James Rouch - Overkill

Aircraft and pilot struck the ground near enough together, somewhere over towards the docks.

‘You got second sight, Major?’ Gaping, Ripper watched the fires taking hold of the flattened theatre.

Revell didn’t have to answer; the incident had restored his stock, put him firmly back in charge again. But there was a question he was going to have to ask Inga, and he wasn’t looking forward to insisting on an answer.

‘Must be that nuke we found the other night.’ Revell re-read the order. ‘Looks like the city fathers have been scared to learn the Commies are ready to drop big ones on the city itself, so they’re bringing forward plans for the breakout.’

‘About bloody time.’ Dooley’s gut signalled its emptiness from both ends of him at once. ‘Another day and we’d have been classed as residents and then we’d never have got out.’

‘We’d never be residents, not anywhere.’ Attempts Burke was making to suppress wind from his small intestine were failing, and he joined the big man in a repulsive duet. ‘We’re cannon fodder. They’ll let us do the dirty work for them, but they wouldn’t have us as ruddy neighbours in case we glowed in the dark and frightened the kids.’

‘Same back home.’ Taking the sensible precaution of moving up wind of the other two, Ripper continued reassembling his rifle. ‘Got a letter from my Aunt Emma just before we came on this jaunt, and from the tone of it I got the distinct impression she thinks I’m in danger of growing two heads. Mind you, the jars of home-made wine she gets through I reckon she sees two of most things.’

‘If your second bonce is no improvement on the first, in looks or brain power, I wouldn’t bother if I were you.’ Burke signalled the finale of the obscene double act with a thundering fart that almost lifted his backside off the ground.

Dooley just had to top that, and lifting each buttock rapidly in sequence contrived to turn a long burst of pungent wind into an almost recognisable tune.

‘If you two carry on for much longer, then the Communists are going to think we are using poison gas.’ Boris sniffed the air.

‘Take care, mate, one whiff of that and you’ll be pushing up the daisies.’

‘Can the rest of you not smell it?’

‘I hesitate to ask, but smell what?’ Cautiously Clarence sampled the evening breeze, taking care to first check the reading on the chemical level indicator attached to his belt.

‘Food, no not just food, meat, cooking meat.’

‘Our pet Ruskie is going off his trolley.’ Clarifying his meaning by tapping the side of his head, Burke suddenly stopped, and began to copy the others who were also testing the air. ‘Christ, I must be going dotty as well. It must be the hunger.’

‘Then we can all smell it. Either we’re down wind of a Russian officer’s preparations for a private party, or they’ve come up with a new stunt to drive us all crazy.’

‘Not very likely, Clarence.’ Revell was also enjoying the aroma of roasting meat. ‘The Reds gave up subtlety long ago.’

A green star shell burst overhead and bathed everything in a ghastly light that turned healthy flesh a putrid colour.

Ripper held out his hands to examine the effect. ‘Can’t say I’m keen on what it does for me, but on Burke I reckon it’s an improvement.’

‘Silence from now on. We’re moving up to our start line, that was the signal. There will be a barrage of sorts to cover the noise of the move, but the guns are short on ammo and we can’t count on its smothering everything, so if you’ve got any last words, out with them now.’

‘Or forever hold your…’ A look from their NCO and Burke cut it short. ‘…Amen.’

‘Can I just say you might have used a better form of words, Major.’

Corporal Thorne was unimpressed when Hyde turned his disfigured face to him.

Revell let it go. He could afford to, there was scant chance that the sapper would come through the night of fighting that lay ahead. Only the order to take up positions for the breakout had saved him from being handed over to the military police on a string of charges. But he was paying a price for that reprieve. The satchel he carried contained five homemade limpet bombs. Utilising a shaped-charge principle they were to be used to finish any disabled armoured vehicles that continued to resist, or any pill-boxes the flame throwers could not subdue.

From close behind them a battery of field guns opened a steady if none too rapid fire, managing to send another shell on its way as the echoes of the previous died.

There were other groups moving through the dusk. Some, like themselves, were armed with an assortment of weapons, a supply clerk’s nightmare; others were equipped exclusively with Patchette submachine guns, or anti-tank rockets, or engineers’ stores. Most of it had been produced in Hamburg’s own underground factories, and much of it, long held back against this day, was being tried for the first time.

Down a side street they passed several M60 and Challenger tanks. They were far too precious to be thrown blindly into the first assault on the enemy forces. The infantry and engineers would probe the Russian defences first, and then, and only then, when the ground was known and the enemy anti-tank weapons accounted for, would the tanks be unleashed.

The same did not go for some improvised armoured machines that stood hidden under thick camouflage netting immediately behind the start line.

Multi-wheeled civilian commercial vehicles had been fitted with rudimentary armour over their cabs and vulnerable tyres, and where their cranes or cement mixers had been there were now quick-firing cannon of every calibre.

Two huge bulldozers had also been fitted with sheets of plate and now waited with their accompanying engineers for the order to advance. Most poignant of all among the strange assortment of vehicles in which so much faith was being put, was a tiny Daimler Dingo scout car of World War Two vintage. Retrieved partially restored from some enthusiast’s garage and fitted with a single general purpose machine gun, it was going to lead.

They were directed into a house whose suspended floor had been removed by fuel scavengers long before, and settled to wait again.

Spiders and other bugs and insects came to bother them, making them itch and adding to their cramped discomfort. Revell hardly noticed them. As he looked around his men his greatest satisfaction was that Andrea wasn’t there. She was safe elsewhere, like Inga.

Those two were so different, so completely opposite each other in every conceivable way that it was impossible to imagine any grounds on which they might come together.

One by one the guns were falling silent, leaving as the only sound the far distant boom of some Russian heavies firing on another part of the perimeter. It was clear the Russians had no clue as to what was about to be unleashed on them.

The attack was planned to go forward and peel away the successive rings of enemy positions, pushing them back and away to either side to widen the gap until it was impossible for them to re-close it. Then they would dig in and hold that cleared ground until they got help from outside. There would be none until then.

The NATO High Command had not been told of the breakout, there had not been the time to involve them, or the wish to take the security risk of the lengthy communications that would have been necessary.

It was the desperate plight of the city that prompted so desperate a plan. The toll in human lives had been terrible so far; with the food situation becoming chronic it was going to get rapidly worse. They had nothing to lose.

The old man noted the readings, and made a pencil dot on the plastic cover of the map. With irritating slowness and deliberation he took a ruler from a shelf, dusted it on his sleeve, and used it to join the last two marks. Halfway along, the line he made intersected another, and he ringed the junction.