Court Martial (3 page)

Unworriedly Tiny starts disarming the monster, screws out the detonator and leaves the mine dangling down amongst us.

We're so frightened we hardly dare breathe.

'Be more careful for Christ's sake,' Porta shouts up to Tiny, who has found three more mines, of a type we've not met before,

'Look at these!' shouts Tiny absorbedly. 'There's a little bleeder 'ere you can
bend
!'

'Christ man, don't bend that!' howls Porta, fearfully. 'It's the sodding detonator!'

'What you want me to do with it, then?' asks Tiny, blankly. 'Kick it in the soddin' teeth?'

'Leave it be, for heaven's sake,' moans Gregor, wild with fear.

'I can't go on cuttin' wire, without it goin' up,' explains Tiny, poking cautiously at the nearest mine.

'Isn't there a red flap on the one side?' asks Porta, getting well down behind a heavy concrete column.

A goods train rattles over the bridge. All talk stops as it passes over us.

'Blimey, it's rainin',' says Tiny, wonderingly, when the train has passed.

'One of the neighbour's boys has pissed on you,' shouts Porta, convulsed with laughter.

'I'll strangle the bleeder,' roars Tiny, shaking his fist at the train roaring in the distance. 'Nobody gets away with pissin' on me! Stink like a backyard shit'ouse, I do! Commie shit all over me lousy 'ead too!'

'You can have a wash when we get back,' grins Porta. 'Better to get hit with shit than shrapnel! See if there's a red button on one side of those rotten mines!'

'There's a red flap,' states Tiny, 'an' a big 'un too. There's the 'ole 'istory of the socialist revolution written 'longside of it.'

'What's it say?' asks Porta.

'They ain't started payin' me Russian translator money yet,' says Tiny, insolently.

'Now, let's go slow on this one and see what happens,' says Porta. 'Push in the red flap and hold on to that lever at the same time. If the lever shifts, then up she goes!'

'
Very
interestin',' bawls Tiny, his voice echoing under the bridge.

'Mad as a bloody March Hare,' groans Gregor, resignedly, pushing himself deeper into the snow.

'No need to take cover,' comforts Porta. 'We're relatively safe down here. Mines always blow upwards!'

'What about Tiny?' I ask, innocently.

'He will have died for the honour of Greater Germany, and his name will be engraved on the heroes monument outside the barracks,' intones Porta, fatalistically.

'I've pushed the flap in,' shouts Tiny, unconcernedly. 'Now what?'

'Bend it inwards, but slowly! If it begins to fizzle, jump down to us, but
move
, unless you're tired of living!'

'She's dead as a nit,' replies Tiny. 'But I reckon she's maybe just lyin' doggo!'

'Now open the lid,' explains Porta. 'Put your hand into the slot, feel round for a little square gadget and pull it downwards.'

'Got it,' says Tiny, in a satisfied tone, hurling the mine over the edge. 'I'll fix the rest quick as a randy Turk shaggin' a bunch o' bints!'

'Careful,' warns Porta, 'careful and hold on tight to that lever! If you let go of it, you've met your last mine!'

'Wait a bit 'fore you shit yourself,' boasts Tiny, selfassuredly. 'I ain't never lost one yet. It's all right to come up again now!'

'Look where you're cutting now,' says Porta. 'A cable might have got entangled in that wire, and if you cut it well get our arses blown off!'

We lay the disarmed detonators under the great steel cylinders. Porta feels they cannot do much damage there.

We work our way slowly through the wire in to the supporting girders, taking care not to touch off a mine.

I am sweating with fear despite the arctic cold. I am just as afraid of the mines as Gregor is. During the many hours we have been working under the bridge, countless trains have passed above us. We hold our groundsheets over our heads in order to avoid an experience like Tiny's.

When we are finally finished with the barbed wire the serious job of getting the explosives up from the sledges begins. I get the worst job, carrying the Lewis bombs from the sledges to the foot of the various piers. After a couple of hours of this I am so worn out that I drop on the snow and refuse to continue without a rest. My arms and back are aching so much that I'm ready to scream at the slightest movement.

Porta and Tiny are engaged in a bitter argument as to which of them is to place the explosive.

'If we take a pier each, it'll go quicker,' says Tiny, who is mad keen to get at the Lewis bombs.

'You do as I tell you, you walking shit-house, you,' shouts Porta, throwing a spanner at him.

'You ain't no more'n me,' rages Tiny. 'An Obergefreiter's an Obergefreiter and neither God nor the Devil can tell one of
them
what to do. Where'd we be, I'm askin', if any bleedin' Obergefreiter was to get up an' go round orderin' other Obergefreiters about?'

'I attended the Army School of Ammunition and Explosives at Bamberg,' crows Porta, 'while you were pissing about at the Army Catering School learning how to ruin sauerkraut! Even
you
ought to be able to accept that on this job, I'm the boss!'

'Strike me blind,' answers Tiny, resentfully. 'As if I 'adn't been at Bamberg. They even give me a medal for exceptional diligence, costin' the lives of two instructors!'

After a great deal more quarrelling and argument they agree to share the work between them. Tiny finds a clever way to fix the bombs to the piers so that they do not slide down. But the most important thing of all is still to get them wired up properly.

It is far into the night before we get one side of the bridge finished, and then Porta demands his dinner.

'The rot's spread from your arsehole to your brain,' cries Gregor, excitedly: 'It's suicide to sit down to dinner right here, under Ivan's own bridge!'

''E'll 'ave a stroke if 'e finds us 'ere, won't 'e?' grins Tiny, unconcernedly.

But Porta still stubbornly demands his dinner, which he has a right to according to HDV
5
.

While we sit eating, NKVD security guards cross above our heads. They are so close to us that we could touch them by merely putting our hands up between the planks of the bridge.

It's a break-neck trip over to the other side of the bridge and several times we are close to falling. When we get there, there is more of that damnable barbed-wire to cut through.

We throw the explosives from base to base of each pier. The primary charges are the most dangerous. A knock can set them off. If we dropped one the security guards would be all over us in a minute, and we have no illusions about the treatment we'd get from them.

'You're pretty good at it,' Porta praises Tiny, patting him on the shoulder.

'Long as we keep the wolf from the door,' Tiny grins with pleasure, ringing the nearest concrete base with Lewis bombs.

He swings under the bridge, with the agility of a monkey, to make the wiring fast.

It makes me dizzy just to look at him.

'How the hell's he
do
it?' mumbles Gregor, nervously.

'For the love of the holy St Agnes, don't ask him,' warns Porta, 'it'd make him fall! He's no idea how piss-dangerous it is!'

A faint noise makes us look up. Three security police are crossing above our heads. We can hear the warning clank of the Mpi's.

'Adolf ought to 'ave a go at this,' roars Tiny suddenly, his voice ringing through the silence.

I tear my Mpi from my shoulder and aim at the security guards on the bridge.

A train comes thundering in the distance. The sound of the salvo drowns in the noise.

Three men in long fur coats topple over the low fence along the bridge and whirl down between the ice-blocks far below.

Porta peers cautiously up between two sleepers. Luckily there were only three of them.

With a steely roar the train crosses the bridge.

What you shootin' for?' shouts Tiny, in amazement, looking round a concrete pier. 'Tryin' to shit-frighten everybody, are you?'

'Because you can't keep that bloody great Hamburg gab of yours shut,' answers Porta, viciously. 'Didn't I tell you not to talk German in these parts?'

By flashing signals to one another we manage to bite the glass capsules open at the same time, ensuring that the explosions are synchronised. This is very important with a bridge of this type. Otherwise the bridge will break at only a few points along its length, and the Russian engineers can easily repair these.

Porta is last man off the bridge. He trails a thin wire after him, and behind the bend in the river he connects it to the plunger box which Tiny is carrying on his back.

We ready ourselves at a safe distance from the bridge on the opposite side of the lake.

Tiny swings the handle like a mad thing in order to build up enough of an induction charge for the explosion, while Gregor watches the meter which tells us when there is enough current available.

Tiny takes a short breather after his strenuous work and lights one of his big cigars. A solemn moment like this, he feels, is worthy of a cigar. With the expression of a padre throwing earth on the remains of a fallen field-marshal, he pulls the plunger to the ready position and gives out a belly chuckle of innocent expectation.

'Grab your 'ats, boys, she's ready to go,' he says, solemnly, patting the box.

'Don't you push that till I say so,' Porta admonishes him, nervously. 'The priming charge has got to go first or not a shit will happen to that damn bridge!'

'Jesus wept!' cries Tiny, in horror, 'that'd
be
like goin' to the pictures an' findin' some Yid 'ad 'ooked the bleedin' film.'

'That can happen,' says Porta, seriously. 'Happened to me once in Berlin'

'Don't be fright,' Tiny assures us. 'I never met one I couldn't beat yet! An' this fiddlin' little bridge ain't goin' to be the first!'

'
Little
bridge, you say?' asks Gregor, in surprise. 'It's the biggest I've ever seen!'

'Enjoy it while you can, then,' laughs Tiny, raucously, 'couple o' minutes' time an' it won't be there to enjoy!'

A goods train pulled by two large steam engines rolls slowly on to the mined bridge. A red flag flutters from every other wagon.

'Holy Agnes, God's stepmother,' shouts Porta, his eyes bugging 'An ammo train!'

'An' look at them tankers piss-f of pet,' shouts Tiny, pointing towards the road, where a long line of trucks are moving along beside the railway line.

'Get a good grip on the ground,' says Porta, worriedly, 'or you can risk flying off it together with that blasted bridge!'

'Hope they don't notice the priming charges begin to fizzle,' says Gregor, darkly, watching the kilometre-long petrol column through the glasses. 'God save us all, there's enough gas there for a whole army!'

'Balls,' Tiny quiets him, in a fatherly tone. 'They'll be flyin' around the Milky Way lookin' down at us before they've time to wonder about anythin'.'

'Bugger, we should have fused 'em shorter,' says Porta, in annoyance. 'Shouldn't believe everything those Bamberg dopes tell you. We know more than they'll ever learn.'

'Like Christmas ain't it? When you're 'avin' a peep through the key'ole to see the Christmas tree your ol' dad's pinched, and tryin' to find out what the presents are they've bought on the never-never,' says Tiny, with a happy expression on his face.

'If it doesn't go, we're for a court martial,' says Gregor, darkly, bringing the glass up to his eye again.

'If it does go,' laughs Porta broadly, 'and Ivan gets us, then we'll have another kind of court martial!'

'Oh, stop thinkin' so much,' says Tiny, optimistically. 'Whatever you do they can 'ave you for it in the army! Court martials're always ready an' waitin'!'

With a noise like distant thunder the train rumbles across the bridge, and from the other end another train begins to roll on to it.

'Pity, only returned empties,' sighs Tiny, sourly.

A couple of flames shoot up suddenly at each end of the bridge.

'Primers gone,' cries Porta, staring expectantly towards the long bridge.

Tiny comes down on the plunger with all his weight.

A single fantastic yellow-red flame shoots towards the sky and spreads into a mushroom-shaped cloud of enormous dimensions. The bridge is lifted up, along the whole of its length, towards the grey, threatening clouds. Both goods trains go with it, without a single wagon tipping over. Then everything bursts into millions of separate parts. A set of bogies crashes down a few yards from us.

The tankers are moving so closely behind one another that they have no possibility of turning. They are whirled up into the air, and flaming streams of petrol pour out over the frozen lake.

Heavy tankers are thrown about like toys. Petrol spurts everywhere, creating new redly glowing bonfires. Then, slightly delayed, the blast hits us with terrible force.

I am thrown many yards across the ice. But everything happens so quickly that I don't even have time to be frightened.

Tiny, with box and torn-off cables trailing behind him, flies like a bullet right across the lake and disappears in the trees on the far side.

Porta is thrown up into the air in a crooked curve, spins around his own axis several times and lands in a giant snow-drift.

Gregor has disappeared completely. We find him far down the gulley, jammed in a cleft between two storm-twisted trees. We have a lot of trouble freeing him.

'Holy Barbara,' cries Porta. 'Those Lewis bombs certainly make a job of it!'

'They'll tear our balls off, if they get hold of us,' predicts Gregory, ominously, peering around nervously.

'Ivan's got other things to think of, just now, than looking for
us
,' says Porta, optimistically. 'That'll teach 'em to drive their rotten trucks with lights full on, as if we didn't exist!'

'Now they know there's a war on, at any rate,' says Tiny, with a satisfied grin.

'Let's get moving,' says Porta, decisively. 'It's only a few hours to the rendezvous point, and they're not waiting for anybody! I don't much like the idea of us four having to make it home on our own!'