‘Wouldn’t you be better throwing in your lot with us? ‘Very kind of you, Major, but no thanks.’ Sutton waved to one of his men who was leaving his sandbagged post. ‘I say, where are you…’ The man waved a shovel.
‘Oh, yes, all right. Well, have a good one.’ Again Sutton turned his attention back to Revell. ‘As you can see, we’re very well dispersed and the component parts of a towed Rapier system really do make a jolly small target when they’re spread about. Plus of course we’ve dug in the generators and roofed their little houses over with turf to reduce their IR signature to almost zero. Would have been nice of course to have had some of those lovely armoured mobile versions instead. Then we could have flitted about and confused the commies even more, but what we’ve got will do.’
‘How will you manage with our radar blinded, though?’ Revell was surprised by, could even admire the skill with which the launchers and their ancillary equipment had been blended into the countryside, but for days his men had been hit by Soviet air strikes when jamming had rendered useless the most sophisticated air-defence systems.
‘You infantry chaps are all the same – got this sort of blind faith in technology, and when you find out it’s not working for some reason you dash about like chickens with your heads off. No offence, of course.’
The slightly sheepish grin on Revell’s face was sufficient unarticulated evidence of the truth of that.
‘If they persist in jamming, then we’ll simply wait until we can actually see them. Jets right down on the deck or choppers actually touching down, it’s all the same. Boom, instant wreckage. Mind you, if they come at us mob-handed it might present the odd problem.’
‘What do you call mob-handed?’ He didn’t want to, but Revell had to ask the question.
Lieutenant Sutton considered for a moment. ‘Well,’ – he paused again -’when we were up near Hanover, with the same number of launchers, we did take out five of those damned noisy helicopters inside three minutes. We can certainly engage and make problems for that number. But I tell you what, I have an absolute maniac of a gun-layer on the Vulcan who’d make sure that if a chopper did touch down nothing would get out of it alive. Does that set your mind at rest in any way?’
Overwhelmed by the RAF officer’s aura of self-confidence, Revel could think of no answer. ‘Have you got land lines to the castle?’
‘No, but then they’d hardly survive your dropping a few thousand tons of brickwork on them, would they? If you get lonely you’ll just have to wave.’
The lieutenant’s sense of humour was beginning to wear somewhat thin on Revell, but he realized the young officer might be using it as cover for nerves. ‘You can take care of your own close-in defence?’
‘I’ve forty men altogether. Working the launchers with minimal crews I can put most of them into my perimeter defences, and of course I’ve got the Vulcan. My problem has been persuading my chaps that not all of them can have GP machine guns. They all came back from that dump toting M60s and draped with more ammo belts than an army of Mexican bandits.’
Across the valley the castle still stood intact. It looked as though it had been there forever and as if it would continue to be, as if the very landscape had been designed around it. But there was nothing in the Zone that could be regarded as permanent, not even the landscape itself.
‘I have to get back. Good luck.’ Revell held out his hand.
Sutton hesitated a second, then accepted it. ‘You too, but it’s the Russians I feel sorry for. You wouldn’t believe the number of rounds we’ve got for the Vulcan.’
The top of the hill had been raked by cannon and machine-gun fire that had pulverized the road and slashed the pines to ribbons. There had been no need for Sergeant Hyde to insist on fire discipline. It would have been instant death for any of them to raise their heads and attempt a puny retaliation.
The probing fire slackened, and then ceased. Cautiously Hyde looked out, the act made less dangerous by the masses of piled bark and cones. ‘Here they come.’
A dismounted squad of infantry were moving toward the bridge. They crouched low, automatics levelled. Behind them came a pair of tracked infantry carriers. Half out of the open rear-deck hatches stood more soldiers, tightly clasping rifles and grenade launchers.
‘I should think it will be…’ Hyde gauged distances, ‘right about now.’
The second armoured personnel carrier was suddenly hidden by a shower of white sparks. Fire belched from the open hatches and its passengers were enveloped by scorching pillars of vivid flame. Hidden from sight within the pall of grey smoke, the APC shuddered off the road into the trees, and then simply dissolved in a tremendous explosion as its ammunition ignited.
Surging forward, the T84 opened up on the mill. A billowing mass of white dust marked the violence of the first impact. Slowly, a section of the building’s roof sagged and tiles slid from their place to shatter on the road and bounce from the roof of the bus. A second shell followed but passed clean through the structure without exploding.
Machine guns and light cannon lashed out at the mistaken target. Bullets raked the walls and the few windows. Glass shattered and lengths of scaffolding were wrenched away and thrown down to land in a wild tangle.
Another mine was triggered, and this time it was the squad of infantry who took the force of it, every man being mown down by the inescapable blast from a claymore.
Trying to press on, the Russians brought on their own destruction. A fragmented steel scythe swept away another squad.
The T84 stopped and its commander waved on more APCs. The mines concealed among the trees silently ticked off the numbers, and then the verges were lit with a series of yellow stabs of flame.
Pierced by a jet of molten metal, another tracked carrier began to burn, its fuel tank’s contents boiled by the stream of plasma. Hatches flew open, but by the pressure of furnace-hot gasses, not by human hand.
With a track blown off and its turret torn away, an APC swerved into another alongside, crushing its hull and riding onto it.
Surviving crew leaped clear and made for the supposed safety of the trees. The first to reach them found no safety there. Shotgun mines cut them down and left those who had been lucky enough to escape that fate, as well, cowering in confusion in the middle of the road.
Another tank that moved forward shuddered under an impact against its turret rear, but boxes of retroactive armour neutralized the missile warhead’s power and it kept going. It moved in alongside the first T84 and both began to pound the far bank of the river.
‘Come on, you bastards, make a try for the bridge.’ Hyde had forgotten time. Finger poised over the activating switch, he waited for an attempt to force a passage past the mill. ‘They want that bridge.’ He held up his hand and made a small gap between thumb and finger. ‘I want them to be that close to thinking they’ve got it.’
Revell knew that Hyde’s section would not be back on time. There was no mistaking the growing sounds of battle from the direction of the bridge. The sweep hand of his watch was brushing away the last moments to the expiration of the hour.
They were heard by Clarence also, and his thoughts as he listened were very different from the major’s. It was two weeks since he’d had a live target in his sights. He wished he were with the section getting to grips with the enemy, actually fighting, not forever standing about waiting for something to happen. And then frequently being disappointed.
The last fractions of the hour ticked by, and still Revell did not close the firing circuit. It was Andrea who made him delay. He couldn’t bring himself to be the one to cut her off from hope of survival.