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  ‘What did that have to do with his driving?’ Scenting an interesting story in the offing, Dooley encouraged his fellow American.

  ‘Well the fella we took the ‘shine to, he always paid cash money on the barrel head, no fuss, no hassle. Uncle Billy planned to spend a goodly portion of it at Ma Kelly’s. She ran a real smart brothel, over a Chinese laundry in Burford City, where we delivered. Aunt Sarah being to due to drop just about any time, Unc’ was in a hurry to get back but wanted time for a couple of decent sessions before we had to turn about.’

  ‘Did you get his oats?’ Thorne was taking a wry interest as well.

  ‘Not that day. Snooping revenuers found a thimble-full of white lightning still in the tank under the back seat. In his hurry he got kinda careless. Didn’t get his oats that or any day for quite a spell. I looked in on Ma Kelly’s, though. That were the day I lost my virginity. I were just thirteen, but big for my years, if you catch my meaning.’

  Ripper had to pause there, as in attempting to nudge Dooley he moved the dressing on his arm. He rocked back and forth hugging the limb to him and keeping up an undertone of heartfelt obscenity.

  ‘Well don’t leave it there, tell us what happened.’ Dooley offered no vestige of sympathy, only encouragement to continue the story.

  ‘Shit, that hurt. Think maybe this’ll get me back stateside? Where was I?’ ‘Losing your virginity.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Soon as I stepped inside I was grabbed by this big red-head. Maybe she thought the bulge in my pants was a roll of money, or maybe not, anyway she hustled me into this room the size of a broom cupboard. I ain’t kidding when I tell you if I’d been an inch taller we’d have had to do it standing up. So like a real pro she gets straight to the serious business first, and reels off a list of services and prices. She rattled through them too fast for me, shit, I’d have needed a medical dictionary to even figure what half of them were. When she asked me if I wanted to plate her I thought she were hinting she wanted me to help with the dishes.’

  ‘Get to it, what happened?’ Leaning close in order not to miss anything, Dooley inadvertently crushed up against Ripper’s sore arm and brought about another torrent of bad language, only at greater volume this time, and another delay.

  ‘You do that again, you fat ox, and I won’t tell you nothing. Like I was saying, I weren’t sure what to do and she must have guessed I were just a learner ‘cause she asked me if I’d ever seen dogs doing it. Hell, for us kids up in the hills watching the hounds make puppies was a spectator sport second only to peeping at grown-up cousins through knot holes in the barn when they were doing a spot of fingering. Only I didn’t get time to tell her that, she went down on all fours, dragged her skirt up over her back and presented me with a target even a blind man couldn’t have missed, ‘cepting I got all nervous, poked twice and missed came too soon and turned her rump into the biggest cream slice you ever saw. Boy was she mad.’

  ‘That’s put me off cake for life.’ With the conclusion of the story Thorne moved away.

  ‘Not me.’ Dooley smacked his lips. ‘I’m into the first pastry shop I can find next leave I get.’

  ‘If you don’t start using that bloody periscope and keep a watch for commie activity you won’t be in a fit state to appreciate anything, that’s if we get back.’ Hyde thrust spare magazines at Dooley.

  ‘Aw come off it Sarge,’ Dooley had to get in the last word, ‘there won’t be any Ruskies along this road. They’ll only have a few units in the whole of this quarantined area and they’ll all be raising dust trying to intercept those civvies, trying to be the ones who get their picture in Pravda.’

  ‘And there was me, thinking Russians fought only for the glory of the motherland.’ Thorne was attempting an experiment with the flamethrower, seeing if he could align its broad nozzle to fire through one of the ball mounts.

  ‘I thought there must be something wrong with your brain, all those warped bloody gadgets you keep coming up with, more likely to murder us than the fucking enemy.’ With disbelief Dooley watched the sapper trying to rig the improvised addition to the Marder’s on-board defences. ‘As for swallowing that bit about the Ruskies fighting for the motherland, that’s a load of crap. Better than half the poor shits we’re fighting aren’t even bloody Russian, let alone commies. So far in this war I’ve fought with cruds conscripted from every country the Russians have grabbed in the past. I’ve stuck my bayonet in Cubans, Estonians, East Germans, Bulgarians, even a shitty shivering Angolan. All they were fighting for was to stay alive through one more day, waiting for a chance to desert without a KGB goon squad hauling them back and stomping their bollocks to mincemeat.’

  ‘Keep watching, Dooley,’ Revell put an edge on his voice, ‘or I’ll be stamping on yours.’

  ‘On watch, Major. Watching now.’ Waiting until he was sure that the officer’s attention had shifted elsewhere, he nudged Ripper. ‘In made to measure ambush country like this, if we do run into Russians, by the time I see them it’ll be too bloody late!’

  The information from the defence ministry was delivered directly into his hands, and the instant the door closed behind the messenger Rozenkov ripped the end from the large envelope.

  It had been worth the two hour wait. He spread the borderless matte finished prints on the desk top and flicked through the typed sheets that accompanied them. Circled white letters were sprinkled across the photographs and of the location marked by each there was a separate enlargement, and a note among the listed information on the paperwork.

  Swivelling around in his chair to face the map, the colonel checked off each against the yellow pins denoting GRU units, and almost immediately he found three military intelligence patrols Morkov had not told him about.

  One of them was still too far from the civilians’ probable route to pose any threat. Another was closer, but was having to traverse very bad going and offered no immediate danger to his plans. The third did, very definitely.

  Even studying the appropriate enlargement, Rozenkov could not distinguish the detail for himself, but the notes said that the unit was composed of five armoured vehicles, its radios were operating on frequencies reserved for the GRU and it was astride the autoroute the civilians were travelling, east of their last position. It was waiting for them.

  Not for an instant did it occur to Rozenkov to speculate what urgent photographic interpretation work had been delayed while this favour had been done for him. The only matter that concerned him was his own position. If. to hold that he had for a while to monopolize the entire resources of a stretched and overworked department, had to have the exclusive use of precious satellite surveillance time when elsewhere the outcome of whole battles might depend on other information it could have provided but didn’t, then that was how it had to be.

  He had seen other officers shot for failure in a minor mission of their own when they had sacrificed its success it enable a greater gain to be secured elsewhere. It was what he achieved that mattered to those above him, not what he assisted others to do, and so it was that his results were all that concerned him, nothing else.

  A protest to the chief of Military Intelligence at the interference in his operation would be a total waste of time. Their friendship would count for nothing, not in a matter so important. General Mischenko would be very polite, very sympathetic, but he would deny all knowledge.

  Raising his complaint with the men who had power over them both would be an even bigger mistake. Creating the impression that he was incapable of looking after the interests of his own department, and therefore of running it, the only result would be the utter ruin of his career prospects and his immediate removal and relegation to a position not half as senior as that he’d enjoyed at the Lubyanka.

  Threats to Major Morkov could not succeed either. To resort to those would be tantamount to admitting to a more junior officer that events had got out of his control. No, if the operation was to be salvaged, if Department A alone was to get the rewards for its successful conclus
ion then it was he alone who would have to do the recovery work.

  It was the right moment to bring the first of his pieces into the game. Although the map did not extend to cover the location where the crack KGB unit was waiting for orders, Rozenkov knew to the second what duration of flying time was involved to move it into play.

  A glance at his unpretentious army issue watch told him that there was little time to spare. He reached for the radio and call sign and acknowledgment crackled back and forth over the air.

  Giving the coordinates first, he waited for them to be repeated; this was not going to fail because of trivial mistakes that should never have happened.

  ‘…and you do understand what is required? Good. Leave this channel open, I shall wish to listen.’

  Perhaps it was actually static or a fault in the tuner or speaker, but Rozenkov fancied he could hear the gunships’ engines and main rotors screaming to full power...

  TWELVE

  ‘We are outnumbered and outgunned.’ Andrea crouched behind the fungus blotched trunk of a fallen tree, and watched the activity about the Soviet armoured cars and personnel carriers.

  That was a conclusion that Revell had already been forced to accept. If they were really lucky, and managed to get close enough they might knock out one or two of the big enemy vehicles, perhaps disable another, but the answer to any surprise success they had would be swift and overwhelming.

  It was only by chance they’d avoided driving straight into the formidable road block. They had stopped shortly before rejoining the autoroute, to secure loose equipment drumming on the exterior of the Marder’s hull. Boris had taken the opportunity to make a fast infra-red sweep from the vantage point of the top of the turret and the instrument had detected the rising heat from the Russian’s engines and exhausts.

  Showing as a pink glow drifting over the tree tops, it had registered with sufficient definition for a bearing to be taken. It had taken little thought on Revell’s part to elect himself to go and investigate, taking Andrea with him.

  The enemy vehicles were parked haphazardly across the autoroute, but effectively blocked its full width, not more than a few hundred yards beyond where the detour rejoined it. A few troops had dismounted, mostly officers, and dressed in full NBC gear with the exception of respirators they strolled about casually.

  Senior among them appeared to be an officer with a zoom-lens fitted Pentax slung by a cord about his neck. Every now and again he would lift it and squint down the road through its viewfinder.

  ‘That’s a reception party. I was expecting them to drag along a gaggle of news men and a film crew, but there’s no doubt who they’re waiting for. Looks like we managed to get in front of the civvies, but just a little late.’ A noise that Revell had at first attributed to an auxiliary charging engine or generator aboard one of the armoured cars, now began to intrude more upon his hearing. It was becoming louder, getting closer, and was joined by a second.

  ‘Helicopters!’ Through a gap in the leafless interwoven branches overhead, Andrea pointed to an orange stutter of exhaust flame in the sky. ‘They are circling.’

  ‘Either they’re lost, or they’re looking for something. Could be a few Party bosses come to spice up the welcome committee, or maybe the press contingent I was expecting. This lot’ll put up a flare for them in a moment.’

  ‘Then what is your plan? Do we sit here and wait until the traitors arrive, and then watch their Russian friends put their propaganda machine into action?’

  ‘You’d attack the roadblock I suppose, put a grenade into the gut of that Russian officer.’

  ‘No, I would put a grenade into the civilians’ transport when it arrived. From here it will be an easy target. Using an incendiary shell there will be no mistake, no survivors.’

  Revell had noticed earlier the colour coded tip of the shell she’d loaded into the under-slung launcher. ‘And you’re all ready to do just that, aren’t you.’

  ‘Of course. There is not the time for us to get to them first. Our orders are to prevent them reaching the Russians. How else would we do that now?’

  On the road the Russian drivers had remounted, and guided by directions from their officers were backing the cumbersome vehicles off the metalled surface and under the trees, except for a command version of an eight wheeled APC that was proving reluctant to restart.

  The troop’s response to the approach of the aircraft didn’t make sense. Revell’s first reaction was to doubt his identification of the choppers, but he had been forced too often in the past to take cover from attacks by Soviet gunships to mistake their distinctive engine beat. With nothing logical on which to base a judg- ment, all he had was intuition, and a gut feeling told him what had to be done.

  ‘Put a shell into that stalled eight-wheeler.’ Of all the orders she might have received, that was the one that Andrea had been least expecting. She didn’t question it, but there was a perceptible hesitation before she fired, as though subconsciously she was giving the major an opportunity to countermand it.

  With the range barely a hundred yards, the grenade’s trajectory was virtually flat and it skimmed the surface of the road to impact and burst on the side of the command vehicle low on its hull between its big rear wheels.

  Spikes of white light engulfed the APC and spitting balls of phosphorus that failed to lodge in the deep treaded tires bounced off to form a carpet of blazing globules.

  Amid shouting and confusion a Russian officer ran with waving arms to the other vehicles and hammered on their armour, trying vainly to attract the attention of their crews to get them to cease the heavy indiscriminate fire they were sending into the trees. He went unheard or ignored as the storm of zipping tracer ricocheted between the trunks and in their display dwarfed the already diminishing fire about the command vehicle.

  ‘Time to get out of here.’ Without further explanation Revell grabbed Andrea’s arm and began to tow her at speed back to the Marder.

  ‘They are not firing at us, let me go, I do more damage to them.’ ‘Don’t argue, just run.’

  Their way faintly and erratically illuminated by the flames from a tire that had taken hold, above the crackling and crashing of heavy machine gun and cannon fire came another sound. Passing directly above them, it reached a crescendo as a violent downdraft blasted pine needles, cones and twigs at them. Temporarily blinded by the stinging wind-born debris, Revell kept going, keeping a tight hold on Andrea and accepting the painful collisions with unseen trees as they blundered on.

  He regained his vision as night was washed from the forest and replaced first by a glaring red and then by a brilliant white light that painted the lifeless ground with the sharp dark shadows of the pines.

  The blast wave that struck them was a hundred times stronger than that from the helicopters’ spinning rotors, and it was hot, a lung-hurting roasting heat that made every breath a sharp sensation.

  Without time to take cover, they were hit by a hammer-hard wall of fast-moving air that was pushing down trees before it and joined the splintered timber in crashing to the ground where a deluge of light material piled against them in a drift.

  Close behind its leader, the second gunship dumped two more super-napalm canisters, but with greater accuracy, using the vivid fire among the trees caused by the first strike to correct its aim.

  The tumbling petrol-jelly filled drop tanks hit the autoroute alongside the disabled eight-wheeler and by the glare of the orange and yellow flame that enveloped it, its companion vehicles could be seen.

  From every hatch and door jumped their crews and infantry passengers but none of them made more than a couple of paces before the second stage ignition occurred. At the centre of the fireball, even as it began to rise and contract, to roll and suck in upon itself, the oxygen cylinders that had spilled from the canister on impact ruptured and multiplied the temperature and area of combustion.

  White furnace flame enveloped the Russians and consumed them. Grenades and small arms ammunition exp
loded instantly, and those spitting heaps, topped by dense black smoke from burning gas capes and respirators were all that marked where each had fallen when the enhanced fireball lifted above the trees.

  Each of the armoured cars and APCs blazed fiercely, spirals of fire coming from every -opening and the many splits in their overpressure ripped hulls.

  There was little time for the helicopter pilots and gunners to congratulate themselves on the results of their strike. Perhaps the lead ship turned too sharply or the following craft a shade too late, but whichever it was the effect was as catastrophic for them both.

  Whirling blades sliced apart a cabin and tail-boom as they came together. Sparks, in a rapid series of huge showers, marked the mid-air collision and at the moment of contact the tearing metal produced a noise that smothered that of the fires on the ground.

  For the lead ship the end came fast. Rotor blades reduced to whistling stumps, it plummeted like a stone. The red mushroom that flared briefly to mark where it went in was puny compared to those it had helped create only seconds earlier.

  Severely damaged but still under a degree of control the other gunship began a staggering descent, its progress marked clearly in the night sky by the long flare from an exhaust that had been stripped of its shielding cowl. That ceased abruptly when both engines cut out together, and from five hundred feet it side-slipped to destruction away to the east.

  They back-tracked for six kilometres along the autoroute before they found where the civilians had turned off. Five minutes along that side road and they came upon the wreckage of the second gunship to crash.

  Dooley had managed to avoid being selected as one of those to go out and make a quick search of the site, and he made the most of it, sprawling at full length and enjoying the rare luxury of being able to do so within the vehicle’s cramped interior. ‘I bet you anything you like that those civvies saw the fireworks, got the shits and are heading back home.’ He spoke to the squad in general, but his eyes were on Andrea as she brushed soil from her smock. As her hands passed over the voluminous garment they smoothed it to the full contours of her body.