‘You inclined to put any money on that, Major? If you are I’d kinda like a piece of the action. The Sarge has got a stack of markers of mine I’d rather like to have settled before I go to meet my maker…’
‘Hey, Ripper, when is your appointment to see Franken Stein?’
‘Shut it, Dooley.’ Revell let their gunner work off his irritation at the interruption by firing on a four-wheeled Gaz armoured car trying to reverse into a firing position on the bank. A single shot started it burning.
Sitting with his back against the hull, Clarence didn’t bother to look out. There was nothing to be gained by knowing where they were, not for him. He didn’t give the orders, couldn’t fire with effect on any target he might glimpse. His rifle had the range, but not the hitting power. The handful of special rounds he had, those with the armour-defeating depleted uranium core, he’d save until he could be sure they weren’t being wasted. Some of the others always wanted to know what was happening, where the current danger lay, he didn’t. If he couldn’t influence what was going on, why concern himself with it.
If a shell or missile was coming at them they’d all know about it soon enough, for a brief pain-filled moment; and if the round missed then any worrying would have been for nothing. Clarence knew just about all there was to know about death, except what it was actually like, but he’d sent more than two hundred others to find out. The prospect of meeting it himself didn’t bother him. For ages now he’d been living on borrowed time. Some day, maybe today, he was going to have to pay back.
Sporadic mortar fire was sending geysers of water high into the air, and then it became suddenly heavier, until spray was continually drenching the Iron Cow. It was like motoring through torrential rain.
A light cannon joined in and the hull rang as rounds bounced from the armour. Machine gun fire was added, but only the speckled traces of light on the hostile fire locater betrayed the fact. Their flight was unseen, their impact unheard.
‘Where’s the heavy stuff?’ It was an involuntary reaction for Revel 1 to duck when the tracer shell ricocheted from the dome of the cupola hatch. Damn it, if this was another of the Russian main positions then they should have run into opposition from weapons of far bigger calibre by now. Where the hell were they? Were the Commies keeping them concealed, saving them for the convoy? It was hard to believe, the lone HAPC was a tempting target for any enemy gunner. There were few who could resist the temptation to try and disable it, to earn the big bounty the Soviet High Command offered for one captured intact.
‘Something on the screen, Major. Dead ahead.’ Boris tried to make sense of the radar image. ‘I can’t make it out, it looks… it looks like they’ve built a wall across the river.’
‘Here, let me see.’ Hyde looked over the operator’s shoulder, and saw the same incomprehensible picture. ‘It’s bloody impossible.’ He tried the thermal imager, and all he got was a view of a great grey cliff that stretched almost from bank to bank.
‘Yeah, and why not a wall. Great at building walls the Commies.’ The three rounds he put into it made no impression. On his screen Ripper saw them impact, and then nothing. ‘Usually though they put ‘em up to keep their people in…’
‘That’s not a wall.’ Revell went for a wider view, and suddenly could see that the ‘wall’ was topped by superstructures and derricks. The Russians didn’t need heavy weapons, the convoy would be going no further.
The many block ships they’d encountered downstream, found in groups of two and three, paled before this. Across the full width of the Elbe thirty or more merchantmen had been scuttled to form an impassable barrier of steel.
‘So much for bloody satellite reconnaissance.’ Through the mist of water kept in permanent suspension by the deluge of bombs, Burke could see the overlapping hulls. ‘I wonder when they’ll get round to spotting this lot.’
‘It hasn’t been here long.’ Movement caught his attention, and Revell saw an ore carrier begin to take on a list. ‘They almost left it too late, it’s only just finished.’
‘That’s what we’ll be if we bloody stay here much longer. The Ruskies have got every bloody inch of this river zeroed.’ Burke swore.
‘Shut it, you miserable bugger…’ Hyde started to go forward, but never made it. A mortar shell scored a direct hit on the starboard engine and the craft staggered, throwing everyone about. Hauling himself to his knees, he looked down. The floor was awash. He turned to search for the damaged section of hull, and then the smell hit him and he shouted to countermand Revell’s order to their gunner to fire on a flak mount aboard a container ship settling by the bows in mid-stream.
‘No, hold your fire, hold it. A fuel line’s gone, we’re filling up with kerosene.’
THREE
Fighting the controls, Burke managed to bring the craft back on to an even keel, but even with the ride height reduced by half the demands being made on the remaining engine were almost too much, and one after another all but the most vital auxiliary systems had to be shut down.
The first was the air conditioning, and that left them with no alternative but to open the hermetically sealed ramp a fraction in an effort to dispel the dangerous accumulations of fumes from the spilt fuel. ‘Beach us.’
‘We’re OK, we’ve still got headway, I can get us back.’ Burke couldn’t understand the officer’s order. They had problems, big problems, but they weren’t on fire, and they weren’t sinking. ‘It’s OK, Major…’
‘Beach us. There’s an empty slipway ahead and to the left.’ Burke complied, juggling the controls to keep the fifty per cent power evenly distributed around the edges of the flexible ride curtain and battling to overcome the Iron Cow’s tendency to keep veering to the right.
Light litter flew from beneath the craft as it left the water and travelled on to the timber-strewn launching ramp. The enemy fire intensified, but the cannons could no longer be brought to bear and what mortar bombs came near had their effect smothered by the stacks of plate and mountains of drag chains among which they landed. A single machine gun continued to fire with results, peppering the hull at close range.
‘Get them out, Sergeant.’ Revell unfastened a locker and began to unpack the cased equipment he took from it. ‘I want a tight perimeter defence around this bus. Mutually supporting positions, all in good cover. I’ll leave the details to you. Boris stays with me.’
‘Me as well?’
The answer Burke got from the NCO was to be dragged from his seat and have his rifle thrust at him before being propelled through the exit.
‘Make this priority.’ Revell completed the assembly of the equipment as he called to the radioman. ‘Don’t route it through the command centre in the convoy, give it straight to GHQ. Be brief, use your own words and tell them the position, and then say they’ll have laser designation on the block-ships in two minutes. Better tell them we’re only half a mile from target. I hope they’ll bear that in mind when choosing warheads, otherwise we won’t be here to line up a second target for them.’
It was a tight squeeze working in the cramped confines of the turret. Revell pulled the co-axial machine gun from its mount, and with no time for finesse dropped its component parts on to the thinly padded bench below. The laser only just fitted into place, its power-pack actually nestling against the compact body of the Rarden.
Taking up position behind it, Revell aligned the sight on a tanker of about twelve thousand tons that formed the centrepiece of the obstruction, and waited. He was gambling that Command would have something in reserve capable of doing the job, and that the haste with which the Russians had been forced to complete their preparations meant they’d not had the time to install any sophisticated counter-designation equipment.