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second blast had flattened much of the meadow, making them conspicuous. Revell watched the crew of the flak-tank as they baled out. The last man from the big radar-topped turret threw up his arms and tumbled over the side, as a third burst from Kurt found him.
    Now the fields on either side of the road swarmed with targets, as the Russian column split up and drove around the obstructing crater. Hyde wasn’t confused by the choice of victims. Playing the control panel like a concert pianist, he sent missile after missile towards the racing Soviet armour. His second round was also a hit, square on the skirt armour of a T84, but it kept going. There was no mistake with the third, it struck an exhaust-spewing T84, setting off its ammunition and sending its turret soaring into the air, accompanied by the flaming bodies of its crew.
    ‘Ten rounds with the mortar, and then we get out.’ The chorus of protest from Hyde, Andrea and Clarence was not unexpected, but Revell knew it was too good to last -and it was.
    It was Cohen who spotted the danger first. ‘There’s a Shilka and a self-propelled gun looking like they mean business.’
    Using a disabled tank as cover, the quad-barrelled flak-wagon employed short bursts of tracer to direct the 152mm howitzer of the SP mount. ‘Let them have the decoys.’ Sods of earth rained about them, as a high explosive shell struck the ground between Revell’s and Hyde’s positions. The major spat dirt and grass, holding his breath against the rasping fumes and stench of high explosive.
    Well away from the crest, the fringe of a clump of trees was brightened by flashes, simulating the back-blast signature of rocket launchers. Other pyrotechnique devices sent showers of powdered metal and foil strips into the air. It worked. The flak-tank switched its fire. Blurs of red and white tracer laced the trunks, bursting with bright splashes on impact. 
    Unable to resist the broadside target presented by the self-propelled gun, as it slewed round to face its thickest armour towards the trees, Hyde fired his two remote Dragon rocket launchers at it simultaneously. Both rounds struck at the same moment and every road wheel and track link was blasted from the vehicle, and its engine torn out.
    A last air-burst from the mortar banged off above the stricken SP gun, as a blackened figure struggled to escape from a roof hatch.
    The range was too great for the 40mm grenades Andrea was firing to be effective, and she gripped the weapon tighter as successive rounds fell short. Beside her, Clarence fired carefully aimed single shots, bringing down two crewmen who had abandoned their T72 when its auxiliary fuel tanks had been opened and ignited by an air-burst, and now flared and spouted fire over the tank’s rear.
    It was time to get out, and Libby didn’t need to be told. He was already pulling the leads from the box as the order came through. Kurt fired off the last of a belt and then both of them were up and running for the Chinook.
    ‘Did you see that?’ Dooley fell in step alongside them. ‘Put that last one down on the fucker’s head, and I set off the spare gas on another. Not bad, eh?’ He carried the mortar and two unused cases of bombs as though they were nothing. ‘Better than piddling about with a box of shitty gimmicks and fireworks, ain’t it?’
    The dig didn’t bother Libby. He just did his job, whatever job he was given. For him the war didn’t matter, staying in the Zone did. Blast it, that column had been slowed by no more than a few minutes. Now they’d be chasing off to get in front of it again, all the time getting nearer the edge of the Zone. That wasn’t what he wanted. If he was going to find Helga he had to stay in, for as long as it took, if it took forever.
    Clarence and Andrea were the last over the crest, and as they half-ran, half- skidded down to the helicopter, it erupted behind them under the savage pounding of several large calibre guns. They scrambled aboard as