James Rouch - Overkill

They had heard the mortar being fired intermittently all through the night, and had been about to reluctantly return to the boat when the column of trucks had pulled into the square. Even then, as success, or the hope of it, had seemed within their grasp, blind chance had conspired to try and rob them of the opportunity.

A giant eight-wheeled truck had parked immediately in front of the building they occupied, and its driver had climbed down to undo his clothing in preparation to relieve himself. Only his preoccupation with that had prevented him seeing the squad, and Ripper had acted before the man could look about him and raise the alarm.

The killing, the driver’s absence, had gone unnoticed, so far, but Hyde knew they had to work fast if they were to retain the element of surprise in what it was they had to do.

With the body hurriedly concealed, they abandoned their carefully prepared position, forced by the truck’s obstructing bulk to shift to a fresh one.

It wasn’t as good; a bomb site where, because of the noise made by even the slightest disturbance of the debris, they had to take up whatever firing points they could find among the rubble, with no opportunity to do anything to improve them.

‘Hold your fire.’ Despite the danger of their exposed position, Hyde knew they had no choice but to bide their time and wait.

The detachment travelling with the mortar was not limited simply to its eight-man crew and the drivers of its handful of support vehicles. Several field cars had also pulled into the square and disgorged a party of officers and a squad of slab-faced, smartly uniformed infantry who could only be their bodyguard.

‘That’s all we need, a bunch of bloody sightseers.’ Taking aim at a colonel, Burke had the barrel of his rifle jerked down by Hyde.

‘There’s no way we can get them all when we open up, and it only needs one of that tough-looking goon squad to survive and start taking pot shots from cover and we’ll never get to the bloody thing to set the charges.’

‘Then just how d’you figure we’re going to get at it then, Sarge?’ Ripper had taken his knife from its sheath and was measuring its length with his fingers.

‘Just wait and see. What the hell are you doing?’

‘I don’t know, leastways I do, and then I don’t.’

The NCO gave up, but Dooley’s interest was aroused. ‘Why you measuring the blade?’

‘You know, it’s weird. When I stuck that Commie, I mean he ain’t the first I’ve stuck since I been here, there were those two tank crewmen back at Kirchdorf, when we lost the major and Andrea; and there was that assault engineer with the flame thrower we found hiding behind that T72 you stopped…’

‘OK, so you’re good with a knife, so what?’ ‘Well, all those guys were real thin, I mean but thin, like they was only skin and bone. The driver I just took out, he had a gut on him. Not a lot, but a gut. I could tell the way the knife went in.’

‘You must be imagining it.’ Dooley didn’t take him seriously. ‘From what I’ve seen even a Ruskie quartermaster on the fiddle would have a hell of a job getting hold of one square meal a day. Either your tiny brain is playing you tricks or the guy must have been a new recruit. Maybe he was fresh from boot camp, or had been drafted straight from the streets of Moscow.’

‘That cannot be right.’ As he shifted slightly to a more comfortable position, Boris caused a minor slide of broken brickwork and his efforts to stop it only intensified the miniature avalanche. He didn’t speak again until every last fragment had settled. ‘Even in Moscow, the only people with full bellies are the party members, and they are careful not to be drafted into the army.’ ‘Alright, that’s enough now.’ Hyde’s interest had been taken by a small four-wheeled Gaz truck that had pulled into the square. The officers appeared to have been waiting for it, and now they gathered around its rear doors while one of their number went inside. ‘Weird-looking bus. No masts or sockets for them so it’s not a radio-van. Obviously got air conditioning, but it’s nothing like big enough for a commander and his staff who’d rate a luxury like that.’

While the late arrival absorbed their interest, the mortar crew had succeeded in setting up their weapon close by and its tracked tractor unit now pulled clear. From the back of an ammunition truck parked over the far side of the square two fat, fin-tailed rounds were lifted and then carried to the mortar, one on a trolley with severely buckled wheels, the other slung from a two-man bar sling.

They were deposited between the gigantic mortar and the strange truck while their fuses were set. For no reason that Hyde could see the crew’s actions enraged several of the officers, who, suddenly noticing what was going on, began to rant at the erring artillerymen.

‘What do you make of that, Sarge?’ Through the close-up clarity provided by the rifle’s superb night-sights, Clarence could see the officers’ fury, and then their assault upon the luckless and apparently unwitting transgressors. They didn’t waste their own energies; after knocking the unresisting men to the ground and delivering several sharp kicks, they handed them over to the bodyguards.

That they’d had plenty of practice showed clearly. With minimum effort but maximum force they reduced the artillerymen to unconsciousness within seconds, then just to be sure gave them another pounding with their rifle butts before letting their comrades carry them away. As a lesson in the skilled application of brutality it was superb; as an illustration of Communist barbarity it was classic.

There was something very special about that truck, but Hyde couldn’t figure out what it was. Well, what the hell. Now they had just the circumstances they wanted. The ready-use ammunition was perfectly placed…

Clarence took his time. There was no point in trying for a fancy shot at the shell’s nose fuse. With the depleted uranium cored bullet he had chambered he would go for the body of the mortar round. Its thick cast casing would be no impediment, not to the colossal temperatures the bullet’s impact would generate. The near fission hot molten and vaporised materials would pass through the casing as though it wasn’t there and through the explosive content of the interior as easily, though that filling would not as passively accept the intrusion as the outer wrapping.

That a Russian officer stepped into the bullet’s path at the last instant made no difference. At a range of under a hundred yards the round passed clean through his leg. He’d not begun to collapse when the principal target bucked and spurted blue flame.

Blinding light filled the square, but no explosion came with it. Hyde looked up to see, where the shell had been, a brilliant white-fire spitting fountain that was expanding at a prodigious rate. Already the wounded officer had been engulfed and fittings on the mortar were beginning to deform and melt as the incendiary bomb consumed itself and everything around.

Frozen into a tableau of petrified disbelief, the Soviet officers could only stare, then the one who had been in the van jumped out and ran. In a moment he was gone, lost to sight among the ruins.

The vehicle’s tyres were beginning to smoke, and a plume of vapour was escaping around the edge of its fuel filler cap. When the spare wheel bolted to the side, taking the full ferocity of the nearby holocaust, exploded, the spell was broken.

Rank counted for nothing as the Russians ran for their transport, and many of the officers came off worst in disputing places with the members of their supposed bodyguard. The square was full of vehicles backing and turning and colliding. Men who had failed to get seats clung to the outsides, taking the risk of the crashes that occurred.