James Rouch - Killing Ground

It soared above all other sounds, going on and on, louder and higher than it should have been humanly possible to sustain. The distinctively dressed body of a child, a little blond girl, had rolled from the top of a stack and flopped untidily to rest on the steaming cobblestones.

An arm and part of the torso had been burned away; what remained gave off clouds of foul vapours. Sparks scudded, wind whipped from the smouldering frayed edges of clothing. They made tiny spiral points of light that were quickly lost against the more dramatic outpourings from the main pyre.

Heavy drops of rain began to fall.

Impatiently Revell watched the haughty German as he, with meticulous care, stowed pen and notebook in the proper compartments within his document case. A perceptible shade faster than was strictly in keeping with his earlier demeanour, he made for his own transport. He forced himself to slow when a glance back revealed that the big medic was grinning broadly. Then a stray round blasted the edge of the village and Klingenberg threw away all pretence at dignity and scuttled the last few steps.

Throwing the case onto the back seat of the Mercedes Estate, Klingenberg wrenched at the door when his first attempt to slam it shut was prevented by the buckle of his raincoat becoming jammed in it. His pinched face reddened as it took several tries before he managed to release his clothing and secure the door.

The amusement Revell experienced, though, was not directed at that but at the vehicle itself. Whoever had executed the complex disruptive camouflage paint job on the vehicle had failed to extend their painstaking handiwork to the chromed fenders or full-length roof rack.

Its heavy-duty tires crunching over broken brick and shards of glass, the Mercedes led the bus out of the square. Spectral faces were indistinctly visible inside the big vehicle. None remained pressed to the windows. They were leaving hell and daren’t turn back for a last look.

‘I hope he goes over a mine.’ Sergeant Hyde watched the shrouded taillights of the little convoy disappear from sight.

‘No chance, Sarge.’ Sampson shied the hypodermic into an anonymous ruin. ‘Infantry and marines die, civvies just get slaughtered, but German civil servants, they’re immortal. Man, when I buy my farm, if I’m reincarnated then all I want to come back as is some poor-paid boring little filing clerk in some piddling hick town hall.’

‘Get them on board, Sergeant.’ Revell turned his back on the noxious pillars of flame and black smoke rising into the predawn sky of another ugly day inside the Zone. Now that the job was done and the surviving civvies were on their way to safety he felt the return of the sapping exhaustion that had been dragging at his mind for days. Or perhaps it had been weeks. Time had almost ceased to have meaning. There were times when it took conscious effort to recall what month, or even what year it was. It was with only half his attention he watched his men lethargically climbing into the APCs, and the others, who had been watching approach roads, return. He should have injected a note of briskness into the proceedings, but it was no more in him than it was in his company, or what was left of it.

Since the Russians had launched their offensive… how long ago was it, four days, five…? They had been steadily falling back before the relentless pressure of mass attacks. The Warpac forces had been using ammunition as though they had a limitless supply, and every thrust had been preceded by devastating barrages, like the one that had virtually wiped this inoffensive little place from the map.

Revell could only be thankful that his Special Combat Company had been operating on the flanks. In the centre, whole NATO divisions had been obliterated. And even so, in the course of less than a week’s fighting they had sustained losses of nearly seventy percent. Of a reinforced company he now had thirty-five men left. Of the sixteen APCs he had begun with he now had four, and one of those was being towed.

But he knew in his heart it was wrong to say they had been fighting. Almost from the start they had been denied that opportunity. Time after time they had prepared positions, road blocks, ambushes, and every time they had been ordered to withdraw before enemy attacks had developed.

It was the massive Soviet air superiority that had caused their losses. Now it had reached the stage when any movement by daylight was inviting destruction. Fighter bombers and helicopter gunships were roaming at will, and to be seen on the open road was an invitation to a series of attacks. The onset of the bad weather twenty-four hours earlier had bought some slight respite, but neither low cloud nor night could completely halt the attacks. With the wealth of sophisticated targeting devices carried by the gunships and bombers it was most likely only a shortage of experienced pilots that had brought about the slight respite.

It was bitterly frustrating to take such punishment and not be able to strike back. What Revell and his men wanted was something real to fight for, not some anonymous ridge or railway cutting from which they were ordered to withdraw without even sighting the enemy.

Sharply, above the more distant rumble of the barrage, came the punching crack of cannon fire.

‘Let’s get moving, sergeant. That’s the Reds taking out the barricades on the edge of town. Their tanks won’t take long to smash through. Are we still being jammed?’

‘On all frequencies. They’re pumping out that mush at tremendous power. If any of our fliers were in the air the transmitter would be standing out on their screens in 3-D.’ Hyde stepped onto the rear ramp of the M113. ‘So we’re still pulling back?’

‘That was the last word we had, as soon as we finished here.’ Revell scanned the hellish scene in the square, now filled with the stench of the burning bodies. ‘Why they wanted this done though, God only knows. Is this any more decent than decomposing under a pile of rubble?’

Shrugging, Hyde ducked into the tracked carrier. ‘Probably the home village of some German politician who pulled a few strings…’

‘Don’t fucking wait for us, will you.’ Running and shouting, Dooley charged from an alleyway. He put on a spurt as he saw the last of the company boarding, was overtaken by Scully who had followed him but now reached sanctuary first.

‘Move over, you shits.’ Scully scrambled inside, shouting down the complaints from others who objected to being sprayed with the muddy water escaping from the cloudy plastic sack he carried. He sneered answers to his noisy and rude greeting. ‘Piss off. This is important stuff. You want to fuck up your guts on army rations, then that’s your bloody lookout. It took me an hour to grub up this lot. I’m not chucking them out now. I volunteered to cook when you lot wouldn’t do it, and if I’m going to do it then I want some decent veggies in the pot.’

‘You reckon they’re decent?’ Ripper watched the little man contort himself to push the soil-blotched turnips and carrots into an under-seat locker.

‘Of course they bloody are.’ Rearranging various bottles of soy sauce and ketchup and scooping back handfuls of stock cubes, Scully succeeded at his second attempt to fasten the improvised catch. ‘It’s the stuff grown above ground that glows in the dark.’

Seated by the rear door of the APC, Ripper suddenly stuck his leg across the opening to prevent Dooley entering. ‘Now you ain’t bringing them in here, boy.’

‘Don’t fuck about. It took me bloody ages to catch this lot.’ Supported in both arms Dooley carried a highly ornate gilt cage filled with a mass of twittering bright blurs.

Shrill cheepings and showers of multi-coloured feather and millet husks accompanied his attempts to push it inside ahead of him.