Killing Ground (24 page)

The rear loading ramp was already half-lowered when it made an uneven touchdown. By the time it made contact with the broken stone the first of the wounded were lining up to board.

A loadmaster, linked to the flight deck by the umbilical of his intercom lead, did a double-take as he saw the girls. ‘Can’t have been all that bad, Major. I wouldn’t have minded ...’ His words tailed off as the line of wounded kept coming in a never-ending line from an opening among the piles of rubble.

‘It’s not been a party.’ Revell ducked as a cannot shell passed through the arc of the forward rotors and a shower of metal and carbon fibre fragments slashed past. ‘Have you got a combat air patrol? Can you get hold of them?’

‘No problem. What do you want and where?’

‘Everything they’ve got. Right under the castle walls and back along the road.’

Less than a minute elapsed and then the air was filled again with the roar of jet engines as a line of A-10s dipped from the clouds and swept low over the trees.

Firing rockets and letting rip with their cannons, the ground-attack aircraft tore the landscape apart, cutting great swaths through the trees. The last to make its pass released four tear-drop-shaped dull silver pods.

They tumbled end over end to burst in long broad avenues of violent flame. Pines became pillars of fire and burst explosively as water trapped behind their bark instantly expanded into super-heated steam.

Hyde clapped the loadmaster on his shoulder to get his attention. ‘That’s it. They’re all aboard.’ - ‘You better pull in the rest of your men, Major. We don’t like to hang around.’

At first Revell thought he’d misheard the load-master. ‘No, we’re staying.’

‘Not according to the orders my captain was given. We’re to lift out all troops in this location. Came direct from your CO. A Colonel Lippincott?’

‘Did you hear his words?’

‘You bet. Nearly burned my ears off. Something to the effect that we were to haul out- any fucking cunts wandering about on this heap of shit.’

‘That’s Ol’ Foulmouth all right.’ Revell had to shout to make himself heard. ‘But we can’t pull out. There’s a billion-dollar supply dump down there. The Reds are after it.’

‘You haven’t heard what’s happening, have you?’

TWENTY FOUR

Bending his head closer to the loadmaster, Revell strove to catch his words.

‘We’ve put down a couple of divisions of paratroops behind the Russian lines. So far they’ve taken a dozen of their command centres, complete with staff and generals. SAS and First Air cavalry have gone in and screwed up all their communications centres. They’re running about like chickens with their heads off. Seems we suckered them into overextending themselves when we fell back across the river. We already slung ten bridges across and our armour is flooding this way.’

‘We’re attacking?’ After the last year of holding actions and retreats the concept was almost an alien one to Revell.

‘You bet your life we are. No preliminary bombardment, just went straight for their throats. Our bombers are having a field day tearing apart roads blocked with their backed-up transport. It’s Falaise all over again.’

‘This area is still stiff with commie troops.’ To illustrate Revell’s point, a mortar bomb impacted against the wall of the gateway and its smoke was cut to ribbons by the helicopter blades.

‘Not for long. We’ve seen them streaming back out of this sector. This lot can’t have got the message yet; they soon will. Not that they’ve anywhere to go. We’ve got all the roads blocked. So come on, get them in here.’

More mortar shells began to fall, most landing short, but now and again one would find a few extra meters of range and detonate on the walls to send hot shrapnel across the ruins.

A red-hot lump of tailfin smacked with its flat side against the back of Revell’s hand and a large blister formed instantly.

Boarding in small groups, in short rushes from cover to cover, they made the comparative safety of the Chinook with only two more light casualties. Fragments wrapped on the fuselage armour.

They threw themselves down on the bare metal floor. There was no noise, no cheering, no celebration as they sat huddled together. This was always the worst time, when the helicopter was most vulnerable. A window cracked under a hard impact and several of them started at the loud report.

‘Is that everyone? My captain’s shouting at me fit to rival your colonel.’ The loadmaster paused to listen to his headphones. ‘He’s calling in another strike to try and hit that mortar, but he wants to lift now, like right now.’

‘Andrea’s missing.’

It was Clarence who’d noticed, missing her among the crowd in which her face alone would have stood out.
‘We can’t wait...’

Revell leaped out, not giving the air crewman time to finish. ‘One minute, just one minute.’
‘We could all be dead ...’

Running without thought of danger from the incoming bombs, Revell raced for the cellars. He was shouting as he went, every swear word, every obscenity he could lay tongue on, anything that would vent his fury. She was coming out of the wine vault, an open bottle in her hand. ‘I couldn’t find him.’

Her speech was slurred, and she retaliated to Revell’s forcing her hand against the wall and smashing the bottle by jabbing at his face with the broken neck. ‘You fuck off, Herr Major. I’ve had enough of all of you. Don’t you like me anymore.’ Her dark eyes held his. ‘I killed your girlfriend in Hamburg; did you know that?’

‘Come on, you stupid cow; you’re putting everyone’s life on the line.’ By a handful of the collar of her flak jacket he hauled her up the steps, past the line of bodies and out to the Chinook. He pushed her in hard to send her sprawling over a mini-gun, to the amazement of its baby-faced operator.

Still the chopper didn’t lift, though the rotors were working up to full speed and the wheels were performing a series of bunny hops as it threatened to rise.

‘Air-strike coming in.’ The loadmaster anticipated the officer’s question. ‘The skipper doesn’t want to get in their way.’

Through the gun port, over Andrea’s still prostrate form, Revell saw two Phantoms boring in at high speed. It wasn’t until they banked to begin their bombing run, so close that he could see the white-outlined black crosses of the Luftwaffe, that he realized the West German pilots were going for the wrong target.

There was no time to shout, to tell them to abort. He could only watch helplessly as they sped the length of the valley and unloaded their pylons immediately above the village.

The detonation of the thousand-pound bombs carpeted the floor of the valley in smoke and flame and overlapping white blast rings. A Bradley hull spun through the air; a house roof lifted, complete and intact, to twice the height of the instantly demolished building beneath it.

For a moment Revell could hope that no other damage had been done, that the underground storage areas had not been penetrated; then there came a long, low, powerful rumble and the whole valley and the surrounding hills appeared to shake.

The Chinook was pushed bodily sideways, puncturing a tire and buckling a landing leg. Thrown off balance, Revell regained the window to see that the site of the village was concealed inside a huge fireball that was beginning to rise. Only its seemingly deliberate slowness gave any measure of its awesome dimensions.

Countless secondary explosions raced through the ground at its base, the collapsing earth graphically marking the precise layout of the complex.

‘Heck.’ The baby-faced gunner was wide-eyed with amazement at the spectacle. ‘Was that a nuke they dropped, was it? You can feel the heat from here.’

Riding the turbulence of the strong up currents, the Chinook lifted and turned to head west. Revell beckoned Clarence to undrape the girl from the gun. He couldn’t bring himself to have anything to do with her.

They were a hundred feet above the ruins, making the transition to forward flight, when she suddenly revived and shoved the sniper’s hands away. Before he could get hold of her again she had thrown herself behind the machine gun and, ignoring the pain of her strapped wrist, was training it downward and opening fire.

The stream of bullets struck a long way short of the lone figure that had climbed into the open. She tried to correct her aim, but fumbled as her target hurled himself aside, and missed again.

Clarence was less gentle the second time, and wrenched her away. The range was longer now, and he sent the tracer in a swirling cone of steel toward the deserter.

Almost into safe cover, he was struck across the back of the legs, below the knee. He collapsed with both calves reduced to a pulp of jelly-like tissue and small fragments of bone.

‘You didn’t kill him.’ Andrea hammered with her fists on Clarence’s back, until she was pulled off.

Dooley had pushed his caged birds into a safe corner, and now gripped her in a bear hug from behind. ‘Keep still, you mad bitch.’

‘He didn’t kill him, he didn’t kill him.’

Waiting until she was quiet, deprived of breath by the pressure of the hold, Clarence sat down, and taking a piece of biscuit from his pack, broke it up and began to poke it through the bars of the cage.

‘No, I didn’t kill him, but he’ll be no more trouble to anyone. And in any event, he would not have counted.’ He pushed in the last crumbs, then picked up his rifle. ‘I still have five to go. Deserters don’t count.’

For as long as he could, Revell watched the series of explosions as the valley receded in the distance. There had been no open expression of the frustration most of them must have experienced. Except perhaps their medic. Sampson had muttered quietly and angrily to himself as he moved among the wounded.

They had all had a reprieve of sorts. A handful of them had come through with hardly a scratch, but all had picked up another layer of scar tissue inside.

With the NATO armies now on the offensive, the war in the Zone was going to be harder and nastier than ever before. He didn’t doubt that the Special Combat Company was going to be right in the thick of it. 

Document Outline

• PDF THE ZONE 7 Killing Ground.bmp
  
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