Over the sights of his rifle, Hyde tracked it as it neared the skeletal remains of a radio truck. The Zil’s stake-sided load deck was crammed with men, so many that the press appeared to be bowing the wooden rails outward.
It was doing about thirty when the road erupted beneath its cab, between the first two pairs of wheels. A tongue of flame drove up through the billowing cloud of smoke and debris and engulfed it.
THREE
The roar of the mine explosion reached the tree line as the Zil emerged from the smoke. Front end collapsed on broken axles, it ground great sheets of sparks from the road. Flames were already licking from the shattered windshield and engine hatches.
As it slewed to a halt, the sides restraining its human cargo snapped under the weight of bodies thrown violently against them, and a flailing cascade of men toppled to the road.
With short precise bursts Hyde swept the load deck clear of the few who had kept their balance. That done, he hosed a whole magazine at the Russians seeking to crawl and drag themselves to safety beneath the canted chassis. The sudden eruption of a fuel tank engulfed those who made it.
Blocked by the wreck, the remainder of the convoy slammed to a halt and their crews bailed out. Several stumbled, or fell and lay still, as other lines of tracer from the woods targeted them.
Its arcing flight marked by its vivid tail-flare, the first of the Milan missiles swept over the broken ground and impacted dead centre on a stalled tractor unit. A fountain of white and silver globules of molten metal marked the point of penetration.
The missile was designed to defeat the thickest armour to be encountered on Warpac main battle tanks, and the sheet metal of the tracked vehicle offered virtually no resistance. A shaft of vaporized metal and explosive bored deep into the engine compartment. Instantly there spouted from the entry point a gout of bright yellow fire and a blazing figure tumbled from the cab, followed by a red bubble of fuel-fed flame.
“What do you want me to take out next?” Dooley snapped the first reload round into place and panned along the convoy.
Using the last of a clip on a command car that was trying to manoeuvre around the pyre the Zil had become, Hyde took in the effect of the squad’s fire. It was frustrating, there were so many juicy targets and they hadn’t the weight of ordnance to do a thorough job.
“Hit another of the tractors. If we can’t smash them all, we’ll bottle up as many as we can.”
About to turn his attention back to the command car, Hyde saw it rock on its suspension as a rifle grenade detonated immediately above it. Peppered by the storm of fragments, it shot backward out of control, a bloodied head lolling from a side window. Without check to its gathering speed it veered on an erratic course, cannoning off a gutted radio truck and hurtling over the edge of the Autobahn. A wall of discoloured water hid its roll into the ditch, to be instantly replaced by spurting steam.
The foul fumes from the launcher’s first stage ignition percolated through the filters of Dooley’s respirator. He held his breath against them as he kept all his attention on his selected victim.
Its main motor failed to fire correctly and the Milan swooped toward the ground trailing a dangerous telltale stream of thin white exhaust. Barely skimming the surface of the field there was no chance of the projectile reaching its intended target and Dooley shifted to the closest available. A towering six-wheeled Kraz mounting a squat hydraulic crane —even that proved too far.
Pancaking onto the Autobahn, the missile broke up and threw a sheet of burning warhead material and rocket propellant in a broad fan over the scarred concrete.
An erratic scattering of automatic fire was being returned now, much of it converging on the aiming point offered by the Milan’s betraying plume of smoke. In the still air it hung like a faintly accusing pointer to its source.
Tracer walked up the field toward Sergeant Hyde, and he had time to claw into the earth before the last few rounds of the burst punched deep holes in the lengths of bough heaped up before him. Splinters of wood and chunks of bark flew over his head.
Then he heard a more ominous noise. A loud distinctive punching crackle sound he knew all too well. From the rear of the convoy soared fat orange gobs of tracer. Faster and faster they came until they slashed at lightning speed through the dead timber around him.
Those first rounds came the closest, but Hyde knew that with a 23mm flak cannon joining in from somewhere among the smoke-shrouded rump of the column, the odds had suddenly changed.
It was too late now to wish there’d been more time to select the ambush site. Their transport’s turret-mounted Rarden cannon would have been more than a match for the enemy weapon, but placing it among the jagged woodland would have been impossible. The spears of flayed timber would have ripped the hover-craft’s tough ride-skirt to shreds and disabled it more effectively than a direct hit.
Despite the casualties and damage they had inflicted, the Russian unit was largely intact and there was little more they could do. Bitterly Hyde blasted off two full magazines in quick succession toward the mobile crane, but the massive truck appeared to soak up the beads of tracer without harm.
“Use the last round. Any target. Just make sure of a hit.” Dooley had already reloaded, and as he fired could only hope that another malfunction would not signal their precise position. “No go. It’s dead.”
“So are we if we hang around until that cross-eyed Red gets better on that 23mm. Is that thing safe to cart away?”
“Can’t swear to it.” Machine gun bullets punched two holes in a log beside Dooley. “They have been known to go off after a hang fire.”
“Leave it, then. Pass the word to move out.” Unclipping a phosphorus grenade, Hyde waited until he could see the others were clear before moving back into deeper cover and lobbing the chunky cylinder beside the Milan launcher.
He didn’t wait to see it ignite, but ran crouched low to catch up to the others. A seemingly solid stream of cannon tracer slashed through the woods to their right. Several of the rounds found still standing trunks and split them with giant cleaver force, and sending scabs of bark high into the air.
Almost up with the others, Hyde saw a man go down ahead of him. He recognized Thome’s distinctive Tiger-stripe helmet cover.
“I’m OK, just tripped. Oh shit, oh bloody shit.” There was a long tear in the leg of Thome’s protective suit. The material under it had also been ripped and speckles of dark blood were already forming on a long graze.
“You’ll be OK.” Unclipping the sling from his rifle, Hyde bound it about the man’s thigh to pull the fabric together. “You’ve taken all your shots and pills?” It was a question he hardly need ask. They were all too well aware of the likely consequences of not doing so to overlook the regular dosing with nerve-gas antidotes. “Keep moving. We’ll scrub you down as soon as we get back.”
Behind them, despite the obscuring smokescreen, the Russian fire was growing in volume. Spent bullets fell about them. When they started down a steep reverse slope to the fold in the terrain where their transport waited, the sounds of the blind retaliation were suddenly reduced. Only a rare stray blob of ricocheting cannon tracer served to show that the Russians were maintaining their profligate expenditure of ammunition.
The air-cushion armoured personnel carrier sat low on its collapsed ride skirt. Its camouflage paint blended in perfectly with the dead birch trees among which it was parked. As they approached, its raked bow door lowered and they entered by the ramp it formed.