Hunter Killer (3 page)

Ushering the civilians away with a pantomime of urgency, the young officer freed his sleeve from a rusty barb and walked back to the Iron Cow. The hover- APC was parked at the side of the road, straddling the fence it had crushed when it came to rest. Its turret-mounted Rarden cannon, supposed to be covering the road- block, drooped, and still had its bell-shaped muzzle draped with a scrap of oily cloth against the flurries of sleet.

‘He’s not doing them any favours. Those Krauts think he’s smiling because he’s glad to be helping them. If only they knew, he’s doing it because he reckons the fighting in the Zone will be simpler if he empties it of civvies.’ Burke watched Libby stand aside on the vehicle’s lowered front ramp to let the lieutenant in, then once more fill the doorway as he scrutinised the face of each refugee filing past. Totally absorbed in the inspection he was making, he appeared oblivious of the cold and discomfort.

Burke went back to the fire, and tossed on to it a couple of chair legs picked from among the pile of broken furniture that provided its crackling fuel. Their impact sent a mass of sparks up the chimney. ‘This isn’t a bad little number we’ve got here. I hope the lieutenant isn’t about to louse it up. There’s bloody millions of civvies trapped in the Zone. If word gets round that we’re holding the door open, the trickle we’re getting through this back road at the moment will turn into a ruddy flood. Then there’ll be some questions.’

‘Hell, what’s the worst they can do to us?’ Ripper stretched. ‘They can only send us back into combat. And they’ll be doing that soon enough anyway.’

Using his boot, Burke tried to return an ember to the grate, but only managed to bring down two more. ‘I’d prefer it later than sooner. So would Dooley, he can’t get visits from his girlfriends in the Zone.’

‘Friends they may be, girls never. Leastways, not for a long, long time.’ York came out of the kitchen, surrounded by blue smoke. ‘The meal might be a little late. The gas must have been cut, there’s hardly any pressure.’ ‘Doesn’t seem to be affecting your cooking. You’re still burning everything.’ ‘I’m a fucking good cook, could have been a chef.’ He offered Burke the dripping spatula he carried like a badge of office. It wasn’t accepted. ‘So shut up then.’ He listened. A steady ‘thump-thump, thump-thump’ could be heard. It came from the next room, sounding like heavy furniture being rhythmically bumped into the wall, it went on and on. ‘He’s never still at it, is he? What can the fucking over- sexed bugger be doing now.’

‘I’d say you hit it on the head first time.’ Ripper punched the cushions into a more comfortable configuration. ‘I reckon he’s about done with fucking, and he’s started buggering. He sure does like variety. Ain’t ever known anybody who liked doing it so many different ways, ‘cepting a cousin of mine who kinda got a hankering-for the livestock.’

Having failed to return the brand, Burke lost patience with it and crushed it into charcoal dust. ‘I don’t know about that, but did you see the old piece he took in there?’ He nodded at the bedroom door. ‘She must be into her fifties, must be.’

‘Can’t say I’ve ever been with one that old myself.’ Reaching out, Ripper lifted a slim-necked green wine bottle from the side of the fire. He jiggled it against the light to gauge its contents, then pulled the protruding cork with his teeth before taking a long pull at a lukewarm liquid. ‘Ain’t a touch on a decent rye, but,’ screwing up his eyes he examined the label and tried to decipher the elaborate entwined script, ‘but I just might be getting a taste for this here schnapps. We stay here much longer and I’ll have to see if I can’t lay in a supply. Where was I? Oh yeah, like I was saying, I ain’t never had one that old. Come to that, apart from a hairy old dame I ran errands for when I was a kid, who used to take out my cock and squeeze it when I got the change wrong, I ain’t had no relations with any female over eighteen or so. What do you think they’re like when they’re getting on a spell, all kinda discoloured and crinkled at the edges, and maybe smelling a bit?’

‘Sounds like a description of York’s cooking.’ The spatula hit the side of the fireplace as Burke ducked.
Only for a moment did the slamming of the kitchen door drown out the continual reverberations of Dooley’s excesses in the next room.

A draught of cold air blasted in with Andrea and circled the stuffy room for several seconds after she closed the door behind her She propped her grenade- discharger fitted M16 against the back of the couch before taking off her helmet and slipping out of the glistening rain cape. Draping the dripping garment over the back of the remaining empty chair, she dried her face and hands on the crumpled curtain she took from the top of a sideboard. The large brass rings still attached to it clinked as she rubbed the last beads of icy water from her fringe.

‘We will be moving out shortly. The lieutenant said we are to be ready.’ There was no need for her to do anything to get the men’s attention, she knew before she looked up that she would have an audience. The surge of cold air and the opening and closing of the doors had woken Clarence; now his head appeared out the top of the sleeping bag against the far wall. ‘That will please York. His culinary efforts must be about nearing fruition, or is that a dead goat I can smell?’

‘Sod York.’ Burke dismissed their volunteer cook’s feelings with an airy wave of his hand, then gestured dramatically at the bedroom door, ‘Who’s going to break Dooley’s concentration and give him the bad news.’ The non-stop thump-thumping had become a rapid thumpity-thumping. Andrea heard, understood, and without hesitation crossed the room and grasped the door handle. Ripper jumped from the couch and caught up in time to grab her wrist. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Either he’s going to shoot your pretty head off, or he’s gonna reckon you’re offering to make up a threesome and then he’s liable to grab you before you get a chance to explain.’ 

‘I know his temper, with that I can cope, as for the other ... I do not think he is suicidal.’ Shaking off the restraining grip with ease Andrea pushed into the room. ‘Fuck off, I’m busy.’ Dooley didn’t even slow down, let alone falter. He had the woman bent over a dressing-table against the partition wall, and was frantically taking her from behind, his pants rucked in grubby folds around his ankles. The ample flesh of the overweight bodies slapped together with a loud wet clapping noise that failed to smother the woman’s screams when she realised they were no longer alone.

‘We are to be ready to move at once, the major will be back soon.’ Andrea’s expression didn’t alter as she unblinkingly took in the scene.

‘I said get out. I don’t care if the shitty Russians are coming, I’m coming first.’ It was taking all of Dooley’s considerable strength to hold the loudly protesting woman, for having failed to break free she now attacked him with her elbows, pounding them back with pile-driver force into his chest and stomach. When she eventually came to the conclusion that her best efforts had failed, she contented herself with sobbing hysterically and hiding her scarlet face in the voluminous lacy French-knickers she had managed to pull down from the corner of the mirror.

‘Shit, I can’t finish this.’ Dooley withdrew, and as he hoisted his pants received a rain of pudgy-fisted blows to the face, as the woman dropped the undergarment and the last vestige of her dignity to launch the assault.

The appearance of York, Burke and Ripper behind Andrea only served to intensify the woman’s hysterics. She grabbed her dress from the soiled and rumpled bed and cowered in a corner of the room, shielding herself with one hand, while trying to restore some order to her elaborately-piled hair with the other.

‘Don’t you ever bloody do that again.’ Dooley towered over Andrea. ‘I’d have killed one of them grinning monkeys if they’d done it. I was going for a personal best, would have bloody made it too, eventually. Now look what you’ve done, buggered my screw and reduced a perfectly good piece of knocking fodder to that. . .’
Being pointed at didn’t help the woman. She was unsuccessfully trying to conceal her globular white breasts with a fat forearm, while hopping up and down on one leg with a high heel caught in the lace trimming of her knickers. She was sobbing, between alternate distraught snatches of threats and imprecations.

‘What’s she saying? She’s gabbing too fast for me. Shrugging, Andrea turned to go out, but answered when Dooley grabbed her arm and spun her about, repeating the question. ‘She said she is going to report you. She will tell the police you raped her.’ 

‘Silly cow, she’s just worked up, that’s all. Her husband’s got his own factory, he’s in local politics I think, she ain’t going to risk queering that, not the nice little life she’s got. You speak the lingo better than me, tell her if she does that I’d have to show the cops some of the Polaroids she took of me, at her house. Remind her about the lampshade and the carrot, she’ll know what I mean. Well, tell her then, you got me into this fucking mess.’

It was necessary for Andrea to walk right up to the fat frau and slap her face before she was able to get the woman’s full attention. As she finished translating Dooley’s message the woman stopped her howling, nodded dumbly and muttered a reply, accompanying it with a pleading look at Dooley.

‘There will be no accusation of rape, she wishes to forget what has happened.’ With that brief translation Andrea went back to the lounge, and the others, unwilling to remain without the presence of her moderating influence, followed.

‘And fucking stay out.’ Savagely, Dooley kicked the door shut. Shit, why’d they have to burst in then; another minute, well maybe two, and he’d have done it. Hell, he couldn’t leave it like this, he had to finish, had to have one last one. If they were moving out it could be ages before he got another chance, and if the major were taking them into action, and that was near enough the only place he ever did take them, then maybe it’d be his last ever. What did he have to lose?

His first attempt to approach the woman met with a violent and shrill rebuff, but he persisted. In halting terrible German he tried to make amends. Within a minute he caught her eye and got a thin embarrassed smile from her. A few more soft words arid he was allowed to gently parry the half-hearted pushes with which she attempted to fend him off, while at the same time fastening the front of her wrap- over dress. At his third try Dooley arrested her efforts and slid a large hand between the silky folds to cup a heavy breast.’ A single muted mew of protest and another even weaker attempt to ward him off were easily overcome.

Dooley ignored the clattering from the next room. Just one more, that was all he wanted, just one more with this juicy great beauty. Come on you big, pink, fat- rumped cock-teaser, quit buggering me about. Now his fingers probed further and played with a warm and rapidly hardening nipple. She was weakening. Hell, he was having to go too fast, at this rate he’d finish screwing up everything but the woman.

Persuading her to sit on the bed beside him, his hand moved from breast to dimpled knee to the soft inside of her ample thighs. A last moment of resistance, and then his hand closed on her silk-shielded underneath. He’d got her, he’d got her. Oh shit, she wanted to waste time with a kiss, alright, just the one, to keep her sweet... a sloppy one, but she didn’t seem to mind, had even used her tongue for the first time ...maybe an audience had turned her on.

Should he go for it straight, or risk turning her… what the hell, go for broke, neck or nothing… or maybe that should be arse or nothing. A fleeting sulky expression as he extracted his exploring fingers from her underwear was swiftly replaced by a slyly conspiratorial mock coyness as he grasped her by the shoulders and began to ease her around.

It was working, it was working! OK, so it wouldn’t be an ideal position but he was in too much of a hurry to be fussy. As her knees slid off the bed and she knelt on the floor bent over it, Dooley got down behind her. Shit, it was a hell of a shame having to make it a quickie, but the way he felt it shouldn’t be too difficult. Releasing himself from his pants, he held the huge rod of his erection to aim it at the dark tuft of hair showing between the parted thighs. Oh boy, as he enjoyed the moment of penetration he knew it wasn’t going to be difficult at all, not at all.

Clarence watched from the window as the Black Hawk transport helicopter made a smooth touchdown in the field across the road from the hotel. Its wheels sank to their hubs in the soft ground as the engine howl died away, and the rotors appeared as individuals from the blurred disc of movement and sent the last stinging shower of spray at the front of the building and towards the road-block and the armoured flank of the Iron Cow. ‘The major is here.’

‘Well I didn’t think it was the fucking tooth fairy making a racket like that.’ With more haste than precision Dooley was stuffing his worldly possessions into a couple of scruffy kitbags. ‘You knew I was busy, couldn’t one of you have done this for me?’
‘If your birds weren’t so old,’ through the partially open bedroom door Burke could see the woman’s profile, admired the jut of her mature figure, ‘I might have done something on a tit for tat basis, but as I don’t fancy wrinkled tit, and you’re doing a tatty enough job of packing. . .’ ‘Piss off.’ Cramming in the last few items, Dooley hoisted the lumpy loads to his shoulders. ‘Well, I’ve got everything I want, are we ready?’

‘And what about this fucking meal?’ Tearing off his gingham apron, York hurled it into the fireplace. Steam and smoke from the kitchen blended and wreathed him.

‘It’s a meal?’ There was a note of incredulity in Ripper’s voice. ‘Jesus, I didn’t know it was a food you were a-cooking, I thought you were working on a new poison gas.’ He craned to look past the cook at the heaving brown sludge filling a pan on the stove, ‘or maybe a new substitute for bitumen…’

A dagger-laced glare and a snort of contempt was York’s only comment. He grabbed hold of the pan, momentarily looking as if he was about to throw it, then he went to the fire and poured the entire contents over the flames. At least he turned the pan over, but the contents proved reluctant to abandon it and clung tight, until several increasingly vigorous shakes dislodged a solid lump. The fire died instantly.
‘And that is probably the effect it would have had on us.’ Double-checking the fastenings on his sniper rifle’s waterproof cover, Clarence led them from the room, down, and out of the building.