He was about to put the first into action when Cohen burst into flames. ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ Catching up with the corporal among the wounded, he threw him down and dragged him clear of the phosphorus-spitting grenade.
Another landed among the wounded as York helped scuff the globules of fiercely burning chemical from the deeply burnt flak-jacket.
Clarence and Andrea were both pumping shots at the upper windows of the coffee shop, then they had to jump back as several more of the incendiary bombs landed among the Russians. Others joined in, and, at irregular intervals, still more of the horrific cylinders would tumble out to add their fuel to the smoke-wreathed fires raging among the wounded.
There was no chance of pulling the casualties clear, and those who tried to make it by themselves managed to crawl only a yard or two before the white flames engulfed them. Kurt was briefly visible, sitting up and waving fiery arms, before a long burst from Andrea’s M16 pushed him back down.
‘Get them, get them.’ Revell hurdled two charred bodies and plunged into the smoke.
Andrea and Dooley followed, Hyde holding the others back. ‘Three’s enough. York, Libby, round the back. The rest of you fan out and cover the front. Make sure of positive identification before you fire.’ Hyde dragged Cohen to his feet, smoke still wreathed from his flak-jacket, his eyelashes and eyebrows gone.
‘I’d make a fucking good fireman. Look at the practice I’m getting.’ Hands shaking, Cohen slowly unfastened the body armour and slipped it off to check none of the pockets had been burnt away. ‘That’s the second time I’ve been roasted today.’
There was a long rattle of automatic fire from the coffee shop and the stabbing flame of a muzzle flash showed in an upstairs room.
THIRTEEN
Through the partially open doorway Revell could see the legs of the Russian infantry officer he’d fired at. The man’s calf-length black boots were slashed and punctured by the storm of shot that had torn into him as the 12-gauge assault rifle had blasted him with five fast rounds.
‘Keep down.’ The major had to shove back against Andrea who was standing close .behind him. Even here, even now, the close contact with her body felt good. He took a deep breath, another, then jumped to his feet and crashed into the door. The weight of the body behind it increased its resistance to the charge and Revell felt his shoulder jar at the heavy impact. There was no one else in the room. Two more phosphorus grenades lay on a table, a third near the body, its pin unpulled.
Dooley watched the stairs leading up, while Andrea came in and turned the body on to its back. The powerful cartridges had done immense damage to the Russian’s face and torso, and every drop of his blood was draining from the huge rents. ‘One less.’
‘Let’s check the rest of the building.’ Stowing the unused bombs in his belt, Revell followed Andrea and Dooley.
Two more rooms on .that floor were quickly checked. The method Dooley used was simple, and classic. His hefty boot would batter a door open, and then the blast grenade he’d held with the pin withdrawn for three seconds would be tossed in and the door pulled shut again. Even as the concussion pounded on the wall beside them, he’d leap in and spray sharp bursts into every corner.
Up another flight and three more grenades failed to flush any Russians from hiding.
‘This one’s mine.’ Revell stopped beside the strongly locked door that led to an owner’s apartment. There were recently made footprints in the dust before it. ‘Fire the house.’ Andrea tapped the head of a grenade protruding from Revell’s waistband. ‘Let them taste the flames.’
‘You don’t give a fuck about revenging Kurt.’ Dooley fingered the keyhole of the mortise lock. ‘I suppose you want us to think your bumping him off was done out of mercy, well screw that. You just got mad because you thought someone else had got to him first.’
‘Stand back.’ Pushing the others aside with a sweep of his arm, Revell blasted the lock with a single shot.
It swung open, revealing a flight of stairs immediately behind it, with another door at the top.
‘You stick your head through that one, Major, and they’ll ventilate it for you. That’s just what they’re waiting for.’ Taking out another grenade Dooley tossed it nonchalantly. ‘How about you blast out the bottom panel and I let them have this, just to even the odds?’
‘No...’ Revell kept looking at the bottom door, the lock had been completely shot away, no wonder it had flown open ...‘No, I’ve got a better idea. You wait here.’
Slowly, ultra-cautiously, the major climbed the stairs one at a time, expecting that at any moment a tread would squeak and the door above would open, to emit a tumbling wood-handled metal cylinder.
He stopped several steps from the top so that his head was level with the bottom of the door, then brought the 12-gauge up to his shoulder.
Suddenly the door smashed open and a hail of fire swept out of the room and over his head. Revell’s answering single shot caught a Russian in the act of reloading his AKM and sent him crashing backwards over a low table, dead before he landed.
Worming to the top of the stairs, Revell tentatively opened the door, to reveal a fussily furnished sitting room. There had been two weapons fired at him, of that he was sure, but there was only one body. Where was the other Russian? It could be another trap, an invitation to them all to gather in the room, and present a better target. He signalled the others to wait where they were. Andrea had already mounted a couple of steps, and didn’t stop until Dooley caught up with her and held her back.
An inch at a time, Revell eased himself up until he stood on the threshold of the room. Four doors led off, and all were closed. He didn’t know what logic or intuition prompted him to first try the door to his immediate left. He crept to it, grasped the satin-finished aluminium handle and barged\ in, crouching low to present the smallest possible target.
A dozen shots from a 9mm automatic sprayed wildly past him, then the Russian officer threw the pistol itself and bolted for the window. Hurdling the bed he hurled himself at the glass, and it shattered, but that was as close as he came to diving through it and on to the roof of the next building.
Snarled by a net curtain that caught on his every button and buckle the Russian fought to free himself, but it resisted the efforts he made to tear it or pull it down. The harder he tried, the more entangled he became. Though it bowed and the brackets supporting it started their screws from the wall, the curtain rail held.
‘You going to finish him, Major, or do you want me to do it?’ Standing by the door, Dooley watched the Russian’s weakening struggles. Andrea squeezed past the big man. ‘I will do it, let me.’ ‘No, cut him down. Our Command are always looking for propaganda, something to counter the lies the commies trot out every day, let’s give them a war criminal.’ Revell stepped aside to let the others reach the trapped man. A heavy cuff to the side of the Russian’s head, delivered by Dooley, put a swift end to his Up-curling invective, and caused him to sag at the knees.
Revell had stooped to retrieve the Stechin pistol when a drawn-out wailing scream flooded the apartment. Dooley and Andrea both stood by the prisoner, both held bayonets. It was the girl’s that was smeared with dark blood, stained almost to the hilt.
‘What the hell...?’
‘She just did it, I couldn’t stop her…’ Only twice before had Dooley seen his officer as furious. ‘I thought she was just cutting the curtain, like me.’ The major hadn’t blown his top in ages, not since Andrea had joined them, and now the old rage had returned, and it was aimed at her.
‘I have no time for trials. This is more sure.’ She held up the bayonet ‘He might have escaped from us, or taken his own life.’
‘And you thought you’d save him the bother. Listen carefully, when I give an order you follow it.’ The words were uttered quietly, but carried more menace than if they had been shouted. ‘If you ever do anything like this again, if I even have reason to suspect that you have, then you go in the cage. When I say I want a Russian kept alive I mean it. There are thousands out there you can butcher, but if I want a prisoner for a special reason, then you leave him alone.’
Andrea was considering the threat that had been made. ‘And how could you have me put in the cage, without making great trouble for yourself?’ A small tight smile curled up the corners of her mouth.
He told her, with the same slow deliberation as his earlier warning. ‘I will tell our Intelligence Service that Kurt told me you were an ex-Grepo, and that you killed him when you found out.’ He waited for her reaction.
She didn’t doubt that he could make the story ring true. He had already woven a tale about her and Kurt to keep them and those same skills could be used to unravel it again. How far could she exploit his feelings for her? Had she already gone too far?/Her next words must not be careless, not if she wanted to stay out of the prisoner of war camps... the thought of those cages was the only thing that brought her fear.
‘I was angry. I saw the look in his face... and thought of what he had done, even to his own men…’ Was it enough? She watched Revell to see if anything had to be added.
God, he wished he could believe her. Anyone else he might have, but not Andrea. Right here and now he had to decide whether or not to keep her. He wanted to; wanted so much more than just keep her near him. And there was the unwelcome complication of Dooley’s presence. The big man had faced plenty of charges from him in the past, and received other, more summary, punishments at his hands. If Revell backed down now there was the danger that he’d be seen to be favouring the girl. But damn it he was, always had, though he’d tried not to show it
‘Go and help with the wounded.’ He made it as sharp as he could, and there was a genuine edge to his words. Damn the girl for putting him on the spot like this. ‘And I don’t want you helping any of them out of their misery.’
‘Search him for papers.’ Revell pretended not to see the casual thoroughness with which Andrea wiped the long, thin blade on the dead Russian before going down.
‘She’s got a nice arse, Major, don’t you think?’ ‘Don’t get smart, Dooley. Just give me the papers.’ He hadn’t fooled the big man, but he’d gone through the motions. Maybe now he’d be more trouble to handle away from the Zone. When Dooley wasn’t preoccupied with the problems of staying alive on the battlefield, he was every sort of trouble a commander could have. Fights . .. drink ... women ... it was as though he was determined to carry as many aspects of the Zone about with him as he could and, by frequently creating mayhem among the military and civilian population, he contrived to do just that. And now for a while he’d be worse, expecting to trade on what he’d just witnessed. Well, perhaps the first couple of times Revell would pedal soft, but after that... ‘You want to use those, Major. Be sort of fitting.’ Dooley was indicating the incendiary grenades. ‘Why not? Here, you do it.’
As Revell left the room, Dooley lobbed a bomb on to the double bed. The dead body swayed as it hung, moved by the waves of roasting air that surged through the broken window. As the last footsteps the apartment would ever hear echoed back from the stairs, the fine filaments of nylon shrivelled in the heat and finally released the Russian. He fell forward, and one hand flopped out of the window, held there by impaling pinnacles of glass. The fierce gusting draughts from the fire kept it in bobbing motion, and it waved goodbye to the world.
‘... Done to a bloody crisp. Not one of them’ll make it to the field hospital, let alone to a burns unit.’ Burke watched the pair of scruffy Hueys lifting off, the late afternoon sun highlighting the faded red crosses on their cabin doors. ‘How come you didn’t hitch a lift, you could have played on that?’ He nodded at the wrappings of bandage around Dooley’s leg.
‘No way. We’re going back bloody heroes. If anyone is chucking forty-eight hour passes about, I want to be in line to collect my own. I might just get overlooked if I’m sitting in a bed that stinks of disinfectant, surrounded by twenty other guys with a better claim.’
‘Move it you two.’ Hyde called from the door of the Chinook. ‘We’re waiting to lift off.’
‘On our way, Sarge.’ There was a loud rush of wind from Dooley’s lower gut. ‘See, I’m even using jet propulsion.’
The co-pilot greeted them as they boarded. ‘Which of you two has pinched a stack of our decorations?’
The expression on Burke’s face was one of genuine surprise, that on his companion’s affected innocence and ignorance. ‘If I had my way I’d leave you here, let you walk it. Don’t take any more or we might put you out yet, at three thousand feet.’
‘Touchy ain’t he?’ Making himself comfortable, Dooley waited until the co-pilot had returned to his seat and was busy with the controls before taking out a wad of crumpled glossy paper from beneath his jacket. ‘Hey, look at this one.’ He held out a full colour centrefold crotch-shot towards Burke. ‘She’s got a crease right along her crack. Now ain’t that something to get your teeth into, or your tongue.’
‘Wouldn’t know, I just fuck them, not eat them.’ ‘Oh boy, are you missing out.’ Dooley kissed the picture. ‘A couple of big licks and you can drive them wild, so long as you don’t mind getting a few hairs stuck between your teeth. Kinda spoils it if you have to stop to get them out’
‘You’re warped.’ The conversation had been overheard by Clarence. ‘Yeah, that’s possible, but if I am I enjoy it, and it don’t do nobody no harm, just the opposite, so what’s it matter? Here, you want one… oh, sorry, you don’t need it, you got the real thing.’ He made a mock wave to Andrea, and could hardly believe it when she came over to him, and took the page out of his hands.
‘You like this?’ She took a second illustration, and turned it around several times, uncertain which way up the two girls should be. ‘I like the real thing better, but I take what I can get.’ Continually nudging Burke, Dooley moved over for her to sit down beside him. Her hips needed a surprising amount of space. He tried to imagine her undressed, bent over...
‘There are things you can show me.’
This was getting good, but Dooley wasn’t sure how far to go along with it. The sniper was watching and he had a healthy respect for him. He tried to temper the elation he felt, as Clarence turned and went to the back of the compartment.