James Rouch - Blind Fire

High above the city, at the apogee of its soaring, thirty thousand yard trajectory, the rocket-boosted Copperhead artillery shell began its hurtling descent towards its general target area. Its ultra-sensitive seeker instrumentation, activated by the violence of its 7,000g launch, began to search for sources of laser radiation.

Almost immediately, it detected that being bounced from the hull of the accelerating T84. The round checked the frequency code of the emission it was homing on, matched it with its pre-programmed information and deployed its stubby mid-body wings.

Travelling at incredible velocity, the tiny control surfaces only had to move fractionally to carry out the final course corrections and bring it to its target. The fifty pound high explosive squash-head charge made a direct hit on the turret top beside the gunner’s hatch. The metal could offer no meaningful resistance to the forces unleashed against it…

As the service station’s high set canopy lifted off its girder supports and disintegrated, a roaring fireball engulfed the pumps and seared the front of the workshops behind them. The T84 rolled out of the flames, towing them with it, and minus every external fitting. It struck a row of cars and climbed on to them, bursting out their windshields and crushing their bodywork, before canting over and toppling on to its side.

A river of blazing fuel gushed from its ruptured hull, pouring down drains and into cracked-open inspection covers. Destruction became complete when the first of the underground storage tanks erupted and showered thousands of gallons of fuel across the area.

Tremors shook the ground as petrol ignited in the confines of the drains and sewers. A second storage tank blasted a hole in the forecourt and sent semi-molten brass valves and fittings and jagged lumps of concrete through the walls and roofs of nearby factories.

‘They’re coming after us.’ Cohen punched the sergeant’s shoulder to get his attention when shouting failed. ‘Look, they’re coming for us.’

Closed down, their co-axial machine guns sweeping the frontages to either side, the last four Soviet tanks were bearing down on them. Their leader fired its main cannon, and blasted a SeaLand container truck parked nearby.

‘Get me another round.’ Grabbing the radio-man’s wrist, Hyde pulled him back down.

Cohen was sending even before the sergeant had finished speaking. ‘…and we need it now, like right now.’ He sweated as he watched the T84 coming closer and closer. A burst punched through the crates above their heads and his pounding heart recorded every second that passed. Now the lead tank was only a hundred yards away, and he hugged the radio pack to his chest. ‘Isn’t that bloody shell ever coming?’

‘Another seven seconds I think,’ Hyde was perfectly cool, even sparing the time to answer a question to which the radio-man had expected no reply. The hawser-draped hull filled the viewfinder, the tiny green power-pack condition indicator in the bottom left-hand corner of the miniature screen was superimposed on a mud-spattered, crumpled track guard.

The tank burst apart as its own ammunition added its explosive force to the Copperhead’s pulverising impact. A blackened torso thudded on to the road, to be crushed by the tracks of the other tanks as they bulldozed past the hulk. ‘What are you waiting for? Let’s get the hell out of here.’ Revell grabbed the designator’s other handle and, with Cohen following, helped Hyde with it to the wire mesh fence on the far side of the yard.

As they ducked and squeezed through the gap the lieutenant had cut and held open for them, they could hear the packing cases tumbling and splintering before the Russians’ unchecked advance.

They were only halfway across the steel stockyard when the leading armour effortlessly flattened the fence. A man shouted and fell as it opened up with its secondary cannon. Hyde caught a glimpse of the machine gun victim’s face. It was the Yank with whom he’d shared the boiled sweets.

‘Set it up here.’ Revell darted in behind a huge bright yellow Lancing-Boss forklift, dragging Hyde with him.

‘How many rounds?’ Kneeling beside them, Cohen was already in contact with the battery.

Hyde stripped the covers from the Hughes equipment. ‘Four, at twenty second intervals; as soon as they’re ready.’

The giant side-loader had vast ground clearance, and Hyde took aim from beneath its chassis. Nosing into the yard, the lead tank had slowed to a more cautious pace, but it was still coming on, and now it enjoyed the partial cover of the steel billets and coiled sheet strewn around, as well as the legs of various gantries.

It was the jib of an overhead crane that intercepted the first shot, and as the thunder of its crashing to the ground died away, the second struck a rack of seamless tubing.

A 125mm shell exploded against the far side of the fork-lift, rocking it on its suspension and punishing the ears of the men in its shelter.

‘Bloody hell, they build these things tough.’ Using his teeth, Burke tied a knot in the improvised bandage he’d wrapped around a gash in his left forearm. ‘But for Christ’s sake clobber that Ruskie next time, Sarge, it might not soak up a second.’

Oblivious to everything else, Hyde concentrated on the approaching T84. The tank constantly had to dog-leg to right or left to find a route through the cluttered yard, and each time it did another stack of metal would take it from his sight. It was at such a moment that the third Blind Fire round came down, and blasted a tangled pile of scrap.

Revell had already passed the word, and as it emerged unscathed from the smoke the T84 was met by a hail of rifle and machine gun fire and a storm of 40mm grenades.

It came on through it all, shrugging aside the puny bullets and suffering no more than loss of paint and damage to some external equipment from the grenades. All three grenades that Andrea fired struck the vehicle’s turret front, and all three exploded harmlessly. She was prevented from firing her last by Dooley. ‘Go for the driver’s periscope. Blind the fucker.’

Taking the advice, and a fraction longer over aiming, she put the next round on to the target, and saw the tank suddenly veer off course and slow.

It was the chance Hyde had been waiting for, and he guided the last of the 155mm shells on to the T84s engine deck. The resulting explosion all but cut the tank in half, and the fire that followed lit the stockyard like day.

Climbing on to the forklift, Revell looked for the last two tanks. Their way blocked by their blazing companion, they had lowered their underbelly blades and were carving a way round it. Slabs and sheets of metal squealed and made masses of sparks as they were rammed and shoved aside. He’d hoped to have bought a longer respite from pursuit, but the Russians weren’t letting up pressure for a moment. All day he had been the hunter, now the roles had been reversed, and he didn’t like it. Jumping down, he was chased by a long burst of machine gun fire, and as he led his squad at a sprint through the yard the forklift was struck by two shells simultaneously and collapsed on to its nose as one giant wheel was wrenched off, and another flayed and set alight.

Behind them the tank engines boomed louder as they cleared the last obstruction and came on. Ahead of them…

‘Fucking nothing. It’s like the fucking moon.’ Dooley’s description wasn’t far wrong. In front of them stretched a vast tract of reclaimed land, broken only by low hummocks of spoil and a network of deep-gouged tyre tracks. On its far side loomed the towering outline of several cooling towers and the great box-like bulk of a power station. Pylons clustered in front of it, and marched away across the alien landscape. ‘Can we make it?’