James Rouch - Hard Target

His shouting unheard above the roar of the engine the MP jumped back, starting to unslung his AKM as he did so. The car almost brushed him and. as the passenger window drew level, he suddenly clutched at his chest, staggered and crumpled.

‘There’s another of the bastards.’

In response to Libby’s yell Hyde slung the wheel hard over, stamped on the gas pedal and hurled the big wagon straight at the second MP who was scrambling from the little tent, pushing his rifle before him.

If the Russian screamed he wasn’t heard. The deep treaded tyres crushed him into the hard earth and the tent was ripped to shreds by the tangled mass of barbed wire and broken stakes the truck bulldozed before it.

As Hyde hauled the encumbered vehicle back on to course, a wheel ran over the parked motorcycles and the wire was dragged from the truck as it straightened up again behind the command car.

Ahead of them the track led right up to the camp. Burke had seen the tank drive into the motley collection of shelters and appear to melt away. For a moment he had the wildly illogical thought that he’d follow it and find it had crushed a bloody course over hundreds of refugees.

‘Keep going.’ It was hardly noticeable, but Revell’s senses were tuned to such a pitch that he instantly noticed the tiny check to their speed. ‘Follow the tank.’ What, from his vantage point up in the roof of the farm, had looked like the start of just another of the many paths that wound through the camp, as they got closer revealed itself to be wide enough to comfortably accept the car, and the truck behind it.

Immediately it started to slope steeply and, as it levelled out again, the false roofs of the camp were forty feet above them, supported by lattice girdering. It was a very different view to the one from outside.

‘I’ll have to put the side lights on, I can’t see a sodding thing.’ Fumbling about with the unfamiliar controls, Burke managed to turn on the wipers and interior light before he pulled the correct knob. He found it just in time. The faint illumination they provided showed a curtain of what looked like thick black canvas blocking their way.

‘It’s just a black-out screen.’ Revell punched Burke on the arm. ‘We’re committed now, drive on.’ He brought up his combat shotgun and levelled it out of the window. Six more of the big twenty round drum magazines were attached to his belt, another lay in his lap. ‘Just take it slow, don’t lose contact with the truck.’

Burke shoved the gear lever across and down, and they began to nudge forward into pitch darkness. The coarse material parted in the middle and scraped and flapped down either side of the car, then slapped together behind them.

The six-wheeler was halfway through the first curtain when the car reached a second, twenty yards ahead. Cohen, riding in the back of the Ural, heard the frayed edge of the material as it brushed along the steel hooped canvas top. He’d rejected the small window of smoked Perspex in the tilt and was looking out of the weapon slit he’d made below it. There was nothing to be seen in the inky blackness.

Dooley had a better vantage point, looking forward, over the truck’s cab roof. ‘I can see the car’s lights, looks like there’s another of these doors, he’s driving into it now… Jesus Christ.’

A blaze of white light, a blast of noise and roasting hot air burst over them. ‘Got you, you ugly bastards.’

The second anti-aircraft position wasn’t so immediately obvious, but he knew it would show up soon. Several layers of camouflage netting offered some cover in the daytime, but at night they gave up their small amount of stored heat very rapidly, and the ground below them, in the shade all day, quickly showed up against the still warm surrounding open slopes.

From the direction of the workshops came the dull boom of an explosion. Clarence ignored it and went on with his survey; he was looking for targets of his own.

Clarence watched both vehicles until they disappeared from sight, and then began to assemble the tripod supporting the high-powered night-sight. The light was failing fast now, though the sky was still a uniform mid-blue, tinged in places with speckles of reddish-brown, a trace of the contamination spreading out from the centre of the Zone.

He brought his attention back to earth, to the dark slopes of the far hills. There was nothing to be seen with the naked eye, nor with the pocket image intensifier he tried. Its definition was poor compared with the larger ones aboard the skimmer, but it was good enough to confirm that what he sought lay under heavy camouflage.

It was already noticeably cooler now that the sun had gone down, there was even a suggestion of a breeze ruffling the grass. Clarence loosened the locking nut on the tripod, sat behind the sighting unit and panned along the hillsides. Near the top of one almost opposite, some eleven hundred yards away, he saw what he’d been expecting to find. It didn’t look much, but the infrared view showed a patch of distinctly colder ground.

Andrea threw her arms across her face to shield her eyes. After the pitch black of the entrance ramp, the glare from the arc lights set in the high roof of the workshop complex was intense. She felt Revell lunge past her and grab at the wheel.

Quickly recovering from the temporary blinding, Burke brushed aside the officer’s hands and made the sharp left turn himself. He hardly needed to remember the layout of the place, he held a map of it in his hands; the steering wheel rim was the perimeter road, the four spokes the radial service lanes, and the boss the massive bunker of reinforced concrete that held the main tank repair facilities. He caught a glimpse of it over the top of intervening blast walls and stacks of crated spares.

The total area was vast, like four gigantic hangars sunk together into the ground, and high overhead a web of steel supported the artificial roof of the refugee camp.

They drove almost immediately into what looked like a reception and dispatch area. Ten or eleven main battle tanks were parked close together, mostly T72s and the latest T84s, with a couple of elderly T62s, both fitted with heavy mortars and bulldozer blades for demolition work. A swarm of fitters was working on them, attaching or removing auxiliary fuel tanks, infra-red searchlights and anti-aircraft machine guns. Close by, two Russian officers discussed details on an engineering drawing. They did a double-take as the command car drew level with them, and died. A burst of five rounds from Revell’s automatic shotgun cut both down, and tumbled three fitters from the T72 behind them.

Hyde didn’t hear the firing above the din of generators and machinery that filled the place, but he saw the victims go down, and anticipating the car’s increase in speed, put his foot to the floor.

Fire from the automatic weapons aboard the car and truck hosed the fitters from the tanks and smashed every un-armoured fitting on them. From the back of the truck, Collins and Rinehart lobbed thermite grenades at each AFV in turn. A few rolled from the armour, but most came to rest on the engine decks, or went in through open hatches. A dazzling white hell washed over the tanks and the bodies strewn about them.

A mountain of packing cases that could only contain new engines or whole transmissions received several more of the destructive grenades, and just two were sufficient for a stack of spare radiators. Molten copper and aluminium flowed as the bursting contents burned at two thousand degrees.

‘Look for the machinery trucks. They’re near here somewhere.’ It was almost impossible for Revell to make himself heard to Andrea, or for her to pass it on to the Grepos in the back. Generators and machinery still thundered on around them, and the crash and clatter of automatic fire was virtually continuous as all the weapons lashed out at every target that presented itself.