James Rouch: Hard Target

Hyde’s urgent action had released a knobbly fibre-glass box from the outside of the hull. It tumbled down the camouflage-painted metal, bounced from the engine pod to the puffed-out wall of the ride-skirt and landed on a tangled mat of rotting vegetation. An instant later it came to rest. Telescopic aerials lanced from it and began to broadcast a blast of white noise that would continue until its power pack was rapidly exhausted, or until it successfully decoyed an enemy warhead riding down the beam focused on the Iron Cow.

In the air above it, the two grenades Clarence had launched rocketed back and forth, giving off dense clouds of exhaust-simulating smoke. Both produced a whining scream that mimicked the full-thrust engine noise of the fast disappearing hovercraft. From the tails of both spewed a series of flares and incendiary pellets, whose combustion temperature dwarfed the shielded infra-red signature of the twin Allison turbofans.

They weren’t needed. Just twelve seconds into its short life the squawk-box was almost reduced to its component molecules by a Soviet AT-12 anti-tank missile.

Deafened by the howl of their straining power units, Hyde had no way of knowing if their ruse had worked until Burke leapt the speeding skimmer over a shallow ridge, and into the safety of low ground surrounded by rolling bills.

The vehicle’s speed fell to a saner pace and they began to drive between serried rows of weed-infested rubble. The battered hulks of rusting cars and trucks and a few drunkenly leaning telegraph poles were the only recognisable features of what had once been a prosperous outer suburb of Hanover.

Burke dropped the speed still further, to cut down the dust raised by their progress and give the perimeter sensors of their battalion’s intruder alarm system time to identify them.

Ahead of them loomed the outline of a gutted local shopping centre. Its precast concrete fabric, though blackened and warped by the fires that had raged through it, had survived largely intact. Only a handful of the less robust surrounding buildings had stood up to the repeated bombing and shelling of the area. Most had been levelled by blast and fire, or been reduced to ragged roofless shells.

Moving at a crawl, the Iron Cow nosed into one of the shop fronts, the dangling remnants of neon signs brushing and grating on its roof as it did. The engines were cut and it drifted into the heart of the building, settling to rest inside an enclosure formed of suspended plastic sheeting.

Slow-moving figures shuffled forward, their outlines made indistinct in the gloom by the cumbersome heavy-duty anti-contamination suits and respirators they wore. Each of the apparitions waved the spray-emitting nozzle of a hose in front of him.

Activated bleach slurry ran from the hull, flushing from every crevice the last of any persistent chemicals adhering to it. That done, the skimmer was scalded clean with high-pressure steam jets. A member of the decontamination crew tapped on the driver’s vision block and gave a slow motion thumbs-up to the men inside.

There was no rush to leave the cramped quarters. Hyde and his men just sat there, letting the tension drain from them.

Collins declined the tobacco pouch and paper that Burke offered him. ‘No, thanks, I don’t. Are all the patrols like that?’

It was Corporal Howard who took it on himself to answer, when no one else did. ‘They’re all different, but that was an easy one, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Think we’ll be getting a spot of leave, Sarge?’ Burke made a critical examination of the butt he held, then puffed vigorously to keep the last shreds of tobacco alight.

‘What’s the matter?’ Libby came down from the turret seat. ‘Don’t you like your work?’

‘Fuck the work,’ Burke growled. ‘I’m just saying it’d be nice to have something to look forward to when we got back.’

The slit in the face of Sergeant Hyde that lips would have marked as a mouth barely opened as he spoke. ‘I’ve got a feeling the CO will have something waiting for us, but it won’t be a seventy-two-hour pass.’

‘I don’t give a fuck what you think of the plan, just make the shitty thing work.’ Colonel Lee Lippincott took the well-chewed pencil stub from between his perfectly capped teeth ‘ and spat out shreds of wood. ‘The orders say this is a joint operation with the British, and as I’ll be the bastard catching shit from the Liaison Staff if you screw up, then believe me you’d better not screw up. If you do, and make it back, then you’ll be fucking lucky to end up as a private third class, testing piss as a beer substitute.’

Major Revell waited until O’l Foul Mouth had finished flecking the floor to the right of his chair with another spattering of spittle and splinters. No effort he could have made would have kept the edge out of his voice, so he didn’t try. ‘OK, so this British tank-hunter squad know the ground, and the whole crazy idea comes from a smart-arse Staff Officer in Brussels, who wants an example of successful co-operation between us and them to counter stories of friction in the press back home. But why, just tell me why, a Commie tank repair shop is so damned important all of a sudden.’

‘Shit, we’ve been in the salient for two weeks now, helping bolster the British defences, you know the picture.’ Lippincott picked flakes of blue paint from his fleshy lips and examined them on the ends of his fingers. ‘After the balls-up they made of trying to clear this pocket in June, Soviet 2nd Guards ain’t exactly the Russian High Command’s favourite outfit. Rumour has it they came close to losing their fancy title. They’re going to have to try again, but they ain’t getting much in the way of new equipment. As things stand we about match them in armour, but somehow they’ve got their cruddy hands on this crack workshop unit. If their tanks are in prime condition when the show starts again, fitted with the latest mods, it could make all the difference.’

‘If we know where it is then drop a cruise on it; why send a platoon of my men on a suicide mission?’

A parody of a benevolent grin creased the colonel’s rubbery features. ‘Suicide is when you die by choice, Major; you ain’t got none.’ He read the expression on the young officer’s deeply sunburnt face, and the grin faded. Hell, Revell gave him the creeps; couldn’t take a joke, never laughed, lived like a damned monk: Jesus, he wasn’t normal. ‘We don’t have the exact location, it’s just somewhere around Gifhorn. That’s a no-go area, stiff with stinking refugees. If we kill so much as a scabby kraut goat I get stick from above, so area weapons are out, saturation, conventional or nuclear.’

‘When the hell are we going to stop fighting this war with our damned hands tied behind our backs?’ Revell crashed his palms down on the desk top between them. ‘Why is it always us who have to be the nice guys? It’s time to hit the Reds hard with everything we’ve got.’

‘Don’t fucking shout at me, Major.’ Revell’s outburst had made O’l Foul Mouth jump and now he shouted back. ‘You think I don’t know how we’re hamstrung. I’m up to my fucking arse in directives that originate from shitty do-gooding pressure groups in Germany and England and back in the States. I’d like nothing better than to put aside for each of them a share of the barrel of super-napalm I fancy pouring over the head of every last torturing Commie.’

Lippincott rose half out of his seat, hammering his desk with his fist at every word. ‘In the Balkans we were fighting Slavs, Bulgarians, even bloody Cubans, tough cruds, dirty even; but compared with 2nd Guards they’re bloody choirboys. 2nd Guards are animals, the lowest; you lift up pig-shit and that’s where you’ll find them. They tore up the rules two years ago, but our politicians haven’t heard that yet, so while the Reds do what they like we have to look twice before we so much as chuck a grenade. But at least you get to smash them sometimes – I fucking don’t.’