The losses and casualties were near instantly replaced with another group that broke from cover far off to the right, splitting the squads fire. Another bunch appeared on the left, further diluting the massed effect of the squads weapons.
“Burke, can you get us out of here, they’re starting to look awfully determined.” Libby had dropped down from the turret. With the APC nose down he was unable to depress the cannon or it co-axial weapon to bear and had joined in with an M16.
“Sure, get me a crane, or a ramp.” Juggling the controls, Burke selected a combination of down draft ducting that would lift the Iron Cows’ nose and lifting it from the cloying mud bring it back nearer to the horizontal. He just had to avoid over doing it and digging the rear of the hull in to the crater rim as they reversed. “I think I can do it. Tell the major.”
Revell was going to have to put more trust in their driver than he ever had before. He knew Burke was good and that their machine was versatile but their predicament was bad. With the full crew aboard he did not think they could do it.
He felt a sharp pain in his arm as a splinter of grenade casing sliced through his uniform and made a long cut across his shoulder. It was Clarence who brought the man down before he could throw a second. From among the wet soil in to which it fell the grenade went off and lifted a body, minus its arms in a bizarre push-up.
Thorne had been wounded also and blood poured from the side of his head, deeply grazed by a bullet that had clipped and removed the top of his ear. It was a growing attrition rate they could not afford. Revell estimated that at least two companies of men were trying to work their way towards them. Another missile streaked past, the roasting heat of its rocket motor starting a fire in a pack stored on the roof. Not seeing where it ended up, Revell fired off a whole clip at the direction from which it had come.
“Get everyone out, just leave the prisoner.”
Piling out at the command Libby glared back through the open hatch at the Russian, now looking white and trembling. “Great, the only one not living dangerously is the bugger who’d be happy to vaporise us all.”
Other comments were lost as the twin turbofans screamed to top speed and the front skirt inflated, successfully lifting the machine out of the crater floor. The engine notes changed and the APC thrust backwards. As Burke had feared the rear edge of the hull, riding above a barely stiffened skirt dug hard into the clinging ground. The engine note increased further as he found some extra revolutions and then the Iron Cow flew back, covering thirty yards and coming within grenade range before its driver could bring it under full control. With a nose up attitude the hovercraft slewed across the front of the crater. While it gave the crew cover to board it prevented their firing and the storm of incoming rounds peaked at the slab sided target. Thump after thump marked bullets impacts against the skirt, some penetrating it. More bullets flattened them selves against the engine housing and hull. Mercifully the only anti-tank rocket fired was ill aimed and missed by a wide margin.
The interior was a tangle of arms, legs and weapons as the squad flung them selves aboard. Libby raced to the turret and instantly machine gun fire was slashing back and forth against the lines of infantry who had suddenly got the courage to advance.
They went down as though mown and when the high velocity cannon added its power, slashing bodies to ribbons before they fell, the rest turned and bolted. Whirling the APC in its own length Burke sent the craft howling into the continuing deluge of mortar shells.
The last of the hatches was pulled shut just as a bomb exploded on the roof. They felt the air sucked from their punished lungs and then the over-pressure. Acrid smoke swept down and with it steel fragments that turned the interior in to a bloody shambles.
Pieces of the casing lanced into the prisoners arm and chest. Another slashed across Dooley’s cheek and tiny razor slivers made blood well from Clarence back and neck.
Hearing the pandemonium behind him Burke tried to select a level course but over-lapping craters made the ride a nightmare. Thrown about the compartment, more wounds were inflicted as the occupants were tossed against fittings and each other, while Samson tried to wipe away blood to determine the extent of injuries and secure dressings.
Of them all only the Russians chest wound seemed life threatening. There was blood coming from the side of his moth and breathing, especially coughing, was agony for him.
“Hell, they’ve got it again.” It was Thorne who noticed the smoke coming from the pack containing the bomb. A wide and spreading section of the marker pen embellished canvas was burning around a chunk of mortar casing that rested on top of it.
Carson reached over and dabbed out the small flames with his palm, flicking the hot fragment on to the floor. “This thing is starting to look real tatty. Think we’ll get our deposit back?”
Lieutenant Andy ruffled the thick material where trails of sparks still made beads of fire along the ragged edges. “So long as they want to take it back I just don’t care.”
Lieutenant General Gregori felt exultant. An hour of threatening, promising, bribing and sheer brutality had obtained for him the information he wanted. He didn’t have the whole picture, there was much fine detail still to be filled in but he knew enough to bury Zucharnin. In fact bury his commanding officer and rival so deep and so fast that there was no chance he would ever resurface. The only thing left to do was decide on the precise manner in which he would do it. To keep his own nose clean it would be best to go up through channels, stick to the book. But if he did that there were others above them both who would not scruple at siphoning off some, or all, of the credit for themselves.
The Kremlin had been more paranoid that usual of late, they were seeing plots in everything, the most trivial and harmless of activities. If he chose he could go to them direct. He knew they frequently accepted intelligence in its raw state, straight from its source with no filtering by the agencies who specialised in grading such material.
To tell them direct that a favoured general had built a private army, was even now using it for some purpose of his own, that would come as a shock to them and reinforce their belief that every one plotted against them. He could offer them a scalp for which he ought to be well rewarded. He had already turned over many times in his mind how he should do it. A coded signal, a ‘phone call? If a call then he would have to be ready to be interrogated, possibly passed to a senior politburo member. Would his nerve hold under snap questioning from such an analytical, politically motivated mind. The signal was the better option, safer and just as powerful in its impact. Better perhaps, a signal can be passed about. His revelations might be diluted in the retelling after a telephone conversation. And then, again, even those in the highest level positions were not averse to slanting things so that they gained credit with the Chairman, especially for uncovering plots in the Army. They always distrusted the army. Even after the millions of lives that had been laid down for their ambition, they still suspected the army of plotting counter-revolution.
He looked back to the pad he had been using. Only a few of the fifty-odd pages remained. The rest had gone into his waste bin and been burned. There could never be enough precautions taken in circumstances like these.
It was important for the sake of impact that he get all the salient facts on to one page. In any event as yet he didn’t have that many. The pressure he had brought to bear on others had provided the bare bones and there would soon be more that would flesh them out, but it could not wait.