“Not if we can find a good use for that thing.” Revell indicated the bomb. “Not if we can find the right place to set it.”
To get ahead of the Soviet forces Burke had to drive flat out, taking incredible risks as they made a wide sweeping detour far out in to the countryside to avoid Soviet patrols. They crossed and recrossed railway lines and rivers, tearing through fences and every manner of obstruction. Twice they had to pull up and jump out to free the hovercraft from long ribbons of woven wire mesh fencing that even their speed had been unable to punch through. The second time they dismounted to find they were towing about a ton of two metre wire mesh fencing, countless posts and caught up in it several dead cattle and the remains of a Ford tractor.
“Hell,” Burke had got out to supervise the work.” I thought we were slowing. The wonder is we kept going at all. No other machine would.”
High overhead a pair of fighter-bombers began a steep banking turn.
“You sure our IFF functioning OK.” Watching the aircraft, Revell knew that there always existed the risk of their being attacked by their own side. He had seen it happen, and experienced the bitter frustration at such an event, when everything in you screamed for retaliatory fire and yet you knew you couldn’t.
The aircraft rolled in to a dive and spawned a scattering of decoy flares as they lanced down towards distant targets. As they pulled out of their dive one dissolved into several fire and smoke towing fragments.
The destruction was complete and sudden. It was unlikely anyone baled out. Certainly no parachutes blossomed but at the distance they might not have been visible.
“That could have been expensive if they only whacked an APC or two. Not a good exchange rate at all.” Tugging aside the last of the wire mesh Sergeant Hyde scanned the sky for any more evidence of the NATO air force. He didn’t really expect to see any. The sector had long suffered a paucity of air support. It must have been a significant contributory factor to the Russian decision to plough on with only close range anti-aircraft cover.
Usually a Russian advance would be sheltered under stepped anti-aircraft defences from a range of missiles and radar, from hand held weapons that could do no more than chip pieces off jets tailpipes to huge mobile rocket batteries quite capable of bringing down the biggest bombers from their maximum ceiling.
Again the countryside they were passing through was untouched by the war, had yet to become enclosed within the hell that was the Zone. Perhaps it would stay that way even when it was. Strangely some places survived in their natural condition even after adjustments of the front lines had enveloped them. Within the giant no-mans land of the Zone, an ugly swathe of territory from the Baltic coast down to southern Germany some of the ground even continued being farmed, though any produce had to be disposed of within the Zone. No supermarket would even stock produce that originated from the chemical poison and atomic weapon contaminated land.
Gradually though the influence of the Zone pervaded all the land between the main belligerents and affected the people trapped within it. The farms were neglected and then abandoned. The villages became more derelict, more over crowded.
Even now, not far away a mass of deep treaded tyres and churning tacks were starting the process that would spoil this beautiful Bavarian scenery.
“Do you reckon they’ll continue the advance at night?” Hyde had been watching from an opened hatch as the clouds began to build up, tall thunderheads boiling high into the sky and threatening more rain. He had to hold on tight to the rim of the opening as the vehicle bucked and skidded across a deeply ploughed field.
“Yes, I think they will, but at some stage they will have to stop and refuel those self propelled guns. The scout cars and APCs have a decent range but those big lumps are thirsty brutes. I saw some gas tankers among their supply column but I recon they will want to hang on to them for emergencies, when no captured stocks are available. I should think they will have earmarked some civilian facilities for that and that will be best done under the cover of darkness. An autobahn service centre will be their most likely place. They’ll have the capacity to take care of the SPGs and to top up the other vehicles. Boris, is there anywhere between here and Nurnberg that is obvious.”
“There are two locations major.” Boris had been scanning the route ahead. “One not far from here, the other another thirty five kilometres further on.”
Revell tried to put himself in to the mind of the Soviet officers leading the reconnaissance element of the advance, and the main body. Enemy doctrine was to keep moving, avoid fighting in built up areas where possible but above all to maintain momentum. It was likely that they would use both service centres, half refuelling at one and the rest at the second. Those who were assigned to wait until reaching the second would be getting short by the time they got to it. And that would be just after dark, early evening.
“We’ll take out the first one, force them to go on to the second. They can’t turn back, they’re over half way.”
“You want to leave them a gift for when they bunch up at the second.” Carson was anticipating what the major had in mind.
“We’ll have to use this stuff to deny them the use of the first service area” Thorne indicated the thermite. “The cannon won’t knock out a gas station the size of an autobahn halt. There must be safety valves and all sorts of devices to prevent any fires we start at the pumps spreading to the underground storage tanks. “We’ll have to move fast. The commies won’t be that far behind us by the time we finish rigging the place for destruction. I don’t fancy getting caught between a bunch of thermite and tens of thousands of gallons of gas, not with tracer firing scout cars and APCs taking an interest in our actions.”
The service centre was duplicated on both sides of the multiple carriageways. There was no civilian traffic, no staff. Doors hung open. Cash desks were unguarded. Word had travelled far faster than the Russian column “Heck, it’s the Marie Celeste of the motorway world.”
They drove in under the high canopy sheltering the many clusters of pumps. All of the lights were out. Thorne selected and passed out thermite blocks as the squad climbed out. He sent them off in pairs to put them in place. As instructed they ignored the pumps and made for the steel covers set in to the road at the side of the self-service store. By some freak of chance a circuit remained live and the automatic opening door kept doing just that. The noise of its motor and the scrape and thump as it opened and closed were the only sound until a single vehicle, a silver BMW saloon hurtled past on the carriageway.
“Some one has ignored the barricades and police warnings and thinks the Russians won’t bother them.” Simmons watched the car until its lights were lost from site. “He’s in for a shock.”
“Serves him right, arrogant bastard.” Libby levered at an inspection cover with a bayonet and slowly the heavy metal slab rose up. “You can just see him zig-zagging around the barricades, can’t you.”
“It’ll make a nice bit of target practise for the Reds, if he doesn’t pile in to the front of one of them.” Clarence looked in to the hole, trying to find somewhere to put the incendiary device among all the brass valves and connections. Finally he tucked it tight up against a pipe whose open end revealed glistening brass threads.
In the far distance, only audible because all around them was so quiet, there came the sound of machine gun fire.
“He found them then.” For good measure Clarence unscrew the chain-retained caps on a couple of pipes. “Handy of him to let us know how close they are.” Thorne visited each of the sites where they had put the thermite and set the fuses. Each of the blocks would blaze at furnace heat for five minutes. More than enough time for them to burn through the tops of the tanks and fall in to the fuel below. The gasoline would instantly boil at far beyond its flash point and result in a huge explosion.