James Rouch - Killing Ground

There was no time to shout, to tell them to abort. He could only watch helplessly as they sped the length of the valley and unloaded their pylons immediately above the village.

The detonation of the thousand-pound bombs carpeted the floor of the valley in smoke and flame and overlapping white blast rings. A Bradley hull spun through the air; a house roof lifted, complete and intact, to twice the height of the instantly demolished building beneath it.

For a moment Revell could hope that no other damage had been done, that the underground storage areas had not been penetrated; then there came a long, low, powerful rumble and the whole valley and the surrounding hills appeared to shake.

The Chinook was pushed bodily sideways, puncturing a tire and buckling a landing leg. Thrown off balance, Revell regained the window to see that the site of the village was concealed inside a huge fireball that was beginning to rise. Only its seemingly deliberate slowness gave any measure of its awesome dimensions.

Countless secondary explosions raced through the ground at its base, the collapsing earth graphically marking the precise layout of the complex.

‘Heck.’ The baby-faced gunner was wide-eyed with amazement at the spectacle. ‘Was that a nuke they dropped, was it? You can feel the heat from here.’

Riding the turbulence of the strong up currents, the Chinook lifted and turned to head west. Revell beckoned Clarence to undrape the girl from the gun. He couldn’t bring himself to have anything to do with her.

They were a hundred feet above the ruins, making the transition to forward flight, when she suddenly revived and shoved the sniper’s hands away. Before he could get hold of her again she had thrown herself behind the machine gun and, ignoring the pain of her strapped wrist, was training it downward and opening fire.

The stream of bullets struck a long way short of the lone figure that had climbed into the open. She tried to correct her aim, but fumbled as her target hurled himself aside, and missed again.

Clarence was less gentle the second time, and wrenched her away. The range was longer now, and he sent the tracer in a swirling cone of steel toward the deserter.

Almost into safe cover, he was struck across the back of the legs, below the knee. He collapsed with both calves reduced to a pulp of jelly-like tissue and small fragments of bone.

‘You didn’t kill him.’ Andrea hammered with her fists on Clarence’s back, until she was pulled off.

Dooley had pushed his caged birds into a safe corner, and now gripped her in a bear hug from behind. ‘Keep still, you mad bitch.’

‘He didn’t kill him, he didn’t kill him.’

Waiting until she was quiet, deprived of breath by the pressure of the hold, Clarence sat down, and taking a piece of biscuit from his pack, broke it up and began to poke it through the bars of the cage.

‘No, I didn’t kill him, but he’ll be no more trouble to anyone. And in any event, he would not have counted.’ He pushed in the last crumbs, then picked up his rifle. ‘I still have five to go. Deserters don’t count.’

For as long as he could, Revell watched the series of explosions as the valley receded in the distance. There had been no open expression of the frustration most of them must have experienced. Except perhaps their medic. Sampson had muttered quietly and angrily to himself as he moved among the wounded.

They had all had a reprieve of sorts. A handful of them had come through with hardly a scratch, but all had picked up another layer of scar tissue inside.

With the NATO armies now on the offensive, the war in the Zone was going to be harder and nastier than ever before. He didn’t doubt that the Special Combat Company was going to be right in the thick of it.

HARD TARGET

BLIND FIRE

HUNTER-KILLER

SKY STRIKE

OVERKILL

KILLING GROUND

PLAGUE BOMB

CIVILIAN SLAUGHTER

BODY COUNT

DEATH MARCH

Copyright © 1988 by James Rouch

An Imprint Original Publication, 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers.

First E-Book Edition 2005

Second IMRPINT April 2007

The characters in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

THE ZONE

THE ZONE E-Books are published by

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Produced under licence from the Author, all rights reserved. Created in Australia by Ian Taylor © 2005