As the three vehicles rattled from sight some of the troops, adorned with colourful scarves, tank crew goggles and other embellishments were waving clenched fists and weapons in evident celebration.
Not the only witness of the carnage, Revell turned to find Andrea was looking in to his face. She shrugged. “That was unnecessary. The ammunition is precious. Anyway, it could have been Russians in captured vehicles.”
“Definitely NATO troops.” Hyde turned back from the edge, “No doubt of that. Maybe the same ones who fragged the civvies in the bank?”
“Well I would hate to think we have two units who indulge in atrocity on that scale.” Revell watched the women below recoiling form the gruesome scene of crushed and mutilated bodies.
It was from the last building in the street that they descended, out of sight of the carnage. Before doing so they were able, unobserved, to carry out a surveillance of the surrounding roads. One held what they wanted. Two eight-wheeled armoured personnel carriers’ old BTR 60 models, adorned with whitewash daubed Russian slogans, were parked outside the shattered front of a small department store. The sole trooper who had been left on guard was anxiously bobbing about on the pavement, craning to see what the other men were looting, and hopefully awaiting their return and his chance.
He never knew what hit him. Dooley’s blade struck twice in the small of his back even as his hand clamped over the Russians mouth. Burke was inside the lead vehicle in an instant and had started the engine even as the others clambered into the cramped interior.
“Why do they always stink?” Through a still open side hatch that swung and clanged heavily against the steeply raked hull Dooley tossed out opened ration packs. Bundles of new clothing and masses of household goods followed. Their immediate route was littered with the household effects.
Creating their own route through the plants and fountains of a miniature park Burke sent the APC crashing and bucking. It canting right over as the four wheels on one side churned deeply in the turned soil of a flower bed and then rearing up as it drove across the top of a bullet riddled Mercedes taxi.
The pressure of the impact burst the vehicle’s trunk and luggage was thrown out to scatter its colourful contents across the road. The driver’s side doors were also thrown open and bodies flopped from the front and rear of the vehicle to be ground to a pulp by the APC’s huge tyres.
“Slow down, we don’t want to break this thing.” Through the tangle of its passengers flailing limbs and tumbling bodies, Revell moved forward to take the commanders seat behind their driver.
Both large front vision flaps were open and Revell saw the terrified face of a Soviet machine gunner who hurled himself aside just in time, leaving his weapon and two other men to disappear beneath the sharply raked front of the vehicle.
There were slight bumps as the deeply treaded tyres ran over them. A smattering of small arms fire chased the vehicle until it swerved through a sharp turn. Blasts rocked them as mortar rounds plastered their route. Burke knew that they came by chance; there was no way coherent opposition to their appropriation of the APC could be organised so quickly. They had acted so fast it was highly likely it hadn’t even been missed as yet. He closed his front hatch but made no move to avoid the explosions. Several times they drove through the falling debris of a round that landed almost under their wheels.
One eighty-millimetre bomb struck the top of the armour plating just behind the small turret that Libby had occupied. The concussion pounded dust from every joint in the plating and made their ears ring. Another landed right beside the vehicle and flayed long strips of thick rubber from a retreaded tyre. Pieces flew off and the wire mesh that filled it and provided its run-flat ability protruded from the split casing. There was a severe rattling from the worn out compressor as it tried to keep the ruined tyre filled with air.
“One more turn, sharp left.”
On Revell’s’ shouted instruction Burke broad-sided the APC through a manoeuvre that rolled the damaged tyre from its buckled rim and flattened all the road furniture; bollards, traffic lights and pedestrian guardrails, on a refuge in the centre of the road.
The bridge was ahead of them, artillery rounds falling about it, sending geysers of water high above the broken parapet.
“Tuck us in among those civvies.”
It was that running, stumbling, crowd, mostly women and children that saved them from the anti-tank rocket batteries positioned on the far bank. As they skidded to a halt on the far side they were surrounded by gun waving, yelling, military police and Revell had to talk fast.
Identity established there was as much shouting and waving to get them to drive the APC clear. They were directed to park in a side street close by, at the tail end of a row of Soviet vehicles, mostly soft skins and several with hastily improvised NATO markings Clearly they were not the only ones who had borrowed enemy transport to get back to their own lines.
Artillery fire was falling regularly in the area of the bridge approaches. Revell knew it might have been simply to prevent NATO reinforcements crossing, but there were smoke shells among it and that suggested it was quite likely the Russians intended to rush the bridge without waiting for any preparation. It was a tactic the Soviet forces had often applied in their advance in to West Germany and was responsible, at a heavy cost in casualties, for much of their early success. Not that everything had always gone their way though.
Due to the wholesale desertions of Czech and Polish units in the early days of the war some Soviet attacks had not been pressed. In places the Zone had developed into a broad ribbon of land up to one seventy kilometres wide. In this region in many places it more closely resembled the battlefields of the First World War, with infantry filled trenches and blockhouses facing each other across a no-mans land less than a rifle shot wide in some places.
As they trudged away in search of their transport, abandoned earlier and hopefully left to receive attention from their light aid detachment, they passed a short line of heavily battle scarred armoured personnel carriers. They were three M113’s; much modified and rebuilt late versions. The insignia they should have carried had been obliterated by scraping and the thick daubings of camouflage paint. Their hulls sides were heavily splattered with fresh blood. Scraps of clothing were caught between the tracks shoes and in the suspension wheels. A child’s shoe was wedged beneath the side-hung towrope on one and hanks of bloody scalp and hair were caught around the suspension of the others.
The troops who lounged on top were all very young. They sported bright coloured scarves and various designs of goggles were pushed up on to the shaven heads of those who had removed their helmets. Several were openly smoking joints and there was no obvious insignia to identify officers or NCOs. Rock music blared from speakers fitted to the hull sides.
“I think we know this mob.”
Sergeant Hyde called up to a driver whose drooping eyelids suggested the joint he rolled between heavily stained fingers was not his first. “What outfit?” He added sarcastically, “Had a good day?”
The reply came in French and carried insolence and disinterest, gabbled with a heavy provincial accent that made it impossible to comprehend. The driver leered down at Hyde’s scared features. From the end vehicle in line came the sound of a fifty calibre round being chambered ostentatiously.
“Leave it for now sergeant.” Revell indicated for the NCO to walk on. “I think we’ll come across them again.”
The driver turned away and ignoring them in a moment in a haze of cannabis smoke.
Behind them there came a loud rumble as charges were exploded beneath the bridge piers. One of them, less well packed than the others, sent a fast climbing gout of dark smoke and chunks of masonry high above the rooftops. As the thunder of the massive detonation died away and in a temporary lull in the shelling, there arose a spine chilling sound. Across the width of the river there came what started as a scream, and then turned in to a howl, a collective hoot of distress.