Killing Ground by James Rouch Page A

cloth. Though the material had not yet begun to fade, already they were disappearing beneath the perpetual shower of needles and cones.
    ‘A couple of dozen dead civvies. So? It’s hardly anything out of the ordinary in the Zone.’
    ‘At various other locations around the valley there are several hundreds more. And not just ordinary refugees. Many of them were members of deserters’ gangs and other similar bandits.’
    ‘How come?’
    Voke grabbed the opportunity offered by the major’s curiosity. ‘Until yesterday this complex was under the command of a captain in the Royal Engineers. He had passed up promotion to stay here. He was too old for a field command and felt that this was the closest he could get. He was very reluctant to leave. He had been here since shortly after the outbreak of war. I had several long talks with him before he left, and of course he showed me over the whole site.’ Sensing Revell was about to look at his watch again, he went on faster, gesturing with wide sweeps of his arms so that Revell had to look up to see what he was indicating.
    ‘During his time here a vast amount of ammunition and equipment had to be condemned. Either obsolete or at the end of its shelf-life, it could only be destroyed. There was in fact so much to be got rid of that an ordnance disposal section was stationed here permanently. I am not sure I remember all the figures correctly but in total I believe there to be about two thousand tons of shells, mines and bombs in the valley.’
    ‘I’ve seen waste on the sort of scale you’re talking about.’ Revell’s thoughts went back in time. ‘And not just in this war either. My uncle was in ‘Nam during the last months. He said one of his regular duties was guard on a dock where they loaded ships to dump ammo in the gulf. There must have been thousands of tons shipped out.’
    ‘The waste here would have been in proportion.’
    ‘How does that explain those stiffs?’
    ‘Very simple.’ Voke could not repress a chuckle. ‘He hated waste. There was a disposal site in the hills, but it was never used. Every unwanted mine, rocket, bomb, shell, and grenade has been used to construct a wide killing zone around the valley.’
    ‘We passed through a roadblock in a gorge about six, maybe seven kilometres from here. On the road out past the old mill. Was that some of his work? If it was, it may be formidable, but it wouldn’t stall Soviet combat engineers for long.’
    ‘That?’ Voke laughed outright this time. ‘My men laid that in a couple of hours. Think what it would have been like if we had been adding to it and refining it for two years.’
    ‘And it’s all unofficial?’ Revell tried to picture the ordnance experts using all their skill and ingenuity over the months and years to lay thousands, perhaps millions of mines and booby-traps.
    ‘It is all very unofficial. The captain was very unhappy when he was ordered out. He wished to stay and see his plan put to the test. Of course, during his time here it was, on a fairly small scale.’
    ‘You mean refugee gangs like those down there.’ Revell found the whole concept fascinating but flawed, deeply. ‘Knocking off a few civvies, even when they come at you mob-handed, is very different from trying to stop a Soviet Guards Army with all their resources.’
    ‘I am aware of that; so was the English captain. His theories were well tested. Gangs have tried to break in using vehicles and armour salvaged from the battle- fields. Once it was a single Challenger backed by several APCs. Another time a large group of deserters tried it with Leopards and T72s. All were stopped. And there is more than just explosive devices, machine-gun-rigged to sweep avenues of approach, gas shells, flame throwers...’
    ‘What’s that low concrete structure at the bottom of the cliff?’
    ‘That was one of the captain’s favourites; there are two others positioned where they’d be appropriate.’ Although Voke knew exactly