21.25 hours. Day One.
Master Sergeant Will Browning thought he now knew why the Black Cavalry Squadron's counterattack had failed. During the past hours while he and the crew of Utah waited for darkness there had been time for him to think over the possibilities. When the squadron's Captain Harling had given the order to advance, the intention of HQ must have been to strike at the flank of the Soviet spearhead. By ill-luck, poor intelligence or plain bad timing, and Browning was unable to decide which, the counterattack had met the head of the second echelon of Russian armour and, worst of all, at a point on the battleground where the enemy artillery could give it the best possible cover.
'The second wave of Soviet tanks, reforming after crossing the river, had been fresh into battle and received sufficient warning to enable them to deploy in readiness for the counterattack. The Soviet divisions' main artillery, still in its positions on the eastern side of the border, was able to treat the American armour in exactly the same way the Russian artillery had dealt with the British charge of the Light Brigade, at the historical battle of Balaclava. And with the same decimating results. The losses to the Russians had been negligible. Maybe it wasn't entirely the captain's fault after all, Browning decided. The officer was bluff, often blustery, but West Point didn't turn out fools; and it certainly couldn't be the troop lieutenant's responsibility either, because he would just have obeyed orders like the rest of them. If a mistake had been made, then it was at headquarters. Wasn't it always!
Browning peered at his watch. He could just see the glow of its luminous dial; it was twenty-one twenty-seven. In three minutes Podini would come down off the hill where he had relieved Adams as guard, and then it would be time for them to move out.
There was plenty happening. Adams had watched a build-up of Soviet logistics on the west bank of the river. The two bridges had been in constant use for the past four hours. It appeared, in darkness at least, that the Russians were unconcerned about the threat of air attack, although the movements of their supplies column should have shown up on NATO infra-red detectors. It suggested to Browning that the Russians were feeling very confident about the present lack of NATO air surveillance, and as he hadn't seen any US aircraft overhead since late afternoon he thought that, for the moment anyway, their efforts must be concentrated on the forward combat zone.
Ginsborough nudged Browning's arm urgently, and whispered, 'Out there…'
Browning could hear noises on the hill twenty meters away, the rolling of a small stone through frost-dried leaves, the snapping of a thin twig. He aimed his Remington into the darkness, and eased off the safety catch.
An off-key blackbird whistled an unlikely first two bars of 'John Brown's Body', and the scuffling on the slope above them increased.
'Podini?' It had to be!
'Who else?'
'You gink,' swore Ginsborough, the tension had made him feel sick.
'Will said half after nine, and it's half after,' hissed Podini.
'What did you see going on over there? Browning asked.
Podini's eyes glinted, catching the light of the rising moon. 'Same as Mike said. They're still building up. Man, some heavy stores!'
'Like what?'
'Rear service equipment. About twenty MAZ cargo carriers…fifteen tanners…ammunition I'd reckon, by the way they spaced them out. Plenty of trucks.'
'Any armour?'
'Nope…some artillery on the other side, waiting to get across. There's an MTU laying another bridge. That'll make three.' He paused and then said casually, 'I saw a nuke.'
'A nuke?' It was Adams, incredulously. 'A nuke missile? You're kidding!'
'How d'you know it was a nuke? demanded Browning.
'I don't know. All I know is that it was one hell of a rocket.'
'How long?'
'I'm guessing…it ain't too easy to see down there. Maybe ten meters, a big eight-wheeled transporter like a fire truck.'
'It's probably a Frog-7,' said Browing, 'with a conventional warhead.'
'You and your fucking nuke,' grunted Ginsborough. Podini seemed determined to make him throw up his rations.
'Okay, let's move out,' ordered Browning. He wanted to get clear of the open ground before the moon rose any higher.
Gunthers was still smouldering, burning in places when the light brae stirred up ashes and fanned new life into the embers. Rubble spread across the streets from shattered houses and stores. The volunteer Bundesgrenzshutz infantrymen who had defended it with their Dragon and Milan missiles had drawn heavy artillery and tank fire, and because most were local men defending their own homes, they had fought bitterly. The bodies of many of them now lay amongst the ruins, but the wreckage of the Soviet tanks, twisted and blackened hulks in every street, was evidence of the ferocity of the battle.
Browning was feeling despondent. Now he was away from the Abrams, it seemed even more unlikely it could ever be repaired. Maybe it was best to write Utah off, and try to make it back on foot even though it might be difficult. The smell of war and death was getting through to him; it had done so at times in Vietnam. It was familiar, a recurring sickness that made him ill for a time, and like 'flu he would get over it. Only there was no medicine he could take to ease his present discomfort. The only rapid cure he knew was in a bottle on the shelf of a bar, in some town as remote from war as maybe Las Vegas.
Adams was a few meters ahead, flattened against a crazily tilted wall that was overhanging the sidewalk. He was signalling frantically with his arm. When Browning reached him, he jerked his head towards the interior of the wrecked building. Browning listened. For a few moments he could hear nothing, and then there was a faint scratching sound.
Browning whispered: 'Civilians, leave them.'
'Maybe they can help us.' Adams dropped to his knees and crawled over the rubble into the darkness.
'Come back you damn fool,' hissed Browning, but Adams ignored him. Browning squatted beside the doorway, his automatic ready; behind him Podini and Ginsborough waited tensely.
Adams was gone a full minute before he reappeared. 'I was right,' he said, 'it's a woman and some kids.'
'If they'd been Russians, you'd have got us all killed,' said Browning angrily. 'Don't ever do that again.'
'They can help.'
'Maybe they can help!'
It was a few moments before his eyes became accustomed to the darkness of the shelled building, then he saw them, huddled together in a narrow wedge of open space between a fallen wall and a staircase – a middle-aged woman and three young children.
The woman asked nervously, 'Soldat…Amerikanish?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'Gott sei Dank.'
'Don't thank me yet, there are only four of us. D'you speak English?'
'Bitte…verstehen sie nicht!'
'I can speak.' It was one of the children, a boy of about twelve, pale beneath the grime of brick dust that coated him.
'We're an American tank crew,' explained Browning. 'We got outselves knocked out this afternoon near the river. We need repair equipment. Can you show us where there's a garage.'
'All garage is bombed,' said the boy, staring at him.
'We know they're bombed, son. We're not looking for service. We need a metal cutter…a gas cutter…you know gas, big fires, very hot!'
'Gas…I think I know.' The boy spoke quickly to the woman but she simply shrugged her shoulders. 'I come show you.'
'What about your mom?'
'Not mother…I come with you.'
'Okay,' agreed Browning. 'But you tell this lady to stay put. We're the only Americans there are around here. If she hears anyone else, they're probably Russians.' He saw the fear in the woman's eyes as he turned away. He followed the boy to the doorway, then stopped and walked back towards her. He raised his automatic.
She misunderstood his action, twisting herself sideways to protect the two children beside her, shielding them with her body.
Browning spoke gently. 'It's okay, lady. Here…' He reversed the pistol in his hand and held the butt towards her.
She relaxed, then smiled guiltily. She took the weapon slowly, then placed it in her lap. 'Danke.'
'Good luck.'
There was something wrong; Browning could sense it. It was the feeling that things had somehow got beyond his control. The boy was hurrying them despite Browning's warning there might still be enemy soldiers in the area. As they moved into a broad alley between two old half-timbered barns, he realized it was a trap. The boy suddenly dived behind a pile of rubble, and shouted loudly. There was a quick burst of automatic rifle fire from the darkness ahead, the bullets hissing past them.
Podini was already firing as the men dropped, the crisp sounds of his Remington echoing from the high walls on either side. Bullets from the automatic rifle were ricochetting from the brickwork.
The boy was shouting again, his words punctuating the rifle shots.
'Jesus Christ,' Ginsborough swore beside Browning, 'the lousy little fucker.'
Browning's German wasn't much good, but he'd understood enough to hear the boy yell that they we Russians and still alive. If they were supposed to be Reds and someone was firing at them, then whoever was at the other end of the rifle was likely to be a friend. He called out, 'We're Americans…Americans…'
The shooting ceased but then nothing happened for a few moments until a voice said, 'Stand slowly. With your hands up.'
'Real slow,' Browning warned the crew. He stood, cautiously. Out there in the darkness someone: had him in their sights. A slight twitch of a finger and he would be blown away.
'Put your weapons down,' said the voice.
'They're down.'
There was movement. Browning thought he could see several men at the far end of the alley. A barrel glinted in a window a few meters above them.
'Walk forward.'
Browning and his crew did so.
The boy had scrambled from behind the rubble and now ran past them. He spoke quickly to the soldiers. One, a lieutenant, walked over to Browning, keeping a rifle aimed at his chest. He said a few words whish Browning assumed to be Russian.
'I'm sorry, I don't understand you. We're American…Black Horse Cavalry. Our tank's out of action…the battle near the river, this afternoon.'
'Be quiet.' The lieutenant spoke to one of his soldiers. The man searched Browning, and then the others. 'No…don't move. Keep your hands up.'
The officer looked through the identification papers, then shrugged. 'These don't mean anything. There are plenty on the battlefield.'
Adams said: 'Shit, man, you think I'm Russian?'
'You could be Cuban, Angolan.'
'Assholes…that's worse than being called nigger.'
'Steady Mike,' warned Browning. If Adams lost his cool then everyone was likely to end up dead; and Adams was particularly sensitive about his nationality.
'Who's your commanding officer?'
'Mickey Mouse,' answered Podini. He was angry with the way the man had spoken to his friend.
'You know we can't tell you that,' said Browning. 'How the hell do we know you aren't Russians?'
'We got a stand-off situation,' added Ginsborough. 'Only we ain't got guns.'
The boy spoke from behind them, excitedly.
The officer levelled his rifle at Browning's forehead. 'One of you still has a pistol…which one?'
'None of us,' answered Browning. He hoped he was right.
'The boy says you all had one; he has found only three.'
'I gave mine away.'
'Lying is a good way to die.'
Browning spoke quickly. 'It's the truth. I gave mine to the woman who was with the boy. You can check.'
'Why would you do that?'
'I was sorry for her.' It didn't sound convincing.
The lieutenant spoke to the boy who turned and ran from the alley. 'We will find out. Now move.'
They were led into the barn and then down a narrow flight of steps to a cellar. At the side of a stack of boxes was a narrow door partially concealed behind a concrete pillar. They were pushed inside. The room was lit by an oil lamp. Resting on benches along its length were more than a dozen infantrymen, Bundesgrenzshutz, their faces worn and tired, filthy with camouflage and the dirt of battle. Their weapons were across their knees or resting on the ground beneath the seats. Several looked up as Browning and his crew entered, but most ignored them. The lieutenant pointed to the far end of the room with the barrel of the rifle: 'Go sit there.'
Browning and the crew did so.
'What now?' asked Adams.
'What the hell what now? Why d'you always ask what now?' grumbled Podini. 'How the hell do I know what now?'
They waited for several minutes, and then one of the soldiers who had been outside in the alley came into the room and handed the German lieutenant Browning's Remington. He said a few words to the officer, then left. The lieutenant examined the pistol, did out the magazine and worked the round from the breech. He examined the bullet slowly, turning the case in his fingers close to the light.
'It's a live one,' said Browning. 'You can test it.'
'On your head,' suggested Adams.
The lieutenant grinned sheepishly, and for the first time sounded friendly. 'I believe you. No one but an American is going to be so stupid as to give his only weapon away. Chivalrous…but stupid Don't forget, Sergeant, the Russians have been in Germany before; our women learnt how to survive. A pistol, for them, is the shortest route to the execution ground. And if you were a soldier of the Heer, such a generosity in wartime could get you shot. However…thank you for the gesture.'
'So okay,' said Adams. 'Now what about my gas cutter?'
Browning explained about the XM1's track, and how they had become isolated after the battle.
'And what will you do if your tank is repaired?' asked the lieutenant.
'Get back to our unit, if we can. Try to find a place where the Russians are thinnest, and break through, rejoin the war.'
'You have enough fuel?'
'We've a three hundred mile range; we topped-up before the attack.' Browning studied the German's face. The man was very young, not much more than twenty-five years old. He looked like a student.
'We will help you. We know the village. We can find the equipment you need.'
'Once we get the Abrams repaired, maybe we can give you guys a lift someplace,' suggested Browning.
The lieutenant grimaced, then shook his head. 'We're staying. The Russians will be back to consolidate the area, and we will be waiting for them.'
Lieutenant Colonel Studley had blacked out, fainted with the pain when one of the guards stamped on the wound in his calf, but it was the agony which dragged him back to consciousness, pulsing, searing, encompassing his entire body.
Studley heard himself scream, and the sound horrified him. There was still only darkness, and the sounds which came from his throat were uncontrollable, unreal, making him feel disembodied. Once, in childhood, he had broken an arm and been taken to hospital to have it set. He awakened on the operating table while the doctor was still manipulating the bone, and there had been the same combination of pain and sound…but then it had ended abruptly with the introduction of more anaesthetic, and became nothing more than a nightmare he remembered later. He tried now to find reality but for a long time it refused to appear, drowned by the spasms which shook his body and mind.
The bright glow was a small light above his head; faces blurred. He thought at first he must be in some medical centre where they were tending his wounds; his head throbbed violently. He found his arms were pinioned, pulled backwards so far his spine was arched away from the ground beneath him. His legs were spread wide.
There was a voice, persistent, questioning, It echoed inside his head, distorted, strident. He was being forced to concentrate on the words, the threats. He remembered.
'You have no more chances. I warned you it would become unpleasant. You throwing your life away for no purpose.'
I am not here, thought Studley. He tried to blank the recent past from his mind. This is not reality; reality is Jane…brown eyes, long dark hair slipping between my fingers…her gentle body.
The agony returned, electrical, twisting at his bowels, jerking at strained and torn muscles, contorting his body and exploding like a thousand white-hot needles in his brain.
'The code, Colonel Studley…only the code…the code…the code…only the code.'
The code? What code? There wasn't any code…isn't any code. The word doesn't exist. Nothing I am experiencing exists in my real world; only Jane exists. Jane…dear God, Jane.
He felt her lips on his neck, and the round warmth of her breasts against his body. He could smell the scent of her hair. She was gripping him tightly, her thighs clasping him…he was losing her…the pain tearing her from his grasp.
'The code, Studley…a few simple words…' The agony and the shouting repeated a hundred times, gathering momentum until all his senses spun together in confusion.
The screams – they were no longer his own and he found he could ignore them. He could see her face again…the gentle mouth smiling, her eyes moist.
He realized his arms had been freed; it was part of the dream again. He refused to allow himself to be tricked. He was upright; body sagging, legs useless, his head lolled as if the neck muscles had been severed. Hands supported him, controlled him
He heard the voice of the GRU captain, but didn't understand the words. The light had gone, his feet dragged across rough ground. Cautiously he allowed his mind to return; it was reluctant.
He tried to shake himself free of the hands, attempting to support himself, but there was little co-ordination yet in his movements; it was returning slowly. There were voices beside him, unintelligible.
He began to recognize his surroundings, the woods. He was stumbling through beds of autumn leaves, over fallen branches, trunks. He could not distinguish between the night sky and the dark outlines of the trees.
They let him drop. He felt the damp ground beneath him, and pushed himself on to his hands and knees. He saw the flash of orange fire from the muzzle of a gun a meter away; a deafening burst of sound as he fell sideways, rolling, tumbling down a steep incline.
He knew they had shot him; he was dying. He lay on his back, and he could see the stars above him. He recognized the Great Bear; found the beacon of infinite north, the Pole Star. He wondered how long he would be able to watch it before his senses faded. And what then? Perhaps he would still be able to see the stars. Perhaps, after all, something followed death. It would have been better to have died somewhere else. Beside a good river; in the warmth of a summer afternoon. There was no romance about death in wartime; that was the myth old men told the young, a lie to feed violence…religion…was there even a God? It was all very convenient, a God to control the people while they were alive, blackmail them into submission with threats of godly vengeance…provide them with an after-life to remove the fear of death, and what did you have then? A disciplined army who would fight.
If there is a God, thought Studley, if you are up there and can hear me, just remember please that all I want is Jane. Not now, but in time.
Max would want her, too. How would a God solve that problem?
There was a dark shape beside him, the fallen trunk of some great tree. He could smell it rotting; the fungi. We'll rot together, he decided, here in this hollow in the ground. The beetles and the worms will share us. You didn't die peacefully either, tree, but you probably took longer. Perhaps you took fifty years to die; more than my lifetime.
He closed his eyes for a time, and tried to conjure warmth; it wouldn't come, nor would the images of Jane. It was almost as though he had expended them while he was resisting the torture. There was satisfaction in that…in the endurance. He had won, and the GRU captain had lost. It had been a small individual war between them, and the knowledge the Russian would have to live with defeat pleased him.
The Great Bear had moved a little, tilted slightly towards the heads of the pines. Studley wriggled his hand sideways until he felt the soft bark of the dead tree. It took him several seconds to realize he had done so. He clenched the other hand and felt it grasp moist earth.
Experimentally, he lifted his head.
No one survived a close-range burst from an AKS-74, and that was what he remembered the guards carrying. He thought he had felt the blow of the bullets, their impact throwing him sideways down the steep bank through the undergrowth until he pitched against the tree trunk. Soviet 5.45mm bullets had the reputation of going in small, but doing a lot of damage on their way out. If he attempted to move too much perhaps he would burst apart, spilling his blood and entrails beneath him. He cautiously flexed a leg, and the pain from his calf wound was startling, seeming to awaken every nerve in his body.
He collected together his memories of the past hours; his capture, interrogation, torture. He set them in order. Miraculously, he was still alive. Alive? Why? How? He tried to understand, and realization brought a strange bitterness. He had meant nothing to the soldiers who had been ordered to shoot him; an insect to be squashed. They hadn't even bothered to make sure they had done the job properly. He was of no importance, simply rubbish for disposal.
He pushed himself upright and into a sitting position, his back against the fallen trunk. The exertion made him dizzy and sick. Carefully, he examined his face with his fingertips, by touch. It was unrecognizable, swollen and tender. His teeth were broken stumps, and his lips torn, caked with congealed Mood. He could not open his jaw. The cracked ribs in his side ached as he breathed, a reminder of the blow from the guard's rifle butt.
His leg was throbbing, the rough bandaging over the wound seeping blood. He tightened it as best he could in the darkness. There was some sort of injury to his upper back; he couldn't tell what, it was painful but it didn't prevent him moving his arms.
They had wanted him to give them the code, and he had refused. They had tortured him and then tried to kill him, and he had survived. The thoughts strengthened him. He would get away; he would drag himself deeper into the woods, find somewhere he could hide out during the daylight, clean and examine his wounds. When he was stronger, he would work his way south-west and attempt to find a way through the lies, perhaps into Switzerland. If not, he would seek out one of the guerrilla groups that would certainly have been formed. Somehow, eventually, he would get back to Britain and Jane.
He thought of the GRU captain; the man's angular face becoming more twisted by fury as Studley had remained silent. He would torture others who came into his hands, For Studley, the de would change at midnight, but for the GRU captain there would always be a new daily code to be broken along with the will and bodies of his prisoners.
Studley remembered his own words to his officers less than a week previously. 'We will be outnumbered…perhaps by as many as five to one…a lot of us won't survive. But we can hold them, if we make it too costly for them to win. Fight like hell…to the last shell or bullet or man. Never surrender…take out as many of them as you can. It'll be bad, bloody bad, but it all depends on us. It's our job to stop them'
Stop them. That was what it was all about. Fighting until you couldn't fight anymore. Then what the hell was he doing smugly assuming he had done enough? Just because he had been wounded and got himself battered didn't relieve him of any responsibility. Just because he'd managed to survive for a few hours didn't permit him to believe his war was ended. What of the other men? His men. They would still be fighting somewhere…wounded or not, they'd damn well fight on. So must he.
He had crawled the steep slope above the fallen tree, to the point where the guard had shot at him. His movement had been slow and painful, but it was easier to crawl than attempt to walk at the moment.
He could hear the sound of an engine, a generator in the distance through the trees, and worked his way towards it. The sky was brighter, the moon rising beyond the tall horizon of the woodland. A few feet to his left leaves rustled; he froze, then relaxed as a terrified rodent scurried away through the undergrowth. There were other hunters in the forest beside himself.
He could smell diesel fuel, exhaust fumes, and the throbbing of the motor was louder. There were men beyond the clumps of bracken and bramble that skirted the clearing. He could see the head and shoulders of a guard patrolling the edge of the woods. He knew there must be others concealed throughout the forest.
It took a long time to inch his way forward until at least be had a clear view of the encampment. The clearing itself was almost empty, but there were vehicles parked close to the trees on the side farthest away from him, and bivouacs beside them. He recognized the radio vehicle, with its dish aerials, seventy meters ahead. A few meters from it was the BMP in which he had been imprisoned before his interrogation; the GRU officer's truck, the BTR command post, was on the left of the clearing, isolated.
There was a lot of activity. The radio vehicle was operating, a dim glow showing though its open doors. A group of cooks were working in a halo of mist around a hid-kitchen beneath the trees, and there was a small queue of infantrymen waiting nearby. Camouflage was being improved over several of the BMPs, as though the men intended to remain in the present position for some time.
To his left, beyond the BTR command vehicle, was a slit trench. He noticed it only because one of the guards paused and spoke to the men inside, before continuing his patrol. Studley crawled towards it.
He was only a few meters from the trench when one of the men it contained stood, stretched himself and then climbed out. He said a few words to a man below him, laughed, then walked away across the clearing. Studley watched him go. The man joined the end of the queue waiting by the field-kitchen. Studley wriggled his way closer to the trench. He could see the helmet of another guard; there might be a third man stretched out beside him, but it was a chance Studley realized he would have to take. He had already decided that if something went wrong, then he would fight with his bare hands until they killed him; they would shoot him anyway if he were captured again. And this time there would be no carelessness.
He slid closer, keeping low in the shadows of the thin scrub. The man was an arm's length away now, and if he looked over his left shoulder would be staring into Studley's face. Studley pushed himself silently to his knees. The Russian infantryman was sitting on a box behind a machine gun. His head was cupped in his hands, the strap of his helmet was beneath his chin.
Studley took a deep cautious breath, paused for a fraction of a second gathering his strength, then grabbed at the front of the helmet with both hands, jerking it fiercely backwards. The man's legs kicked away from him and his hands clawed at Studley's arms. As with the advice he had been given about escaping, Studley knew there would be no second chance. A combination of anger and determination made him stronger. He ignored the pain of his injuries, and swung himself around until he could get his knees against the man's back, then with as much power as he could find he wrenched the head and helmet sideways.
Bone snapped. For a moment Studley thought the strap of the helmet had broken. He changed his grip quickly to gain more purchase on the man's head; it moved strangely, loosely in his hands. The infantryman struggled weakly for a few more seconds as his life died away, and then was still.
Studley felt exhausted; throbbing agony had returned to his wounds. His clothing was soaked with sweat. He wiped it from his eyes with a sleeve, and felt it stinging in the cuts of his lips and face. Every movement of the past few seconds had sounded terrifyingly loud and he expected at any moment to hear shots and feel the thud of bullets ripping into his body.
He glanced towards the field-kitchen, the queue had lengthened, the cooks were not hurrying their work. Men stood chatting while they waited, swinging their arms across their bodies or stamping their feet to keep their circulation moving in the night air. They were far enough away from the front tines to still feel secure; in probability, they had not yet seen any action, he thought. Men who had faced shells and bullets did not relax their vigilance so easily.
He quickly examined the machine gun: a 7.62mm PK on a bipod, simple to operate unless it jammed. If it did so, then he would discard it instantly; there was no time to study its mechanism.
He moved the body of the dead guard. The box on which the infantryman had been seated held additional magazines of bullets, and to Studley's greater satisfaction contained ten RGD-5 grenades. Beneath the body he found a loaded AKM rifle.
The slit trench overlooked a long valley sweeping down towards the west. Studley debated quickly on the choice of weapons; he would not be able to carry them all. He pushed half a dozen of the grenades into his pockets and then dragged the machine gun with him over the brow of the hill, where he was able to move around the perimeter of the camp out of sight of the guards.
He was within twenty meters of the radio vehicle when there was a shout from across the clearing in the direction of the slit trench. Studley jerked the pin from a grenade then hurriedly tossed it underhand through the open doors, scurrying back into the undergrowth like a disabled crab as it exploded inside the armoured vehicle, belching flame and smoke through the buckled and split metalwork. The tall radio mast collapsed sideways into the trees. He threw another with all his strength towards a running group of men near the centre of the clearing, and several crumpled bodies were hurled away by its blast.
The camp was panicking, the men unable to identify the whereabouts or nature of the attack, mistaking the grenades for mortar bombs. Studley limped towards the nearest BMP. Its crew were scrambling inside, and the troop hatches were fully open. Studley's grenade bounced off the rear of the turret and exploded within the hull. A sheet of fire roared upwards as the fuel tanks ignited. He caught a glimpse of the driver, crawling away from the hull, his overalls alight.
There were no more close targets for his grenades. Studley dropped behind the machine gun. He worked the first round into the breech with the bolt, and mentally crossed his fingers.
On the far side of the clearing were a group of men Huddled around the BTR command post. It moved, its driver reversing it towards the woods. The men moved with it, using its hull as protective cover. Studley squeezed the trigger and felt the satisfying shudder as the gun reacted. He kept the burst short; it was unlikely he would have more than two hundred rounds in the magazine, and this gas-operated weapon would get through more than six hundred and fifty a minute. As the bullets struck, the BTR began smoking. He gave it a second burst, low alongside the driving compartment. The smoke became flame which billowed and swelled like the fireball of a miniature atomic bomb. He raked a longer burst through running figures then scrambled deeper into the undergrowth, moving further to his left, dragging the machine gun.
One of the BMPs was thundering blindly towards him, crashing through the light woods, its tracks slapping and squealing. He threw himself aside and the vehicle road past. There were shots crackling viciously in the trees…unaimed, indiscriminate, shouted orders, more explosions. Vehicles were revving, moving. A wounded man was screaming.
'Bastards…you bastards,' yelled Studley. He knew he was invincible; better than invincible, he had become death itself. He grabbed the machine gun under his arms and staggered into the open, firing it from his hip at a BMP that was dragging itself out of its camouflage, trailing the netting. Its rocket exploded in the launcher, ripping the vehicle's turret off backwards as neatly as if it had been removed by a cutting charge. Fires had brought eerie daylight to the clearing, the contorting shadows and smoke adding to the stygian chaos. One of the BMPs exploded for a second the as its ammunition overheated, scattering flaming debris high into the air. A UAZ Jeep bounced out of the woods and spun in the open ground. Studley caught it with his final burst, firing until his gun stopped. The Jeep accelerated for a few meters, hit the wreckage of one of the BMPs and rolled on to its side.
Studley dropped the machine gun and pulled out his two remaining grenades. He removed the pin from each and stood waiting defiantly. The only remaining undestroyed target he could see was the field-kitchen.
'I'm here, you bastards…' The reply was the digestive sound of the fires, the sharp crack of small-arms ammunition as it exploded amongst the burning wreckage. The madness left Studley. He said, quietly, 'I'm here.' There was a sense of anti-climax, unrealness.
He stared around him; nothing moved but the shadows.
The fatigue, exhaustion, and the pain were returning. He must get away; find somewhere where he could lick his wounds. He needed a weapon, though. Not another machine gun, something convenient, light, a pistol. He could see a holster on the belt of a body lying beside the upturned Jeep. He staggered over to it. It was the GRU captain; the man was unconscious. Studley looked at the two grenades he was holding in his hands; the pins were lost somewhere on the far side of the clearing. He had never expected to replace them. He considered tossing the grenades into the woods, then changed his mind.
Carefully he wedged them beneath the GRU captain's body, the man's weight holding the levers against their casings, then he took the pistol from the man's holster.
He was about a kilometer away down the long slope of the woodland when he heard the two grenades detonate. The sound gave him no more satisfaction than had he killed a rabid dog.