Mallet hung up.
‘What’s the news?’ Bowman asked.
‘Six hasn’t heard from D Squadron since they landed. Half an hour ago.’
Loader checked his watch and grunted. ‘The airfield’s only twenty miles away. A straight run on the main road. What’s taking them so long?’
‘Maybe the Russians have sent out a force to ambush them,’ Webb said.
‘Could be,’ Bowman said. ‘The way they’ve masterminded this attack, it wouldn’t be a surprise.’
Loader said, ‘Whatever’s holding them up, those fellas need to get a move on. Foot to the floor, like. We’re in the shit here.’
‘It’s out of our hands now,’ Mallet replied. ‘Nothing we can do about it except sit tight.’
‘Christ, no,’ Webb said as he stared at the woods. ‘It can’t be.’
‘What is it?’ Mallet asked.
Bowman planted his left hand on the Gimpy stock and scanned the trees. At first, he saw nothing except the mortar-churned earth, the shrapnel-slashed bodies, the blood.
Then he spotted the figures charging out of the gloom of the forest, and his heart sank.
‘Oh, fuck!’ Loader shouted. ‘There’s more of them. They’re coming again!’
Thirty-One
The rebels streamed forward in a loose throng, sprinting across the open ground in the same formation as the first wave. Except the second wave was bigger. Eighty or so fighters. Sixty men, plus the twenty survivors from the initial attack. The defenders on the rooftop stared at them in shock for a moment. Then their training instincts took over. Mallet shouted into his mic, screaming at Casey to pop off the few remaining bombs at the treeline. Bowman and Loader aimed through the holes in the parapet and squeezed off bursts from the Gimpys at the mass of figures flooding towards them. Mortar shells battered the clearing, killing half a dozen of the rebel fighters. The machine guns picked off a few more. The rest ran on unscathed towards the demolished stretch of the perimeter.
‘I’m out of bombs!’ Casey said over the radio. ‘Switching to my rifle.’
‘Where did this lot come from?’ Loader shouted.
But Bowman already knew. The first wave had been sent in to soften the opposition up. The Russians had kept the second force in reserve, waiting behind the trees in case they were needed. As soon as the first assault had failed, the Russians would have brought these guys forward to finish the job.
In a few seconds, they’re going to sweep through the gap in the fence, he thought. And we’ve got no mortars left to hit them with this time.
As he took aim, a torrent of bullets slapped into the section of parapet eight inches to his right. Bowman quickly pulled back from the edge. The rounds ate into the coping, spitting out clouds of dust across the rooftop. One bullet narrowly missed his cheek before it embedded itself in the wall behind him. Loader and Webb shrank away from the parapet as sustained bursts of gunfire accurately raked their positions.
‘Who the fuck is shooting at us?’ Loader yelled.
Bowman said, ‘The Russians must have set up a support position. Somewhere along the clearing.’
‘Whoever it is, they’re getting close.’
The rounds were coming in thick and fast. They were getting hit by something heavy. Another PKM machine gun, perhaps. Or something similar. The Russians would have established by now that the main fire was coming from the top of the mansion. They would have positioned a lone shooter behind cover, with orders to put down sustained fire on the parapet to cover the main attacking force. One PKM could do the job. They were brutally efficient weapons. Effective to a range of 1,000 metres, with a rate of fire of 650 rounds per minute.
Another smart call from the Russians, Bowman thought. They’ve been more than a match for us today.
‘I’ll deal with the shooter,’ Mallet said. ‘You lot focus on the main group.’
They belly-crawled over to new firing points further along the northern side of the parapet. Mallet traded his C8 rifle for the meatier .50 cal and lay flat on his stomach, observing the ground to the right of the arch as he looked for the muzzle flash from the shooter. At their twelve o’clock, the main KUF force was pouring through the breach. They speedily divided into multiple assault teams and started pepper-potting forward. A carbon copy of the first attack.
Bowman and Loader brassed up the middle group with four rapid bursts, then backed away before a chunk of the parapet disintegrated under a savage volley of machine-gun fire. They shovelled their weapons to the left, laid flat on their stomachs, fired, scurried back. Rounds whizzed through the perforations and smacked into the low wall behind the soldiers. Loader swore as a chunk of debris tumbled down on him.
‘Locate that fucker, John! We’re getting hammered!’
Between the rounds coming in from the front and the north-east, Bowman and Loader were under almost non-stop pressure. With no mortars to drop and the extra fire support, the frontal assault teams were advancing with greater speed than the first wave. A few of the enemy wielded RPGs or machine guns. Several others were gripping newer Russian assault rifles with grenade launchers fitted under the barrels.
‘These bastards are gonna be right on top of us in a few minutes,’ Bowman shouted.
‘It’ll be sooner than that,’ said Loader, ‘if we can’t put the drop on that shooter.’
As he spoke, the concealed shooter fired at them again, driving the men back from the parapet. The incoming burst was suddenly interrupted by the
