Hard Target (12 page)

Hyde had been considering the same problem. ‘No way past that lot, Major, not in one piece, and I should imagine it goes all around the place.’

Only half listening to the sergeant, Revell swept the glasses upward to the bare gentle slopes of the surrounding hills. ‘We need to find somewhere up there, where we can keep watch for a while and try and figure out the layout of the place.’

‘It’ll have to give good cover.’ There was no enthusiasm in Libby’s voice for the idea. ‘If this is the place we think it is, then the Ruskies aren’t going to take too kindly to having bunches of sightseers gawping at it.’

‘Now where the hell did they come from?’ Coming down through the long grass away to their left Revell saw a group of Russian soldiers. They were lounging along, some indulging in horseplay, all of them carrying their jackets in a casual manner, though as they neared the bottom of the slope, just before they disappeared from sight behind the detached part of the camp, they had begun to dress and tidy themselves.

‘Look at the top of the hill... no, more to your right, that’s it.’ Under the sergeant’s guidance, Revell brought the grey tiled rooftop into his field of vision. That was all that was visible of the building that lay just over the crest.

‘It’s the Reds’ knocking shop, you’d call it a cat-house. Round here it’s known as The Farm.’

At Hyde’s words Andrea stopped fanning herself with the opened front of her jacket and looked at her watch. ‘The Russian pigs allow the girls to sleep in the afternoon. That will be the last of them leaving now. They have stayed late today. The whores will not be at their best tonight.’ ‘Be an ideal place from which to keep an eye on those workshops, if that’s what they are.’

‘You still have doubts then, Major?’ Libby borrowed the glasses.

‘We have to be sure. The Reds will only give us the one crack at a stunt like this. If we screw up and all we hit is a field kitchen or mobile bath unit, we’ll not only get blasted for a big fat zero, we’ll screw it up for the poor SOBs who have to come along after us and try for the real thing. Even if it is the outfit we’re looking for, I don’t want us to go charging in and shoot up a handful of empty bays and a couple of junked soft-skins. Surprise is the only compensation we have for lack of numbers. At the speed we’ll have to get in and out there won’t be time to hunt for targets, we have to hit them where it hurts first time.’ He looked at Andrea. She had closed her jacket again, that was a pity. He had enjoyed watching the twin swells of her high breasts.

‘Are you sure about the Ruskies clearing out of that place in the afternoon?’ ‘That is how it has always been. I do not think they change it.’ ‘You know the place, Sergeant. Are there any problems in walking in there and staying low until we’re ready to make our move?’ ‘Not that I can think of, Major. There’s just the one building. Front and back door. Central staircase. Six rooms upstairs, five down. There’s a big attic which runs the length of the roof and a small cellar.’ ‘Are there any Russian units close by?’ This time the girl had to refer the query to Kurt; he didn’t bother to reply, just shook his head.
‘Do you know of any commander, in any army, Major, who’d build a barracks close to a brothel?’
‘Can’t say I do, Sergeant Hyde, but I can think of a few Staff Officers who’d make sure the HQ was next door to one.’ If Hyde had tried to score a point there, Revell hadn’t let him. It was difficult to tell when the NCO was being sarcastic and when he wasn’t.

Hyde had meant his remark to be a light one, but it had not come out that way. For all this Yank’s drive and efficiency, and determination to be in the forefront of the action, Hyde was beginning to take a dislike to him. He was too bloody austere, Even the outwardly flippant counter he’d made to Hyde’s question had been delivered’ without a trace of humorous intent. It was difficult, no impossible, to imagine what the American officer did when he wasn’t on duty. 

Did he sit and play solo all day, stand to attention in a cupboard until it was time to go back on duty again?
Oh sod it. Why couldn’t they have left him and Clarence and the others happily potting away at Russian tanks and crews in the salient? Was it simply fate, or the malice of some nameless clerk he’d crossed at battalion HQ that had got him involved in this half-wit scheme?

Well he was lumbered with it now, but if he came through it alright then there was no chance of his doing it again. Soon as it was over he’d rejoin his own outfit like a shot.

More than anything he wanted to stay in the army. What was there for him outside looking like he did, sweet fuck-all. Staying in would probably kill him; getting out, back into civilian life would slowly destroy him. Of the two he much preferred the quicker death and fuller life before it, than the living death and no life at all that would be his lot back home: but by Christ he’d risk it rather than work with these Yanks again, or a moment longer than he had to. First of all though he had to survive. He’d already proved he was good at that; he ran his hands over his facial scars, well fair. In the next twelve hours, the way things were shaping up he’d have to be ruddy brilliant.

The farmhouse stood in isolation in a small fold just below the crest of a softly sloping hill. A single, substantial, stone building devoid of any frills, the area to its front was roughly paved, and beside and behind it stood, sagged or lay the weather- beaten remains of a collection of various sheds and outhouses. The whole was surrounded by a low stone wall.

Kurt had sent his men to watch the back of the house, while he and Andrea with Libby, Hyde and Revell openly approached the front.

Libby noticed the heaps of broken bottles below each window; the piles were substantial. The Russian visitors appeared to have found a fast and presumably amusing way of disposing of their empties. There was glass in every window of the house, and all the curtains were drawn. Even in bright sunshine it was a grim- looking place. The unwanted recollection of Old Mother Knoke’s words, ‘perhaps she’s at The Farm’ made anger rise inside him. This was one of the ugliest things about the Zone. Many of the women in there were carrying on the trade they’d practised before they’d come to the camp, before the war even: but a number would have been forced into it. He watched while Kurt sorted an intact bottle from the nearest heap and then hammered on the door.

It was a good act, drawn most probably from considerable personal experience. Hyde watched as Kurt bawled and sang and slurred pathetic pleas to the unseen inmates. When he backed off a pace to see if the German’s performance had drawn anyone to an upstairs window, Hyde saw for the first time the rear end of a drab painted Mercedes saloon, just discernible in the gloom of a rotting tractor shed. As he drew Revell’s attention to it, the boot and knuckle-scarred door swung open.

Before the dressing gown clad woman had time to launch fully into her tirade, Kurt had hurled himself past her and was dashing for the stairs.

Andrea followed, unwrapping her submachine gun as she ran. As Revell and Hyde took one side of the ground floor Libby went to the other. The first two rooms he hurled himself into were empty. He crashed open the third to discover a pair of Russian officers hastily pulling on their pants. One of them already held a pistol, Libby gave him no chance to use it, his second and third shot tearing out the Russian’s throat. Blood splashed across the room as the 9mm bullets struck and the dying officer toppled back over a chair to crumple into an untidy heap.

Neither Libby nor the surviving officer paid any attention to the ugly bubblings and rattlings coming from the expiring man. There was another sound in the room, an animal-like whimpering from the heavy breasted girl with thickly caked-on make-up who crouched under the dining table, trying at once both to make herself inconspicuous and frantically gather up and conceal her pendulous breasts.

Insignia on the two crumpled jackets tossed carelessly over the arm of a small sofa indicated that both the visitors were captains. The remaining Russian slowly lowered to the ground the raised leg with which he had frozen, stork like, in the act of dressing on Libby’s precipitate entrance, and straightened up. He was well into middle age and the heavy flesh on his stocky body fell in multiple folds about his waist. A mass of dark hair covered his torso and upper legs, and overlong arms gave him an ape-like look that was accentuated by broad slab cheeks, a small nose and deep set eyes beneath thick eyebrows.

The killing had drained Libby’s anger, most of it, then the girl whimpered again and he saw her mass of livid bruises and the white mess about her mouth. He retched, and levelled the Browning again.

The Russian saw the look on his attacker’s face and clamped his hands in front of his genitals as though he could somehow protect them from what was coming. He saw the knuckle on the trigger whiten and his bowels emptied violently and noisily.

‘No… damn it... no.’ Revell’s shout blended with the roar of the weapon’s firing.

All four bullets struck their target, the last two chasing a dead body as it was spun round and thrown back, fountaining urine and dark red vomit. A limp arm smacked into and cracked one of the panes as the punctured cadaver thumped down below a window, head lolling, sightless eyes contemplating a protruding rib.

‘What the hell do you think this is, a butcher’s shop?’ Revell crossed the room avoiding the stinking puddles and picked up one of the jackets. ‘You see this, you see this.’ He waved it under Libby’s nose. ‘These are, were, technical support troops, probably from the 97th. They could have told us everything we wanted. What bloody good are they now?’

The sights and smells in the room did not bother Andrea. She stood in the doorway and looked at the bodies. ‘The only good Russian is a dead Russian. I would say that they are now very good.’ With no great gentleness she hauled the terrified girl from her hiding place and dragged her from the room. ‘I will put her with the others.’
Libby offered no explanation, no apology.

‘Oh, what the hell. It’s too late now. Get yourself to an upstairs window and watch out for any Commies that look like they’re coming to investigate your executions. Don’t open fire until I say, just let me know if you see any. Have I spelt it out clear enough for you?’

‘Killing them has become a habit, Major.’

Hyde appeared and stepped in fast to pre-empt any response from Libby. ‘It takes a lot of breaking. We haven’t taken prisoners for five months, not since we saw Commie tanks gunning down some of our blokes who ran out of ammo and tried to surrender.’ As the officer did not appear to have been placated, he changed the subject. ‘All the girls have been herded into one of the big front bedrooms. They’re a bit indignant about the whole business, but they’re keeping quiet so far.’

‘OK, let’s see if we can find anything out from them. There’s nothing to be learnt from these two, and this stink is incredible.’

They closed the door after them, passed one of the East Germans who was standing guard by the partially open front door and mounted to the upper floor.

‘Girls’ was a rather generous description for the collection of variously aged whores who sat on the double-bed and bare boards under Kurt’s submachine gun and Andrea’s contemptuous glare. Their ages ranged from what might have been about twenty, but looked older, in the case of the girl they’d discovered downstairs, to what in one case might have been getting on for sixty. Most of them appeared to have been in bed, or undressing when the break-in occurred. Only two of the fifteen were wearing more than underclothes beneath the blankets and robes they had pulled about themselves.

The girl who had witnessed Libby’s work was sobbing deeply, on the verge of hysterics. Her face had been cleaned up, and with the mess had gone most of her over-done makeup. Her unadorned face was pale and puffy, but not unattractive. Huge breasts and the partial crescent of one large pink nipple bulged over the top of the inadequate sheet with which she’d been provided.

‘I want to ask them some questions, Andrea. Tell them we won’t hurt them, and we’ll see the Russians don’t.’ That was an easy promise to make: Revell had no idea if he could keep it.

The message, though not delivered by Andrea with any grace, or in a friendly tone, had the effect of calming the women. One or two even managed a coy smile at Revell.

Hyde hadn’t expected any of them to try their allure on him, and he was right, they didn’t. One thing did please him though, he noticed a subtle change come over the major when he started to deal with the women. It wasn’t much, a slight softening of his manner and an almost imperceptible shading of his aggressively American accent. Well, well, well; so the stiff bastard did have a weakness, fancied himself as a ladies man, did he? He had to admit though, it did appear to be working. Although Revell had in most cases to work through a third party, he still contrived to give the impression that he was talking intimately and secretively with each of the whores. Not that Hyde felt himself in any position to criticise or comment on another’s man’s technique, not with the sort of silly-arse games he had to play before any but the roughest drunken scrubbers would have anything to do with him.

‘Any good, Major?’ The interest was genuine, but it wasn’t simply that which prompted Hyde.

‘You know it wasn’t. They say they don’t know a damned thing, that they’ve never heard of the 97th.’

‘They probably haven’t. The Ruskies who come up here are after a good screw or whatever else it is they fancy, not polite conversation. Did you ask them if they’d heard any movement at night?’
‘Of course I damned well did.’ A note of irritability had crept into the officer’s voice. ‘They’ve heard trucks and tanks, but that doesn’t mean a thing; the Reds do all their re-supplying and troop movements at night, same as we do. Could be anything.’

‘So where do we go from here?’
Revell jerked his thumb at the ceiling. ‘Up, into the roof. We’ll knock out a couple of roof tiles and see what we can from there. As soon as we’ve got a rough idea of the layout, we’ll sketch out a plan and you can go back for the others.’ ‘What about this crowd?’

For a moment Revell gave it consideration. A leer he noticed on the face of one of the East Germans helped him to make a decision. ‘Get Libby in here. We’ll put the deserters on look-out. We don’t owe them anything much, no reason why we should lay on an orgy for them.’