Hyde had been sidling nearer to the officer while the exchange went on, and now he whispered from behind the hand he held over his lipless mouth. ‘I’ve got a smoke grenade. We could be out of here before this lot know what’s happening.’
Though he didn’t hear the words, the shaven-headed East German sensed that something was going on and took a threatening pace forward. He indicated with jerking movements of his submachine gun that he wanted them to move apart.
‘Well?’ Hyde held his ground.
‘No, we can use their firepower. It’s our transport they want. I reckon we can trust them until the job’s done.’ Revell spoke to the girl. ‘Tell your ugly friend we’ll do a deal.’
While Revell, the girl, and bullet-head held a discussion to iron out the details of the arrangement, Hyde and Libby withdrew to a corner. ‘Can’t say I’m too keen on this, Sarge. Do you think he knows what he’s doing?’
‘I bloody hope so. It’s not just his neck he’s sticking out. Mind you. he’s right about them being OK until they find out where the skimmer is; it’s after that things could start to get a bit hairy. I wouldn’t put anything past this lot.’
‘I know someone who won’t like this arrangement -Clarence.’ Libby accepted a cigarette and a light from Hyde. ‘As far as he’s concerned, once a Commie always a Commie. He’s quite likely to blow their heads off the moment he sees them.’
‘I can’t see the major being too happy about that if it happens. So we’d better keep an eye on him, hadn’t you.
The heavy emphasis wasn’t lost on Libby, ‘I’m not his bloody keeper.’
‘You are now. I’m not having this job and my pension buggered up, just because one of my blokes takes it into his head to shoot GDR deserters into decent imitations of lace curtains with dum-dums. Anyway, you’re the only one he really gets on with.’
That was something Libby could not deny. He and Clarence had lost much in the war. For the sniper though the loss of his family, a part of his mind and his humanity at least had been sudden and complete. For Libby fate had reserved a more spiteful piece of cruelty. Two days before he and Helga were to be married, the Russian armour had plunged into West Germany: the border town of Ratzburg where she lived with her grandfather had been one of the first to be overrun. All he could do now was keep looking and hoping. To do so he had to stay in the Zone, and he’d stay there for as long as it continued to exist, and he lived.
Revell concluded his discussion through their interpreter and rejoined Hyde. ‘He’s called Kurt.’ Revell indicated the leading deserter. ‘He says he is, or rather was, a captain in the 8th GDR Motor Rifle Division.’
‘The hell he was.’
‘I agree with you, Sergeant. Those weapons they’re carrying must be the ones they had when they went over the hill, and the only units I know of that were still issued with those antiquated pieces when the war started were the Grepos, the border police.’
‘We’re not in very nice company, then, are we. I wonder how the girl got mixed up with them.’ The more Libby saw of her, the more she reminded him of Helga. It was the stance she adopted, her air of determination, independence, Helga’s qualities, the reasons he felt sure she must still be alive.
‘Who knows. Maybe you’ll get the chance to ask her. They’re going to show us exactly where the Russians were doing their digging. You don’t seem at all happy with the idea, Sergeant Hyde.’
The Yank was a perceptive bastard, Hyde had to give him that. How do you tell an officer you reckon he needs his bleeding brains tested? ‘It’s your decision, Major, but there’s a couple of precautions I think we should take while they’re around.’
‘OK, I’m listening.’
‘Main thing is to keep an eye on Kurt. If any trouble starts he’ll be the one to fire first. And don’t let them bunch us together. Stay spread out among them, that way we’ll make less of a target if they try any funny business.’
‘That’s a nice comforting thought.’ Libby deliberately lengthened a tear in his ragged over-clothes to make access to his pistol and grenades easier. It was a bloody stupid way of going to war: dressed like a tramp, working with scum who probably didn’t even trust each other and certainly couldn’t be trusted by anyone else. That was the Zone, slowly destroying even those it didn’t kill, grinding them lower and lower to a sub-human level where any action was acceptable or justifiable. But these men were border police, men who’d earned bonus payments for each would-be escaper through the Iron Curtain that they shot down. They had a head start on everyone else.
EIGHT
‘Can’t you do something to keep him quiet? Give him another jab, two if it’ll help.’ The intermittent screams from the wounded man were beginning to fray Burke’s nerves.
‘What do you want me to do, gag him?’ Rinehart was becoming irritated by the constant interference. ‘He’s had an extra shot already, but it doesn’t do any good, not with the skull fractures he’s got.’
‘That’s not bloody fractures, half his bloody head is shot away. Why don’t you save him a lot of pain, get it over with now?’
The black had to wait until Nelson had finished another sequence of wailing and incoherent shouting before his reply could be heard. ‘In our outfit we don’t pull the plug on nobody, not even a specimen like you.’
‘I would, if it were him.’ Dooley grinned broadly at Burke.
Cohen stepped back inside. He’d gone out on to the ramp for a while to get away from the bickering, and smell of sweat and blood and stale tobacco. There was little movement of air about the skimmer. Even with every hatch and port open, the fetid atmosphere inside was hardly stirred by the light breeze that ruffled the tops of the oaks.
‘I’ve counted. Between you, you’ve managed to start fifteen arguments in the five hours since the major left. Maybe you want to try for sixteen?’ No one took Cohen up. ‘You want to get some air, kid, you’re starting to look a bit green about the gills.’ He moved aside to let Collins squeeze past. ‘Don’t step off the ramp. If you want to have a pee you’ll have to do it from there, anything, else you’ll have to hang on to. I’ve spotted a suspicious lump below that might react rather loudly to having a pile of shit dropped on it.’
‘You sure are taking this being left in charge thing seriously. I ain’t never even heard an officer telling anyone how to crap. Hey, can you imagine that?’ The idea appealed to Dooley, and he offered it to the general audience. ‘On the command, wait for it, pants down. Shitting commences now. Arse paper will only be torn off from left to right…’
An outburst of yelling from Nelson blotted out his finale. As the wounded man’s shouts tailed away, and the wracking arching spasm that had accompanied it subsided, before Dooley could repeat his last words, there was the sound of cannon fire.
‘Light stuff.’ Like the others Burke froze in his seat as he listened intently, trying to identify the type and direction of fire. ‘North of the woods, so it’s not between us and the major.’
‘That’s Commie flak, twin 23mm mount by the sound of it.’ There was another noise Rinehart could detect between the rapid bursts. Faint at first, but growing louder, a high-pitched buzzing like a disturbed bee-hive. No, more like the engine of a model aircraft. ‘Hell, it’s an RPV, a sky-spy.’
Even as he said it, at the end of a sustained rattle of cannon fire the tinny note changed, became ragged.
Still on the ramp, Collins looked up and saw the miniature craft for an instant as it flashed overhead. Looking like a six-foot-diameter discus with a lift fan set in its centre, the dappled white-and-blue remotely piloted reconnaissance vehicle swished a leaf-chopping path across the treetops as it plunged towards the ground. The cloudless sky could be seen through a large dark-edged hole near its rim, from which spun a trail of vaporising fuel. ‘That’s one of ours.’