Sky Strike (19 page)

The Soviet gunship fighter leader had released only two air to ground rockets when it ran into the solid wall of 30mm cannon shells. Caught by the converging fire from a pair of Thunderbolts, the chopper broke apart and fell out of the sky.

There was little of the second and third helicopter in line to actually reach the ground, as the effects of the pounding fire and the detonation of their ammunition and fuel loads reduced them to little more than fluttering showers of torn and semi- molten debris.

Seeing the fate of the others, the pilot of the last gunship tried to break away, but a snap burst from a high-velocity rotary action cannon sheared off its tail just forward of the rotor assembly. It came down like an autumn seed case, spinning around and around. Engulfed by flame as it crashed, none of the crew escaped.

Above the dead scene of past battles the sky was coming alive, being knotted by looping vapour trails. As the Thunderbolts swept the squad’s immediate attackers out of the way, their covering fighters in turn engaged and harried the Soviet and East German escorts.

Sometimes a parachute would billow close by the smudge of smoke that marked the place where an expensive piece of sophisticated technology had succumbed to the brute result of a warhead’s violent chemical reaction; more often there would be nothing to differentiate the falling bodies of the crew from the other broken parts among which they tumbled.

‘What the hell have we started?’ Open-mouthed, Cline watched a MIG-21 dive straight into the ground under full power, sending a geyser of flame a hundred feet above its point of impact. That dispersed instantly, and then apart from a shallow steaming crater and an odd sunlight-catching shred of metal there was no sign of the aircraft or its pilot.

‘Whatever, we’re taking advantage of it. Round up the squad, get them aboard, we’re still in with a chance.’

The three-dimensional sky battle was becoming more complex, more destructive. Now being conducted at several quite clearly defined altitudes, its original cause was forgotten. While radar homing, TV guided and heat seeking missiles inflicted casualties at the longer ranges, where the opposing aircraft came into closer contact, heavy cannon played their part and sent their share of victims into terminal dives that ended only with devastating impact on the ground, or with the mid-air destruction of the aircraft as fuel tanks or ammunition were ignited by incendiary rounds.

Libby felt cheated, had prepared himself for death and it hadn’t come. It was others, thousands of feet above him, who were finding death. As Burke sent them racing for their lines he watched the aerial combat, had counted nine planes destroyed so far, and had seen as many again break off action and dive for the security of their home bases with flaring wing tanks or damaged jet pipes or gaping holes in their fuselages.

He was aware of Revell watching him, knew the officer had not forgotten the incident at the foundry, and was adding that to what he had witnessed recently. It would be done kindly, Libby knew that, but he was going to be gently but firmly taken away.

Away from the Special Combat Group was not important, had never mattered to him much, only ever being a means to an end; but away meant a destination outside the Zone, and that he couldn’t bear.

It would be a place of firm discipline and soft beds, where men who only wore uniform for appearance would tell him they understood, men who had never been in combat, and whose worst loss had been their temporary removal from the comfortable consultancies they’d enjoyed in civilian life.

For most of the others in the squad, getting out of the Zone meant rest and food and safety and sex for the woman in the Land-Rover still doggedly following it meant something less tangible, but to them even more precious, freedom. For Libby, leaving the Zone, with the danger that his departure might be permanent, meant either the destruction of his mind or the ending of his life by his own hand.

Better he stay there dead, than live like a cabbage beyond the loose boundaries of the Zone. He let his hand stray to and rest lightly on the butt of the pistol tucked into his waistband. It was not time yet, but with the wheels eating up the road as they sped under the umbrella of the NATO air-cover towards the sanctuary of the West, he would not be leaving it a lot longer.

How strange that someone like Boris, who had been through a crisis of fear, should emerge stronger from the experience; but then the Russian had seen only a year of war, and only a few months of combat. Libby had been through two years, most of it in combat save for a couple of short spells in military hospitals with painful and unglamorous wounds, and it was as though during the whole time his experiences had been diminishing him, taking something from him so that eventually his resistance to the pressures must fail.

Hearing officer and NCO discussing their position, he knew that within the next few miles they would enter NATO-controlled territory. In the past he had accepted these short breaks, knowing that he was coming back, but without asking, without being told, he knew that this time he wouldn’t be. A label would be tagged to his clothing, a diagnosis applied to his mental condition, and he would be sent back to England.

He felt the butt of the pistol warming in his grasp, and at that moment knew he wouldn’t be leaving the Zone.

‘They’re getting close.’

While the major and the sergeant scrutinised the open ground ahead from the cover of the jumbled farmyard buildings, Clarence kept watch on the approaching Russian infantry patrol.

‘What do you make of them, Sergeant?’ Revell passed the binoculars.

A mile away, a file of large-wheeled vehicles was moving across their front. Partially hidden by the hedge-topped sunken lane in which they travelled, it was difficult to identify them. Hyde panned ahead, and found a gap in the thick, ill- kempt growth, and waited for them to come into his field of vision. The cab of the first appeared, and he identified it immediately. ‘They’re ours. It’s a convoy of Stalwarts.’ He saw his observations confirmed as the line of trucks emerged into the open, the forward control, high sided six-wheelers instantly recognisable.

‘Then we’re almost home. Tell the women to rig a white flag on the Land- Rover, and have a couple put on ours. No point in getting blasted by our own side when we’re on the last lap.’

A burst of machine gun fire hit a wall close by as Ripper secured a stained and tattered rag to the twisted remains of the radio aerial. ‘Can we get going now, I think we’ve been spotted?’ He dived head-first into the APC as another dozen rounds came even closer.

Hyde didn’t move, he was watching the Stalwarts as they drew up in the open and their crews left the cabs to work on traversing box-like mounts in their cargo sections. At that distance it was difficult to make out... then he saw the sides of the high mobility load carriers drop, and their crews take cover, and he knew what those contraptions were.

Smoke billowed about and almost hid the trucks as their Ranger anti-personnel mine throwers began to rapidly discharge masses of the self-arming devices. Within a minute thousands of mines had been laid in a hundred-yard-wide strip across the neglected fields.

Even before the smoke had drifted clear, the vehicle’s crews had remounted and the trucks were pulling out.

‘Signal the women to stay in our wheel tracks.’ A mortar shell punched a hole in the partially collapsed roof of the farmhouse, and Revell knew they could delay their departure no longer. A fragment of slate sliced through his sleeve and he felt warm blood trickling down his arm, and looked to see it threading from beneath his cuff and snaking over the back of his hand.

The enemy patrol was just getting the range, and several more shells fell on the farm as they pulled out, while machine gun fire raked its general area. For a few moments they would have the buildings between them and the Russians. They would have to make the most of it.

Revell kept his eyes locked on the ground where he knew the mines lay concealed in the long grass. He had seen tanks being used to deliberately clear a path through anti-personnel minefields, and had seen them suffer no worse than broken tracks, but he’d never seen a wheeled vehicle attempt it, would until now have considered it too lunatic to contemplate - but they had no choice.

Just as he thought they must have reached the danger area, there were explosions under the front wheels, and then almost immediately two more. The APC lurched on one side and Burke had to fight the steering to keep them going straight.

‘That’s one wheel gone.’ Burke’s words were drowned by more explosions and the nose of the vehicle dropped, and as it hit the ground another detonation lifted it up again for a brief moment before it crashed back down. Black smoke began to come in wisps through a rent in the floor plates. ‘We’ve now got the first five- wheeled APC. Anybody got any ideas as to how we do the last thirty yards?’

It might as well have been thirty miles. Revell could see where the grass had been disturbed in a couple of places, but for the location of each mine he could see, there were ten he couldn’t. They were designed to maim and cripple, if they moved from the APC, now beginning to burn, then that was what would happen to them. The Land-Rover was still intact, but that too would be going no further. Mines that could blast the wheels from a tough armoured vehicle would instantly turn the soft- skin into a blazing death trap.

The Russians had reached the farm and set up their guns and mortars. Although the range was extreme he could hear the bullets scything through the grass, and then a bomb landed right behind the Land-Rover.

There was nothing he could do to stop them. As more shells blasted the meadow about them, the Land-Rover surged forward, steered around the stricken carrier and bucked and lurched at speed through the grass. It had by a miracle covered perhaps half the distance to safety when the inevitable happened.

Several explosions blended together and the vehicle was lifted high into the air, spurting flame and sending bodies tumbling in every direction. Wreckage rained down and a chain-reaction rippled through the minefield. Some of the women’s remains were tossed again and again, suffering worse mutilation each time.

The fire beneath the APC was gaining a hold despite the efforts of Dooley and Burke with extinguishers. Suddenly Dooley hurled the half-full extinguisher away and began to scramble about on the floor at the rear of the compartment.

‘What the hell are you doing? Come on, we’re making a run for it.’ Ignoring the sergeant, Dooley kept raking through the piles of equipment ‘It’s gone, it’s fucking gone. Where’s my fucking pack?’

Cline looked back in, as he stood on the hull steps, taking time to choose where he’d first put his feet. ‘I chucked it, it was one of those that went out when we were stuck between the two wrecks. Was it important?’

The crud, he fucking knew. All that loot, if only he’d kept a bit in his pockets, spread it about a little ... Dooley thought, and remembered, He slid down the canted floor of the hull and reached for the jammed door of the safe. Shit, he’d get the damned thing open if he had to tear it apart with his teeth. Through a gaping corner he could see a glint of yellow metal.

As he took a firm grip of the hot metal and started to pull, the interior of the APC was suddenly brilliantly lit as the flames reached the fuel tank and it began to burn in earnest. Dooley felt the heat on his back, and then suddenly there was a searing pain in his foot and he had to beat out the flames on his boot. Fire was all around him and he was forced back, feeling it scorching his face and hands.

The major was the first to reach Cline, and dragged him to the side of the field where Andrea helped fix a tourniquet above the stump of his left leg. Deeply in shock, the bombardier was attempting to make a note of his injuries in his logbook.

Apart from minor wounds caused by fragments from the stray mine Cline had stepped on, all of the others made it. Then Revell looked again, and counted. Libby was missing.

Blazing wreckage and intense mortar fire obscured the minefield, and made returning to it out of the question. He’d last seen Libby staring at the remains of one of the girls, and had thought he’d been with them when they’d run for the shelter of the sunken road.

It wasn’t possible to be certain, perhaps the smoke was playing tricks with his eyes, but briefly he glimpsed what looked like the figure of a man. Unarmed, bareheaded, it was walking back towards the farm, back into the Zone.

A Canadian armoured car stopped alongside. Its commander surveyed the burning APC. ‘There’s a field-dressing station half a mile down the road. Did all your men get out?’

The smoke thickened and Revell didn’t see the figure again. ‘Yes, all those who wanted to.’

HEADQUARTERS.
AIR DEFENCE COMMAND.
CENTRAL SECTOR. ZONE.

General Pakovski had heard the car pull up outside, its doors slam, and now the commotion in the outer office. He had failed, and they were coming for him. Picking up the pistol he checked that a round was chambered. The door burst open and two KGB officers strode in. They paused, then stopped when they saw the pistol
‘You have left it too late for that.’
The senior KGB man reached forward to snatch up the weapon, and died with a bullet through his forehead. The other went down with two through his heart before he’d had time to display a reaction.
It was a pity it was over. Pakovski holstered the pistol and picked up his briefcase. He had enjoyed the power and the trappings that had gone with it. Now there was only one place he could go, only one place where he might be safe. It was his turn to laugh as he stepped over the bodies. He laughed again. In the whole of the war, he was the only man to ever go willingly into the Zone...