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relief arrive.’
    As he watched Burke trudging towards the roadblock, head down against the gusting wind, Revell noticed a movement at an upper window of the hotel. There weren’t supposed to be any civvies still around… He turned to look at the chopper in time to see Dooley waving back from the cabin doorway. The big man vanished inside the moment he realised he’d been observed. So Burke wasn’t the only one who was pushing his luck today. Oh, what the hell, let him get away with it this once, pretend he hadn’t noticed, the big gorilla had been behaving himself for the best part of a week. Anyway, it was most likely Hogg’s fault. Doubtless the lieutenant had been eating and sleeping in the Iron Cow, and had kept Sergeant Hyde too busy with a thousand niggling tasks for him to keep tabs on the big man every minute of the day - and it only ever took a minute for Dooley to get organised. Presented with a building chock-full of bedrooms it was obvious what he’d been up to…
    ‘Where are we going?’ Libby stood with Burke and the lieutenant outside the vehicle, as Sergeant Hyde made a final check of all the lockers and hatches. They could hear the sharpened studs of his boots grating on the hull’s metal floor. ‘No bloody idea.’ Burke thrust his hands deep into his pockets. ‘But I hope it’s somewhere a fuck sight warmer than this.’ ‘I’m not leaving the Zone.’
‘You’ve got no sodding choice, mate,’ Burke tried stamping to aid his circulation. ‘Where that whirly-bird goes, there go we, like it or not. You’re not planning to do something stupid, are you?’
    It was beginning to get dark, there would be no more refugees now, Libby knew that - they only travelled during daylight so as to stand the best chance of spotting mines - but he kept looking up the road, willing just one more to appear, a slim attractive girl. There was no one. No Helga. He’d stopped showing the photo to the passing human debris: not one of them had eyes for it, they were too full of themselves, too wrapped up in the overwhelming emotions of relief, joy and even disbelief at having finally made it. He had to get back into the Zone again, had to. ‘Well, are you?’
‘Mind your own business.’
    Taking a tight hold on Libby’s sleeve, Burke pulled him away from the group. ‘It is my sodding business. If the brass have laid on a chopper for us that means we’re going places in a hurry, and that means Ol’ Foul Mouth has found another bastard job for us. I don’t fancy going into action with some last minute replacement beside me, some ruddy unknown who might put me right in it.’
    ‘It’s nice to know I’d be missed.’ There was a sneer in the words. Sergeant Hyde came out on to the ramp, jumped down, and activated the door control. He had to hit the switch twice before the hydraulics eventually, reluctantly, raised and closed it. ‘All secure, Lieutenant. Be a good idea if we boarded the chopper now.’ The lipless, graft-patched edges of his mouth hardly moved as he spoke.
‘The major said to hang on until our relief arrived.’
    ‘So I heard, Lieutenant, but I can see a Bundeswehr truck coming. The bunch of refugees in the back look familiar, and that’s a military police jeep following it.’ ‘Yes, well maybe we could board now.’ Shepherding the men before him, Hogg kept glancing back at the approaching vehicles. Hyde was the last to scramble in, and did so as the officers went forward and the Black Hawk lifted. Before closing the sliding door he saw the jeep stop at the road- block and its occupants climb out to watch the take-off. They didn’t look too happy.
    The men were already making themselves comfortable, which in most cases meant settling down to sleep. Andrea sat next to Dooley, who held his mirror- polished bayonet and was stabbing and cutting the air as he spoke to illustrate his words.
    Through a misted window, Hyde caught a last glimpse of the hotel. There would have been big