‘That’s quite a fund of little stories you’ve got. Are they all that poignant?’ It took Ripper a moment to recover from the shock of seeing the sergeant suddenly loom out of the mist His fire-damaged face took on a spectral quality against the slowly swirling white backdrop.
‘You ain’t heard the half of this one yet. A couple of weeks and two tubes of antiseptic cream later we go back for another go. Maybe I’m the sort who doesn’t learn by his mistakes, anyway I was all worked up and in a hurry again and I got real careless. You know what a head of barley looks like?’
‘Why, you decided to change tack to a lecture on subsistence farming?’
I’ll tell you, it’s hard, real hard, with lots of long sharp whiskery bits.’ Ripper wasn’t about to be deterred from the recounting of the episode. ‘Well, one of them critters got in the way. Damned near speared my foreskin and stabbed poor Barby right where it hurts.’
‘You finished?’
‘No, Sarge, I recovered the full use of it inside of a week…’
‘Just get aboard will you. We’re moving. And get rid of that bloody straw. You look like something out of the Wizard of Oz.’
Libby trailed behind the pair, watching Hyde help the Yank remove his insulation lagging. Now they were on their way again the tiredness wouldn’t bother him, it would still be there, but the pressures and dangers would sublimate it to the need to stay alert.
And there was another reason. They were driving back towards the Zone, would reach it today if luck was with them. The Zone meant refugees, and he would want to see everyone he could. To miss one might be to miss Helga. His war, his part in this war, would end the instant he found her.
The young Russian conscript manning the checkpoint barricade had gone a bleached white, and the clipboard in his hand was shaking visibly.
There had been no chance to avoid it. After rounding a bend in the fog it had loomed up immediately in front of them, and Burke had been forced to brake hard to avoid ramming the big counterweighted ‘H’ beam blocking their path.
From the small guard hut came a bellow of raucous laughter, and an empty bottle arched from the open doorway to smash at the edge of the road.
About two seconds that was how long the conscript had to live if he shouted a warning to his comrades loafing over the half-seen card table in the shack. His eyes flickered from the turret machine gun to the several tips of barrels that poked from various weapon ports. Every one was pointed at him.
Very slowly the fresh-faced youngster backed to the concrete block at the pole’s end and put his weight on it. As it went down, the massive beam beyond the pivot rose from the supporting cradle on the far side of the road, and began to rise. Hunched over the rough-surfaced counterweight, the Russian closed his eyes tight, as though in prayer, and didn’t look up as the eight-wheeler trundled past.
‘Boris and dine must be guessing right about those coded radio signals we keep intercepting. They’re about us.’ Hyde knelt behind Revell’s seat. ‘Perhaps we should be looking for a change of transport?’
‘There’s no need, not yet.’ Revell checked his map, pencilled in the location of the roadblock. ‘That kid won’t have reported us, so as far as the Ruskies are concerned they’ll think we’re still back there, somewhere.’
‘And pretty soon they’re going to realise we’ve slipped through. Better to make the switch now, while we’ve the chance to choose the time and place.’
‘I say stick with this wagon for as long as we can.’ Burke was enjoying the drive. The mist had lifted sufficiently for him to motor as close to the vehicle’s top road speed as the twisting route would allow; enabling him to take advantage of the absence of other traffic, in the lull of activity between the re-supply convoys using the cover of the dark, and the coming of full day, when civilian, inter-unit and local traffic would take over. ‘Where the hell would we get another.’
‘Commie vehicle in this condition!’
Both driver and NCO had made good points, but for Revell it was a third argument that prompted his decision to press on as fast as they could. In fact it wasn’t even an argument, it was a solid gut feeling that told him to go for mileage first and subtlety afterwards, but it would do no harm to offer a placatory gesture to the sergeant.
‘Let’s see if we can’t have the best of both worlds. First chance we get we’ll pull over and do what we can do to alter this APC’s appearance. It’s too distinctive, so let’s see how we can make it look the same as the other Warsaw Pact wrecks of its type. God knows there’s enough of them about, we should be able to merge into them. They can’t possibly check every one.’
As if to bear out Burke’s argument, they passed three trucks pulled into the edge. Engine covers were raised on all three, as they were on a massive six-wheeled recovery vehicle a few hundred yards further on.
‘We’re being followed,’ Head poking out of an open hatch to catch some air and overcome the feeling of nausea the vehicle’s harsh ride gave rise to, Cline had seen a pair of machine gun armed motorcycle combinations and an armoured car gaining on them. Any doubts he had as to whether or not the APC was the subject of a pursuit were swiftly dispelled when a roof-mounted klaxon on the car began to blare up and down the scale.
‘Slow up. Let them get close.’ Revell tapped a grenade at Dooley’s belt. ‘You and Andrea pitch them some presents. Half a dozen should do it.’
The lead motorcycle had closed to twenty-five yards when the APC’s side hatches were thrown open and the grenades tossed out.
Six irregular-shaped lumps of cast metal bounced on the road surface and rolled to a stop at its edge, then shattered and hurled fragments of metal in every direction.
Caught in the centre of the storm, the second combination disappeared from sight completely, hidden by the smoke and barely glimpsed flame of the detonations. The passenger and rider of the leading machine hunched low as they felt and heard the explosions behind them but it was too late. The bike’s rear wheel deflated, slashed open by a sliver of casing, and at that instant the rider slumped over his handlebars, a gaping wound in his neck.
Making a wild grab for the controls the passenger attempted to avert disaster, but it was already inevitable. The bike’s front wheel crabbed to the left and as the scuffing rubber sent it out of balance, men and machine were sent cart wheeling into the hedge.
As the mushroom of smoke from the grenades drifted upwards they were supplemented by a growing pall from the pools of blazing petrol and the burning bodies in the road. The armoured car had stopped, a front tyre fiercely alight. When the crew made a hurried exit to tackle the problem, Libby added to their discomfort with three short bursts he got off before a bend took them from sight. He thought he had missed, most of the tracer going high, until at the last moment he saw a crewman drop the extinguisher he was ineffectually wielding and clutch his stomach as he started to collapse.
‘Cat’s out of the bag now.’ Through a gap in the hedge Burke glimpsed witnesses to the incident.
Beside a netting-shrouded radio van stood several half-dressed East German signallers. Their open mouths made dark circles in their lathered faces.
‘I reckon those guys are going to be telling tales inside of the next few minutes.’ The target the van presented was visible for too short a space of time for Ripper to get in a shot, and he heard others swearing at the missed opportunity.
‘And a couple more after that, we are going to be the centre of a lot of attention.’ Cline checked that his rifle was within reach and patted his spare magazines. ‘If we get back we’ll be able to tell them we took on a whole Russian army.’