Survivors began to climb from the wreck, some handing out blood-covered children to those who had been first to exit.
‘Someone get the dressing pack from the cab.’ Hyde put down the control box. ‘Come on, we can’t leave the poor buggers.’
‘No, we haven’t the time. They will slow us.’
‘Piss off.’ Hyde tore Andrea’s fingers from their grip on his arm. ‘They’re your bloody people. Now get that first-aid kit…’
As she grudgingly obeyed, he looked again at the distant scene. Panic appeared to have set in among the injured civilians; some tried to claw their way back into the bus, others ran in frantic circles. One of them collapsed and lay still, and then another and another.
‘What…?’ Panning the ground with binoculars he saw the cause. ‘The Reds are through the minefield; they’re shooting the poor bastards.’
From the partial concealment of a bend in the road, where it emerged from the woods, a lavishly camouflaged, squat-hulled tracked APC was hosing long bursts of machine-gun fire at the refugees.
Trapped on the bridge, their escape blocked by the hulk of their earlier transport, the women and children flopped to the ground. Even when the last was down the firing continued, sending hundreds of rounds into the heaped bodies until there was no more movement.
‘No! They haven’t seen us.’ Barking at Ripper, who was traversing the Browning, Hyde choked down his own urge to retaliate, but not his revulsion at what they’d witnessed. He checked his watch. They had still a few minutes to spare before they’d have to start back. So they’d be cutting it fine, so be it. He wanted to pay those shits back tenfold.
The reconnaissance vehicle edged cautiously forward. Very slowly and hesitantly the turret roof hatch opened and its commander appeared. He seemed unwilling to expose himself to danger and stayed so low that his nose appeared to rest on the turret top. The hatch made an angled roof over his head.
Traversing slightly, the turret brought its main armament to bear on the bridge, but it was not with its 73mm gun that it opened fire, but with the anti-tank missile mounted above it. The commander ducked back hurriedly only a second before the launch.
Riding a bright tail of flame, a threshing coil of fine wire unreeling behind it, the chunky broad-finned rocket soared along the road. Twice it veered abruptly to correct its trajectory.
Powerless to interfere, Hyde watched and recognized the lack of training or experience of the operator controlling the flight. A good man would have kept the transit time shorter by manipulating the controls more smoothly. The fact that he was going for a stationary target at short range should have made it a textbook exercise. He was not surprised when at the end of the missile’s erratic course its impact was several meters short of the bus.
Lashed by the hail of fragments, the grotesquely stacked bodies leaped into macabre animation as the powerful warhead pounded a hole through the road deck.
Reappearing, the commander surveyed the damage. As the smoke drifted to give him a clear view, the vehicle’s co-axial weapon again sent ripples of tracer at the bridge. A crew member climbed from the loader’s hatch and began to reload the launch rail.
‘A perfect target.’ Andrea sighted for her grenade thrower, then turned and snarled at the sergeant as he punched the weapon toward the earth. ‘Why?’
‘Because, you stupid cow, the major may love you but I don’t. With me you get away with nothing. You try something like that again and I promise I’ll see that you go in the cage with all the other rubbish, the other East German border guards. Understand?’
His fist stinging from the hard contact with the barrel, Hyde was forcing himself to bide his time. From what he had seen of the overcautious, even timid, performance by the Russian advance guard he concluded they were either from a freshly formed unit, or an old one so leavened by replacement drafts as to be little better. And if he was right in that, then the losses they sustained in their recent encounter with Voke’s minefield would also be having a marked restraining effect on them.
But still it took an effort to hold back. He again had the control box in his hand. He longed to throw the switch, but after what they’d done simply blocking their route was not enough. Not by a long way.
That the bus had driven onto mines he’d laid he would have to live with for the rest of his life, but he’d never intended that as the outcome. The communists’ act of shooting down those wounded women and children had been cold-bloodedly deliberate. It was not something he would shrug aside as a fortune of war.
‘Better keep our heads down. They’ll start a bit of probing in a minute.’
‘I’m already underground, Sarge. I’ll send you a postcard with a kangaroo on it.’ Using an entrenching tool with more energy than was usual for him, Burke had hollowed a scrap at the roadside. Sparks flew from the tip of the entrenching tool as it struck flint below the topsoil. ‘I hope they don’t use mortars. A couple of tree bursts and we’re all fucked.’
Ripper had to duck as heavy machine-gun fire stitched a path across the crest of the road. A ricochet zipped past, clipping the ring mount and sending splinters of fine lead particles into his hand. Blood welled instantly from the multiple flesh wounds.
‘Aw shit.’ Wiping the back of his hand on his jacket, Ripper examined the mass of almost invisible punctures. ‘I’m real cheesed off with using eyebrow pluckers. Last one like this was in my face and I was shaving out bits of metal for a week.’
He lowered himself into the cab and released the brakes, waiting for the Scammel to roll a little way before reapplying them. ‘Now the only thing they’re gonna see of me is the lead I’m throwing.’
Its tracks fanning spray and mud, a T84 rocked to a halt beside the APC. Hyde could make out the slab features of an officer who appeared immediately to start shouting at the APCs reluctant commander. The tank man unholstered a pistol and waved it wildly.
‘He’s giving the poor bugger hell, and I bet it’s not for killing civvies either.’
Perhaps it was his imagination, but Hyde thought he saw the commander’s face pale as he reluctantly climbed out and was clearly ordered to stand in full view on the tank’s engine deck.
‘Wouldn’t Clarence enjoy a target like that.’ Hyde could imagine the quick precision with which their sniper would have eliminated both men. He would hardly have needed to move to shift the graticle from his first victim to his second.
‘If he could be patient he would only have needed to fire once.’ With her sharp eyes Andrea could see almost as clearly what was happening as the NCO with his aided vision. ‘Watch for a moment and you will see what I mean.’
The tank man appeared to be working himself to a frenzy, making extravagant gestures with the pistol. Suddenly the APCs commander crumpled onto the deck of his machine.
‘Oh jeez, will you look at that.’ Ripper heard the faint report of the shot. ‘What the hell can we expect from them if they do that to their own?’
TWELVE
‘The Reds can jam us for all they’re worth, use any electronic countermeasures that take their fancy. It won’t make the slightest difference. We’ll still hack them down as fast as they appear.’
Revell tried not to appear so, but he was sceptical of the claims made by the lieutenant in charge of the Rapier battery.
‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ From a corner of the main barn, Lieutenant Sutton pointed out the dispositions of his men and equipment. ‘I hate to disappoint you but I should tell you we don’t have a battery here, nothing like it, just part of two detachments.
‘Actually just two launchers, but God knows how many reloads. But we also scrounged a towed Vulcan system from that marvellous Aladdin’s cave down there. That’s over by those old hayricks. One of the launchers is by the tractor shed and the other at the edge of that little copse higher up the hill.’