Chieftains

The Russian SPG commander Ellen was watching struck a match and lit a cigarette. In the fraction of a second that the match flared, momentarily blinding the man, Ellen was on his feet. As the man dragged on the tobacco, Ellen clamped his hand over cigarette and still-burning match and crushed them against the man's mouth, at the same time driving the slim blade of his knife upwards beneath the ribs. The Russian struggled but Ellen pulled him off balance backwards, then cut his throat twice just above the stiff collar, using a quick sawing movement of the razor sharp blade. It was almost too easy; he had practiced it many times.

The two remaining crew members of the Russian SPG were already dead. Both killed while they slept. The driver's back had been within reach of the soldier lying flat along the hull, while the gunner had taken no notice of the man who had silently dropped in through the turret behind him believing, if he had awakened at all, it was his returning commander.

Ellen lowered the Russian's body to the ground. A non-smoker himself, he could smell the faint coppery scent of the man's blood; it gave him a sense of elation. His hands were sticky, he wiped them on the dead man's overalls. He had made his first kill. Never again would he have to stand at a bar and listen enviously to the tales of his colleagues who had been in action. Now he was truly one of them; a fully-fledged member of the elite corps.

Welbeck, who had been the one to tackle the gunner, seemed to be a long time inside the tank. Lance Corporal Ellen should have waited beside the track, but didn't. He reached the turret just as Welbeck climbed out. Welbeck reacted instinctively to the dark figure that appeared unexpectedly in front of him. His bloodstained knife was still in his hands. He drove it straight into Ellen's chest.

Ellen felt the blow, realized what had happened but felt no pain. He had time to say quietly: 'You stupid bugger.' Then his legs weakened and crumpled. He dropped to his knees and felt the cold of the metal against the palms of his hands…and then nothing. His body dropped backwards from the hull to land on the corpse of the Russian he had killed only a minute earlier.

'Everything satisfactory, Sergeant?' Lieutenant Hinton had been waiting beside the bunker's secondary exit.

'Yes, sir. The area's clean. I've posted guards. One casualty.'

'Wounded?'

'Dead, sir. Lance Corporal Ellen.'

The first of many yet to come, thought Hinton. 'How?'

'Bloody carelessness, sir! Disobeyed orders.'

There was no point in delving further at the moment, and Sergeant Welbeck was obviously unwilling to volunteer details. Hinton knew he would learn in time. 'Thank you Sergeant. Get the doors open will you.' He gave a thumbs-up sign to Fellows and swung himself into the nearest of the APCs. The sound of the Scimitar's Jaguar engines made the air of the bunker vibrate.

There was nothing that could be done to disguise the appearance of a FV 107 Scimitar; its sharply angled turret and sloping bow resembled no armoured vehicle used by the Warsaw Pact armies. Protection for the tanks and the SAS APCs was the night itself, their speed and manoeuvrability, and the direction of their travel – westwards towards the battlefront. From a distance, in the poor light, they might be mistaken for reinforcements moving forward in support of the Soviet advance.

Hehlingen was twenty kilometers from the bunker; little mare than fifteen minutes at top speed on a good road. There were no longer any such roads, and a fast direct route was impossible.

Fellows, standing half-out of his hatch, watched the night sky towards the west. Flashes of distant light flickered like summer lightning along the horizon, and the sky itself was coloured as though it reflected the illumination of a vast city. It was almost beautiful, smoke clouds glowing scarlet, violet and a continuous pyrotechnic aurora borealis shimmering above the fields. He was feeling alert, self-confident; it had been far more of a strain on his nerves while they waited cooped up in the bunker. He still found it hard to believe that this was war, though there was plenty of evidence. Every small village or even farmhouse they passed had been destroyed, tumbled and blackened stone, crazily-angled window frames, fallen roofs, deserted…still smoking. Wrecked vehicles, some unidentifiable, others which looked as though they had simply been abandoned, littered open fields. There were bodies, corpses lying awkwardly in the wreckage; a line of uniformed men arrayed beside a hedge, neat and tidy as though ready for inspection, weapons beside them, the night hiding the bloodstains and the wounds. Shell and rocket craters, dark irregular patterns in the fields; shattered tarmac and cobbles, sewer pipes and drains, burnt woodland.