‘Christ!’ Davis shouted in horrified realization — tossing his half-finished mug of tea out of the way under his seat. ‘Gas… gas… gas… All stations, this is Bravo One… gas… gas… gas… check all vehicles and close down.’ He switched quickly to the squadron net. ‘Hullo Shark, this is Bravo One… gas… gas… gas… Over.’ He rammed on his respirator and blew out hard.
‘Shark here… Roger Charlie Bravo One.’ Captain Willis’s voice was reassuringly steady. ‘Do you have casualties? Over.’
‘The infantry… I’ll check the troop.’ Davis’s voice was slightly muffled, but he knew it would transmit.
‘What kind of gas?’
‘Chemical… unidentified.’
‘How was it delivered?’
‘No idea… no shells over… haven’t seen aircraft. High altitude rockets, maybe.’
‘Roger Charlie Bravo One… out.’
‘DeeJay,’ shouted Davis, ‘you got your hatch clamped down and your respirator on?
‘Yes.’
‘Spink… check yours, lad.’ Davis peered out through his lenses. The infantrymen he could see were hunched on the ground, curled into grotesque foetal postures; one was convulsing rhythmically, but the others were now all still. God, it was nasty… bloody terrifying. An unseen, unheard form of death that drifted in without warning. He could have been out there… leaning out of the turret for a breath of air when it arrived. The bastards; those bastard Russians. What about the rest of his troop?
‘All stations Bravo, this is Nine… acknowledge. Over.’
‘Bravo Two. Over.’
‘Bravo Three. Over.’
Davis waited. Where the hell was Four? ‘Bravo Four, this is One… acknowledge. Over?’
‘Bravo Four. Over.’
Relief made Davis angry. ‘Bravo Four, this is Nine. When I say acknowledge, I mean acknowledge… and fast okay? All Bravo Troop standby… and for God’s sake stay closed-down. Any casualties near you? Over.’
Only one of the troop replied to his question. ‘Bravo Three… report Milan squad knocked out here.’
‘Roger Bravo Three. Out.’
PBI, they used to nickname them; poor bloody infantry. It was appropriate. ‘Inkester, keep your eyes peeled.’ DeeJay had already started the Chieftain’s engine. ‘Everything okay down there, DeeJay?’
‘Ace, sir.’
‘Spink? Spink, wake up, lad!’
‘Yes, sir. I’m all right.’
‘Fucking stay that way,’ warned Inkester. ‘Shit… look at that…’ Four stub-winged aircraft in a tight diamond formation were swinging up above the distant woods, rising into a steep climb. Below them the ground was already a seething mass of napalm flame. ‘What the hell are they, sir?’
They had come in so fast Davis had not seen their approach dive. ‘Tomcats maybe… Yanks… ours anyway.’ The aircraft were already only small dots; the formation broke, sunlight glinted on perspex and they were gone.
It’s begun again, thought Davis. As though in confirmation, the hull of the Chieftain began to quiver with the shock of exploding missiles. Overhead, the shrieking roar of heavy artillery shells rose above the throb of the tank’s engine. Two more days, please God… that’s all, just two days… keep us alive for two more days until we’re pulled out.
Floggers! He saw them in the distance against the dawn sky, chunky, menacing, only a hundred meters above the ground. They seemed to be aiming themselves directly at Charlie Bravo One. He lost them for a second and they were suddenly terrifyingly close… one disintegrated into a vast orange flame; a comet spewing flaming debris as it fell. The others… he saw missiles briefly… heard the explosions somewhere to the rear. Smoke! Shell bursts ahead of him. Ethereal dark serpents writhing from the earth, to envelop the fields and swell along the riverbanks. The ground leapt, trees and shrubs flattening beneath the sharp aerial detonations of canister, aimed against infantry already incapacitated by the gas; steel pellets hammered the Chieftain’s armoured body, shot-blasting the paintwork from polished metal.
Davis wondered what it was like for the Russian tank crews. Perhaps in some ways better; at least they were moving forward. But into what? Minefields! The leading tanks armed with rollers and ploughs to clear the treacherous and deadly ground… wedged up against ditches and streams where they became stationary targets for the Milan crews or the gunships. And here against the well-prepared defences, unable to use the natural cover until it was cleared of mines by their engineers. No, it wasn’t better for them, and it was probably psychologically worse… they had everything to lose, and not much to gain… only someone else’s piece of ground to die on.
Imagine being up there watching, he thought. Up there, not like God, but just up there. In a command helicopter well up out of harm’s way if there was such a place; looking down and seeing it all happen. Like the time he had flown into Berlin, and seen the East German minefields stretching as a dark ploughed road as far as he could see in both directions from the windows of the aircraft; only now the border would be a band of fire and smoke cutting Europe in half. How wide was the devastation and destruction? Would it go on expanding until the whole world was one huge smoking ruin?
Inkester called, ‘Infantry… I think I can see Russian infantry!’
Davis swept the ground through the smoke with the 7.62mm machine gun, pleased to give himself something to take his mind off the devastating artillery bombardment. He stopped firing, and watched through the episcope as a British Saracen disgorged its men sixty meters to his left; ten infantrymen, clumsily-suited and cradling their SLRs, alien in their respirators, comforting. Replacements; infantry to fight infantry. Davis wanted more of them to appear, supported by some fresh armour to charge forward and roll it all up, get it. over with. They wouldn’t come, it was a waste of time even thinking about it.
‘Charlie Bravo One… this is Shark. Soviet air-drop to the rear… about two Ks back, at Cyanide… some light armour. We’ll hold here until it gets too hot, then move to Potash… out.’
‘Roger, Shark,’ acknowledged Davis.
Airdrop, bloody hell. And behind somewhere. That was bound to be the way they’d do it; they weren’t going to get themselves shot to hell in order to ford some pissy little river; they’d just put up a diversionary artillery barrage, and then air-drop their troops past the defences. Sod crossing minefields and bridging ditches. They would secure the bridgehead by an airborne assault first. Gas! That was bloody obvious, too. Someone should have had those poor infantry bastards in their respirators since first shot yesterday… bloody disorganization… too many bosses up top… too bloody far away from the battlefront. No, that wasn’t true. The colonel had been right up there with them… Colonel Studley in his Chieftain, out there in the battle like his crews. Bloody good for him; he was… had been the sort of colonel you wanted to fight under… poor sod.
‘Armour! What the hell?’ Inkester’s voice, anxious. ‘Range six hundred…’ The Chieftain lurched on its suspension as Inkester fired. ‘What was it, sir? The wreckage of the vehicle was hidden in the smoke.
‘An MT-LB… worry about what’s coming, lad, not what’s gone.’