As the pair departed the sergeant looked around for other work to hand out. Burke and Dooley became instantly engrossed in a minute examination of the nearest objects. In the driver’s case it was the fuel gauges. The big man’s sudden intense interest in the back of the hand with which he’d been in the act of smothering a yawn was less effective as a task-avoiding ploy.
‘You can get working on this lot.’
Dooley just caught the satchel of blast grenades. ‘What do I do with these?’
‘I’m sorely tempted to tell you, but what I really want is to have them made up into nice tidy bundles of four or five each. When you’ve done that, you can do the same with these incendiary grenades.’
Comprehension dawned on Dooley, as he accepted a more carefully passed bag of thermite bombs. ‘Now you’re talking business.’
Clarence sat at the back of the compartment. Since Hyde and Libby had returned and he’d been summoned down from his position in the turret he’d not said a word; now he looked at Hyde and spoke quietly. ‘You haven’t said precisely what I am doing in all this. Where do I come in?’
Hyde squeezed on to the bench beside the sniper and took out the map. ‘We’ll be taking on the workshops from the direction of the farm, from here, see.’ He turned the map for Clarence. ‘Now the Ruskie we collared says there’s a pair of camouflaged light anti-aircraft guns on the hill opposite. If they spot us and can get into action, at that range, about a thousand yards, we’ll be cut to bits. You’ll take up a position on the flank and snipe the crews to pin them down. We’ll pick you up on the way out.’
There was no concern or emotion in Clarence’s voice. ‘What are they? If they’re above machine gun calibre there will be shields for the gun-layers. At that range I’ll not be able to get through them, I’ll have to content myself with picking off the loaders, and slow their rate of fire.’
‘All the Ruskie knew was that they were light, only four or five crewmen to each.’
‘Then it’ll most likely be twin 23mm or single 57mm mounts. Well, I’ll do what I can.’
‘Good, thanks.’ Now why the hell had he thanked him. It mildly annoyed Hyde that Clarence always exuded an air of superiority, though there was nothing in his manner, apart from that impeccable accent, that could account for the impression he gave.
Now there was only the wounded man to see to, Hyde had been putting that off. Nelson was still clinging to the last shreds of life. His breathing was starting to become noisy, and every laboured intake seemed like it might be his last, but still the next one came, and the next, and the next.
Rinehart moved over so the sergeant could get a closer look at him. ‘He’s a tough kid.’ Hyde almost added ‘more’s the pity’, but checked himself. ‘Do you think he’ll last until we get him back?’
‘Hey, Sarge, you don’t have to have an expression on your face for me to know you ain’t really interested. What you want to know is how long is he going to hang on.’
‘That’s what I’m thinking, is it?’
‘Sure it is. This ain’t the first time I’ve been in action with the major. He reckons we should pull out all the stops, hit the Commies with all we’ve got and finish them once and for all. And since he can’t get the General Staff to go along with that, he kinda practises it himself. Total War is the term he uses. It sorta fits the way we’ve always gone about things. Firepower is his. God and the Zone is his temple. He wants me up front zapping Reds, not pissing about back here playing nurse. So am I right or am I right?’
‘How do you feel about it?’ Hyde was conscious that the others were listening. ‘What about, killing Reds or leaving Nelson?’ Hyde nodded at the wounded soldier.
There was the briefest hesitation, and the answer was not as slick this time. ‘We all got to go eventually. Guess he’s as comfortable and going as easy as a lot I’ve seen. Better he kicks the bucket now than lives on with only half a head and no brain. Bed sores, baby food and contempt is all he s got to go back to.’
‘You ain’t thinking of helping the kid along are you?’ Dooley paused in his work. ‘They can fix up most anything now. A guy in ‘C’ company got scalped by a bomb splinter, took the top off his skull like the lid off a coffee pot. They fitted a plate over the hole and now he’s even got hair growing back.’
‘That was different. Nelson here has lost a chunk of his brain.’ Peeling back the edge of yet another blood-soaked bandage, Rinehart exposed the scooped-out hollow surrounded by jagged bone and untidy flaps of hair-tufted skin.
The display did nothing to weaken Dooley’s stubborn stance. ‘I’m just telling you, there ain’t no one going to give the kid the cut-the-grass. Not while he’s in with a chance.’
‘Who said anything about finishing him? The major just wants us to dose him up and make sure he can’t come to any harm while we go off and do the job.’
Dooley shifted uneasily. Some of the ground had been knocked from under him, but he wasn’t prepared to let it go that easily. ‘OK, just so long as that’s understood. And no trying anything funny like slipping him a couple of extra shots so he OD’s.’
When the big man had flown off the handle Hyde’s immediate reaction had been to regret raising the subject a full hour before they’d have to leave, but now he saw it had worked to his advantage. Dooley would have made the same fuss later on about tying Nelson. By accepting it as a lesser evil, he would presumably raise no further objection when the time came. Now with that out of the way, Hyde began to check off the long list of ordnance they’d be taking with them.
It was impressive, it needed to be, they were going after a very hard target. ‘Those friends of yours behaving themselves with the girls?’ Andrea didn’t answer the real question Revell had concealed in the sentence. ‘I do not know, or care. Some of them are keeping a watch that is all that matters. The whores are used to being abused. It will keep them in practice.’
Their Russian captive looked on uncomprehendingly, but constantly glanced from the girl to the officer as they spoke, as though in so doing he might deduce what they were discussing, and whether it concerned him. ‘Have you been with Kurt and the others very long?’ He tried burying the question another way, determined to find out her relationship with the motley crew of renegades and traitors.
‘Why do you not simply ask me if I sleep with them? Are you afraid you will not like my answer?’
‘Well, do you?’ Her bluntness had surprised him. He tried belatedly to match it.
‘No.’ She added nothing to the bald statement. Revell probed now that he had at last got her to talk. ‘What’s your secret? One of them must have tried something.’
‘Yes, one of them did try to have me, when I was first with them. I killed him, before he could. It will save us both time if I tell you I do not like men, so you see there is no use in your pursuing me.’
Was he that damned obvious? At one time he’d prided himself on his technique, and he knew it still worked, but not on this one. Apart from a rather mannish middle-aged teacher at high-school, who’d been the cause of much speculation and a host of wild and often absurd or obscene rumours, he’d never knowingly had any contact with lesbians. Was she one? Somehow he couldn’t picture her in another woman’s arms, but he couldn’t picture her in a man’s either. She was hard, but she still moved like a woman and could hardly be judged by her appearance. If every girl back in the States who’d ever worn jeans and jacket were a lesbian, then who the hell was it keeping the birth rate up?
‘Do you drink?’ Revell offered her the opened bottle of vodka, from which both he and Hyde had only taken a sip. It tasted like aviation spirit, and must have been over a hundred proof.