‘This is no time to be taking a breather. Keep moving.’
‘How?’ The light from the burning truck was diminishing but it served to display what lay ahead. Andrea slumped against the debris. ‘I had thought the falling material, besides covering the mines, would have shattered the cliff face. It has not. Instead it has swept it bare of any ledge or hold.’
It was the first time Hyde had ever heard her defeatist, and by that he knew she was too exhausted to go on. Her iron will and rigid self-discipline, her determination never to be bettered was finally evaporating, beaten from her by the gruelling climb.
‘Right. We’ll rest here a while. Wait for the others to catch up.’ Scanning the rock wall, Hyde could see only confirmation of her words. ‘There’s got to be an alternative route. We’ll find it. We bloody well got to, we haven’t a choice.’
Ripper hauled himself into the small space, and put his hand to the dressing on his leg. It felt freshly damp. He was bleeding again.
‘Sarge, what we’ve ‘done so far was tough, but not even a mountain goat is going higher. I got to tell you, Fm not feeling at my best, but I sure as hell don’t want to be left here. Come daybreak it’ll be a sitting target for the first commie that wanders down that road.’
‘Listen.’
Shepherding the girls to join the group, and dragging the deserter with him, Burke shushed them to silence. It was hardly necessary.
From the direction of the mill, growing louder every moment, came the rumble of tank tracks. They were travelling fast, as attested by the thrashing and squealing of linked cast-metal over sprockets and return rollers.
‘You know,’ – tampering with the field dressing made Ripper wince with pain as the soft absorbent wadding moved across the ragged edge of the wound – ‘I think we are well and truly in the shit.’
They watched the lead tank of the Warpac column slew to a violent halt on the apex of the bend before the roadblock. Its long cannon barrel swept back and forth as its turret oscillated to cover each side of the road in turn.
‘Please, just don’t look up here, boys.’ Ripper felt mesmerized, like a deer in the beam of a hunter’s flashlight. ‘I bet he’s getting his ears chewed off for stopping.’
‘Maybe.’ Hyde examined the T72 through his glasses. Every hatch was dogged down tight. While they remained like that there wasn’t much chance of their spotting a small group high above them and trying hard to make themselves inconspicuous. ‘But maybe that jamming is a two-edged weapon. It’s being pumped out at such a power it could be screwing up their radio links as well.’ He turned to Andrea. ‘Did you say that Spetsnaz creep you hit had a microwave dish?’
‘Yes, and from the look of it I would say it had seen considerable use.’
‘So.’ Hyde looked at the long whip-aerial above the turret. ‘If their communications are buggered we should have confirmation any second.’
The tank recoiled on its suspension as its cannon spat a 125mm high-explosive shell into the obstructing avalanche of stone at point-blank range.
The blast of impact and the sharp crack of firing blended in one, and when the smoke cleared the ragged stack of material appeared undisturbed.
Tentatively the gunner’s hatch opened and a figure, grotesquely distorted by the erratic light, lifted itself out and slid warily onto the rear deck. There came the tinny ‘clang’ of a track-guard-mounted locker being opened. Unrecognizable pieces of equipment were taken out, and then a shallow metal dish that was handled carefully.
‘Take him out, Andrea, fast.’ It was a terrible gamble, might have the fatal consequence of drawing attention to them, but for Hyde that was one consideration among many.
There was a perceptible delay, not long, but sufficient to be proof of just how tired Andrea was, and then she fired. The grenade’s accuracy, or lack of it, was further demonstration.
As the grenade impacted on the road under the rear of the T72, the hull protected the gunner from the fragmentation effect but it was close enough to send the Russian scuttling head-first back inside the turret.
Reloading quickly, Andrea took aim for a second attempt before the hatch was pulled shut.
‘Forget him. Smash that gear on the rear deck.’
Hyde’s instruction came in time and the second 40mm round arced down to the road to detonate on the tank’s engine deck close to the open locker. The litter of unassembled equipment was instantly mangled and swept away, along with bedding rolls on the back of the turret.
Even as that second grenade did its work of destruction, the T72 and other unseen armoured vehicles on the road behind it opened up with their main and secondary armaments and fired a protective screen of smoke bombs.
Long bursts from co-axial machine guns were dwarfed by the massive concussion of heavy cannon and the rapid crackle of lighter weapons aboard APCs.
Unaimed, unleashed as a wild, blind, suppressive fire, the gun flashes hit the scene in a stroboscopic nightmare effect through which only the flashing blurs of orange and green tracer could be discerned.
Ricochets soared from the lower slopes and flew past the huddling party, and then a single 30mm armour -piercing round found them, tumbling deformed after its first contact with a boulder.
A piercing scream, and blood showered over them all. The body of a girl fell forward and flopped from projection to projection until it was lost amid the jumble of stone. Two more of the girls whimpered in pain, struck by shards of bone from the shell’s unwitting victim. They slowly collapsed and their heads lolled as they went into shock.
The rest of them crouched lower, those on the outside questing with their fingertips for anything that might be dragged across in front of them to form a barricade.
‘I told you all.’ Ripper got no satisfaction from the mass of young warm female flesh pressing against him. ‘We are deep in the shit.’
SIXTEEN
Step by laboured step Revell had watched the painfully slow ascent of what he had become certain was Hyde’s group. There were men, volunteers, who could be spared from other tasks to go out and assist them. It was the lack of suitable equipment that had delayed the attempt.
One of the few cellars to be completely caved in beneath the crushing weight of the falling walls had been that containing the pioneers’ specialized stores. Among the items buried were all the coils of rope and wire cable, the hand winches and the blocks and pulleys.
It had taken an hour’s hard work and a measure of luck to salvage sufficient rope for them to entertain the hope of reaching the stranded party.
Voke entered the MG pit and looked down into the darkness. ‘We have spliced the lengths together. I think with what we have we could reach them from the outwork.’
‘That means opening the postern door.’ The information posed Revell a dilemma.
‘What with the generator and all the activity down there, the moment we open up it’ll stand out like a beacon on every Warpac IR-scope in range.’
‘We could erect a sandbag wall immediately inside.
With all power off while we bring them up, the risk would be much reduced.’
It was the straw Revell had been searching for and he grabbed it. ‘Get to work. Put as many on the job as there’s room for down there.’
From the road far below came the faint but distinctive grind and rattle of tank tracks. A moment after came the short sharp crack of a rifle grenade, quickly followed by a second.
At only a few paces Voke could hardly see the major’s face. He hesitated, waiting to see if the order would be countermanded.
‘Carry on.’ As Revell made his way to the courtyard he heard the storm of wild retaliatory fire, and hurried to join Thorne and the waiting mortar crews.
They stood ready, the absurdly long Merlin rounds held poised above the gaping tubes. The barrels were almost vertical, in anticipation of engaging close-range targets.