‘There’s a nuke cooking in there. We’re moving out.’
Word had spread ahead of them and the greatest danger they faced in the run back to the lake was that of being struck by wildly driven transports of every description. As they neared the shore, though, a smattering of shots came their way. A withering volley silenced the enemy post, but it was an indicator that they had not been entirely unnoticed.
More bullets cut into the trees behind them as they splashed to the boat and threw their weight against it to overcome the cloying suction of the mud into which it had settled. Clarence was the last to board and sub-machine gun fire tore into a flak jacket beside him as he was hauled in.
All need for stealth was now gone. The material was ripped from the blades and the cleaned wood was plunged into the water to send them skimming at speed back to the far bank.
As he worked the tiller Hyde kept watch over the stern. When they had only fifty yards to go he detected vague movement back where they had come from, and thought he heard the sound of engines. This was confirmed when a shell whistled past overhead, and a troop of Russian PT76 swimming tanks growled into the water in pursuit.
‘Boy, we’ve made them mad as hell.’ In fumbling to save the oar he’d nearly let slip, Ripper had also seen the danger. ‘Shit, I ain’t been so scared since the county sheriff’s black and white chased me across a field after I were caught stealing a couple of apples.’’
‘This makes just as much sense.’ Burke kept snatching backward looks to watch the progress of the amphibious combat vehicles. Pushing a white bow wave before them, only their turrets and gun barrels were visible above it. As they beached he sent a whole magazine towards the leader hoping to hit the driver’s snorkel-like periscope, but the series of short bursts brought no check to the PT76’s steady progress.
‘This way. This way.’
A Royal Engineers major was waiting for them, and led the squad through the garden of a rambling mansion-sized house and out on to a wide main road.
Hyde pulled up. ‘We’re sitting targets if they see us here.’
‘There’s a turning a little way down. Come on, hurry.’ At a fast jog the sapper officer took them two blocks then ushered them into a side street.
Recognising the name of the road, barely readable on a fire-scorched sign on the side of a building, Boris brought it to Hyde’s attention. ‘Sergeant, on your map this is one of the streets marked in red.’
Holding back for a moment, Hyde saw the Russian tanks turning on to the street they were just leaving. They slowed, clearly undecided which way to go, or whether to terminate the pursuit, then the officer of engineers saw them also, and fired a long burst from his Patchette at them, a burst that seemed mostly composed of tracer. Striking and bouncing from a tank’s armour it instantly drew their attention.
‘That should do it…’
‘Why don’t you let them have the fucking lot, why stop at half measures?’ To Dooley’s dismay the officer did just that, putting the rest of the magazine into the flank of an armoured ambulance that had followed the tanks into the road.
The non-combatant vehicle immediately revealed its true identity as a crewman appeared from a top hatch and fired a ring-mounted heavy machine gun at them. Water showered from traps on the tanks’ hulls as they fired shells from their main armaments and added the chatter of their co-axial weapons to the weight of shot skimming towards the squad.
There was no further hesitation. Their guide led them at a fast pace half the length of the side road, then into a solid slab-sided building that bombs and rockets had done no more than pockmark, once all the glass had been shattered in its facade.
‘Not much for you to do now. Best just pick your grandstand seat and get ready for the fireworks.’
Hyde had begun to take an interest in the sapper major, and watching the road, kept half an eye on him also.
Everyone had to come back from the windows as on entering the comparatively narrow street, the Russian vehicles unleashed a storm of ordnance at the buildings flanking its length. Bullets and fragments of shell came in through every window and ricocheted about the gutted and looted interiors. Part of a shop front collapsed as a low velocity 73mm shell blasted its last supports away.
Apparently satisfied that they had either destroyed or frightened off any potential opposition they drove into the street, keeping always to the centre of the road, maintaining a proper interval between each vehicle.
‘Those tank crews know what they’re doing. Pity they’re not getting proper back-up from the infantry in the red-cross marked wagon.’ Burke watched their progress with an expert interest.
‘Never did know a Commie who’d willingly get out from behind armour unless he were forced to, present company accepted.’ Ripper added that for their deserter’s benefit, but Boris wasn’t listening.
It was the first chance he’d had, and Boris was hastily stripping off the Russian uniform and replacing it with the ragbag assortment of different nationalities uniforms that was his usual dress. He glanced to see if anyone was watching, before bundling the discarded clothes into a large crack in the partition wall and pushing them from sight and almost out of reach.
It must have been entirely at random, for there seemed nothing to guide the Russian gunners’ choice as to which buildings to put shells into. They would wait until they had pulled level with one, and then the barrels would depress back to the horizontal as the semi-automatic loader was disengaged, then they’d traverse and fire without hesitation and seemingly without aiming, as sometimes the shells exploded against front pillars, sending clouds of dust back over the tanks, and at other times they’d penetrate almost to the rear of the ground floor before impacting and sending fireballs roaring up through the structure.
‘I love doing this.’
The major turned the handle of a detonator and a series of small charges rippled through a tall office block a little way along. Slowly at first, but with gathering momentum, the whole fabric began to sag and then in a welter of thousands of tons of steel and concrete it fell into the road to completely block it.
‘Expensive way of making a roadblock, when you’re short of explosives, isn’t it?’ Hyde had a genuine interest in the answer. The expenditure seemed profligate viewed against the parsimony with which small arms ammunition was issued in the city.
‘No. We used munitions captured from the Ruskies, stuff that we suspected might be booby-trapped. Couldn’t even steam out the contents for use elsewhere, so we just fix our own detonators to them and use them like that. The cost is negligible.’
Again the detonator was turned, and this time it was a PT76 that took the full force of a blast that came from beneath the road. The vehicle was lifted several feet into the air by the forces erupting from the ordnance-packed sewer. Tracks, road wheels, hatches and every type of fitting were ripped from the vehicle before it crashed down and began to burn.
From a row of shops opposite the misused ambulance came a dozen great gouts of flame as crude projectors spewed streams of burning chemical. Liquid fire dripped from the tracked vehicle and every door was thrown open, only to be slammed shut again as the roasting air hit the men struggling to escape. A moment later they tried again with the same result, and then with the vehicle’s engine racing they tried driving out of trouble, and only managed to motor into it.
A mine exploded beneath a track and the ambulance spun around in its own length as it broke. The rubber of every track pad and road wheel was well alight. When the belt of machine gun ammunition to the weapon on the roof began to cook-off, crew and infantry passengers could take it no longer.