Civilian Slaughter (3 page)

“Well, the only way they'll find out is if the Ruskies kick up a stink and fix it on us. Let's make sure there aren't too many witnesses.”

Moving at top speed the hovercraft rolled and swayed in a sickening ship-like manner. The automatic ride height sensors failed to respond fast enough to the rapid changes in terrain as they crossed patches of bomb cratered landscape.

Like the others, Dooley had turned to man a ball-mounted machine-pistol. He almost lost his balance as the craft lurched and canted over on another violent change of heading.

Above him the Rarden opened up with an ear-splitting crack that was hardly lessened by the respirator, or the continual hiss of static over the intercom. Bracing himself against the jolting of the wild ride, he waited for a target.

There was a series of tremendously loud bangs and the craft shuddered as it took several impacts. All Dooley could see through his periscope was giant orange tracer skimming past so close he didn't think it possible they could miss. Then three more struck the turret, and their gun went silent.

FOUR
“What's the problem?” Hyde had only a second or two in which to decide whether or not to abort the attack. They were still racing straight at the rear of the convoy. The brief respite from the surprisingly accurate Russian cannon fire could only be because they were reloading.

“I've fixed it.”
As proof of their gunner's word, Hyde heard the Rarden punch a measured trio of shots toward the trailer mounted flak-gun. The first shot went wild, the second was closer, seeming to strike the tow-bar joining the trailer to a light truck. The third impacted immediately below the 23mm barrel at the moment it began to reply.

There was a flash, unaccompanied by smoke and then the enemy weapon elevated skyward and loosed a long burst into the air.

Knowing he must have got the gunner and probably the elevation mechanism, Clarence took his time over the next shot. Waiting for a smooth patch of ground where the range was point blank, he put two shells into the mount from the flank.

A feed belt or magazine ignited and hid the cannon and the remains of its crew inside a sparkling cascade of brilliant white and blue flame.

One or two of the convoy's machine guns chased the hovercraft with long bursts, but their attempts to bring their weapons to bear failed as they underestimated the attacker's speed. Several others were still firing at the tree line and made no move to switch their fire to the real danger.

If they even recognized it, they left it too late. Crossing the ditch where it was nearly filled by rubble from craters, the dashing hovercraft seemed almost to take off as it leapt onto the Autobahn behind-the last vehicle in the convoy.

A captured Land Rover with slapped-on Warpac markings, it was actually reversing to get away when the HAPC sideswiped it. The impact spun the Rover through 360 degrees, hurling its driver onto the road. Before he could scramble to safety a ripple of machine gun fire from a side mounted weapon aboard the hover- craft virtually cut him in two. Another burst riddled his late transport and started a blaze among cans of grease and oil in the back.

“Look at them run.” Dooley had all the targets he could hope for, or cope with. A hundred meters on the far side of the road Burke put his machine through a right angle turn to bring it on course parallel with the stationary transport. With speed reduced to jogging pace they travelled slowly the full length of the convoy.

Suddenly aware they were caught on what they had thought was the safer blind side of the road, the Russian soldiers panicked, some dying as they collided with each other in their rush to find new places of safety. With steady precision, shells from the Rarden 30mm cannon were pumped into the motors and fuel tanks of every vehicle and piece of plant and machinery. Under the ferocious impacts, cylinder blocks were cracked open and fuel, cooling and electrical systems smashed and shredded. Fire sprouted instantly and tractors, trailers and loads alike were engulfed by infernos of flame.

A group of Russian field engineers had taken shelter beneath the bed of a large compressor. Oil poured over them as a solid shot ripped open the motor's sump. They became torches as an incendiary shell burst and ignited the spillage.

Other human targets were sought out by the armoured hovercraft's infantry passengers, and brought down by swirling cones of automatic fire as flames flushed them from hiding.

Using the roof-mounted grenade launcher, Hyde sent salvos of anti-personnel and smoke bombs at the road. Scything fragments and eruptions of white phosphorus added to the death and destruction.

“That's it, job's done.” Hyde shouted to their driver. “Get us out of here fast!”

As they raced from the scene, Hyde set the bomb thrower to lob decoy devices in their wake. Noise generators tumbled into strident life on the ground. A screening pall of hot smoke was created by the sequential detonation of a mass of sub-munitions. Bursting in the air, each short lived fiery-centred cloud could draw off any missiles homing by infra-red emission detection, while masking them from observation by any thermal imaging sight.

Traversing the turret, Clarence took a last look at the convoy before the smoke concealed it from view. From a rapidly increasing distance it appeared as if a full half kilometre of Autobahn was a continuous sheet of red and yellow flame. An impenetrable curtain of black smoke rose high above it, blotting out the pale sun.

“The Reds will create a stink over this.” Through the thick, clouded prisms of the command cupola, Hyde took in the scene. He heard their gunner's words, but made no reply. It was done, irreversible. Only now did he remember to look at the time. He couldn't be certain whether or not they had continued the one sided engagement beyond the cease-fire deadline. Well if they had, he'd be hearing all about it soon enough.

“We must have copped a bit of damage.” Burke was having increasing trouble keeping the craft on course. “I think the ride skirt's taken a hit. We're spilling air.”

“There's a railroad overpass two kilometres dead ahead.” Hyde checked his map, though he had hardly any need. They had fought over this area, to the east of Hanover, many times before. “Take us down into it. Turn south, there's a road bridge, we'll tuck in underneath it. No point in advertising where we are.”

As the hovercraft nosed over the edge of the embankment and slewed sideways down to the track bed, they became aware of a steady leathery drumming against the left-front of the hull. The machine had taken on a definite and uncorrectable list to that side.

“Must be that Land Rover that got in the way.” Burke examined the chunk of aluminium. “Looks like a part of his wheel arch.”

“I don't give a damn if it's a part of the driver's crotch.” Hyde surveyed the ride- skirt. “How long to replace those panels?”

Burke shrugged. “Maybe thirty minutes. Quicker to do both than mess about patching the one that's still hanging on.”

“I want it done in twenty.” Hyde reached into the craft and pulled a Stinger missile from under the driver's seat. “Give me a whistle when you're ready. And for Christ's sake do something about him.” He indicated the body entangled with the components Ripper and Garrett were trying to free. “Cover him over.”

Looking from the Stinger the sergeant held nonchalantly, Burke found himself involuntarily scanning the sky. “No chance of us being pounced on, is there? The truce is in force now, isn't it?”

“Why take chances? I’ll be up on the bridge. Remember, twenty minutes.” The bank was steep and with his awkwardly bulky load Hyde was sweating profusely by the time he reached the top. He threaded his way through the rusted remains of a wire fence and walked to the centre of the bridge.

A wrecked West German civilian ambulance and a couple of well bleached skeletons stood at the far end. The vehicle's front was crushed flat where it had been bulldozed aside by a tank. He hoped that the knocked out T72 in the distance was the one that had done it. Both tableaus dated from the first days of the war.

Then the Warpac forces had rampaged across this part of West Germany. It had seemed like nothing could stop them. On the first day, heedless of losses, they had made forty miles in places. Hyde remembered being at a HQ, the first evening, seeing the red flags sprouting on the situation map as Russian reconnaissance elements and Spetsnaz units turned up in places they had no right to be, far behind the NATO front line.

But as the markers of NATO units had been steadily moved farther and farther west and grown steadily fewer in number, although they weren't to know it, the Warpac advance was already in deep trouble.

It had been a totally unexpected factor that had first dislocated and then stopped the pell-mell assault. Soviet satellite troops, mostly Polish and Hungarian but with a few East German also, had mutinied.

Months later, when NATO forces had begun to re-capture odd pockets of territory, they had come across mass graves. In one Hyde had counted over a thousand bodies in the top layer alone. The stench had driven him off from completing even that crude estimate. But not before he had recognized the uniforms.

The pit had contained the rotting remains of a whole East German infantry battalion. Slaughtered to a man, with no pretence of selection or discrimination. Officers, drivers, medics, all had been mowed down and dumped like so many bags of garbage.

Since then they'd seen countless other examples of the Communist way of instilling loyalty and discipline. What an ugly farce it made of all the disarmament talk of the 1980s. All of Gorbachev's “glasnost” had counted for nothing when the Russian military chiefs judged it had gone too far and taken over the reins.

There was no real danger of their coming under air attack. Hyde had used that as an excuse to get away on his own for a few minutes. He could hardly believe that this truce meant the end of the war. There had been five others before it, none had lasted more than a couple of weeks. The average was six days.

But if it was, what then? When the war had started he'd dreaded a disabling wound. Well, he'd got a disfiguring one, and now because of it, he dreaded the peace.

The chemical level indicator was registering a low reading, he took off his helmet and lifted his respirator. Flakes of graft tissue came with it, adhering to the straps.

Thorne had been unlucky to pick up something so deadly, even on that poison- riddled tract of land. But he'd been lucky not to have suffered. The pain didn't have to continue for you to suffer from a wound.

With the tips of his gloved fingers Hyde pressed the spongy tissue of his face. There was no sense of feeling, in the same way as he had no sense of smell or taste. All that had gone in the fire, with his face.

From below in the overpass came the stuttering note of a klaxon, and he started back. At the fence he paused, sighted on the T72 and sent the missile on its way. It was a direct hit where the turret sat on the hull.

Where was he going to use that skill in civilian life? It was a joke. For him there was only the war. For him it had to go on.

FIVE
From the roof of the hotel Major Revell had a good view of the grounds and the countryside for several kilometres all around.

The battles that had surged back and forth had largely spared the impressive old building. A couple of solid shots, tungsten-tipped misses from a distant tank versus tank engagement, had punched holes in the walls and a single five hundred pound iron bomb had cratered the garden and destroyed the serried precision of much topiary work, but that was all.

Even looting had been on a very minor scale. It was a good choice for the Special Combat Company's base. Close enough to the rear bases to enable Carrington and his team of brilliant scroungers to prey on the dumps, and too far forward to be of serious interest to higher commands who might otherwise have appropriated it for themselves.

Beyond the perimeter fence had sprung up the inevitable clusters of refugee tents, huts, and shelters. Wisps of smoke rose from them, and the copses nearby al- ready showed the usual sprinkling of fresh stumps where fuel had been cut.

Lieutenant Vokes climbed out through the skylight and joined him. They watched as a pale blue Jaguar XJS executed a high speed dry skid in through the tall wrought iron gates at the far end of the long drive. Twin fans of gravel marked the sports car's savage acceleration and it fishtailed slightly on the loose surface.

“Andrea?” Vokes admired the vehicle's handling as it left the drive and tore across the overgrown lawn to be lost from sight among the wide spaced lines of military vehicles parked beneath camouflage netting.

“Who else? She's developed a passion for the exotic. It was a Ferrari yesterday.” “Where does she find them?”

“There are some big houses tucked away in these parts. I suppose most had two or more cars. When the civvies pulled out they were more likely to take the Rolls or the Range Rover. Can't carry much in a Ferrari.”

“True.” Vokes sighed. “I must say, I wish it was me she had her small warm hand around rather than a gear shift.”

“Take my advice, don't try it. She's capable of pulling either out by the root.” There was a time, not long before, when Revell would have jumped on any one talking about her like that. But he'd changed. What he had felt for her she had burned out of him. “Garrett was the last to try. He was wearing his balls in a sling for a week. He's scared witless of her now.”

The Jaguar reappeared from between a pair of dapple painted Saxon wheeled APC's. It made a high speed hand brake turn onto the drive, shredding thousands of miles from the tires, and rocketed back out onto the road.

As the roar of the high revving motor died away it was replaced with another familiar sound. The distinctive thumping beat of a Huey grew steadily louder.

Vokes shaded his eyes and looked in the direction. “Twin door guns. That will be the colonel, will it not.”

'That I could do without. What does Ol’ Foul Mouth want with us?” A thought struck Revell. “Where's Hyde and his squad?”

“Still in decontamination, over by the lake.” “Right, keep them there, or at least out of the way until you see that chopper lift off again.”