‘Why the hell didn’t you chuck them out years ago, you could have saved all this?’ Sweeping his arm wide, Hyde took in the room, the island, the whole of the Zone.
Shoulders bowed, there was a weak attempt at a weary smile on Boris’s bruised face. ‘I was asked that by another British soldier during one of the interrogations after my desertion. My answer to you is, as it was to him, a question. Why did you not stand up to them years ago? Time after time the Free World let the Communists commit crimes that could have been prevented if the West had only stood up and shouted ‘enough’, and backed the demand with determination and the threat of force. Afghanistan and Poland and all the others since, you sat back and watched. And worse, you kept supplying them with grain to feed their armies and the materials to make the pipelines that now keep their army in the field.
The West has never understood that they are dealing with a bully, and when you are faced with a bully you do not hand over what he wants and then tie your hands behind your back, as the West did by not re-arming sooner. No, you refuse, and you wave the biggest stick you can. For years your countries practised a cowardice that was matched only in its scope by the brutality and sadism of the Communists.’
‘Who are you calling bloody cowards?’ Forced on to the defensive by the accusations, Burke sought an answer. ‘We did stand up to them, what do you think this war is all about?’
‘Too little, and too late. Perhaps you would prefer I used the word appeasers, rather than cowards; but even an appeaser must take steps to protect himself when the bully’s hands are at his throat and clawing for his eyes.’ Burke didn’t bother to come back with another rebuttal. The Russian was much to close to what he personally saw as the truth. He felt cold. Unable to answer, he feigned interest in the rusting children’s climbing frame in the garden, having to scrape frost from the dirty pane to see it.
‘The snow has stopped.’ Boris joined him at the window. Apart from a few places where it had drifted, the covering was only a foot or so deep. The branches of the trees at the back of the house had been swept clean of their light burden by the dying wind. Every bough and twig stood stark against the white backdrop. It was a two-dimensional landscape, like a pen and ink sketch on virgin parchment. ‘Take a long look.’ Hyde peered over the pair’s shoulders. ‘Next chance you get, it may have been remodelled by a few Commie surface to surface missiles and guns. Come to that, so might you.’
Running his tongue over the broken stumps of his front teeth, Boris felt the pulsing ache in his jaw and cheek. The process had already started.
SIX
‘Are we ready for that floating Commie hardware yet?’ The room was dark, save for the glow from the screens. Revell stood behind the bombardier and scrutinised the complex assortment of electronic equipment set on various improvised tables and trestles in a crescent around him.
‘Computer is running the last tests now, Major. We should get a green any moment, then we can start blowing parts off those tubs whenever they appear.’ Cline leant forward and made a fractional adjustment to a dial. The image on the main radar display sharpened.
A composite from three dishes, there was little to be seen on it. To the west, the empty water of the Kattegat, to the north the Swedish coastline tailed away towards Norway and the open sea. To the south, the same coastal strip led to the exit from the narrow waters of the Sound, through which the Soviet warships must come. At twenty miles, the neck of the opening was just visible at the extreme limit of the low powered radar’s range. A few other islands scattered randomly along the coast completed the picture.
The tiny six-inch-diameter tube of the air-watch scanner was a blank, and hopefully it would stay that way. Revell was more interested in the image on the electro-optical TV. It showed the Kattegat to be not as uncluttered as the radar picture suggested. Although restricted in range by their limited power source, the cameras were still able to reach out all of six miles, picking out the stretch of sea at the limit of Sweden’s territorial waters with perfect clarity. View after view, as Cline switched from camera to camera, showed the almost oily calm to be liberally scattered with variously sized slabs of floating ice. None were sufficiently thick to have registered yet, but in places they had come together to form floes a hundred yards across, and were growing more substantial all the time. Others were constantly being created.
‘That should slow up any Swedish patrol boats.’ After the way in which he’d almost queered it for himself earlier, Cline thought that things were beginning to go rather well – for him at least. His swift visual check of the components being unloaded from the sledge had revealed no apparent damage, and when all the gear had at last been set up, and he’d thrown the switch, every single status indicator had glowed an unbelievable green. A moment’s worry, when the light indicating the condition of the standby batteries had flickered, had been quickly allayed by the discovery of a loose connection.
Without looking round, Cline knew the officer was still behind him, the ghost of his reflection showed on the hooded radar display. He didn’t find it easy to communicate with Revell, talking to him was like throwing stones at a snow drift, made little impression, got no reaction. Still, it couldn’t hurt to impress the stiff bugger at bit. Now was an opportune moment to enhance the good impression he must have already created by setting up and bringing the equipment into action single-handed. Cutting to the camera mounted on the church tower he zoomed in on two men trudging back to the house from their most northerly launcher site, number one, situated almost precisely in the centre of the island.
Revell could make out the faces of Lieutenant Hogg, and Ripper. Powdered snow plumed out from each footfall, and the men clutched empty demolition charge satchels that they hugged to their bodies as extra protection against the cold which made their breath hang in freezing clouds behind them.
Revell did acknowledge that the bombardier was good, but only to himself. He demanded that the men under his command do their job to the best of their ability, he expected no less, accepted no less, and doing it didn’t warrant praise. In the gunner he recognised a climber, a man chasing promotion; in Cline’s case chasing very hard. Well he was cocky enough already, he wasn’t going to oblige Cline by inflating his ego still further. ‘What’s that?’
Cline snapped his attention back to the radar. A tiny green dot had sprung into existence just off the Swedish coast. It was moving perceptibly, and heading for their island. ‘Patrol boat?’
‘Not unless the Swedes are running some itty-bitty ones we don’t know about. Try and get it on camera.’ Revell craned closer, crowding the operator.
The snap-guess had been a bad one, Cline knew he should have allowed himself more time. On examination the blip obviously couldn’t be anything bigger than a small yacht, twenty-foot maybe, although it was more likely a motor cruiser. The computer gave its speed as fifteen knots. ‘I can’t get it on camera, Major. None of them were mounted to cover the area between the island and the mainland. With the water too shallow for the big units we’re expecting, it wasn’t thought there’d be any need to.’
‘Damn. Track it on the radar then. I want to know its precise landfall.’ This was a complication Revell could have done without. Every possible contingency had been allowed for in the planning of the operation, but the probability of Swedish civilians visiting the island during the comparatively short period they were there had been calculated to be miniscule, and so his orders as to what to do in the event were brief and vague. Refugees in the Zone were one thing, neutral civilians on their own territory were quite another. No staff officer, even the greenest, was going to commit himself too definitely, in writing.