‘So okay,’ said Adams. ‘Now what about my gas cutter?’
Browning explained about the XM1’s track, and how they had become isolated after the battle.
‘And what will you do if your tank is repaired?’ asked the lieutenant.
‘Get back to our unit, if we can. Try to find a place where the Russians are thinnest, and break through, rejoin the war.’
‘You have enough fuel?’
‘We’ve a three hundred mile range; we topped-up before the attack.’ Browning studied the German’s face. The man was very young, not much more than twenty-five years old. He looked like a student.
‘We will help you. We know the village. We can find the equipment you need.’
‘Once we get the Abrams repaired, maybe we can give you guys a lift someplace,’ suggested Browning.
The lieutenant grimaced, then shook his head. ‘We’re staying. The Russians will be back to consolidate the area, and we will be waiting for them.’
Lieutenant Colonel Studley had blacked out, fainted with the pain when one of the guards stamped on the wound in his calf, but it was the agony which dragged him back to consciousness, pulsing, searing, encompassing his entire body.
Studley heard himself scream, and the sound horrified him. There was still only darkness, and the sounds which came from his throat were uncontrollable, unreal, making him feel disembodied. Once, in childhood, he had broken an arm and been taken to hospital to have it set. He awakened on the operating table while the doctor was still manipulating the bone, and there had been the same combination of pain and sound… but then it had ended abruptly with the introduction of more anaesthetic, and became nothing more than a nightmare he remembered later. He tried now to find reality but for a long time it refused to appear, drowned by the spasms which shook his body and mind.
The bright glow was a small light above his head; faces blurred. He thought at first he must be in some medical centre where they were tending his wounds; his head throbbed violently. He found his arms were pinioned, pulled backwards so far his spine was arched away from the ground beneath him. His legs were spread wide.
There was a voice, persistent, questioning, It echoed inside his head, distorted, strident. He was being forced to concentrate on the words, the threats. He remembered.
‘You have no more chances. I warned you it would become unpleasant. You throwing your life away for no purpose.’
I am not here, thought Studley. He tried to blank the recent past from his mind. This is not reality; reality is Jane… brown eyes, long dark hair slipping between my fingers… her gentle body.
The agony returned, electrical, twisting at his bowels, jerking at strained and torn muscles, contorting his body and exploding like a thousand white-hot needles in his brain.
‘The code, Colonel Studley… only the code… the code… the code… only the code.’
The code? What code? There wasn’t any code… isn’t any code. The word doesn’t exist. Nothing I am experiencing exists in my real world; only Jane exists. Jane… dear God, Jane.
He felt her lips on his neck, and the round warmth of her breasts against his body. He could smell the scent of her hair. She was gripping him tightly, her thighs clasping him… he was losing her… the pain tearing her from his grasp.
‘The code, Studley… a few simple words…’ The agony and the shouting repeated a hundred times, gathering momentum until all his senses spun together in confusion.
The screams — they were no longer his own and he found he could ignore them. He could see her face again… the gentle mouth smiling, her eyes moist.
He realized his arms had been freed; it was part of the dream again. He refused to allow himself to be tricked. He was upright; body sagging, legs useless, his head lolled as if the neck muscles had been severed. Hands supported him, controlled him
He heard the voice of the GRU captain, but didn’t understand the words. The light had gone, his feet dragged across rough ground. Cautiously he allowed his mind to return; it was reluctant.
He tried to shake himself free of the hands, attempting to support himself, but there was little co-ordination yet in his movements; it was returning slowly. There were voices beside him, unintelligible.
He began to recognize his surroundings, the woods. He was stumbling through beds of autumn leaves, over fallen branches, trunks. He could not distinguish between the night sky and the dark outlines of the trees.
They let him drop. He felt the damp ground beneath him, and pushed himself on to his hands and knees. He saw the flash of orange fire from the muzzle of a gun a meter away; a deafening burst of sound as he fell sideways, rolling, tumbling down a steep incline.
He knew they had shot him; he was dying. He lay on his back, and he could see the stars above him. He recognized the Great Bear; found the beacon of infinite north, the Pole Star. He wondered how long he would be able to watch it before his senses faded. And what then? Perhaps he would still be able to see the stars. Perhaps, after all, something followed death. It would have been better to have died somewhere else. Beside a good river; in the warmth of a summer afternoon. There was no romance about death in wartime; that was the myth old men told the young, a lie to feed violence… religion… was there even a God? It was all very convenient, a God to control the people while they were alive, blackmail them into submission with threats of godly vengeance… provide them with an after-life to remove the fear of death, and what did you have then? A disciplined army who would fight.
If there is a God, thought Studley, if you are up there and can hear me, just remember please that all I want is Jane. Not now, but in time.
Max would want her, too. How would a God solve that problem?
There was a dark shape beside him, the fallen trunk of some great tree. He could smell it rotting; the fungi. We’ll rot together, he decided, here in this hollow in the ground. The beetles and the worms will share us. You didn’t die peacefully either, tree, but you probably took longer. Perhaps you took fifty years to die; more than my lifetime.
He closed his eyes for a time, and tried to conjure warmth; it wouldn’t come, nor would the images of Jane. It was almost as though he had expended them while he was resisting the torture. There was satisfaction in that… in the endurance. He had won, and the GRU captain had lost. It had been a small individual war between them, and the knowledge the Russian would have to live with defeat pleased him.
The Great Bear had moved a little, tilted slightly towards the heads of the pines. Studley wriggled his hand sideways until he felt the soft bark of the dead tree. It took him several seconds to realize he had done so. He clenched the other hand and felt it grasp moist earth.
Experimentally, he lifted his head.
No one survived a close-range burst from an AKS-74, and that was what he remembered the guards carrying. He thought he had felt the blow of the bullets, their impact throwing him sideways down the steep bank through the undergrowth until he pitched against the tree trunk. Soviet 5.45mm bullets had the reputation of going in small, but doing a lot of damage on their way out. If he attempted to move too much perhaps he would burst apart, spilling his blood and entrails beneath him. He cautiously flexed a leg, and the pain from his calf wound was startling, seeming to awaken every nerve in his body.
He collected together his memories of the past hours; his capture, interrogation, torture. He set them in order. Miraculously, he was still alive. Alive? Why? How? He tried to understand, and realization brought a strange bitterness. He had meant nothing to the soldiers who had been ordered to shoot him; an insect to be squashed. They hadn’t even bothered to make sure they had done the job properly. He was of no importance, simply rubbish for disposal.