‘And their Airforce.’ Boris eased off the headphones. ‘Whoever is in charge of this search is pulling a lot of strings.
Inter-service co-operation is not the Warsaw Pact’s strongest point. Can we not use our radio to summon help of our own?’
‘Not yet.’ Every few minutes Revell was trying to fix their position, keeping a constant update on their distance from the Zone. ‘The raid on Kothen was the first time NATO has made a deliberate incursion into East Germany. If it’s screwed up as bad as it sounds, then they’re not going to be in a hurry to do it again. The longer we can hold out, the better chance we’ve got of getting some air-cover. Until then we’re on our own, we sort out our own troubles.’
‘Got one for you now, Major.’ Burke pointed.
They were fast coming upon the tail-end of a long line of troops marching in single file down either side of the road. There seemed to be some confusion among them, particularly among those at the back. It was obvious they had heard the brief action, but being nearly twenty miles behind their own front line they didn’t know what to make of it.
The first thing Revell noticed about them was that virtually every other man was carrying an anti-tank rocket launcher, and the second was that an NCO and an officer had stepped into the middle of the road to signal them to stop.
Burke didn’t, and the officer paid dearly for his careless curiosity as he was struck by the trim board on the hull front and had his head almost severed from his body. The NCO moved quicker, but in the APC they felt the series of minor bumps as the wheels on one side passed over his legs.
Streams of tracer leapt from every port and cut down the lines of men before they even had a chance to unslung their weapons. From the turret Libby raked the road ahead, dissolving opposition before it could form.
Under the impact of the heavy bullets Libby saw heads burst like melons under a sledgehammer. He could hardly breathe in the poorly ventilated turret and tears filled his eyes, but at such close range he could not miss. A few bullets hit the metal protecting him, but he hardly heard them above the noise of his machine gun, and he knew there was little chance of small-arms fire penetrating the most thickly armoured part of the APC.
Twice, the vehicle’s gathering speed and the mount’s limited depression, meant he couldn’t bring the weapon to bear on small groups that hadn’t panicked and looked like they might present a danger, but each time he saw the knot of soldiers disintegrate as the major used his assault shotgun.
When they reached the head of the column, Libby cranked furiously to turn the turret and then sent single shots or short bursts at any likely centre of retaliation. There were few.
In the space of twenty seconds a battalion-strength column had been reduced to a bloody shambles. Many soldiers had thrown down their weapons and run, hurling away their packs and other equipment as they fled across the fields. For two hundred yards the verges were littered with bodies. Sometimes it was just one, in other places four or five would be heaped upon each other and among them staggered or thrashed the maimed and dying.
Blood had splashed on Burke’s vision block and he had to open the front port to be able to see where he was driving. The sudden rush of air helped to drive the stench of cordite from the interior. Hundreds of cartridge cases rolled on the floor, making an incessant clinking that grew irritating.
A dial on the panel caught his attention. It indicated overheating in an engine. He reported it to Revell.
‘Nurse it a bit further, but don’t risk blowing it.’
Andrea heard. She had used all her ammunition and had been about to help herself to some from Burke’s pack. Taking three magazines she paused, then took a fourth. ‘It would not be a good time to start walking, would it?’
TEN
The trap had been hastily prepared but well sited. A tank transporter, still with its gutted T84 load aboard its semi trailer, straddled the road. In the fields to either side Russian infantry had hurriedly dug-in, the ramparts of freshly turned earth betraying every position. Further back, a pair of BMP infantry combat vehicles were half-hidden hull-down in a fold.
‘Through them or round them, Major?’ Burke closed his port, forced to accept the stain-restricted visibility, knowing that to leave it open would have been to invite a storm of small-arms fire.
‘Can’t risk the damage of a collision. Let’s take the scenic route.’ At extreme range a hail of automatic fire struck the side of the APC as it turned off the road, crushing a rusted tubular steel gate into the soft earth. Great lumps of turf and loam smacked on the roof of hull and turret as shots from the BMP’s 73mm guns added their weight, An RPG-7 anti-tank rocket flashed past, another self-destructed overhead and deep dents appeared in vulnerably thin top plates as most of that surface’s paint was charred away or blistered by the fireball.
Libby sent retaliatory fire at the enemy infantry but without noticeable effect, the fields soaking up the tracer that didn’t ricochet wildly into the sky. Even using all his skill and strength, he couldn’t hold the unstabilised weapon steady for more than a couple of seconds at a time, against the savage bucking of the ride.
The BMP’s started from concealment, pluming grey exhaust. Burke saw them and began to cut back towards the road. On the rough terrain the wheeled vehicle was at a disadvantage against its tracked opponents, whose better cross-country performance was already enabling them to close the gap as they took short cuts through patches of ground that Burke had to avoid for fear of bogging down.
A 73mm shell blasted a crater in the meadow fifty yards to their left, and shortly afterwards a second impacted against a tree even further off. Libby watched the guns on both BMP’s go to maximum elevation immediately, as they had to in order for the breeches to be aligned with the feeding ramp of the semi-automatic loaders. That added the problem of re-sighting the unstabilised gun after every shot to the Russian gunners’ other problems in their severely cramped turrets and slowed their rate of fire to once a minute at most.
Libby kept watch on the lead vehicle, and as its smoothbore gun depressed to the horizontal called a warning to their driver. The violent course correction was hardly needed, as two more shells fell little nearer than the first. And then the APC thundered back on to the metalled surface of the road and, picking up speed, began to pull away from its pursuers.
Almost the instant they reached top speed, an engine began to misfire, and Burke could no longer ignore the temperature gauge beginning to push into the red.
‘What now, Major?’ Hyde had been reading the map over the officer’s shoulder. ‘No turnings off this road, and we can’t lose those Ruskies by outpacing them. Could be we’ll be thinking on our feet again soon.’
‘How long we’ll be stood on them is what bothers me. At my best pace a BMP can catch me in bottom gear.’ By slowing Burke had managed to keep the tell-tale needle hovering just short of the danger point, but even that was not enough. At that temperature the coolant would soon be boiled away and when the engine seized there would be no point in trying to continue on the remaining one. Its ninety horsepower would be insufficient to hold their lead, and the moment they hit a serious gradient the APC would be slowed to a crawl. Then with the enemy machines closing fast it would be no better than a barely mobile crematorium, for the impact of the first high explosive anti-tank shell would turn it into a pyre.
To underline his thoughts a round crashed into the road behind them, and another scorched past, carrying away a headlamp and setting ablaze a truck parked further on.