James Rouch - Civilian Slaughter

A rare slight movement as a cramped muscle was carefully flexed, or as a fractional adjustment of position was made, to further improve a field of fire, was all that there was to betray that they were not corpses.

Before them the ground sloped gently down toward a long straight stretch of Autobahn three hundred feet away. The road surface was sprinkled liberally with the craters of direct hits by bomb, rocket, and shell, and smothered in soil and lumps of clay thrown from near misses in the fields alongside. At irregular intervals, sometimes singly, sometimes in small clusters, stood the fire-seared wrecks of trucks and trailers. All rested on their axles, tires burnt away. Most had been reduced to virtually unidentifiable condition. Only the occasional outline of a partially intact cab gave any clue as to their origin.

On the far side of the broad highway, flat meadow-land had become a sodden morass where drainage ditches had been obliterated by a carpet of explosives.

Gradually sinking into the cloying mire were the flame-ravaged hulks of a troop of T84 Warpac tanks that had attempted to escape the carnage on the road. Their thick composite armour had offered scant protection from top-attacking terminally guided munitions. Now, minus tracks and every external fitting, even turret and gun in one case, they were gradually disappearing into the mud. They were taking with them the charred remains of the crews.

But it was not the pounding and the churning of high explosives that had killed every last blade of grass in the fields. After that violent tilling the soil had been drenched with toxic and defoliant chemicals. It was those ugly, indiscriminate weapons that had crudely sterilized the land.

In the remains of a drainage ditch alongside the Autobahn the still water was coloured not with the green scum of stagnant growth, but with the life-leeching taint of a cocktail of chemical agents.

“We’re in business.” Sergeant Hyde gave Dooley a jab with his elbow. He pointed to where indistinct dark outlines were beginning to emerge from the smoke-filled air a kilometre away.

Swinging the thermal imaging sight of the Milan rocket launcher to bear, Dooley was able to make out the distinctive bulk of a heavy truck, and then more as others followed it into vision. “All right! I owe you fifty marks.”

Without taking his eye from the target, Dooley reached out. His gloved hand patted across the two-round reload case to check it was unfastened. No matter how much they wore the all enveloping NBC suits it was never possible to become completely used to them. They made every action clumsy, restricting vision and hearing and communication. Even the cologne doused muffler he kept tucked inside couldn’t mask all the other odours from the long hours, sometimes days, they were forced to wear them. He’d have given anything to rub his eyes, scratch his nose, but that meant lifting the respirator, and that was out of the question. The contamination monitor strapped to his wrist was showing a reading almost off the scale. Contact with any twig or stone, or any unfiltered breath could prove quickly lethal.

The drifting perpetual pall that so reduced visibility in the Zone had been thickened in this sector in the last month by non-stop battles, as the NATO forces had maintained pressure on the retreating Warpac forces rear guards.

Dust and smoke had combined to the point where now, at midday, it reduced the orb of the July sun to a blurred orange patch. That was the only relieving colour in the otherwise monochrome landscape.

“How did you know that they’d be moving equipment by this route? They’ve a dozen to chose from in our patrol area.” Dooley had the cross-hairs aligned dead-centre on the lead tractor unit of the approaching convoy. He had only to make fractional adjustments to track it as it steered a slow cautious path between the craters and the litter of wreckage.

“The Reds have kept their forward airstrips in use until this morning.” Hyde made a mental note about the fifty mark bet. It was always difficult to collect from Dooley. Most likely he’d end up having to add it to the other three hundred already outstanding. “Airlift capacity is too stretched and precious to let them haul out graders and dozers that way, but a complete airfield repair battalion is too valuable to abandon. So I figured they’d make a run for it close to the cease fire, when our gunships would be back at base. This route is the most direct and being metalled it’s not as chewed up as some.”

Lifting his head from the Milan, Dooley made a quick scan of the rest of the column. While the lead elements would soon be level with their position, the tail end was only just emerging from the fog. He counted ten slab-sided tracked towing vehicles, as many trailers bearing heavy plant and several huge-wheeled power shovels and multi-wheeled cranes. Mentally ticking off the squad’s weapons, even adding in the Milan’s reloads, he knew they didn’t have the fire power to do telling damage to so many large targets. Sergeant Hyde must have been thinking on the same lines, as he sighted down the barrel of his SA80.

“Pity we can’t call down artillery. Any request for it now is going to be referred all the way up.”

“And all the way down will come a ‘get your fingers off the trigger’ type order.” Switching the sight to normal vision, Dooley could see the Russian driver of the lead truck labouring at his heavy steering. Beside and behind him sat other drab NBC suited men. They sat motionless, like ugly dummies.

“You’re all too right.” Hyde checked the time again. “We’re cutting it fine. I make it thirty minutes. No staff officer is going to stick his neck out at this late stage, not for any target.”

Not for a moment did it occur to Dooley to ask why they were, that wasn’t the way the squad operated. They just got on with the killing. They were very good at it. They’d had a lot of practice.

For him at this moment it was enough that his back was itching and driving him mad just where he couldn’t reach it. He welcomed anything that would take his mind off it.

The convoy had slowed to an agonizingly slow pace. Hyde could see a distinctive blemish on the lead vehicle’s front wheel. He watched it, mesmerized, willing it to rotate faster.

So close to the deadline for the cease-fire, the Russians obviously thought themselves immune from attack. Another couple of kilometres to go, and then they’d be safely into the Warpac side of the intended demilitarized territory.

Mentally he urged the Soviet driver to put his foot down. Gradually the rest of the transports had begun to bunch behind him as impatience overcame convoy discipline.

A line, of prime movers and semi-trailers rested between the clusters of rusting derelicts. Hyde searched among them for any armour or towed weapons, but found none. There were, though, several tarpaulin-shrouded loads that could have been automatic weapons of any calibre. Several of the trucks’ cabs had anti-aircraft machine guns mounted above them, but none were manned.

“They’re worried about time as well.” Hyde heard the blare of a klaxon. About halfway along the column, dwarfed by the machinery about it, a command car was trying to overtake. A figure leaning out of the open passenger door was making sweeping urgent gestures.

The Russian officer must have been looking at his watch, and worrying. His concern, though, would be a different one entirely. A principal clause in the published truce terms was that any military equipment remaining in the cease fire area after zero hour must be immobilized and abandoned. A Warpac commander who allowed that to happen could expect, at best, to be demoted to the ranks of a disciplinary unit on mine clearing.

The message was obviously understood. Immediately the Zil eight-wheeler in the lead began to pick up speed. Its powerful twin engines plumed black fumes from its high mounted big-bore exhausts.