' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (8 page)

Despite the constant rain the battle was easily located by the flashes of gunfire and explosions reflecting off the underside of the clouds.

Maggie left the engine running and joined him, helping manhandle the trailer, hooking it up and connecting the chunky rubber clad electric socket.

“They’re still at it.” He observed, referring to the direction he had been looking, the Vormundberg battle.

“And let’s hope they are still going strong when the 4 Corps Yanks get here...” Maggie began, but her voice tailed off in embarrassment. People were fighting and dying over there in the distance.

They shared a mug of strong, hot and sweet compo coffee made with evaporated milk as Staff Sergeant Vernon gave them the unwelcome news that he had no exact location for where the fault was supposedly located so they had to check a twenty six mile stretch of autobahn to Lehr
te, where TP 31s area of responsibility began.

The driver who had called in the complaint had been less than helpful.

“You’ve signs down on the approach to a junction.”

“Which junction?”

“The junction with the cocked up signage, of course!”
Click! Brrrrrrr!

With the trailer hooked up and connected they paused to stand together at the edge of the autobahn’s embankment facing the dark forest as they loaded their personal weapons, SA80s. These were of the older Block 1 model, the problem child, brought out of whatever cobweb bedecked armoury they had lain in since the MOD had given up trying to offload them. 

352 Provost Coy’s Block 2s had all been redistributed amongst mobilised infantry reservists. 

Tony clambered over the tailgate and laid his rifle across his knees whereas Maggie slotted hers into the weapon rack behind the drivers and front passengers seats.

SOPs stated that for safety purposes vehicles should always proceed in a manner that did not conflict with the intended direction of the traffic, in other words they were supposed to drive east for a mile to the maintenance vehicle gate between the carriageways, drive west for eight miles to the junction that marked the extent of their assigned ‘turf’ before returning slowly in order to locate and correct the errant signage, a fifty four mile round journey.

After conducting a dynamic risk assessment that had taken less than a heartbeat Maggie decided to head west on the eastbound hard shoulder. This would avoid head-on collisions with any heavily laden Foden and get her back into her nice
warm green maggot in at least half the time. However, they could have been on another planet as there was no traffic, no street lighting and not so much as a single unguarded bulb to be seen anywhere on the sodden landscape. Only the sound of to-ing and fro-ing helicopters ruined the effect.

Those few civilians who had not fled west were keeping a very low profile.

The black, wet ribbon of the autobahn stretched off into the distance as Maggie adjusted her PNGs and let out the clutch to pull away, but remained in second gear. On reaching the far side of the canal the Pointsman there moved the metal caltrops, the tyre puncturing spikes to disable vehicles attempting to run the roadblock, aside for them and Maggie gave him a friendly wave that was acknowledged with an unsmiling but perfunctory nod, the passive night goggles he wore adding to the cold and emotionless automaton effect.

“Miserable bugger isn’t he?” said Tony from the back as the linked, sharpened spikes were noisily dragged back into place behind them.

“Well dancing a jig every second for being the only one still alive after the Spetsnaz came calling would not really be appropriate, now would it?” Maggie replied without looking back.

“I suppose not, but what’s he got in that bergan side pouch he always has with him on point duty?” Tony asked, staring at the object of discussion as they drove past it.

“It isn’t scoff, he doesn’t go near it. He just sticks it on the verge by the chicane halt sign and collects it again when he’s relieved.”

“Did you ask him?” Maggie asked.

“No.”

“Then why ask me?”

Tony was silent for a moment.

“He’s still a weird fucker.”

As the Landrover drew away, the checkpoint with its covering infantrymen in a trench, and the solitary military policeman on traffic point duty were quickly swallowed by the
night.
Maggie had undergone her recruits cadre at Chichester, or ‘Chi’ as referred to by members of ‘The Corps’, with the lone pointsman. He had been a very affable, happy go lucky young soldier back then though a little immature, and seriously keen on a WRAC member of his unit.

The pointsman owed his life to the makers of the helmet he had been wearing; the close range headshot delivered by the female commander of the Russian team had been deflected, although the scar on his forehead would be a visible reminder until the end of his days whenever he saw his own reflection. All that having been said though, having regained consciousness in a ditch buried beneath the bodies of his colleagues and finding himself staring into the dead eyes of the young woman he had been so fond of, it would never require the presence of a mirror to remind him of the events of that night.

Having recovered from his injuries he had been returned to duty but remained aloof. The sections new commander had tried to integrate him with his new comrades but when that had failed he had been permanently posted to the solitary role of pointsman at the TP, the task he had been undertaking when the rest of the original section had killed. But he went about that duty uncomplaining of the 12-on-6-off stag roster and remained distant, even to the extent of positioning himself well away from the covering sentries of 1 Wessex.

Maggie put aside all thoughts of the pointsman and his ghosts as she concentrated on not falling asleep at the wheel.

Tony sat in the rear of the vehicle where he used a heavily filtered red lamp to pick out the ‘NUT’ route signs as PNGs were in very short supply and limited to one per vehicle. He occasionally shouted out when a sign needed a slight adjustment due a combination of the rain saturating the ground and the wind acting on it like a sail, canting it over at an angle or toppling it to the sodden verge in the case of those on pickets.  A couple of signs affixed to street furniture required a moment to be repointed an additional twist or two of the retaining wire ties to sit them more securely by Tony, with shoulders hunched against the rain and wind, his SA80 hung reversed down his back by its harness to keep water out of the barrel.

After seven miles the road began a long climb, the dark fields either side gave way to even darker forestry plantation, and once at the top Maggie halted again to allow Tony to lift another drunkenly leaning sign, rooting it more firmly with deft use of the signing vehicles most vital tool, a 2lb hammer. Two solid blows did the trick and Tony turned back to the vehicle, but paused as something in the distance caught his eye despite the rain. He slid open the driver’s side window.

“Would you look at that.” he said to Maggie.

She opened the door to lean out in order to see what he was referring to as the rain pounding the windscreen was not exactly an aid to viewing, and the windscreen wipers best effort was lacking.

Off on the horizon the position of the 4 Corps lead elements was just discernable by flashes reflected off the clouds in a similar
manner to that of Vormundberg’s fight.

The flashes relented and vanished as another air threat was dealt with, and the progress continued, if indeed it had even paused at all.
Out of the cloud base emerge a burning aircraft, falling to earth with no clue as to which side had owned it.

“Come on, let’s get moving.”
The road began a gentle incline but any elation that the sighting of 4 Corps had caused was diminished by the smell that became apparent, growing stronger by the moment.

Rüper auto services, named after a small village to the north, had served both truckers and the motoring public with fuel, food, a rest stop and motels for both east and west bound traffic until the war. When the coup in Poland had forced a sudden withdrawal by NATO to avoid being flanked a horde of refugees in some hundred or so vehicles had bypassed the military road blocks by using the tracks through the forestry plantation and descended upon the westbound services, desperate for fuel and food. They had been in sufficient
numbers for their vehicles collective heat signature and radar return to register with the Soviet equivalent of JSTARS.

The refugees and their vehicles remain there still, hidden from view by the darkness but the nauseous petrochemical scent of napalm and that of its victims lingered on.
It was worse in daylight of course, the blackened and buckled cars and vans were nose to tail, side by side, a disordered logjam on the filling station forecourt and its approach ramp where they had attempted to extract fuel from storage tanks already emptied weeks before.

The southern services two hundred meters away had received the same treatment. The two infernos had burned unchecked, melting the tarmac of the autobahns so that in the dark on that uneven surface it is not unusual for tired drivers to think they have strayed off the road.

Perhaps this was the cause of the complaint and they could both head back to their sleeping bags?

No such luck.
A ‘Nut’ ‘UP’ arrow was pointing at an angle towards the Rüper auto services off ramp.

“Shit…some bastard has being playing silly buggers with the signs.” Tony shouted, turning his head as they passed the obviously interfered with item.

Maggie halted the vehicle and pressed her camouflage face veil, worn cravat style, against her nose in an effort to block out the stench of death as Tony clambered over the tailgate. She hated this place and usually held her breath and floored the accelerator on the downhill westbound route, treating any passengers to a severe bone rattling ride as the uneven surface was akin to the ‘slow-down-ripples’ from hell.

Lifting her PNGs clear of her face she looked at her watch; pressing the tiny button on one side of the casing to illuminate the hands and figured she could get over an hours sleep if she kept her foot down all the way back.

Maggie looked in the wing mirror, but it was beaded with raindrops and did not reflect any light from Tony’s red filtered torch so she gritted her teeth and opened the side window, grimacing in the rain as she peered back at the off ramp, but she could see no sign of Tony.

“Tony?” there was no response.

“TONY!” she paused to listen but there was just that miserable non-stop rain.

Muttering aloud, she lifted her SA80 from the weapons rack behind her, killed the engine and removed the ignition key.

Emerging into the rain she listened for a second before calling Tony’s name again.

He couldn’t seriously be playing a practical joke could he, knowing how she disliked this place?

Pulling the PNGs back into place and holding the rifle casually in one hand she walked cautiously to where the off ramp began. There was no sign at all of him and she now fully expected her partner to be playing a foolish prank as she started along, the blistered and melted road surface crunching beneath her feet, until she reached the nearest buckled and burnt out car, a people carrier. The naked wheel rims it was sat upon were now an integral part of the off ramps tarmac surface, sunk into the tarmacadam when the napalm had brought it to boil. The driver’s door was open, restricting her view further down the ramp. As she reached the open door she glanced inside. Even in the mixed shades of green from the PNGs she could make out a skeletal foot upon the brake pedal.

Bile rose in her throat and she fought the impulse to gag.

“Tony?…I am not fucking about here, so quit screwing around or you’re walking back, you bastard!”

Her foot struck something metallic that skittered away and looking down she saw it was a 3’ picket with ‘NUT’ still affixed.

Brittle tarmac crunched behind her and she started to turn, to shout an angry remark at Tony but something slipped over her head and contracted around her throat, stifling the retort. The SA80 clattered to the ground as Maggie raised both hands to her throat and as she did so a knee pressed into the small of her back, pulling her off balance.

The cheese-wire sliced deeply into the female British soldier’s fingers but he knew she was unable to even give voice to the pain and shock. The face veil about her throat to keep out the rain was a little hindering, but with a vigorous sawing motion it was but the work of a moment to cut through it and into the soft flesh beneath.

   
Vormundberg: Same time.
Royal Marines of A Company, 44 Commando, passed through the fighting positions of 2LI, the 2
nd
Battalion Light Infantry, to a pre-arranged point where guides from 2 Wessex led them safely through the lines of the men from Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire to a muddy forest track on the reverse slope. There, medics and the marines own quartermaster sergeant waited. 1 Troop was the first to arrive, numbering only nineteen men now, and their current troop commander, a corporal, carried out the reorganisation drills and reduced the troop further, sending one marine away in the direction of the medics, protesting vocally as he limped off.