The pointsman owed his life to the makers of the helmet he had been wearing; the close range headshot delivered by the female commander of the Russian team had been deflected, although the scar on his forehead would be a visible reminder until the end of his days whenever he saw his own reflection. All that having been said though, having regained consciousness in a ditch buried beneath the bodies of his colleagues and finding himself staring into the dead eyes of the young woman he had been so fond of, it would never require the presence of a mirror to remind him of the events of that night.
Having recovered from his injuries he had been returned to duty but remained aloof. The sections new commander had tried to integrate him with his new comrades but when that had failed he had been permanently posted to the solitary role of pointsman at the TP, the task he had been undertaking when the rest of the original section had killed. But he went about that duty uncomplaining of the 12-on-6-off stag roster and remained distant, even to the extent of positioning himself well away from the covering sentries of 1 Wessex.
Maggie put aside all thoughts of the pointsman and his ghosts as she concentrated on not falling asleep at the wheel.
Tony sat in the rear of the vehicle where he used a heavily filtered red lamp to pick out the ‘NUT’ route signs as PNGs were in very short supply and limited to one per vehicle. He occasionally shouted out when a sign needed a slight adjustment due a combination of the rain saturating the ground and the wind acting on it like a sail, canting it over at an angle or toppling it to the sodden verge in the case of those on pickets. A couple of signs affixed to street furniture required a moment to be repointed an additional twist or two of the retaining wire ties to sit them more securely by Tony, with shoulders hunched against the rain and wind, his SA80 hung reversed down his back by its harness to keep water out of the barrel.
After seven miles the road began a long climb, the dark fields either side gave way to even darker forestry plantation, and once at the top Maggie halted again to allow Tony to lift another drunkenly leaning sign, rooting it more firmly with deft use of the signing vehicles most vital tool, a 2lb hammer. Two solid blows did the trick and Tony turned back to the vehicle, but paused as something in the distance caught his eye despite the rain. He slid open the driver’s side window.
“Would you look at that.” he said to Maggie.
She opened the door to lean out in order to see what he was referring to as the rain pounding the windscreen was not exactly an aid to viewing, and the windscreen wipers best effort was lacking.
Off on the horizon the position of the 4 Corps lead elements was just discernable by flashes reflected off the clouds in a similar manner to that of Vormundberg’s fight.
The flashes relented and vanished as another air threat was dealt with, and the progress continued, if indeed it had even paused at all. Out of the cloud base emerge a burning aircraft, falling to earth with no clue as to which side had owned it.
“Come on, let’s get moving.”
The road began a gentle incline but any elation that the sighting of 4 Corps had caused was diminished by the smell that became apparent, growing stronger by the moment.
Rüper auto services, named after a small village to the north, had served both truckers and the motoring public with fuel, food, a rest stop and motels for both east and west bound traffic until the war. When the coup in Poland had forced a sudden withdrawal by NATO to avoid being flanked a horde of refugees in some hundred or so vehicles had bypassed the military road blocks by using the tracks through the forestry plantation and descended upon the westbound services, desperate for fuel and food. They had been in sufficient numbers for their vehicles collective heat signature and radar return to register with the Soviet equivalent of JSTARS.
The refugees and their vehicles remain there still, hidden from view by the darkness but the nauseous petrochemical scent of napalm and that of its victims lingered on.
It was worse in daylight of course, the blackened and buckled cars and vans were nose to tail, side by side, a disordered logjam on the filling station forecourt and its approach ramp where they had attempted to extract fuel from storage tanks already emptied weeks before.
The southern services two hundred meters away had received the same treatment. The two infernos had burned unchecked, melting the tarmac of the autobahns so that in the dark on that uneven surface it is not unusual for tired drivers to think they have strayed off the road.
Perhaps this was the cause of the complaint and they could both head back to their sleeping bags?
No such luck.
A ‘Nut’ ‘UP’ arrow was pointing at an angle towards the Rüper auto services off ramp.
“Shit…some bastard has being playing silly buggers with the signs.” Tony shouted, turning his head as they passed the obviously interfered with item.
Maggie halted the vehicle and pressed her camouflage face veil, worn cravat style, against her nose in an effort to block out the stench of death as Tony clambered over the tailgate. She hated this place and usually held her breath and floored the accelerator on the downhill westbound route, treating any passengers to a severe bone rattling ride as the uneven surface was akin to the ‘slow-down-ripples’ from hell.
Lifting her PNGs clear of her face she looked at her watch; pressing the tiny button on one side of the casing to illuminate the hands and figured she could get over an hours sleep if she kept her foot down all the way back.
Maggie looked in the wing mirror, but it was beaded with raindrops and did not reflect any light from Tony’s red filtered torch so she gritted her teeth and opened the side window, grimacing in the rain as she peered back at the off ramp, but she could see no sign of Tony.
“Tony?” there was no response.
“TONY!” she paused to listen but there was just that miserable non-stop rain.
Muttering aloud, she lifted her SA80 from the weapons rack behind her, killed the engine and removed the ignition key.
Emerging into the rain she listened for a second before calling Tony’s name again.
He couldn’t seriously be playing a practical joke could he, knowing how she disliked this place?
Pulling the PNGs back into place and holding the rifle casually in one hand she walked cautiously to where the off ramp began. There was no sign at all of him and she now fully expected her partner to be playing a foolish prank as she started along, the blistered and melted road surface crunching beneath her feet, until she reached the nearest buckled and burnt out car, a people carrier. The naked wheel rims it was sat upon were now an integral part of the off ramps tarmac surface, sunk into the tarmacadam when the napalm had brought it to boil. The driver’s door was open, restricting her view further down the ramp. As she reached the open door she glanced inside. Even in the mixed shades of green from the PNGs she could make out a skeletal foot upon the brake pedal.
Bile rose in her throat and she fought the impulse to gag.
“Tony?…I am not fucking about here, so quit screwing around or you’re walking back, you bastard!”
Her foot struck something metallic that skittered away and looking down she saw it was a 3’ picket with ‘NUT’ still affixed.
Brittle tarmac crunched behind her and she started to turn, to shout an angry remark at Tony but something slipped over her head and contracted around her throat, stifling the retort. The SA80 clattered to the ground as Maggie raised both hands to her throat and as she did so a knee pressed into the small of her back, pulling her off balance.