The major recalled his commanding officer’s parting instructions before he’d transferred to this liaison post with the KGB. He was to trust no one, confide in no one, and bide his time, wait for the big opportunity. In the fierce perpetual competition between the State Security Force and Military Intelligence, more than simple prestige hung on the outcome of the more important operations.
Whatever the result of this one in particular, he knew he could expect no favours from Rozenkov, no credit for success, no protection in failure. Win or lose, the operation’s conclusion would only mark the onset of more doubt and danger for him. On the other hand, if he played a double game, performing his liaison tasks adequately while setting thing so that the GRU could step in and take the credit, then his stock would ride high with his own commander and he would be whisked away to a more attractive post, beyond Colonel Rozenkov’s malevolent gaze and reach.
He would set to work at once, but he would have to tread carefully. ‘Is that all, Comrade Colonel?’
Dismissing the officer with a grunt and a wave of his hand, Rozenkov continued his scrutiny of the map, hardly noticing the quiet click of the door catch as it was gently pulled shut.
In a mind trained to watch for detail, for any betraying gesture or intonation, the near imperceptible change in the usual manner in which the major left the room registered with his intrigue-honed thought processes, and for a second he gave it consideration.
There was a brief overlap as he referred his concentration back to the map. A mental card index went to file the thought away, but the instant before it was filed from sight an unlooked for cross-reference was made.
The colonel let his eyes stray from the centre of the map to the pair of red-topped pins not yet in use, and then back to the sprinkling of yellow. He looked at them for a long time.
‘Shitty great fuss to make over a couple of little holes.’ Dooley watched as Ripper’s burns were attended to.
Andrea dusted an antiseptic into the deep dark-ringed pits in the young American’s shoulder where the molten metal had splashed on him, then taped a field dressing over them. ‘You can let him go.’
‘I could do with a cigarette.’ Ripper flexed his wrists after Dooley released his powerful grip. ‘Can somebody pass me mine, it’ll take a minute for me to get any feeling back into my fingers. This great ape had cut off my circulation.’ Hell, he needed a smoke. The worst bit had been when the girl had cut away his scorched NBC smock. Charred pieces of the thick cloth had fastened to his flesh. In the more lightly burned areas outside the confines of the sterile bandage he could see the pattern of the material’s weave.
Delving into a smouldering, blackened pack, Clarence produced a small handful of grey ash. ‘Rather looks as if your special handrolls have gone up in smoke.’ He let the light powder run through his fingers to dust the floor.
‘Then hell just have to stay in the real world with the rest of us.’ Hyde came down from the turret. ‘And his first brush with cruel reality is to find out that he’s back in the infantry. The cannon is buggered good and proper, so’s the co-axial mount and the last of the smoke discharges. I want a couple of volunteers to heave the twenty-millimetre ammo out. From here on it’s just excess baggage.’ Two of the squad were a little slow in avoiding his eyes. ‘You’ll do nicely, get to it.’
As Thorne and Dooley set about searching every rack, locker and ammunition box, the Marder began to splash through the acres of shallow flooding on the periphery of the heavily cratered area.
Coiled and snaking belts of mixed cannon shells began to mark their route.
Altogether the detour took them three miles out of their way, but with the terrain involved only marginally better than that they were seeking a way around, it cost them ninety precious minutes.
Estimates Revell made as to how long it would be before they rejoined the road again, and were once more on the Range Rover’s trail, had constantly to be revised as their driver was able for a while to increase speed on a patch of more favourable going and then had to slow to a crawl to negotiate or find a way to avoid giant craters that loomed suddenly before them, partially hidden by a sickly yellow drifting mist that was rising from the sulphurous ground.
Gathering darkness was also taking a hand in concealing the ugly countryside, but the sinking blood-red sun was playing a last few tricks with the light, turning the dull grey foliage of the distant trees a delicate pale pink, and tinting the mist with an orange glow.
‘Doesn’t look like we’re on earth at all, does it.’ In the fast fading light it was difficult for Burke to decide whether to use his naked eye or switch to infrared or white light illumination. He settled for a compromise, using an image intensifying prism that he pulled like a visor over his vision port.
As they drove onto solid ground, and the Marder nosed into the trees, it rapidly became obvious that the image intensifier alone would be insufficient. With that single drab shade predominating there were hardly any reference points. Tree trunks, bushes, the very grass, they all merged into one.
After narrowly missing a third collision with elms that had materialized from the uniform backdrop when only yards off, Burke decided to use the shielded headlamps, choosing to employ white light.
Only the left hand beam came on, and that was weakened by a thick coating of mud. A further substantial portion of its usefulness was cancelled by its being reflected back by thickening streamers of ground fog tailing into the woods.
‘Give the Ruskies another year and they’ll have the whole bloody world in this state, if they’re not stopped.’ Heaving clear the last of the cannon shells, Thome secured the hatch before retrieving his flamethrower and commencing a thorough check of its every component.
‘Shit, what’d be the point of that.’ At their slow pace through the trees, with the engine revs kept low, Dooley discovered that he didn’t have to shout at the top of his voice to be heard. ‘What good’s it gonna do them if they win the war and what they capture ain’t fit for nothing. Fuck it, that don’t make any sort of sense.’
‘It is not always possible to reason, to think, the way a communist would.’ Taking advantage of the gentler ride Boris was repairing electronic circuits damaged by the direct hit. ‘When they cannot get what they want they would rather destroy it than let others have its use.’
Boris was thinking back to his time in Moscow, to the moment when he had started to admit to himself how conditions really were in Russia. Until then he •had kept his head down, like every one else, got on with his life and either pretended not to see or made excuses for what even his deliberate self-blinkering could not fail to notice.
It was those ten days at the Stalinskachowskii military prison in the city that had finally forced him to open his eyes. Those two hundred and forty hours had seemed more like that many million. There, in the name of the State and Party, carried out by members of the KGB and GRU he had witnessed greater cruelty and depravity than until then he’d known existed.
Prisoners had been forced to eat their own excreta, the young ones had been buggered by relays of brutish guards until they bled and had to be stitched without anaesthetics. And there was the petty, vicious, mind breaking vindictiveness of the constant roll calls and searches and punishments…
Ten days he had been given for the wine stain on his dress uniform. Within a day of arriving he’d had a further forty added for offences so trivial he’d found it hard to believe them when they’d been read aloud in the chief warder’s office. He hadn’t laughed, not even let his face twitch but as if they could read his mind and to punish him for what was in it, he was kicked all the way back to his cell and then beaten for an hour by warders who left no part of his body untouched.