“Oh man. That has got to be one of the wildest rides.” Carson had been unable to resist the temptation and had knelt on a bench to try and catch a glimpse of their progress through one of the gun ports. His face shone with excitement as he turned back to sit facing the centre of the interior.
Revell was looking at the map. The display on the control consol in front of their driver, and its flickered repeater on the command position he just ignored. Too often the electronic direction indicator had sent them the wrong way or failed altogether at a critical moment.
“Might be useful for a Sunday afternoon driver looking for a picnic site but what ever command says, it is not up to battlefield situations.” Burke snapped down a toggle switch and the sat-nav system closed down. Lolling back in his seat he rested his feet across the panel. He felt someone nudging up beside him in his cramped position.
“Oh man, you are one heck of a driver. They ever told you that? You reckon you’re appreciated?”
Lieutenant Andy was grinning fit to split his face and pressing behind him was Carson. “You just got to join us man. You don’t want to be with this gung-ho combat outfit, Join us. We have so much fun…we’ve got this go-cart track and the brass give us all we want…”
Carson pushed forward, his camouflage-adorned features just visible below Andy’s armpit. “We’re building this stock car based on one of those big Volvo command cars. We’re going to ship it back to Carolina and then we’ll blow every one else off the track… You’d be the perfect driver, we’d clean up.”
Burke basked in the adulation and then found himself lugged back down to earth.
“There’s a job to do.” Revell had seen the huddle about his driver. ”After that you can try for a transfer. Of course we might be spread across the landscape as radio active fragments first.” He could understand if Burke was tempted by the prospect dangled before him. The entire unit took their dour driver for granted. He was good, brilliant even, as the last two minute run had proved. Certainly he wasn’t used to being praised and fussed over, it would likely go to his head, but they had a mission to complete first.
In the dull red glow of the crafts’ interior, Hyde and Revell checked their route.
“We’re too far to the north” Revell gauged the distance from their present location to where they should have been. It was a tough route, a maze of city streets. Some places, particularly at intersections with long straight approach roads, they would be a sitting target. And any turn might drive them into the sights of a Warsaw Pact anti-tank gun or even those of a Soviet tank. Cities soaked up troops and armour like a giant sponge but the Warpac forces would be hurriedly setting up positions to cover main routes.
“This way looks the best.” Sergeant Hyde pulled the map towards his lap and let his dirt stained broken nail trace an erratic path across the city. “We should avoid any Ruskie supply routes that way, assuming they’ll be using the uncluttered boulevards. Should take us around any positions they’re establishing.”
“Life sure is getting complicated.” Dooley had put his feet up on the thermite container and was now crowding others out of that section of the bench as he made himself comfortable.
Revell heard the muttered comment and though he ignored it he could understand the sentiment. Certainly the simplest thing would have been to blast straight through to the last known location of the ‘A’ bomb team. Take a chance on the enemy not yet having found it.
“So, you think we should keep going in a straight line. That would make life uncomplicated.” Andrea could not keep the amusement out of her voice. Not for an instant had she ever comprehended the seeming debate on every important decision the unit had to make. She knew Revell had the last word, always, and that he was usually correct…at least he always had been so far…but with the East German forces she had been used to orders being immutable, fixed. “I do not see what the problem is about. We know the location, get us there and leave this,” she rapped the ribbon festooning case of thermite with her knuckles. ”You are surely not serious in thinking we can hang around in the middle of Warsaw Pact position, playing with an ‘A’ bomb until we are sure it is safe and then carry it back to our own lines.”
She was not being subtle, she knew that, but the thought of carting a nuclear weapon across enemy territory filled her with dread. For the first time ever, that she could recall, she knew what fear was like.
A staccato blast of noise came from overhead as Libby opened fire with a clip of three rounds from the 30mm Rarden cannon and then there was a long crackling burst from the co-axial chain gun as the turret made a fast three hundred and sixty degree traverse.
The impact and detonation of the three high velocity shells at extreme close range shook the craft with sharp punching cracks from the blast waves.
“I’ve got Russian infantry all over the place. Hit the gas!”
As Burke responded to the call and set the turbofans screeching to emergency full power there were thuds and rattles on the exterior of the hull.
“Grenades.” Andrea was the first to thrust the barrel of an assault rifle through a hull gun port and fire off the whole clip, then she slapped in two more magazines in swift succession and loosed those off in similar wild and un-aimed fusillades.
The other five ports were also sending out streams of tracer that ricocheted from walls and storefront door and window frames to make a wild pattern of zipping lights. Cascades of shattering sheet glass fell in shimmering avalanches then were picked up by the viscous downdraft from the ride skirt and sent across the mall in a lethal hail that cut down the surviving Russian troops.
Bursting from the building the hovercraft performed a broadside skid across the road to scrape along fifty metres of concrete bollards before Burke fully regain control and instinctively sent the APC plunging across a gas station forecourt, smashing down the pumps and then into a narrow service road behind it.
In the turret, eyes locked on the gun sight, Libby just caught a glimpse of a flaring fire in their wake before the barrel took a hard knock on a street sign and the impact jarred his whole body. He heard the detonation of a couple of anti-personnel grenades in their wake and knew that the major was taking no chance on their being followed.
The thin walled explosive devices went off in jagged brown puffs of smoke that filled the garbage can littered alleyway with dirty smoke and thousands of tiny razor sharp steel fragments.
“Ahead, on the left somewhere…” Revell held the mike against his throat to make sure their driver heard… “There’s an entrance to an underground unloading bay. We can use it to make half a block.”
“It will take us away from our destination.” Burke wrenched the controls; preventing the APC from more than occasionally slapping deluges of sparks from the walls and steel security doors of the buildings rear access.
Ahead of them a rocket impacted amongst the convoluted pipe work of an industrial air-conditioning system and sent lengths of aluminium trunking down in to their path.
Adjusting the ride so that the nose of the machine was lowered Burke sent the Iron Cow into the raining debris, giving it no chance to get underneath the ride skirt and do serious damage. The lightweight material was crushed and flipped above them, and then they were executing a turn that took them down a concrete ramp and smashing through a red and white striped barrier into the deep gloom of an underground service area.
After a hundred metres Burke brought the APC to a halt and let the air spill out to rest the craft on the ground.
“I want a close perimeter.” Revell hit the rear door release and felt a heavy draft as damp clammy atmosphere from outside swept in to replace the cordite-tainted air of the APC’s interior. He would not take the chance of their being jumped again. That they had been, he knew, was his fault. While his assessment was that the Soviets were still as yet unorganised he had not allowed sufficiently for the fact that some of the advance elements of the assault troops might have already been formed in to patrols. If that was the case then it was sheer bad luck that they had encountered one of the patrols, and an alert aggressive one at that. Of course it was also likely that they had run in to what was no more than opportunist looters, but still he could have been more ready. Should have been. Now with a close perimeter guard at this new location it was far less likely they would be jumped.