Blind Fire Read Free Page B

ducked down, stuck his head in a paper bag and made repulsive noises while his shoulders heaved.
    Suddenly they were out of the cloud and only a hundred feet above the road. Rain swept in gusts at them, stinging their eyes. The chopper levelled out and its speed fell rapidly, so that the road was no longer a blurred black ribbon. Details could be made out. The patches of old repairs, sprouting clumps of weeds, individual puddles and longer flooded stretches where neglected ditches and field drains had overflowed.
    ‘Now.’ Hyde’s hand slapped down on Dooley’s shoulder as he saw Revell wave
from the cockpit.
    In swift succession Dooley tripped two releases, and a pattern of bowling ball sized objects arced over the ramp and down towards the road. Some of the spheroids landed on the verges but most, prevented from bouncing and brought immediately to rest by their special ribs and fins, settled on the road.
    As the Chinook disappeared into the distance the antitank mines sat quietly ticking, mindlessly counting the seconds to the moment when they would arm themselves. It came, and a brief tinny buzzing signalled the activation of fuses and booby trap devices.
    From that moment, until they self-destructed twelve hours later, nothing was going to get past that stretch of road while they sat there.

    TWO
    ‘For the last twenty bloody minutes the Sarge has had me rushing about like a ruddy blue-arsed fly, lugging these fucking heavy missiles around until the sweat’s pouring off me. Now he wants me to sit down in the wet grass.’ After aiming a savage kick at the droplet-laden seed heads, Burke squatted down beside the mortar and began unpacking rounds.
    ‘I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you.’ Dooley took off his helmet and wiped the rain from his face with a scrap of filthy rag. ‘Chances are you’re not gonna live long enough to catch a cold.’
    ‘Piss off. How do you want these fused?’
    Dooley considered the question. ‘Well there’s not much fucking chance of knocking out armour with 60mm HE, so let’s go for air-bursts. Might knock some bits off the flak-wagons and…’ he grinned, ‘...besides, they look pretty.’
    ‘You all ready here?’ Major Revell stood behind the two men and looked down on the gentle slope of the meadow to the stretch of road a thousand yards away.
    ‘Checked and double checked, Major. Any Ruskie who sticks his head out of a hatch for a look-see after the action starts is going to get his ears pierced the hard way.’ As the officer departed, Dooley sighted again through the RCA laser rangefinder.
    From the far side of a belt of defoliated woodland came the dull boom of a powerful explosion, followed by the crackling ripple of multiple mine detonations.
    ‘Not long now.’ Burke rested his hand on the mortar’s barrel cover. ‘Christ, I’m cold now. This bloody rain is going right through me.’
    ‘What you want is something to cuddle up to, like your buddy Clarence, with his little fraulein.’
    ‘He’s not my mate. The only thing we have in common is that we’re British. I don’t want nothing to do with that headcase. Anyway, I don’t reckon there’s anything between them. I’ve never seen him touch her.’
    ‘You’ve never seen me screwing, but I do it.’ Having wiped the rangefinder, Dooley stowed it in its compact carry case. ‘Nice little toy, saves a ranging shot, but when things warm up there won’t be much time for pissing about with gadgets. It’ll all be down to how fast we can stuff those little bastards down the tube.’ Dooley’s broad features creased into a wide grin again. ‘If the shits get close enough, we can chuck the crappy things. How’s your pitching arm?’
    From his position among the clump of thistles on the crest, Revell could see the rest of his squad scattered about the slope below him. From behind, at the bottom of the reverse slope, came the constant throbbing of the Chinook’s engines. He’d kept Cohen with him, and