A million thoughts, images, emotions flashed in rapid sequence through Libby’s mind. Oh God he hated this place, this war, the Zone. Helga, that was all he wanted, just to find her, then none of this would matter any more. He’d desert, go East, West, even stay in the Zone just so long as he could be with her. He needed her, hadn’t been with another woman since the war had taken her from him, swept her out of his reach. Frustrations that masturbation had done little to relieve were welling up inside him. All those hours over the last two years spent in finding moments alone and then frantically working himself to a climax.
‘You like this?’
A hand was pulling at his trousers, expertly unfastening them, seeking his erection.
‘It is wet. You want me?’
Waves of sickly sweet perfume filled his nostrils, and through the several layers of clothing he felt the twin hummocks of flesh dangling to the woman’s waist rolling against his own stomach. A fat sweat-sticky leg was thrusting between his thighs.
‘NO.’ He hadn’t meant the shout to be so loud or the blow so hard.
The pistol pinned between their bodies swept up and the butt of the weapon caught the whore under the chin. Too heavy to be lifted off her feet by the blow, she reeled back, blood from a tooth-pierced bottom lip already staining her naked front, and collapsed among the other women.
‘I… I…’ Damn it, he couldn’t say he was sorry, he wasn’t. ‘She shouldn’t have kept bothering me… it was her own fault.’
The words were understood, or heard, or were ignored as the others gathered around the victim and helped her to a sitting position. She made no complaint, dabbing at her swelling lip with the inside of the hem of her garment. All of them bore marks and bruises on various parts of their bodies, some on their faces. The elderly whore had had longer than most to get used to the inevitable punishments that went with her trade. Once the bleeding was staunched her concern turned to her fussily trimmed nightdress and she checked it over inch by inch, heedless of how much she exposed herself in the process, until she was satisfied that no outward facing material was marked.
To conceal what he felt sure must be the still huge and obvious mound of his erection, Libby leant in a corner and crossed his hands in front of himself. There was still six hours until last light. It was going to seem a lifetime if he had to stay in here. When the attack commenced time would speed up a hundredfold.
The thought of the fighting didn’t worry him, he was certain he’d come through it. God had screwed up his life enough already, the bugger couldn’t be so bloody spiteful as to bring it to an end before he found Helga again. Only the Communists practised nastiness of that order.
Libby fished out and threw the woman a bar of chocolate he’d been saving for later. He now regretted having used so much violence, the desired effect could have been achieved by using less, or perhaps none at all. It’d been partly his own fault that the situation had got so far out of hand. Despite himself he’d been fascinated as well as repelled by the sight of the plump body offered him. He pushed the idea from his thoughts, shuddering to physically aid its departure.
Perhaps sometime, not now, it wouldn’t hurt just to have one woman. He’d do it very quickly, seeking nothing but swift gratification of a very basic need, Helga would understand, he knew she would. He’d held out so long. Yes, perhaps he would, the present might be easier with that future to think on. And now he had that to look forward to, the afternoon would pass all the sooner and bring the future, and Helga, nearer.
‘It’s not a lot to go on, Major.’ Hyde looked at the sketch. The pencilled outline, looking rather like a plump bullet, that was the detached section of the camp in which they were interested bore very few details, and those had question marks against them.
‘You might as well say it, it’s damn-all. We’ve got the right place. These deep churned tracks leading to it,’ Revell shaded in a mass of lines that converged on the head of the bullet, ‘they scream tanks. That area down there that looks like any other piece of the camp is just a shell, outer camouflage for the 97th’s workshops, and we can’t find out a damned thing about it.’
Beads of sweat were trickling down from Hyde’s hairline, making glistening lines on the pinkly unreal tissue of his reconstructed face. It was sweltering in the attic. The two tiles they had prised loose and sent skittering down the roof to land with shattering crashes behind the house had done nothing to aid the flow of air, bring any cooling draughts. He took another look out of the hole.
They were only five hundred yards from the place, and with the advantage of a couple of hundred feet of elevation over it, and still apart from the probable location of the main entrance they knew nothing, except that they had been right about the minefield going all the way around. A wide belt of untrampled and rampant grass testified to that.
There was no doubt at all that the workshop was a very juicy target. Packed into those few acres was a battalion that would normally have spread its valuable vehicles and machinery over several times that area to avoid making a concentrated target. Nestling under the wide false roof were engine shops, armouries, assembly lines, machinery trucks, welding bays and masses and masses of stores the Russians could ill afford to lose.
‘So what do you think?’ The major waited for Hyde to finish his inspection of their target.
‘I think we’ll need an awful lot of luck to do any real damage if we go at it without knowing which part is which.’
‘I agree. One of the main problems is that they won’t keep much in the way of fuel and ammunition there, those will be in dumps elsewhere, so we can’t even hope for a lucky hit on one of those helping us out.’
‘There is one thing though.’ A thought suddenly struck Hyde. ‘The Russians are a sloppy lot of buggers when it comes to safety measures, and I can’t believe the 97th will be any different.’
‘So?’ the point eluded Revell.
‘So the workshops are accepting tanks straight from the frontline, fuelled and armed. When a tank reaches a REME workshop the first thing that happens is that the ammo is removed. If the Ruskies stay true to form and don’t bother, then every tank in there will be better than a one-ton bomb.’
‘It’s a good idea, we go for the tanks as well as the machinery and personnel…’
‘And if just a few of them brew up and their racks blow, they’ll gut the place.’
‘Very neat, I like it, but we still come back to the fact that we don’t know where the tanks, or the machinery or anything is. It’s a pity Libby was so fast on the trigger, we could have used those…’
‘Russians. There are Russians coming.’ It was Andrea, calling from downstairs. ‘How many, and where?’ Revell was the first back down. ‘Just two.’ Keeping well back from a yellowed net curtain, she indicated the pair of brown clad, black booted soldiers who were surreptitiously working their way towards the rear of the farmhouse. Their pistols were holstered, and all they carried was a haversack each.
‘They’re not after us. They’re coming to visit their girlfriends.’ The major watched as the Russians cautiously peered out from behind the cover of a rusting farm tractor at the back door. The nervousness they displayed at every move they made and noise they heard indicated that they were breaking a lot of regulations by being there. ‘I want them alive, one at least. Andrea, tell Kurt and the others not to fire, not unless a lot more come running, but I think these two are very much on their own. OK, Sergeant Hyde, let’s you and me go and prepare a welcome for our visitors.’
Masses of half-eaten scraps of food littered the kitchen floor. Hyde slipped and almost fell when his boot skidded on a slice of cucumber, as the two of them took up places of concealment. They had to wait several more minutes before a shadowy outline showed behind the frosted pane in the door’s upper half, and there was a tentative, almost apologetic knock. It was repeated a little louder though still timidly, and then again. Slowly the handle began to turn and the door opened just a crack.