am I enjoy it, and it don’t do nobody no harm, just the opposite, so what’s it matter? Here, you want one… oh, sorry, you don’t need it, you got the real thing.’ He made a mock wave to Andrea, and could hardly believe it when she came over to him, and took the page out of his hands.
‘You like this?’ She took a second illustration, and turned it around several times, uncertain which way up the two girls should be. ‘I like the real thing better, but I take what I can get.’ Continually nudging Burke, Dooley moved over for her to sit down beside him. Her hips needed a surprising amount of space. He tried to imagine her undressed, bent over…
‘There are things you can show me.’
This was getting good, but Dooley wasn’t sure how far to go along with it. The sniper was watching and he had a healthy respect for him. He tried to temper the elation he felt, as Clarence turned and went to the back of the compartment.
‘So… what did you have in mind?’ His hand kept hovering over his crotch, wouldn’t he have just loved to have shown her, pulled her face down to it. Those bright teeth nibbling at him, yeah, that’d be good.
Sorting through the pilfered pictures, Andrea selected one and showed it to Dooley. ‘You see this one…’
He saw it alright. Dooley could feel sweat pouring off him as he looked at the full frontal black girl, one leg cocked up on a chair, her thighs spread wide. ‘How would you do it to her?’
Willing as he was, Dooley could hardly believe what he was hearing. This was too good to be true…
‘Where would you thrust your bayonet?’
It was too good to be true…
Revell watched from where he stood beside the radio station. It wasn’t possible, she couldn’t be switching to that great slob; but there again her first choice of companion had been a crazy one, the loner, Clarence. ‘I’ve got the commander of that blocking force for you, Major.’ Cohen hesitated before passing over the handset. ‘You know him.’
Revell paid the remark no special attention, until he heard the voice coming over. In fact it wasn’t so much that he recognised the voice as the language.
‘OK, Colonel… Like you say, Colonel, it’s a cunt…’ He jotted down a map reference. ‘Yes… well pick you up… Glad to hear you got every mother-fucker, Colonel… out.’
‘It was Ol’ Foul Mouth then, Major?’
‘Colonel Lippincott to you, Corporal. You value your stripes, don’t you forget it.’ But Revell devoutly wished he could. Even talking to the man was an experience, but after the first time the novelty of listening to a tirade of obscenity from a senior officer wore off. Worse, Lippincott expected his subordinates to use ‘earthy English, something the fucking troops can understand’. Revell played safe by throwing his own words back at him. ‘Here, give this to the pilot, tell him an LZ is already laid. We should see smoke before we get there.’
Trust O’l Foul Mouth to want to get back to his creature comforts as fast as possible. The colonel was always going on about how he longed to get to grips with the ‘shitty commies’, waving the stump of the arm he’d lost in a Russian strafe attack on a forward HQ to emphasise every point. But the immaculate, almost dandified uniforms he sported and the trappings of luxury with which he surrounded himself didn’t go well with the blood and guts image he liked to project. It looked as though he’d at last tricked or bullied or blackmailed someone into letting him have a crack. And Revell was forced to admit that if his scratch force had already accounted for the remainder of the column, then he’d done a remarkable job. But there again, it was likely he’d been able to call on more firepower than Revell had…
‘I’ve got it in sight now. Looks like someone has been lighting a lot of bonfires.’ Revell went forward into the cockpit. About five kilometres ahead, the pale grey band of the autobahn stretched away to the right and left as far as the eye could see. The area surrounding the section they were aiming for was dotted with flickering red flecks. Thin black fingers rose up into the western sky, brought into sharp relief by their contrast against the reddish dust-filled clouds through which the setting sun was trying to shine.
As they flew closer the fires showed more clearly, revealing themselves to be burning vehicles. Most were on the slip roads feeding a complex intersection with the multi-lane highway, but there were five actually on it and one or two beyond. A disc shaped sky-spy sped past the cockpit, provoking a bout of swearing from the flight crew.
‘Those fucking things should be made to self-destruct when they’ve finished a mission, if they can’t get them back.’ The pilot shook ‘his fist after the unconventional miniature craft. ‘You know, they leave some of them stooging about on auto for an hour or so after they’ve finished with them, until they drop out of the sky.’
The sky-spy executed a precision turn to complete another circuit of the holding pattern it had been locked into. A two-fingered salute from the co-pilot followed the remotely controlled aircraft. ‘I know of three choppers that have been hit by those flying cow-pats. Nearly brought one of them down, killed a door gunner and started a fire in a cabin.’
‘We’re looking for a service station.’ Leaning forward, Revell could see the scene of the recent battle through the thin veil of blue smoke hugging the ground. It looked as if the column had run head-on into a row of hulldown NATO armour, but there had been casualties on both sides. Among the wrecks on the autobahn, he recognised the chunky turret outline of two West German Leopard tanks, as well as three American M60A2 tanks. The engagement must have been a fierce one while it lasted. A line of Chevrolet military ambulances were filling already.
‘Hold on, we’re going down.’ As the pilot settled the old Chinook to another fast landing that brought a groan from Cohen, the light began to fade rapidly. With the whirr of the blades dying to a whisper, there came a violent rapping at the forward door. Libby pulled a fumbling Ripper out of the way and unfastened it.
‘Do I have to come looking for you, or are you coming out?’ Revell jumped on to the weed-infested tarmac of a disused service centre. A weighted down white plastic sheet, laid out in the form of a giant ‘H’ crinkled and rucked beneath his boots. The orange smoke candle that supplemented it was hardly needed, with the numerous fires around giving all the information that could be wanted about wind speed and direction.
‘They drove straight into our fucking laps. We just sat behind the crash barriers up on the highway there and waited for them.’ Lippincott was in fine humour, chewing on a fresh pencil. ‘The last bunch didn’t even put up a fight, just popped up and waved their crappy arms. My boys had themselves a turkey shoot. Some of them started pumping out smoke like crazy, but we switched to infra-red and just went on swatting them. We brewed up every last one.’
‘Looks like you took some casualties yourself, Colonel.’ The row of flaming armour on the autobahn stretched away like a line of ruddy beacons. ‘Shit. Wouldn’t have had them if a flight of commie gunships hadn’t pounced just when we were getting down to business and our attention was elsewhere. We got lucky though, the fuckers only made one pass, must have been low on fuel. Had my own command car shot out from under me though. I’ll have to find myself a new driver as well, or get the old one fitted with a new leg. Still, there’s always a few eggs get broken, it’s the price we all have to fucking pay.’
Whether he was referring to his driver losing a limb, or himself losing a car, Revell couldn’t be sure. Most likely, the loss that concerned Lippincott was that of a driver who’d become used to his peculiar ways.