“First you drop me in the shit by telling General Grigori that one of our patrols has discovered a NATO nuclear weapon before telling me. That makes me look like I don’t know what is going on in my own sector. So I get no credit with the Kremlin. And don’t you dare give me any of that rubbish about Gregori’s having responsibility for telling me. That poisonous rat is a master at getting the kudos when things go right and dumping the crap on others when they go wrong. And now despite my giving you a battalion of military police to safeguard the convoy route, it is closed down for two hours by sabotage.”
I think Father… General… it was perhaps just an accident… a poorly secured load… I have dealt with some drivers and the convoy commander as well as the escorting military police.”
“Bollocks. An accident just happened to occur there? Close to where the enemy had planted a nuclear weapon? Right at our most vulnerable point? No, the bastards had come back and thumbed their noses at us.”
“But if it is the same squad, and they still have the bomb, why just burn three or four ammunition trucks and block the route for… for a short while.”
“I’ll tell you why.” Through the frosted glass of his door the general saw that no one in the clerks room was moving. No, they were listening. Well they would regret that later. “Because the buggers who took back the bomb had been holed up in the area while your men fumbled about trying to find them. The political position about nuclear weapons is hamstringing NATO strategy. Some one screwed up and they want their bomb back. Not only have you let them have it, they’ve stolen our own bomb disposal man. Instead of their dashing straight back to the west and risking running in to our major troop concentrations in the city they are circling to the north before making a crossing into NATO territory.”
“It might be to the south.“ The captain felt smugly content with himself for making a point the general had missed. “If they want to circle the city then that would be the shorter route.
“So it is, but that is the direction in which we launched our recent attack on Regensberg. They will know the area is stuffed with reserves and service units. You can’t move there without tripping over a security check point.” His voice grew so loud that it made the cracked glass in the door vibrate and sent the stationary silhouettes in the outer office scurrying in to action.
General Zucharin got up from his desk and took a moment to rub his face with the palms of his hands. The two days growth of bristle made a sharp rasping noise. “That bomb is still out there. It may no longer be in our area but I don’t give a damn about that. Just make sure that when that NATO unit is intercepted your men turn up fast, you grab the bomb, I claim the credit. And I want that technician back. I had a fax this morning from a Lieutenant Colonel in the Strategic Rocket Forces and you know the clout they have at the Kremlin. He said he wants his man returned. I had to tell him we still need his services for a while longer. We have two days. I don’t care if he comes back alive or riddled with a fatal case of the pox; I want to be able to show him a body, warm or cold. What I don’t want is to have to say we have lost him altogether. So what ever you do, get in ahead of the KGB, they’ll be trying to do the same.”
“But what if a local commander insists on reporting the recovery himself.”
“Then boy,” Zucharnin jabbed his finger in to the centre of the young officers forehead, “tell him to have a chat with me and I shall once again rescue your balls from the furnace. Take the best equipment, commandeer anything else you need, get the job done or I withdraw the protection you have magically survived under during the last three months of cock-ups.”
The salvo of shells landed on and close to the small towns police station. It was a fluke, pure chance but at a stroke the hopes of a swift and organised evacuation were lost. It was an artillery round plunging through the roof that did the most harm. Breaking no more than a handful of tiles and splintering a timber beam it went on to penetrate only as far as the third floor of the four floor building. The fuse burst the shells’ thin casing as it struck a filing cabinet. The binary load it carried had mixed in flight, the coated metal wall separating the component chemicals having been shattered at the instant of firing. The gas flooded out and began to flow down through the building.
As it reached a corridor, and officers making for a shelter, it flushed through their lungs as they breathed hard with the exertion of running. All were sent in to a frothing fit. The same fate overtook everyone in the immediate area of the police head-quarters as the gas released by the rest of the salvo merged to form a near invisible cloud There was no breeze and it gently swept about the streets, stirred only by the passage of vehicles.
A cars and truck collided, their drivers collapsing at the wheel without the time to pull over. Their eyes bulged and their hands grabbed convulsively at their throats, just like the few early morning shoppers who succumbed near instantly as they formed a queue waiting for the food shop to open. The nerve gas did not discriminate. Babies in pushchairs, dogs on leads, even birds pecking for minute crumbs between the table legs of a pavement restaurant, all died within seconds.
The suffering was brief in that central area, mercifully so where the heaviest concentrations formed. As the cloud moved outwards through the town centre it became attenuated, losing its rapidly lethal concentration.
The panic that quickly spread added swiftly to the fast mounting death toll as people chose to run rather than head for the gas proof shelters. Even the handful who did have their respirators with them died as they fumbled with stiff straps and catches.
More in their confusion ran into the cloud, others were mown down by a bus that mounted the pavement and crushed pedestrians against walls and street furniture.
An elderly couple had no chance; unable to move fast enough they were abandoned by the young woman who for a moment took pity and tried to help. Children walking with their mothers on the way to school were closer to the ground and parents found they wee dragging a corpse before their own body was added to the toll.
Revell had seen the monitor flicker at the instant the klaxon sounded. Faster than any human reaction could have been the NBC system sealed hatches and vents and switched the air-conditioning to recirculating. By chance the hatches had been already shut as they motored in to the town centre. It was the Majors standing order that they should enter any new built-up area already secure against grenade attack through open roof hatches. It was a standard tactic of infiltrating Russian units to ambush from flat rooftops any reconnaissance vehicles nosing forward. Sure that the contamination was not penetrating their vehicle Revell joined the rest of the crew in taking the extra precaution of donning a respirator. In the APC’s restricted interior there was no chance to suit-up but they would before going outside, no matter how difficult the task.