Dooley had a better vantage point, looking forward, over the truck’s cab roof. ‘I can see the car’s lights, looks like there’s another of these doors, he’s driving into it now… Jesus Christ.’
A blaze of white light, a blast of noise and roasting hot air burst over them. ‘Got you, you ugly bastards.’
The second anti-aircraft position wasn’t so immediately obvious, but he knew it would show up soon. Several layers of camouflage netting offered some cover in the daytime, but at night they gave up their small amount of stored heat very rapidly, and the ground below them, in the shade all day, quickly showed up against the still warm surrounding open slopes.
From the direction of the workshops came the dull boom of an explosion. Clarence ignored it and went on with his survey; he was looking for targets of his own.
Clarence watched both vehicles until they disappeared from sight, and then began to assemble the tripod supporting the high-powered night-sight. The light was failing fast now, though the sky was still a uniform mid-blue, tinged in places with speckles of reddish-brown, a trace of the contamination spreading out from the centre of the Zone.
He brought his attention back to earth, to the dark slopes of the far hills. There was nothing to be seen with the naked eye, nor with the pocket image intensifier he tried. Its definition was poor compared with the larger ones aboard the skimmer, but it was good enough to confirm that what he sought lay under heavy camouflage.
It was already noticeably cooler now that the sun had gone down, there was even a suggestion of a breeze ruffling the grass. Clarence loosened the locking nut on the tripod, sat behind the sighting unit and panned along the hillsides. Near the top of one almost opposite, some eleven hundred yards away, he saw what he’d been expecting to find. It didn’t look much, but the infrared view showed a patch of distinctly colder ground.
FOURTEEN
Andrea threw her arms across her face to shield her eyes. After the pitch black of the entrance ramp, the glare from the arc lights set in the high roof of the workshop complex was intense. She felt Revell lunge past her and grab at the wheel.
Quickly recovering from the temporary blinding, Burke brushed aside the officer’s hands and made the sharp left turn himself. He hardly needed to remember the layout of the place, he held a map of it in his hands; the steering wheel rim was the perimeter road, the four spokes the radial service lanes, and the boss the massive bunker of reinforced concrete that held the main tank repair facilities. He caught a glimpse of it over the top of intervening blast walls and stacks of crated spares.
The total area was vast, like four gigantic hangars sunk together into the ground, and high overhead a web of steel supported the artificial roof of the refugee camp.
They drove almost immediately into what looked like a reception and dispatch area. Ten or eleven main battle tanks were parked close together, mostly T72s and the latest T84s, with a couple of elderly T62s, both fitted with heavy mortars and bulldozer blades for demolition work. A swarm of fitters was working on them, attaching or removing auxiliary fuel tanks, infra-red searchlights and anti-aircraft machine guns. Close by, two Russian officers discussed details on an engineering drawing. They did a double-take as the command car drew level with them, and died. A burst of five rounds from Revell’s automatic shotgun cut both down, and tumbled three fitters from the T72 behind them.
Hyde didn’t hear the firing above the din of generators and machinery that filled the place, but he saw the victims go down, and anticipating the car’s increase in speed, put his foot to the floor.
Fire from the automatic weapons aboard the car and truck hosed the fitters from the tanks and smashed every un-armoured fitting on them. From the back of the truck, Collins and Rinehart lobbed thermite grenades at each AFV in turn. A few rolled from the armour, but most came to rest on the engine decks, or went in through open hatches. A dazzling white hell washed over the tanks and the bodies strewn about them.
A mountain of packing cases that could only contain new engines or whole transmissions received several more of the destructive grenades, and just two were sufficient for a stack of spare radiators. Molten copper and aluminium flowed as the bursting contents burned at two thousand degrees.
‘Look for the machinery trucks. They’re near here somewhere.’ It was almost impossible for Revell to make himself heard to Andrea, or for her to pass it on to the Grepos in the back. Generators and machinery still thundered on around them, and the crash and clatter of automatic fire was virtually continuous as all the weapons lashed out at every target that presented itself.
‘They are there.’ Andrea smashed out the windscreen and sent a tracer-laced burst towards the dozens of machinists jumping from the row of heavy trucks and trailers.
Revell used a whole magazine as they motored along the line, pumping a shot into the radiator of each precious vehicle. As he did, he could hear the blast bombs Hyde’s passengers were using tearing the guts out of the cabs and machinery decks. Lathes, drills and milling machines were smashed and toppled from their beds.
Panic was all around them. Time and time again, fleeing Russians would run straight into their fire. The terror and confusion was precisely what Revell had counted on. They were almost halfway round the perimeter road and not a shot had been fired against them so far.
The concussion from the grenades was punishing, threatening to burst their eardrums as waves of pressure from the blast bombs washed over them and rocked the vehicles. An explosive grenade Revell tossed at the side wall of a Song wooden hut had an unexpected effect. The entire side of the light structure collapsed in a shower of planks and splinters, to reveal the interior of a radar and radio repair shop. It was too good a target to miss. Ordering Burke to stop, the major used two flame tubes on the racked equipment and test benches. The single-shot weapons threw their charges of red phosphorus over everything, and the precious sets immediately began to explode in the heat.
As he sent the second on its way, before there was time to see the effect of the fountains of blazing chemicals, a bullet struck the roof of the car. It might have been careless shooting from Dooley, hosing bullets from the front of the truck as he fired the M60 from the shoulder, but in any case they had been stationary for too long.
Now they were passing welding and lubrication bays, and the sets of grease guns, gas bottles and arc welding kits, along with the AFVs parked by each, received their full share of attention. An eight-wheeled mobile crane and two armoured recovery vehicles parked nearby were given the same treatment.
Every blast wall and stack of stores they passed revealed new targets, but they brought fresh dangers as well. A burst of automatic fire came at them from between two Shilka flak tanks. They missed, and before the Russian could reload he was flushed from cover with a snap shot from a flame tube, and sent running with his clothes ablaze.
Thick smoke obscured the roof, dimming the powerful lights. It rose from a score of fierce fires in their wake. The pillars of curling flame marked their route, and it was that chain of beacons that gave away where they would be next.
Revell looked back to see that the truck was still with them. It was spitting bullets and incendiary materials from every side. As he turned back he barely caught a glimpse of the giant fork-lift truck bearing down on them, and then the shock of the collision threw him from his seat.