Out of control the Black Hawk side-slipped, the rotors sliced across the front of an office building and the ground raced towards them.
THREE
At the last instant the nose of the helicopter came up, but it was still travelling too fast when it struck the road. There were loud reports as the tyres burst, then the undercarriage was ripped off. The chopper’s broadside progress across the intersection was accompanied by the scream of grinding metal on stone and billowing clouds of sparks and smoke, through which scythed lengths of splintered blade and shattered panes of glass.
With a final jarring collision the cabin came to rest, and as it did the unchecked racing howl of the twin turbo shaft engines died. The silence was short-lived. Even as Libby’s sound-saturated eardrums began to recognise the fact that they had stopped, their deafening racket was replaced by another that played on a wider range of nerves. A hideous, nerve-shredding, distressed howling began to emanate from the cockpit.
‘Out. It’s starting to burn.’
The hefty shove Hyde gave him in the back helped Libby shake some of the shock from his mind, and he leapt down from the doorway to start helping out the others. A fierce fire raged over their heads as the flames fed on the punctured tanks of aviation fuel. Every breath was filled with the stench of kerosene and burning rubber.
Ripper and Clarence joined Libby in trying to salvage some of the demolition charges. Roasting smoke filled the cabin, and molten aluminium was dripping from the flames overhead.
Attempts to free the trapped co-pilot were hopeless. The concrete lamp standard that had crushed the other flight deck crew had wrapped the metalwork of the cockpit tight around his legs. But it wasn’t that pain that prompted the man’s ghastly yelling; slashed by scalpel-sharp slivers of glass, the flesh and muscle of his face hung down into the torn hands he cupped to hold them. Like bloody steaks, the flaps of tissue flopped back and forth at his every move.
Taking the kit Revell pushed into his hand, Hyde extracted the syringe, and with the force of a knife-thrust plunged the long thick needle in through a tear in the co-pilot’s tattered flak-jacket as close to the heart as he could get, and rammed the plunger home.
As though it mattered against the other agonies and fears he was experiencing, the man jumped and mewed at the sliver of metal’s penetration, then the huge overdose hit him and every fibre of his suffering-wracked body relaxed and he died.
Another helicopter passed overhead. Others could be heard, and so could the rattle and crash of automatic and cannon fire. Even as they had been going down, Revell’s mind had been interpreting the wild flitting images he’d glimpsed through the cabin windows. The rail junction and marshalling yard could only be a few hundred yards off. Maybe the raid wasn’t as big a shambles as it had looked from the air, maybe most of the first wave had got through, and even if they hadn’t, the second was due soon, and then they’d have enough men on the ground to do the job and still hold a perimeter against the time when pick-up would be possible.
A decrepit Tatra truck rattled around a corner two blocks away, and several half-dressed East German Militia snapped off a wild fusillade of automatic fire from its back as it rocked to a stop across the road. Cline and Dooley sent several disciplined short bursts in return, and the truck crashed through a clumsy, tyre-stripping, five-point turn before roaring off the way it had come, its passengers tumbled into a heap.
‘We got them, Major.’
‘Fuck off, Bomber, they pissed off because they were shit scared.’ Dooley fitted a fresh belt to the M60, letting its loose end hang free down to his knees.
The heat drove Libby back, forcing him to abandon his attempt to save a case of ammunition. A moment later machine gun rounds began to cook-off inside the Black Hawk, and they all had to duck as some came out through the bubbling alloy skin of the fuselage.
Revell tossed a sack of rifle grenades to the armourer. ‘We’ve got all we can carry. Everyone take a maximum load. If things are as screwed up as they look, then we won’t be able to count on much in the way of re-supply.’
They were fifty yards from it when the helicopter’s fuel tanks ruptured and exploded. Libby saw the mini-gun, the section of floor to which it was bolted, and a shower of ammo boxes sail across the street to crash into and through the wall of a warehouse.
A gunship spun into the road ahead of them, disintegrating and filling it with fire that instantly spread to the timber yards on either side. Sergeant Hyde struck off down a side alley, and the others followed. They had to step over a man-sized depression in the asphalt that was filled with a stinking red pulp. Tangled white silk draped a stack of oil drums close by, linked to the remains by twisted rigging lines.
The alley ended at a wire mesh fence. Through it, made indistinct by the clouds of drifting smoke, Libby saw their objective. It looked different from the aerial photographs. The bare cement walls had been toned down by the application of a wash of camouflage paint, but the control-tower-like glass top was unmistakable. Steel shutters had been added, but had been left folded back. From where they stood, at ground level, it was impossible to be sure, but at least ten, and possibly twenty or more long lines of assorted railway wagons separated them from the signal cabin.
‘Sure is a pity the major can’t do a Moses, and get these freight cars to part for us.’
‘Just get us through the fence.’ Cline slapped his cutters into Ripper’s hand. ‘Shit, how come you’re always giving me the work?’
‘Every time you open your mouth, you draw attention to yourself.’ Clarence volunteered the answer as he worked at the other side of the opening, cutting through the woven intersection of the wire to work at twice the young infantryman’s speed. He had to brush aside Boris’s attempts to help.
The Russian was nervous and, hampered by the whipping aerial of his man-pack radio, only managed to get in the way. His nervousness showed in the taut lines in his slab face and his fumbling eagerness to get the squad moving once more.
From the far side of the yard came the sounds of small-arms fire, and further away, the fast punching crack of multiple cannons.
‘In we go.’ Revell went first, and stood guard as the others and their loads were fed through. His first glance had told him there was no choice of route. To go around the long lines of wagons would have taken too long. They would have to thread through them, squeezing between each row into what was a potential killing ground if there were any more militia in the area. And by now there was a strong chance there would be.
Andrea sent a long burst at a brown-uniformed figure that sprinted from a small shed. The last few bullets caught him, and the man went down, kicked once then lay still. ‘A Russian. They said nothing about Russians.’
‘Probably just railway troops, bound to be a few. Burke, get me his jacket.’
‘I’ll get it.’ Before Burke could act Dooley had set down his machine gun, and was running towards the body, spare belts flapping about him.
A second figure appeared at the door of the shed, then ducked back as Libby fired from the hip, a brief burst that went nowhere near its target, but drove the Russian back out of sight before he could take aim with a pistol.
Not bothering even to attempt to remove the jacket, Dooley grabbed the corpse by the wrist and began to tow it back, sweeping a broad stroke on the damp ground that was marred by the indents made by the trailing boot heels.