‘Looks like they just bulldozed everything flat.’ A glint of metal caught Hyde’s attention. He borrowed the binoculars for a closer examination. ‘And I mean everything. There’s cooking pans, clothes… that’s all these poor sods have got in most cases. They must have been chucked out fast. I wonder why they didn’t go back for them afterwards. This lot of scavengers would have cleared the ground down to bare soil in a matter of hours.’
‘Follow that wire.’ Very carefully Revell nudged the binoculars to bring into the sergeant’s field of vision a tangled flattened web of slotted angle iron, to which portions of the corrugated plastic sheets that had once formed walls were still attached.
Hyde adjusted the focus, picked up the dull metal thread and panned along it until it vanished in a low heap of mixed debris. The overhead sun illuminated sufficient of the mound’s interior for him to recognise the flask-shaped device nestling there.
‘A bloody minefield.’ Flicking the glasses back and forth, Hyde identified a dozen more of the trip-wires.
‘They look directional to me.’ Revell accepted the binoculars back. ‘Set to throw their fragments along the clearing, but I shouldn’t imagine the Reds are too fussy about what might spray out into the camp. This sheet,’ he tapped the canvas, ‘has a few holes that look about the right size.’ Again he flicked the thick material, where quarter and eight inch diameter holes admitted beams of light that streamed like miniature searchlights across the hovel’s dark interior.
‘Many did go back.’ Andrea crossed to stand by Revell, as though she might look out, but she didn’t. ‘The Russians did not stop or warn them. They let the mines do it. Everyone who has tried has been killed, even those who had been in the army and thought they could deal with the mines. They go off if you touch the wires, and there are others that go off for no reason when you are near.’
‘They wouldn’t take that sort of trouble for a few bags of cement, Major. There must be more in there than some unfinished drains.’ Revell nodded agreement. ‘I think you’re right, Sergeant Hyde. We still need more information, but I think we just found our target.’
NINE
It was so damned frustrating. Revell panned the binoculars across the clearing and then over the eye-confusing clutter of the detached portion of the camp. There was nothing more to be learnt from their present position.
The few outward signs of the minefield gave every indication of its having been most carefully laid. On their own, the criss-crossing trip-wires would have provided a major and time-consuming hazard to safe clearance, but there were other, more subtle indicators that various different types of mine were also in use. In places there appeared to be inviting gaps in the network of wires; Revell didn’t doubt they were a deliberate invitation to the unwary. Pressure, noise, vibration, any one of a dozen stimuli might set off the traps beneath the seemingly safe lanes. They had neither the time, nor the expertise to clear a way through.
Hyde had been considering the same problem. ‘No way past that lot, Major, not in one piece, and I should imagine it goes all around the place.’
Only half listening to the sergeant, Revell swept the glasses upward to the bare gentle slopes of the surrounding hills. ‘We need to find somewhere up there, where we can keep watch for a while and try and figure out the layout of the place.’
‘It’ll have to give good cover.’ There was no enthusiasm in Libby’s voice for the idea. ‘If this is the place we think it is, then the Ruskies aren’t going to take too kindly to having bunches of sightseers gawping at it.’
‘Now where the hell did they come from?’ Coming down through the long grass away to their left Revell saw a group of Russian soldiers. They were lounging along, some indulging in horseplay, all of them carrying their jackets in a casual manner, though as they neared the bottom of the slope, just before they disappeared from sight behind the detached part of the camp, they had begun to dress and tidy themselves.
‘Look at the top of the hill… no, more to your right, that’s it.’ Under the sergeant’s guidance, Revell brought the grey tiled rooftop into his field of vision. That was all that was visible of the building that lay just over the crest.
‘It’s the Reds’ knocking shop, you’d call it a cat-house. Round here it’s known as The Farm.’
At Hyde’s words Andrea stopped fanning herself with the opened front of her jacket and looked at her watch. ‘The Russian pigs allow the girls to sleep in the afternoon. That will be the last of them leaving now. They have stayed late today. The whores will not be at their best tonight.’
‘Be an ideal place from which to keep an eye on those workshops, if that’s what they are.’
‘You still have doubts then, Major?’ Libby borrowed the glasses.
‘We have to be sure. The Reds will only give us the one crack at a stunt like this. If we screw up and all we hit is a field kitchen or mobile bath unit, we’ll not only get blasted for a big fat zero, we’ll screw it up for the poor SOBs who have to come along after us and try for the real thing. Even if it is the outfit we’re looking for, I don’t want us to go charging in and shoot up a handful of empty bays and a couple of junked soft-skins. Surprise is the only compensation we have for lack of numbers. At the speed we’ll have to get in and out there won’t be time to hunt for targets, we have to hit them where it hurts first time.’ He looked at Andrea. She had closed her jacket again, that was a pity. He had enjoyed watching the twin swells of her high breasts.
‘Are you sure about the Ruskies clearing out of that place in the afternoon?’
‘That is how it has always been. I do not think they change it.’
‘You know the place, Sergeant. Are there any problems in walking in there and staying low until we’re ready to make our move?’
‘Not that I can think of, Major. There’s just the one building. Front and back door. Central staircase. Six rooms upstairs, five down. There’s a big attic which runs the length of the roof and a small cellar.’
‘Are there any Russian units close by?’ This time the girl had to refer the query to Kurt; he didn’t bother to reply, just shook his head.
‘Do you know of any commander, in any army, Major, who’d build a barracks close to a brothel?’
‘Can’t say I do, Sergeant Hyde, but I can think of a few Staff Officers who’d make sure the HQ was next door to one.’ If Hyde had tried to score a point there, Revell hadn’t let him. It was difficult to tell when the NCO was being sarcastic and when he wasn’t.
Hyde had meant his remark to be a light one, but it had not come out that way. For all this Yank’s drive and efficiency, and determination to be in the forefront of the action, Hyde was beginning to take a dislike to him. He was too bloody austere, Even the outwardly flippant counter he’d made to Hyde’s question had been delivered’ without a trace of humorous intent. It was difficult, no impossible, to imagine what the American officer did when he wasn’t on duty.
Did he sit and play solo all day, stand to attention in a cupboard until it was time to go back on duty again?
Oh sod it. Why couldn’t they have left him and Clarence and the others happily potting away at Russian tanks and crews in the salient? Was it simply fate, or the malice of some nameless clerk he’d crossed at battalion HQ that had got him involved in this half-wit scheme?
Well he was lumbered with it now, but if he came through it alright then there was no chance of his doing it again. Soon as it was over he’d rejoin his own outfit like a shot.