‘In the APC, and draw their fire.’ Much of the effect of the T62’s shooting could not be seen, but now and again a high explosive round would burst among the tops of the trees and lengths of smouldering bough and bark and trunk would sail spinning through the air.
Revell only knew the pair’s approximate position, but he could see the shells falling all about it and his mouth went so dry he found it hard to catch a breath.
The vehicle’s turret machine gun clattered loudly and sent a line of tracer at the advancing tank. A second followed, then another: and then Revell saw its cannon traverse towards them and elevate.
A solid shot struck the hill lower down, the following high explosive round came no nearer.
‘They can’t elevate enough.’ Hyde could imagine the Russian commander’s frustration, then saw it demonstrated as the man brought the tank’s anti-aircraft machine gun into play.
Already having the range, it was an opportunity Clarence did not neglect. He fired twice, short bursts whose arcing trajectory was marked by dashes of bright green tracer. Before the tank man could settle behind his weapon he was hit, threw up his arms and collapsed to drape his upper torso over the side of the turret.
Burke didn’t hear the Harriers’ approach. One moment the sky was clear save for the thick column of smoke from the dump, the next they were hurtling at zero feet over the wall, unleashing salvo after salvo of 68mm air to ground rockets from their underwing Matra pods.
The effect was devastating. Traffic that wasn’t blasted off the road collided with the blazing debris, as truck and transporter drivers abandoned their still-rolling vehicles. A carpet of destruction preceded the jets as they swept over the area.
All four aircraft banked to scream past the hill in succession, so close that Revell could see the pilots and feel the buffeting effect of their slipstream and the pungent heat of their exhausts.
The second pass was more selective and saturation tactics gave way to precision bombardment. Both T62s were singled out and in turn were pounded by direct hits that reduced both to burning hulks. The scout cars, checkpoint and watch tower received the same attention. Several rockets fell into the minefield and initiated a chain-reaction, while still others blasted holes in the wall.
Among the inferno of devastation, individuals and groups of Russians ran from place to place seeking shelter from the howling flame-tailed warheads, but there was nowhere to go and many were cut down as they ran or threw themselves into some imagined place of safety, only for it to be obliterated by a direct hit.
They were gone as quickly as they had come, using their unique vectoring ability to execute impossibly tight turns at the end of their second run to set them on their course for home.
In that short space of time, not more than half a minute from their appearance to their departure, the Harriers had pulverised the area of the wall and its defences, and wrought bloody havoc among the troops and dumps flanking the road.
There was no need to order the others to board, when Revell reached for the grab-rail on the side of the APC he was the last to do so. Burke was tackling the, in places, near-sheer decline even before he was in his seat.
Even when at times he locked all the wheels, their driver could not prevent their transport gathering speed. In desperation, as it threatened to run out of control, he deliberately steered it through the clumps of coarse growth dotting the slope and as, one after another, the tough twisted trunks of hawthorns resisted before yielding to the vehicle’s progress, its headlong career was checked, and its speed reduced to a level where he at least had the chance of maintaining some degree of control.
Revell stood peering out of the open hatch as they neared the place from which the grenades had been launched, searching the cratered terrain for Andrea and Libby.
The air still held a strong smell of cordite, now being reinforced and at times swamped by the stink from the many fires among the tussocks of spark-generating grass and felled trees. To them was added the smoke and stench of the fires among the dumps, and together the pall was being thickened to a state that compared with the fog they’d endured around dawn.
When he saw them, Revell found his thoughts and emotions crowding him with conflict. She seemed unharmed, and at that realisation he felt exaltation. Then he saw Libby extend his hand to her, to assist her over a tangle of fallen wood, and saw her take it, without hesitation.
Seeing it made him think of his ex-wife, of how the cold cow had eventually come to reject the physical aspects of their marriage, how in the last six months before they’d separated she’d never once let him touch her. And then he remembered how he’d felt on the day of their divorce, when she’d thrown at him the news that she was having an affair, and was already pregnant by a salesman she’d met only weeks before.
The turmoil in his mind at this moment was something like that. Andrea, with whom he’d never got anywhere, who was so untouchable and had frozen him out, being familiar with someone else. The sight brought him pain and anger and he had to struggle to keep the feelings from his voice when he called to urge them on.
Closed down tight, with every weapon port manned, they drove towards the fires, and as they steered between two blazing dumps, heading towards the road, a human tide of screaming Russian infantry rushed towards them.
TWELVE
Every single man was on fire. Some flapping at burning sleeves and jacket fronts as they ran, others were no more than animated balls of flame from which hands and feet projected.
Several of them deliberately threw themselves under the APC to put an end to their suffering and the suspension couldn’t damp the jolting and bouncing as skulls and rib-cages made unnatural obstacles for the wheels.
A few tried to cling to the hull, pounding with blistered fists at the armour as they begged for help, but most just ran, heads down with their teeth clenched and their jaws set in expressions of utter determination, as though they could win the race against the flames the draught spread over their bodies.
Those too severely injured to move sat, or lay, and waited for the tides of liquid fire to roll over them. Among the petrol fires ammunition dumps began to erratically explode and added a further ingredient to the boiling hell.
The hull of the APC was becoming too hot to touch, and there was a strong aroma of burning rubber as the tyres steamed in the roasting air.
Libby had climbed into the turret seat their sniper had vacated for him, but there were no targets. When the vehicle slewed on to the road there was no opposition, no living Russian in sight. Twice they had to bulldoze wrecks aside, but there was no other obstruction to their progress.
Bodies sprawled about two damaged scout cars and a knocked-out T62. A crudely painted black and white striped pole lay splintered at the roadside. Short lengths of barbed wire impaled the APC’s tyres and were carried round several times before being dislodged, making scraping contact with the hull at each revolution.
‘We’ve made it’ Burke steered the vehicle around a chicane of tank obstacles and through the gap in the wall.
‘Oh yeah, out of the frying pan…’
‘Into the Zone.’ Hyde completed Dooley’s sentence for him.
‘Well at least the bloody roads won’t be stiff with sodding Commies.’ Following the major’s instructions, Burke took a right fork, then turned on to a narrow side road that barely admitted the nine-foot-wide eight-wheeler.
‘Back there we could see the fuckers.’ Dooley jerked his thumb over his shoulder, towards East Germany. ‘This is the Zone, from now on we won’t see sodding nobody until we drive into the middle of a Ruskie Battlegroup, or an ambush by armed civvies.’