‘They’re both fucked, Major.’ Burke reported his examination of the collision-damaged transports.
It took that to snap Hyde back to reality. ‘Do you fancy being just a trifle more precise? Or would you like to be carrying the fifty-calibre for the rest of this trip?’
‘Reporting, sir. Command carrier burned to a crisp, number two carrier has broken back, three links damaged, and jammed transmission. Number three has jammed transmission, commander’s cupola ripped away… Oh yes, and the electrics have been buggered by a bit of shit a penetrating shell sent flying about inside. They’re both workshop jobs.’
Ignoring his sergeant’s glare, Burke looked back at the APCs. Fuck it, he was a combat driver, not a bloody infantryman. And all this bloody hassle caused by one sodding little stray Warpac scout car. He spat in annoyance.
‘What’s up, boy?’ Ripper displayed his mass of little green teeth in a broad grin.
‘You reckon you’re too ancient to learn how to use your feet again?’
‘Salvage what you can, Sergeant. Ammunition and ration packs to take priority.’ Revell walked across to the Hummer. Something about it had been bothering him. He walked around it twice. Somehow it jarred, but he couldn’t figure why.
‘It is new.’
Revell started; it was as though Andrea had read his mind yet again. That was the thought he’d been forming. A glancing re-examination confirmed it.
Beneath a superficial coating of mud the Hummer was factory fresh; it didn’t even have any unit or other markings.
‘How long is it since we saw any new NATO transport in this sector of the Zone?’ Stepping back, Revell took in the perfect paint work, new tires and complete complement of shovels, axes and gas cans.
‘I cannot recall.’ Andrea looked to the blazing APC and the collision-damaged pair of M113’s beyond it. ‘I thought that all replacement equipment was issued to headquarters staff and their like, for the vital movement of filing clerks and senior officers.’
‘You’re all sick. You know that, don’t you?’ Pushing between the officer and Andrea, Sampson felt the driver’s neck for a pulse. At the first brush of his fingers the cooling of the man’s flesh told him there was no point. He wiped blood from his fingers, dragging them down the side of his jacket to rid them of the last adhering clots. ‘Half of West Germany is a blitzed and contaminated wasteland and all you’ve got to complain about is who’s getting the new sets of wheels.’
There was a loud shout and the three of them saw Dooley plunging into the billowing smoke shrouding the fiercely blazing APC.
He staggered out of the pall seconds later, clutching a bulging, smoke-stained kit-bag. There were two ragged-edged holes in the tight-stretched drab material. When Dooley pulled it aside, in contrast to the earlier noisy excitement there was just a single plaintive ‘cheep.’
The bright-coloured birds clung forlornly to their perches. A beak, a foot and a scatter of yellow and green feathers marked the only mortal remains of the Russian gunners’ unwitting target. The victims’ abrupt demise had for the moment at least tamed the excitability of the surviving birds.
Satisfied the loss was no worse, Dooley recovered the cage and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Well, what are we waiting for then?’ He ducked as a large chunk of red-hot metal flew overhead, propelled from an explosion on the side of the APCs hull.
‘That’ll be my flame tanks.’ Struggling with the straps, Thome attempted to shift a bulky pack to a more comfortable position. He didn’t bother to turn and look. ‘There’s always a spot of residue left in them.’
Sergeant Hyde detailed men for the point and rearguard. Ammunition aboard the burning M113 was beginning to cook-off, making almost too much noise for him to make himself understood. He was relieved when the major signalled for them to move out.
Of the many dozens of actions he’d been in, it was the first occasion in which Hyde could recall having been bothered by the sounds of battle. He noted it as perhaps a further indication that his nerve was cracking.
As they filed past the flattened corpse of the Soviet officer, few of them gave it as much as a cursory glance. Only one man deliberately averted his eyes.
‘Now don’t you go on letting things like that upset you, boy.’ Ripper gave the man a hearty slap on the shoulder. ‘It’s gonna come to all of us. And besides, he wouldn’t have wanted to live no more. Not with his pecker flattened and the end shot off his tongue. His sex life wouldn’t have been worth a pinch of chicken shit.’
Boris made no reply. It was not the sight of a body that he avoided. He had seen more than most, and having suffered fates far more horrific than this lone example. What bothered him was that as a Russian deserter who had for more than a year been fighting on the NATO side, he was becoming less and less able to look upon the death of his fellow countrymen.
It had not always been like that. When he had first gone over he had exulted at every Warpac death he had witnessed. During his time in the Red Army, many men had attempted desertion from his unit. Most had been dragged back and brutally executed in front of their comrades as an example. And now, as he gradually learned more of the methods by which the communists were keeping their forces together in the field, the sight of the remains of an ordinary Russian soldier filled him with sadness.
In the Soviet army the penalty for failure, even if through no conceivable fault of his own, did not result only in a man’s death at the hands of the sadists in the Commandants Service, the field police; it usually meant a similar sentence on some or even all of his family. It was to that they had sunk, to the methods of Stalin’s time, and worse.
The junior officer whose blood he had walked through had been a victim of that system. His crew had jettisoned him to avoid putting their mission at risk. The system was run by fear.
For Boris it held a special terror. He had deserted during the confusion of a heavy air raid. If for an instant his disappearance was suspected of being anything other than total obliteration beneath a falling bomb, then already his family would have suffered.
As he trudged with the others through the rain, sometimes beneath the scant shelter of the dripping trees, he felt as though he no longer cared whether he lived or died. All that was important was that he did not fall alive into the hands of the KGB, or their military equivalent, the GRU.
‘I wonder who the poor sod was that they carted off.’ Burke didn’t address the question to anyone in particular, but his gruff voice carried to others in the file. ‘They must have wanted him bad to take risks like they did. If we’d had any TOW rounds left or been keeping company with an Abrams they’d have been deep in the shit.’
‘I made a note of the driver’s ID.’ Sampson wiped water from his face. ‘He was with some piddling little supply company, Dutch I think. Whoever the guy was who was with him he couldn’t have been that important.’
‘Perhaps.’ Clarence didn’t raise his voice, but with its precise clipped tones it carried. ‘Perhaps the Reds have heard the stories and they’re looking for Paradise Valley.’
‘Quiet back there.’ They had a long way to go, and Revell wanted to put an early stop to speculation like that. With Russian reconnaissance patrols already probing the area they could not afford to waste time on a wild-goose chase in search of some mythical end-of-the-rainbow-type supply dump.
He was about to order an increase in pace, to take their minds off the speculation, but against the continuous and virtually ignored thunder of artillery came the much louder, and closer, throbbing of a Soviet gunship. Their step quickened automatically.