James Rouch - Overkill

Ten minutes later it returned. This time it moved less cautiously, and stopped long enough to put several hundred rounds into the area of the interchange. Apparently satisfied when no fire was returned, it headed back the way it had come.

An hour passed, in which the sun climbed higher and beat down more fiercely. Their sweat mixed with the dust and brought to their bodies an unbearable itching sensation they could do nothing to relieve. None of them touched the water bottles they had been allowed to half fill before leaving. If it was bad now, it was going to be a lot worse.

Revell felt almost guilty when the colonel sent him forward to investigate the sound of tank engines that had been audible for some time, but that was not accompanied by the clouds of dust that would have indicated movement and betrayed a precise location.

He took Andrea with him, and together they crawled, slid and ran two hundred yards to the shelter of a rusting Leopard tank. Wriggling in through a hole low in its hull side they carefully extended the aerial of their radio out through the crack around the edge of the distorted loader’s hatch.

An ammunition explosion had gutted the inside of the tank, only the massive breech of the main armament remained intact. The turret had been lifted by the blast and now it was possible to see daylight between its bottom rim and the top of the hull.

It hardly seemed possible they could have got so close. A pair of Soviet T72s stood not fifty yards off. Both had their engine covers open, and a harassed mechanic was leaning over one compartment, while he shouted at and argued with the crew seated on the other tank.

Around the tanks were a company of Russian infantry. Having grown bored with waiting they had organised various diversions, among which games of cards and dice seemed the most popular. A group of young officers stood and talked among themselves. Glancing frequently at the tanks, they looked even more often at their watches.

‘They are afraid. They have fallen behind their schedule.’ Andrea eased herself to a more comfortable position. It brought her into contact with Revell, but she made no move to back off.

He spoke quietly into the radio, but his mind was on other things. Was it his imagination or could he feel the heat of her body through the several layers of clothing between them? If it was only his imagination he was content to let it stay that way, an illusion was better than nothing. After all the months of hoping, of hopeless scheming, this was the first time he’d been alone with her.

And now that at last he was so close to her, it had to be at a time, and in a place, when he could not exploit the situation. They had seen what they’d come for, now they had to get back, and fast. The engine covers were being slammed closed and the infantry prodded to their feet.

Stifling though it was inside the metal hull, they still felt the additional heat from the exhaust gases of the scout car as it stopped alongside. A fraction of an inch at a time Revell began to retract the radio aerial, until it slid to the thinnest end of the crevice through which it projected, and stuck fast with near twelve inches of the shining metal still sticking out.

With engine beats that were far from healthy the T72s began to lurch forward, inexperienced drivers, or failing gearboxes giving the infantry riding on the rear decks and turrets an uncomfortable time.

As they began to move, Revell noticed a junior sergeant deliberately slip back from the back of the second tank and sit in the track marks clutching his ankle and feigning injury. Two privates were less concerned with appearances and simply jumped, sprinting away. An officer fired after them and the slower of them stumbled, recovered and tried to hobble on, fast being left behind by his companion. The officer fired again and this time the limping man went right down, rolled once, arched into a spasm and lay still.

With that example before his eyes the junior sergeant made a miraculous recovery and dashed after his mount. He leapt for the back of the tank and as he got a hold was kicked in the face by the officer who had used the pistol with such effect. Letting go with one hand he swung round, and as he threshed to regain a grip put his right leg between the whipping track and the drive sprocket.

Crushed and pierced, the limb was not completely severed and the junior sergeant lost several fingers as the sudden wrench with which his remaining hold was torn dragged them along a rough-finished weld that sawed straight through them.

The bark of the exhausts drowned the screams from the terrified man as he flopped about in the dust, first pressing the spurting stumps of his knuckles to his mouth, now plucking at the bloodstained cloth tangled with the protruding bones of his leg.

Leaving their vehicle, the crew of the scout car climbed on to the hulk of the Leopard and from that vantage point watched and shouted derision at the sufferer. They kept it up for some minutes, before their commander did as the tormented man begged, between anguished screams, and ended his agony with a bullet.

Slowly and carefully Revell moved round until he could bring his repeater shotgun to bear on the turret hatches. He could hear the Russians moving about, and from the cutting-off of the beams of daylight coming through various ports and holes in the armour he could determine their positions.

There were three of them. All it would need would be for one of them to drop a grenade in, and that would be it. Should they by some miracle avoid that, then they’d be in no state to answer the burst of automatic fire that would inevitably follow.

The radio, resting on the twisted remains of the loader’s seat, was suddenly jerked into the air as a Russian gave its protruding aerial an exploratory tug. Revell didn’t give him the chance to pursue his curiosity further.

Five blasts from the shotgun threw open the hatch and caught two of the car’s crew unprepared. The storm of pellets lashed into them and the multiple impacts threw them off.

Andrea fired at almost the same split second. Patiently she had been tracking the progress of the vehicle’s commander and as the roar of the 12-gauge boomed about the interior of the hull, she put a compact burst through the hole in the turret front where the co-axial machine gun had been, and into the base of the soldier’s spine as he sat on the hull front reloading his pistol.

Blood made the metal surround slippery, and Revell had difficulty hauling himself out. The recoil was savage as the improperly held shotgun put the contents of three shells into the men on the ground. All of them were lying still, but he had seen others learn the hard way that a Russian who was down was not always out. A favourite trick of theirs was to play dead and then open fire on the backs of NATO soldiers after they had passed.

Ignoring the helping hand offered, Andrea climbed from the turret. She didn’t bother to look at the bodies.

A bullet bounced from the armour between them, striking sparks from the metal. A second cut through the air past Revell’s face and they jumped down to seek the shelter of the tank’s bulk.

A smattering of single shots followed, coming from the direction of a decrepit Tatra truck hung about with toolboxes and welding kits.

Machine gun fire came from another angle and probed for them with short accurate bursts that forced them to keep low. Only Andrea’s M16 had the effective range to engage the enemy, and it wasn’t enough. Taking a smoke grenade from his belt, Revell lobbed it beyond an angle of the hull and counted down the seconds to its ignition. Its bursting seeded a wide area with blazing pieces of phosphorus that gave off dense clouds of yellow-white smoke.

The first few paces they tried to hold their breath, but the exertion of running forced them to gulp for air, and instead they got the acrid fumes from the blazing chemical. It rasped in their throats, burned their lungs and even as they raced clear their eyes continued to stream from the irritation.