James Rouch: Hunter-Killer

O’l Foul Mouth had a way of presenting a mission that Revell didn’t like. What had doubtless been long thought over and meticulously worked on by experienced planning Staffs, he made sound hasty and improvised. While riding shotgun for a bunch of gunners wasn’t the best job Revell had been offered, it would do as a stopgap, serve to keep the nucleus of his new command together, if it ever materialised. His life seemed a succession of stopgaps; his battles, his women, each briefly enjoyed then discarded as he hurried to the next, and hopefully better experience.

‘You’ll pick up your equipment and the group you’re to escort at Bremen. You’ll fly out from there.’ Lippincott rose to conclude the meeting. ‘Best round up that cutthroat mob of yours, fast as you can. Where are they now, what they doing?’

‘Manning a Zone perimeter checkpoint. They’ll have their hands too full of refugees to get into any trouble there.’

‘You’re forgetting I know that crowd, and so do you. Neither of us believe that, not for a fucking second.’

‘I hope the lieutenant knows what he’s doing. We’re supposed to be making sure the refugees stay in the Zone, not helping them get out.’ Burke looked out from the uncurtained window, along the road to the checkpoint.

A bedraggled group of elderly civilians was shuffling through the gap that had been opened in the barricade. The moment the last one was clear Lieutenant Hogg hauled the wire-festooned pole back into place, laying it across the top of the concrete-filled oil drums. He was hampered by several of the party attempting to crowd about him and offer their thanks. An old lady in a mud-spattered suede coat kept grabbing at his hand, trying to kiss it.

‘Now how far are they going to get, dressed like a load of scarecrows?’ Ripper’s southern drawl was accentuated by a succession of yawns, and he tucked a blanket more snugly about his legs as he lay slumped on the couch. ‘Folks in these parts are shit scared of the Zone, reckon anyone who gets out carries every disease from anthrax to the black death, and glows in the dark to boot. They’ll be lucky to travel another mile, and luckier still if all that happens is that they’re picked up and shoved back in.’

Ushering the civilians away with a pantomime of urgency, the young officer freed his sleeve from a rusty barb and walked back to the Iron Cow. The hover-APC was parked at the side of the road, straddling the fence it had crushed when it came to rest. Its turret-mounted Rarden cannon, supposed to be covering the road-block, drooped, and still had its bell-shaped muzzle draped with a scrap of oily cloth against the flurries of sleet.

‘He’s not doing them any favours. Those Krauts think he’s smiling because he’s glad to be helping them. If only they knew, he’s doing it because he reckons the fighting in the Zone will be simpler if he empties it of civvies.’ Burke watched Libby stand aside on the vehicle’s lowered front ramp to let the lieutenant in, then once more fill the doorway as he scrutinised the face of each refugee filing past. Totally absorbed in the inspection he was making, he appeared oblivious of the cold and discomfort.

Burke went back to the fire, and tossed on to it a couple of chair legs picked from among the pile of broken furniture that provided its crackling fuel. Their impact sent a mass of sparks up the chimney. ‘This isn’t a bad little number we’ve got here. I hope the lieutenant isn’t about to louse it up. There’s bloody millions of civvies trapped in the Zone. If word gets round that we’re holding the door open, the trickle we’re getting through this back road at the moment will turn into a ruddy flood. Then there’ll be some questions.’

‘Hell, what’s the worst they can do to us?’ Ripper stretched. ‘They can only send us back into combat. And they’ll be doing that soon enough anyway.’

Using his boot, Burke tried to return an ember to the grate, but only managed to bring down two more. ‘I’d prefer it later than sooner. So would Dooley, he can’t get visits from his girlfriends in the Zone.’

‘Friends they may be, girls never. Leastways, not for a long, long time.’ York came out of the kitchen, surrounded by blue smoke. ‘The meal might be a little late. The gas must have been cut, there’s hardly any pressure.’

‘Doesn’t seem to be affecting your cooking. You’re still burning everything.’

‘I’m a fucking good cook, could have been a chef.’ He offered Burke the dripping spatula he carried like a badge of office. It wasn’t accepted. ‘So shut up then.’ He listened. A steady ‘thump-thump, thump-thump’ could be heard. It came from the next room, sounding like heavy furniture being rhythmically bumped into the wall, it went on and on. ‘He’s never still at it, is he? What can the fucking over-sexed bugger be doing now.’

‘I’d say you hit it on the head first time.’ Ripper punched the cushions into a more comfortable configuration. ‘I reckon he’s about done with fucking, and he’s started buggering. He sure does like variety. Ain’t ever known anybody who liked doing it so many different ways, ’cepting a cousin of mine who kinda got a hankering-for the livestock.’

Having failed to return the brand, Burke lost patience with it and crushed it into charcoal dust. ‘I don’t know about that, but did you see the old piece he took in there?’ He nodded at the bedroom door. ‘She must be into her fifties, must be.’

‘Can’t say I’ve ever been with one that old myself.’ Reaching out, Ripper lifted a slim-necked green wine bottle from the side of the fire. He jiggled it against the light to gauge its contents, then pulled the protruding cork with his teeth before taking a long pull at a lukewarm liquid. ‘Ain’t a touch on a decent rye, but,’ screwing up his eyes he examined the label and tried to decipher the elaborate entwined script, ‘but I just might be getting a taste for this here schnapps. We stay here much longer and I’ll have to see if I can’t lay in a supply. Where was I? Oh yeah, like I was saying, I ain’t never had one that old. Come to that, apart from a hairy old dame I ran errands for when I was a kid, who used to take out my cock and squeeze it when I got the change wrong, I ain’t had no relations with any female over eighteen or so. What do you think they’re like when they’re getting on a spell, all kinda discoloured and crinkled at the edges, and maybe smelling a bit?’

‘Sounds like a description of York’s cooking.’ The spatula hit the side of the fireplace as Burke ducked.

Only for a moment did the slamming of the kitchen door drown out the continual reverberations of Dooley’s excesses in the next room.

A draught of cold air blasted in with Andrea and circled the stuffy room for several seconds after she closed the door behind her She propped her grenade-discharger fitted M16 against the back of the couch before taking off her helmet and slipping out of the glistening rain cape. Draping the dripping garment over the back of the remaining empty chair, she dried her face and hands on the crumpled curtain she took from the top of a sideboard. The large brass rings still attached to it clinked as she rubbed the last beads of icy water from her fringe.

‘We will be moving out shortly. The lieutenant said we are to be ready.’ There was no need for her to do anything to get the men’s attention, she knew before she looked up that she would have an audience. The surge of cold air and the opening and closing of the doors had woken Clarence; now his head appeared out the top of the sleeping bag against the far wall. ‘That will please York. His culinary efforts must be about nearing fruition, or is that a dead goat I can smell?’