An oncoming ambulance convoy scattered as shells followed the APC’s swerving progress. A cross-marked Tatra fell apart as it was side-swiped by the lead BMP, turning over into the ditch and spilling its bandaged occupants into the stagnant water amid a tangle of drip-feeds and broken stretchers.
Aiming straight back down the road, Libby saw his tracer bounce from the sharp raked front of the BMP’s without effect. The range was down to four hundred yards and on the smoother surface the Russian gunners had improved their rate of fire. Still not accurate, the weight of fire would eventually tell. Libby knew that his chances of getting out were so slim as to be non-existent.
If the hit was on the turret then he would never know about it. Capable of punching through a hundred millimetres of armour, the turret’s fourteen would provide no impediment to the shell’s tungsten tip. And at the moment of penetration the round’s explosive filling would destroy the turret, very likely setting off the fuel and ammunition, and accounting for most of the others as well. But if the hit were elsewhere, perhaps on the engines, or through the side of the hull, then the interior would be flooded with fire and, trapped in his seat, he would suffer the most terrible of deaths, being burnt alive.
Three hundred yards, and now the shells were falling so close they rocked the vehicle. Fragments of casing hammered the armour, the tip of one piece piercing the turret wall and sending sparks into the side of Libby’s face.
Above the roar of another near-miss he heard a scream, too high-pitched for a man: Andrea had been hit. Keeping the machine gun firing until the barrel smoked, Libby sent an endless line of bullets at the Russian driver’s vision slits, and saw the leader skid and almost caused a collision before control was regained.
When it was the gap had opened again, and stayed open. Towing swirling steam, the APC reached the outskirts of a village. Better kept than many they had passed, they raced into it along its single main street, and were close to its centre when Revell saw what lay ahead.
Heavily armed KGB troops were pushing and herding civilians into the road so that they filled it from the buildings on one side to the other. As Revell spotted them the Russians, with kicks and threats, began to force the people to the ground.
At forty miles an hour the APC was driving straight at a human roadblock. Having traversed forward at the officer’s shout Libby sent a long burst over the civilians’ heads. A couple jumped to their feet, and were felled by shots from KGB machine pistols. The others stayed down, and Libby saw them closing their eyes and hugging each other in small family groups.
Down to twenty miles an hour, the terrified people only yards ahead and the BMPs closing fast, Burke looked for a side turning and saw none. The front wheels were almost upon an elderly couple when he threw the steering hard over and sent the APC ploughing into a shop front.
Its mass carried it through the windows and splintered the counters, crushing the pathetically few goods on display, and then it struck the rear wall and a deluge of debris rained down.
The wheels spun on the loose rubble, then Burke shifted down into the lowest gear and the APC began to grind forward, climbing the heap of rubble that had been the back wall. It thumped down into the brick-strewn back garden as the roof caved in, leaving only the shell of the building standing.
A succession of fences collapsed before the APC, then it swerved back on to the road, taking away the corner of a house as it negotiated a narrow alleyway to do so.
Knowing there was a possibility of a breech explosion if the barrel had become blocked or bent, Libby tried a single shot, then a short burst when that proved safe. He forced his aching arm to work the traverse mechanism and had a clear view of the road just as the Russian vehicles reached the civilians.
Minds numbed by the threats and violence, most of them still sat or stood in the road. The BMP’s didn’t stop, didn’t even slacken speed.
‘They’re driving through them… there’s kids there.’ To Libby it looked deliberate when the second BMP made a separate lane of its own through the East Germans. ‘Get them, get the bastards.’
Burke hurled the eight-wheeler through a turn that put it in behind a whitewashed greenhouse beside the road, as the leading vehicle raced past.
At point-blank range Libby put fifty rounds of armour-piercing and incendiary into the BMP’s bulbous rear doors. Jets of fuel hosed the road in its wake, then became tongues of bright flame. Out of control, gorging fire from every hatch and vent and port, the vehicle jerked and bucked and swerved until, hitting steep steps at the front of a house, it canted over and toppled on to its side, tracks still thrashing round in the centre of a growing lake of blazing fuel.
The greenhouse shattered as the APC charged through it and rammed the second BMP amidships. Whipping lengths of track ripped away sections of the enemy vehicle’s thin aluminium track covers as it was broken by the pounding impact.
Applying full power, able to see only the two-tone grey side of the BMP, Burke pushed the crippled vehicle across the road into the corner of a house. The substantial stone structure resisted the charge and the APC was backed off to repeat the tactic.
Crewmen were struggling to escape through buckled hatches when the APC struck again, and were hurled back inside by the avalanche of masonry that came down as the wall collapsed to bury them and their transport.
‘Hold it.’ Libby came down from his seat as Burke began to turn the APC on to its original heading. ‘We’re not leaving.’
‘Don’t be damned stupid.’ Temporarily trapped by loose equipment the collisions had piled about him, Revell could only twist round in his seat to confront the armourer. ‘Reinforcements could be here any moment.’
‘I’m with Libby.’ From his weapon port Clarence could see the remains of the civilians. ‘Leave us if you like, but we have a score to settle with half a dozen KGB thugs.’
‘And I stay also.’ There was a livid brown scar on Andrea’s cheek, where a red-hot fragment had struck. The area around it was heavily bruised and there was blood at the corner of her mouth.
‘Then we’d better deal with them quick as we can.’ Pushing aside the last of the packs, Revell stood and reached for his hatch lock. ‘Well, come on then.’
Leaving the APC unattended they sprinted along the side of the street until they reached the stomach-wrenching site of the slaughter. Most of those mowed down had been killed immediately, but a few clung to life. Among them a pregnant woman whose left leg had been crushed to a bloody pulp; and worse, a child, perhaps ten years old, a pretty blonde girl whose face was now distorted with suffering as she lay with her back broken in the middle of the road.
Clarence went over to her, despite attempts by others to hold him back. As he reached her and bent to lift her slight frame a shot rang out and a bullet aimed for him missed and finished the girl’s suffering.
Two bellows blended as one. Side by side Clarence and Libby raced for the building, while a fusillade of fire from the others gave them cover.
Hitting the door first, the sniper shoulder-charged through it, and as he went sprawling Libby fired over him to bring down the Russian who had just reached the bottom of the stairs.
Jagged bone protruded from the KGB man’s shattered leg, but he still managed to snarl at Libby before his mouth was ruined by a savage blow with a rifle butt. Again and again the weapon was driven down with pile-driver force, joined by a second as Clarence caught up.
Hearing a back door slam they ran through the house, and had to duck back as bullets gouged into the doorpost and lintel.
Libby had glimpsed a field car being hastily boarded by several Russians, and when he and Clarence appeared at the opening again it was to hurl grenades.