Hard Target Read Online Free PDF Page A

luck. It was a theory that the next thirty-six hours would put severely to the test.
    ‘OK, have everyone muster by Hyde’s skimmer. Was there something else?’ From Windle’s perceptible hesitation before turning away he knew there was. ‘This British bunch, Major.’ Windle needed no second opening. ‘Their sergeant’s got a face like the phantom of the opera; their driver is the laziest creep I ever set eyes on, and the one who goes round with a sniper rifle substituting for a security blanket, well he’s off his head.’
    ‘Are you saying we... you can’t work with them? ‘No, sir, that’s not what I’m saying, it’s just that...’ ‘Listen, maybe we’ve been too insular, too self-contained for too long. Take a real look at our men; Dooley and that mercurial temperament of his, and Nelson with that doll...’
‘His mascot, sir.’
‘... and Cohen, he believes in Martians.’ ‘He says that’s because he’s given up believing in the human race, sir.’
    ‘You get my point though. The main thing is these British are good, damned good or they wouldn’t be coming with us. Now let’s get this briefing over with.’ Revell eased his aching backside off the rough wood of the crate and followed the sergeant. Well, this would be the last of the preliminaries. In twenty minutes they would pull out, to have the benefit of last light when they passed through their own lines and then he would be doing what he did best, fighting.
    Dooley was forced to admit, at least to himself, that the driver of the Iron Cow was good, damned good. Private Burke might be an all-time record gold-bricker, but Jesus, could he throw that thing around. For the first time since the major had told him he’d be travelling with him and Cohen in Hyde’s skimmer he began to feel less unhappy. If he had to be going into battle again, and with the major they always seemed to be, then he might as well go in with a combat driver good enough to get them back out again.
    The interior of the vehicle was lit by a dull red glow from a single bulb over Howard’s radar console, and more faintly at the front end of the compartment by the pale green glow given off by the screen of the driver’s image intensifier.
    With most of the mission’s stores on board, stacked in the narrow centre aisle, there was little room for the passenger’s legs. Libby and Cohen had their feet up on cases of incendiary grenades.
    There was little talking among the men sitting cramped together on the benches. The salient was behind them now. Ahead lay thirty miles of what was a free-fire zone after dark. Surveillance radars, intruder alarms and sophisticated night sights having made fighting after sunset a practical reality, had also just about brought it to an end.
    At night the battlefield belonged to the technicians. One man at a console could do the job of fifty sentries, and could call down in seconds a weight of fire sufficient to halt and smash a regiment of tanks.
    So Howard sat at his board, watching for active radars focused on them, ready to jam any he found, and monitoring the compact but powerful electronic devices the Iron Cow carried to blanket her own emissions and avoid their detection by enemy passive detectors. Most of the tasks were handled by the on-board computer, but the equipment could fail and then his speed of action would be their only protection.
    Science had given Burke the means by which to drive at approaching the vehicle’s top speed at night, but it could do nothing to smooth the route they were forced to take if they were to avoid the Russians’ most likely points of concentra- tion. War in the Zone was a giant game of hide-and-seek with a deadly booby prize for the losers.
    And so the three carriers wove a complex snaking course through the fields and woods, sometimes taking to the beds of streams for a distance, mud and water splashing up their hulls and turning to puffs of steam in the exhaust from their turbines. At other times