Flares ejected as decoys drifted down. The last was barely brushing the treetops when a slim flame-tailed missile lashed under incredible acceleration from the vicinity of the castle and hurtled after the plane. Ignoring the flares, it screeched past and bored into the cloud in pursuit.
‘Go on boy, go get him.’ Ripper cheered the Rapier. ‘It’ll get him. It ain’t even a contest. That’s one Warpac pilot who won’t be fretting himself over his fuel consumption for long.’
‘Did anyone pinpoint the launch site?’ Even through the field glasses Revell could make out nothing that would betray the missile’s lift-off point. Not for the first time he regretted his thermal imager had been lost with the APC. With it the location, bathed in the residue of the hot exhaust gasses, would have stood out like a neon sign.
‘Pretty close to the castle, I think.’ Lowering the rifle, Clarence used his keen sight in an attempt to decide if a smudge he saw among distant high ground was a trick of light or the faint remains of rapidly dispersing smoke. He couldn’t be certain. ‘I’ve got an idea it came from within that circle of hills. If you look, the road runs along the base of its plinth of rock, and the circle of hills is on the other side of it.’
‘That’s close enough. So somewhere down there is one of our air-defence batteries, or at least part of one. Their transport allocation is usually generous; maybe we can hitch a lift.’
Taking the point, Revell was disappointed when they lost sight of the castle the moment they started downhill. The trees prevented more than an occasional tantalizing glimpse. But at least each one showed them that little bit nearer.
Setting a fast pace, he maintained it even when he began to feel the strain himself. They had to make contact. Even if like themselves it was another bunch of strays, there had to be benefits from their falling in together. For an anti-aircraft unit the advantage would be increased infantry to protect it. For his men it was a lifeline. Transport meant a chance to recover from their weariness, perhaps the opportunity to get sufficiently far ahead of the Russian advance to prepare some hot food. But most of all it offered the opportunity to move fast enough to escape being encircled by the enemy and killed or captured. And being captured by the Warpac forces was merely death postponed.
Looking back, the major saw that some of the company were straggling. ‘Sergeant Hyde, have them close up, regular intervals. If anyone falls out they’re to be stripped of ammunition and left behind.’
It worked, as nothing else would have done. Those to whom each step was agony found the strength to withstand the pain; those who felt they were about to drop from sheer exhaustion found untapped reserves of energy.
Like walking zombies they kept moving. With almost mechanical strides and with laboured breath whistling between gritted teeth they kept going. They knew they had to.
SEVEN
Rain dripped from great banks of razor-wire flanking a high spike-topped steel mesh gate. The massed coils of serrated metal strips had been added to at different times. Most strands were heavily rusted; others, though streaked or spotted with the same dull encrustments, could still show lengths that gleamed brightly. A moss- blotched reinforced concrete guard post flanking the gate was unmanned, and the gate itself hung open.
Above soared a towering cliff of dark granite. The walls of the castle extended it still higher. Tire marks showed a single light vehicle had been through that day.
‘Do we knock and wait for the butler.’ Scully felt nervous, overpowered by the sheer scale of the rock face.
‘There can’t be anything special in here.’ Checking quickly for booby-traps, Carrington went forward a few meters, but could see the side road for only a short distance where it followed the base of the cliff. ‘They wouldn’t leave the post unmanned and the gate open if there was.’
‘Maybe the two guys in the Hummer were the last to leave.’ Ripper also felt oppressed by the sheer scale of their surroundings. When he looked up he had to fight down the fear that the whole mountain was looming over him, falling to crush him.
‘Wouldn’t it be great if this was the entrance to that Paradise Valley?’
‘You think they’d leave the gate open if it was?’ Hyde snorted. ‘A place like that would be protected by a battalion at least.’
‘We’re never going to find out by standing here.’ Revel checked he had a round chambered and with Andrea at his side led in through the gate. Carrington tagged close behind them.
Andrea loaded a smoke round into the grenade-launcher slung beneath the barrel of her Ml6. ‘When I was in the camps there were many stories about a special place that held vast stocks of everything we could ever want. All that we so desperately needed was supposed to be there. Food, clothing, medical supplies, arms, everything.’
Though she talked as they walked, Andrea never for an instant relaxed her vigilance. Revell made no response, giving all his concentration to trying to anticipate what lay around the next bend.
‘An old man came to one camp I was in. He was crippled and almost deaf and covered by many great scars. Always he spoke of a wonderful valley where anything could be had. If you could get in. Eventually he persuaded some men to go with him. He would not tell them the location in advance, only that it was in this general area. We never heard of any of them again.’
Still between high frost-cracked walls of granite, the road curved around the base of the cliff. Beside the road there was room only for a shallow stream that crossed and re-crossed the metalled surface, and where they had to wade through it the water lapped ice-cold to their ankles.
Throwing himself against the illusory cover of the rock, Revell edged back a few paces. ‘No wonder they didn’t bother with the guard post.’ His breath came in gulps and he could feel his heart hammering inside his ribs.
He had seen it for only a second, but it was locked vividly in his mind’s eye. A massively strong bunker seemed to grow from the rock itself. Perhaps a meter of concrete faced with inches of steel, the snouts of machine guns protruded from step-sided embrasures. The weapons could sweep a hundred-meter straight stretch of road that offered no shred of cover. Even attempts to rush the position using smoke would have been doomed. Firing blind, the guns could not have failed to hit anyone attempting that suicidal run.
Armour would have been no protection. Niches cut in the rock held well- protected directional anti-tank mines. At point-blank range the hull sides of the toughest main battle tank would be penetrated effortlessly.
‘Maybe the Russians are here before us.’ Carrington too had seen what lay in their path. ‘Anybody who strolls that way is going to get creamed. I’m impressed.’
Revell was too, but someone was going to have to go out in the open and ... ‘You can come forward.’
The bull-horn blared into life without crackling a pre-warning. ‘I promise you are quite safe.’ Each heavily accented word bounced back and forth in echoes that gradually diminished to a confused babble.
‘It is no trick. We are on the same side. We have been watching your approach on remote cameras, but only in the last few moments have we picked you up on our microphones.’
There was a pause, and Revell made no move. He laid a restraining hand on Carrington’s arm. ‘We’ll take no…’
‘I see that you doubt me.’ The disembodied voice blasted out again. ‘That is understandable. I shall expose myself.’
Dooley tittered. ‘That’s supposed to set out minds at rest?’ He had to shove fingers in his mouth to comply with Sergeant Hyde’s order for silence.
There came an electronically amplified thud and then a resonant ‘click,’ as if the bull-horn had been put down while still switched to full power. There was a brief period of dead silence and then from behind the machine gun nest strolled an unarmed officer. Walking into the open, he turned to beckon behind him and was joined by three young soldiers. Their battledress was immaculately new, but long hair straggled from beneath their helmets.
The trio lounged against the blockhouse, masking the machine guns. Reassured, but still maintaining a degree of caution, Revell went forward with Andrea and Carrington. Advancing to meet them, the first man made a careless salute.
‘Lieutenant Hans Voke, commander of Dutch Pioneer Company seven four nine.’ He grinned a broad grin that exposed a gold tooth. ‘I am welcoming you to NATO supply depot number twelve. You may have heard of it; the unofficial name is Paradise Valley.’
‘Doesn’t look much like paradise to me.’ Keeping a tight grip on the side of the truck, Thorne was bumped by others as the eight-wheeled Foden wallowed through huge potholes.
The basin of land dominated by the castle was over two kilometres in diameter. They were nearing a small village set in its centre, and dwarfed by the jagged ridges and precipitous slopes around it.
Apart from the straggling collection of about twenty houses and a small church, the only other sign of habitation in the valley was a picturesque farm on the slopes opposite the castle.
All of the buildings were from another and gentler age. Half-timbered for the most part, some with shutters and fenced gardens, the only sign that the twentieth century had created any impression on the place was the abandoned hulk of a farm tractor beside a rotting woodpile.
Pulling into the yard of a small sawmill that was little more than an open-sided shed beside a house with blue shutters, the truck came to a stop with a hiss of air brakes. When they’d all dismounted it drove forward beneath the shed.
‘So where are all the goodies that are supposed to be stashed here?’ Looking about him, all Dooley could see was a typical abandoned West German village, scruffy from long neglect.
‘You are standing on them.’ Voke displayed his gold tooth again. ‘But perhaps it is improper of me to say that. You are standing over them, a small part of them.’ Beside him stood an electric saw bench. The drive belt had perished and fallen off. He pressed the start button.
There came the subdued hum of a well-maintained pump starting up and the sigh of powerful hydraulics. The Foden began to drop smoothly as the floor beneath it sank.
‘What you tell me about the two men in the Hummer is a cause for worry.’ Voke led the major down a long well-lit corridor that smelled of gun oil and linseed.
‘They were two of my men; they deserted early in this morning, I think.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Here they have knowledge of this place. You can be certain one was taken as a prisoner?’
‘My sergeant saw it happen. The man was wounded, but he thinks not fatally. But what can your man tell them—just what have you got here?’
‘It would be more quick to show you while my men’ show yours where fresh clothes and boots are to be found. Of course they are not mine to give, but the provost sergeant and the last of the stores clerks were evacuated by helicopter last night, and you can see,’ he indicated his own impeccable turnout, ‘I am not in a position to tell on you.’
They turned a corner and with a sweeping wave of his arms Voke announced the huge subterranean hangar they’d entered.
For a battle-weary commander like Revell, who for a long time now had almost given up hoping for, let alone trying to get hold of replacement equipment, it was an Aladdin’s cave.
In the great cavern beneath the floor of the valley were row upon row of factory- fresh wheeled and tracked armoured personnel carriers, armoured cars and armoured re-supply vehicles. In the distance was what looked like a small mountain of crated engines and other spares.
Voke tried to hide his amusement at the major’s open-mouthed amazement. ‘There are seven more rooms like this.’
‘All filled like this?’
‘Certainly all filled, but not all like this.’ Voke led the way out again and talked back over his shoulder. ‘Another holds pieces of light and medium artillery, another contains engineering equipment. Two are filled with soft-skin transport; I cannot recall what is in the others. But that is not all. There are other storage areas for electronic equipment, radar spares and the like. And then yet more for clothing, small arms and ammunition. All on the same scale.’
They were passing a series of large rooms whose fireproof doors had been strongly wedged open. Looking in as they passed, Revell could not identify all that the various crates and racks held, but he saw sufficient to be more impressed and more bitter with each he hurriedly scrutinized.
‘Why the hell hasn’t any of this stuff ever been issued? There’s enough here for two or three battalions. We’ve been screaming for it for months.’
‘Actually, a clerk told me that here there is enough to equip at least a brigade, or even to refit a division. One of my men swears he has even seen several crated gunships. I do not disbelieve him.’ Voke’s tone had an edge to it now, and he was no longer smiling.
He led into a large circular room. The centre was dominated by a crescent of computer terminals and telex machines. Leaving only space for two or three doorways, the walls were lined with filing cabinets. Voke tugged at the handle of the nearest. It was locked. ‘You see, for a bureaucrat the turning of a key makes everything safe. We should have fitted the Free World with a lock, and kept communism out that way.’ He unleashed a massive kick at the cabinet, denting its front. ‘We give them the latest machinery, the best computers, and still they only feel happy when they are pushing pieces of paper from tray to tray.’
‘Doesn’t any of this material ever get issued? The road in hasn’t seen real traffic, maybe not all winter.’ Tapping at a keyboard, Revell was surprised when the screen glowed to life, displaying the gibberish he’d typed. Its green glow was eerie in the dimly lit room.
‘I have not been here even that length of months. All I have seen is perhaps five or six small loads being taken out by Chinook. High-value specialized equipment, radar, that sort of thing. Not enough to keep the cobwebs off the stacker trucks.’ ‘Is that your task here, materials handling?’ ‘No, Major. I was sent here to prepare all this for destruction.’
EIGHT
Tugging open the elevator gate, Voke led across the dusty interior of the shell of a house and out into the rain.