James Rouch: Death March

Equipment flew about and the craft went over at an acute angle before Burke managed to get it back on the level. Even as he did heavy machine gun fire smacked across the ride skirt at an acute angle, slashing holes in it.

The first of the Soviet reconnaissance armour had arrived. An APC clanked across the concrete surface of the gas station and its stubby gun barrel belched a long jet of fire as it snapped off a high explosive squash head round. Had the anti-tank round hit them square on it would have destroyed them, the concussion of its detonation pounding great scabs of metal from the hulls interior and killing them all.

Instead it struck at the joint between two reactive armour blocks, setting off both. Inside the Iron Cow the noise was colossal and again the craft was thrown sideways, almost turning through a hundred and eighty degrees.

From the turret Libby unleashed a stream of cannon shells and sent them in to the side plates of the Russian armoured personnel carrier. The turret had been swinging to bear on them again but now it stopped and the barrel drooped to a useless maximum depression.

From their co-axial machine gun came a long stream of armour piercing rounds and Russian infantry staggering from the Rardens victim were chopped down. Libby switched his aim and concentrated another burst from the cannon on a patch of armour just below the rocket launcher of a scout car that had rocked to a stop at the side of the buildings.

For an instant the metal glowed under the stream of impacts and then from inside came a muted explosion that burst up through the top of the vehicle to dismount the loaded launch rails and out of the front through the driver’s vision port

“The buggers are all around us.”

The turret guns continuous fire was matched by the storm of tracer that hosed from the gun ports along the sides. Two motorcycle combinations raced into the area and both spun and fell over as machine gun fire slashed their tyres and killed their drivers. The shaft drive machines bucked as the spinning wheels of bike and sidecar came down on the hard surface, throwing out the passengers.

Getting in behind the two low-loader trailers the weapons on the Iron Cow slugged it out with the increasing numbers of Soviet vehicles. Twice shells struck fuel pumps on the forecourt. Both times there were spurts of flame but no fire followed. A tungsten cored round from the hovercraft missed its intended APC target and went on to strike a scout car that drove around the side of a building straight in to it. Flame spurted from every hatch and an internal explosion sent its four missiles and their launch rails spinning away.

Tracer lodging in a huge spare wheel attached to the front of the closest trailer set it alight and illuminated the Iron Cow. Revell ordered their driver to back away in to the darkness. Shot and shell followed them and external fitting were smashed and torn away. Unequal from almost the first moment it was now becoming more so. Had they been a conventional vehicle with wheels or tracks they would already have been immobilised.

“Get us out of here.” Revell could see even more enemy vehicles arriving and fanning out to face them.

By the light of a blazing APC a line of trucks could be seen crossing the overpass from the far carriageway. Troops, many armed with rocket propelled grenades, were jumping down and being sorted into lines by their officers. It was Boris who had drawn the officer’s attention to the time. “Major, only eight minutes before detonation.”

“We need every ounce of speed, now.” Burke heard the officer’s urgent voice through his head set. For the duration of the fire-fight he had crouched in his seat, watching the enemy tracer coming straight at him, so it had seemed. All the time he was able to do nothing, except call out when he saw a target he imagined their turret gunner might have missed.

Burke had the hovercraft in motion bare seconds later, was racing for the covering darkness of the autobahn beyond the service area. Machine gun and cannon fire followed them. A single round penetrated the thinner rear plates beside the door and zipped across the interior before flattening itself on the floor of the turret basket. Smoke from the unburned tracer element when it finally came to rest.

The fleeing machine was bracketed by explosions as more low velocity guns aboard armoured personnel carriers sent high explosive at them. Again it was the Kevlar ride skirts that absorbed most damage and the hovercraft took on a list.

“If we keep up this speed the panels will rip away.” Burke was having to wrestle with the controls to keep direction as air spilling out made the craft pull to one side.

“Then let them. Just keep us going as long as we hang together.” Revell could hear a panel drumming as the slipstream threatened to curl it back and rip it from it securing strips.

They reached the top of a long climb. The countryside was invisible around them but they knew they were climbing, through the straining of the motors and the continual presence along side them of a lane marked for heavy vehicles. They passed under a road bridge and then began to ride down the far side of the hill.

“If we keep going, in a few minutes we could be back on a hill top, in line of sight of ground zero.”

Revell knew that Carson was right. For another minute he sensed the hovercraft was motoring downwards, then it levelled out. “OK, find us some shelter around here.”

“Two minutes Major.”

Boris’s voice came over the headset, cracking with fear.

“Turn off all the electrics, everything. Secure all gun ports” The interior became jet black as the faint illumination from the panel and the dull red glow from the single small bulb behind the turret basket died.

Burke tried to use the headlights but nothing happened, they had been destroyed along with every other external fitting. They were on a rough track he had found after turning off the autobahn and driving through a tough over-grown hedge that plucked hard at the torn sections of the skirts thick material. Something big and showing only as a jet-black structure against the dark sky loomed ahead and they drove into a farmyard. A hard right turn and he took the doors off a modern barn as they drove in to the cavernous interior. A storm of grain and chaff arose from the floor and made a storm of particles about the interior.

“That’s about the best I can…”

Pure white light lanced through the interior and lit it like day as it found a way in past a buckled gun port and a pinprick hole in the armour where a round had just failed to penetrate. Instinctively they ducked and huddled together, covering their heads with their hands. There was a sound like an approaching express-train multiplied ten fold and then a blast wave struck the farmyard. The building they were in leaned over and the ribbed metal panels of its covering squealed and cracked under the pressure. Several of the curved roof sections whirled away in to the night. There was a continuous rumble for a long moment as the roof of the half-timbered farmhouse near by collapsed into ruin, unable to withstand the blast wave. There was a moment of silence, just the sound of the over pressure diminishing in the distance and then the back wave struck and the panels about them were punished again, several more being torn off and others partially removed, being left ripped and hanging by corners. They flapped back and forth crashing and grinding together and against the steel beams to which they were now only partially secured.

Outside there was the noise of other loose items being thrown about. The sheet steel shelter became almost a stark girder frame with only a fraction of its corrugated panels remaining. The Iron Cow, its skirt fully deflated, letting the hull rest hard on the ground, was moved bodily sideways. A long ripping sound signalled the loss of a complete skirt panel and the stripping away of at least one securing strip of spring steel.