Plague Bomb by James Rouch

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    Boris and Thorne struggled with a spare track plate that was proving difficult to remove from the brackets fastening it to the hull side. Their comments as Burke sauntered past carrying a single track pin, and grumbling about having to do it, were drowned by the thunder of Dooley’s assault on a recalcitrant fragment of distorted metal still retaining the failed component.
    ‘Post a guard sergeant, and have an air-watch kept, then we’ll have a stroll to the top and see what lies ahead. Might as well take that advantage of this stop.’
    The view was not as panoramic as that they’d had from the hill on which they made their electronic sweep, but it was even more informative. Before commencing a systematic search of the slice of Bavaria laid out before them, Revell couldn’t resist a swift general sweep along the road where it went off into the distance.
    ‘Got them.’ Studying the scene a moment longer, he handed the binoculars to the NCO and directed his observations to a causeway and Bailey bridge across cratered and flooded ground less than two miles ahead.
    ‘Looks like they’re stuck.’ Adjusting the setting to suit his weaker sight, Hyde scrutinized the distant tableau.
    Four figures stood about a Range Rover that had stopped on the log built causeway leading to the bridge, a little short of a section that had partially subsided into the artificially created bog.
    ‘Do we go in on foot and grab them now, or wait for the track to be fixed?’ Hyde returned the glasses.
    ‘I think we’ll wait for the wagon.’ Something else caught Revell’s attention. ‘In fact we’ll have to.’
    Midway between them and their quarry he’d seen a pair of light trucks and a field car parked among the trees, far enough in for them to have been invisible from the road. In the course of the day they’d seen dozens of rusting wrecks and at first glance that was all those three vehicles had registered as, but then instinct made him focus on them again, and a more critical inspection revealed that they weren’t hulks.
    It was the trucks’ erected canvas tilts that betrayed them. Tough though the material was, it would not have survived several months’ continual exposure to Europe’s unrelenting elements. If they’d been derelicts then there ought only to have been a few flapping strips by this time, but that wasn’t how it was.
    The transports were all late models that, aside from being mud spattered, appeared to be in perfect condition. That discovery made, it didn’t take Revell long to discover what they were doing there.
    Scrutinizing every yard of ground between the vehicles and the highway he found their passengers dug-in and occupying hastily camouflaged positions astride it.
    With the advantage of height, Revell could discern the textbook precision with which the slit trenches and weapons pits were laid out.
    ‘There’s the best part of a platoon of Russian infantry waiting for us. Seems like we’ll have to run the gauntlet of whatever they’ve got to throw before we’ll reach those turncoat civvies.’

    ‘And it doesn’t look like they’re prepared to hang about and wait for us either.’ Even without the binoculars Hyde could tell from the patterns of movement about the Range Rover that efforts were being made to repair the causeway.
    ‘Okay, the schedule’s too tight for us to play Indians and sneak up behind that ambush ...’
    ‘Not much chance of that anyway, with the racket the Marder makes.’ ‘Right.’ Revell had already recognized that impediment to any attempt at stealth. ‘So we’ll just have to get as close as we can before they open fire. If we charge in with cannon blazing they’ll hit us with a shower of anti-tank rockets. The road’s not that wide, and there’s nowhere else to go, so ...’
    ‘So…?’ Not that he needed to ask, Hyde was perfectly able to anticipate what was coming next.
    ‘And so we motor toward them like we’re on a Sunday afternoon drive round