Hard Target Read online

  ‘See what I mean? He’s good.’

  Back in the trench it had come as a shock to Collins to hear the torrent of obscenity from the usually quiet and reserved man, but this... Of course he knew his speciality, but he’d never realised... nearly two hundred... it was incredible. Clarence, with his neat and fussy ways and his quiet distaste for the crudities of army life …nearly two hundred!

  ‘...was due to go on an officer-training course, but he had a breakdown and was lucky to stay in at all.’

  Collins realised with a start that Libby was still talking. He made non-committal noises to give the impression he’d heard every word. ‘... Now when he gets leave, he goes back there and sits all the time in the garden of remembrance where their ashes are scattered. One week of grief keeps him killing for six months.’

  Their skin was prickling, and their eyes watered and smarted with the concentration of chemicals in the air. Even up-wind of the saturated area, and despite the prophylactics they had taken, the noxious substances still affected their respiration and made breathing both difficult and painful. It was a temptation to run, to get to the sanctuary of their air-conditioned transport as quickly as possible, but that would have been fatal with the high level of toxic material in the atmosphere.

  Whole chunks of the landscape through which they trudged looked as if they had been bleached. What little greenery there still was had a blotched and leprous look.

  The sky, filled with the dust and smoke of two years’ bitter conflict, was a uniform dull red that betrayed no hint of the sun’s position, but trapped its light and spread a meagre portion of it across the alien landscape.

  The angular turret-topped hull of the skimmer was a welcome sight when they reached the gorse-shrouded gully. Burke, their combat driver, was waiting.

  ‘Burke by name, and Burk by bloody nature.’ Hyde dropped his pack heavily on to the older man’s feet. ‘You might have turned it round ready for a quick getaway if it were needed. Or doesn’t your weary old brain stretch to such mind-boggling initiative?’

  Burke scowled, and heaved the kit through the open door set in the hovercraft’s front, beside the driver’s position. ‘I might have done, but an Ivan sky-spy was pissing about overhead earlier, so I thought I’d better keep the Iron Cow as cool as possible, in case it was doing an infra-red survey.’ He patted the faded name painted on the starboard hull front.

  ‘You’ve always got a ruddy answer, haven’t you?’ The sergeant’s sarcasm made no impression on Burke. He clambered aboard to take his seat.

  Last to board was Corporal Howard. He carefully stowed the field-radar set, before threading his way down the narrow single compartment of the craft’s interior to the built-in radar console at the rear. The instant he activated the com- plex electronic systems and put on his headset, the front ramp lifted drawbridge- like to seal the doorway and the twin Allison turbofan engines on either side of the crew compartment whined into life.

  Burke tapped a proportion of their combined two-and-a-half-thousand horsepower for the lift ducts, and the concertinaed skirts about the hull’s lower edge straightened, bulged and rose from the ground as they lifted the fifteen-ton machine.

  As the skimmer whirled round almost in its own length, Libby hauled himself into the cramped cannon-armed turret set in the centre of the roof. Hyde sat immediately behind their driver in the command seat, while Clarence leant back on a bench and began to clean his rifle. Only Collins sat bolt upright in the approved and official manner, feet firmly on the floor, heels against the locker under his seat, rump pressed back hard into the angle made by the metal wall of the compartment and the thinly padded bench top. The general-purpose machine gun he’d been given the dubious honour of carrying and caring for was between his knees, butt on floor, barrel tip beneath his nose. His satchel of demolition charges, still intact, rested on the seat beside him.

  Unlike Clarence, Collins had not been unhappy to see the Russian tank so comprehensively destroyed. He wanted more time to get used to being in action before he took on the task for which he’d trained, finishing off disabled enemy tanks capable of being salvaged and sent back into battle.

  After a casual glance at an external contamination monitor, Clarence turned up the air-conditioning to one and a half pounds of positive pressure. ‘The wind must have shifted. It’s as thick as porridge out there.’

  Collins managed to eliminate most of the discomfort by swallowing hard several times, but his ears continued to ‘pop’ at irregular intervals. Looking forward, he could see the tattered remains of the wiper blades scraping clear arcing tracks across the thick front-vision block.

  ‘There’s a beam on us.’ Howard’s shout echoed through the alloy cocoon, adding fresh discomfort to their ears.

  ‘Identify.’ Hyde’s response was as punishing. ‘Acoustic.’

  Several actions in the cramped compartment blended into a single confused tangle of movement. Clarence grabbed a pair of garishly painted grenades from a rack and fired them in rapid sequence from a short barrelled discharger set in the roof behind the turret: Hyde hurled himself towards Collins, shoved him aside and smashed his fist down hard on a large orange stud, one of a colour-coded row.

  Simultaneously, the nose of the craft dipped as Burke lifted the forward edge of the skirt to gain every ounce of speed. The skimmer surged ahead in response as the engines screamed up to full emergency power.

  The feeling of tightness in the muscles of his face, the sudden dryness in his mouth, had nothing to do with Collins’ fear of the consequences of Burke’s manic evasive driving. He knew, as did the others, that somewhere out there a Russian infiltrator had spotted them and was, at that very moment guiding down on their heads an anti-tank missile or shell. There were only seconds...

  Hyde’s urgent action had released a knobbly fibre-glass box from the outside of the hull. It tumbled down the camouflage-painted metal, bounced from the engine pod to the puffed-out wall of the ride-skirt and landed on a tangled mat of rotting vegetation. An instant later it came to rest. Telescopic aerials lanced from it and began to broadcast a blast of white noise that would continue until its power pack was rapidly exhausted, or until it successfully decoyed an enemy warhead riding down the beam focused on the Iron Cow.

  In the air above it, the two grenades Clarence had launched rocketed back and forth, giving off dense clouds of exhaust-simulating smoke. Both produced a whining scream that mimicked the full-thrust engine noise of the fast disappearing hovercraft. From the tails of both spewed a series of flares and incendiary pellets, whose combustion temperature dwarfed the shielded infra-red signature of the twin Allison turbofans.

  They weren’t needed. Just twelve seconds into its short life the squawk-box was almost reduced to its component molecules by a Soviet AT-12 anti-tank missile.

  Deafened by the howl of their straining power units, Hyde had no way of knowing if their ruse had worked until Burke leapt the speeding skimmer over a shallow ridge, and into the safety of low ground surrounded by rolling bills.

  The vehicle’s speed fell to a saner pace and they began to drive between serried rows of weed-infested rubble. The battered hulks of rusting cars and trucks and a few drunkenly leaning telegraph poles were the only recognisable features of what had once been a prosperous outer suburb of Hanover.

  Burke dropped the speed still further, to cut down the dust raised by their progress and give the perimeter sensors of their battalion’s intruder alarm system time to identify them.

  Ahead of them loomed the outline of a gutted local shopping centre. Its precast concrete fabric, though blackened and warped by the fires that had raged through it, had survived largely intact. Only a handful of the less robust surrounding buildings had stood up to the repeated bombing and shelling of the area. Most had been levelled by blast and fire, or been reduced to ragged roofless shells.

  Moving at a crawl, the Iron Cow nosed into one of the shop fronts, the dangling remnants of neon signs brushing and grating on
its roof as it did. The engines were cut and it drifted into the heart of the building, settling to rest inside an enclosure formed of suspended plastic sheeting.

  Slow-moving figures shuffled forward, their outlines made indistinct in the gloom by the cumbersome heavy-duty anti-contamination suits and respirators they wore. Each of the apparitions waved the spray-emitting nozzle of a hose in front of him.

  Activated bleach slurry ran from the hull, flushing from every crevice the last of any persistent chemicals adhering to it. That done, the skimmer was scalded clean with high-pressure steam jets. A member of the decontamination crew tapped on the driver’s vision block and gave a slow motion thumbs-up to the men inside.

  There was no rush to leave the cramped quarters. Hyde and his men just sat there, letting the tension drain from them.

  Collins declined the tobacco pouch and paper that Burke offered him. ‘No, thanks, I don’t. Are all the patrols like that?’

  It was Corporal Howard who took it on himself to answer, when no one else did. ‘They’re all different, but that was an easy one, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Think we’ll be getting a spot of leave, Sarge?’ Burke made a critical examination of the butt he held, then puffed vigorously to keep the last shreds of tobacco alight.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Libby came down from the turret seat. ‘Don’t you like your work?’

  ‘Fuck the work,’ Burke growled. ‘I’m just saying it’d be nice to have something to look forward to when we got back.’

  The slit in the face of Sergeant Hyde that lips would have marked as a mouth barely opened as he spoke. ‘I’ve got a feeling the CO will have something waiting for us, but it won’t be a seventy-two-hour pass.’

  TWO

  ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think of the plan, just make the shitty thing work.’ Colonel Lee Lippincott took the well-chewed pencil stub from between his perfectly capped teeth ‘ and spat out shreds of wood. ‘The orders say this is a joint operation with the British, and as I’ll be the bastard catching shit from the Liaison Staff if you screw up, then believe me you’d better not screw up. If you do, and make it back, then you’ll be fucking lucky to end up as a private third class, testing piss as a beer substitute.’

  Major Revell waited until O’l Foul Mouth had finished flecking the floor to the right of his chair with another spattering of spittle and splinters. No effort he could have made would have kept the edge out of his voice, so he didn’t try. ‘OK, so this British tank-hunter squad know the ground, and the whole crazy idea comes from a smart-arse Staff Officer in Brussels, who wants an example of successful co- operation between us and them to counter stories of friction in the press back home. But why, just tell me why, a Commie tank repair shop is so damned important all of a sudden.’

  ‘Shit, we’ve been in the salient for two weeks now, helping bolster the British defences, you know the picture.’ Lippincott picked flakes of blue paint from his fleshy lips and examined them on the ends of his fingers. ‘After the balls-up they made of trying to clear this pocket in June, Soviet 2nd Guards ain’t exactly the Russian High Command’s favourite outfit. Rumour has it they came close to losing their fancy title. They’re going to have to try again, but they ain’t getting much in the way of new equipment. As things stand we about match them in armour, but somehow they’ve got their cruddy hands on this crack workshop unit. If their tanks are in prime condition when the show starts again, fitted with the latest mods, it could make all the difference.’

  ‘If we know where it is then drop a cruise on it; why send a platoon of my men on a suicide mission?’

  A parody of a benevolent grin creased the colonel’s rubbery features. ‘Suicide is when you die by choice, Major; you ain’t got none.’ He read the expression on the young officer’s deeply sunburnt face, and the grin faded. Hell, Revell gave him the creeps; couldn’t take a joke, never laughed, lived like a damned monk: Jesus, he wasn’t normal. ‘We don’t have the exact location, it’s just somewhere around Gifhorn. That’s a no-go area, stiff with stinking refugees. If we kill so much as a scabby kraut goat I get stick from above, so area weapons are out, saturation, conventional or nuclear.’

  ‘When the hell are we going to stop fighting this war with our damned hands tied behind our backs?’ Revell crashed his palms down on the desk top between them. ‘Why is it always us who have to be the nice guys? It’s time to hit the Reds hard with everything we’ve got.’

  ‘Don’t fucking shout at me, Major.’ Revell’s outburst had made O’l Foul Mouth jump and now he shouted back. ‘You think I don’t know how we’re hamstrung. I’m up to my fucking arse in directives that originate from shitty do-gooding pressure groups in Germany and England and back in the States. I’d like nothing better than to put aside for each of them a share of the barrel of super-napalm I fancy pouring over the head of every last torturing Commie.’

  Lippincott rose half out of his seat, hammering his desk with his fist at every word. ‘In the Balkans we were fighting Slavs, Bulgarians, even bloody Cubans, tough cruds, dirty even; but compared with 2nd Guards they’re bloody choirboys. 2nd Guards are animals, the lowest; you lift up pig-shit and that’s where you’ll find them. They tore up the rules two years ago, but our politicians haven’t heard that yet, so while the Reds do what they like we have to look twice before we so much as chuck a grenade. But at least you get to smash them sometimes - I fucking don’t.’

  Revell saw the pinned-up sleeve over the stump of the colonel’s left arm and read the bitterness and frustration in his voice. He lowered his own when he spoke again, but every word was punched out sharp and clear.

  ‘Smash them? All we’re ever allowed to do is carry out a few raids, maybe lay an ambush or two. The rest of the time we sit in holes in the ground waiting for the next mass Commie attack. We should be taking the war to them in a big way, tearing their eyes out, not pecking at them.’

  ‘Not a fucking chance.’ With a neatly manicured nail Lippincott prised a sliver of soggy wood from between his top teeth and flicked it to a far corner of the office. ‘You don’t think our cruddy political bosses want us to start winning, do you? Shit, no. Of course they’ll dole out just enough hardware to let us hold the Reds, and on occasion enough to enable us to mount division strength attacks, with limited objectives of course, to keep up morale and give the newsboys some fresh footage - but they sure as hell don’t want us to start pushing the Commies right back. If that happened, the Reds might be tempted to break that cosy little hot-line agreement and take the war outside the Zone. None of those skunk-faced rats in Westminster or on Capitol Hill want any nukes falling in their back garden.’

  ‘You want me to tell my men that? You want me to tell them we’ve a job to do. but we mustn’t do it too well ?’

  ‘Don’t get smart, Major. This mission is important. The Hanover salient is our last chance to deny the Reds a straight run to Essen and the Ruhr and the Channel. You knock out that workshop, screw up 2nd Guards Army, and you’ll buy us more time to consolidate.’

  From the top of a stack of papers in his in-tray the colonel took a type-written sheet and waved it in front of Revell.

  ‘No, it ain’t a new brand of arse wiper, it’s a note from a two-star general. He says the press will be getting this story. They’ll be encouraged to make a big splash about British-American cooperation if the mission goes well. Now I ain’t about to disappoint a two-star general, so don’t balls it up. No friction, understand? I want everything to go as smoothly as a well-oiled cock up a nice slack fanny, or else.

  * * *

  Libby’s fist hit PFC Dooley a solid blow in the gut. As he fell to his knees the big American lunged forward and, catching his opponent by surprise, brought him down too. Before Libby could regain his feet Dooley was on him and the breath whistled from them as they pounded each other.

  ‘What the bloody hell is going on here? Break it up.’ Corporal Howard pushed through the tight circle of men that had formed around the co
mbatants and was then in turn pushed aside by his sergeant.

  At that moment the more powerfully built American was on top, hands locked about Libby’s throat. Hyde hesitated a fraction of a second, undecided which was the best way to end the fight without giving grounds for further aggravation between the Americans and his men. But even as he stepped forward to pull them apart himself, Major Revell came through the crowd on the far side and instantly delivered a savagely powerful chop to the back of Dooley’s neck.

  Eyes bulging, tongue protruding between teeth half-hidden by foam, he began to topple to the floor. His fall was arrested by the officer, who grabbed his ears and hauled him to his feet.

  Revell spoke quietly, never taking his intense pale blue eyes from the semi- conscious man’s face. In the general silence the words carried to everyone there. ‘Listen to me, Dooley. The colonel said ‘no friction’, you understand?’ The soldier went cross-eyed, attempted to shake his head, winced and nodded. ‘One warning only on this one. I know you, Dooley. It happens again and you’ll be doing mine clearance with a jack-hammer, OK?’

  Dooley’s knees had gone rubbery and only the officer’s tight grip kept him upright. He nodded, again with the same painful result. Letting go his hold, Revell turned to Hyde. ‘Any idea what all this was about?’

  ‘No, Major.’ Hyde shook his head. ‘No idea at all, but it won’t happen again.’ By Christ it wouldn’t, he wasn’t going to be shown up in front of an officer from another unit, American, British or whatever. But especially not in front of this one. Although he’d so far had little contact with the American forces that made up half the NATO troops fighting in Europe, he had in his mind’s eye a composite image of a typical Yank officer. Revell didn’t fit it at all.

  The three hovercraft personnel carriers that would carry them on their mission were almost ready. Sergeant Hyde suspected that the flare-up had occurred as a result of Dooley’s constant attempts to pilfer pieces of equipment from the Iron Cow. Libby and Burke had spent weeks gathering together a complete set of accessories for their transport, from wrecks and other unofficial sources and Libby in particular had been steadily growing more irritated with the big American’s jackdaw tendencies.