‘Pity a few more don’t do it, save us having to tackle so many that get through.’ Dooley got to his feet. ‘Yeah, this’ll do.’ With his foot he started the body rolling.
Burke helped move it off the track with similar assistance. I know one thing, I’m bloody glad it’s a skimmer I drive, and not a ruddy tracked APC. With the number of bloody mines the Russians are starting to use, I want as little contact with the ground as possible.’
‘Less maintenance on one of them as well, ain’t there.’
A grin spread across Burke’s face, it matched Dooley’s. ‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that but now you come to mention it, you’re right.’
The shadows, where individual ones could be distinguished beneath the canopy of leaves, were lengthening, though the sun was still a couple of hours from meeting the horizon. The two men had to take care not to touch, or even brush any of the overhanging trees. Many of them bore signs that the explosive devices set among their dangling branches had already detonated. Some of the damaged trunks and shattered stumps were obviously old, dating back to the first fierce battle; but others were more recent, evidence that with age the devices were becoming unstable, capable of being triggered by nothing more than inclement weather. It would be a deadly place to shelter during a storm. Enough of the mines remained to ensure that the threat they posed would exist for a long time to come.
‘We can see as much from here as we will out there.’ Stopping just within the fringe of the trees, Dooley squatted down and looked out over the barbed wire to the rolling farmland.
‘No point in taking risks we don’t have to,’ Burke agreed. ‘We’ll be doing enough of that later.’
‘That’s for sure.’
‘You don’t sound too bothered.’
‘Can’t say I am. I reckon when your number’s up, it’s up, ain’t nothing you can do about it.’ The packet of cigarettes Dooley had half withdrawn from his pocket tie crushed back in. ‘Don’t suppose I ought look for trouble though by sending up smoke signals.’
‘I should think it’d hardly matter, the size of the smoke cloud we’ll be creating later. What do you think about this plan of the major’s?’
‘It’s OK, ’cept we’re a bit thin on the ground for taking on a battalion of Ruskies, even if they ain’t expecting us and are more likely to be holding spanners than AKMs when we hit ’em.’
‘We’ll have to scare the shit out of them to make them keep their heads down for as long as possible, but it’ll only be a couple of minutes at most.’ Burke unslung his pack and sat on it.
‘Better jump up a bit sharp if you think you’re gonna fart again. You’ll lose more than your balls if what you’ve got in there goes off.’ Dooley ticked off the contents of Burke’s pack to himself. There was enough explosives in it to reduce both of them to lots of tiny pieces and clear a wide area of the woods of mines, and trees. He didn’t drop his own load. It was not that he was unaware of the weight of the case of single-shot flame tubes, though at more than eighty pounds it was a load that would have crushed most men, rather that in his opinion to have done so would have tarnished his hard-man image. That was his most prized possession, and one he guarded jealously, nurturing it with ostentatious exercising at every opportunity.
‘The others are taking their time.’ Burke changed the subject.
Dooley just grunted, and went on staring out at the over-grown fields and untended hedges. He wasn’t seeing them though, and he hadn’t really heard Burke. What filled his mind was the fight to come, he could picture it, and his part, as clearly as if he were watching it on a screen. Rows of yelling, charging Russians fell before him, tens, hundreds of them and still they kept coming and still he kept firing; he was spreading destruction all about him. He didn’t feel the wounds, felt no sense of danger. Another scene swam into his mind and swamped the first; the White House lawn, a special ceremony: there were cameras, reporters, private words from the President, a shining medal on a cushion…
‘On your feet, this is no time for bloody dreaming.’ Hyde’s words dissolved the fantasy, and once more Dooley saw the fields. He rose to his feet, deliberately doing it the hard way, not giving himself a push with his hands.
‘We’ll move out in small groups of twos and threes, strung out but not too far apart.’ There was no need for Hyde to raise his voice to be heard by the men tailing back along the path. No other sound disturbed the still woods. ‘Keep in sight of each other at all times. We’re only going as far as the first track or road that looks like it’s used regularly by heavy Russian traffic. The Commies are supposed to move only by night, but I’m counting on there being a few idiots who start out early. With any luck one of them will come our way and we’ll be able to collar transport before the rush builds up and it becomes impossible.’
‘What about refugees. How do we handle them if we’re spotted?’ Hyde recognised Libby’s voice from the back of the line. ‘I don’t think that’ll be a problem. It’s not long to curfew. If there are any about who are cutting it a bit fine, they’ll be in such a bloody hurry to get home they won’t even notice us.’
‘What kinda transport we looking for, Sarge?’ It was Rinehart who raised the issue.
‘Well, it’s got to hold all of us, plus the major and his new recruits, that consideration apart, anything, anything at all.’
Dust raised by the speeding Gaz scout car settled on the men crouched behind the hedge. Dooley spat out mouthfuls of grit and made repulsive noises as he blew his nose.
‘Do you have to do that?’ Clarence wiped his tongue with a handkerchief. ‘What are you beefing about? One good spit is better than what you’re doing. For fuck’s sake quit it; dragging that dry rag around your mouth is worse than scraping your fingernails down a blackboard.’
Cohen ignored the exchange as he turned to Hyde. ‘That’s the third vehicle in twenty minutes to pass us like there was a race on. How do we stop one of those without breaking it ?’
‘We don’t. We’ll stop the next one anyway we can, then go back into hiding and wait for the following vehicle crew to stop and help whoever we clobber.’ Hyde beckoned Clarence over. ‘Take out the driver. Don’t worry about the noise. It’ll be nothing to the crate going over.’
‘Where do you want it to land?’
‘I’ll be happy as long as it’s on the road and not on us.’
Without any further discussion Clarence departed to set up his ambush. A moment later he had melted into the countryside. There was a five-minute wait before the next Soviet army vehicle came along.
It was a Toyota pick-up, one of the mass of civilian vehicles the Russian forces had pressed into use when the war had begun to extend beyond the time they had planned, and they’d had to return their own called-up supply trucks to the dislocated civilian economies of East Germany and Poland. This one was a battered and sorry example: dents and scrapes that marred every panel exposed large areas of its original bright-red paintwork, showing startlingly vivid against the thin coat of olive-drab still adhering elsewhere.
Through his glasses Hyde watched the pick-up’s fast approach. He could just, through the layer of dust on its screen, make out the pale blob of the driver’s face. ‘Looks like it’s the boy racers who come out early, taking advantage of clear roads and no traffic police.’ Occasionally the Toyota would jink to the side, as its driver slung it around the worst of the many pot-holes.
There was a distinctive double click as Libby cocked his rifle. ‘I hope Clarence is going to hit him soon, or we’ll have the perisher landing in our laps.’