There was nothing further to be said, and they just sat there, each alone with his thoughts and his fears. Occasionally they would hear a voice from one of the other positions. It grew lighter, but the rising fog made the castle as isolated in the day as it had been during the night. There was nothing more they could do; their preparations were complete. Everything was as ready as it could be to withstand an attack from any quarter.
A powerful explosion lit the fog and sent it into twisting eddies. Six minor detonations followed so closely as to blend with the first.
‘Fuel-air. Nothing else has that punch.’ Hyde looked over the rough rampart, but there was nothing to be seen, except a patch above the hill about a half a kilometre away where the natural obscurity was thickened by black smoke. ‘Too far off to have been meant for us; they’re trying new tactics to crack the minefields… Shit.’
Howling noise accompanied a Russian gunship that loomed from the fog, its whirling blades chewing the air hard as it sought lift.
Torrents of small-arms fire lashed toward it. Every detail of its construction was clearly visible as it slashed past the top of the ruins so close they could have reached out and touched the tips of its rotors.
Storms of debris and mud were whipped into their faces stingingly hard, and it was that hail that saved the helicopter. It banked steeply and offered only its armoured underside to the streams of bullets as it clawed its way to safety. Belatedly the sights of a Stinger were wiped and the missile launched, but by then the air was full of decoying strips of aluminium chaff, bright flares and every type of decoy device. There was no loud report from a successful interception.
‘They know we’re here now.’ Scraping his eyes clear, Dooley hurled a rock after the gunship. The futile act didn’t make him feel any better, but he felt he had to do something.
Another of the vapour bombs was heard, but it didn’t share the slight success of the first. Built to resist the shock of the massive over-pressures, most of the buried mines remained sentient, waiting for their intended victim.
The trees, though, could not withstand the onslaught and fell outward in great swaths from the centre of the ignition. For some seconds after the beat of the second, unseen, gunship had receded, the creaking, tearing and splintering of their collapse continued.
A Rapier missile skimmed past an angle of the wall and clipped a projection. It tumbled out of control and broke up under the tremendous G-forces exerted on its thin casing.
‘Slow off the mark.’ Scully ducked as pieces of fin and motor components zipped over his head. ‘But I’m glad to see the guys at the farm are at least awake. But who the hell are they aiming at?’
The stump of a leg beneath his hand trembled as his patient went into a spasm; and Sampson lost his grip on the protruding rubbery length of artery. A pulse of dark blood was hosed at the wall, and then the man on the table went limp and the rapid flow became a sluggish ooze.
Stepping back, the medic swore. He’d known in his heart he had no chance of saving the man, but not to have the time to even try… The terribly punished body had given up its fight for life seemingly willingly, with hardly a struggle.
A rocket’s warhead had stripped clothing, flesh and limbs from him indiscriminately and burned most of what it had left otherwise untouched.
That was the first he’d lost who’d lived to reach him. Sampson closed the staring eyes and covered the blackened face. He put his hands palm-down into a bowl of tepid water heavy with the smell of disinfectant. It was soothing, until he looked down and saw that the solution had turned as red as the many drops and splashes on the walls and floor.
‘Karen, will you find someone to take him out?’
The little blonde put down the mop with which she’d been attempting to swill away the worst of the blood and went out.
Sampson noticed that the mophead, contents of the pail and floor were all a muddy pink. He took hold of the long handle to finish the work and found that it too was sticky with blood.
Shells were hammering the ruins, and even deep below ground the concussion of the impacts could be felt. Sometimes a monstrous 182mm round would impact, and then the shock would travel down through the walls and be transmitted by the rock itself to the floor beneath his feet. The lights would dim and then flare once more to full strength, to highlight the dribbles of dust and floating cobwebs shaken from the ceiling.
He’d lost track of time; all he knew was that this was the first moment since the shelling had started that he’d not had a victim of it waiting for attention. Sampson did a round of those already treated. They were all quiet, making no complaint or fuss. It was something to be grateful for that the Russians had not as yet used chemical weapons. Working in respirator and full NBC suit with his patients at constant risk would have been a nightmare.
Most of the girls were still among the injured, but Karen and to a lesser extent a couple of the others had been a great help. Their presence, even that of those who were laid out in the far corner, had played a large part in controlling the situation when the trickle of wounded had suddenly become a flood.
Men with gaping cuts, broken limbs and extensive burns had been calmed by the sight of the girls going quietly about their work. Those who had been forced to wait for attention found new reserves of endurance while the girls moved among them, and their presence had not had merely a cosmetic effect.
As each man was brought forward in his turn, Sampson found them already prepared for him, clothing cut away, the wound cleansed.
But all their efforts could not rid the room of the smells that permeated it. There was no ventilation and the air was becoming foul.
Carrington entered, followed by a Dutchman who appeared reluctant to breathe the fetid atmosphere.
‘Got a stiff you want carted?’
As they struggled out with their awkward burden, Sampson followed, holding doors open for them. Along the branch passageway, into the main corridor to the steps and up into a ground floor room that was unrecognizable since the last time he’d seen it so shortly before.
Sections of the ceiling had fallen in, bringing masses of plaster that had been crushed to a fine white powder beneath heavy army boots. Against a wall was a close-packed line of jacket-and blanket-shrouded bodies.
Lowering the latest addition to the growing tally, Carrington didn’t flinch as a shell struck the outside wall and sent a fresh scattering of pulverized plaster over the corpses.
‘Why doesn’t the major bring you all down into the cellars?’ Sampson hunched his head down between his shoulders as a big shell pounded another crater in the mercifully thick fabric of the castle.
‘Can’t.’
Sampson found himself bobbing up and down while Carrington remained unmoved by the barrage. ‘All we’re doing is taking stick and casualties, for nothing.’
‘The commies are pushing a road through the minefield; we’re trying to put them off. We let them have it every time the dust clears for a second.’
A giant blow against the wall of the room marked the impact of a 182mm ‘concrete buster’ shell. Cracks radiated from a point a meter above the row of dead. Shards of carved stonework skittered across the floor and a drop of molten lead splashed on the dusty tiles and solidified into a ragged star.
Clutching a face opened from brow to chin, a figure stumbled toward the medic. Dashing forward, Sampson caught him as he sagged, and started down the stair with him.
Reaching the bottom step he saw Karen running forward to help. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got him, I’ll manage. You and the other girls start to get another room ready.’ He felt the man’s blood soaking into the shoulder of his jacket, warm and sticky. ‘We’re going to need it soon.’