Free Overkill by James Rouch Page A

the effective range to engage the enemy, and it wasn’t enough. Taking a smoke grenade from his belt, Revell lobbed it beyond an angle of the hull and counted down the seconds to its ignition. Its bursting seeded a wide area with blazing pieces of phosphorus that gave off dense clouds of yellow-white smoke.
    The first few paces they tried to hold their breath, but the exertion of running forced them to gulp for air, and instead they got the acrid fumes from the blazing chemical. It rasped in their throats, burned their lungs and even as they raced clear their eyes continued to stream from the irritation.
    After only fifty yards the machine gun zeroed on them again and they had to take to a rough-formed trench made by the collapse of a sewer.
    Mortar bombs began to fall, and though it was taking them the wrong way, they had to stay in the snaking excavation as red-hot slivers of casing scythed overhead. Above the continual bang of their detonation they caught the sharp loud bark of tank cannon. The T72’s had run into the colonel’s reception.
    Now there was no chance of rejoining the squad. They were trapped on the wrong side of the fighting, and with the mortar fire continuing to pursue them with a single-minded vindictiveness they could only go on, in the hoping of finding an alternative route back into the city.
    They shook off the barrage when they entered an area of docks and wharfs and warehouses, and passed beyond its range.
    Everywhere was utter devastation. Few of the huge buildings had been completely levelled, but what was left standing had been rendered useless by repeated bombing and artillery fire. Ships of every size and type lay alongside but without exception they had sunk at their moorings. A foot-thick layer of debris-bearing fuel oil carpeted the water and the stench from it was overpowering. Many of the ships had burned and the hulls and upper works were a uniform smoke-streaked rust red.
    Nothing that could have been of the slightest use remained. The wheels had been taken from the overturned trucks, along with engine fittings and, in some cases, even axles. There was not a packing case that had not been broken open and its contents examined. Vessels that had keeled over until most of the superstructure was submerged showed signs of having been entered and searched. Save where the charred remains still hung from davits, every lifeboat and raft had been removed. It was as if a swarm of human locusts had scoured the docks from end to end.
    Checking his map, Revell began to work towards where a bridge was indicated, and as they shifted course in that direction they became aware of the sound of an engine ahead of them. From its rough note, far worse even than the two ill-maintained T72s, it couldn’t be a vehicle. Its beat was slow and ragged, as if each might be its last, but every time it wheezed, hesitated, and then managed one more.
    In the echoing streets between the leaning bomb-scarred walls it was difficult to pinpoint precisely, but its location became obvious when they turned a corner and saw a group of elderly women working at the edge of a dock.
    Hoses trailed from a throbbing pump, one over the edge of the wharf, the other up and into a large container mounted on a handcart fashioned from the rear end of a pick-up truck. The women were filthy, stained from head to foot with thick oil that glistened in the sun with hues of blue and green. They formed a chain that passed buckets of oil from the surface of the dock to a cluster of opened drums.
    A shot rang out as a girl with a rifle saw Revell and Andrea and fired at them. For a snap shot it came close, clipping the stock of Andrea’s Ml 6 and jarring it in her hands.
    The salvage party broke and ran, slipping and sliding in the mess covering the ground about them and made worse by the full buckets they dropped. In a moment they were gone, but the girl with the rifle, joined by a similarly armed companion, had taken cover behind the handcart