In the far distance the mist softened outline of Bayreuth suddenly sprouted tall columns of flame as the powerful warheads reached the extreme of their short range and enveloped the outskirts of the town in destruction and boiling smoke clouds.
The tramping refugees cringed at the ear-splitting howl, as the number of missiles seemed to increase, each tearing through the air towing a long streamer of flame. Many tried to hold back but from the top of a scout car an officer opened up with a machine gun, firing bursts in to the crowd where it seemed most to resist the urgings to go on.
A man who had seen his children shot down jumped on to the back of the car, grabbing the gunner. Mad with grief and rage he plunged his thumbs into his eye sockets. An instant later he was shot down and rolled to the ground, his corpse joining those of his family. It was almost the only example of fighting back in that whole crowd. Most of the men were weakened by thirst and in many cases by hunger. Subdued by the treatment they had received and seen handed out to others they were only anxious to protect their families. So they did nothing.
Still buried in the centre of the column but now staggering under the weight of the two young children she carried Linda managed to keep going. She knew there would come a point when the presence of the refugees would have conferred on the Russian attack all the benefit it could. Then they would be dumped and their gravest danger would be the risk of being run down. Already she had seen the Russian combat drivers making no effort to go around those who had fallen for any reason. She tried to keep the children’s eyes averted but it wasn’t always possible. If they survived this day she knew they would wake and scream every night for a long time.
Smoke with a choking stench rolled across them and she looked for its source. Off to her right two tall pillows of smoke were rising and drifting. Although she had heard nothing she knew it was shelling. To add to the other agonies of the people some NATO units had opened fire.
At the head of the procession there was a sequence of detonations. Unidentifiable pieces of bodies were thrown high. A ripple of fear ran back through the refugees and they actually stopped, shocked by the loss of life as they entered a minefield. As many again went down beneath the gun butts and boots of the Russians. There were two more waves of destruction before the minefield was cleared.
Linda and her children were ten ranks nearer the front by the time it ended and they walked through a field of dead and dying.
General Grigori had sent his signal and had waited twenty minutes in an agony of suspense. He might have had to wait hours, a day…perhaps the first response would be KGB units arriving to arrest any body, every body, who might be involved or responsible for what was happening, to the extent of the whole head Quarters staff. That would include him. Signal or no signal he might not be believed when he swore he had known nothing. Perhaps there would be a penalty to pay for not having known when he should have.
He bellowed at any one who approached him. He wanted the worry that made his heart pound and his head to feel as if it was splitting to go unseen by others. His back was giving him hell, a stress spasm he hadn’t experienced since he’d been at risk of being found cheating at his Staff College examinations. He wondered how Zucharnins’ attack was going. The first assault waves would be on the NATO front lines about now. Would the ruse work? Would the NATO forces hold their fire when faced by the approaching civilians? It was likely they would. That was something he could really worry about, Zucharnin might get away with it if he scored a spectacular success. But still, there was the indisputable fact that he had built his own army, something the Kremlin feared more than anything else.
Gregoris’ staff were at their desks, not daring to move. They knew the mood he was in and would do or say nothing that would draw his attention. He once again thought through the course of action he had taken. In a way the risk he took was no less than Zucharnins. But if it payed off, it would pay off handsomely.
He noticed a signals clerk hunching further over his radio, his hand poised over the out-tray of an attached printer. “This must be it.” He longed to rush into the outer room and snatch it away but forced himself to be calm, to wait.
The man took an age, withdrawing the single sheet slowly and methodically folding it in half before standing, brushing down his jacket front and pushing his chair back. Gregori wanted to hurl himself through the door, grab him and choke him to instil a sense of urgency but forced down every outwards appearance of the churning mental turmoil he was experiencing.
The glass door opened and the signaller presented himself at the desk. Even now he kept his arms by his side, keeping the paper out of reach. It was impossible to restrain himself any longer. As the man punctiliously saluted Gregori leant as far across the desk as he could and his hand went out like a claw.
“If you do not hand me that message instantly I shall rip it from you along with your fingers.” He took it from a hand that shook like a leaf and dismissed the man.
Restoring full self control he waited until the door had closed, again agonisingly slowly, before opening the paper and orientating it to read. There was only one line, just two words. ‘Arrest Zucharnin.’ Nothing more, no instruction to assume command, no direction as to what to do with the assault that had already begun. It was only half of what he wanted. A start, but still only a half.
The general would be in his office on the next floor up. Grigori would have too move fast. He would gather a squad of military police on the way. The building swarmed with the parasites and after the frequent blasts they got from the general they would welcome the chance to get a measure of payback.
“Until we can get rid of the bomb we can do nothing.” Revell listened to the rockets rending the sky on their way to blast apart the NATO defences. He well knew the hitting power of those massive warheads. From the nature of the detonations he had seen he was sure some of them contained napalm. Fires were springing up everywhere as the frightful liquid was jetted in to buildings and across rooftops.
The jamming had stopped. Perhaps there had been a lucky hit by one of the few retaliatory NATO shells, or more likely the Russian equipment had failed. Usually the Russians built redundancy in to their systems with back-ups for everything but that was no guarantee the second line units would be fit to take over. Often they would be incapable of doing so with the troops manning them nothing like the calibre of the front line units.
They parked in the shelter of a sports stadium to clear out the ankle deep accumulation of shell cases and empty ration packs. Although the sounds of the barrage came clearly none of the salvos of Russian missiles seemed to be directed to this area.
There had been comparatively few of the original population remaining in the region before the attack. A quiet sector it might have been but its position in a slight salient was a sure indicator that before long it would be just another swathe of ruins within an ever-expanding Zone. Their anticipation was proving prophetically correct, more so than the NATO High Command who had allotted the area a low priority in men and materials.
The Russian troops, now supported by swarms of scout cars and APC’s were reaching the southern suburbs of the town. In places their commander’s impatience had induced them to drive on ahead of the covering refugees and the few NATO weapons able to engage them had extracted a heavy price. Others had driven outside of the trudging column and run on to mine fields. The lightly armoured vehicles had been blasted apart by weapons designed to knockout far heavier main battle tanks. The lighter construction of the armoured personnel carriers had seen them erupt in flames and fall apart, throwing to a great distance any civilians still clinging to their hulls.