James Rouch: Hunter-Killer

‘If your birds weren’t so old,’ through the partially open bedroom door Burke could see the woman’s profile, admired the jut of her mature figure, ‘I might have done something on a tit for tat basis, but as I don’t fancy wrinkled tit, and you’re doing a tatty enough job of packing…’

‘Piss off.’ Cramming in the last few items, Dooley hoisted the lumpy loads to his shoulders. ‘Well, I’ve got everything I want, are we ready?’

‘And what about this fucking meal?’ Tearing off his gingham apron, York hurled it into the fireplace. Steam and smoke from the kitchen blended and wreathed him.

‘It’s a meal?’ There was a note of incredulity in Ripper’s voice. ‘Jesus, I didn’t know it was a food you were a-cooking, I thought you were working on a new poison gas.’ He craned to look past the cook at the heaving brown sludge filling a pan on the stove, ‘or maybe a new substitute for bitumen…’

A dagger-laced glare and a snort of contempt was York’s only comment. He grabbed hold of the pan, momentarily looking as if he was about to throw it, then he went to the fire and poured the entire contents over the flames. At least he turned the pan over, but the contents proved reluctant to abandon it and clung tight, until several increasingly vigorous shakes dislodged a solid lump. The fire died instantly.

‘And that is probably the effect it would have had on us.’ Double-checking the fastenings on his sniper rifle’s waterproof cover, Clarence led them from the room, down, and out of the building.

‘Get aboard the chopper, we’re leaving the hover-APC here.’ Revell threw them the news while they were still complaining about the cold. Folding his arms and adopting a belligerent air, Burke stood his ground as the others filed towards the aircraft. ‘I’ve been nursing that bastard machine for six months, just got the git working how I like it, and now you bloody tell me I’ve got to leave it here, to be stripped by sodding looters or wrecked by some idiot driver who doesn’t know how to handle her. Major, you know how scarce these wagons are, how the hell will we ever lay our hands on another?’

‘You finished?’

Burke opened his mouth to go on, but realised the officer wasn’t offering him an invitation to continue, and closed it again.

‘Now, unless you want to be pulling every stinking back-breaking job around for the next thirty days, I suggest you shut up and listen.’ Revell had been expecting an outburst from the British combat driver, but couldn’t let him get away with it, hence the threat. It was a particularly effective one in Burke’s case. Except where his beloved hover-APC was concerned – and even then he’d take every opportunity to hive a task off on to someone else – he was the most dedicated, the most skilful exponent of the art of goldbricking in the whole of NATO. ‘You know damned well that old bus is way overdue for a complete refit The powered traverse it out, the electrics are still held together by prayers and Blu-tack after that last brush we had with the Commies and the port turbine is developing a mind all of its own. There’s a recovery crew on its way, but if you want to say a last goodbye to the ugly great hunk of metal you can go tell the lieutenant I’ll see him and the rest of the squad at the chopper the moment our West German relief arrive.’

As he watched Burke trudging towards the roadblock, head down against the gusting wind, Revell noticed a movement at an upper window of the hotel. There weren’t supposed to be any civvies still around… He turned to look at the chopper in time to see Dooley waving back from the cabin doorway. The big man vanished inside the moment he realised he’d been observed. So Burke wasn’t the only one who was pushing his luck today. Oh, what the hell, let him get away with it this once, pretend he hadn’t noticed, the big gorilla had been behaving himself for the best part of a week. Anyway, it was most likely Hogg’s fault. Doubtless the lieutenant had been eating and sleeping in the Iron Cow, and had kept Sergeant Hyde too busy with a thousand niggling tasks for him to keep tabs on the big man every minute of the day – and it only ever took a minute for Dooley to get organised. Presented with a building chock-full of bedrooms it was obvious what he’d been up to…

‘Where are we going?’ Libby stood with Burke and the lieutenant outside the vehicle, as Sergeant Hyde made a final check of all the lockers and hatches. They could hear the sharpened studs of his boots grating on the hull’s metal floor. ‘No bloody idea.’ Burke thrust his hands deep into his pockets. ‘But I hope it’s somewhere a fuck sight warmer than this.’

‘I’m not leaving the Zone.’

‘You’ve got no sodding choice, mate,’ Burke tried stamping to aid his circulation. ‘Where that whirly-bird goes, there go we, like it or not. You’re not planning to do something stupid, are you?’

It was beginning to get dark, there would be no more refugees now, Libby knew that – they only travelled during daylight so as to stand the best chance of spotting mines – but he kept looking up the road, willing just one more to appear, a slim attractive girl. There was no one. No Helga. He’d stopped showing the photo to the passing human debris: not one of them had eyes for it, they were too full of themselves, too wrapped up in the overwhelming emotions of relief, joy and even disbelief at having finally made it. He had to get back into the Zone again, had to. ‘Well, are you?’

‘Mind your own business.’

Taking a tight hold on Libby’s sleeve, Burke pulled him away from the group. ‘It is my sodding business. If the brass have laid on a chopper for us that means we’re going places in a hurry, and that means Ol’ Foul Mouth has found another bastard job for us. I don’t fancy going into action with some last minute replacement beside me, some ruddy unknown who might put me right in it.’

‘It’s nice to know I’d be missed.’ There was a sneer in the words. Sergeant Hyde came out on to the ramp, jumped down, and activated the door control. He had to hit the switch twice before the hydraulics eventually, reluctantly, raised and closed it. ‘All secure, Lieutenant. Be a good idea if we boarded the chopper now.’ The lipless, graft-patched edges of his mouth hardly moved as he spoke.

‘The major said to hang on until our relief arrived.’

‘So I heard, Lieutenant, but I can see a Bundeswehr truck coming. The bunch of refugees in the back look familiar, and that’s a military police jeep following it.’

‘Yes, well maybe we could board now.’ Shepherding the men before him, Hogg kept glancing back at the approaching vehicles. Hyde was the last to scramble in, and did so as the officers went forward and the Black Hawk lifted. Before closing the sliding door he saw the jeep stop at the road-block and its occupants climb out to watch the take-off. They didn’t look too happy.

The men were already making themselves comfortable, which in most cases meant settling down to sleep. Andrea sat next to Dooley, who held his mirror-polished bayonet and was stabbing and cutting the air as he spoke to illustrate his words.

Through a misted window, Hyde caught a last glimpse of the hotel. There would have been big trouble if they’d stayed, but then, as yet, they didn’t know what sort of trouble the major was taking them into. Chances were it would be a hundred times worse, a thousand times more deadly. Maybe down there was a frying pan they’d soon be happy to leap back into, those of them still able to leap.

Sergeant Hyde stood at the foot of the steps and scanned the distant gate in the perimeter fence as the first of the Starlifter’s engines burst into life. He checked his watch for the tenth time in a minute and pretended not to see the flight crew urgently beckoning him to board from the cockpit window. They were cutting it fine. The timing had to be precise if they were to slot into the air traffic pattern in place of the scheduled civilian flight without attracting attention.