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the next round.”
    “Is there that much we can do?” Revell moved aside a little to give the barrage of soggy splinters more room. “You bet your fucking life there is, as long as we stick to our side of the demilitarized strip. There're dumps to be replenished, defence positions to be constructed and improved, material to be salvaged and roads to be repaired ... especially roads.”
    Revell could anticipate what was coming. His anger, being pointless, had subsided, to be now replaced with a sullen resentment. It was going to be worse than guarding the cages. “We take charge of a construction battalion? Of Warpac deserters?”
    “Got it in one, almost. Only you're not getting some easy-going bunch of Poles and Hungarians. In fact you're getting all Ruskies. Not to dress it up for you, you're getting the sweepings of the camps. All the ones who've been causing trouble. The guys who refused to work, or were into stealing, murder, or gang buggery, or trying to dabble in the black market by bribing guards. You know, just about every vice known to man, and some that are only known to renegade Communists.”
    “Where do we find them.”
    “Oh, they'll find you. They're on their way, be here about mid-morning tomorrow. Your company will take over as their escort for the last stage of the journey. I should think the other guys will be glad to hand them over to you. Did hear they've already had to stop twice and put MPs on board to sort out knife fights.”
    “What's the work precisely, and where?”
    “Clearing and patching a section of road that runs up to the truce line. Goes right on through it and into the Warpac side, in fact. If you keep out of the demilitarized strip though, you shouldn't have any trouble from that direction. The escort commander will give you a map.”
    “What about engineering equipment?” Inside Revell was a strong suspicion that he already knew the answer to that also.
    “Each of your new buddies, gallant allies or filthy traitors depending on whose point of view you're seeing them from, our PR boys or the KGB, comes fully equipped. To be fucking precise, with either a pick or a shovel.”
    “Sounds like it's going to be a bundle of laughs.”
    “Well the general was smiling a hell of a lot when he gave me the word. Now I've got to be getting back. Can you offer a route back to the chopper around that clown producing the smoke screen.”
    Lippincott belted himself in, while Revell stood at the open door. “Great, ain't it.” The colonel tapped the back of the empty pilot's seat. “OK, so this machine's not exactly new, maybe hardly airworthy, and sure as shit I'm not a three-star general in the making, but together we're a slice of the NATO war effort, and what happens? We come to a grinding halt because this crud has to scuttle off for a piss.”
    Revell, too, suddenly had strong feelings about the pilot's weak bladder, but not for the same reason as the colonel. There came a blast of rock music as a convoy of assorted civilian vehicles entered the grounds. Leading them was an ex-Warpac generator truck. Mounted on top of its box like bodywork were two enormous speakers. Following closely was a Rolls Royce convertible, a pair of Starstreak missile launchers sprouting from the place where the passenger seat had been. It and the rest of the column were heavily festooned with bright balloons and masses of bunting.
    Corporal Carrington, seated on the back of the Corniche, created a temporary panic among the surrounding refugee settlements by firing off a whole belt composed entirely of multicoloured tracer, then he waved to the officers.
    Groaning inwardly, Revell experienced a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He saw the colonel, open-mouthed, watch the weird variety of impressed transport crunch over the gravel toward the hotel.
    “They're just letting off steam. Celebrating the truce.” Hell, even as he said it, Revell knew it sounded weak.
    Observing a Toyota pick-up