Plague Bomb (2 page)

‘Sir Julian is quite right.’ Nodding agreement with their driver, Professor Edwards gave up the unequal struggle to try to obtain a more equitable share of the available space and sought distraction in a contribution to the discussion. ‘We should recall our mission, its purpose. For the sake of that, for appearance’s sake, we should strive to achieve a degree of harmony. I must myself admit, that while I cannot subscribe to so optimistic a projection of the outcome of our endeavours we must not let petty differences blind us to the importance…’

‘Aw, shut it, you prissy asshole.’ The CND badge pinned to the left breast of the stained fawn anorak worn by the woman in the front passenger seat rose and fell significantly as she let out a long sigh. She leaned across and spoke to their driver as he steered them on to a fresh heading that would take them past the NATO troops. ‘Jesus Webb, did you say that Edwards had won a Nobel prize? What for, hot air and bullshit?’

Webb glanced at the woman, able to spare only that moment as the potholed surface and the many broken boughs that littered it tested even the Rover’s rugged suspension and power steering. ‘He was espousing the cause of disarmament before you were born, let alone before you decided you weren’t much good as an actress and there might be more in it for you to make yourself into a pale imitation of Jane Fonda.’

‘He got you there.’ Gross leaned forward and turned a wet-lipped rubbery leer to the women. ‘Be warned little starlet, little aging starlet, Sir Julian here has crossed verbal swords with better men and women than you. For years he’s been virtually a compulsory member of every expert panel on television and radio in England. He’s made more in appearance fees than you have hooking on Broadway between walk- on parts, or should I say lie-down parts.’

‘That’ll do Gross, let it go at that.’ Wrenching the wheel hard over, Webb didn’t quite succeed in avoiding a deep hole where a drain cover had collapsed. From Father Venables came a yelp as the vehicle lurched. A garishly coloured flask jumped from his hand, bounced against the fabric lining of the roof and spattered all the passengers with lukewarm coffee.

Again Webb caught a glimpse of the woman, this time as she tried to cover her head against the sticky deluge. She wasn’t completely successful and the sweet fluid trickled through her plastered hair and down her cheek. Immediately she set to work to repair the damage, using tissues and cosmetics from a small bag pulled from the depths of a pocket. He wondered how much effort went into cultivating her outdoor look.

The grubby jacket hugging close to her curves, the tight faded jeans; it was all carefully contrived, like her carelessly attractive hair style. But as she worked fast with comb and make-up for an instant he saw the real Sherry Kane, frightened of being a shade over thirty, trying hard to stay in the mould, maintain the image she liked to see of herself. As repairs to hair and face were completed, her style returned and she launched back into character.

‘Can we get around that position, or are we likely to be up to our fannies in NATO boy scouts any minute?’

That conjured an absurd and amusing picture, and Webb was surprised that Gross didn’t jump in with something suitably suggestive and crude. Possibly the picture wasn’t so outlandish; perhaps not boy scouts, but Webb could imagine her going with younger men, much younger…

‘It’s not a position. We’re far out in front of any fixed defensive lines, have been for the last six hours. Actually there are other parts of the Zone we could have driven across in that time, if there hadn’t been the certainty of our being spotted within a few miles. Here it’s going to take us a day or so, but the ground forces are far more thinly spread and there’s a good chance we’ll be able to slip between them. Besides, the more arduous the journey the greater the gesture, and its publicity value.’

‘What were those troops then?’
Venables re-secured the top of the all but empty flask. ‘Pioneers, I should think, a pick and shovel company cleaning up after the fighting, poor devils, too stupid even to be used as cannon fodder. Not the sort we have to worry about. We can forget them; they’ll not be bothering us.’

TWO
The Leopard armoured recovery vehicle followed Sergeant Hyde and his squad as they walked along the scorched section of road, assessing the suitability of the knocked-out trucks and personnel carriers for repair.

At irregular intervals the surface was pockmarked by shallow indentations where the engineers had removed mines the Russians had found time to plant after springing their ambush on the column.

In many cases there was little of the vehicles left to examine. Fierce blazes had completed the work started by close-range tank fire. Ammunition and fuel loads had burned long enough to totally consume all but steel bodywork and chassis members.

An M113 armoured personnel carrier had come to rest a little off the road, having taken only a single hit, and not burned; it looked a more promising candidate for their attention.

The shell’s impact had jammed the rear door, and Dooley had to take a crowbar to it. When finally he managed to pry it open the air was suddenly full of fat black flies as a miniature tidal wave of decomposed mushed flesh and bloated maggots slopped slowly around the sides of the partially lowered ramp, and to the ground.

Ripper started to heave, threatened to set others off, until Hyde shoved him away.

Holding a cologne-doused cloth over his mouth and nose, Dooley waved sapper Thorne forward. His voice came indistinctly from behind the rag. ‘What you waiting for, give it a fucking burst.’

‘Anything to oblige.’ As he stepped up, for once he could envy their sergeant. The furnace heat that had long ago destroyed the NCO’s face had also ruined his sense of smell. Bracing himself in anticipation of the weapon’s surging recoil, Thorne aligned the fuel dribbling nozzle of the man-pack flame thrower on the partially open rear of the carrier.

It bucked in his hands as a three second burst squirted a mushrooming jet of yellow fire, filling his ears with its distinctive wailing screech and washing away the stench of rotting tissue and replacing it with the familiar pungent fumes of unconsumed petrol-jelly.

‘Salvage detail, who’d bloody have it. Must be the worst sodding work there is in the whole of the ruddy Zone.’ A single small arms round cooked off inside, and Burke ducked, expecting more, but there was only the one. ‘Well isn’t it?’

‘You don’t hear any of us arguing, do you?’ Cautiously Dooley approached the combined ramp and door and put his boot onto its warm metal. Using all his weight he tried to force it down further, but it moved only a fraction before its damaged hydraulics locked and prevented any more movement.

Smoke came from scraps of cloth smouldering among the remains inside. Soot stained the metal walls of the interior and coated much of the surface of the sluggish mess oozing toward them.

A neat circular hole marked where the Russian tank shell had penetrated, the APCs bulging and distorted aluminium armour indicated that its explosive filling had detonated inside the crew compartment. Of the driver and commander and their eleven infantry passengers all that remained was the gelatinous layer of pulped flesh on the floor and bench tops. Fragments of larger bones made it lumpy, as did broken rifles and submachine guns, and crushed helmets holding the pulverized remains of skulls.

A tidy row of boots along either side added a touch of gruesome absurdity. From some protruded the stumps of ankles and from a pair at the far end, untouched by the roaring flame, came a non-stop cascade of squirming white maggots as they overflowed from the heaving food gorged mass that filled them.

‘I thought the hygiene squads were supposed to take care of this sort of thing.’ Not making the mistake of coming too close again, still Ripper had to fight to suppress the urge to retch.

Thorne slipped from the harness of the flame thrower and lowered its triple cylinder pack to the ground, laying it carefully before leaning the hose-linked projector and trigger group against it. A gentle hiss of escaping propellant nitrogen gas came from a pressure tank until he gave its valve an extra half turn. ‘You’re joking. Half the battle damaged armour being back loaded for repair at base workshops has bodies or bits on board. The poor devils from REME who do that job can’t cope with it all. Anyway, does the rear-area warriors good to see how mucky the war can be. I’m surprised you’re not hardened to it by now. Must be those weird hand-rolled fags you smoke, upsetting your stomach.’

‘Oh, yeah, and what makes you an authority on everything. Seems to me you ain’t so clever, you only just got out after doing twenty-eight days and losing your stripes for impersonating an officer.’ There was more Ripper would have added, but in his anger at the sapper for mentioning his joints within hearing of the major, he took a step forward too far, and the smell hit him again. He was forced to retreat with his hand clamped tight over his mouth.

‘I wouldn’t have if your precious major had kept his word and dropped the charges after I knocked out that commie anti-tank position.*

‘He’s your major as well, now.’ Sergeant Hyde picked up the flame thrower and thrust it back at the sapper. ‘You remember that. He’d have willed his soul to the devil, and ours as well, in exchange for the destruction of those Ruskie guns; just be grateful that he spoke up for you at the court martial. You could have gone down for a lot, lot longer.’

‘Like forever.’ Setting his head on one side, Dooley let his coated tongue loll from his mouth and made a pantomime of tugging a noose tight about his neck.

‘You’re not expecting us to shovel this mess, are you.’ The sentence was phrased precisely by Clarence. It was not a question, it was a statement, a refusal in advance of any order.

‘Heaven forbid that our aseptic sniper should ever be compelled to do such a nasty thing.’ Using the butt of his rifle, Hyde pushed the door shut as far as it would go. I heard you turned down a medal because you were scared you might have to shake hands with a general at the presentation. If you can’t even stand contact with the living then who am I to force you to consort with the dead. Anyway, it’s not worth bothering with, it’s a write-off.’

Those words came as a relief to their Russian deserter. Since Major Revell had gone off to headquarters to try and get their assignment altered, Boris had been given all of the worst duties by their NCO. In anticipation of being told to climb into the carrier he had already begun to assemble his entrenching tool, now he quietly, and hopefully unobtrusively, stowed it once more. His actions did not entirely escape the sergeant’s notice.

‘Go tell the ARV crew they can stand down, there’s nothing for us here. We’ll have a brew then get on to the next site. You know where the tea things are.’ All of them stopped, turned and looked as they heard the personnel carrier’s door being lowered again. It was Andrea who was surveying the ghastly interior. Her sharp dark eyes met Hyde’s. 

‘Was it like .this when your face was destroyed?’ Her expression didn’t alter as she glanced from the horrors of the vehicle to the sergeant’s mask-like graft-built features.

Hyde knew there were few men who could have looked at either without registering at least revulsion.

‘No, it was the plasma jet from a hollow-charge warhead that took my face. This looks like it was done by an armour-piercing high explosive round. From the size of the entry hole I’d say about a hundred and twenty-five millimetre. That would make it from a T72 or T84, or maybe an up-gunned T64. That what you wanted to know?’

She didn’t answer, but walked away, to sit by Boris as he set about boiling water on a small field stove he had scrounged the use of from the young conscript crew of the West German recovery vehicle. Squatting on a wheel blasted from a nearby Mercedes six-wheeler she cradled her grenade discharger fitted Ml6, her finger hooked casually around the trigger.

Her proximity obviously made the Russian nervous. It took him several attempts before he succeeded in getting the unfamiliar equipment to function correctly, and twice his fumblings almost upset the water.

Hyde had seen her have that effect on others; but then she had some effect on everyone she came in contact with. Among men it varied from manifestations of lust to abject fear, and sometimes both within the space of seconds.

With women the band of emotive reaction was not as broad, but was within it, if anything, even more pronounced. It was at moments like this, as Hyde caught a good view of her beautiful profile, as even the bulky equipment festooned combat outfit failed to entirely conceal her superb figure, that he could understand their officer’s obsession with her. Not that she had ever done anything to encourage the major, the reverse in fact, but the American had fallen in a big way. There were times when it was beginning to have a detrimental effect on the unit’s efficiency.

‘I been thinking…’ ‘Thought I could smell burning.’ Ignoring the sapper’s interruption, Dooley went on, ‘…you know I reckon we could have a worse job than this.’ He grinned and waited for the inevitable response from the expected direction, and wasn’t disappointed.

Conscious of being older than the others, Burke had begun to see himself as a father figure. With the pronouncements he made on any and every subject being for the most part ignored by his companions, he’d come to see their silence as unquestioning acceptance of his wisdom, and expected such as his due. Dooley’s disagreement with his assessment of-their task’s lowly status was not well received and he set about unintentionally providing yet more ammunition for the big man’s lumbering wit.

‘Tell me then, go on, tell me. Here we are, stuck miles forward of our own lines, in an area where we know there’s a commie armoured battle group operating,’ sweeping his arms wide he indicated the ambushed and shattered re-supply column, ‘where we could get clobbered ourselves at any moment, and have nothing bigger than a bloody grenade to hit back with, here we are hauling wrecks and shovelling shit. You think you can come up with something worse?’

‘Course I can. For a start, we could be ten miles east of here.’ ‘So what’s so kinda special about that chunk of the Zone. Seems to me that one piece of this godforsaken land is pretty much the same as any other.’ Under cover of the squad’s interest in the baiting of their driver, Ripper had rolled and lit a joint. Taking a series of quick draws before extinguishing it and adding it to his meagre stock, he saw their sergeant watching him, and almost dropped the tin as he replaced it in his pocket.