Part 2 (2/2)

Burke took in the overturned tractor and the splintered remnants of its packing case load, sticking out from beneath the broken track-festooned wreck. 'Sod it. What am I going to do?' To Burke's mind the sole redeeming feature of a mission concerning which he'd always had the very deepest misgivings had been torn from him. He wasn't about to find consolation in Libby's words.

'How's about you stop blubbering over that old bus that you can't put together again anyhow, and start giving a hand with some of the ch.o.r.es. This stuff gets kinda heavy after the first three.' Staggering under the weight of the cased ammunition already in his arms, Ripper had to accept a fourth heavily-dented box from Hyde before he was allowed to totter off towards the house.

'It's no good, Sarge.' Hardly bothering to glance at it, York tossed a machine gun on to the stack. 'This is just a waste of time. What wasn't mashed on impact got bent when the tractor broke loose and turned over. Look at it.'

He held up one of the decoy mortar-discharger?, all six barrels were now decidedly oval.

'Keep looking. Everything repairable must be salvaged, and everything else must be gathered up into one place, so we can get it ready for effective demolition. We can't go round sticking a couple of ounces of plastic on each individual chunk of rubbish.' Diving on the b.u.t.t of a machine gun, Hyde dragged it from beneath the crushed tractor cab: but that was all there was, the barrel and body of the weapon had been torn off and pounded into the ground.

'It was the chutes.' Carrying part of the rigging, Re veil led Clarence and Dooley into the clearing.

The two men were having difficulty with the huge bundle of canopy silk. It kept trailing and snagging on the ragged stumps of silver birch that had been felled by the sleds' high-speed impact.

'One of the s.h.i.+ts didn't deploy properly, must have wrapped itself around the others.' Dumping the voluminous folds of fine fabric on the pile, and weighting them down with anonymous hunks of metal, Dooley pulled a face. 'Good job this set weren't on our rig, we'd have gone straight through that f.u.c.king house and on out to sea.'

'We'd have been alright with York around.' The radio-man treated Libby's comment with suspicion. 'And why's that?' 'With that big mouth of yours, you could have drunk it dry and we'd have been able to walk home.'

'p.i.s.s off.'

'That's what you'd have been doing, for f.u.c.king years and years and years.' Dooley might have added more, but the major's torch beam flicked his way, and he caught its warning.

Andrea heard, but didn't listen. The conversations, the jokes, the arguments, all washed over her, she took no part and no interest in them. It wasn't contempt that made her ignore the men, not even fear that familiarity of any description might be interpreted as encouragement - to her they were simply not important.

In battle, yes, or when the discussion became serious*and had to do with their work, then she listened, but not to this trivia. It was a constant surprise to her how men such as these, whose minds were full of thoughts of s.e.x and drink and whose mouths spilled crude humour and obscenities, could when necessary weld instantly into a ruthlessly efficient fighting unit, capable of taking on an enemy force superior in numbers and machinery and defeating it or mauling it so badly it was left easy meat for others.

She had learnt something more about fighting from each of them. The sniper, Clarence, had taught her much and she'd absorbed all the skills he'd unknowingly pa.s.sed on. And now she had tagged on to Dooley, from whom she was finding out all there was to know of hand-to-hand combat.

There was still so much to absorb, and there would be others among them who could teach her; but the hardest lesson of all would be the skills of command. Revell and Hyde both practised it as a fine art, yet in totally different ways. She hadn't yet decided which was best, but some day, one of them would also become her teacher.

's.h.i.+t, this don't leave us much to fight with if we tangle with a bunch of Ruskies.' York pulled out an M60 machine gun from the splintered remains of a case. Although obviously damaged, it looked a marginally more likely candidate for repair than any other retrieved so far.

'Cheer up.' Using his bare hands, Dooley partially straightened the thick tubular legs of a machine gun bipod, until they snapped, and he hurled them from him in disgust. 'If the cruds chop off your hands and feet, you can still pee on them and drown them.'

'With that great donger of yours, I reckon you could always club them to death.' Andrea wasn't listening.

FIVE.

From the top of the bell tower of the tiny church, Bombardier Cline could see much of the southern half of the island, by the light of the pale and watery dawn, though at times the snow made it indistinct as the last eddies of the dying wind pushed thick flurries around the building. The locations of the three sites for the launchers were just visible. The weather didn't matter. When the time came the radar and low-light TV would give him better eyes than his own with which to follow the progress of the Russian wars.h.i.+ps, and direct the rocket artillery's fire.

He gave a final twist to the clamp securing the miniature camera to the parapet. The instrument that had failed on test and that he'd just replaced was flying at his feet. The cold was numbing his hands, and had made him clumsy. Fear of dropping their last spare camera had made him work even slower.

There were other similar instruments set in trees along the sh.o.r.e, giving a healthy redundancy factor. Even if the Russians retaliated to their first salvo with a saturation counter-bombardment it was unlikely they could take out all the cameras, so long as they stuck to conventional warheads, that was. If the Communists got stroppy and used a low yield nuke, they'd be able to wipe this comparatively featureless island as clean as a billiard ball at one go.

It had been a good operation for Cline so far. He'd survived the touchdown, found himself instantly elevated to command of the artillery contingent and felt he'd acquitted himself pretty well in the eyes of the Yank major and his horror- show NCO. All he had to do was stay sharp and he'd come through this with a promotion. That would be a handy short cut, save him a lot of tiresome face- stepping and back-stabbing. It was a real b.u.g.g.e.r, trying to make your mark, get noticed, among the ma.s.s of other sods in the battery who were keen to do the same thing. But now, now he had golden opportunity to save a lot of boot licking, he'd get that commission yet...

'You still fixing that?' Libby clambered up through the trap. 'I thought you said that was only a two-minute job. You'd better get back to the house and start checking the other circuits that have been hooked in, before the major comes after you.'

'Just who the h.e.l.l do you think you're talking to?' In the armourer, Cline had recognised someone who might take a share of his glory, diminish its s.h.i.+ne. It'd be best to put the bloke in his place early on, like now.

Unconcerned, Libby leant out and brushed snow from a ledge, watching the large soft lumps fall silently to the roof of the porch twenty feet below.

Stung by Libby's apparent indifference, Cline repeated his question, prodding him in the back to emphasise each word.

Slowly, as though reluctant to concern himself with the matter, Libby turned and faced the gunner. For a long moment, as the junior NCO bristled on tiptoe, Libby looked him up and down, adopting an expression of weary contempt as he completed the inspection.

'Shut up, you jumped-up little prat. While you've been piddling about with these lightweight peripherals, me and the others have been harnessed like a b.l.o.o.d.y dog- team hauling the bulk of your electronic gear to the house. The others are out there now, pulling ruddy great launchers and reload ammo fit to bust. I'm s.h.a.gged, and I've not been made any happier by having the Sarge send me chasing after you, like a bleeding company runner. So take this as fair warning, it's the only one you'll get. You ever lay a finger on me again and I'll snap it off, then shove you off here to see if you bounce.'

Despite the cold, colour rushed to Cline's cheeks, but the visual effect of his bottled indignation was spoilt by his inarticulate spluttering. 'You... I'll... I'll... have you... a charge... the...'

'Oh, p.i.s.s off.' Bored with the whole affair, Libby returned to contemplating the wall of the tower and the thin cable that ran from the camera, down its side, and was lost in the snow as it snaked away. He didn't watch Cline's angry departure, but he did allow himself a small smile, when shortly after the trapdoor slammed, he heard the bombardier's swearing as he slipped on the ladder.

He was glad to be alone, even for this brief moment. His hand delved deep into an inside pocket, and he pulled out the photograph. For the hundredth time he thought what a good idea it had been to have the copies made. This one was becoming very creased, the corners dog-eared, and the picture itself blurred by his dirty fingerprints. A breath on it and a quick rub with his cuff brought a marked improvement. He liked to be alone when he looked at it, liked to keep even her image to himself. And when he had the real thing once more, when he held Helga again, then Revell and Hyde and all the others and the Zone and the war, they could go to h.e.l.l, they would have served his purpose.

The subdued throbbing of the generator outside could just be heard above the rapid clicking of the miniature printer. Switching off the terminal, York separated the flimsy strip and handed it to Revell.

'Are we in business yet?' His nose swollen to grotesque dimensions and spread across his face, Lieutenant Hogg spoke with a heavy nasal intonation. The blood that constantly trickled around his mouth, and dripped from his chin, had stained his anorak dark red.

'It's getting more promising. They've spotted a lot of activity at Gdansk and a couple of other Polish ports where we can expect the escorts to come from. Still no firm figures, but I'm beginning to feel this breakout could be bigger than expected. A lot bigger.' Extracting a clip, Revell took one of the message strips that had been tapped out earlier. 'But at the moment I'm more concerned about this.'

Hogg took it, read, and attempted a whistle that failed and instead forced a large drop of blood from his nose. He wiped it away with the back of his glove. 'If the met boys have got this right, then the great-grandaddy of all cold fronts is heading our way. Says here temperatures of below minus thirty can be expected. h.e.l.l, now that is low. It'll freeze the nuts off the men.'

'It won't do Andrea a lot of good either, but there's other equipment I'm more concerned about. With the temperature dropping to that level we're bound to get an increased failure rate among the electronic gear, it's inevitable.' Through the largely gla.s.sless window Revell could see that the snow was definitely slackening. If the sky cleared then the mercury would plunge still further. 'How long before all three sites are ready, and we can do a complete system check for bugs? We can't be getting a true picture, testing each piece and link as it's installed.'

'Number one is ready now. Two will be at least a couple of hours yet. We could save time by stationing it closer in.'

'No, we're going for maximum dispersion within the perimeter of the intruder alarms. What about number three, the Lance.'

'With its trailer, that scales better than two tons, Major. Even if we hitch all the men to it, I can't see us s.h.i.+fting it far from the sledge. Once it's in place all we have to do is fix on the wings, survey the site and connect up. I reckon if we stick to our original plan we've another five hours' hard work, what with s.h.i.+fting all the reload rounds for the multiple launchers. Do we work during daylight?''

'Yes. No breaks until it's all done. I might have to think about it again if this cloud starts to thin, but for the time being it's full steam ahead, drive them hard.' Revell ticked off items on his check-list. 'What about the demolition charges?'

'I'll take care of them.' Hogg dabbed at his running nose. 'For the most part it's just a case of connecting the wires, but there's a fair bit of ground to cover, what with the remote decoy mortars and all. It'd be a help if I could have Libby. He knows what he's doing with that sort of thing.'

'Pick someone else. I'm not happy about our shortage of heavy weapons. We need at least one machine gun, and if anyone can salvage something from the junk pulled out from under that tractor, he can. Likewise I've got work here for York and Cline, otherwise you can take your pick.' 'The girl?' .

Revell suspected an ulterior motive behind the lieutenant's query; he suspected anyone who took an interest in Andrea. 'Boris is with the working parties. He's safe enough out there with the other men, even Clarence. They've had an order to lay off, and they'll obey it. Andrea I can't be so sure of, so she stays here, giving a hand with the casualties.' That wasn't really how Revell wanted it. He'd far rather have had her here, in the control room with him, instead of upstairs. But he felt he had to display at least that much disinterest, even so, his thoughts constantly veered to her.

'Major, one of your men...'

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