Blind Fire Read online

  Cover illustration: Russian Mi 24 Helicopter gunship.

  NATO designation ‘HIND

  Crew 2.

  Max speed 175 mph.

  Typical armament. Four-barrelled cannon in remote under-nose turret, 128 57mm rockets carried in four pods slung from inboard stub wings, 4 ‘Swatter’ antitank missiles, outboard on wings.

  THE ZONE Series by James Rouch:

  HARD TARGET

  BLIND FIRE

  HUNTER KILLER

  SKY STRIKE

  OVERKILL

  KILLING GROUND

  PLAGUE BOMB

  CIVILIAN SLAUGHTER

  BODY COUNT

  DEATH MARCH

  BLIND FIRE

  James Rouch

  THE ZONE 2

  For Nora and Jim Mullee

  Copyright © 1980 by James Rouch

  An Imprint Original Publication, 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers.

  First E-Book Edition 2005

  Second IMRPINT April 2007

  The characters in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  THE ZONE

  THE ZONE E-Books are published by

  IMPRINT Publications, 3 Magpie Court

  High Wycombe, WA 6057. AUSTRALIA.

  Produced under licence from the Author, all rights reserved. Created in Australia by Ian Taylor © 2005

  The Zone - Central Sector

  The Third Battle of Frankfurt is now into its second week, with Russian and Hungarian divisions poised to take Aschaffenburg. All civilians living south-east of autobahn A683 between Darmstadt and Offenbach have been warned to prepare for evacuation. There will only be four hours’ notice of it becoming a free-fire area.

  Russian casualties since the beginning of the battle are put at 27,000, with 685 tanks and other armoured vehicles destroyed. NATO losses have not been announced, but are said to be ‘heavy.

  Twenty-seven people died, including five riot police, during disturbances at the University of Stuttgart. It is thought more bodies will be recovered when the gutted city hall is searched. It had been occupied by students protesting at the ending of exemptions and deferments for military service. The cause of the fire has not yet been established.

  Since the beginning of the month, Russian advances in the central sector have added a further nineteen hundred square miles to the Zone.

  The West German government has protested strongly to the NATO Supreme Commander over the decision to withdraw from Aalen without prior consultation, and the subsequent use of nuclear demolition devices thought to have severely damaged more than half the town. Triggered to catch the Russian 8th Guards Army on its entry, first reports put enemy losses at more than 20,000. A revised figure of seven to eight hundred has now been admitted.

  ONE

  ‘They drove straight through us, like we weren’t there.’ The battalion commander pushed aside the fussing hands of a corpsman attempting to apply a dressing to the gaping wound in his shoulder, almost dropping the handset. ‘Yeah… yeah, I’m OK…’ His hand left red smears on the drab lump of plastic as he held it closer. ‘…It’s that Russian column you’d better worry about: came out of nowhere, blew our minefields apart and chopped my headquarters company to pieces. We threw everything we had, knocked out a couple of T84s and an APC, but the rest just kept right on going.’

  Smoke, thick and black, drifted from the smashed and burning vehicles littering the roadside. The acrid fumes from the blazing tyres and ammunition forced a cough from the officer, and the involuntary action brought a spurt of blood from his wound. Again he had to hold off the hovering attendant. ‘You’re losing a lot of blood, sir.’ The medic persisted. ‘So are others. Go help them, see to me later.’ As the corpsman moved away, the officer was forced by growing weakness first to slump against the fragment-riddled side of his command vehicle, then to slide down its armour until he sat on the muddy, oil-coloured road beside the salvaged radio pack. The light rain was washing the stains from his hands and face, spreading them on to his jacket.

  ‘Yeah, I’m still here.’ Where the hell did the clown on the other end think he’d be? His concentration, had to compete with a swimming sensation inside his head and an overpowering feeling of strangely detached giddiness. It wasn’t unpleasant, rather like the early stages of inebriation. ‘…There wasn’t much time for counting… I reckon about twenty-five of the Reds’ latest tanks, plus an assortment of APCs, self-propelled artillery, flak and some fancy engineers wagons. Maybe forty, forty-five pieces of armour in all.’

  It was becoming more difficult to concentrate on the words in his ear, harder to grasp their meaning. His gaze wandered to the crushed jeep in the centre of the road. Lying there, like a carelessly tossed cut-out, it looked unreal. What little was visible of the grotesquely flattened human form among the metalwork added absurdity, not horror.

  ‘What...? Say it again... I didn’t catch... no nothing. The only thing between that Ruskie regiment and Frankfurt, is half a dozen small depots that couldn’t muster more than ten clerks and fifty pioneers between them. If the Reds keep up that pace, you’ll have them coming in by the back door in about five hours… that’s right, five, f-i-v-e hours.’

  The rain made no difference to the rubber and diesel fuel-fed fires. Across the road, the turret hatches of a Soviet T84 clattered up and down, as flames and roasting gases boiled from its furnace-like interior. Rain falling on the hull rose back into the air as steam, almost before contact.

  Damn it. That voice was still nagging away at him. What the hell did it want now? ‘... Cut it off with what? Even if we could catch it, the best we could do would be to bite its tail. You want to stop that commie column - you got to chop off its head. All I can do is gather together what I’ve got left and try to prevent any more breakthroughs, make sure it doesn’t get reinforced.’

  He looked up. Mixed with the falling rain that felt so good on his face was a mass of floating particles of lampblack from the burning tyres. The handset felt heavy, he wished he could use his other hand to help support it.

  ‘…I’ve got ten tenths… that column’s got cloud umbrella all the way. The Reds have picked a good day for a drive… Yeah, OK. I’ll give you a status as soon as we get sorted out. Do what you can to stir up Casevac will you, I’ve got more than thirty stretcher cases that need help real bad. Yeah... out.’

  He didn’t bother to secure the radio, just let the handset fall as his arm flopped to his side. Maybe it’d be a good idea to get patched up now. Funny, he’d been hit before and had felt a lot more pain from wounds that didn’t look half as ugly as this one. The tumbling piece of shell casing had made a big hole, the torn edges of the material around it had been dragged in and were buried in the mangled tissue.

  Still, whatever his problems, all this was nothing compared to what the poor SOBs who’d have to stop that Russian column would be letting themselves in for.

  The floor of the old Chinook was smothered in mud, and its spar-ribbed walls and ceiling in tattered centrefolds and pages torn from Hustlers and Playbirds. Eddies of the slipstream coming in through an open window caused some of them to flutter and pulsate obscenely.

  ‘Get your hairy paws off. Go buy your own.’ Dooley paused in the act of detaching a bent over crotch-shot from a bulkhead. He feigned disinterest as the co-pilot continued to eye him suspiciously. ‘Just seeing if she was a natural blonde.’ With a last lingering look at the model’s vibrator-filled rear, he sauntered to the far end of the cabin. A brief turbulence caused him to stagger and almost lose balance. He had to grab at one of the loaded pallets.

&nb
sp; ‘Sit down, you big lump. You go flying out a window and the civvies down there are going to think a nuke’s been dropped on them.’ Sergeant Hyde looked out. The suburbs of Frankfurt were behind them now, and they were just crossing the autobahn to the east of Hanau. Only a couple of the other members of the squad were visible in the equipment and stores filled interior, apart from Dooley, who sat morosely eyeing the extensive collection of soft porn from the top of a stack of ammunition boxes.

  Libby sat by himself as usual, contemplating but not seeing the upside down stencilling on a case of anti-tank mines. Further away Burke could just be seen. He’d made a little cocoon for himself among the crates and was fast asleep.

  At fifteen hundred feet the twin rotors of the elderly transport helicopter chopped through the passing wisps of the lowest clouds. The Chinook banked slightly as it turned on to a new heading.

  Hyde’s burn-scarred mask looked up as Major Revell came back from the flight deck. ‘Do we have a fix on those Ruskies yet?’ He added nothing to the question. Since the time he’d learnt he and his section were to stay with the American outfit, the sergeant had made up his mind to treat the Yank officer with cold civility. Revell, for his part, appeared unbothered, and that irritated Hyde. All he wanted was out - to get back to his own battalion, or any British unit. Anything was better than being attached to this rag-bag squad, being treated with contempt or ignored by every Command in whose area they operated, until there was a really dirty job to do. Christ, they even had an ex-East German border guard among them, one of the despised Grepos, and the girl...

  ‘No location as yet. I’ve told the pilot to do a wide sweep, so we come up behind their last known position. I’d rather we tracked them than suddenly found ourselves flying over them, a target for the mass of SAMs and flak they’ve got.’

  ‘And when we do find them, what then? Hop on ahead and set up an ambush?’ ‘That’s about it. The orders say we stall them, and keep on stalling them while the Staff try to scrape together a blocking force that can finish them off.’

  Corporal Cohen staggered back to join them. The twin chevrons on his sleeve were still clean and bright against his soiled and faded jacket. There were new contours to the bulging pockets in the flak-jacket he wore, evidence of shrewd deals with the chopper’s crew. ‘I just got word, Major. We can have an ECM platform tasked to us within fifteen minutes of finding the Reds.’ He sat down heavily and fanned himself with his clipboard. His pallid features confirmed that his most recent travel sickness cure was ineffective.

  He wasn’t capable of expression, but Sergeant Hyde snorted his disgust. ‘One unarmed aircraft, stooging about overhead, doing a spot of jamming. Is that the best they can come up with?’

  ‘Well it’s better than nothing.’ Revell watched the rotor-blade misted rain travelling in horizontal lines across the window. ‘It’ll stop the Ruskies squawking for close air support, and if the crew of that jammer are any good, maybe they can even screw up the column’s short-range sets, force them to close up on the road.’

  Hyde brightened at the prospect of the target that would present. Bloody hell, he’d had little enough to feel happy about since he’d been roped in with Revell. The Yank wasn’t like any officer he’d ever known, you could never tell when he was making a bleeding suggestion and when he was giving an order. It kept Hyde on edge; he’d have been happier with an officer who kept a bit of distance. You knew where you stood then.

  Revell jotted a signal on the radio-man’s clipboard. ‘OK, send that acknowledgement and arrange for one frequency to be left open. Have it confirmed by whoever’s tasking the ECM mission. Electronic countermeasures are fine, so long as they don’t blanket us as well. And keep trying for that promise of air- support. Tell them anything will do. Hot air balloons, a couple of hang gliders, anything.’

  ‘I’ll try, Major, but I’m getting the same answer every time. Everything with wings or rotors apart from this old rust bucket is committed to the big battle south of the city - there’s nothing to spare.’

  ‘Then tell them if we can’t call on air, and we’re not able to hold those Ruskies on our own, there’s going to be T84s competing for road space with the trams on Kaiser Strasse damned soon.’

  As he followed Cohen back to his improvised communication board midway down the cabin, and waited for the corporal to squeeze his small frame into the even smaller space so he could get past, Revell watched Dooley.

  The big man was trying to fold a couple of sheets of glossy paper quietly. There were two gaps in the wall covering near him. Revell felt his eyes being irresistibly drawn to the succession of big breasts and glistening vaginas. There certainly were a lot of whores in the world. It was crazy, some of them had really beautiful faces. He could never understand why a woman whose looks would enable her to get anything she wanted in life should squat, open her legs and play with herself in front of a camera and, effectively, a couple of million masturbating males.

  There were still lots of pretty girls in Frankfurt too. For the last twelve months the city had carried on virtually as normal, with the fringes of the Zone barely forty kilometres away. Now it was even closer and still an air of normality reigned. But in the last two or three weeks there had been a subtle change in the general mood. Somehow, it was as if the population was enjoying one last fling, attempting to ignore the underlying feeling of growing tension. The euphoric veneer was brittle, it would take little to crack it and release panic.

  They were over the Zone now, and before going forward, the major looked out. There was little to betray the fact to the untrained eye. The small villages strung out along the winding roads and clustered about intersections^ appeared perfectly normal, as did the scattered farmsteads. The first detail that jarred was the total absence of traffic; there should have been some even on these rural roads. Careful inspection revealed other, more ugly evidence.

  It was early September, yet large areas of woodland were already stripped of autumn colour and any vestige of leaf canopy. And broad swathes of land that marched across the rolling hills had a uniformly sickly yellow appearance. Less obvious were the seemingly random clusters of circles of churned bare soil. From an altitude, they looked to be the work of a demented ploughman. Revell knew better, they were the massive craters made by long-range artillery rockets. Early on in the war, this area of the Hesse had been one of the principal assembly points for the NATO counterattack that had pushed the Russian forces back beyond Fulda, almost to the East German border.

  The ferocity of the Soviet chemical and conventional barrage had crippled the planned West German and American follow-up attacks. Though the Russians had been content to let the NATO troops hold the territory, its contamination had made it a hollow victory, setting the pattern for battles that were to follow, and the formation of the Zone.

  When the battles spilled beyond the Zone, then it grew accordingly, spreading out to engulf the newly-ravaged ground. The loss of Frankfurt, if it followed so soon after Wurzburg and Nurnberg, would be a crippling blow to morale and strengthen the re-emerging lobby in the West that believed the time had come to attempt a negotiated peace.

  The rest of the squad were sitting behind the pilot’s position. Kurt was pencilling additional obscenities on the black and white illustration of a mud-spattered magazine featuring women and animals. While the grossness of his drawings was almost beyond belief, Revell had to admit the Grepo did have a degree of warped talent.

  As usual, Clarence and Andrea were sitting side by side, close but not quite touching. They were working together, using triangular needle files to cut tiny nicks into the sides of 5.56mm rifle rounds. The work was being done with expert precision and loving care, each converted dumdum bullet being carefully checked before being slotted into a magazine.

  ‘Make sure we don’t take any of those back with us.’ Revell counted the number of filled mags, and worked out the total of modified rounds. A sufficient number had already been finished to keep the whole squad firing on au
tomatic for thirty seconds or more. ‘There’s news hawks around who’d love to get something like that for the antiwar press back home. That’s one load of ammunition the General Staff wouldn’t like them to have.’

  ‘Only the Russians will know of them.’ Andrea turned her dark brown eyes to the officer. ‘I do not think those we hit will be in a position to make a complaint.’

  That was a face Revell could have looked at all day. He’d moved heaven and earth to retain her in the squad, despite the violent opposition from I-Corps, and even though keeping her had also meant keeping Kurt. Hell, he still didn’t really understand why he’d done it.

  It wasn’t as though there was anything between them. Clarence was the only one she associated with, and even their relationship seemed to be strangely a-sexual, the only visible link between them being hatred of the Russians.

  But then everyone who fought the communists soon learned to loathe them; for their atrocities, their sheer barbarity. In Clarence and Andrea though, the depth of feeling went far beyond that. For them the killing of Russians was their whole life, the very essence of their existence. Clarence’s score was close to two hundred. Andrea didn’t keep a tally, the most important thing to her was how soon the next chance would come.

  ‘Smoke up ahead.’ The pilot leant out into the aisle and called back. So Andrea’s next chance would come soon. Revell stepped into the cockpit. Peering through the wiper-swept glass, he looked towards the several thin pillars of black smoke that rose to the cloud base and spread beneath it.

  ‘Better take us down as low as you can. We’ll hedge-hop from now on.’

  ‘Already doing it.’ The pilot indicated the altimeter, steadily dropping past the thousand feet mark. ‘There’s no armour on this bus, not even the blades.’ He jerked his thumb towards the Lycoming engine above their heads. ‘One cannon shell through them and we’re gonna be aboard an olive drab carousel, going nowhere but down. You ain’t expecting me to dump you right on top of the commie column are you? Cause I ain’t too keen on that.’