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they would use a stretch of road or lane, and the hurtling trio would skim through an abandoned village ®r past a huddle of refugee shelters and slew back on to the fields beyond.
    And that was the final horrific ingredient of the Zone. Few of the civilians whose homes lay within it had moved out. Areas existed where rural life went on much as before, but they were shrinking green oases in a dying landscape. Many would willingly have gone, a lot had tried, but the population beyond the Zone’s boundaries feared contamination; from the chemicals they knew were being used, from radiation brought about by the many small-yield tactical nuclear weapons that had been used, and most of all from the mythical bacterial weapons that featured so strongly in each new rumour: and so the civilians caught in the Zone were literally forced to stay.
    It was worst in the big camps in the north of the Zone. There civilisation had collapsed and even the armies avoided them, save as now when the Russians were using a settlement as cover for activities they didn’t want disturbed.
    Revell had been watching Clarence take the cartridges from a spare Enfield magazine and clean them one at a time, before inspecting and replacing them. He reached across and took one of the long slim bullets from the cloth in which they nestled, and held it up against the light. Two small nicks were visible, just below its pointed tip. ‘How long you been using dum-dums?’
    Clarence went on with his work, not bothering to look up. ‘Since I found out the Russians were using them, about three months. You don’t approve?’ ‘My men have known a bit longer.’ Revell handed the round back. ‘We’ve been using them nearer six.’
    Tucked up in a corner, his slight frame wrapped in cumbersome body armour, Abe Cohen closed his eyes and tried to sleep. It wouldn’t come. Hell, he felt awful, like his stomach was about to climb his throat and hurl itself out of his mouth complete, in one great heave. It was worse than being seasick. At least at sea there was some sort of regular motion; it was still horrible but at least you knew what was coming. These skimmers were something else. He hugged his arms across his stomach, not that he could feel the contact through an inch of laminated fibre-glass and metal mesh, and tried again. He didn’t care how tough the job they were going to do was, he’d happily have taken on the whole of 2nd Guards Army if only it meant getting out of this bucking bucket.
    ‘There was a beam on us then,’ Howard called out. ‘Take what evasive action you have to, but stay on this general heading.’ Hyde had given their driver the order before he remembered the major. He looked to see the officer’s reaction.
    Revell understood, and nodded. ‘Don’t forget we’ve got a brood bringing up the rear.’
‘Another one. The Ruskies are looking for us now.’ A tight skidding turn almost threw Howard from his seat.
    If Burke was making life uncomfortable for Cohen, he was also making it very difficult for the distant Russian radar operators who were trying to pick them up and plot their course.
    Hedges and fences collapsed before the skimmers’ onslaught. A small group of houses that couldn’t even be glorified by the name of village were grazed and shaken as the racing hovercrafts scraped by, using their outline as cover and to confuse the enemy radar.
    It worked, but the gap had widened between the Iron Cow and the following vehicles. They chased after the British craft, almost nose to tail, as their drivers pushed themselves to the limit to keep up with Burke’s fast progress between the houses.
    Seven hundred yards from the hamlet, from a spot not quite within the fringes of a plantation of pines, there was a rapid succession of stabs of light as a multi- barrelled Russian ZSU-23 anti-aircraft tank opened up with all four of its 23mm cannon. Tracer arced through the night towards the ill-spaced file of NATO machines.

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