Struggling to wedge a final component of the temporary repair into place, Webb ceased work abruptly as he heard a fusillade of cannon and automatic fire from behind them.
‘How close is that? Could it have to do with us?’ Becoming agitated Edwards opened a door and prepared to climb into the back of the Range Rover.
‘I don’t know. A mile or so, perhaps, but it’s definitely on the road we’ve travelled.’ Resorting to stamping on it, without success, Webb had to content himself with leaving the oversized length of wood projecting above the others about it.
‘Then why are we waiting.’ Setting an example of urgency he hoped the others would follow, Edwards reached for a hand-hold to haul himself in, missed it, and lost his footing on the high step. Teetering, he gave a high pitched yelp of alarm, then with arms flailing fell backward into the polluted water half filling a large crater.
Not eighteen inches deep, he floundered and panicked as if thrown into the deep end. ‘Oh, help me, help me someone, get me out, oh it’s revolting, I’m wet…’
Extending the handle of the axe for him to grip, Sherry and Webb assisted the professor back to the causeway. He sat gasping and spluttering.
A belly laugh from Gross at his mud-smeared and bedraggled condition did nothing to soothe Edwards’ ruffled dignity and composure, but it did stimulate the speed of his recovery from the shock of his unexpected immersion. ‘Be quiet you uncouth braying fool. Oh damn, damn, damn. I’m quite soaked through. Get me a blanket someone, quickly.
While Edwards installed himself in a corner of the rear seat, and Gross tried and failed to grope Sherry as he assisted her into the front passenger seat, Webb unlashed a petrol can from the roof rack and began to splash its contents over the causeway behind them.
The empty container he tossed aside, to slowly settle in the same miniature lake that had so recently accommodated Edwards. When he bent down and flicked his lighter at the periphery of the soaked area he had to recoil swiftly as the spilt fuel ignited with a roar.
Black smoke billowed from the breeze-feathered tops of the licking flame, as liquid fire dripped off the logs to spread across the ground below.
Hurrying back to the driver’s seat he started the engine, and with a glance through his rear view mirror at the boiling smoke, eased the Range Rover forward onto the improvised repair they had effected.
Lurching from side to side, from beneath the four wheel drive vehicle came a chorus of creaking protest from imperfectly positioned timbers. There was a sharp crack as one snapped, the sudden loud twang of a rope binding parting, but momentum was maintained and wallowing dramatically the Rover dragged itself across the disintegrating section and onto the Bailey bridge that comprised the final link with the far side.
Webb’s last sight of the causeway revealed it to be a blazing wreck on the verge of total collapse. Fire raged along it, spreading even as he looked and shreds of burning rope and bark made a non-stop shower into the water. He would have enjoyed seeing its collapse, it would have marked their final separation from the west, underlined and reinforced their commitment to the east. Eventually it would fall, even though he would not see it, and that knowledge was satisfaction enough.
‘You can relax, the worst is over. Whatever it was that was happening behind us, we cannot be caught now. From this moment we can enjoy a gentle drive to our destination and a pleasant reception.’
Professor Edwards heard but paid no attention. Through the discomfort of being wet and cold he could feel something else; a prickling, mildly burning sensation. Alternately he scratched or applied pressure to those parts of his body where the sensation was becoming most acute. It seemed mostly confined to the lower half of his person, those parts that had been immersed, but he could sense it also where the filthy water had splashed on his face and hands.
Trying to be discreet, and decent about it, he fumbled beneath the blanket and hoisted the leg of his trousers. The skin had an unhealthy blanched look and was crisscrossed by red marks that revealed where creases in his damp clothes had been in closest contact with his leg.
The growing discomfort of the irritating affliction forced him to pluck at his clothes to prevent even that light contact, but that was not enough, the burning and itching was becoming worse, unendurable.
Casting all thought of propriety aside with the blanket he took the only course open. Tortured by intolerable discomfort that was fast transforming into pain he mewed his distress as he took recourse to the only measure the torment prompted in his distracted mind.
‘Holy Jesus.’ Hearing the commotion Sherry turned to look. ‘Has the old guy gone off his trolley?’
Edwards had managed to strip to his woollen underpants when he finally lost control and howled as he went berserk.
Automatic fire of every calibre spat from the Marder on Revell’s order. Cannon shells and machine gun tracer slashed through the trees at the roadside. Timed to perfection, the onslaught hit the Russian ambush an instant before it was to be sprung.
From the turret Ripper kept hosing shells from the slim barrel of the Rheinmetal cannon. His targets were invisible, but experience had taught him the hard way from what sort of position and angle to expect concealed enemy fire. Every possible location he saturated with a storm of armour-piercing and explosive shot.
Not once did he see the men he was firing at, but there were moments when he could tell he was firing with effect. Sometimes it was a gout of bright light as his rounds ignited a Russian’s smoke grenades, or a fountain of white fire as he set off spare machine gun magazines in a weapon pit.
From the steady cruising speed with which they’d approached the Russian ambush, Burke pushed the mileage-worn engine to its limit and beyond. But even so, as they surged ahead streams of bullets hit the hull’s angled armour, beating a hail on the metal as they deformed against it or bounced off.
A hastily aimed anti-tank rocket soared from a clump of saplings and skimmed over the steeply raked bow plate as an uncomfortably near miss. Another blasted the road a few yards in front of their threshing tracks and sent fragments smashing into the APCs frontal armour. The largest pieces, travelling at incredible velocity, actually dented the hardened plate. Smaller chunks of the bomb’s casing, and lumps of asphalt starred but failed to penetrate observation prisms in the command cupola.
Grenades exploded on the hull top. Ripper felt their concussion through the extra thick protection of the turret walls, but instinct told him they were almost past the worst. There were few targets to the front or side, only the rear facing remotely controlled machine gun remained in constant action. It was tempting to traverse the turret, to join in the engagement of those communist troops who made the mistake of thinking they could run from hiding into the centre of the road and fire at the carrier’s more vulnerable vertical rear armour, but a warning from Revell kept him watching the road ahead for a Russian backstop position.
Tearing around a bend they drove straight into it. A poorly camouflaged Soviet field car was beneath trees at the roadside. Resisting the near overwhelming urge to destroy the soft-skin target presented to him at point-blank range, Ripper traversed the cannon in search of the vehicle’s occupants. They found him first.
‘Top of the embankment on your right…’
Already elevating the weapon as fast as he could, as he heard the major’s shouted warning he had to instinctively duck as a machine gun splashed blindingly bright tracer across his periscopes and sight.
Retaliation had to wait while he blinked his vision clear, and regaining it, the first thing he saw was a flame-tailed rocket coming straight at him.