‘We’ve got visitors.’ Clarence didn’t step into the room, delivering the information from several paces outside the door. ‘A couple of Russian field cars, packed with Commandants Service troops.’
‘They must be after this crowd.’ Indicating the flayed Soviet NCO, Revell rubbed grime from a cracked pane and looked out at the pair of open-topped vehicles. They were still the best part of a quarter mile off, picking their way carefully through the broken masonry and debris on the road. ‘Everyone into the truck.’
As Dooley kicked the last of the vegetables from the back of the Gaz, and set up the M60, he found a moment to glance admiringly at the hefty buttocks of the East German woman as she pedalled furiously away from the foundry, then Burke crunched the truck into gear and it took all of his concentration to hang on.
Boris sat between Revell and the driver, his state of mind betrayed by the sweat beading his face, and his nervous compulsive clutching of the radio pack in his lap, so hard that his knuckles whitened.
‘Not too fast. I want them to think we’re going to stop.’ Revell had clipped a fresh magazine to his assault shotgun, and now cradled it with the muzzle only a fraction from the open passenger window.
The cars had stopped, blocking the road, and several of their passengers had dismounted and now stood about waiting for the truck. Every one of them was heavily armed, and each held his automatic weapon ready for instant use.
A dwarfish Russian captain stepped forward and held up his hand, a slung machine pistol bumping against his barrel chest. His expression of thuggish arrogance was wiped from his face, at the same second as his confident stance gave way to a hurried backing movement.
The collision hardly caused any check to the accelerating six-wheeler’s speed. As the heavy duty front off-side tyre mounted and caved in the chest of the captain, one of the sturdily built field cars was bulldozed away and the other flipped on to its side to trap the three men still in it.
White fire spread among the Russians who had leapt aside in time, as Revell’s incendiary rounds sprayed phosphorous and hideous death. To its effect was added the massed fire from the men in the back, and then as they passed, short precise bursts from Dooley on the machine gun.
Wreathed in acrid smoke, the site of the would-be roadblock presented a horrific spectacle, with several of the military police reeling in circles, every inch of their bodies being consumed by the unquenchable flames.
Two or three ill-aimed bursts were sent after the Gaz, but the closest passed safely overhead, and only a single bullet actually scored a hit, grazing past the cab to smash a rear-view mirror.
‘Turn coming up, Major. Which way?’ Burke crunched down through the gears as he slowed the elderly truck. ‘Christ this thing is knackered. Can we stop and swap it for something else?’
Having at last managed to unwind the twists of wire securing the broken catch of the roof hatch, Revell stood on the seat and looked out. The whole of the horizon to one side was a curtain of variously coloured smoke, occasionally lightened by an ascending fireball as fuel or ammunition cargo ignited in the marshalling yard.
‘Keep the pall on your right, and nurse this clunker as best you can.’ Dropping back into his seat, Revell didn’t bother to re-secure the hatch, so that it clattered at every bump in the road. ‘Getting a replacement might not be all that easy.’
‘If the smoke is on our right,’ Boris dabbed at his face with his already perspiration-dampened sleeve, ‘then we are going north. The Zone, and our own lines are to the west. That is the way we must go.’
‘No.’ Using his last reloads, Revell replenished the 12-gauge’s half-emptied magazine. ‘It won’t take the Ruskies back there long to figure just what’s been going down. Soon as they put two and two together and come up with the conclusion that it’s us, and not some panicking black-marketeers who did them the damage, they are going to come after us with a vengeance. They’ll be expecting us to head west, so we’ll try to motor north for a while, until we’re clear of the action, then we’ll head for the Zone using minor roads.’
‘Problem up ahead.’ There was no civilian traffic moving on the roads, but Burke had been forced to reduce speed several times while he negotiated partial roadblocks unintentionally formed by East German drivers who had hurriedly abandoned their vehicles at the commencement of the raid, and had not yet summoned up the courage to return to their charges. Several large articulated trucks had simply been left where they had happened to brake to a stop, with their long semi-trailers sprawled across two-thirds of the width of the wide road.
‘Ease back on the gas. We don’t want to get tangled up with them.’ The line of twenty or more well-spaced trucks had also been seen by Revell, but what he had noticed almost as quickly, and had given him much more cause for concern, was the half dozen motorcyclists escorting it. Not content to hold their station, the riders were flashing back and forth along the slow-moving file, constantly waving and signalling to the crews, apparently urging them to greater speed.
‘If those wagons are in the same state as this one, it’ll take more than a few shouts to get them to roll any faster. Shit, one of the cocky sods is taking an interest in us. Let’s hope he can count, and realises we’re not one of his.’
The motorcycle roared past, executed a tight skidding turn behind them, and suddenly appeared alongside the driver’s window. Its rider gesticulated wildly, and shouted at the top of his voice, but was barely audible above the bellow of the Gaz’s holed exhaust.
‘He wants us to catch up with the others. He thinks we are with them.’ Boris gave the translation out of sheer habit, he was beyond reasoned thought as he watched the two-wheeler dart ahead, and saw the machine pistol slung behind the rider’s back. ‘I feel sick.’
‘Then do it in your damned helmet. Not over me.’ From the floor Revell retrieved one of the helmets they had pushed beneath the seat as the escort had drawn up alongside, checked it was the Russian’s own, and pushed it at him. ‘And don’t do it on the radio either.’
Every few moments the motorcyclist would glance back at them, twice making a beckoning gesture.
‘You better do as he says. Just keep as much distance as you can between their tail-end Charlie and us, without giving them reason to take an interest in us again.’
‘What happens if they turn east, or stop for a brew?’ Burke was trying to judge the distance just nicely, close enough to the convoy to keep the escort happy, but not so close that they’d be under constant scrutiny.
‘If and when, we’ll play it by ear.’ Revell looked out of the side window, and pretended not to hear the sounds of their Russian emptying the contents of his stomach.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’ Near-bending the gear lever in his effort to shift to a lower ratio, Burke eventually had to settle for the jerking snatch of dropping two, as the convoy slowed to a crawl ‘They’re turning off. Oh bloody Christ, look where we’re going.’
There was no chance to make a break. The first five trucks had already turned into the camp, and half the escort had dismounted to direct the rest of the vehicles off the road. A heavily armed group of military police stood by a BRDM scout car beside the gates and were taking a bored interest.
Boris was sick again, as their turn came to drive into the huge sprawling vehicle park beside the serried ranks of bleak barrack huts, but had nothing left to bring up, and could produce only ugly retching noises and a little spittle.
The guardhouse beside the entrance was a single-storey concrete structure that doubled as a pillbox. A light flak-gun stood on its roof, surrounded by a low rampart of sandbags. Once past it Burke had no choice but to tag behind the last in line of the convoy. The whole place swarmed with Russians, and a large concrete building, unremarkable save for its extreme ugliness, indicated that the place was a headquarters of some sort.