Cannon fire was added, from Hinds whose pilots were reluctant to make themselves visible for more than seconds at a time. From such a hopelessly long range only a handful of spent rounds flattened themselves against the unyielding ancient fabric.
‘It’s not like them to piss about this much.’ Reading off the range in his sight, Burke was aware there was no point in having a go at such elusive targets. ‘Could be that they’re just decoys… Fucking shit…’ He whirled about and fired wildly at a gunship only a hundred feet overhead.
The range was too short for the missile to arm itself in the time, but its sheer speed took it plunging in through the floor of the helicopter.
Disintegrating and scattering burning propellant as it penetrated, it turned the cabin into a roaring furnace. Out of control, the helicopter toppled from the sky to crash near the remains of the Scammel.
Torrents of mud and debris swept across the top of the ruins and three more camouflage-painted gunships closed in. From their open side doors came bright lines of tracer, and coils of rope were thrown out to whip about in the downwash.
Rolling onto his back, Clarence took aim and a door-gunner sagged limply, only restrained from falling by his safety harness.
The fight became wild, the choppers hovering and backing to give their gunners the best opportunities. Men who appeared at the cabin doors and made to slide down the ropes first hosed the ruins with their personal weapons.
Putting aside his sniper rifle, Clarence, hurling himself into an adjoining gun pit, pushed a body aside and wrenched a mini-gun hard back on its mount to gain the maximum elevation. Flicking the selector to the highest rate of fire he blasted several hundred rounds into the cabin top and rotor hub of a gunship banking in a tight turn to come in to drop its infantry.
There was a small flare of flame as a fuel line to one of the Isotov turbo shaft power-plants was severed, and then as the blur of the mini-gun’s rotating barrels slowed, the gunship stalled and fell onto a corner of the ruins.
Even as the cabin distorted and buckled with the impact, the still-rotating blades smashed themselves to lethal slivers against a weapon pit. Blood fountained among the fragments of carbon fibre.
At point-blank range rifles and machine guns hosed armour -piercing incendiary rounds into the craft’s shattered cockpit and gaping cabin.
He was so close, Revell could see the struggles of the pilot and gunner to free themselves, and the sprawl of infantry fighting to drag themselves clear.
Burning fuel dribbling onto the men spurred them to frantic effort, faces distorted by the effort of forcing broken limbs to respond. There came an ominous creak of metal grinding on stone and the machine appeared to sag and then shudder as it moved bodily sideways toward the edge. It teetered, a mound of rubble collapsed beneath it, arid then it was gone, followed by a cascade of granite and sandstone chips.
As suddenly as they had appeared, the gunships departed, racing for the cover of the hills and woods. They trailed smoke and dropped a shower of external fittings and torn panels as they went. Unable in that condition to execute wild evasive manoeuvres, they had to soak up more damage from the tracer that chased after them.
It had been a crazy tactic. Revell couldn’t begin to understand what the Russians had hoped to achieve. They’d been trying to land troops in what had to be a suicide mission. Unless… unless Burke was correct and the whole episode was a diversion from some other piece of nastiness they were hatching.
A monstrous explosion rocked the whole fabric of the castle. Smoke and dust belched from every entrance to the lower levels in a raging blast that threw him over.
TWENTY ONE
Pushing himself to his feet, he heard screams coming from below – girls’ screams. Grabbing his shotgun and waving Hyde and Voke to stay, Revell raced for the cellars.
Burke was already ahead of him, Colt automatic in one hand, the other clenched tight about a grenade from which the split ring attached to the pin dangled brightly.
On the ground floor several men had been mowed down by the blast, mostly those who had been in direct line with the cellar entrance. Some lay still, heads shattered, but most still moved, hugging themselves against the agony of broken bones. Others stood dazed, stupefied by the powerful concussion. Andrea was among them, nursing her left wrist.
Pushing in front, Revell led down the steps. By a miracle the lights still functioned, but they served little purpose. He strapped on his respirator as some protection against the thick choking dust as he groped his way down.
At the bottom they stopped and listened. From roughly in the direction of the dispensary came the muted sobs of a terrified girl. Sensing rather than seeing what was happening, Revell held out his arm to check Burke’s impulse to go straight toward the sound.
Revell was frightened at the prospect of the terrifying game of blindfold hide-and-seek that lay ahead. It would be as dangerous and deadly a fight as any he’d ever taken part in, as could ever be imagined.
Hugging the wall they stumbled forward, with Revell trying desperately to recall every turn, every doorway, every side passage.
He could see perhaps a matter of inches, six perhaps, not more. The air was hot and carried a strong scent of partially consumed explosive. His foot made contact with an object that rolled away. Still keeping the shotgun trained ahead, he stooped to feel about. His searching fingers found several of the items, grenades.
A few steps farther and another forced investigation brought about the discovery of the remains of the man who had been carrying them. Underfoot the floor was slippery with blood. From a helmet he touched, Revell determined that the bodies they were encountering were members of the Dutch ammunition detail. Groans came from a body he stepped on. Attempting to move it aside, he found it had no arms; both were off at the shoulder.
The clattering fire of a Kalashnikov punished their ears in the confined space, but Revell took no account of that when he replied with a three-round burst. There was no response to the hail of flechettes that filled every inch of the passageway with a quota of needle-sharp steel.
Wafting past, a current of cool air brought an improvement in visibility. Silhouetted against a circle of light haze dead ahead was a dark blur. It was slowly crumpling, and as he went down a second slumped from the shadows across it.
‘Two down; how many more to go?’ Burke felt the grenade warming in his hand, and knelt to roll it in the dust, to make sure it wouldn’t stick to his damp palm.
Resolving itself gradually into the outline of the shattered postern door, the patch of light enabled Revell to orient himself. ‘They must have climbed up and put a charge on it, while we were occupied upstairs.’
Before he could fire, Burke had snapped off a shot and a figure sidling through the opening was thrown back and screamed for a long time as he fell down the cliff face.
From the chunks of flesh and small splinters of wood to which the door and its surround had been reduced, Revell was sure that at the moment the demolition charge exploded the passageway must have resembled hell.
Men caught in the blast had been torn apart, and the loads they carried scattered. It was a miracle that none of the ordnance had gone off at the same time. With every other room packed with ammunition from floor to ceiling, a chain reaction of secondary detonation would have blasted the stump of the castle across the countryside and left nothing but the bare rock.
A small round dark object was tossed in through the doorway. They threw themselves down, but the Russian grenade burst between the bodies and, beyond bringing down more dust into the already heavily laden atmosphere, did no harm.
There was a tugging at Revell’s foot, and he looked down. The Dutchman Old William was sprawled on the floor, his hair matted with blood and his face lined with cuts. Unable to talk, he gestured toward a door.