“There’s no way around this” Revell felt bitter frustration that they had wasted so many of the hours of darkness. Their maps had shown several places where the autobahn was unfinished, places where they could have slipped past the patrols but in reality the gaps had not existed, the road was complete and it encircled them.” Revell scanned the complex of ramps and slip roads. The Soviet column was unending. Clearly they were doing their best to make up for the delays they had suffered earlier.
“We could create a temporary blockage, a crash or fire maybe, and slip through during the confusion.” Sergeant Hyde indicated the thermite. “We have the stuff to do it.” He employed the turret gun sights to examine the problem. “If we can get them to panic, get a good flap going then we might be able to break through. After that we can use the railway lines for a few hundred metres and then we can turn off and we’ll have the concealment of another built up area.”
“It would have to be done without noise, without gun fire, without being seen.” Concentrating his attention on the flyover immediately above the twin tracks, Revell looked for a way to reach it. “The high level road offers the best opportunity. When the driver’s reach that point the last thing they will be expecting is trouble and there is no chance of getting around a hold-up on that elevated section. The front of the column will draw ahead and you’re right, we should be able to slip through a gap.”
“That’s twenty feet in the air. But I think we can do it, we just need some one really fit… Simmons!” Hyde started to unfasten the catches on the case containing the thermite.
The overhead power lines serving the railway were dead. The gantries supporting the thick steel cables gave Simmons the start he needed. A precariously balanced short section of fire-scorched ladder scrounged from a derelict fire tender in the salvage yard provided the rest of the climb. Propped from the top of the steel latticework post, to a cast iron stanchion holding a road sign and emergency telephone on the flyover enabled him to climb to the roadway and grab a hold.
Thick, lung searing, blasts of exhaust gas swept over him as Simmons gripped the post. He kept his head just below the top of the parapet, hidden by the telephone shelter. Balanced precariously on the top rung of the ladder he was careful to keep himself within the shadow of the fluorescent striped box. The noise was deafening, the rattle and sharp squeal of thrashing tracks blending with the bellow of engines and the scrape and rumble of poorly secured loads shifting on the cargo decks of the trucks.
With their headlights dimmed almost to extinction the vehicles were travelling at twenty-yard intervals. Simmons nestled an improvised thermite bomb against his arm where he crooked it around the thick steel support. He waited for a particular combination of vehicles, an open backed truck followed by a tracked carrier. The truck to make an easier target for his throw, the carrier because its driver would have a restricted view of the roadway between himself and the vehicle ahead.
His arm aching fit to break and his vision blurring from the clouds of fumes and grit constantly washing over his face Simmons knew he couldn’t hold on for long, then he had luck, and knew he would not have the need.
A six-wheeler Zil cargo truck wheezed up the long gradient towards him. Its stake sided cargo deck held a poorly secured selection of packing cases and even as it approached Clarence could see its covering of tarpaulin was flapping and cracking to constantly reveal various shaped containers. At a long distance behind, making even harder work of the grade came a tracked ammunition carrier. Not only was the roof hatch closed with no one standing at it, but the drivers visor was down. Even as he saw it the vehicle made a couple of crab-like corrections to its path, indicating just how little its driver could see and his inexpert driving.
The Zil drew level with Simmons and he saw that one of its rear tyres was running almost flat; another had long strips of rubber compound peeling away and flailing the underside of the cargo deck with each revolution.
Throwing the device was awkward and he almost lost his grip on the post. The kilo of incendiary material landed on the edge of the deck and for a moment he thought it was going to topple off, instead it went the other way and disappeared in among the variously shaped wooden packing cases.
Not waiting for the result he slid back down the stanchion. Freeing himself quickly from a projecting bolt head that threatened to snag him, he swung under the bridge and managed to grab a hold of the ladder. He was transferring his foothold to the top of the gantry post when a soft explosion on the roadway sent a shaft of white light into the sky.
The air was instantly filled with the sound of vehicles braking violently and doors opening and slamming. A huge wreath of white smoke spilled over the edge of the elevated roadway and then was blasted away as a secondary detonation dwarfed the first.
“You hit the jackpot.” Dooley had climbed up to help and held out his hand to assist Simmons to make the transfer from ladder to the more easily negotiated gantry. As he did the ladder fell, falling on to the granite ballast flanking the track. The conductor wire twanged and hummed at the weight they imposed on the gantry as they clambered down. No faces appeared above the parapet. The clatter had gone unheard amid the noise from braking vehicles and shouting drivers. The pair ran for the hovercraft, Dooley quickly falling behind.
A more substantial explosion, rupturing oxygen cylinders, sent truck wheels, rocket casings and the broken and burning carcases of heavy boxes across along the flyover for a considerable distance. Fed by the cylinders contents the fire was consuming the truck at a furious pace and pushing a pillar of red fire high into the night sky. Burning debris rained down over the edge of the flyover. Landing on other sheeted loads the red-hot debris ignited several other fires.
“Go, go, go.” Revell thrust himself in to the turret and threw open the hatch for a better view of the route.
The top of the overpass was one sea of flame, frequently swirled in to long tongues of fire as ammunition exploded. A long interval had opened up between it and the front of the convoy. Burke sent the hovercraft through the centre, sending an emergency blast of power into the ride height to clear the steel crash barriers. Down a shallow embankment on the far side and then a wire mesh fence collapsed before them as they swerved across a drainage ditch and on to the railway line.
Revell pushed the throat microphone harder in to position. “OK Burke take off along the tracks. We’re a train…”
The heavy ballast rattled beneath them, moved by the blast of the full power down draft. Revell turned to look back. The fierce blaze on the over-pass was spreading as burning fuel ran under vehicles that were abandoned or unable to turn or reverse away from it. The silhouettes of men running about showed against the blaze as it flared wildly out of control. Before a bend took them into a cutting and through a station surrounded by suburban housing, he saw a last glimpse of the scene, illuminated by a series of spurts of tracer and fountains of signal flares.
“Stay on the rails as long as we keep heading north.”
Burke heard the officer’s words and had misgivings he couldn’t resist expressing.
“That’ll take us back in to the heart of the Zone, away from our own lines.”
“We’re not going too far, I just want to put some distance between us and the Soviet troops who are still hyper active from the attack on the city. I want to find an area where there has been no fighting for some time, where everyone is sleepy.”
“Are your men asleep?” General Zucharnin, for the second time in twenty-four hours, felt he could happily strangle his stepson. Deliriously happily. It was just the thought of his mother, that gorgeous full-bodied, glamorous and highly experienced sex maniac that kept him from carrying out the threats he longed to transform from wishful thinking to harsh reality. He had never known that marrying her would mean taking on responsibility for this moron. In fact as she’d refused to go to bed with him until they were married he had, in his hurry, never even thought to look for such complication. But he did have the problem of her useless offspring and as there was little he could do about it he had to content himself with bellowing what he felt. It was a rare day when he did not send an officer and several enlisted men to the firing squad and this poltroon had screwed up enough to warrant such action ten times over. Yet still he stood, or almost crouched, drooling with fear in a corner of the office.