Hunter Killer (16 page)

From somewhere out to sea came a series of dull explosions. A heavy movement of air shook the house and threw snow into the room through every gap and crack about the windows and doors.

‘That’s the
Rogov.
Those shits out there have got problems.’ Unable to resist the temptation any longer, Dooley had come over to the radar desk and was trying to look between Revell and the operator to see what was happening on the screen.

Internal explosions were racking the ship, sending chunks of debris into the sea. Members of the crew lined the rail surrounding the aft helicopter pad, and at each fresh blast another would jump. Flames licked from every port and opening and sent a pillar of jet-black smoke straight up into the milky white of the sky. From its stern came a slab-fronted landing craft. The fact that it was already packed *with men did not stop those at the rail from hurling themselves over the side to land in it. Several missed, and spun for a moment in the LCT’s wake before going under the breath-stopping freezing water of the Kattegat.

Three ships among the second group appeared dead in the water. They were being left behind by the remainder as they moved on, with no vestige of formation remaining. Now, like a herd of cattle that had been frightened into a stampede, they were only interested in leaving the area as quickly as possible.

‘Looks like we’re going to get away with it.’ Cline was filling pages of the log with cryptic notes in a hand that grew more extravagant in its flourishes with each entry. ‘We beat a whole fleet to a pulp and we’re being let off scot-free.’

‘It’s rather early to start counting chickens. There’s still too many damned foxes around, others are finding that as well.’ Using the radar, Revell had been following the progress of the LCT that had left the
Rogov.
As though its helmsman was undecided on the best course of action and the safest place of refuge, it had first circled out to sea, and now it turned back towards the island and crossed the path of the second group. Its charmed life came to an end as it crossed close in front of a large trace and abruptly disappeared.

‘That must be the last of them coming now.’ With the tip of his pencil Cline indicated the fresh traces springing to life at the base of the screen. A red light flashed urgently among an unlit row. ‘Intruder, Major. Northern perimeter.’

‘Any idea who or what or how many?’

‘Can’t be sure, Major. The equipment I brought was chosen more for lightness and compactness than multi-sensor capability, so I can’t say if it was metal, or what, but it did last several seconds, so it could either be a slow-moving vehicle or a file of men.’

‘That’s nice.’ Dooley and the rest of Hyde’s group were getting ready to move. ‘He don’t know what it is, but it’s either a tank or a war party.’

‘What’s the difference, we’ve got to stop it anyway.’ Five grenades were already hanging from Libby’s webbing, he added another two.

Hyde opened the door, and the temperature in the room dropped several degrees as soft milky light flooded in. ‘So let’s go and do it.’

The squad of Russian marines was moving cautiously, their AK74 assault rifles held at the ready. They kept in single file, each man stepping carefully in the tracks of the one ahead. A young officer led them, he walked stooped over, like a man sensing danger.

As they came to the fringe of a clump of firs he signalled a halt, and took out his binoculars to examine the ground ahead. Twice he swept it, then came back to focus on the network of tracks around the small collection of houses in the distance. He beckoned to his radio-man, and took the handset.

His mouth opened to speak as he pressed the transmit switch, and stayed open as a figure rose up from out of the ground and plunged a knife through the layers of clothing swaddling his neck to cut his windpipe.

The fight was short and vicious, with Hyde’s men having the supreme advantage of surprise. Dooley threw himself on three marines, finishing one with the first swing of a length of timber before pain seared his wounded shoulder as he went for a second blow and a Russian ducked in beneath his guard. There was just time for Dooley to divert the wildly wielded club to parry the knife thrust, and then the pair were upon him and he was having to roll and kick to avoid the stabs and blows aimed at his face and chest.

Sweeping aside a rifle butt jabbing at his face, Dooley brought up his studded left boot. Thick clothing prevented the crushing impact doing the intended damage to the Russian’s crotch, but it still had sufficient force to hurl him back, and for the moment left Dooley free to concentrate on the marine with the knife.

There was no sound. The fight was going on in complete silence. Even the dead made no noise as they fell, the snow cushioning their fall. Hyde grabbed a Russian who had a stranglehold on Andrea. Her knife could make no impression on the man’s thickly quilted jacket front and sleeves, and with her shorter arms she could not reach his face. Going for the eyes, Hyde missed and felt his fingers slide into the marine’s nostrils. Knowing the excruciating pain it would cause he pulled back hard, and the hands locked about the girl’s throat were suddenly released.

Blood smothered the sergeant’s hand and wrist and showered on Andrea as the flesh split. Reeling at the agony and interested only in escaping the fingers clawing his face, the Russian never saw, and made no move to ward off, the underarm stab that Andrea delivered to his groin.

Bulging eyes stared down at Dooley as he tightened his iron grip on the Russian’s face. Foam and spittle bubbled in the back of the man’s throat and his struggles grew weaker. Another face appeared over him, looking at him from behind a Makarov pistol. Face and pistol were whirled from sight in a shower of brains and blood at the impact of a close-range burst of automatic fire.

Pushing the dead marine aside, Dooley clambered to his feet. Littering the snow were eight Russian corpses and as many rifles. Between them spots and daubs of blood coloured the white ground, linking them and charting the brief course of the battle.

‘I said no bloody noise, no shooting.’ Hyde jabbed Ripper in the chest with the tip of the rifle he had wrenched from him. ‘What’s the bloody use of tackling them with knives and fists if you’re going to bang away with this ruddy thing just as we’re finishing? Here, take it.’ He slung the weapon back at the American. ‘Someone will have heard that, we’d better get ready for more visitors.’ 

‘Are we setting up here?’ Ripper looked around as the others started to hack at the frozen ground. ‘Ain’t we going to move a ways from these here cadavers?’

‘Don’t be sodding stupid.’ Libby drove the tip of his entrenching tool into the ground, levering up a saucer-shaped scab of turf and ice-bound soil. ‘In a bit these stiffs are going to be just that. They’ll make nice ramparts for slit-trenches. They won’t stop bullets, but fragments’ will be slowed down, and a few less feet per second can make all the difference between a flesh wound and losing your head, literally. Now dig.’

‘You not searching these then?’ Burke shoved a corpse past Dooley with his feet, kicking it into place on the edge of his excavation.

‘I got the insignia off the officer, that’s the only thing any of this lot will have that’s worth taking. Who ever heard of a well-off Ruskie grunt. These stupid shits only got two-hundred-fifty bucks a year. If they’d been the sort who could make a profit, they wouldn’t have been here, they’d have been enjoying some cushy number back in Moscow.’

Clarence wasn’t happy with an order from Sergeant Hyde. ‘It’s a waste.’ ‘It is not a bloody waste. Those special slugs of yours are the only things we’ve got that will go through armour.’

‘They’re for tackling body armour, not main battle tanks. Was it a pair of T72s you said the Ruskies had brought ashore? There is no way my bullets can punch through that much plate. It’s inches thick in the front, and at the sides they’ve those side-skirts. The best I shall be able to do is drill holes in that. It’s hopeless, absolutely hopeless.’

‘And I’m telling you it isn’t. Those tanks have been prepared for winter service, and you know how much practice the Ruskies have had at that. Well, they’ve removed the side-skirts, I suppose to stop snow packing between them and the tracks. If you can stay hidden until they’re within fifty feet, you should be able to put a round into them. Now get out to that position on the flank.’

From where they were digging in Hyde could see the sea. It was a good position. They had a field of fire that covered every approach to the house, and the nearest of the launcher sites, a few hundred yards behind them among a dense thicket of evergreens. Again his gaze went to the sea. The ice was increasingly reaching further and further from the shore, growing rapidly by welding on any floes that brushed against it. He couldn’t see the
Rogov
itself, but towards the north of the island a tall thick pillar of black smoke rose to be lost from sight in the unnatural- coloured sky. It drove straight into it, without tainting the glowing pallor, as though a hole had opened to receive it. Occasionally he heard a distant rumble as further explosions rocked the ship. It probably wouldn’t stay afloat for much longer; there had to be a limit to what the much-repaired hull could take.

‘Think we did much damage to those warships, Sarge?’ Burke had failed to find an excuse for stopping work for a moment, and now struck up a conversation with his NCO in the hope of inventing one.

‘Enough to have scared the shit out of their admiral, I should imagine. The poor sod must have thought he had a safe run until he left Swedish waters. By now he won’t know what to bloody do. He can’t turn back, he hasn’t got the room to manoeuvre without taking his ships into open water, and our subs and mines will be waiting for him there. And the bastard doesn’t even know if he can take a swipe at us or not. If he does and the Swedes kick up a stink, then muck will fall on him from a great height. As I will on you if you don’t get digging.’

Regretting that the ruse had not worked for longer, Burke resumed his excavations. Frost had bound the root-woven earth together to give it a granite-like consistency. His entrenching tool had to be lifted high and driven in repeatedly before a decent size lump could be hefted on to the parapet. He noticed Dooley taking rests at frequent intervals, trying to conceal a grimace at every effort.

‘What’s the matter? Has the big hard man got cramp?’

‘Shut it. If that hole of yours were ever likely to be deep enough, I’d bury you in it. As it is, you open your trap again and I’ll likely turn you inside out and bury you in your own mouth. It’s big enough.’ With pile-driver force, Dooley sent the blade of his shovel into the soil, until it was hidden by the ice-bound earth. He paid dearly for the gesture, feeling the blood ooze again from his punctured shoulder.

‘That’ll have to do. Everyone under cover.’ Between attempts with cold hands to pile the fruits of his labours on the edge of his slit-trench, Hyde caught a glimpse of movement among distant trees. Waiting a moment to see that the others had gone to ground, he got down himself. It was probably a delusion, but huddled into the all too shallow hole, he felt warmer. After carefully cutting a vee-shaped cleft in the ragged parapet he looked again. There could be no doubt about it, there was the main body of the Russian patrol, perhaps another forty men. It wasn’t their loping progress that had first caught his attention. Trees were falling, being toppled and crushed by the advancing bulk of a crudely whitewashed T72.

Even before he could see the details of its raked frontal armour and turret, Hyde had calculated its course. As the tank cleared the tree line, the Soviet marines fanned out behind it, facing him across the half mile of bleak open ground, and started purposefully forward.

THIRTEEN
‘Well it had to turn up sooner or later. The rumours have been doing the rounds long enough.’ The third battle group showed bright and clear on Cline’s screen. Several of the traces were as large as the biggest they had already seen, but one in particular stood out, dwarfing them and shaming the other blips that swarmed about it.

‘Seventy thousand tons. The pride of the Russian fleet.’ Revell couldn’t take his eyes off the image. ‘It’s just got to be the
Admiral Sergei Gorshkov,
that carrier’s the biggest hull ever launched from the Leningrad yards. Hell, it’s even bigger than anything the Commies have ever laid down at Nikolayev on the Black Sea. York, I want to know if it’s operating aircraft, rotary or fixed-wing.’

‘I’m already monitoring it, Major, and it’s not, but someone is. I’ve got what sounds like a Swedish fighter controller, seems our neutrals have heard the fireworks going off in their back yard. I can’t tell what they’re yacking about, sounds like the Swedish chef out of the Muppets, but I’m betting the sky gets rather full in the next couple of minutes.’

‘It is already.’ Manually activating the automatic IFF interrogator, Cline double- checked the Identification-Friend-or-Foe system. ‘And the pair of birds coming our way aren’t ours, and they aren’t Russian. He could be right.’

‘Of course I’m fucking right. Only a genius like me would have checked that channel.’ Unable to resist, despite his confidence, York leant over to see his interpretation of the radio-intercept confirmed by two fast-moving traces on the air-watch radar.

‘Our fellow islanders have seen them too, they are getting excited.’ Over his headphones, Boris could hear the commander of the Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries on the island desperately trying to establish whether or not he could, or should, engage the fast approaching targets. ‘In the Red Army it is always the same. Without a specific order to follow, a Soviet officer is terrified of doing the wrong thing, afraid to use initiative.’

‘I hear small-arms.’ Fraser paused and listened, as he attended to the Swedish woman. His words received immediate attention, and the room was suddenly quiet.

It was unmistakable. The cold, still, air brought the sound of fighting into the room. Revell could discern the brurring chatter of machine guns, the occasional crack of single shots and, more worrying, the sharp smart crash of cannon fire.