Hard Target (18 page)

The door flew open and an avalanche of variously coloured clothes and underwear preceded Burke’s return. ‘Hello there. You look like you’re nicely settled.’

‘No way. At this moment I couldn’t stuff a shitty olive. Marvellous, ain’t it.’ Pushing aside the hands that sought to hold him back, Dooley got up and walked to the pile. ‘Here, come and get this lot on.’

There was a mad scramble as the women fought to salvage their own things and steal all they could of everyone else’s. Dooley had to put his large boot to several similarly dimensioned behinds before he succeeded in reducing the row they were making.

Burke was repulsed rather than sexually aroused by the sight, of the fighting women. Huge rumps, hobbling breasts, all were on show in abundance and had no effect on him.

The major shouted from downstairs and the two men began to propel the women along the corridor while they were still fumbling, hopping and contorting to finish dressing.

‘No one would ever believe this.’ His erection had completely disappeared. Dooley knew it without checking. ‘I ain’t never gonna tell anyone about this, not ever. I spend fifteen minutes in a brothel: the first five I’m trying to grab a broad, the next five I’m trying to keep a load of whores from finding out that I’m not ail I’d like to be and was five minutes before, and the last five I’m forcing them to get dressed and chucking them out. I just don’t like myself at the moment. Maybe m a year I’ll have forgotten all about it; the hell I will.’

Andrea was coming down the stairs.
‘There you are.’ Revell steered her to the women. ‘Tell them to get down to the camp and lose themselves, and don’t take no for an answer. I want them out right now.’

He started up the stairs. In a crazy way he’d be doing the Russian a favour. If the Soviet security services got him to tell the whole story, and they would, including how he had given the enemy an inch-by-inch description of the workshops, then the last few hours of his life would be very painful and unpleasant.

Cradling the 12 gauge assault-rifle Hyde had brought him from the skimmer, he climbed to the top of the building. It would be best if he fired right away, from the door of the attic: no need to make a ceremony of it. He paused at the door, laid the heavy twenty-shot weapon on the floor and took out his pistol. The weight of the silencer unbalanced the Colt and he had to consciously counteract it.

As he put his hand to the door, he paused again, and checked that the safety catch was off. The air held a smell he hadn’t noticed before, like, like overdone meat. Dismissing it from his mind he pushed open the door.

Thick grey smoke filled the room, drifting in layers in the warm, still air. Wisps of it wafted out through the hole in the roof. The smell was much stronger now, almost overpowering. He felt his way to the wall and began to work his way round the room. In a far corner he discovered a smouldering bundle. It was the Russian. Blue and yellow flame still rippled through his hair and what was left of his uniform. Two empty vodka bottles lay nearby.

Revell did not make a close, examination, pumping two shots into the man to extinguish any last vestige of life. At the impact, sparks and clouds of black particles flew up and he had to step back smartly to avoid them settling on him.

The body lolled sideways, scraping off long ribbons of red-streaked black tissue on the wall. Smoke from the still smouldering belt about the lower half of what had been a face, found its way out through the misshapen holes in the charred remains of a nose.

In two years of savage war in the Zone, the deliberate incineration of a bound and helpless prisoner was as inhuman an act as Revell had ever witnessed. It was almost the equal of the worst atrocities the Russians had committed.

He knew: he had no proof, but he knew who had done it. What had happened to Andrea, what could she have been through to turn into a person capable of this? It went far beyond anything that the motives of revenge or hate could justify.

Now there was no question of leaving her with Clarence when the attack went in. He would keep her with him and though that might make him uneasy, he was not unhappy the prospect. If there was more in her than the urge to k then he wanted to know, find out how to get past or through that tough shell she presented to the world. It would be easier or safer than the job they were about to tackle. Hyde was calling him. The men were ready for the first briefing. It was almost time.

The major connected the last wire of the intricate layout booby-traps that Collins had set about the house, then car fully closed the front door before climbing into the command car. Burke already had the engine turning over smoothly. Andrea sat between Revell and the driver. Four of the Grepos crouched on the floor in the back, still wearing the same dull sullen expressions the officer had first noticed; Mother Knoke’s. They had not altered in all those hour: save for the brief strained grimaces while they’d been with the women.

‘Damn it.’ Revell swore. ‘We didn’t rig that Merc’ ‘Collins took care of it.’ Burke slowed the car after passing out of the farmyard, while he waited for Hyde, piloting the big truck, to negotiate the narrow opening. ‘It’ll go bang at the same time as the house, or maybe it’ll be the other way round. Either way, any sloppy Commies are in for a hell of a fucking shock.’ There was a lurch as the car left the track and then the vehicle’s four-wheel drive was pulling them effortlessly towards the top of the hill. The sun was still a few minutes from the horizon and sent the car’s long shadow ahead of it to the crest.

‘Take it easy as we go over, then head to your left so we hit the main approach track about three hundred yards from the entrance.’ Scouring the floor of the hollow time and again, Revell searched for other traffic. It was early yet, but as the Ural topped the rise behind them he spotted something. A lone T72 was heading in the same direction.

‘OK, stop here. Give Sergeant Hyde the signal.’ As Burke lowered the window and waved, Revell turned in his seat to watch Clarence jump from the back of the truck and then take the bulky packs handed to him.

Hyde had seen the Russian main battle tank as well, and noted that it was travelling opened up with its two-man turret crew sitting half out of the roof hatches. Dust and thick white exhaust smoke plumed out behind it.

‘Looks nice and quiet down there.’ Libby had to hold tight as they reached the bottom of the slope and Hyde wrenched the wheel over to turn on to the track a hundred yards behind the tank, keeping only a length between themselves and the command car in front. ‘Those tank blokes wouldn’t be so casual if they thought there was any trouble in these parts.’

‘Very likely, but I think we’ve got trouble. There’s something up ahead, at the gap in the minefield where the track goes through. Looks like a traffic control point.’

Libby unclipped a grenade from his webbing and rested it in his lap. A lone military policeman stood beside the track. Two motorcycles were parked outside a small tent, half-hidden by a movable barbed wire barricade that was pulled back out of the way.

The MP waved the tank through, then saw the command car approaching and stepped out into the road to flag it down.

With a noisy grinding of gears Hyde changed down as the lead vehicle slowed. ‘Why in fuck’s name is he doing that? He let the tank through.’ ‘Perhaps we should be showing lights, or maybe these wagons shouldn’t be here at all.’ Libby watched the command car. At a couple of lengths from the Russian it had almost slowed to a stop, then with a bellow of its exhaust it surged towards him.

His shouting unheard above the roar of the engine the MP jumped back, starting to unslung his AKM as he did so. The car almost brushed him and. as the passenger window drew level, he suddenly clutched at his chest, staggered and crumpled.

‘There’s another of the bastards.’
In response to Libby’s yell Hyde slung the wheel hard over, stamped on the gas pedal and hurled the big wagon straight at the second MP who was scrambling from the little tent, pushing his rifle before him.

If the Russian screamed he wasn’t heard. The deep treaded tyres crushed him into the hard earth and the tent was ripped to shreds by the tangled mass of barbed wire and broken stakes the truck bulldozed before it.

As Hyde hauled the encumbered vehicle back on to course, a wheel ran over the parked motorcycles and the wire was dragged from the truck as it straightened up again behind the command car.

Ahead of them the track led right up to the camp. Burke had seen the tank drive into the motley collection of shelters and appear to melt away. For a moment he had the wildly illogical thought that he’d follow it and find it had crushed a bloody course over hundreds of refugees.

‘Keep going.’ It was hardly noticeable, but Revell’s senses were tuned to such a pitch that he instantly noticed the tiny check to their speed. ‘Follow the tank.’ What, from his vantage point up in the roof of the farm, had looked like the start of just another of the many paths that wound through the camp, as they got closer revealed itself to be wide enough to comfortably accept the car, and the truck behind it.

Immediately it started to slope steeply and, as it levelled out again, the false roofs of the camp were forty feet above them, supported by lattice girdering. It was a very different view to the one from outside.

‘I’ll have to put the side lights on, I can’t see a sodding thing.’ Fumbling about with the unfamiliar controls, Burke managed to turn on the wipers and interior light before he pulled the correct knob. He found it just in time. The faint illumination they provided showed a curtain of what looked like thick black canvas blocking their way.

‘It’s just a black-out screen.’ Revell punched Burke on the arm. ‘We’re committed now, drive on.’ He brought up his combat shotgun and levelled it out of the window. Six more of the big twenty round drum magazines were attached to his belt, another lay in his lap. ‘Just take it slow, don’t lose contact with the truck.’

Burke shoved the gear lever across and down, and they began to nudge forward into pitch darkness. The coarse material parted in the middle and scraped and flapped down either side of the car, then slapped together behind them.

The six-wheeler was halfway through the first curtain when the car reached a second, twenty yards ahead. Cohen, riding in the back of the Ural, heard the frayed edge of the material as it brushed along the steel hooped canvas top. He’d rejected the small window of smoked Perspex in the tilt and was looking out of the weapon slit he’d made below it. There was nothing to be seen in the inky blackness.

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.