Civilian Slaughter (4 page)

Not asking or waiting for an explanation, Vokes hurried back down from the roof. Revell followed at a more leisurely pace, mentally equipping himself for the trouble he was expecting.

The colonel was stalking into the lobby as he reached the bottom of the elegant staircase.

“What the bloody blue fuck are you up to, Major?” Revell waited for the first blasts to wash over him. He knew from experience there was no earthly hope of having his say at this stage.

“Shit. I get you boys a nice easy number in a quiet sector, so you can build up to strength again after your last blood bath, and what do you do? I'll tell you what you do, you near get me busted all the way back down to civilian convict. And seeing as I start as a full-blown colonel, that's a piss awful long way.”

“Is it about the patrol?” Revell thought it best to determine that up front. The colonel had been known to spring the odd surprise by blowing up over a less than obvious matter. But this time Revell had it right.

“You call that a patrol? A patrol?” Colonel Lippincott extracted a sheaf of photographs from his pocket and waved them above his head. “With a runaway regiment of maniacs in kamikaze tanks I couldn't have stirred more shit than you've done with one lousy APC.”

“Is that a compliment, Colonel?”

“That is not a damned compliment, and it wasn't when I got it in exactly the same words from a two-star general. Have you the faintest idea how much work went into laying on this truce?” Lippincott waved any potential answer aside. “No, course you haven't. Nor have I, but you can bet your ass it was one hell of a lot. And so while all along the Zone, from the Baltic to the Med even the most head- banging gung-ho bomb happy shit is cheerily putting aside his rifle and taking up knitting, you go out and try to queer it for everyone, and me in particular.”

Face red, Colonel Lippincott paused for breath. “Let's get some air. This place stinks like a stale morgue.” Not waiting to see Revell tagging along behind him, he strode through the overturned tables of the opulent dining room and out through the elegant conservatory on the back of the building.

Broken glass crunched under their boots. As they stepped out onto the broad terrace a light breeze wreathed them in wood smoke and they moved to the far end to get out of it.

“Just what the blue blazes is that guy doing?” Lippincott pointed to the long shallow pit in the middle of the lawn. Tending the red-hot filling of wood ash, and replenishing it constantly from a nearby stack of logs was a sweating smoke- stained figure in grubby shorts, army boots, and chefs hat.

“That's Scully, the company cook.”
“Is he not used to civilization?” Lippincott jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the hotel. “Back in there must be one hell of a catering kitchen. Does he always do things the hard way?”

“We're having a barbecue.”
Resignedly Lippincott sprawled on a stone bench. “Of course, I should have known. One minute you're fucking up the truce, next you're having a sing-song around the campfire.”

Revell was waiting to see the photographs. They were becoming gradually more crumpled in the colonel's grasp. “So is it ... rucked?”

“See for yourself.”
They were aerial shots, with the slightly grainy effect that showed them to be unenhanced frames from a sequence obviously taken by an RPV. All ten were of the convoy ambush. It was the recorded time printed in white in the top left-hand corner of each that interested Revell most.

“See the HAPC in some of the shots? Know whose it is?” “I'm not denying it's ours, Colonel. We've got the only one in this whole sector. I presumed that was why we were chosen to carry out patrolling up until the last moment.”

“Precisely my damned point.” Accepting the return of the prints, Lippincott crammed them into the breast of his jacket when he couldn't get them into his pocket. “You were to patrol, not do a cannon-armed simulation of the caped crusader at work. Who the hell told you to cream that Russian outfit?”

“Nobody said we couldn't.” Absently Revell watched their cook dragging a soil encrusted tree stump toward the pit. “Those timings, on every picture, show my men turning away before zero hour for the cease fire.”

“Yeah, but thirty fucking seconds. I've been in action, Major,” Lippincott waved the empty sleeve of his jacket. “You can't tell me that in the middle of a red-hot action your vehicle commander was doing some sort of crazy NASA countdown.”

“Whether he was or not, they finished in time. Are the Russians complaining?” “Don't they always; never known a people for bellyaching like they do. This time, though, you got lucky. Again. As we were flying in I heard over the radio that the Swedes who are policing the truce caught some of the sneaky sons of bitches trying to extricate supplies after the deadline. That about makes us even by all accounts.”

“So why the visit?” Turning, Revell half sat on the stone balustrade. He knew there had to be more coming. The colonel was very much a hands-off commander, only made special visits for special reasons.

Taking a pencil from a top pocket crammed with them, Lippincott began to chew, keeping up a spitting hail of pieces as he gradually reduced its length. “You know your outfit isn't liked by the big chiefs. They're still beefing about 'private armies' and dilution of resources. If I didn't get you the odd mission too mucky for the Guards or the Air-Cav to tackle ...”

“Seems like all our tasks are like that.”

“As I was saying, if I didn't volunteer the Special Combat Company for a few of the more distasteful jobs I wouldn't be able to justify your existence. Right now, though, they're after blood. I've made my peace by saying we’ll do penance ...”

“I get the feeling most of it is going to be done by my men.”

“What the hell do you expect?” Lippincott pushed himself to his feet with the stump of his arm against the back of the bench. “You knew the form. You were around for the other truces, you know how fragile the damned things are. Only takes one stupid mistake and it's total war again. We need this breathing space. Sure, we've been chasing the tail of the Reds for five weeks, they're on the ropes, but I tell you, so are we.”

Revell remained sitting as the colonel stalked back and forth on the neatly interlocked slabs of soft-coloured sandstone. “The men reckoned, I do, that one last push and we'd have had them back over the East German border, maybe well on the way to their own.”

“You don't see it, do you? All you've got is your own little slice of the action. To the top of the next hill, the end of the next street, that's your war. Well it's bigger than that, there's a lot more to it.” Lippincott snatched out one of the photos.

“This Russian engineers outfit you burned up. How many of the vehicles used to be ours? Three-quarters? It's usually around that isn't it. Of course it is, without captured equipment they'd have been back to horses and carts a long time ago. Come to that, some of their units are already. So are some of ours. The Zone is the biggest battle of attrition the world's ever seen, bigger than you can ever imagine from the little bits you see. Another week, maybe less, and more than two thirds of our armour would have been immobilized by lack of spares or ammunition or both.”

“That bad?”
“That fucking bad, and worse. The West German Airforce has almost ceased to exist as a viable combat arm ... Same goes for the Brits'. Every Harrier that comes off the line is issued immediately. Some go into action unpainted. You must have seen that for yourself.”

He'd seen it, but never realized the full implications. Their small battle group was almost self-sufficient, replenishing itself by battlefield salvage. It had given him a false impression of the overall picture. “So how many Hail Mary’s are we to do?”

“By the time it's over you'll wish it was that simple.” Lippincott dabbed at his eyes as an engulfing cloud of wood smoke made them water. “Let's walk, before that chef of yours has us first on the menu as smoked hors d'oeuvres.”

They picked their way past a solitary bomb crater, skirting tangled heaps of uprooted and wilting hedges. Revell made a point of steering a path away from the lake. Just audible was the whine of the pumps serving the decontamination sprays.

“It might not be for long, of course.” Lippincott glanced sideways at the major. “Depends on how the cease fire holds up.”

They reached a boundary fence, reinforced by entwined razor wire. Beyond it the heath land stretched away in a series of gentle folds. In the middle distance stood an isolated stand of fir trees. Farther off a few scattered rooftops were just visible.

Close alongside the fence was a huddle of improvised refugee shelters, looking as if they would all collapse if any one wall were removed. Sitting on either side of a small fire consisting mostly of cones and twigs, an elderly couple were taking turns to spoon beans from a can.

They ate slowly, savouring every mouthful. When the hot can was passed from one to the other, elaborate care was taken not to spill anything from the cloth wrapped container.

Revell watched them, wondering if the food came from the company's reserve stock. He noticed a clean bandage about the woman's wrist. That would be Sampson's work, and tended to confirm the source of the meal. “So what will we be doing? Riding herd on a load of these poor devils as they're shunted around the countryside?”

“No,” Lippincott looked away from the scene. It was too common to hold his attention for long. “No, you're going to be riding shotgun on a load of Russians.”

SIX

“My men will be wasted as prison camp guards.” Even as he felt his anger rising, Revell knew protest would be useless. Instead, his mind switched to considering the first problems which would arise from such a change of assignment. First and foremost would be the need to keep a careful watch on Andrea and Clarence. Both had a self-imposed vendetta against the Communists. It was hard to say which of them was the most ruthless in its pursuit: Clarence with his merciless sniper's precision or Andrea with her less cool but just as deadly blood lust.

“... it's not quite so simple, Major.” Spitting a last fragment of wood, Lippincott selected another pencil. He crunched off the eraser and nibbled thoughtfully at the paint down one side, like he was sampling a doubtful stick of celery.

“Of course we're all hoping the cease fire will become permanent, but I guess there's not many who believe it really will. Leastways none of the staff officers reckon it's likely to make it into a second week. So, in exactly the same way as those bastards on the Warpac side will be doing, we're going to get ourselves ready for the next round.”

“Is there that much we can do?” Revell moved aside a little to give the barrage of soggy splinters more room. “You bet your fucking life there is, as long as we stick to our side of the demilitarized strip. There're dumps to be replenished, defence positions to be constructed and improved, material to be salvaged and roads to be repaired ... especially roads.”

Revell could anticipate what was coming. His anger, being pointless, had subsided, to be now replaced with a sullen resentment. It was going to be worse than guarding the cages. “We take charge of a construction battalion? Of Warpac deserters?”

“Got it in one, almost. Only you're not getting some easy-going bunch of Poles and Hungarians. In fact you're getting all Ruskies. Not to dress it up for you, you're getting the sweepings of the camps. All the ones who've been causing trouble. The guys who refused to work, or were into stealing, murder, or gang buggery, or trying to dabble in the black market by bribing guards. You know, just about every vice known to man, and some that are only known to renegade Communists.”

“Where do we find them.”

“Oh, they'll find you. They're on their way, be here about mid-morning tomorrow. Your company will take over as their escort for the last stage of the journey. I should think the other guys will be glad to hand them over to you. Did hear they've already had to stop twice and put MPs on board to sort out knife fights.”

“What's the work precisely, and where?”

“Clearing and patching a section of road that runs up to the truce line. Goes right on through it and into the Warpac side, in fact. If you keep out of the demilitarized strip though, you shouldn't have any trouble from that direction. The escort commander will give you a map.”

“What about engineering equipment?” Inside Revell was a strong suspicion that he already knew the answer to that also.

“Each of your new buddies, gallant allies or filthy traitors depending on whose point of view you're seeing them from, our PR boys or the KGB, comes fully equipped. To be fucking precise, with either a pick or a shovel.”

“Sounds like it's going to be a bundle of laughs.”

“Well the general was smiling a hell of a lot when he gave me the word. Now I've got to be getting back. Can you offer a route back to the chopper around that clown producing the smoke screen.”

Lippincott belted himself in, while Revell stood at the open door. “Great, ain't it.” The colonel tapped the back of the empty pilot's seat. “OK, so this machine's not exactly new, maybe hardly airworthy, and sure as shit I'm not a three-star general in the making, but together we're a slice of the NATO war effort, and what happens? We come to a grinding halt because this crud has to scuttle off for a piss.”

Revell, too, suddenly had strong feelings about the pilot's weak bladder, but not for the same reason as the colonel. There came a blast of rock music as a convoy of assorted civilian vehicles entered the grounds. Leading them was an ex-Warpac generator truck. Mounted on top of its box like bodywork were two enormous speakers. Following closely was a Rolls Royce convertible, a pair of Starstreak missile launchers sprouting from the place where the passenger seat had been. It and the rest of the column were heavily festooned with bright balloons and masses of bunting.

Corporal Carrington, seated on the back of the Corniche, created a temporary panic among the surrounding refugee settlements by firing off a whole belt composed entirely of multicoloured tracer, then he waved to the officers.

Groaning inwardly, Revell experienced a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He saw the colonel, open-mouthed, watch the weird variety of impressed transport crunch over the gravel toward the hotel.