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assembly of the equipment as he called to the radioman. ‘Don’t route it through the command centre in the convoy, give it straight to GHQ. Be brief, use your own words and tell them the position, and then say they’ll have laser designation on the block-ships in two minutes. Better tell them we’re only half a mile from target. I hope they’ll bear that in mind when choosing warheads, otherwise we won’t be here to line up a second target for them.’
    It was a tight squeeze working in the cramped confines of the turret. Revell pulled the co-axial machine gun from its mount, and with no time for finesse dropped its component parts on to the thinly padded bench below. The laser only just fitted into place, its power-pack actually nestling against the compact body of the Rarden.
    Taking up position behind it, Revell aligned the sight on a tanker of about twelve thousand tons that formed the centrepiece of the obstruction, and waited. He was gambling that Command would have something in reserve capable of doing the job, and that the haste with which the Russians had been forced to complete their preparations meant they’d not had the time to install any sophisticated counter-designation equipment.
    If they had, and they detected the invisible beam he was directing, then at any second they might retaliate and the eye he pressed to the rubber surround of the sight be boiled from his head. He had seen it happen, and it took conscious willpower to keep him there.
    From beyond the ceramic and steel armour he heard the crash and clatter of the squad’s weapons going into action, and answering fire from Russian small arms. A grenade exploded, someone was screaming.
    Without moving from the gunner’s set, Revell groped with his free hand for his assault shotgun in the rack below. His fingers found its barrel and he hauled it up to cradle its familiar bulk across his lap. Now he had two reasons for leaving the laser, but still he stayed, and waited.
    Andrea saw her grenade blast the Russian’s body apart, and with careful deliberation put a second forty-millimetre shell into the chest of another. He went the same way, and took the men either side with him.
    Trailing blue smoke from its burned-out rocket motor, an anti-tank missile flashed past to self-destruct over the river when it failed to find a target.
    Another group of Russians charged from cover, shouting and yelling as they came. Once more they had to bunch to pass between piles of props and girders and once more they were slaughtered as they were channelled through those killing grounds.
    From the top of a gantry walkway, Clarence took in the scene below. So far he had left the killing to the others, he was looking for different targets, and now he found them.
    Behind a long brick-built workshop Russian military police and KGB troops were using sticks, boots and rifle butts to hurry soldiers being unloaded from packed trucks and field cars. Using the telescopic sight on his rifle the sniper panned across the new arrivals. Few of them carried weapons, some didn’t even have proper boots, and were wearing various types of footwear of obvious civilian origin. All of them were in rags, with the few insignia visible indicating that they were from all sorts of units: construction, pipeline and chemical, as well as artillerymen and radio-technical troops.
    Some of them looked frightened, many bewildered; none of them looked happy. Weapons were being thrust at them, AKS-47s for the lucky ones, a couple of grenades for those less fortunate, lengths of angle-iron and chain for those not even that lucky.
    Despite the rising dust clouds and scudding smoke from riverside fires, the sun was hot on Clarence’s back. If it brought him discomfort it didn’t register, when he was lining up on a target nothing ever did. Of more concern to him was the distortion caused by the heat haze shimmering from the piles of ships’ plates, and the confusing, near blinding, glint from heaps of