Burke cautiously pushed it open. It was the wine vault. The air was almost clear. There was a cage of songbirds on the table, but they were the only occupants.
‘The fucker’s skipped.’ Burke took a tighter grip of his pistol.
‘He might not have got far.’ The smell of death and the slimy mess beneath his feet offered the hope to Revell that the deserter, whether he had mistimed an escape or taken advantage of the confusion of the attack, was dead.
‘That bloke is a survivor. I’ll put money on his still being alive.’
A heavy figure blundered into them from behind, and after the start it gave him, the major was glad to see Dooley. Even with his respirator on, his great bulk made him unmistakable.
Revell motioned toward the opening. ‘Dooley, stay here. Anything comes in through there you know what to do. Same goes if we flush someone out and he makes a bolt for it.’
‘What if he come this way instead? You want prisoners?’ Straightening the belt of the M60, Dooley undraped another three from around his neck. He settled himself in the doorway of the wine cellar, after a quick glance inside to reassure himself that his feathered friends were all right.
‘They were trying to kill your birds, weren’t they?’
Nothing more was needed to settle Dooley’s determination. He reached out and began to gather sandbags about himself. Noticing Old William, and after a cursory examination concluding from his shallow but steady breathing that he was still alive, he dragged him in behind the barricade as well.
The temptation to slip into the vault and extract a bottle was strong, almost overwhelming, but there was in his mind a more powerful reason, besides self-preservation, for not stirring from his position.
From within the cellar came a sad whistle of half-hearted song. He thought of the hard work it had been to gather the colourful birds in their aviary, with it almost encircled by burning sheds and garages. They’d been panicking, and he knew he must for certain have missed some that were hiding in nesting boxes.
‘Miserable shits.’ Dooley talked aloud, but to himself. ‘Not bad enough they don’t believe in God, they’ve got to go around trying to kill all his little creatures as well.’
He was in that frame of mind when a grenade popped in through the opening. It bounced once, almost playfully, then detonated harmlessly among the tattered corpses. Holding his fire he let three of them enter, ducking low to avoid the long bursts they directed down the passageway. Only when they paused to reload did he open up.
Coming from what must have been to them an impenetrable dark, the Russians were caught by surprise. It must have been an agonizing shock when the heavy-calibre bullets smashed into their legs and brought them down hard.
Taking time to count how many belts he had, Dooley decided he could spare one. His victims were writhing and moaning, plucking at their ruined limbs, from which sharp white shards of bone projected.
Casually, standing so he could fire from the hip, he emptied the rest of the belt into the tangle of flesh and weapons.
Dooley listened. All sound and movement had ceased. ‘See, you commie shits. I’m a humanitarian as well as a nature-lover. Maybe I should join Green Peace.’
Patting his pockets, he counted the number of spare magazines he had for his pistol, and checked that he still had his little hoard of jewellery and dental fragments. The simple action brought back memories of how he’d come by each item, the death he’d witnessed, and shared in. ‘Yeah, well, maybe not Green Peace.’
Little of the draft clearing the main passageway was clearing the side corridor that led to the aid post.
Within a few steps Revell found visibility again down to nil. They were forced to inch forward, not daring to lose contact with the wall. There were two other rooms to pass before they reached their objective at the end of the passageway.
Revell tried hard to recall the distances involved, and compare them with their present slow progress. In steps he could roughly calculate it, but how many shuffles were equivalent to one normal pace?
He tried using his thermal imager, but the invading Russians must have employed grenades whose smoke masked the wavebands on which it functioned, and he got virtually no picture at all.
His fingertips found the first doorway, and splintered wood where it had been forced open. It was tempting simply to hurl in a grenade, but some of the girls might have escaped or been herded into there. He had to be more discriminating in his tactics than he would have liked.
Making sure of the type of cartridge he had chambered, he hurled himself across the opening, blasting a shell at the cellar ceiling. There was no answering fire and he ducked inside, closely followed , by Burke. They were hardly in before a hail of bullets ripped past the door.
The room was comparatively free of smoke. Lined with steel ammunition boxes, many of them displayed evidence of having been sprayed with automatic fire.
‘You think they did the same all the way along?’ Burke could picture the scene as a Russian had braced himself in the doorway and swept every corner with blasts of high-velocity rounds.
‘Not if they saw what they’d hit in here. They must have shit themselves^’ Mentally Revell ticked off the shots he had fired. He didn’t need to reload, yet. ‘What’s in the next room?’
‘Karen…that is, they were clearing it to take the overflow of wounded.’ Burke remembered something. ‘The stuff they’d hauled out they dumped in the passageway.’
‘Were they stacking it both sides, or just one, and which?’
Closing his eyes, Burke tried to recall a detail that had been too trivial to note at the time. ‘This side… yes, this side. Against the wall between the next door and the sick bay.’
‘Right. We’ll make a dive for the next cellar. Same tactics as before. You still got that grenade?’
‘If I lose it you’ll know soon enough. The pin’s out.’
As he dashed for their next objective, Revell snapped off three fast shots that were rewarded with a muffled yelp of pain and the sound of a body falling.
Again there was no reply to the single flechette shot the major put into the ceiling, and when more bullets hosed along the passage they were already tumbling inside to a soft landing on rows of sleeping bags.
‘How far now?’ Pulling off his respirator, Revell gulped the tainted air. Before he had an answer to confirm his own estimate, they had to throw themselves to either side of the door as a grenade bounced past.
Fragments from it slashed through the opening, ripping apart the bedding and creating showers of down and lint.
‘By my reckoning, three steps to the stack of boxes, then five, no, six to pass it and then an immediate sharp left will put you facing the door of the dispensary.’
Revell drew a mental picture of what he expected to see when he got there. The trapped Russians would have herded their hostages to the far end of the room, to keep them out of the way and permit unobstructed action. Unless, that is, the troops were Spetsnaz.
There came the sound of a girl crying, and ugly grunted threats in Russian. The words might not have been understood, but their obvious menace was, and the crying ceased in a series of choking sobs.
‘They’re still alive.’ Burke said it to reassure himself, and then the hairs on the back of his neck prickled as there came a long wailing scream of sheer agony. The lunge he made for the door was blocked by the major.
‘Not yet.’ Revell heard Sampson’s distinctive voice raised in protest, more shouting in Russian, the thud of a heavy blow and then a silence that could be almost felt.