Bulging eyes stared down at Dooley as he tightened his iron grip on the Russian’s face. Foam and spittle bubbled in the back of the man’s throat and his struggles grew weaker. Another face appeared over him, looking at him from behind a Makarov pistol. Face and pistol were whirled from sight in a shower of brains and blood at the impact of a close-range burst of automatic fire.
Pushing the dead marine aside, Dooley clambered to his feet. Littering the snow were eight Russian corpses and as many rifles. Between them spots and daubs of blood coloured the white ground, linking them and charting the brief course of the battle.
‘I said no bloody noise, no shooting.’ Hyde jabbed Ripper in the chest with the tip of the rifle he had wrenched from him. ‘What’s the bloody use of tackling them with knives and fists if you’re going to bang away with this ruddy thing just as we’re finishing? Here, take it.’ He slung the weapon back at the American. ‘Someone will have heard that, we’d better get ready for more visitors.’
‘Are we setting up here?’ Ripper looked around as the others started to hack at the frozen ground. ‘Ain’t we going to move a ways from these here cadavers?’
‘Don’t be sodding stupid.’ Libby drove the tip of his entrenching tool into the ground, levering up a saucer-shaped scab of turf and ice-bound soil. ‘In a bit these stiffs are going to be just that. They’ll make nice ramparts for slit-trenches. They won’t stop bullets, but fragments’ will be slowed down, and a few less feet per second can make all the difference between a flesh wound and losing your head, literally. Now dig.’
‘You not searching these then?’ Burke shoved a corpse past Dooley with his feet, kicking it into place on the edge of his excavation.
‘I got the insignia off the officer, that’s the only thing any of this lot will have that’s worth taking. Who ever heard of a well-off Ruskie grunt. These stupid shits only got two-hundred-fifty bucks a year. If they’d been the sort who could make a profit, they wouldn’t have been here, they’d have been enjoying some cushy number back in Moscow.’
Clarence wasn’t happy with an order from Sergeant Hyde. ‘It’s a waste.’
‘It is not a bloody waste. Those special slugs of yours are the only things we’ve got that will go through armour.’
‘They’re for tackling body armour, not main battle tanks. Was it a pair of T72s you said the Ruskies had brought ashore? There is no way my bullets can punch through that much plate. It’s inches thick in the front, and at the sides they’ve those side-skirts. The best I shall be able to do is drill holes in that. It’s hopeless, absolutely hopeless.’
‘And I’m telling you it isn’t. Those tanks have been prepared for winter service, and you know how much practice the Ruskies have had at that. Well, they’ve removed the side-skirts, I suppose to stop snow packing between them and the tracks. If you can stay hidden until they’re within fifty feet, you should be able to put a round into them. Now get out to that position on the flank.’
From where they were digging in Hyde could see the sea. It was a good position. They had a field of fire that covered every approach to the house, and the nearest of the launcher sites, a few hundred yards behind them among a dense thicket of evergreens. Again his gaze went to the sea. The ice was increasingly reaching further and further from the shore, growing rapidly by welding on any floes that brushed against it. He couldn’t see the Rogov itself, but towards the north of the island a tall thick pillar of black smoke rose to be lost from sight in the unnatural-coloured sky. It drove straight into it, without tainting the glowing pallor, as though a hole had opened to receive it. Occasionally he heard a distant rumble as further explosions rocked the ship. It probably wouldn’t stay afloat for much longer; there had to be a limit to what the much-repaired hull could take.
‘Think we did much damage to those warships, Sarge?’ Burke had failed to find an excuse for stopping work for a moment, and now struck up a conversation with his NCO in the hope of inventing one.
‘Enough to have scared the shit out of their admiral, I should imagine. The poor sod must have thought he had a safe run until he left Swedish waters. By now he won’t know what to bloody do. He can’t turn back, he hasn’t got the room to manoeuvre without taking his ships into open water, and our subs and mines will be waiting for him there. And the bastard doesn’t even know if he can take a swipe at us or not. If he does and the Swedes kick up a stink, then muck will fall on him from a great height. As I will on you if you don’t get digging.’
Regretting that the ruse had not worked for longer, Burke resumed his excavations. Frost had bound the root-woven earth together to give it a granite-like consistency. His entrenching tool had to be lifted high and driven in repeatedly before a decent size lump could be hefted on to the parapet. He noticed Dooley taking rests at frequent intervals, trying to conceal a grimace at every effort.
‘What’s the matter? Has the big hard man got cramp?’
‘Shut it. If that hole of yours were ever likely to be deep enough, I’d bury you in it. As it is, you open your trap again and I’ll likely turn you inside out and bury you in your own mouth. It’s big enough.’ With pile-driver force, Dooley sent the blade of his shovel into the soil, until it was hidden by the ice-bound earth. He paid dearly for the gesture, feeling the blood ooze again from his punctured shoulder.
‘That’ll have to do. Everyone under cover.’ Between attempts with cold hands to pile the fruits of his labours on the edge of his slit-trench, Hyde caught a glimpse of movement among distant trees. Waiting a moment to see that the others had gone to ground, he got down himself. It was probably a delusion, but huddled into the all too shallow hole, he felt warmer. After carefully cutting a vee-shaped cleft in the ragged parapet he looked again. There could be no doubt about it, there was the main body of the Russian patrol, perhaps another forty men. It wasn’t their loping progress that had first caught his attention. Trees were falling, being toppled and crushed by the advancing bulk of a crudely whitewashed T72.
Even before he could see the details of its raked frontal armour and turret, Hyde had calculated its course. As the tank cleared the tree line, the Soviet marines fanned out behind it, facing him across the half mile of bleak open ground, and started purposefully forward.
THIRTEEN
‘Well it had to turn up sooner or later. The rumours have been doing the rounds long enough.’ The third battle group showed bright and clear on Cline’s screen. Several of the traces were as large as the biggest they had already seen, but one in particular stood out, dwarfing them and shaming the other blips that swarmed about it.
‘Seventy thousand tons. The pride of the Russian fleet.’ Revell couldn’t take his eyes off the image. ‘It’s just got to be the Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, that carrier’s the biggest hull ever launched from the Leningrad yards. Hell, it’s even bigger than anything the Commies have ever laid down at Nikolayev on the Black Sea. York, I want to know if it’s operating aircraft, rotary or fixed-wing.’
‘I’m already monitoring it, Major, and it’s not, but someone is. I’ve got what sounds like a Swedish fighter controller, seems our neutrals have heard the fireworks going off in their back yard. I can’t tell what they’re yacking about, sounds like the Swedish chef out of the Muppets, but I’m betting the sky gets rather full in the next couple of minutes.’
‘It is already.’ Manually activating the automatic IFF interrogator, Cline double-checked the Identification-Friend-or-Foe system. ‘And the pair of birds coming our way aren’t ours, and they aren’t Russian. He could be right.’