Overkill Read Online Free PDF Page B

getting it wrong.
    ‘Aircraft. IFF doesn’t function.’
‘Where are they coming from, how many?’ Revell couldn’t leave the designator, was forced to constantly realign it as blast waves shifted them, or the pressure of the backed-up river moved the block ships; he had to rely on Boris’s interpretation of the information on the screens. If the Identification-Friend-or- Foe equipment really had failed then their radio-man’s alert and swift observation might be the only thing to provide warning of danger from the skies.
    ‘From the north west. There are two, no three. Approach speed is very fast, mach two, no, closer to mach four. The set must be at fault, the picture is all wrong, they have no wings.’
    ‘Better secure everything. Warn the others to keep down, forget the Russians.’ The set was working perfectly, but Revell couldn’t blame the man for thinking it must be on the blink. Those fast approaching ‘aircraft’ could only be cruise missiles. Wingless, they relied on body-lift at high supersonic speeds to carry their payloads.
    He made a final slight adjustment to the laser’s point of aim, centring it on the mid-section of the tanker. A telltale white dot on the lens of the designator told him precisely the place on the hull being turned into a laser emitter whose coded frequency would bring the warhead of the first cruise exactly to it.
    Already he had risked a hurried glance through the turret’s periscopes to determine which should be his second and third choices. The cramp in his arm and fingers was forgotten, he slowed his breathing so as not to cause any deviation in the beam.
    The cruise came in low over their heads and dived on to the tanker, in vision for only a tiny fraction of time as no more than a blurred white flash.
    A huge fireball hid the tanker and from it soared giant portions of fabricated steel. Bow and stern of the ship were propelled in either direction, and lifted by the blast from the mud, were caught by the heaving water and born downstream until they turned over and sank.
    Identifying his second target as the obscuration cleared, Revell was only just fast enough in switching aim to it. A deck cargo of rusted freight containers was thrown high into the air as the second missile struck, but unaided by the pent-up forces of unflushed gases that had rendered the tanker’s destruction so complete, this same sized vessel was not destroyed utterly.
    Bridge and superstructure gone, its hull torn open to the water line, the vessel wallowed sideways from the line and settled once more into the bed of the river, still almost on an even keel. Revell saw the implication even as he laid the white spot on the side of an ore carrier. One more missile, one more ship, but even if its destruction was as total as that of the tanker, there still remained the hulk of the container ship obstructing the channel.
    The explosion of the last of the cruise missiles failed even to envelop the container ship as it broke the back of the ore carrier, then as the broken ship began to heel over, Revell saw it heave and shudder as though being attacked by massive forces.
    A wall of water had been building up behind the blockade, and now the Elbe set about clearing a way for itself. What three swiftly delivered ship-killing blows had failed to do, millions upon millions of gallons of pent-up water set about, re-opening its route to the sea.
    They might only have been plastic boats in a bathtub for all they mattered in the face of that irresistible onslaught. The crack of the cruises’ detonations, the booms of their following sonic waves, were nothing compared to the din of metal on metal as one after another the block ships were tossed aside and into each other. Bows were lifted by the surge and sent like monstrous spears through the sides of other vessels. A large tug that rolled over offered its propellers like a can-opener to the side of a ferry and sliced a fifty-foot gash in its plates. 
    ‘Get