That changed as they reached the bottom of the slope and Burke increased the revolutions of the idling six hundred horsepower engine, crashed through the gearbox to engage the drive and transformed the quiet burble of the exhaust into a raging bellow.
Their route lay cross country, the Marder taking every ditch and other obstacle in its stride, slackening speed only to cross embankment enclosed roads, where for a few brief yards the bare metal of the worn tracks would once more produce the maximum amount of noise as they pounded over asphalt.
From the vantage point of the command cupola Revell enjoyed three hundred and sixty degree vision, and he needed it when they broke from a belt of woodland into a series of rough fields lined with rows of seedling conifers. There was hardly any need for him to remind their driver to zigzag. The Marder’s erratic handling, combined with the yawing caused by the deep plough cut furrows of the rows, was in itself sufficient to make any enemy gun-layers task difficult.
A minute or two more and they would be crossing the Russian battle group’s trail a mile to its rear. That should leave an adequate safety margin. Through his forward vision block Revell could make out the churned ground and broken hedges that marked the enemy armour’s route.
They crossed the steel cut and crushed avenue and plunged into the gloom of the tall trees beyond. Instinctively Revell ducked as a branch smacked into the block. As he looked again they ran into trouble, literally.
FOUR
There was the thunder and shock of heavy collision as the Marder piled at full speed into the side of a Soviet scout car parked beneath camouflage netting.
It was no contest. The much lighter four wheeled vehicle was rammed aside with its armour crushed in, and caught a second time. As the APC charged past it slowly toppled over onto its roof, fuel spouting through rents in its plates.
‘Keep your foot down.’
Burke didn’t need the major to tell him that, he’d have done it even if he hadn’t seen the other components of the battle group’s rear guard.
The range was point blank. Using the cannon’s maximum depression Ripper had the tip of the slim barrel almost touching the turret of a Russian personnel carrier when he put a ten round burst into it.
With no chance to note the effect of the hits, they tore on. A spray of heavy calibre machine gun bullets whined off the turret and hull, instantly followed by a wild fusillade of cannon fire that brought down masses of leaves and branches on the Marder’s roof. Another rapid burst was more accurate, one shell punched a hole clean through a road wheel and a second exploded on the turret front. Detonating among the bank of eight smoke dischargers, it tore some away, and ignited the grenades in others.
Smoke billowing from and over it, the Marder raced through the forest, chased by balls of green fire marking the tracer tails of armour-piercing rounds of larger calibre.
Ripper loosed a long burst in the direction of their source, but an accurate sighting of the tank from which they must have come was rendered impossible by the swirling white fog they involuntarily laid behind them, and its reinforcement of thick black smoke from a burning APC.
Fifteen minutes later, safely out of range, they stopped to take a bearing. Hyde could hear the crash and clatter of cannon and automatic fire continuing as the Russians vented mindless retaliation on the inoffensive trees. ‘If the civvies have heard that commotion they’ll be going like bats out hell. We’ll have job catching them.’
Reaching over their driver’s shoulder, Revell activated the air conditioning to rid the compartment of fumes. Empty shell cases from the Uzis and the twenty millimetre rolled under his feet. ‘Most likely they did, but I’m pretty sure we’ll get up to them. Even if whatever they’re using has four wheel drive they’re still near certain to stick to the roads all they can. We’ll cut across country every chance we get and head them off.’
‘They sure can’t have seen that commie battle group, otherwise they’d have gone straight to them, saved themselves a longer journey.’
‘You are an innocent, and a fool.’ Andrea didn’t spare Ripper’s feelings. ‘Whoever leads that delegation does not want to contact the first Warsaw Pact unit they happen to run into, especially not after having gone so short a distance. He is looking to make a grand gesture, and for that he must drag those with him all the way to the main Soviet defence line on the far side of the Zone.’
Dooley dropped in through a roof hatch, into the rear of the compartment. He stank of smoke and the gloves he took off were singed and smouldering. ‘Don’t I get some god-damned fucking awful jobs. It’s taken me bloody ages to put out those shitty smoke candles. That hit made a right fucking mess of them, only a couple left that are still serviceable.’
‘You didn’t put them out, it’s impossible to smother phosphorus. All you did was wait until they’d near enough finished on their own and then kicked away the bits that were left.’
‘Oh yeah Mister Clever, and how do you reckon that?’ Not intimidated by the aggressive sneer, Thorne pointed to the big man’s boots.
‘Well I got a clue from the fact that your feet are on fire.’ Looking where the sapper had indicated, Dooley saw bright specks trapped in the seams and stitching around his toecaps. From each issued a thin streamer of white smoke. Prevented by a chorus of protest from the others from making use of the mouthful of spit he generated with sickening noises, he had to go out again and sit on the roof to pick at each piece of spontaneously burning chemical with the point of his bayonet. While he did it, he swore continuously as the heat and charred material discoloured the mirror finish of the blade.
Examining their large scale map of southern Germany, Sergeant Hyde noticed that the several plots their Russian had made of the civilians’ progress had been linked by a solid red line that continued in broken form as a projection of their expected course. ‘If our commie deserter’s prediction is right, those civvies must be completely out of their skulls. They’re heading straight toward the most heavily chemically saturated and bug infested part of that contaminated territory. Do we go in after them, or wait on the fringes, knowing that poisonous toxin soup or a mob of bacteria are going to do our work for us?’
‘They go in, we go in.’ Revell had already made his decision. ‘If they keep moving fast, and have a slice of luck, one or two of them might make it. Those lab bred germs work quickly, but the KGB disinformation experts will only want those civvies in usable, not perfect condition. Even if they only survive an hour or two after their reception that’ll be enough to give their Department A a field day. In that time they’ll get all the footage they need. Best do a check on our NBC gear, I want us to be prepared if we have to go in.’
‘I did this morning. Regulations…’
‘Just tell me the position. Is everyone fully equipped for operating under those sort of conditions?’
‘No.’ It took an effort, went against his nature and training, but Hyde answered in the same abrupt manner the officer used. ‘What do we need?’
‘Eye pieces for the respirators, gauntlets, filter pads… It’s this work we’ve been on. We haven’t been using the suits but they’ve been taking a battering all the same.’ Bugger the major, he wasn’t a bloody telex, he’d tell it his way. He wasn’t about to leave a damn Yank officer with the impression he’d been neglecting his duty. ‘Being carted about, thrown in and out of transports… That microparticle-proof material can’t take it for any length of time. I’ve put in for replacement items, but officially we’ve been non-combatant for a month, we’re right at the bottom of the priority list.’