Frozen into a tableau of petrified disbelief, the Soviet officers could only stare, then the one who had been in the van jumped out and ran. In a moment he was gone, lost to sight among the ruins.
The vehicle’s tyres were beginning to smoke, and a plume of vapour was escaping around the edge of its fuel filler cap. When the spare wheel bolted to the side, taking the full ferocity of the nearby holocaust, exploded, the spell was broken.
Rank counted for nothing as the Russians ran for their transport, and many of the officers came off worst in disputing places with the members of their supposed bodyguard. The square was full of vehicles backing and turning and colliding. Men who had failed to get seats clung to the outsides, taking the risk of the crashes that occurred.
Opening fire with every weapon on the fleeing transport the squad picked off man after man. But even those who fell, no matter what the severity of their wound, still tried to get away, and kept trying until another shot or the crushing wheels of a truck or field car put a final stop to their desperate efforts.
None of the Russians bothered to return the fire. When the driver of a field car died in a hail of bullets and the uncontrolled vehicle turned over only yards from Hyde’s men, the survivors who crawled from the wreck discarded their weapons to aid their speed as they raced past and away.
Within a minute the square was left to the dead or terribly injured. There were no more targets. The bomb’s warhead, with the added fuel of the other ready-use round it had ignited, would continue to burn and illuminate the surrounding district for some time, but with nothing else to consume, eventually it would burn out. Hyde knew that, the Russians must have known that, so why had they run?
Again his attention turned to the unusual vehicle standing just beyond the extreme perimeter of the conflagration. It had slumped towards the fire, the tyres on that side charred and crumbling away, but it had not caught fire.
Waves of heat were washing over him, but he shuddered as though they were icy blasts from the pole. Taking out his survey meter he uncapped it and pointed it towards the van. Some radiation was to be expected, the uranium cored round would by now be no more than micro-particles floating in the hot air currents filling the square, but he was looking for something else and when the head of the probe was aligned with the open rear door of the vehicle he saw just the reading he had expected and feared.
‘There’s a nuke cooking in there. We’re moving out.’
Word had spread ahead of them and the greatest danger they faced in the run back to the lake was that of being struck by wildly driven transports of every description. As they neared the shore, though, a smattering of shots came their way. A withering volley silenced the enemy post, but it was an indicator that they had not been entirely unnoticed.
More bullets cut into the trees behind them as they splashed to the boat and threw their weight against it to overcome the cloying suction of the mud into which it had settled. Clarence was the last to board and sub-machine gun fire tore into a flak jacket beside him as he was hauled in.
All need for stealth was now gone. The material was ripped from the blades and the cleaned wood was plunged into the water to send them skimming at speed back to the far bank.
As he worked the tiller Hyde kept watch over the stern. When they had only fifty yards to go he detected vague movement back where they had come from, and thought he heard the sound of engines. This was confirmed when a shell whistled past overhead, and a troop of Russian PT76 swimming tanks growled into the water in pursuit.
‘Boy, we’ve made them mad as hell.’ In fumbling to save the oar he’d nearly let slip, Ripper had also seen the danger. ‘Shit, I ain’t been so scared since the county sheriff’s black and white chased me across a field after I were caught stealing a couple of apples.’’
‘This makes just as much sense.’ Burke kept snatching backward looks to watch the progress of the amphibious combat vehicles. Pushing a white bow wave before them, only their turrets and gun barrels were visible above it. As they beached he sent a whole magazine towards the leader hoping to hit the driver’s snorkel-like periscope, but the series of short bursts brought no check to the PT76’s steady progress.
‘This way. This way.’
A Royal Engineers major was waiting for them, and led the squad through the garden of a rambling mansion-sized house and out on to a wide main road.
Hyde pulled up. ‘We’re sitting targets if they see us here.’
‘There’s a turning a little way down. Come on, hurry.’ At a fast jog the sapper officer took them two blocks then ushered them into a side street.
Recognising the name of the road, barely readable on a fire-scorched sign on the side of a building, Boris brought it to Hyde’s attention. ‘Sergeant, on your map this is one of the streets marked in red.’
Holding back for a moment, Hyde saw the Russian tanks turning on to the street they were just leaving. They slowed, clearly undecided which way to go, or whether to terminate the pursuit, then the officer of engineers saw them also, and fired a long burst from his Patchette at them, a burst that seemed mostly composed of tracer. Striking and bouncing from a tank’s armour it instantly drew their attention.
‘That should do it...’
‘Why don’t you let them have the fucking lot, why stop at half measures?’ To Dooley’s dismay the officer did just that, putting the rest of the magazine into the flank of an armoured ambulance that had followed the tanks into the road.
The non-combatant vehicle immediately revealed its true identity as a crewman appeared from a top hatch and fired a ring-mounted heavy machine gun at them. Water showered from traps on the tanks’ hulls as they fired shells from their main armaments and added the chatter of their co-axial weapons to the weight of shot skimming towards the squad.
There was no further hesitation. Their guide led them at a fast pace half the length of the side road, then into a solid slab-sided building that bombs and rockets had done no more than pockmark, once all the glass had been shattered in its facade.
‘Not much for you to do now. Best just pick your grandstand seat and get ready for the fireworks.’
Hyde had begun to take an interest in the sapper major, and watching the road, kept half an eye on him also.
Everyone had to come back from the windows as on entering the comparatively narrow street, the Russian vehicles unleashed a storm of ordnance at the buildings flanking its length. Bullets and fragments of shell came in through every window and ricocheted about the gutted and looted interiors. Part of a shop front collapsed as a low velocity 73mm shell blasted its last supports away.
Apparently satisfied that they had either destroyed or frightened off any potential opposition they drove into the street, keeping always to the centre of the road, maintaining a proper interval between each vehicle.
‘Those tank crews know what they’re doing. Pity they’re not getting proper back-up from the infantry in the red-cross marked wagon.’ Burke watched their progress with an expert interest.
‘Never did know a Commie who’d willingly get out from behind armour unless he were forced to, present company accepted.’ Ripper added that for their deserter’s benefit, but Boris wasn’t listening.
It was the first chance he’d had, and Boris was hastily stripping off the Russian uniform and replacing it with the ragbag assortment of different nationalities uniforms that was his usual dress. He glanced to see if anyone was watching, before bundling the discarded clothes into a large crack in the partition wall and pushing them from sight and almost out of reach.
It must have been entirely at random, for there seemed nothing to guide the Russian gunners’ choice as to which buildings to put shells into. They would wait until they had pulled level with one, and then the barrels would depress back to the horizontal as the semi-automatic loader was disengaged, then they’d traverse and fire without hesitation and seemingly without aiming, as sometimes the shells exploded against front pillars, sending clouds of dust back over the tanks, and at other times they’d penetrate almost to the rear of the ground floor before impacting and sending fireballs roaring up through the structure.
‘I love doing this.’
The major turned the handle of a detonator and a series of small charges rippled through a tall office block a little way along. Slowly at first, but with gathering momentum, the whole fabric began to sag and then in a welter of thousands of tons of steel and concrete it fell into the road to completely block it.
‘Expensive way of making a roadblock, when you’re short of explosives, isn’t it?’ Hyde had a genuine interest in the answer. The expenditure seemed profligate viewed against the parsimony with which small arms ammunition was issued in the city.
‘No. We used munitions captured from the Ruskies, stuff that we suspected might be booby-trapped. Couldn’t even steam out the contents for use elsewhere, so we just fix our own detonators to them and use them like that. The cost is negligible.’
Again the detonator was turned, and this time it was a PT76 that took the full force of a blast that came from beneath the road. The vehicle was lifted several feet into the air by the forces erupting from the ordnance-packed sewer. Tracks, road wheels, hatches and every type of fitting were ripped from the vehicle before it crashed down and began to burn.
From a row of shops opposite the misused ambulance came a dozen great gouts of flame as crude projectors spewed streams of burning chemical. Liquid fire dripped from the tracked vehicle and every door was thrown open, only to be slammed shut again as the roasting air hit the men struggling to escape. A moment later they tried again with the same result, and then with the vehicle’s engine racing they tried driving out of trouble, and only managed to motor into it.
A mine exploded beneath a track and the ambulance spun around in its own length as it broke. The rubber of every track pad and road wheel was well alight. When the belt of machine gun ammunition to the weapon on the roof began to cook-off, crew and infantry passengers could take it no longer.
With the surface of its aluminium armour beginning to bubble in places, with phosphorus and sodium dripping from it, the doors began to open again, and stopped after only a few inches. The heat that had deterred them before had welded the hinges into solid masses. Screams came from inside and a blistered hand was thrust through the gap between rear door and hull, only to be fused to the metal.
The remaining pair of amphibious tanks were trying to reverse past the wrecks to get out of the street, but the space available was narrow and they were getting themselves into all sorts of trouble as they collided first with shop fronts and then with the burning wrecks and finally with each other, a collision that cost both of them the thin aluminium splashguards over their tracks. ‘What’s the crew of those elderly brutes?’
Clarence had the answer for the officer of engineers. ‘Commander, driver, gunner and a section of infantry.’
‘Ah, then we’d better finish them now, before the blighters decide to abandon ship, or tank rather, and take to the hills. Be a damned sight harder to winkle them out then.’ From his pocket he took a small radio transmitter. ‘Hope the Ruskies aren’t jamming this frequency, that’s the risk of these things. Much prefer wire control, where it’s possible.’ His thumb flicked a control to the ‘on’ position.
Red flame flowed over the front of a building opposite the tanks as drums on its top floor were punctured and ignited by small charges. Another building began to go the same way, and then one across the street was followed by another that made four and the process continued until a whole block on either side presented the roaring face of an inferno.
‘Now this is a bit of a waste.’ The engineer returned the transmitter to his pocket. He had to shout to be heard above the fires. ‘This was planned to catch Russian infantry. We could have fried a whole battalion or more.’
Distorted by their rapid expansion, weakened by being heated until they glowed, the girders and reinforcing rods that kept the bomb-damaged buildings upright began to fail.
Giant chunks of concrete, whole sections of frontage, began to fall into the street, and the tanks’ crews saw the danger too late. Even as they started to leave by the escape hatches, braving the searing heat of the street, they were struck down by the rain of beams and masonry cascading from the upper floors. The hulls of the tanks were speared by white-hot steel, crushed beneath torrents of concrete, and as their fuel tanks were ruptured and ammunition ignited, their destruction became total.
‘Might be an idea if we made a move ourselves. Be silly to get roasted in our own oven.’
‘Hold it, eh, Major?’ Hyde had levelled his rifle at the engineer, and cocked the weapon. ‘I think we should have a word before we go anywhere.’
‘Hey, Sarge, you lost a screw?’ Dooley couldn’t make sense of what was happening. ‘This guy saved our bacon and broiled a platoon of Reds with their transport. You think he’s a spy or something?’
‘I don’t know, but something’s not right, so how about you go through his pack and find out just who we have here. Unless, that is, he’d like to save us the trouble and talk.’
The Royal Engineers major shrugged, then a quiet smile spread over his smoke-stained handsome face. ‘The name is Thorne.’
THIRTEEN
It was past mid-day when Revell woke, but only his watch told him that. The room was still dark, heavy shutters remained fastened over the windows. He groped for matches on the bedside table and lit the stump of candle.
With the pale illumination, memories of the night came pouring back, and with them the uncomfortable realisation that he was very sore. Rude noises came from the baby-oil bottle as he squeezed the last drop from it and gingerly patted it on to his red and flaccid penis. The contact was painful, but the coldness was soothing.
Noticing that Inga’s suit was missing from the chair, and hearing her moving about in the next room he hurriedly dressed, wasting some time in having to hunt for his scattered clothes.