James Rouch - Hard Target

At dangerously close range Revell put two shells into the track’s cab and, as they turned the crushed front of the Ural into a furnace, stepped back on to the recovery tank’s engine deck and pumped shells in through each open hatch.

On reaching the top of the ramp they looked back. A wall of spitting chemical fire blocked it, and as they watched, the boiling fuel in the Ural’s high capacity tank flared up and the over-stressed container split, sending a burning flood down the incline into the complex. There were no more shots, only screams.

Clarence was quite satisfied with his first shot. He’d watched as the gun-layer of the 57mm was lifted from his seat and laid out of sight below the rampart of sandbags. In a minute the body would have company.

The sniper settled himself behind his rifle again and waited. The non-stop concussion from the explosions in the hollow was no distraction that was a discipline he had taught himself.

Another Russian was climbing into the seat. Clarence gave him a second to settle down and. as the gun began to turn and dip, carefully pulled the trigger. He kept his eyes glued to the sight and waited – nothing. Confident, he maintained watch. Fully six seconds after he’d fired, his second victim slowly, almost gracefully, fell sideways and draped himself across the gun’s breech.

There would be no third target, not at that gun. Four Russians jumped from the pit and ran. Clarence turned his attention to the machine gun mount, and swore quietly to himself. The barrels of the weapon had been dipped to bear on his hillside, and the gun-layer was hidden behind the close packed machinery of the guns themselves and the strips of vertical armour plate to either side. Flashes tipped each barrel and tracer soared across the gulf between the hills.

It had most probably been intended as a morale booster, to give the crew the feeling they were doing something. But Clarence recognised that behind that random burst there lay an intelligent guess. Good: he enjoyed a duel and though not usually pitted against a flak gun, he wasn’t concerned about the disparity in fire power. The extra risk would add spice to the contest. He fed a fresh round into the chamber and took a long time over sighting.

‘Keep moving, keep moving.’ Revell caught up with the others and dragged them to their feet. ‘That lot was meant for Clarence, not for us!’ The tracer had started fires higher up the slope, away to their right. The circle of illumination they cast was rapidly expanding. Together Hyde and the major urged and shouted the others on, but there was no more speed to be got out of them. Dooley was having to help Libby who was trailing a leg, and Kurt clutched at his shoulder and seemed to slow with every pace.

Showers of sparks spiralled from the burning grass, starting fresh fires that spread towards them. Their way led between two patches of the flickering light, and a sudden increase in the strength of the breeze widened both to overlap and encompass the struggling group.

Another burst from the flak gun, chewed the ground, throwing soil and clumps of grass over them. This time no one took cover and the rate of progress up the hill increased. At the instant the flak gun ceased firing there was the distinct crack of a single rifle shot from the crest. A hesitant answering burst from the heavy machine guns soared harmlessly into the sky and ended raggedly. Then there was silence.

Clarence didn’t see or hear the others until Hyde nudged him with his boot. ‘Yes, alright, I’m coming.’ Reluctantly he pulled back from the sight and hurriedly began to pack. He hated having to leave without witnessing the effectiveness of his shot. All that he’d been able to see was a frontal view of the mount, its four barrels locked on him and unmoving. As they’d fired he’d drawn mental diagonals between the corners of the square marked out by the muzzle flashes and put a bullet into their imaginary intersection. If his memory of the captured guns he’d seen held good, then he’d put that bullet into the gun-layer’s upper chest, a fraction below his voice box.

A series of sharp explosions made them stop and look back at the workshops. Each detonation came faster and louder than the preceding one. With a tremendous roar the whole huge yards-thick roof of the tank repair shed rose up on a pillar of boiling flame, punching effortlessly through the lightly constructed false roof of the camp and going a hundred feet into the night sky. It hung there for a moment, flame-trailing tank turrets cart wheeling through the air about it, dangling tassels of red-hot reinforcing rods, then fell back to complete the work of destruction.

Every inch of the refugee encampment was lit like day, as mushrooms of orange and yellow fire came out of the gaping crater where the workshops had been.

Revell prodded the others into movement, forcing them to tear themselves away from the spectacle. Fie knew that every minute it took them to reach the skimmer was a minute less darkness for their journey back. And every passing moment also gave the nearest Russian units time to sort themselves out, figure what had happened and start to do something about it. They had to put distance, a lot of distance, between themselves and the havoc they had wrought on one of the Soviet Command’s favourite outfits, and fast.

Libby was thinking along the same lines. ‘That was a hell of a thorough job we did, what’s the betting the Ruskies will do as thorough a job on us if we’re caught.’

Maybe it was just because they had started downhill, but Hyde noticed an immediate and marked increase in the pace.

‘If we hadn’t spent so much bloody time dodging trigger-happy Russian patrols on the way back to the Iron Cow we’d be bloody home by now.’ Burke thumped the bulkhead with his fist.

Dawn had caught them still six miles from their own lines, and with its coming a Russian Hind helicopter gunship had found them. It was the last of the relays that had sought them throughout the night.

Coming at them from behind, out of the rising sun, the first they had known of it was a near miss from an unguided air-to-surface missile. Ten more had plastered the ground around them as they bolted for the cover of a patch of devastated woodland. Four times the Hind made low level high speed sweeps across the area, blasting it with salvos of 57mm rockets, chewing up the trees and ground with long bursts from its gatling-type cannon.

‘I can’t get a shot at him through these damned trees.’ Fragments from more of the powerful warheads forced Hyde to duck back into the comparative safety of the turret’s armour.

Libby, with his leg strapped stiffly, had been unable to get into the turret seat, and now he fumed and fretted as the sergeant took over his job.

‘Wouldn’t do any good anyway.’ At least he could offer advice. ‘Those buggers have titanium armour on the bits that matter. Best you could manage with that machine gun is to knock a few unimportant chips off him. You’ll have to get in a good solid hit with the Rarden to bring him down.’

‘That’s no cruddy learner out there.’ Dooley listened to the rattle of the 20mm cannon firing and the sound of the trees as they fell. ‘He ain’t gonna come low enough or slow enough for you to get a poke at him with that.’

Revell had been keeping a count. It wasn’t exact, but he reckoned the Hind still had more than half its one hundred and twenty-eight unguided rockets left, plus the four big Swatter anti-tank missiles. If they stayed where they were, with the methodical pattern the Hind was working, it was only a matter of time before he scored a hit or a crippling near miss. If they left cover and made a run for it, he would have all the time in the world to put one of the devastatingly powerful anti-tank missiles into their hull, and that would be it.