Plague Bomb (3 page)
‘That’s where the contamination starts.’ Clarence knew, like he knew everything there was to know about the Zone.
‘A year back the communists had a lot of trouble with refugees in that area, too many of them for a start, so word was sent out that they were to be dealt with, reduced to manageable numbers. The local commander must have been short of men and ammunition for his artillery, but he did have two dumps he hadn’t used until them, so he emptied them, threw the whole lot into the camps and at any civvies who got in the way. We know that one of the dumps held chemical weapons, nerve gas shells, defoliants, toxins, you name it…’
‘And the other?’
‘No one has any idea, at least no one in the west. Must have been batches of experimental weapons. Inside of a week just about every disease you can name, and a lot that haven’t even got names yet, was killing the civilians in the hundreds of thousands, All we could do was cordon the sector, treat the few who made it to our side.’
‘I never read anything about it in the press back home, you sure you got your facts right? Since I’ve been with your crowd, I’ve heard some awful tall tales.’
‘And spun a few yourself.’ Hyde tapped the medical kit making a prominent bulge in a readily accessible pocket in his jacket. ‘It’s true enough, we were issued with these just after it started. Why it never made the papers God only knows. Probably because we’re not so slick at manipulating the world’s press, or perhaps some boot licking toady in the British foreign office thought it might upset the Russians, make the negotiated peace that much harder.’
‘The only thing that happened far as I can see,’ Burke thought it time he restored some of his authority, ‘is that we got turned into ruddy pincushions by all those booster shots we started having. Not that I’ve got any faith in the damned things working, it must be like a bloody germ soup in there. You won’t catch me going near the place. If the medics want those injections given field trials they can send some other mug, I won’t even go and have a peep over the perimeter wire.’
‘It ain’t right, leaving good land to rot; why don’t somebody have a go at it with napalm, or phosphorus, clean it up.’
With Burke retreating to a quiet spot to drink his tea, Dooley was happy to shift his attention to Ripper. ‘Because it’d take forever. We’re not talking about a chunk of land the size of a football field, it’d J>e like trying to sterilize a couple of decent sized counties.’
A thousand feet overhead a pilotless sky-spy droned for a while in large circles, chased by lines of flashing orange tracer from the ARV’s anti-aircraft machinegun. None of Hyde’s squad made any move to copy the aggression and, unharmed, the remotely controlled miniature aircraft went on its way.
‘Waste of ammo.’ With casual interest Hyde tracked the Russian craft, noticing how rarely the tracer came within even a hundred feet of the small camera equipped plane. ‘On a live firing range back home I watched a whole battalion of armour take turns to have a go at one of those things. For an hour, on and off, it whizzed about sounding like an amplified dentist’s drill. They all missed it.’
‘If the major doesn’t get us off this crappy job, and soon, I’ll be popping off at the fucking things myself, just to relieve the boredom. Come to that, I’ll have a go at anything that beats the monotony of trotting about this truck graveyard.’ Pulling a face as he tasted his drink and realized it was coffee, Dooley slung it away. ‘Are we out of the decent stuff again? You know I can’t stand this old ladies brew.’
‘Heck, now I just can’t figure that at all.’ Taking the precaution of stepping beyond Dooley’s reach, Ripper displayed his pale green teeth in an ingratiating smile. ‘From what I hear it kinda seems as how you find the old ladies themselves pretty tasty.’
Also expecting retaliation, but far enough away to not to have to take avoiding action himself, Burke waited and watched for it to happen, then swore loud and long as a battle-scarred armoured vehicle came clattering down the road toward them, to provide a distraction and diversion. ‘Bloody hell, I thought I’d seen everything this war had to offer.’
The last to do so, even Clarence got to his feet to witness the approach of the Marder personnel carrier. ‘What on earth is keeping that ancient wreck moving? It looks as if it’s spent the last five years as a target on the ranges.’
Many of the vehicle’s rubber track pads had been worn to pitted wafer-thin shreds, many had gone altogether, and the racket made by the bare metal thrashing the road surface and squealing over the distorted and unlubricated return rollers almost matched that from its rusty and holed exhaust.
Hardly a vestige of paint was to be seen on the gouged and patched armour of its hull and turret. The West German APC bore no unit insignia, nor any other identifying mark, save a partially obliterated white-outlined black Bundeswehr cross on its front. Slewing to a rocking halt, its clattering diesel raced on after the vehicle had stopped until it at last reluctantly spluttered into clicking silence after a series of gradually diminishing over-runs.
‘It will be interesting to see what kind of men would go to war in such a machine.’ Running his hand over a rough finished irregular patch that only partially concealed a deep hole in the sharply raked upper body, Boris cut his fingers on embedded fragments of tungsten, splinters from the armour-piercing round that had so narrowly failed to penetrate. Fresh blood speckled the metal as he pulled away, and he did so barely in time. The driver’s hatch flew open to crash down where his hand had been.
‘Then get a mirror, take a good look at yourself.’ Major Revell pulled himself up until he sat on the hull with his legs dangling, into the driving compartment. ‘Get your gear together, we’re moving out.’ ‘In this?’ Burke had completed a slow circumnavigation of the Marder, and the curled lip with which he silently signalled his contempt for the transport had grown more pronounced with each step taken and every component investigated.
‘That’s right, in this. Sorry I couldn’t get one with white-walls and a custom paint finish.’
‘You know me better than that, Major. I don’t give a bugger what my wagons look like. They can be papered with candy stripes or stripped to bare metal, doesn’t make any difference to me. It’s the mechanics I bother about. What I’d like to know is did this crate come to a stop like it did because that’s the way you drive, or because its suspension brakes and running gear are knackered?’
‘Seen the tracks? The rest of this clunker just about matches them.’ He was talking to Burke, but Revell was looking at Andrea.
‘How long can I have to work on it?’ In the APCs condition Burke saw a chance to keep himself out of the firing line for a day or two longer. It’d mean getting dirty, but what with waiting for spares and spinning out the work maybe he could even spin it out to three, or even four, days. So he’d get his hands grubby; better than being shot at.
‘You can’t. It’ll have to do as it is.’ Revell tried, but he couldn’t catch Andrea’s eye. She had to be avoiding him deliberately. He heard but didn’t pay any heed to their driver’s litany of complaint, until he went on too long. ‘There’s a choice. Either we use this heap or we walk. Okay, so if you see it my way, help the others load.’
‘What have you got us, Major?’ Giving up an attempt to wedge a pick and shovel into blast-distorted brackets on the hull side, Sergeant Hyde threw them toward the back of the vehicle where the packs and weapons were being passed in through the wide rear door.
‘Not quite what I was after.’ Revell shrugged. ‘It’s a mission more suited to a field security unit I’d have thought, but we’re furthest forward in this sector so we got it. Seems a bunch of civvies are trying to cross the Zone to reach the Russian lines...’
‘That’s a switch, ninety-nine percent of the traffic is the other way...’
‘…The word is they’re a self-appointed peace mission, making a gesture for the world’s press. If they do link up with the commies then the KGB’s propaganda boys will have a field day. We’re to grab them first, prevent it happening.’
‘Why not send in a squadron of air-cavalry,’ Burke’s gruff disapproval floated from within the transport, ‘they’d soon locate the buggers, have them back within an hour. Save us a lot of pissing about.’
Lifting his legs out to make room for their driver to lake his seat, Revell jumped to the ground, landing beside Andrea. Now she was looking at him, and the same question was in her eyes.
‘Could be the Soviets don’t know they’re coming; If that’s the case we don’t want to put on a big show that’ll alert them. And if they do know about it, and we don’t manage to catch the civvies after mounting a maximum effort, then they’ll capitalize on it all the more. So the approach is low key.’
‘And when, if, we find these ...’ Andrea sought the words, and finding them, filled their every syllable with loathing and hatred, ‘…these pathetic blinkered innocents, these Russian pawns, traitors, what then?’
‘Kid gloves all the way. Orders are we’re to gently turn them around and give them an escort back.’
‘You know the sort of people they will be, don’t you.’ Andrea turned her contempt on Revell.
‘I can guess. A worn-out union boss doing the last bit of harm he can before someone discovers he’s been dipping into the pension fund, a member or two of the World Peace Committee or some other commie front organization, an elderly faggot from a respectable British university, and others on the same line, the usual assortment.’
‘And their leader, you know what he will be. A KGB operative, perhaps one who has been a sleeper for a long time. If you do stop them, bring them back, then what? I tell you, they will use their friends and contacts in the media to brand you a thug and a fascist, and they will bay for your blood. If you take them back, then you destroy yourself.’
‘What would you suggest. Put them against a wall and turn our rifles on them?’
‘Why not. In the name of peace they would be pleased to see that happen to you, to all of us. In the name of peace, a communist dictated and dominated peace, such scum would be happy to see Russian tanks drive over the lawns of the White House, through the gates of Buckingham Palace.’
If her concern for his fate had been prompted by affection, Revell would have been over the moon, but he was well aware that it wasn’t. He found it difficult to understand her. A conscripted member of the East* German Militia, when she’d deserted she’d chosen to hide among the human flotsam of a big refugee camp up north. She had even joined and eventually led a gang composed mostly of renegade East German border guards, the lowest of the low. At any time she could have escaped to the west, but hadn’t until by chance she’d fallen in with the squad during their attack on those important Russian tank workshops.
Her intense hatred of communism couldn’t be the total explanation of her complex character. Revell’s speculations, his attempts to predict her future behaviour based on his observations were frequently confounded by some fresh contradictory act. If only he could get closer to her, get to know more about her ...
‘Ready to roll, Major.’ As he reported, Hyde made a point of stepping between the officer and the girl, to be sure of getting Revell’s full attention. ‘We’ve run a check on the armament. The twenty-millimetre and co-axial machine gun in the turret are all right, but there’s a fault in the remote control for the rear roof- mounted machine gun. It’s nothing too serious though, we can probably fix it while we’re on the move. What about the crates in the back? We’re short of room, might be better if we unpacked whatever’s in them.’
‘Electronic gear. Have Boris take care of it, that’s his department. I just hope it works; we’re going to need it, we’re strictly on our own on this one. Now let’s get moving, I’ve a gut feeling tells me the Reds are going to be looking for those civvies as well, and they won’t be wasting any time ...’
THREE
The hall was magnificent, as was every room in the Kremlin that Rozenkov had been led through, but the only feature of it that he took any real note of was the brilliant light from the many crystal chandeliers flooding into every corner of its vast interior.
It was a wry interest, founded only on a comparison of the lavish use of light bulbs here, and the difficulty he’d experienced in getting even a single forty-watt for his desk lamp at the Lubyanka, let alone the special electrical apparatus they’d been unable to obtain for the Intensive Treatment wing of the interrogation block.
He was not quite alone in that huge apartment. At its far end, flanking carved and inlaid double doors, were immaculate soldiers of the elite Kremlin Guard.
Rozenkov had done the best he could with his appearance, but he knew that when he passed between those two men he would by comparison be little better than a uniformed scarecrow. Their boots had walked no other surface than these highly polished floors, their jackets and trousers and caps had never been exposed to the elements. It was not security nor ceremony alone that put them there in that condition. The colonel recognized a contrived situation when he saw one; he should, he arranged enough for prisoners, in order to instil uncertainty, and inflict fear.
It was for the same reason, to over-awe and unsettle him, that he’d been ushered to the only chair in the surprisingly spartanly furnished Czarist showpiece. To stand would have betrayed nervousness, sitting removed the risk of giving that impression but meant his jacket would become creased, and so he sat forward, just a little, to keep his back from contact with the seat’s elaborate embroidery.
Like chess, for every move there was a counter-/ move, and he was good at chess. Under pretence of smothering a slight cough with the back of his hand he glanced at his watch. One hour and forty-nine minutes. Not much of a wait set against the years he had spent working to get here.
The doors swung silently open. Colonel Yuri Nikolai Rozenkov stood, tugged straight the hem of his jacket and started forward. He realized he was sweating; he, who had killed a hundred men himself and signed away the lives of countless thousands more, he was experiencing fear.
As he approached and passed between them he could have sworn he saw the guards’ blank expressions animate for the merest fraction of a second in sardonic smiles before instantly reverting to their previous immobility. They knew what he was going through. Rozenkov let his camera-sharp eye snap memory of them both and file the images in the ‘retribution pending’ section of his mind. Should they ever find themselves within the reach of his power, he would take great satisfaction in prompting their recollection of this moment before making their lives unpleasant, and shorter.