Hunter Killer (4 page)

‘Get aboard the chopper, we’re leaving the hover-APC here.’ Revell threw them the news while they were still complaining about the cold. Folding his arms and adopting a belligerent air, Burke stood his ground as the others filed towards the aircraft. ‘I’ve been nursing that bastard machine for six months, just got the git working how I like it, and now you bloody tell me I’ve got to leave it here, to be stripped by sodding looters or wrecked by some idiot driver who doesn’t know how to handle her. Major, you know how scarce these wagons are, how the hell will we ever lay our hands on another?’

‘You finished?’
Burke opened his mouth to go on, but realised the officer wasn’t offering him an invitation to continue, and closed it again.

‘Now, unless you want to be pulling every stinking back-breaking job around for the next thirty days, I suggest you shut up and listen.’ Revell had been expecting an outburst from the British combat driver, but couldn’t let him get away with it, hence the threat. It was a particularly effective one in Burke’s case. Except where his beloved hover-APC was concerned - and even then he’d take every opportunity to hive a task off on to someone else - he was the most dedicated, the most skilful exponent of the art of goldbricking in the whole of NATO. ‘You know damned well that old bus is way overdue for a complete refit The powered traverse it out, the electrics are still held together by prayers and Blu-tack after that last brush we had with the Commies and the port turbine is developing a mind all of its own. There’s a recovery crew on its way, but if you want to say a last goodbye to the ugly great hunk of metal you can go tell the lieutenant I’ll see him and the rest of the squad at the chopper the moment our West German relief arrive.’

As he watched Burke trudging towards the roadblock, head down against the gusting wind, Revell noticed a movement at an upper window of the hotel. There weren’t supposed to be any civvies still around… He turned to look at the chopper in time to see Dooley waving back from the cabin doorway. The big man vanished inside the moment he realised he’d been observed. So Burke wasn’t the only one who was pushing his luck today. Oh, what the hell, let him get away with it this once, pretend he hadn’t noticed, the big gorilla had been behaving himself for the best part of a week. Anyway, it was most likely Hogg’s fault. Doubtless the lieutenant had been eating and sleeping in the Iron Cow, and had kept Sergeant Hyde too busy with a thousand niggling tasks for him to keep tabs on the big man every minute of the day - and it only ever took a minute for Dooley to get organised. Presented with a building chock-full of bedrooms it was obvious what he’d been up to…

‘Where are we going?’ Libby stood with Burke and the lieutenant outside the vehicle, as Sergeant Hyde made a final check of all the lockers and hatches. They could hear the sharpened studs of his boots grating on the hull’s metal floor. ‘No bloody idea.’ Burke thrust his hands deep into his pockets. ‘But I hope it’s somewhere a fuck sight warmer than this.’ ‘I’m not leaving the Zone.’
‘You’ve got no sodding choice, mate,’ Burke tried stamping to aid his circulation. ‘Where that whirly-bird goes, there go we, like it or not. You’re not planning to do something stupid, are you?’

It was beginning to get dark, there would be no more refugees now, Libby knew that - they only travelled during daylight so as to stand the best chance of spotting mines - but he kept looking up the road, willing just one more to appear, a slim attractive girl. There was no one. No Helga. He’d stopped showing the photo to the passing human debris: not one of them had eyes for it, they were too full of themselves, too wrapped up in the overwhelming emotions of relief, joy and even disbelief at having finally made it. He had to get back into the Zone again, had to. ‘Well, are you?’
‘Mind your own business.’

Taking a tight hold on Libby’s sleeve, Burke pulled him away from the group. ‘It
is
my sodding business. If the brass have laid on a chopper for us that means we’re going places in a hurry, and that means Ol’ Foul Mouth has found another bastard job for us. I don’t fancy going into action with some last minute replacement beside me, some ruddy unknown who might put me right in it.’

‘It’s nice to know I’d be missed.’ There was a sneer in the words. Sergeant Hyde came out on to the ramp, jumped down, and activated the door control. He had to hit the switch twice before the hydraulics eventually, reluctantly, raised and closed it. ‘All secure, Lieutenant. Be a good idea if we boarded the chopper now.’ The lipless, graft-patched edges of his mouth hardly moved as he spoke.
‘The major said to hang on until our relief arrived.’

‘So I heard, Lieutenant, but I can see a Bundeswehr truck coming. The bunch of refugees in the back look familiar, and that’s a military police jeep following it.’ ‘Yes, well maybe we could board now.’ Shepherding the men before him, Hogg kept glancing back at the approaching vehicles. Hyde was the last to scramble in, and did so as the officers went forward and the Black Hawk lifted. Before closing the sliding door he saw the jeep stop at the road- block and its occupants climb out to watch the take-off. They didn’t look too happy.

The men were already making themselves comfortable, which in most cases meant settling down to sleep. Andrea sat next to Dooley, who held his mirror- polished bayonet and was stabbing and cutting the air as he spoke to illustrate his words.

Through a misted window, Hyde caught a last glimpse of the hotel. There would have been big trouble if they’d stayed, but then, as yet, they didn’t know what sort of trouble the major was taking them into. Chances were it would be a hundred times worse, a thousand times more deadly. Maybe down there was a frying pan they’d soon be happy to leap back into, those of them still able to leap.

THREE
Sergeant Hyde stood at the foot of the steps and scanned the distant gate in the perimeter fence as the first of the Starlifter’s engines burst into life. He checked his watch for the tenth time in a minute and pretended not to see the flight crew urgently beckoning him to board from the cockpit window. They were cutting it fine. The timing had to be precise if they were to slot into the air traffic pattern in place of the scheduled civilian flight without attracting attention.

He was aware of Revell standing in the doorway at the top of the steps and knew that he too would be counting off each second until the moment when they would be able to delay no longer.

There was a freezing wind whistling across the open ground at the end of the taxiway, but Hyde made no concession to it by pushing his hands into his pockets or pulling up the hood of his parka. He liked the cold, and besides, he hardly felt it on his face as it struck at the deadened nerves in the rebuilt tissue.

‘Can’t leave it much longer, Sergeant…’ He heard the major’s shout at the same moment as he spotted the jeep that was racing and bucking across the grass towards them in defiance of every airport regulation. As the distance narrowed he made out Burke behind the wheel, and a sullen-faced Libby sat in the back, flanked by Clarence and Dooley.

The ground crew were finishing their work and boarding their transport as the jeep rocked to a stop, cutting four brown gashes in the soaked and ice particle- laden grass at the edge of the concrete. Even as Hyde followed the others up into the aircraft, the steps were being hitched for towing, and he had to jump a widening gap to board.

‘I always say, if you got to go to war, then if you can’t do it in style at least do it comfort.’ Ripper slumped in the seat and put his feet up on the back of the row in front.
‘You’ve got a funny idea of being comfortable.’ A dozen cigarette stubs and matches were strewn about Burke’s feet on the floor of the sled-mounted cabin. An echo of the vibration from the aircraft’s hull kept them in slight but perceptible motion. ‘Mind you, one of these would make a nice bingo hall.’ He surveyed the serried rows of safety harness equipped seats. ‘You could even strap the old girls down, make sure they stayed for an extra card and stop them collecting their winnings.’

‘Where’s everyone else?’ Arching his back to relieve the aches caused by an abortive attempt to sleep stretched out along a row, York peered around.

‘The artillery lads are scrambling about on the two sleds at the back. They’ve got a real eager beaver of a captain and a sergeant-major who looks like he eats privates for breakfast.’ Yet another spent match was flicked away as Burke finished the second packet of the day, and sent it, crumpled, in its wake. ‘The others are in the crew room behind the flight-deck, they’ve got coffee there.’

‘So long as the sergeant-major only eats his own privates, or beavers, I ain’t bothered, and I’ll wait for the crowd to clear around the coffee.’ York dipped his hand into Ripper’s bag of large white mints and helped himself. The moment he tasted the first one, he put the others back. ‘This is a heck of a long hop. I thought we were going into action on the west coast of Sweden, not the other side of Mongolia.’

‘The major says we’re taking a scenic route, just to make sure we get thoroughly lost among the civvy traffic’ With three vigorous puffs Burke reduced the king- sized cigarette’s length by half, bringing its glowing tip that much nearer his heavily nicotine-stained fingers. ‘We’re just as bloody likely to get shot down tiddling about like this as we would be if we hedge-hopped straight there. Apart from the chances of the Swedes or the Ruskies noticing we’re not what we’re supposed to be, we’re bloody likely to get shopped by any civvy pilot who gets a whiff of what’s going on. They don’t take too kindly to having their lives made more dangerous by the military using the civvy routes as cover.’

‘Now why don’t you relax.’ Giving every appearance of intending to follow his own advice, Ripper slumped lower in his seat, so that his oversized helmet was tipped forward by the back of the chair, over his eyes. ‘This is like travelling first- class, compared to what it was like in that SAC Galaxy I came over in. Why hell, if we asked real nice maybe the lovely little Andrea would do the stewardess bit. She could give me in-flight or indecent attention anytime.’

‘Where is she anyway?’ Standing on a seat, York looked over the rows. ‘She don’t seem the sort to go and have a chat and a coffee.’ ‘I should imagine she’s head of the queue to ask the major for permission to bump off our pet Commie.’ A new packet was extracted from a deep pocket and Burke lit his forty-first cigarette.

‘I bet that guy Clarence is crowding close behind her. Why’ve we got our own tame Ruskie anyway?’ Ripper was indignant. ‘What can he do we can’t?’

Burke watched ash float slowly to the floor now greying about his feet. ‘Talk fluent Russian for a start. What do you think we got all that extra radio gear for? When things get hot the Commies won’t have time for piddling about with coding. If we can monitor what they’re jabbering about it could be bloody useful, especially if they’re nattering about how much shit they’ll be shovelling in our direction.’ The smirk that Burke turned on was aimed at York. ‘He’ll be keeping you busy.’

‘I’ll have enough to do, keeping the command links open in the face of the jamming the Reds are bound to try, without having to help out a cruddy amateur. The way I see it, chances are I’ll end up working all the equipment and that beetle- browed shitty sod will be operating nothing more difficult than his notepad and pencil.’

‘Well, ain’t we just lucky to have such a brilliant radio operator. You reckon you’ll be able to cope alright then?’
The gentle sarcasm was lost on York, and he took no exception to Ripper’s remark. ‘Of course I will, but that’s not the damned point, I shouldn’t have to. For this job I ought to be a corporal at least, with a couple of guys under me.’ He suddenly noticed the looks the others were exchanging. ‘You know what I mean.’ ‘Course we do.’ Only the top of Ripper’s helmet was now visible, and his voice floated out from between the rows. ‘You want a couple of guys under you, that’s fine, so long as you don’t want me for one. I prefer girls. There ain’t ever been no faggots in my family, we’ve all been dead straight, ‘cepting that fifth cousin I heard tell of, the one who got kinda fond of livestock, if you get my drift.’

Several of the filter tips began to roll sluggishly in the ash as the aircraft banked to a fresh heading. Pulling out his small compass, Burke checked the new direction. It was south-east. They were beginning the final run. Removing another cigarette from the pack before he had finished the last he took another long look around the cabin. Well it seemed strong enough, and he’d examined the great steel skids below it earlier, but every time he thought of the way they were leaving the aircraft his stomach fluttered and he broke out in a sweat. If there had been even a pretence of a steering mechanism to hold on to, it would have helped.

When those huge chutes popped and dragged the cabin-sled out, every one of them, strapped helpless in their seats, was going to be at the mercy of blind luck. The aircraft struck turbulence and dipped before recovering. For a terrifying moment Burke had wildly imagined that the drop was coming now, that there had been an accident and he and the cabin were about to start a long and steepening dive into the freezing water of the Kattegat. His hand shook as he lit another cigarette.

‘What you got there?’ Sergeant Hyde leant over Clarence’s shoulder and tried to see what he had so hurriedly stuffed into his pack. He reached in and pulled out the surprisingly heavy small screw-top cannister. Barely the size of a modest Thermos flask, it felt like it weighed twenty pounds or more. ‘You quite sure you want to undo it, Sarge?’ There was nothing in the sniper’s tone that conveyed threat or warning, but Hyde hesitated before taking hold of the top and starting to unscrew it. ‘Don’t.’
Hyde turned to see that it was Libby who had grabbed his wrist. ‘I’ve just about had enough of you. The major may have laid on that last minute trip to the refugee registry for you, but you’re not under any special protection. I’m warning you . . .’

‘Go ahead then, but I’m warning
you,
Sarge. You undo that and you might lose your nuts as well as your face, or at least the use of them.’ Not for a moment did Libby relax his hold, until Hyde slackened his grip on the container top, then he let go fast and took a step back.