James Rouch - Civilian Slaughter

The mass of men were starting to surge forward, impatient at the APC’s slow progress. First to reach it, only yards ahead of the rest, a lieutenant leaped for the side of the moving vehicle. He grabbed hold, then lost it and rolled off. As he went down his uniform glistened brightly.

Tarkovski saw, and his brain made the final connection of what he had been trying to understand.

“The paint is wet, the paint is wet!” Left on his own in the middle of the road, he screamed after his men, now jubilantly crowding about the lead personnel carrier. “Run, get away!”

At least two thirds of his battalion were packing themselves about the eight wheeler. Above their shouting and whistling he couldn’t make himself heard or understood.

Mad with frustration and rage he looked to the gun emplacement. The gunners were searching for a way down. He waved them back.

“Petrov, you bastard. Stay where you are, open fire, you shit! Open fire!” Tarkovski tore his hair and whirled to look at the clusters of men now about both of the APCs. The third vehicle seemed to have gone. On the roof the gunners still stood in indecision. At the top of his voice the colonel ranted at them, spittle shooting from his mouth.

“Open up on them. Fire, you shits, fucking well fire!” The girl stood up, swaying enticingly, then she reached in among the litter of parcels on the roof and tossed two small black objects into the crowd. At the same instant she dropped from sight through the open hatch.

In the crowd there was a confused tangle of movement. Men who had recognized what was thrown panicked to get clear. Others who wanted to see what it was pressed forward and pinned them against the sides of the hull.

Either side of the APC there were eruptions of flame and smoke and blood. An arm spun through the air and screams drowned the sounds of the engines.

Every hatch aboard both transports clanged back and above every one appeared a rifle, grenade launcher or machine gun.

Chunks of flesh jumped from the crowd as bullets smashed into and through them. A mist of blood hung over the scene as the heavier turret-mounted weapons joined in.

Frozen for a moment, the flak gunners grabbed at the netting over their twin-mount and began to roll it back. Petrov was throwing himself into the gunner’s seat when his face was pulped and the back of his head blasted away in a single concave bowl of bone.

Tarkovski hardly saw the body that toppled past him to land with a sickening squelch on the cobbles, destroying the last of the skull.

The ladder slipped as he climbed and he had no time for obscenities as he smacked to the ground beside the corpse. Above him there was a drawn out scream and a jet of blood hosed out in a wide arc. A body flopped across the edge of the roof, an arm and leg and several yards of intestines dangling over the side. Blood and filth ran down the wall.

In swift succession came the familiar sounds of armour-piercing rounds punching through metal. Pushing himself to his feet Tarkovski hoped they were striking the slaughtering APCs, but the fire they started was above him as ready-use ammunition was ignited.

Moving steadily forward, the weapons aboard the APCs were hosing non-stop streams of tracer and grenades into every building and corner.

Two men ran for cover behind the field car. The vehicle seemed to jump and disintegrate in front of his eyes as it was hit by several converging streams of automatic fire.

Taking a last look around, Tarkovski could see no fire being returned. Yelling curses, he ran for the farmhouse door. He was no longer drunk. He passed the truck he’d noticed earlier. This time, though, he paid it no attention, assuming it had stalled alongside the building.

A grenade detonated on the cobbles as he threw himself behind the blast wall. There was a searing pain in his leg, and then he was in cover. When he tried to stand the limb collapsed under him, and he experienced the pain afresh. It was broken, he knew without looking.

Dragging himself, he secured the door and then crawled across to the table. It took a strength-sapping effort but he managed to reach up and grasp the holster on top, then collapsed back in agony. Every movement brought new experiences in pain.

A piece of the top of his boot had been driven into the hole in his calf. On the other side of the leg the leather bulged and blood welled sluggishly every time he moved. The large fragment that had struck him had passed almost from one side of the limb to the other. On the way it had snapped the bone, and driven at least a part of it out through the flesh on the far side. That was what was beneath the bulge.

In the farmhouse the sounds of battle were far less distinct. Not that he could call it a battle. It was too one-sided for that. His men had galloped cheerfully, deliriously, happily to their own bloody execution.

There was nothing to be salvaged but his life. He’d kept that this long, he wasn’t about to lose it now. He’d cheated the firing squad once, the hangman twice. This could not be any more difficult than that. First he had to find a place to hide.

There had been no resistance. Revell had thought that once he had heard a bullet skim past, but he could have been mistaken, or it could have been a spent round that had ricocheted from one of the metal-clad barns or silos.

Several of the outer buildings were alight. A huge barn was billowing vast quantities of smoke that was fortunately blowing away from them on the light breeze.

The whole area of the road and courtyard resembled a charnel pit. At least two hundred bodies littered the ground. Many of them, victims of grenades or multiple impacts, were flayed or even totally dismembered. Every wheel on the APC was smothered in a red slush.

Blood also spattered the armour. Carrington sprinted from the cover of a silo, his progress slowed when he slipped and rolled through the worst of the mess. He scrambled aboard, his hands feet and clothes daubing more gore on the sticky paint.

“It’s set. Five minutes. I’d have been back sooner but there was stuff bouncing all over the place out there.”

The turret gun blasted off behind Revell and punished his ears. Derelict machinery in an open front tractor shed sparkled as the bullets struck sparks from it. A body flopped down from the rafters, and a full burst into the roof brought down three more and started a fire among the shattered timber.

An anti-tank rocket soared from the corner of a much-holed barn. Revell just had time to duck before it struck. It impacted low on the hull, aft of the front wheel. The heat round blasted its jet of molten explosive into a box of reactive armour. With a roar the defensive charge exploded and disrupted the plasma stream, showering droplets of white hot material over the nearby bodies.

“It’s OK, we just lost a wheel, we’ve plenty more.” Revell acted fast to prevent a bail-out as the interior filled with smoke.

“It’s buggered the power steering as well.” Burke had to wrench hard at the wheel to get the ten-and-a-half tons of armoured vehicle turning.

“Where’s Hyde?” Finding the single periscope in the commander’s hatch gave him virtually no vision closed down, Revell opened up and put his head out.

“He’s off to our left. Looks like he’s fine.” Dooley had spotted the sergeant’s eight-wheeler first, through the turret machine gun sight. “What the hell. Doesn’t he know he’s being followed?”

“Get us over there fast.”

Holding on tight, Revell tried to see through the thickly swirling smoke as they bounced and jolted over a corner of what had been a deeply ploughed field.

As they came alongside, Revell hailed his NCO. “This is a raid, not a looting expedition. Get your men out of those trucks.”