Civilian Slaughter (13 page)

Despite having already run the journey once, Dooley set a fast pace, stumbling through and crushing down any shrubbery that had sprung upright since his last passage.

When they reached him, the wounded man had been hauled to a half-sitting position against the trunk of a tree. Apart from that, the two Dutchmen standing guard had done nothing to help him.

“Where did we get him?” The reclining man's clothes were so saturated in blood that Revell could not determine where he had been wounded. He waited for the corpsman to complete a hurried examination.

“Not us, Major.” Turning the man half to his side, Sampson pulled a long, slim bladed knife from just beneath his right shoulder blade. “Nice crowd he was mixing with.”

Conscious, but white-faced with pain and shock, the man looked up at the officer. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly as he tried to form words. He succeeded only in producing pink bubbles that trickled down the sides of his chin to drip slowly onto his chest.

“Someone really wanted him dead.” Sampson stood up. “I count three stabs wounds in the back, another through the throat. He's dying fast, Major, only a few minutes at most. You want me to give him a shot, help him go easy?”

Beckoning Grigori forward, Revell knelt down beside the dying man. “Tell him he is dying...”

“Hasn't he had enough...”
Revell shut off Sampson's protest and signalled to Grigori to go ahead. Limply, without change of expression the man acknowledged what he was told. “Tell him we want to get the men who hit our camp last night, and that it means we'll get the backstabber who did this to him.”

That took longer, and Revell listened to the largely incomprehensible flow. The dying man appeared to have trouble grasping what was said to him, and the major had their interpreter repeat his words twice more.

After a moment, the effort bringing bubbles of pink blood to his lips, the man began to splutter a reply, each word accompanied by audible bubblings from his chest. It took time, with frequent pauses to gather what little strength and breath he had left. Finally his words were reduced to an incoherent mumble. He sagged lower against the tree, gasping like a fish out of water. What air he did manage to suck into his pain-wracked frame could be heard whistling out through the holes in his lungs.

Grigori appeared indifferent to the man's suffering, looking on him with contempt. “He is a senior lieutenant in the KGB, I did not catch his name, but it is unimportant. His unit is the 717. They are at a farm ten kilometres down the road, right on the edge of the demilitarized Zone.”

“Is that all?” Revell had been only able to understand the odd word or two, and was unsure how much he could trust their interpreter, or if he should at all. “There seemed to be more than that.”

“The ramblings of a dying man.” Grigori shrugged. “There was talk of hashish, and another officer, and of a junior sergeant. That name I did catch, he repeated it many times, Ivanov.”

“Anything else?”

“Only that it is his wish we kill them all.”

“Not much loyalty among Communists, is there.”

“Oh, no, Major,” Grigori took the remark at face value, missing the irony. “Absolutely none.”

SEVENTEEN
“Fucking creeps.” Dooley kicked out at a Russian who had stopped work to scratch his backside, and missed.

“I thought they were working quite well today.” Scully accepted the end of the hawser and passed it to a pioneer who stood on top of the felled tree.

“No, not this lot. I mean those animals back at HQ. The major has told them who did that dirty work over at the camp, and where they are now. And what do they do, fuck all.”

Taking the end of the wire as it was pushed back beneath the timber, Dooley made it fast to form a loop about the thick trunk.

“I suppose they know what they're doing” Scully began shepherding the Russians clear before the slack was taken up. The cable had already parted once and they'd been lucky not to have any serious injuries from the incident.

“Do they? Letting the Reds get away with the murder of a couple of thousand civvies don't seem right to me, no way. They did in Afghanistan, no reason why they should get away with it here.”

From a safe distance they watched the truck edging forward. Gradually the coil of steel straightened out. In his cab, Burke kept a close watch on the door mounted rear view mirror. Guided by hand signals from Lieutenant Vokes, he applied the brakes as soon as the full length of the plaited wire was suspended above the ground. It vibrated, with a low pitched twanging sound, in time with the slow throb of the idling motor.

Vokes went forward to the cab door, shouting in through the open window. “Take it very slowly. Stay on the line I showed you, across the road, then between those two trees and over the little clearing beyond. The going is soft, but I think it is just the deep layer of leaf mould. Try not to stop, or you may dig-in.”

This was the first of the trees to be tackled by the towing method and a crowd was gathering to watch. For the NATO soldiers it was pure curiosity; the Russian labourers though had a more specific interest. If it worked there would be less heavy work for them to tackle.

There was almost an air of excitement as the truck edged forward, accompanied by the creaking of the hawser, the splintering of wood and the deep bellow of the straining engine.

For a long moment there was no apparent movement, and a half-derisive cheer went up from the assembled audience. It was repeated when the truck began to crab sideways on the dusty surface.

A sharp crack was accompanied by a fountain of bark as the wire slipped a meter along the trunk, cutting cleanly through the stumps of several small branches. The truck's exhaust boomed louder and almost imperceptibly the obstacle began to move. It pivoted slowly around the soil-encrusted mountain of its roots, moving steadily.

Attention switched abruptly back to the truck as its motor suddenly cut out. Sunk to its axles on one side, half way across the clearing, it rested at an angle of forty- five degrees.

Burke jumped down from the elevated cab step. “That's the first bloody crash I've ever had at two miles an hour.”

Vokes circled the stranded vehicle. “No harm done. We'll pull it out. It just means that for the next go we shall have to lay some sort of roadway, then...”

He stopped talking and bent down to examine where a large chunky treaded tire had scooped away the top-soil.

“Give me something to dig with, quickly.” He accepted the bayonet that was offered and began to carefully scrape more of the loosened material away.

Pushing his way through to the front rank, Revell looked down. The arm and shoulder, and then the head of a young child were exposed.

Reaching out, Revell pulled the lieutenant back. His work had already revealed another arm, to a body crushed beneath the wheel.

“Children.” There was a deep, choking sadness in Vokes's voice. “In heavens name, how many will there be.”

“There are two too many already.” Leaving the encircling crowd, Clarence knelt beside the find and brushed soil from a small dirt-ingrained hand. “It just goes on and on, doesn't it.”

For a while Revell had thought the men quite capable of bodily lifting the three- ton Bedford off the grave. It had taken considerable effort by himself and Hyde to push the others back.

“I want a guard on this site. No one is to touch anything.” “Right, Major. I'll put Clarence on first.” Hyde knew there was no way he would be able to get the sniper to leave the scene in any event. “If he's going to be hang- ing about, he might as well be doing something useful.”

“This an experience that will be good for him.” Andrea ran his fingers along the ribbon that had been tied between the trees to mark off the ground.

“You really are a callous bitch.” Hyde had no time for the girl, when she was drunk, or as now, surprisingly sober. She had a face men would kill for, but the mind behind it was filled with death, and needed no more. “It reminds him of his kids. He found them buried under what was left of his married quarters in Cologne.”

“I know that.” Untwisting a kink in the tape, Andrea flicked a moth from it. “Do you know that he has set himself a target? He is killing a hundred Russians for each of them, and for his wife. At that last count he told me he had only a few to go. Perhaps now he will start again. It will give him something to go on living for.”

It was not what the major had expected her to come out with. His instinctive reaction to the discovery of the little bodies was to rush to headquarters and throw his news at them. A moment's calmer consideration told Revell it could achieve nothing. Next he wanted to get on the radio and tell the world, well as much as he could reach, what was happening. It was more than likely though that any calls he made would be monitored, and rapidly jammed.

Either course of action would fail to get worthwhile results, except maybe to bring down a storm of trouble on the whole unit.

He spent an hour thinking the situation through, then made his decision. It took another hour to write out the messages, then just a few minutes to get together couriers and escorts.

Armed with passes that would get them to their various destinations, the six teams departed, taking with them the best of the transport and all the fuel they had.

He was taking a huge gamble, but at least this way, at this stage, any repercussions would come back on him alone. It was too late, even now to have second thoughts. There was no way he could pursue and turn back the dispatchers even if he'd wanted to. For all his determination though, he felt inside an unpleasant hollow, sick feeling.

Casting his thoughts back to what lay within the little, ribbon-enclosed clearing banished his doubts, and replaced it with anger and impatience.

“You getting married, and want me to make up an album? Is that it?” Swanson unslung his camera bag from his shoulder. “The boys you sent for me weren't exactly the chatty sort. Come to that, I thought they were a tight-lipped pair of miserable bastards.”

Revell had to smile at the thought of Ripper being described as tight-lipped. “That was their orders. You'll pick up the background as you go along. The basics are that I want a complete photographic record of something that's happened here.”

“No problem. Why all the mystery. Is it being sat on? Are you?” “Yes to both, heavily. Will your boss miss you if you're missing for a half a day.”

“So who runs photographic? I'm my own boss most of the time. We don't fit into any cosy little niche so we get left to do our own thing. Where do I start.”

“There's a pit on the other side of the hill. It's been burned out, but thoroughly. There might just be a chance though that something is left. Perhaps a side caved in and covered a few pieces. Anyway, you'll have some labourers with you, they'll do the dirty work.”

“Great, sounds fun. What then?”
“Back here. And this won't be.”
“Oh my. I never want to see anything like this again.” Swanson stalked about the edge of the deepening excavation, the motor on his camera making an almost continual whirring sound.

The truck had been gently pulled clear. Under close supervision the Russians were starting to remove the bodies. Twenty were laid in a neatly spaced row. More were being added all the time.

As each was carefully pulled from the deathly hold of others, even more were revealed. The excavation had grown almost to the full width of the small clearing.

“How soon can I have prints? And I'll want copies.” “I anticipated that a call from you wouldn't be for any ordinary event. In fact I rushed out here as a sort of advance guard. Here come the rest of my guys right now.

The distinctive double beat of a Chinook was becoming audible. Swanson delved into his pocket and extracted a signal candle.

“Could you have one of your men ignite that close by, that chewed up chunk of land beside the road will do. If there's a level space to set that down.”

The giant twin rotor helicopter was hovering almost over them. Slung beneath it dangled a wheeled cabin with shuttered windows.

“It's a mobile developing room. Knew you'd be in a hurry as always, and this way I can guarantee privacy. Won't have to send or transmit any material. Oh yes, and they're bringing video cameras, complete with sound equipment. By the time I'm through you’ll have the comprehensive record you wanted. And if you're going over to Division to ram it down the throat of whoever is keeping this under wraps, I'll film that for you as well.”

EIGHTEEN
“Can you erect a screen of some description? This won't be pretty. No point in spoiling everybody's dinner.” On a table made from stacked gas cans and broken planks, the surgeon was setting out a row of knives and saws.

“I’ll have something rigged up right away.” Revell looked at the shining instruments. “How many will you want... want to...” He couldn't think of the right words to use.

“How many have you exhumed so far?”
“About fifty so far, Doc, but it's going to go a lot higher.”

“Five will give us a good sample. I hope you know what you're getting us all into.”

“This has been forced on me, but I gave you the chance to cry off.” “Yes, yes, I know you did. Sorry, that wasn't fair. Right, I’ll need an assistant with a strong stomach.”

“There's Sampson, our medic. He should be a help.”

“Hell, I don't need any help to do an autopsy. I want these blasted wasps swatted away from me. Can't stand the bloody pests. Prefer to work where there's an un- healthy dose of contamination in the air, keeps the garish little buggers down. Actually I will use your medic. It'll be good experience for him. At least he can watch.”

“Anything else, Doc?” Revell ducked as a wild swing to fend off a fly nearly connected with the side of his head.

“Sorry, thought it was a wasp. Just can't stand the stupid things. Hate the way they creep up behind you and go 'buzz' in your ear when you're least expecting it. I don't suppose you've got anyone who can take dictation have you, possibly shorthand ... no, silly question really.”

“We have.” Revell beckoned forward a bespectacled clerk. “This is Private Watts. Borrowed him from another Division's HQ_. Been trying to get into this outfit for ages. Very keen, even brought his portable with him. He'll have your report typed out for checking before you go.”