She could only hope that he would declare the bomb unsafe, and that they were to use the thermite there and then. But he was taking a long time, suggesting that he thought he could fix the dreadful thing.
In the early days of the war, when she had been in the East German border guard, one of the hated Grepos, she had seen the results of the weapons employment. NATO counter attacks had been stopped by the use of missile delivered bombs. Just small ones, like this, but dirty, with a high radioactivity count.
Injured soldiers and civilians with horrific burns and severe radiation sickness had turned up for a week afterwards. It had been mostly civilians. The British attack had been stopped even before it had formed, when the troops were passing through a town on the way to their start line.
At night, though her post had been almost nine kilometres away, the whole area about the site of the airbursts had glowed. As the firestorm had died so that eerie dull orange haze had shown in the night sky. She had woken up one morning to find that in the night, and that a full ten days after the strike, a dying woman had made her way to her barracks. She had opened her eyes to look into the melted face of a corpse propped against the side of her bed. Down on its knees and only a fraction from her, the corpses hand, burnt to a talon and frozen in death, reached out for her.
Within an hour Carson announced himself content with what ever it was he had done and they reloaded the bomb, without enthusiasm.
The sweep out in to the country should have taken them well clear of enemy activity. Revell knew that the Russian advance had centred on the two main routes from the east in to the city of Nurnberg, with little activity to either side of that main corridor. That was particularly so in the south where roads were mostly on a north-south axis, of little use to them except for communications. The Zone here was scrappy, a ragged bordered strip of land that the Russians held more by fortifying easily defended areas rather than by forming a regular front line. Their only aggressive until recently, when they had launched their attack on the city, had been patrolling, sometimes in company strength. It had enabled them to dominate broad swathes of territory.
The Czech and Polish forces that had been responsible for this front in the first days of the war had quickly been reduced to less than fifty percent strength by mutinies. Only the rapid injection of reserve Russian units had stabilised the situation.
That miss-employment of valuable reserves had played havoc with Warpac plans. The long term consequences had been that the Zone in this sector was partially within original Warsaw Pact territory, the only place where it was, and it was the narrowest point in the whole of the Zone. It was to create room for manoeuvre before the spring offensive that the Communists had started this current push, intending to increase the Zone far beyond its present width.
As they drove east Revell was surprised to encounter several groups of refugees heading in the same direction. That just had to be wrong, even though they had witnessed what looked like Russians attempts to herd them back, away from the NATO front line. Usually the civilians made every effort to move west, in to NATO territory. Twice they had to cut across country to avoid slow moving east bound truck convoys loaded down with dejected looking non-combatants.
The vehicles occupants were for the most part well dressed, their clothes clean. Only a few had bandages on wounds and those were neatly done, evidence that they had come from the city and been attended to before the medical resources had been stretched too far. They also narrowly avoided another Russian convoy; a straggling line of impressed civilian vehicles, mainly open trucks, piled high with colourful broken and water stained boxes. They almost ran in to it at a hill top cross-roads, just managing to drive off road and hide in a rough paved area holding various heaps of road mending materials.
As the convoy climbed closer Revell could see through his binoculars that most of the heaped cargo appearing to be salvaged food stuffs, obviously looted from supermarkets and cash and carry warehouses, and none too carefully. Virtually all of the visible cans and packets were buckled or torn. The contents oozed from many and mixed with masses of dried pasta and the defrosting contents of ready-meal and bulk freezer cartons There were six vehicles in all and on the long steep hill they had become widely spaced, some of them struggling on the gradient, clearly overloaded.
Revell took Andrea with him when he left the Iron Cow and stole up to the road to look through a gap in a high mesh fence. The bottom half was smothered in vine-like weeds and closely flanked by tall thistles. He chose Andrea not because he particularly wanted her company but he knew that if she stayed then even Sergeant Hyde would have trouble preventing the men from having a go at her over the shooting of the Russian on the bike. In truth Revell had to admit to himself he had found that distasteful. All of them had killed, most could recall instances where they had shot down unarmed men, even in the back, but the incident in the gated estate had been different. There had been something poignant about the solitary Russian they had encountered. He had posed no threat, was befuddled by drink and the nature and volume of what he had been looting strongly suggested he was taking the booty back to share. For those reasons and others the men found her murderous reflexes unpleasant, certainly in this instance.
Crouching low and parting the bindweed they monitored the traffic. Each vehicle betrayed its civilian origins, though a handful had been roughly sprayed with camouflage colours. In no case did it conceal the names of transport companies and manufacturers that adorned them. In the cab of every truck sat a stone-faced Russian guard, a rifle between his knees. The only animation they displayed was when a vehicle began to fall behind on the hill as it reached the steepest gradient opposite the resurfacing material depot. Then they could be seen waving their arms shouting and threatening, successfully intimidating their press-ganged civilian drivers, urging them on.
“Where the heck are they going with that lot?” Revell watched the third vehicle approach, a small dump truck with a quarrying company logo on the cab door. He could make out the assortment of foodstuffs the truck carried. There had clearly been no selection involved. Every conceivable type of food had been thrown aboard. Smashed ketchup bottles leaked their contents over tinned fish, cellophane wrapped bread rolls and even a carton of drain cleaner. The Russians who had supervised the loading had been more interested in the quantities rather than the actual content. Language problems had very likely not helped the choosing of what was heaved aboard. They must have emptied the shelves of a cash and carry.
“Perhaps the food is to feed the refugees they are rounding up.” Andrea watched a woman driver respond with a scream and shield her head with her arms to avoid a second hard slap from her escort. Her hands removed from the steering wheel, their truck swerved towards the roadside and the Russian had to cease his assault as the Scania threatened to fall over sideways on the soft verge.
“They don’t ship in food for those, you know that. The Commies wouldn’t lift a finger to help refugees.” Approaching them was another yet another dump truck, obviously hi-jacked from a quarry or motorway building project. It was piled higher than any of the others. Revell heard the engine spluttering and watched the vehicle constantly stall and make an erratic jerking progress. Eventually it had to pull off the road close by them, its wheels flattening broad tracks in the rank growth.
The motor cut out with a long over-run and after the sound of the fierce application of the parking brake, applied only just in time to prevent the over-laden wagon from rolling back, all that could be heard was the screaming of the Russian guard.