Standing back as Libby scuffed another bank of snow aside, Hyde looked out over the still countryside. ‘It’s not a night for standing around, that’s for certain. Not that I’m likely to let you. Alright, now three more heaves and we’ll have it lined up with the kitchen door. One last effort, and we’re in.’
‘I bet the lieutenant is regretting he was so fast to volunteer now. Him and Clarence must be wishing they were back here.’
Libby nodded agreement. ‘You’re probably right. No fun in being out there at the moment, no fun at all.’
‘Radio batteries are OK, Major. My sets use only a fraction of the juice those tubes do. Even if the generator is no good, used sparingly I can keep us in contact with the big outside world for two or three days.’
Revell had asked the question almost for the sake of something to do. He felt like the spider sitting at the centre of an intricately constructed web, waiting for his prey. The work was done, and the hours until the first of their Russian targets appeared would be long, and seem even longer. This wasn’t the sort of war he liked. The real war was what you saw in the sights of your rifle, or felt at the end of a bayonet. Hanging around a command room, unable to move far from it, unable to do anything in it… that might be war for staff officers, for generals, it wasn’t for him.
To fill in, to give himself something to do, he could have gone outside, lent a hand with shifting the generator, but the interference might not have gone down well with Hyde. He suspected that inside the British NCO there still lingered a residue of resentment at serving under an American officer, at having lost the independence he’d enjoyed as leader of a crack British anti-tank team.
There were times when Revell wished he was just a sergeant, with nothing more than his squad and himself to worry about. It’d be good just to get on with the fighting, to go out and do the damned job and to hell with the political consequences. While the Russians fought without constraints, his every action was hedged about by the need to avoid civilian casualties, or damage to property, or offence to other NATO partners. Rules, regulations guidelines… a Communist officer had none of those, he’d have an objective and perhaps a deadline and the fear of the consequences of failure… Revell could still hate the savagery with which the Soviet forces obtained their victories, while ‘envying the freedom of action they were given to gain them. But it was a strange sort of freedom the Russian commanders enjoyed. Ten, twenty thousand civilian casualties didn’t matter to a Warsaw Pact general as he drove his regiments towards their goal, but if he delayed by so much as an hour, then even if his primary objective was still achieved his removal was certain. A Russian’s freedom was the freedom to butcher, to slaughter, but never to deviate from his observance of the strict orders he’d been given. It was that inflexibility that had cost the Communists outright victory at the start of the war, when none of their army commanders had dared even to attempt to plug the gaping holes in their advance caused by widespread mutinies among the East German and Polish units.
The NATO Staffs had rightly diagnosed that inflexible command structure as a weakness in the enemy, but had never got round to recognising as deadly a failing in their own strategy. When faced with an opponent prepared to resort to every dirty trick, to employ the full range of horrific modern weapons of mass destruction, half-measures to contain them could only resort in half-victories, or more usually half-defeats.
That Lance missile, standing out in the snow waiting for him to transmit the coded command to commence its near instantaneous firing sequence and launch, was a good example of NATO’s, or rather the West’s mentality. Four separately targeted warheads nestled within the sharp nose of the missile. Their fuses precisely pre-set, they would detonate above a Swedish Air Force base, a vital hydroelectric power station, a coastal patrol craft complex and a garrison town. Spectacular though their kiloton warheads would be, that would be the limit of their effectiveness.
It was a half-measure. If the Swedish parliament was as nervous as the Western analysts believed, and if it was still in permanent session at that time, it was possible it might over-react, declare on the NATO side before all the facts were gathered and the discovery made that in reality no damage had been suffered. But it was more likely to do what it had been doing for two years, dither and talk and let the moment pass in frightened and confused indecision. Then the West’s only hope would be that a local commander with a few coast defence missiles under his control might not wait for orders, might retaliate instantly to what he saw as a Russian bombardment preceding an assault. What a way to fight a damned war…!
York and Cline were preoccupied with their respective electronic equipment. Outside, Revell could hear Hyde exhorting the men to greater effort. The generator being bumped against the wall and the shout of someone whose fingers were between the two. From upstairs came the rare loud groan of one of their causalities. Andrea was up there… he should go and see how the injured were faring, he hadn’t checked on them for several hours…
‘Go down and get yourself a coffee. I’ll be up here for a while.’
The young gunner-medic made a fussy last adjustment to the bandage he’d been replacing, then went out. His footsteps echoed back to Revell from the uncarpeted stairs.
It was darker than the fire-control room. Only white or very light coloured objects stood out in the breath-misted gloom. Bandages were clearly visible, as were the pale hands and faces of the men wrapped in their life preserving silver chrysalises. The hard rasping breathing of a chest case was the only audible sound.
Andrea was over on the far side of the room, struggling to fully fasten the zip of a silver cocoon. Carefully, Revell stepped between the bodies to go and help her.
‘It is done.’ With a last effort Andrea sealed the body into its crinkling shroud before Revell reached her. ‘He is the first, others will follow. I think that one is next.’
Revell followed her pointing finger to where a scrap of white cloth blended imperceptibly into the deadly pallor of a face it didn’t entirely cover. ‘I don’t know how he’s lasted this long. He lost a lot of blood when his arm was taken off. I’ll have the body moved as soon as the men have finished shifting the generator.’ There were other matters Revell wanted to talk about with her, but in the darkness he couldn’t be sure all of the casualties were sleeping.
He’d never managed to be alone with her for more than a few moments. Not that he’d ever been really conscious of her manipulating it that way, but on reflection he felt sure that she had. Never very communicative, she immediately stiffened and backed away from contact with any man she sensed showing an interest in her. With her looks, that kept her perpetually on her guard. The skills she displayed at holding men at a distance, and generally taking care of herself, were considerable; the way she managed Dooley was ample proof. Revell couldn’t tell whether the big man got anything from the relationship, other than having, and enjoying, the prestige of having her near. Several savage slap-downs he’d received in public suggested there was less than truth in many, perhaps all, of his private boasts.
Damn it, Revell had never felt so protective towards any woman, not since the early days of his marriage to the bitch, and that had soon been beaten out of him by spite and neglect and contempt. And now he had this irrational urge to take Andrea under his wing, a woman more able to take care of herself than any other he’d ever known. It was stupid, irrational, when he’d made up his mind to treat her no differently from any of the men. And it was dangerous as well. Dangerous because his preoccupation with her could affect the efficient running of the unit, because it could cost some or all of them their lives unless he could come to terms with it.