“It is Linda, I have no time”
There was a lot of noise in the background, shouting.
“The Russian soldiers have come in to the camp, thousands of them. They are flooding out of the tree plantations. They are rounding up people, everyone, at random.”
“Can you tell what their purpose is, can you see what they’re doing.” Still Revell could hear the loud confusion behind her voice, and in her voice, fear. It must be taking a super human effort to keep talking when everything inside her was prompting her to run, or hide.
“They are lining people up… I thought they were going to shoot them, but they are not. They are marching them away, the soldiers pushing the people ahead of them. They are doing it very fast, they are shooting any who move too slowly.”
To verify that Revell could hear single shots, but so many of them that they crackled almost like automatic fire.
He couldn’t think what to say. ”Can you tell what direction they are heading?” The first pale streaks of first light were visible on the horizon.
“Oh yes, they are marching them towards the west. Away from the sunrise. I am sure. And now they are coming this way, what should I do? They will be here soon. I must put the children’s coats on.” There was an edge to her voice, barely controlled fear.
“Hold back as long as you can. Get in to the middle or back of the column. Avoid the front at all costs.” The phone made a scratching, scrabbling noise and then Revell heard the signal end abruptly. He could only think she must have jammed it in her pocket and switched it off, before the Russians saw it.
‘Away from the sun.’ Even now her feminine inability to know direction had been obvious, but she had come up with what she could. The Russian infantry, propelling tens of thousands of civilians was moving away from the sun. They were moving west, straight for the weak NATO defences south of Bayreuth.
“On your feet, now.”
The major’s shout carried all the urgency he had intended and the squad bolted for the hovercraft. The bomb had already been fastened on board. None of them worried about bumping it now as they packed on to the benches. Dooley, last man in, pushing past their Russian prisoner. He looked weary, exhausted. All night others had been pushing past him to take their turn to sleep on the benches.
“All aboard. Closing up.”
Revell had been scribbling on a pad, now he tore it off and handed it to their signaller. “Make it top priority and don’t make a mistake.”
“What’s happening Major.” Sergeant Hyde asked the question loudly.
“The Reds are clearing out that camp. They’re marching the refugees ahead of them as human shields.”
“Engines up to speed and running sweet as a nut Major. Five percent extra on the port motor.”
“All electronics functioning, signals poor.” Boris was the next to check in over the intercom’ circuit.
“Turret guns OK.” Libby checked his ready-use ammunition was to hand.
“Good. Hold it for the moment.” Major Revell listened as Burke eased off on the power so as to keep the turbine chambers within the optimum temperature range.
Hunched over his communications board, Boris was hitting his keyboard with lightning speed, his face creasing in concentration. Twice more at short intervals he pounded them then turned to the officer. “They are jamming Major. Every frequency with a strength I have never seen before. They’re pushing us back in to the dark ages. No radio, no sat-nav, no satellite links, nothing.”
Revell knew the truth of the dark ages remark. Now it was up to who ever had the fastest horse. “Burke, I want every ounce of power. Use the route we checked out last night, towards the NATO lines. Everyone else, man the ports Load the turret gun with high explosive. If I call for fire give it all you’ve got. Don’t worry about conserving ammunition. Any action is going to be short and bloody.”
Zucharnin smirked as he picked up the first marker his clerk had placed on the desk. They made a dark red line on the white blotting pad. His expression became one of intense satisfaction as he began to mark the route of his division and the civilians being herded before it.
His commanders would only have got back to their units an hour before their troops were due to cross their start line. He had deliberately called them to meet him down here, at a secret location. By the time they got back to their commands they would have missed a nights sleep, a supper and breakfast. They would be tired, hungry and bad tempered. That was just what he wanted. If the refugees slowed, tried to turn aside or even turn back, then the Soviet soldiers among them would drive them forward. If the Commanders were ill tempered then that attitude would cascade down to the ranks and for once the ordinary soldiers would have others to bully, to drive.
He added the other unit markers. He had no need to refer to anything, he had it all engraved on his memory. The nature of the terrain he knew by heart. Several inspection trips had familiarised him with every valley, every town, village and every hedgerow.
Everything that needed to be done, had been done. And now that the moment was here there was nothing more for him to do. Every one down to the lowliest NCO knew his place and function precisely. The mass of staff work had been completed on the spot so that no one in his headquarters would have any idea. His imbecile stepson was the only one who had openly questioned what was going on. Any others of his officers who had suspected the planned attack had retained the good sense to keep their mouths shut.
It was now just a case of waiting. Signallers following the advance would be laying landlines. NATO jamming counter measures would be by-passed that way. Three hours, perhaps less if the troops were utterly ruthless, as they had been ordered, would see the first wave of the refugees approaching the NATO defences. The minefields would be breached quickly beneath the civilian’s feet. The light outer defences of the NATO line would likely be empty by the time his men reached them and even if they weren’t they would go down like straw as they hesitated to fire for fear of hitting the refugees.
He could well imagine the total confusion among the NATO troops, faced with a herd of innocents being propelled towards them. They might try selective fire but with his division so enmeshed with the refugees they would surely not resist for long. They would fall back and once that started to happen it would have a domino effect.
Even when the civilians no longer served any purpose, when his troops had burst clean through and were swinging south to roll down behind the NATO defences those headless sheep would be swarming through the countryside, blocking roads and rapidly becoming a logistical nightmare for NATO, with their demands for food, shelter and medical supplies.
In anticipation he put a gnarled finger on to one of the markers and nudged it forward an almost imperceptible distance.
For the next few hours he would not leave the map. All he needed was that and his telephone. It sat on the desk, the only white one among the several black handsets. In the next few hours it was not jut the success of the assault that would hang in the balance; his future, even his very life depended on this brief passage of time.
The gamble he was taking was colossal. He had siphoned off troops to form the attack division. Concealed them, trained them, equipped them. All they lacked was gunships and main battle tanks though he had obtained fifteen heavy tracked assault guns. Keeping them moving with their gargantuan thirst for fuel was a commanders nightmare but the quantities of light weapons his division had required and the ammunition, that had been easy to obtain. The quantities of such things in the Zone were vast, so great that no one really tried to keep a tally any more. Even the Soviet High Command, so meticulous about controlling every aspect of every function of its armies would take months to discover the materials that had been redirected, the infantry Division that existed on no Kremlin order of battle. Even the fleet of armoured personnel carriers and scout cars had been produced from nothing, battlefield salvage, vehicles that had been declared write-offs. He had them put through his own improvised workshops, even produced some new ones in an automobile plant they had over-run months before. He had reported it to Moscow as being beyond hope of being made suitable for vehicle production ever gain. Smaller factories, employing impressed East and West German workers and many Czechs and Poles had been turned over to production of essential bridging equipment and radio jamming sets to be mounted on trucks. And what he saw as one of his most successful diversions of supplies, the conversion of seventy new GAZ six wheel trucks to carry 210mm Katusha rocket launchers, plus sufficient reload rounds to last through a prodigious expenditure of ammunition during the opening stages of the battle.