Plague Bomb (7 page)
Hardly giving the men time to get into the room, let alone vie for position before him, Rozenkov wasted no time with preliminaries. He could be sure that some of the nervous men in front of his desk would not be fit for their jobs. Some would be stupid, some lazy, but there was not the time to replace them, and in any event he was certain that their deputies would be of similar stamp, chosen so as not to outshine their bosses. It would be a case of having to squeeze the best from them now, and later weeding those who could not take the pressure.
Indeed all of them would be on a form of probation as far as Rozenkov was concerned. Those whose performance was adequate would be given longer to prove their worth, any of the staff who did not come up to the required standard would get no second chance,’ and in addition their names would go on a special list he intended to keep. If by their failure they caused him to fail, then his last act before his removal would be to ensure that he dragged them down with him.
‘There is an operation underway that is of special interest to me ...’ ‘I had anticipated that, Comrade Colonel ... eh, Director ...eh, Comrade Director. Full details are here.’
His confusion and hesitancy over Rozenkov’s proper title cost the head of operations much of the advantage he’d hoped to gain by his forethought and thoroughness. The remainder of it was lost when the summary page was ripped from the front of the bulky file, and the rest of it thrown back at him.
Hardly seeming to have glanced at the half page of double spaced lines, Rozenkov singled out the head of communications, identifying him by the radio- technical corps insignia on his shoulder.
‘I want a radio link installed in here, on my desk, so that I can keep in personal touch with our units in the Zone.’
‘Of course Comrade Colonel.’ The head of communications smugly beamed as he avoided his discomforted colleague’s mistake. ‘I can have you patched through on the army net. It will mean running cables through the building from the com- munication centre in the basement, but ...’
‘I do not want to talk with army, not with corps, not division, not even battalion. I want to be able to talk direct with platoon and company commanders in the field. What technical problems may be involved I do not care. Have it done.’
Glancing again at the summary, Rozenkov frowned, and there was a noticeable ripple of movement among the crowd, like a contagious shudder. ‘There is no mention of the arrangements for press coverage, why is that?’
‘The intention is, Comrade Colonel, to fly the delegation to Moscow, to meet the representatives of the world media here.’
It was only when she spoke that Rozenkov realized there was a woman in the group before him. Little beside-the lack of shadow on her chin betrayed her. In a suit of very masculine cut, with a severe hairstyle, she was otherwise an unremarkable member. ‘And if we do that we lose half the value of the exercise. There must be no hint, no possibility of the suggestion being made that we brought them into the country via a neutral. A press conference we can arrange any day, an event, a genuine event, could be of propaganda value behind price. The press must be somewhere close at hand when we make contact with these civilians.’
‘But how Comrade Colonel ...’
She was ugly, squat and ugly, Rozenkov found time to wonder how a woman with no natural talent for her work could have got so high, without having had the advantage of attractive femininity to play on. Later he would learn more about her.
‘... that is a quiet sector. There is no reason for correspondents of the calibre we require to be there, what pretext could we give?’
‘We shall select some unit within a short flying time of where we can anticipate the civilians making contact. If we tell the media people that the unit is to be inspected by the President of the Supreme Soviet, then they will be clamouring to go.’
‘With respect, Comrade Colonel, the foreign press have been speculating on the Comrade Leader’s health. You will recall that they have made much of the fact that he has not been outside the Kremlin in six months.’
‘Then can you think of anything more likely to attract their interest and attention? There need be no embarrassment. Until they see him they will print nothing, and when the delegation appears instead they will take that as their story and forget the other. Now, what arrangements have been made for the civilians’ interception?’
‘All field units have been alerted ...’
‘Are you mad?’ Rozenkov exploded. ‘Would you have them make contact first with a bunch of stupid Cossacks, or Serbs, who are either going to shoot them by mistake or bugger them and give them the pox? Order all units withdrawn from the immediate area, then get me the GRU liaison officer. Perhaps Military Intelligence will have units in the vicinity that can cover for us until we are ready to airlift a Spetsnatz company into place.’
Rozenkov was having to rebuild the whole operation from the ground up. Virtually nothing had been done, and what had was ill planned and uncoordinated. He was about to dismiss the gathering but checked himself, and lowering his voice so that they had to strain to hear every word, spelled out his position, and theirs.
‘If this operation does not reach the successful conclusion expected of it by ... by those above us, then there will be ... changes ... It should not need saying, but I do so to make everything clear; no excuses will be acceptable. The operation is basically simple, with only three component stages. That civilian delegation will be located, intercepted and used to the fullest advantage in the world press. It is possible, even likely that NATO troops will be used to prevent that happening. At all costs they will be stopped from interfering. Before they can do any harm to our plan they must be destroyed.’
It took Revell only a minute to check the corpses of the remainder of the decontamination squad. In the suit of each he found the same neat circular punctures he had noticed in the first. Several of the bodies had been riddled, and it was very obvious that the men had walked into a hail of high velocity automatic fire.
With the Marder grinding and growling along behind him he started toward a pair of Land Rover ambulances parked at the roadside a hundred yards on.
In each the crew of driver and medical attendant still sat in the cab, behind multiply starred windshields that were further obscured by splashes of congealed blood burst from gaping wounds caused by the deformed bullets’ impacts.
A few yards further, and about a Bedford dump truck and trailer mounted compressor lay the rotting bodies of the pioneers who had been the original victims of the cleverly sprung Russian ambush.
Foxes and scavenging crows had torn open body cavities the snipers’ bullets had not already pierced, and now past the stage of bloating putrefaction what was left of the skin and other tissue hung in ribbons from disjointed skeletons.
There wasn’t the time to make a search and confirm it, but Revell knew that among the trees close by, investigation would have uncovered the spots where the carefully camouflaged riflemen had patiently lain in waiting for each arrival in turn. The trampled grass would have re-grown, but the spent cartridge cases would still be there.
The Marder stopped by the ambulances and Sergeant Hyde began to organize the systematic looting of everything usable from the well equipped vehicles. Between them the Land Rovers provided sufficient NBC equipment to make good all their shortages, and provide ample spares of those items most likely to need subsequent replacement under intensive use.
‘You feeling a mite happier about going into those badlands now?’ Though he heard clearly over the intercom, Burke made no reply to their gunner. Instead he looked back to see if the American was still fidgeting in his turret seat as he usually did before resettling, and then engaged the drive fiercely. The violent tactic brought complaint from more than his intended victim.
‘Fuck it, stop chucking this crate about like it was a fucking stock car.’ Pushing aside the avalanche of ammunition clips and medical kits that had followed him to the floor, Dooley regained his seat on the bench.
Boris had suffered worse than a sudden loss of dignity. Blood oozed from a deep gash high on his forehead, where his head had made hard contact with a hull fitting. He made no complaint, not even when Thorne, acting begrudgingly on their officer’s orders, cleaned and covered the indented cut. No sound came from him when the hair the impact had embedded in his flesh was pulled away, nor when the first field dressing applied proved to be too small and had to be ripped off to be replaced by a larger.
‘Tough buggers, those Ruskies.’ Watching, Dooley saw the deserter immediately resume what he had been doing, pausing only to wipe spots of blood from the respirator lens he’d been replacing.
‘Maybe,’ Hyde didn’t see it the same way, ‘or maybe they’re just so damned thick they don’t even know when they’re hurt. I saw one of their field hospitals once, we over-ran it before they had a chance to scarper, surgeons were still working when we went in. That’s if they were surgeons, I’ve seen apprentice butchers make a better job of carving meat. You should have seen it—crude wasn’t the word. They might have a few fancy show-piece hospitals in Moscow, but for the poor sods they use as cannon fodder it’s swab, stitch, splint and back into battle Ivan. The stupid sods line up like dumb animals to have their arms and legs lopped off without even an aesthetic. Our M.O. did his nut. You saw it Clarence, what did you think?’
‘When I walked through the wards all I was thinking was what a lot of rotten marksmen there must be in the NATO armies. I’ve never seen so many gunshot wounds. In our casualty clearing stations better than three quarters of all cases are from mines and artillery. It was nearer fifty-fifty there, though that might have been because of the human wave tactics the Russians were usmg at the time. When there’s a couple of thousand or more of the ugly swine coming at you, there isn’t always the opportunity to take leisurely aim and go for a killing shot, it’s a case of having to pump as much lead toward them as you can.’
‘I would like the chance to fire on such numbers.’ Andrea hugged her M16 across her chest.
‘Killing them one by one will take so long.’ She looked pointedly at Boris, but he studiously avoided her eye.
He didn’t catch all her words, but Revell could tell by her tone and expression that Andrea was talking about killing. Only rarely did she join in conversation, and then almost invariably on that subject. That alone should have made it easy for him to draw her on the subject of Inga.
After the circle of Russian armour around Hamburg had been broken he’d gone back into the city to search for her. All he’d found was her apartment block a blazing inferno and no sign of Inga. Those other residents he’d been able to find had told him little; shots had been heard, and a dark haired girl had been seen leaving shortly before the fire had broken out in Inga’s rooms.
In a moment he could have set his mind at rest, or had his worst suspicions confirmed by asking Andrea what she knew, but either answer was too frightening to contemplate. One would have left him filled with doubt, the other would have tortured and torn his mind. And so he didn’t ask, and instead of the single conflict that would have gnawed at his brain he was left with elements of both chasing through his thoughts and twisting and warping them until he didn’t know what question to ask, what answer to hope for.
‘We are behind them again.’ On an infra-red scan of the road ahead Boris had detected very faint, but positive, traces that revealed a vehicle had passed this way before them. ‘They have had the advantage of the delay of our detour. I would say they are at least an hour ahead of us, perhaps little more.’
‘And there are no more short cuts for a while,’ Burke eased back on the speed as he sensed a vibration setting in at maximum revs, ‘all we can do is hang on to their tails.’
‘So why don’t we give up now. Whatever they’re in it’s obviously got the legs on this old rattle-trap.’ Thorne could see little save the blur of passing foliage through his own periscope, and was unsuccessful in persuading Dooley to surrender his place at a better sited vision device. ‘Those civvies will be sitting down for a cosy vodka with a brace of commissars and a reporter from TASS while we’re still frolicking about a couple of hours in their wake. Let’s turn back and find a bit of fighting, somewhere I can find the chance to use this properly.’ He slapped the flamethrower’s tanks.
‘We go on, catch them even if it means we have to burst in on such a pleasant gathering.’ For a while Revell had been watching the condition of the surface of the road they were travelling. It was deteriorating rapidly. Long sections had been broken by frost. In places the edges had crumbled away and the further they went the greater became the profusion of storm-shattered branches littering it, and severed telephone wires and power cables draping it.
‘These roads haven’t seen traffic in a year or more, and the blizzards last winter look to have brought down a lot of stuff. Sooner or later those civvies are going to run into a blockage they can’t drive through or around. Either that or they’ll have to slow so often for lots of minor obstacles that we’ll catch up to them that way. Whatever, we keep going.’
Of course they’d keep going. Hyde had known what the officer was going to say. They always kept going, even when it didn’t make any sort of sense, unless ...
There was a loud clattering as hard fragments pummelled and sounded like they were threatening to penetrate the hull overhang. The left track was shedding the last of its ride cushioning, track-life prolonging rubber inserts. Even if it lasted long enough to take them all the way to the Russian lines, as they might have to, there was no chance it would bring them all the way back.
CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS OF ALL TYPES WILL BE TREATED SIMPLY AS ANOTHER MUNITION AVAILABLE TO THE ARMY COMMANDER IN THE FIELD. IF CIRCUMSTANCES WARRANT IT, AND CONDITIONS ARE SUITABLE, TOXINS, NERVE GASSES, BLISTERING AND BLOOD AGENTS, BACTERIAL AND VIRAL WEAPONS WILL BE USED.
IT SHOULD BE KEPT IN MIND THAT THE THREAT OR FEAR OF THE USE OF THESE WEAPONS CAN OFTEN SERVE AS EFFECTIVELY AS THEIR ACTUAL EMPLOYMENT. THE OSTENTATIOUS MOVEMENT OF CHEMICAL TROOPS INTO FORWARD AREAS, THE CONSTRUCTION OF DUMMY HANDLING FACILITIES AND DUMPS; ALL THOSE WILL HELP TO FEED FALSE INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION TO THE ENEMY AND ENCOURAGE THE INCORRECT INTERPRETATION OF THAT HE ALREADY HAS. THE SKILLFUL COMMANDER WILL NOT NEGLECT THE USE OF AGENTS AND SYMPATHIZERS TO SPREAD ALARM AMONG THE CIVILIAN POPULATION BEHIND THE ENEMIES LINES, AND EVEN AMONG HIS BATTLE FORMATIONS.
SUCH MEASURES WILL FORCE THE ENEMY TO DEGRADE HIS FIGHTING ABILITY BY TAKING ALL PRECAUTIONS, WHILE LEAVING OUR OWN TROOPS FREE OF ANY SUCH CONSTRAINTS.
From a Russian Army manual (Written and published 1969, revised 1972/75/78/80/82) used at Staff Officers college 12, and considered by western intelligence to be the Soviet military’s standard work on the subject.