James Rouch: Death March

“Possibly quite true but do you seriously think I would make trouble for a grandson of a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Do you?” Zucharnin looked about the little office. “There will be matters that will require rearranging. Before I give consideration to how best to employ you in the future, and at what rank, perhaps you might move in to here. It will be more than adequate for the level of responsibility you can expect, the amount and type of furniture you will be allowed to have.”

When the door closed behind the general, Gregori looked about. There was not even a telephone. The single bulb was weak, its faint illumination barely reaching to the corners of the room. The desk and chair, the only furnishings, were of the cheapest utilitarian quality. There was no floor covering, only the bare board and those heavily pitted and splashed with paint. Everything was gone, all the trappings, all the comforts. Doubtless there would be a cut in pay. That would make it impossible for him to hide events from his wife. She’s find out anyway, the officers wives had a grapevine as effective as any KGB network.

He sat at the desk and put his head in his hands. There was nothing left to hope for, beyond at best marking time until retirement. Even that possibility must be precarious now. Would his wife stay with him as their home standards dropped? It wasn’t likely. Dam her; her hen-pecking ambition was as much to blame for this situation as anything he had ever done.

There was only one thing left to hope for. That Zucharnins assault would fail, that somehow the weight of blame would do him harm. After all, the man who threw away a division would not be looked on favourably by the powers in the Kremlin. It was a straw but in his heart he dared to hope.

“Easy, we don’t want an accident now.” Carson supervised the removal of the nuclear device from the interior of the hovercraft.

“Like you really need to tell us that?” Dooley set the pack down and kept one hand on it for a moment to make sure it was not going to topple over.

“Chuck out that thermite as well.” Revell looked around the vehicle park. Apart from a couple of abandoned low-loader trailers it was empty.” So where do you want to set it up.”

The autobahn service centre covered a vast area. All of the fuel pumps were on one side of the carriageways. Crossover ramps and bridges brought the vehicles from the far carriageway.

“Just there will do fine. We can certainly be sure it will not be a place the Reds will poke about. They’ll be more interested in grabbing goods from the gift shops and restaurants.” Indicating a compound close by, Carson took one side of the pack and waited for some one else to take the other. “Come on you guys, it won’t bite you.”

“No, it’ll bloody vaporise you.”

“Stop complaining Simmons. You’ll never know about it.”

“Thank you Sarg’, from that I am supposed to draw comfort.”

“Grab it and move.” Sergeant Hyde walked behind them as the two men struggled with the load and stopped before a locked gate.

“Can’t we just dump it here? No one is going to see it.”

Pushing Simmons aside Sergeant Hyde broke the gates small padlock with a couple of blows from his rifle butt. “I don’t want any Commie discovering it when he strolls off for a pee. They’d never disarm it but they could drive on and hope for fuel elsewhere. We’d only knock out that part of the column passing by. Not good enough.”

The compound held perhaps thirty vehicles of every make and type, but many were totally unrecognisable. All were wrecks recovered from accidents on this stretch of the autobahn. Some had burnt out; some were roofless where bodies had been removed. All were severally damaged.

“We’ll put it in the cab of that tractor unit.” Carson had to stand on a piece of wreckage to reach the door and tug it open. “A few feet off the ground will do a lot to enhance the effect.”

“Bugger the theory, lets just get it in place.” Simmons needed help from the other two in order to lift the bomb on to a burnt-out seat frame.

Lieutenant Andy had joined them and with Carson climbed in to the cab.

“Will this take long?” Far away in the night sky there was the faintest of glows. Hyde wondered if it was the first gas station they had burned. It was in the right direction.

“Five minutes, less if you stop interrupting.”

“What yield do we want?” Lifting a plate Carson shone a torch down in to the bombs interior. He could see a punctured and buckled bulkhead where a bullet had passed through.

Andy looked round. The site was several hundred metres across and right in the centre was row upon row of islands each holding four pumps. Between each pair was a steel beam that rose high to support a wide canopy. “There’s fifty pumps at least, I guess we can reckon on their being a queue lining up within thirty minutes and there will be a load more on the approach road and coming along”

“So how hard do we hit them. We going to try and get them all?” Hand poised over an open-faced dial, Carson’s finger rested on the red pointer that stood out against the white face and black division of the surround.

“Let’s do a thorough job, make sure the gas station owners can put in a real good insurance claim. Let’s go for point two of a kiloton. That should chuck the commies all over the landscape.”

“Point two it is.” Applying slight pressure to the arrow on the dial Carson moved it around until it indicated the intended setting, and then nudged it further. “If you’re going to do a job…” He muttered to himself.

“OK, check list.” Producing a clipboard Lieutenant Andy went down a page of single line instructions.

To each as they were uttered Carson muttered “Check.” He opened another plate, dropping and losing the fastening as it fell open. “So, just the timer to do, what do you reckon.”

“The Major wants forty five minutes.” Sergeant Hyde had stood and sweated with Simmons as the device had been worked on. “Will that get us far enough away from here?”

“That’s for sure, as long as we don’t have a break down.” Twice dropping the torch in the confines of the cab and having both times to retrieve it from among the exposed and soot covered springs of the seat Carson finally confirmed everything was done. “I gave it just forty. Ample if we shift and we’ve wasted at least five here anyway.”

“Then let’s not waste any more. Hyde thought he heard a vehicle approaching, but it was too soon for it to be the enemy. It had to be another idiot ignoring the ban on motorway traffic.

“Initiate sequence, now.”

“Doing it Lieutenant. We’re all set to spoil the Commies party. I bet that pretty little Andrea will be pleased we’ve got rid of the thing.”

“I reckon they all will.”

Carson still had his hand inside the panel, He looked up at Andy. “We have a problem. The trigger switch depresses but doesn’t engage. I can’t turn the bugger on.”

“How long will it take to fix it?” Hyde had been about to lead the way back to their transport. He could hear the engines already running up to speed and feel a waft of hot air from the exhausts drifting past them.

“No way of knowing until I lift it out and then I don’t carry any spares. To improvise a spring and put it back…maybe a half hour.” Carson was already unscrewing the switch housing.

Hyde calculated times and distances. “That’s about how long before the Commie advance guard arrives.”

“OK, no one gone off for a leak?” Revell looked about the interior to make a last check that every one was back on board. As he did the vehicle took a pounding hit from a cannon shell.