James Rouch - Hunter-Killer

‘That’ll have to do. Everyone under cover.’ Between attempts with cold hands to pile the fruits of his labours on the edge of his slit-trench, Hyde caught a glimpse of movement among distant trees. Waiting a moment to see that the others had gone to ground, he got down himself. It was probably a delusion, but huddled into the all too shallow hole, he felt warmer. After carefully cutting a vee-shaped cleft in the ragged parapet he looked again. There could be no doubt about it, there was the main body of the Russian patrol, perhaps another forty men. It wasn’t their loping progress that had first caught his attention. Trees were falling, being toppled and crushed by the advancing bulk of a crudely whitewashed T72.

Even before he could see the details of its raked frontal armour and turret, Hyde had calculated its course. As the tank cleared the tree line, the Soviet marines fanned out behind it, facing him across the half mile of bleak open ground, and started purposefully forward.

‘Well it had to turn up sooner or later. The rumours have been doing the rounds long enough.’ The third battle group showed bright and clear on Cline’s screen. Several of the traces were as large as the biggest they had already seen, but one in particular stood out, dwarfing them and shaming the other blips that swarmed about it.

‘Seventy thousand tons. The pride of the Russian fleet.’ Revell couldn’t take his eyes off the image. ‘It’s just got to be the Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, that carrier’s the biggest hull ever launched from the Leningrad yards. Hell, it’s even bigger than anything the Commies have ever laid down at Nikolayev on the Black Sea. York, I want to know if it’s operating aircraft, rotary or fixed-wing.’

‘I’m already monitoring it, Major, and it’s not, but someone is. I’ve got what sounds like a Swedish fighter controller, seems our neutrals have heard the fireworks going off in their back yard. I can’t tell what they’re yacking about, sounds like the Swedish chef out of the Muppets, but I’m betting the sky gets rather full in the next couple of minutes.’

‘It is already.’ Manually activating the automatic IFF interrogator, Cline double-checked the Identification-Friend-or-Foe system. ‘And the pair of birds coming our way aren’t ours, and they aren’t Russian. He could be right.’

‘Of course I’m fucking right. Only a genius like me would have checked that channel.’ Unable to resist, despite his confidence, York leant over to see his interpretation of the radio-intercept confirmed by two fast-moving traces on the air-watch radar.

‘Our fellow islanders have seen them too, they are getting excited.’ Over his headphones, Boris could hear the commander of the Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries on the island desperately trying to establish whether or not he could, or should, engage the fast approaching targets. ‘In the Red Army it is always the same. Without a specific order to follow, a Soviet officer is terrified of doing the wrong thing, afraid to use initiative.’

‘I hear small-arms.’ Fraser paused and listened, as he attended to the Swedish woman. His words received immediate attention, and the room was suddenly quiet.

It was unmistakable. The cold, still, air brought the sound of fighting into the room. Revell could discern the brurring chatter of machine guns, the occasional crack of single shots and, more worrying, the sharp smart crash of cannon fire.

‘Warn the gunners at the launch sites that the Ruskies are inside the perimeter. And I want the Lance ready to go on a ten-second countdown.’

This was it. Now he felt the sensations that tied Dooley in knots before a fight. Total surprise and confusion among the Russian land and naval forces had kept them safe so far, but now that slight edge was gone. Having shown their hand, they could expect the pressure to build up fast. They would have to do as much damage as they could before the Soviets hit back hard. The marine infantry attack was just the start, the Russian elite troops were, to the barrage that was inevitably coming, what the first loose flake of ice was to an avalanche.

‘Major.’ York found frequency after frequency jammed with traffic, much of it in code, but a lot of it in clear, as he tapped into the third battle group’s ship-to-ship and fire-control communications. ‘They’re getting ready to chuck hardware, I’m sure of it.’

‘How long before the Gorshkov is in range?’

‘Ten minutes at present course and speed, but some of the escorts are really piling it on. We can have a go at some of them inside five.’

‘Hold your fire, Bombardier. Forget the secondary targets, we’re waiting for a chance at the jackpot.’

‘Think we’ll still be around to collect, Major?’ Revell didn’t answer York’s question. None of the men would have been likely to believe an instant and positive ‘yes’, and nothing else would have done any good. Already they had done more, much more, than 01’ Foul Mouth or any of the brass had probably expected them to. But even if they’d wanted to, there was no way they could cut and run. They had nowhere to go to, the best they could hope for was to survive whatever the Russians, and perhaps the Swedes, threw at them, and hang grimly on to await a pick-up that might never materialise. This, more than any other mission he’d led the unit into, was taking on all the appearances of a one-way trip.

There was a series of smacks against an outside wall. Fraser fumbled with the sacking he was drawing over the woman’s face. Doing so uncovered her blackened legs.

‘Just spent rounds from Hyde’s fight.’

‘That’s OK, sir.’ Fraser tried to control his shaking hands. ‘Just as long as we don’t get an ‘over’ from that Ruskie tank.’ He moved away from the fresh corpse. ‘I’ll go back to our casualties now.’ Had that one not been available, he would have had to fabricate another excuse to leave the control room. His stomach churned, and for a brief instant his bowels had been about to empty. The sweat that broke from his body instantly seemed to turn to pellets of ice. Though he walked carefully and deliberately, his feet tripped on the stairs and he almost fell, as another group of bullets hit the roof and brought down a tile.

‘The kid’s shit scared.’ York didn’t bother to check if he was out of hearing before offering the remark.

‘Only a head-case wouldn’t be.’ It was only partly for the youngster’s benefit that Revell said it. There were times when the truth needed to be spoken aloud. None of them were there to throw their lives away. Each of them had passed up a hundred opportunities to do just that in the last few months.

No two members of the unit had the same reason for going on, but the reasons they had were strong, and drove them to fight to stay alive just one more day. In the Zone that was the best you could ever hope for, to see the next day, and there were never any guarantees.

Only ten of the Russian marines were still coming on. They moved in a huddled mass, close behind the slowly advancing bulk of the T72. Their fallen comrades dotted the ground they had already covered, almost impossible to discern in their winter clothing against the backdrop of snow, no more than untidy hummocks marring the pristine white coating over the landscape.

Clarence had held his fire, forcing himself to sublimate the nearly overwhelming urge to take aim, and stayed hidden. But even if he was not as yet involved in the fighting, there was still another battle for him to fight. The. air he filtered to his lungs through several layers of scarves struck bitterly cold, but he had the measure of it now. He wasn’t about to be caught a second time. Willpower was the only weapon he possessed to aid him in the struggle, and it took all he had to help prevent him closing his eyes and giving in.