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Moscovite, would have needed to apply any great amount of his inbred skill at reading between the lines to see the full implications of that simple sentence.
    Whatever the operation, he was going to make it succeed. Nothing else mattered, that would be everything. Instant oblivion would be the happiest fate of anyone who stood in the way of his achieving that.
    There were parts of the Zone that the war had never touched, and they were motoring through one such now. The Bavarian towns and villages they passed were intact, needing only a splash of fresh paint on the pretty houses to restore them as they had been a year before, when the war had threatened to turn this way and the population had been evacuated.
    Some traffic on the roads and they would have come back to life immediately, but there wasn’t going to be, and they wouldn’t. Eventually their turn would come, the battles would swirl even through this remote corner of southern Germany and then for a few hours or days at most, the names of the towns; and villages would be those mentioned in the world’s press, and then as the war moved on they would slide back into obscurity.
    By then they would have ceased to exist save as smouldering ruins with a few tracks bulldozed through them. Another year after that and even those who had once lived here would have trouble in finding the most memorable or distinctive of landmarks, as nature took advantage of the head start destructive man had given her in finally reclaiming her territory. ‘This wagon is a real bastard.’ Gradually Burke was learning how to cope with the Marder’s peculiar handling characteristics, but already his arms ached from the strain of the constant corrections he had to make as the brakes, steering and suspension combined their faults to pull the vehicle to the left.
    His complaint went unheard, as had all those before. Cotton from a first aid locker plugged the ears of those of the squad who didn’t have headsets. Clarence was one. Without a turret or remote controlled weapon to man he had wedged himself into an angle of the interior and concentrated on avoiding being jolted about the compartment. Occasionally an item of equipment that had been inse- curely stowed, or a member of the squad who had relinquished a handhold at the wrong moment would bump into him. Inanimate objects he threw aside, bodies he fended off as best he could with the minimum of contact. He had to shout at the top of his voice to make himself heard to Revell, who stood with head and shoulders out of sight in the command cupola beside the turret.
    ‘Can’t we ease off on the speed? This old wreck just isn’t fit for it.’ ‘It’s okay, we’ll be slowing soon.’ Ducking down to mime the words to the sniper, Revell pushed his throat microphone closer to communicate with the driver. ‘There’s a sharp right up ahead, take it.’
    The sheer bulk of the vehicle meant that several times they had to take to the side as they negotiated the narrow winding side road as it began to climb. Overgrown hedges were crushed beneath the churning tracks, and great lumps of bark torn from trees, fences and gates half hidden by the brambles and vines entwined about them were splintered and flattened into the soft ground.
    Gradually the hill steepened, until their forward progress was little better than a walking pace. Not that it brought any diminution in the decibel level, that stayed high as the engine strained to move the twenty-eight tons of men and weapons and armour up the twenty-two percent gradient. Seven of the eight available gears had been used by the time they reached the top.
    ‘I hope the fucking view was worth it.’ Dooley disentangled himself from ribbons of springy steel strip cut to open the packing cases. ‘For a shitty minute I thought we were going to have to get out and fucking push.’
    The rear door had to be opened manually when the hydraulics developed a leak and sprayed a high pressure jet of fluid at the