Killing Ground Read Free Page A

run, not even to the extent of releasing decoy flares against AA missiles. The degree of their complacency was illustrated by the second machine even displaying its navigation lights.
    Fires leaped from a score of locations and added their jet smoke to those already rising into the predawn light. A ruptured fuel tank flared a brief bubble of flame and a bursting tire made a small fountain of blazing rubber.
    A single broken line of tracer curled toward the second gunship. Well-aimed, it was shrugged aside by the armoured belly of the machine. Turning tightly, the pair swept back and saturated with a storm of fire and steel the location from which the weak resistance had come.
    Only a few hundred feet above the Russian helicopters a single MIG fighter flew top cover for them, sometimes lost to sight in the low cloud.
    A gasoline tanker stalled in the centre of the bridge exploded and liquid fire poured toward the river far below. Ammunition aboard trucks close by began to detonate and made sparkling fountains of white, red and green.
    Spreading a map on the wet metal of the hull top, Revell screwed up his eyes in the half light to trace a path with a grimy finger. ‘We’ve fuel for maybe another thirty kilometres, if we go easy on it. We’ll have to drop the cripple and pack everyone into the other three.’
    Hyde craned over the major’s shoulder to look at the point he was indicating. ‘A railway bridge. What are the chances of it still being intact?’
    ‘Wish I knew.’ Revell refolded the map. ‘But it’s the only one we have a chance of reaching.’
    Stretching her arms above her head, Andrea watched without real interest as the Hinds soared to skim the bottom of the clouds and then dived to commence another strafing run. She turned away as the gunships tore into and pounded to scrap a dozen more vehicles. Fresh fires erupted. ‘We will be crossing the front of the Russian advance. It is likely we will run into their reconnaissance units.’
    ‘Maybe.’ There was nothing else Revell could add.
    ‘We’ll be travelling by side roads.’ It was Hyde who found a crumb of comfort.
    ‘That country is rough; unless the Reds are trying to sneak around the side it’s not very likely we’ll encounter a main axis of their advance.’
    ‘Only one way to find out.’ Patting the anti-tank missile launch tube, Revell took a last glance at the bridge. ‘So let’s be on our way before those commie fliers get cheesed off with hammering wrecks and start looking for stragglers, like us.’
    Bracing himself behind the major’s seat, Sergeant Hyde took out the map and examined the route the officer had chosen. In the dim light of the APCs interior, and with it swaying and jolting over the poor track roads, it took him a while to orient himself. He studied it for several minutes before an indistinct nagging doubt crystallised into coherent thought.
    ‘Doesn’t seem to have been a lot going on around here, not up until now.’ Revell almost let the point go as a chance remark, then had second thoughts and re-examined the area. He was surprised he hadn’t noticed the fact himself. It was further indication of just how tired he was.
    While all of the remainder of the eighty square kilometres displayed by the map were covered in a mass of additional symbols, denoting old battlefields, dumps, contaminated areas and minefields, the area they were traversing was entirely free of such information.
    ‘Printing error?’ It hardly rang true, but Revell had to consider it, even as he dismissed it from his mind.
    With a shake of his head Hyde discounted the idea. ‘I’ve never been this way before, but I’ve always had a feeling that it’s about where Paradise Valley should be.’
    ‘No such bloody place, Sarge.’ Driving gingerly to conserve fuel, Burke was for once able to take part in a conversation. His first in days, since the intercom had broken down. ‘That’s a bleeding fairy story, put about by staff officers and