At the rear gun port Andrea unleashed a pyrotechnic stream of tracer and armour piercing bullets into a pair of radio trucks that stood close together, joined to each other and a tall mast by a mass of cable. The trucks soaked up the fusillade without apparent ill effect until a figure stumbled from a rear door, clutching his stomach.
Events were nowbeyond Major Revells’ control. Their driver had the skill; all he needed was the luck, to clear the succession of obstacles. Another anti-tank ditch looked to be a problem for them but it was an old one, had not been maintained and the sides had begun to cave in. Juggling the ride height and speed Burke was able to slide sideways in to the bottom of it and then at maximum power send them leaping up a rough slope of tumbled of soil on the far side and back on to the level.
Single shots and light machine gun fire were starting to make a continual patter on their flanks, creating a different sound when they hit the steel turret, aluminium hull or Kevlar ride skirts. A single round found a weakness in a joint and its super-hard tip made a pimple on the interior wall where it came that close to penetrating. Twice grenades detonated against the top of the hull, coating some of the vision blocks with speckles of carbon and filling the interior with the stench of cordite and burning paint.
“We’re through. Just the front outposts now.” Burke saw that the zig-zagging communication trenches were running away from their path, not across it. They were the ones that would enable reinforcements to get to the front line without showing themselves. Now thought the defences were fully alerted and a continual hail of small arms fire hosed across the Iron Cow from every direction. A cannon shell bounced off the turret side, another produced a loud grinding sound as it wrenched away a bank of decoy launchers and they swung back and forth on the armour, still attached by a single distorted fixing and a length of cable.
The country they raced through had changed dramatically, from the green of fields and woods they were now in the midst of shell torn ground where nothing could grow. This area was regarded as only lightly fought over and yet great swathes of the land had been churned and burnt again and again, by explosives and by the crushing tracks of tanks and the deep treaded tyres of armoured vehicles, by explosives and napalm.
It was honeycombed with bunkers and gun pits. Torn sandbags and splintered baulks of timber flanked tracks worn deep by tramping boots and dragged equipment. Wire and tape cordoned huge swathes where every puddle had a scum of poisonous chemicals and the ground itself had a ghastly sickly look. As they travelled further in to the strip of land that separated the two armies so they encountered belts of razor wire, much of it torn about with ripped up posts. What remained was designed to channel attackers into minefields protected by interlocking fields of fire.
The war in the Zone had taught the men who fought in it every conceivable skill in killing, brought to a pitch every art of defence and attack. One after another the squad were driving through positions that were mutually supporting and layered in such a way that attacks by armour or infantry would be sucked in to a maelstrom of destruction.
Ahead of them a curtain of mortar fire was going own. Out beyond the front line positions a barrage warmed in intensity, waiting for them to run its gauntlet.
A continuous curtain of dirt and shrapnel was lifting, becoming impenetrable.
“We come out on the other side of that and we are going to run straight on to our own guns.” Revell was all too well aware that in that lay a risk as great as any they had faced in running through the Soviet positions. Possibly a greater risk. The hovercraft was a rare beast and was not even on a lot of gunner’s recognition charts. On either side. That might confer advantage among the Russians when, unable to positively identify the machine they had at times held their fire, but not when faced by their own sides anti-tank guns and teams when they would run the real risk of coming under attack for the same reason.
Pulling hard over to avoid a falling salvo, Burke could not prevent the hovercraft side-slipping on liquid soil and dipping the machines nose in to a giant shell hole. They hit the bottom with a monstrous splash, throwing out much of the oily water lying there.
The involuntary halt in no-mans land was an opportunity not to be missed Revell realised.” Simmons, Thorne, grab the recognition panels and fix them on the front.”
With the front exit jammed in to the far wall of the crater and the rear access being rapped by machine gun fire and shrapnel where it projected above the rim of the crater they had to exit through the turret hatch, with streams of tracer passing close overhead.
Sucking mud grabbed at them as they stretched the orange panel over the armour, securing it to any projection.
“Major, we’ve got company coming.” Simmons saw the Russians first. They were running from one strip of ruined trenchf to another, pausing in shattered machine gun posts as they advanced on the stranded machine.
About twenty men were in the advance. Their hands were filled with satchels and loose grenades and several had single shot rocket propelled grenades. Even as the two men saw them coming one launched a missile and it soared towards them, perfectly visible as it popped from its launch tube. A few metres from the tube the main motor cut in and its flight became a blur, the air behind it rippling in a haze from the super-hot gasses coming from the jet pipe.
Simmons felt he could have reached up and touched it as it soared above him, going on to be lost amid the continuing mortar deluge. “Give me an M60, and make it fast.” Both men had only their side arms and the range was too far for their pistols to be effective.
A machine gun was thrust up, butt first, and a box of ammunition was pushed up on the rooftop after it. At the same time the second hatch opened and the commanders cupola swung back.
Revell had swapped his close range shot gun for an M16 and crouching on top of the hull he opened up on the nearing infantry. As he did the M60 also clattered into life and then jammed after ten rounds. The closest of the Russians was only fifty yards away and knelt to send another anti-tank round at them. He fell clutching his throat before he could fire and Revell switched his attention to two men who were dodging from cover to cover to get close enough to hurl the grenades they carried. When one fell his companion went to ground, and stayed down.
Urged on by an officer about half the men left cover and began a dash towards the APC. Several became enmeshed in obstacles, sharp stakes and heaps of wire catching on their flapping coats and making them easy targets as they paused to pull themselves free.
Having cleared the M60 Simmons sprayed wildly, using a short belt in seconds. He lay on the port Allison housing to reload. As he did Andrea pushed up through a hatch and without pause fired off three 40mm grenades from her launcher.
The first struck the ground between two men and fragments of metal casing scythed their legs from beneath them. A second struck a charging rifleman on the chest and his upper body burst apart. The weapon he was carrying became a lethal projectile and decapitated the man beside him. A third grenade detonated in front of the officer and when the fountain of flame and smoke rose in to the sky he was down and moving only sluggishly. The barrage had driven the others to cover but several grenades flew from pits and dips in the churned terrain. All exploded well short of their target but chunks of casing still reached as far as the rear of the vehicle, zipping away in glancing blows that left only shallow silver scratches on the metal.
“There’ll be more of the blighters.” Clarence joined the group and they formed a defensive half circle about the rim of the crater. “And here they come.”
From the distant enemy emplacements sprang a full company of Russian infantry. They were shouting furiously and all had bayonets fitted to their rifles. Starting across open ground from a hundred metres away they were an easy target for the heavily armed squad and before they were half way many had been shot down and several more were limping back, holding heads and limbs, wounded by fragments from air bursts Andrea had sent over.