‘What of Sergeant-major Gorbatov, Comrade Colonel.’ ‘He is to report to Lieutenant General Akenshin at the department of satellite surveillance control at the ministry of defence.’
Ignoring the soldier’s departure with the tray. Ro-zenkov turned back to his map. Every thirty minutes during the afternoon Major Morkov had come in and moved the yellow markers a fraction to indicate the GRU units’ latest reported positions. In a rough circle the lemon topped pins converged on the pencilled projected route the civilians were likely to travel, but they weren’t closing quite as fast as he might have expected for such well equipped troops. And between two or three of the encircling companies there were larger than usual gaps.
‘Get me Lieutenant General Akenshin at the defence ministry.’ Rozenkov continued to study the disposition of the yellow markers as he waited for the call to be connected. ‘Hello, Gregor, it’s Rozenkov… Thank you. It is still subject to confirmation, but, I think I shall yet make your exalted rank. Gregor, I have been able to do something for you. Do you still enjoy your love affair with your stomach… I thought so. I am sending you a chef I have discovered. Try him, you will not be disappointed…Well yes, there is something. If I give you some coordinates can you let me have a fast breakdown of activity in the immediate area, say within a hundred miles… The Zone, southern sector, Bavaria…You can…? Yes, ours and theirs, especially ours… Excellent, enjoy your meal.’
As he replaced the receiver, Morkov came quietly into the room and working from scribbled notes on a pad moved each of the pins.
‘Your men are spread more thinly than I’d expected, Major, even in that area. See, there are large gaps, here and here.’ Slouched in his chair, Rozenkov indicated where he meant by raising a leg and kicking at the locations, indenting the map into the soft plaster backing it.
Major Morkov sought any reason to be worried by those seemingly reasonable words. Though he found none, he began to perspire, and itch inside his smartly tailored uniform. ‘As the colonel must know, there are never enough men or vehicles to do everything precisely as-we would wish to.’
‘Probably you are right, though I must admit, of late I have been gaining the distinct impression that the GRU has been obtaining all of its requirements and more, at the expense of KGB military units.’ Enjoying a thin smile at the liaison officer’s difficulty in immediately refuting that, Rozenkov declined to go in for the kill, choosing to let his prey run a while longer. He saved the major from having to find an answer.
‘No matter. If those are all the troops you have available, then they will have to do. I am sure you would produce more if you could.’ Able to breathe again through a windpipe that nervous tension had constricted, Morkov made an excuse and left. In the corridor he paused to dab beads of water from his brow, and scrubbed the dampened handkerchief over his palms.
He could hear Rozenkov move about, and strained to hear what he was doing. For a moment he had half expected the colonel to come after him and order his arrest, it was with great relief that he heard the distinctive squeal of the drink cabinet being opened. So he was safe, and the overwhelming sensation of realizing that ruled out any further speculation as to what the head of Department A might be doing next without knowing the position of all his opponents’ pieces. Such an advantage did not have to stay the monopoly of his adversary. The game was now more complicated, more dangerous.
It was tempting. Rozenkov held the red pin between thumb and forefinger, but finally decided to replace it in the hole it had occupied beside the map. It was too soon to make his move yet, he would hold his men back until the picture was clearer. At this stage he strongly suspected he was having to play the game.
ELEVEN
‘They can have left only a few minutes ago, perhaps ten, not more.’ The reading Boris obtained from the infra-red detector was strong. Residual heat still radiated from the ground where the Range Rover had stood, and a higher level of emission from the ground below its engine even betrayed in which direction it had been parked.
‘Damn.’ Revell didn’t conceal his annoyance. He’d been counting on the civvies calling a halt during the hours of darkness. ‘Ten minutes or ten hours, it makes no difference. That wagon of theirs can outrun us. We’re never going to catch them in a tail chase.’
‘There’s short cut we could take, Major.’ Using a hand-held torch to illuminate the map board, Hyde indicated a side road that turned off the autoroute to cut through the mountains and rejoin it forty kilometres further east. ‘Those civvies have stuck to the main roads so far, doesn’t seem too likely they’ll change tactics in mid-course. If we can manage a decent speed over the high ground then we should come out in front of them, with time to arrange our own reception.’
‘Can we keep up speed?’ There were attractions in the suggestion but the success or otherwise of the idea rested on whether or not the battle-weary APC was capable of maintaining the performance required.
Burke shrugged. ‘The engine’s oil tight, and now it’s thoroughly warmed up it’s not running too bad. I’ve driven much worse further and faster. If we’ve already discovered the only weak link in the track, and if the transmission holds together, then we must be in with a chance.’
It was his decision and his alone, Revell was very aware of that. If they lost the trail, for whatever reason; if the civvies turned off before the roads rejoined, or if their rendezvous with their Russian friends was somewhere between here and the junction, then he’d failed.
But damn it, what ever arguments could be raised against the NCO’s suggestion, it came back down to the fact that on present form their pursuit must fail. They couldn’t count on the civilians stopping again. If they wanted a slice of good luck for a change they were going to have to cut it themselves.
‘Okay, we take the turn-off.’
During his deliberations Andrea had been beside him, occasionally leaning against him as she looked at the map. Her presence, her proximity made him feel good. A great effort of will, of self control would be involved, but he’d have to take things slow with her, not rush it.
It was probably by accident that Thome’s hand brushed against her breasts as he reached between them for a water bottle being passed around. Certainly Andrea made nothing of it, and she’d always been fast enough slapping aside any deliberate attempts to feel her body, but Revell reacted all the same.
‘Keep your hands to yourself.’ Immediately he regretted his interference, wishing the engine had started a moment earlier and drowned his words. Still he was not sufficiently on guard over his jealousy, he would have to strive harder to keep it in check.
It had been a long time coming, longer than he’d expected, but it was no surprise to Clarence that Andrea had at last battened onto the major. Systematically she had worked through most of them, like an apprentice butcher eager to learn every aspect of the craft, how to cut and hack and mince flesh in a thousand different ways.
The Uzi submachine gun felt unfamiliar in his hands, and he glanced at the weapons rack to check that his Enfield sniper rifle was still safely secured. It swayed a little as the Marder lurched on turning off the autoroute onto the back road. The major’s assault shotgun was next to it, its huge twenty round drum magazine dwarfing the grenade discharger barrel on Andrea’s M16 next in line. Even their rifles were together.
Not that there was anything the officer could have done to speed the selection process, bring his turn faster. Andrea set her own pace, made her own rules.
The ride became rougher, and the Marder began to climb. The instruments indicating the level of contamination outside of their steel cocooned world, that had fallen dramatically since they left the grey woods, began to rise again.
As the angle of ascent became steeper Clarence had to exert considerable pressure on the bench and floor to prevent himself from sliding into Dooley. There was nothing he could do to stop Andrea from sliding into him.
The contact of the warm length of her thigh did nothing for him, no woman had, not since that Soviet Bomber had crashed on the married quarters in Cologne, and his wife ... and children.
As so often they did, those thoughts drove all else from his mind and only gradually did he become aware that Revell was glaring at him. For a moment he didn’t understand, then comprehension dawned as Andrea shifted slightly to a more comfortable position and he felt her move against him.
Ordinarily he would have wasted no time in distancing himself from that physical contact, but the major’s attitude prompted him to uncharacteristic behaviour, and he stayed where he was. The glare has deepened to a scowl, and to get away from it Clarence closed his eyes and leaned back against the hull feigning sleep.
In his mind he conjured pictures of the sort of country they were traveling through. His thoughts projected images of steep and rugged hillsides, often covered by dense forests of firs and pines, and in places gashed by deep river gorges and outcrops of frost shattered rock, and here and there, where the slope of the land was not so severe, a few cleared patches where farms clung to the valley sides. He had only to move his head a little, open his eyes and the image intensifying lens in his periscope would have enabled him to check the accuracy or otherwise of his imaginings.
The night was no impediment, the special glass would concentrate what little light there was and enable him to see as clearly as in day, but he didn’t bother. He had seen enough of the Zone already.
Beyond the armoured wall of the hull the landscape they passed did resemble the sniper’s picture of it, the mountains and craps and cliffs and valleys were all there, but they lacked the furnishings of trees and grass and clear water he’d set on them. The basic contours of the land were there as they had been before the war, but there any similarity with the tourist brochures ended. Defoliants had stripped the trees of leaves and needles. No blade of grass remained, and with it had gone the patterns of the meadows that had marked out the farms. A few hardy, or miraculously fortunate plants survived, but now they looked alien in a panorama of lifeless decay where death was the norm.
With even their root systems shrivelled and destroyed by the constant showers of yellow rain and other Russian chemical weapons, the trees no longer bound the soil to the slopes and erosion on a gigantic scale was adding its contribution to the man-made havoc, silting and damming the rivers. Mud slides also blocked the road in places, and from the glutinous mounds projected lance-like lengths of snapped off timber.
Rarely shaving more than a fraction from their speed as he tackled each, Burke made scant allowance for the dangers of the slippery slopes. On one the tracks began to spin as loose material carried them toward a vertical drop to a debris- laden river several hundred feet below. They found traction again just in time, driving clear as part of the slide avalanched over the edge, taking a section of the road with it into the depths.
‘Hell, I had my eyes closed then.’ Ripper left his periscope and reached to dig their driver in the back. ‘I ain’t had a drive like this since I rode with my Uncle Billy hauling moonshine across the state line. He sure was in a hurry that day, Aunt Sarah had been denying him his conjugals for better than a month, on account of her being, like they say in the good book, kinda heavy with child.’
‘What did that have to do with his driving?’ Scenting an interesting story in the offing, Dooley encouraged his fellow American.
‘Well the fella we took the ‘shine to, he always paid cash money on the barrel head, no fuss, no hassle. Uncle Billy planned to spend a goodly portion of it at Ma Kelly’s. She ran a real smart brothel, over a Chinese laundry in Burford City, where we delivered. Aunt Sarah being to due to drop just about any time, Unc’ was in a hurry to get back but wanted time for a couple of decent sessions before we had to turn about.’
‘Did you get his oats?’ Thorne was taking a wry interest as well.
‘Not that day. Snooping revenuers found a thimble-full of white lightning still in the tank under the back seat. In his hurry he got kinda careless. Didn’t get his oats that or any day for quite a spell. I looked in on Ma Kelly’s, though. That were the day I lost my virginity. I were just thirteen, but big for my years, if you catch my meaning.’
Ripper had to pause there, as in attempting to nudge Dooley he moved the dressing on his arm. He rocked back and forth hugging the limb to him and keeping up an undertone of heartfelt obscenity.
‘Well don’t leave it there, tell us what happened.’ Dooley offered no vestige of sympathy, only encouragement to continue the story.
‘Shit, that hurt. Think maybe this’ll get me back stateside? Where was I?’ ‘Losing your virginity.’
‘Oh yeah. Soon as I stepped inside I was grabbed by this big red-head. Maybe she thought the bulge in my pants was a roll of money, or maybe not, anyway she hustled me into this room the size of a broom cupboard. I ain’t kidding when I tell you if I’d been an inch taller we’d have had to do it standing up. So like a real pro she gets straight to the serious business first, and reels off a list of services and prices. She rattled through them too fast for me, shit, I’d have needed a medical dictionary to even figure what half of them were. When she asked me if I wanted to plate her I thought she were hinting she wanted me to help with the dishes.’
‘Get to it, what happened?’ Leaning close in order not to miss anything, Dooley inadvertently crushed up against Ripper’s sore arm and brought about another torrent of bad language, only at greater volume this time, and another delay.
‘You do that again, you fat ox, and I won’t tell you nothing. Like I was saying, I weren’t sure what to do and she must have guessed I were just a learner ‘cause she asked me if I’d ever seen dogs doing it. Hell, for us kids up in the hills watching the hounds make puppies was a spectator sport second only to peeping at grown-up cousins through knot holes in the barn when they were doing a spot of fingering. Only I didn’t get time to tell her that, she went down on all fours, dragged her skirt up over her back and presented me with a target even a blind man couldn’t have missed, ‘cepting I got all nervous, poked twice and missed came too soon and turned her rump into the biggest cream slice you ever saw. Boy was she mad.’