Boris had been the first to take over, and was the last to emerge. 'This whole area is full of Russians. I was challenged; I had to kill a sentry.' Although already wiped clean he continuously rubbed handfuls of gra.s.s over his palms and between his fingers to rid them of the very last traces of blood. 'It is alright, I hid his body.'

'Have we got a lead on those mortars?' Hyde displayed no interest in the fate of the unlucky Russian, or the trauma suffered by their deserter in having to kill a fellow countryman with his bare hands.

'Yes. It is like always. There are several fired, pre-surveyed and ranged sites from which it is fired in random rotation. The nearest is only two hundred metres from here.'

'Right, so we'll set an ambush for them. Let's go.' Hyde knew he need add nothing more.

The men fell into single file, each taking the position in the order of march that by custom and practice had become his. Dooley was rear guard and for his size moved with surprising stealth as they came out from the trees and crossed a wide road between the wreckage of a burned-out ammunition convoy. He was just across when a scout car sped past, the strips of tread from its worn tyres making a rippling sound as they flailed the surface. He looked back once before following the others into the ruins of an apartment block. Another Russian platoon was plodding through the trees they'd just left. Now there was no doubting what Boris had said, there were enemy troops everywhere, and some were now behind them.

'We must not wait any longer.' Inga began to pack her camera equipment away. 'The new demolition party that has arrived may not know that we are up here. If they blow the tower early ...'

Revell had been dozing, but when he looked over the edge and saw the men far below beginning to stack drums of cable near the entrance, he understood the urgency.

In places the stairs had ceased to exist, destroyed by the same hits that had bitten great pieces from the tower's external fabric. When they reached one of these sections they had to improvise, sometimes using the handrail, still secured to the wall, like a fireman's pole, and once having to make a drop of fifteen feet to the next intact flight, easing themselves down until they were holding on by their fingertips and then carefully aiming their fall on to the narrow strip of bare concrete that was all that stood between them and the eventual oblivion of a three hundred foot plummet to the ground level.

It might have helped had the staircase been as dark as had the interior of the lift, but there was sufficient light from the fires and star sh.e.l.ls coming in through the many rents in the wall for every danger to be graphically visible.

Several times Revell wondered at the girl's coolness. Though she might be frightened at some of the risks they were forced to take, and only a fool would not have been, still she kept going, without any hesitation, any holding back. It was an impressive display of willpower, and seemed so out of keeping with the aura of, if not helpless, at least dependent, vulnerability and femininity, that it gave rise in his mind to a first enigma about her.

They made it to ground floor level with only minutes to spare. Two men who were working to connect the last of the charges looked up in utter astonishment when the pair walked from the service stairway and out past them.

'Do you want to stay and see it go down? In a world full of destruction, it must be considered something special.'

'You're the something special I'm interested in right now.' He almost cringed. Had that sounded as school boyish to her as it had to him? It was an agony, waiting for her reaction.

'That was a nice thing to say. Then shall we go?'

Past the still smouldering wreck of the generator truck, the crater, the almost invisible dark stains where the guard and the first demolition crew had lain, they walked away from the tower, striking out in a direction that Revell hadn't been before.

Their way took them through what must once have been a beautiful park. Most of the flowerbeds and displays had been ploughed over by sh.e.l.l fire, but those that had survived the violent transplant bloomed on and filled the air with scents that for a while washed from the senses the memory of smoke and cordite and death.

The tracks of a miniature railway had been caught in the general upheaval and now made fantastic loops high off the ground, still bound as parallel ribbons of steel by their remaining ties, just like the full-scale tracks that arched above so many bridges and embankments across the city.

Exhibition halls in the park had been reduced to no more than steelwork frames, revealing their bombed interiors to the world, and a gla.s.s-topped observation tower lay stretched full length, still largely intact thanks to its reinforced construction, and half buried in the lawns that had given before its plunging weight.

Inga's apartment was on the second floor of a building that looked as if it had been struck by the full force of a battery of Katyushas. She led him up a staircase that was only a little better than the one in the TV tower. At its top (for although the building went on, the stairs did not), she opened a smoke-stained door and they stepped through into total darkness.

Revell stood waiting as a match flared behind him. That slight light made mad shadows and reflections dance about it and robbed him of the chance to get a first sneak preview of the room. Dark shapes chased along the walls, darted to the ceiling and then were lost as the light dimmed to nothing, but it was like the pause between tuning-up and the overture.

Civilisation burst upon him as an oil lamp was turned up full. He had forgotten that there were rooms with curtains and carpets, with furniture, with paintings, with tables, with ornaments... with all the things that people beyond the Zone took for granted. In a brief instant he came to understand the full meaning of that pat intellectual phrase, culture shock. It must be like this for an aborigine, seeing his first house, his first automobile. Shock was the only word that described the sensation. War had done more than rob him of some of his life, it had obscured his memories until trenches and shelters and filth and hunger seemed the norm.

'You like it?'

There was puzzlement in her voice, and Revell snapped out of his stupor to search for nice things to say. As she went through to the kitchen to find gla.s.ses he wandered round the room, running his hand over the backs of the polished chairs and finding no rough edges, no embedded shrapnel, over the fabric cover- ing of the couch and finding no tears, no patches.

'How do you keep it like this?'

'It's not all mine, I have had to move twice. Once because of a Russian advance, once because of an unexploded bomb. I like it here, but I do not know how long I will be able to stay. Here,' she handed him a gla.s.s brim full of amber liquid. 'It is peach wine. The very last bottle I have. After this I shall have to try to get some of the terrible potato wine that is made here. I do not drink much, but sometimes I need one.'

'That's like me. I'm not much of a drinker.' They stood opposite each other, an arm's length apart, not tasting their drinks, not talking. Outside there was a far distant rumble of gun fire but it didn't intrude, rather it seemed an accompaniment, a background score to the silent scene they were playing out.

'I want you.' Revell put down his drink and took a step towards her. 'I know, and I think that is what I want also. Please, wait here. Follow in a minute.'

When she had gone into the adjoining room, Revell picked up the drink again. He didn't want it, but he was aware of the fur on his teeth and ran a gulp of it around his mouth before swallowing the sickly sweet wine. He was conscious of the dirt and sweat staining his battledress. In the immaculate room he was made to feel like a scarecrow dumped in the banqueting hall of a stately home. Not that the contents of the apartment were that extravagant, it was just that the place was clean, and smart and... and civilised. That was a world he hardly belonged to any more.

It must be over a minute now. He couldn't be sure, it seemed only seconds, but he'd finished the gla.s.s and without thinking had picked up hers and taken a sip. It had to be above a minute. He crossed the room, took hold of the door handle, turned it slowly and pushed it open.

'You cheated.'

If it was an accusation then it was a playful one. Inga stood by the bed, her long slim body lit by a single nightlight on a small dressing table. The one piece suit had gone, was now draped over a cane-back chair. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were bigger than he'd expected, they must have been constrained by the stretch-material. The transition of her body line from waist, over hips to thigh was smooth and gradual, a flowing sculptured look that was interrupted only by the white cotton briefs she still wore.

'Would you like me to help you?'

The trappings of war fell from him as she deftly worked at buckles, zippers and b.u.t.tons. As she reached for the waistband of his pants he stopped her, and did that for himself. She put her hands to his shoulders and ran them down over his chest to his belly, where they parted to run separately to the top of each thigh. He wanted to grab her hands and drag them to his erection but he didn't, and stayed still as her palms retraced the journey.

'I do not need these.' Inga took her hands from him and hooked her thumbs into the top of her briefs.

'No.' He saw that he had startled and surprised her, and softened and lowered his voice. 'No, let me do that for you.' He was trembling, like an excited high school kid on his first heavy date, but he couldn't help it. Dropping to his knees in front of her, his hands reached for and gripped her remaining garment at either side. He began to ease them down, saw the first stray wisps of pubic hair. It was darker than the sun-bleached mane that reached to her shoulders and he was pleased, preferring that some of her secrets stayed hidden until he came to explore her body. 'I want you to let me do things for you. I want to make you feel good. Just tell me what you want.'

He didn't look up, continuing to follow the progress of the fragment of cotton as it eased slowly over her thighs. She moved her legs a fraction further apart as the gusset came away, and with that final resistance gone the briefs slid easily down her smooth skin.

As they settled on the floor he felt a fingernail, then two, then three, rest on the nape of his neck. Their pressure increased until they must have been half buried in his flesh, then they began to follow the line of his backbone and he felt the exquisite pain-pleasure sensation of their raking progress.

'If you say such things I might be tempted to make you my love slave. You wouldn't like that, would you?'

Still he couldn't bring himself to look her in the face, then without hint or warning she and the pain and the pleasure were gone and he was contemplating only the discarded underwear.

'Come here.'

Inga lay stretched full length, face down, on the bed. Her face, slightly turned towards him was half hidden by an enveloping down-filled pillow. He waited, trying at once to take in every curve and contour of her body.

'There is some baby-oil on the dressing table. Rub it all over me, all over.' Like a zombie he collected the small plastic bottle and returned to the bed. Flipping open the top he went to squeeze a little into his palm, then hesitated, and instead, holding it close to her leg, compressed it sharply. Inga jumped as the jet of cold fluid struck her, but he hardly noticed that, having eyes only for the oil that was beginning to trickle over the inside of her thigh. Very gently he started to work it in, using first the tip of his fingers, then his whole hand.

'Do both at once, it feels lovely.'

Again Revell sent the thick fluid on to her flesh and as he knelt on the side of the bed, half over her, she opened her legs further and began to sigh as his hands ran up her calves to her thighs, then lingering only a second to cup her warm b.u.t.tocks, over them to the small of her back where they turned to start the sensuous process again.

Her skin began to glisten as his hands roamed further seeking out every last inch of her flesh, and his own too was beginning to catch the light as perspiration coursed down him, not from the physical effort of what he was doing, but from the mental strain of resisting the urge to lie on her golden body and take her.

Gradually, deliberately, he edged nearer until by bending over her he could bring his erection to brush against the top of her leg. Inga sensed what he was doing immediately, and pushed herself up on to her elbows to half turn and look at him.

'You are not allowed to do that, not yet. There are lots of other things you must do for me first, then perhaps, just perhaps, I might let you show me how you do things to yourself. But before that you must give me lots of pleasure, beautiful s.e.xual pleasure. Give me your hands.'

Rolling on to her back she took his hands, her grip slipping on their oiled skin, now totally devoid of roughness. There was a wicked, inviting smile playing about her lips and making her eyes sparkle as she took the unquestioning offering and pushed them down between the tops of her legs.

'Perhaps you have done this for a woman before, I do not care. I shall teach you to do it the way I like, and when you have learnt you will do it for me many times.' The smile vanished and was replaced by an expression of concentration as she guided his fingers. 'You learn fast, yes, like that, not too hard, yes, oh yes.'

Revell paused and pulled back as Inga writhed, grinding her legs tight together. She subsided, then sought his hands again. This time she lost control almost instantly and he found his own heart pounding as he watched her thrashing the rumpled covers to a new tangled configuration. He went back to her before she had finished, could feel the heat rising from her body, found his fingers competing with hers as she fought to prolong the ma.s.sive o.r.g.a.s.m, then as he reached her she climaxed, and lay still.

He sat back on his haunches to wait her next command. She sprawled on the bed, chest heaving but gradually subsiding, her breathing growing quieter. He'd done it well, he knew that; he wondered what would be next.

TWELVE.

Ripper was very pleased with himself, he'd done a good job. The Soviet driver had flopped about on the gra.s.s beside his cab for a few moments, but the second stab, delivered to his chest, hadn't really been necessary. The man had died, without making any sound, even as the blade was pushed into his heart with surgical precision. Now he waited for Hyde's signal that it was all clear, and safe to drag the corpse back into cover.

They had heard the mortar being fired intermittently all through the night, and had been about to reluctantly return to the boat when the column of trucks had pulled into the square. Even then, as success, or the hope of it, had seemed within their grasp, blind chance had conspired to try and rob them of the opportunity.

A giant eight-wheeled truck had parked immediately in front of the building they occupied, and its driver had climbed down to undo his clothing in preparation to relieve himself. Only his preoccupation with that had prevented him seeing the squad, and Ripper had acted before the man could look about him and raise the alarm.

The killing, the driver's absence, had gone unnoticed, so far, but Hyde knew they had to work fast if they were to retain the element of surprise in what it was they had to do.

With the body hurriedly concealed, they abandoned their carefully prepared position, forced by the truck's obstructing bulk to shift to a fresh one.

It wasn't as good; a bomb site where, because of the noise made by even the slightest disturbance of the debris, they had to take up whatever firing points they could find among the rubble, with no opportunity to do anything to improve them.

'Hold your fire.' Despite the danger of their exposed position, Hyde knew they had no choice but to bide their time and wait.

The detachment travelling with the mortar was not limited simply to its eight- man crew and the drivers of its handful of support vehicles. Several field cars had also pulled into the square and disgorged a party of officers and a squad of slab-faced, smartly uniformed infantry who could only be their bodyguard.

'That's all we need, a bunch of b.l.o.o.d.y sightseers.' Taking aim at a colonel, Burke had the barrel of his rifle jerked down by Hyde.

'There's no way we can get them all when we open up, and it only needs one of that tough-looking goon squad to survive and start taking pot shots from cover and we'll never get to the b.l.o.o.d.y thing to set the charges.'

'Then just how d'you figure we're going to get at it then, Sarge?' Ripper had taken his knife from its sheath and was measuring its length with his fingers.

'Just wait and see. What the h.e.l.l are you doing?'

'I don't know, leastways I do, and then I don't.'

The NCO gave up, but Dooley's interest was aroused. 'Why you measuring the blade?'

'You know, it's weird. When I stuck that Commie, I mean he ain't the first I've stuck since I been here, there were those two tank crewmen back at Kirchdorf, when we lost the major and Andrea; and there was that a.s.sault engineer with the flame thrower we found hiding behind that T72 you stopped...'

'OK, so you're good with a knife, so what?' 'Well, all those guys were real thin, I mean but thin, like they was only skin and bone. The driver I just took out, he had a gut on him. Not a lot, but a gut. I could tell the way the knife went in.'

'You must be imagining it.' Dooley didn't take him seriously. 'From what I've seen even a Ruskie quartermaster on the fiddle would have a h.e.l.l of a job getting hold of one square meal a day. Either your tiny brain is playing you tricks or the guy must have been a new recruit. Maybe he was fresh from boot camp, or had been drafted straight from the streets of Moscow.'

'That cannot be right.' As he shifted slightly to a more comfortable position, Boris caused a minor slide of broken brickwork and his efforts to stop it only intensified the miniature avalanche. He didn't speak again until every last fragment had settled. 'Even in Moscow, the only people with full bellies are the party members, and they are careful not to be drafted into the army.' 'Alright, that's enough now.' Hyde's interest had been taken by a small four-wheeled Gaz truck that had pulled into the square. The officers appeared to have been waiting for it, and now they gathered around its rear doors while one of their number went inside. 'Weird-looking bus. No masts or sockets for them so it's not a radio-van. Obviously got air conditioning, but it's nothing like big enough for a commander and his staff who'd rate a luxury like that.'

While the late arrival absorbed their interest, the mortar crew had succeeded in setting up their weapon close by and its tracked tractor unit now pulled clear. From the back of an ammunition truck parked over the far side of the square two fat, fin-tailed rounds were lifted and then carried to the mortar, one on a trolley with severely buckled wheels, the other slung from a two-man bar sling.

They were deposited between the gigantic mortar and the strange truck while their fuses were set. For no reason that Hyde could see the crew's actions enraged several of the officers, who, suddenly noticing what was going on, began to rant at the erring artillerymen.

'What do you make of that, Sarge?' Through the close-up clarity provided by the rifle's superb night-sights, Clarence could see the officers' fury, and then their a.s.sault upon the luckless and apparently unwitting transgressors. They didn't waste their own energies; after knocking the unresisting men to the ground and delivering several sharp kicks, they handed them over to the bodyguards.

That they'd had plenty of practice showed clearly. With minimum effort but maximum force they reduced the artillerymen to unconsciousness within seconds, then just to be sure gave them another pounding with their rifle b.u.t.ts before letting their comrades carry them away. As a lesson in the skilled application of brutality it was superb; as an ill.u.s.tration of Communist barbarity it was cla.s.sic.

There was something very special about that truck, but Hyde couldn't figure out what it was. Well, what the h.e.l.l. Now they had just the circ.u.mstances they wanted. The ready-use ammunition was perfectly placed...

Clarence took his time. There was no point in trying for a fancy shot at the sh.e.l.l's nose fuse. With the depleted uranium cored bullet he had chambered he would go for the body of the mortar round. Its thick cast casing would be no impediment, not to the colossal temperatures the bullet's impact would generate. The near fission hot molten and vaporised materials would pa.s.s through the casing as though it wasn't there and through the explosive content of the interior as easily, though that filling would not as pa.s.sively accept the intrusion as the outer wrapping.

That a Russian officer stepped into the bullet's path at the last instant made no difference. At a range of under a hundred yards the round pa.s.sed clean through his leg. He'd not begun to collapse when the princ.i.p.al target bucked and spurted blue flame.

Blinding light filled the square, but no explosion came with it. Hyde looked up to see, where the sh.e.l.l had been, a brilliant white-fire spitting fountain that was expanding at a prodigious rate. Already the wounded officer had been engulfed and fittings on the mortar were beginning to deform and melt as the incendiary bomb consumed itself and everything around.

Frozen into a tableau of petrified disbelief, the Soviet officers could only stare, then the one who had been in the van jumped out and ran. In a moment he was gone, lost to sight among the ruins.

The vehicle's tyres were beginning to smoke, and a plume of vapour was escaping around the edge of its fuel filler cap. When the spare wheel bolted to the side, taking the full ferocity of the nearby holocaust, exploded, the spell was broken.

Rank counted for nothing as the Russians ran for their transport, and many of the officers came off worst in disputing places with the members of their supposed bodyguard. The square was full of vehicles backing and turning and colliding. Men who had failed to get seats clung to the outsides, taking the risk of the crashes that occurred.

Opening fire with every weapon on the fleeing transport the squad picked off man after man. But even those who fell, no matter what the severity of their wound, still tried to get away, and kept trying until another shot or the crushing wheels of a truck or field car put a final stop to their desperate efforts.

None of the Russians bothered to return the fire. When the driver of a field car died in a hail of bullets and the uncontrolled vehicle turned over only yards from Hyde's men, the survivors who crawled from the wreck discarded their weapons to aid their speed as they raced past and away.

Within a minute the square was left to the dead or terribly injured. There were no more targets. The bomb's warhead, with the added fuel of the other ready-use round it had ignited, would continue to burn and illuminate the surrounding district for some time, but with nothing else to consume, eventually it would burn out. Hyde knew that, the Russians must have known that, so why had they run?

Again his attention turned to the unusual vehicle standing just beyond the extreme perimeter of the conflagration. It had slumped towards the fire, the tyres on that side charred and crumbling away, but it had not caught fire.

Waves of heat were washing over him, but he shuddered as though they were icy blasts from the pole. Taking out his survey meter he uncapped it and pointed it towards the van. Some radiation was to be expected, the uranium cored round would by now be no more than micro-particles floating in the hot air currents filling the square, but he was looking for something else and when the head of the probe was aligned with the open rear door of the vehicle he saw just the reading he had expected and feared.

'There's a nuke cooking in there. We're moving out.'

Word had spread ahead of them and the greatest danger they faced in the run back to the lake was that of being struck by wildly driven transports of every description. As they neared the sh.o.r.e, though, a smattering of shots came their way. A withering volley silenced the enemy post, but it was an indicator that they had not been entirely unnoticed.

More bullets cut into the trees behind them as they splashed to the boat and threw their weight against it to overcome the cloying suction of the mud into which it had settled. Clarence was the last to board and sub-machine gun fire tore into a flak jacket beside him as he was hauled in.

All need for stealth was now gone. The material was ripped from the blades and the cleaned wood was plunged into the water to send them skimming at speed back to the far bank.

As he worked the tiller Hyde kept watch over the stern. When they had only fifty yards to go he detected vague movement back where they had come from, and thought he heard the sound of engines. This was confirmed when a sh.e.l.l whistled past overhead, and a troop of Russian PT76 swimming tanks growled into the water in pursuit.

'Boy, we've made them mad as h.e.l.l.' In fumbling to save the oar he'd nearly let slip, Ripper had also seen the danger. 's.h.i.t, I ain't been so scared since the county sheriff's black and white chased me across a field after I were caught stealing a couple of apples.''

'This makes just as much sense.' Burke kept s.n.a.t.c.hing backward looks to watch the progress of the amphibious combat vehicles. Pushing a white bow wave before them, only their turrets and gun barrels were visible above it. As they beached he sent a whole magazine towards the leader hoping to hit the driver's snorkel-like periscope, but the series of short bursts brought no check to the PT76's steady progress.