by Jack Hayes
He handled the map and compass around his neck like a seasoned soldier, even though his skiing had the erratic quality of a child. Jouhki read his rank from the uniform.
A captain?
The man was muttering under his breath. Jouhki was too far back to hear the words, and thereby glean his nationality, but he could tell the sentiment from the scowl about this soldier’s face.
Jouhki lifted two fingers and silently signalled to the rest of his team.
They knew the instructions well: ‘fan out, prepare for ambush’.
As they scooted away between the firs, Jouhki returned his attention to the stranger in his woods.
“Are you friend or foe?” he wondered.
He eased his finger through the trigger loop of his weapon and took careful aim along the sight.
“Either way, you’re not Finnish,” Jouhki thought. “And around here, that alone makes you both my enemy and…”
He aligned the soldier’s head into the middle of his gun’s crosshairs.
“…a potential source of valuable supplies.”
CHAPTER 14
Maddox pulled to a halt between the trees.
He lifted his map and slapped his compass down on top of the surface, twisting the dial to align the arrow with north. Shit. They were drifting off track.
Maddox grimaced as he tried to peer through the foliage, searching for any hint of a landmark that he could use for confirmation of their route. As he winced, Patterson pulled alongside.
“How much further?” Patterson asked.
“Twenty miles,” Maddox replied. “That takes us to this point on the escarpment.”
He tapped a collection of contours on the chart.
“After that,” he continued, “We’ll make camp and two of us will continue on as scouts, running south along it until we can find the German position.”
Conley was next to join them, followed by Shield.
The cocking of a weapon caused every man to look up.
They were staring down the barrel of a Finnish partisan’s rifle.
“Okay, everybody remain calm,” Jouhki said, appearing from his position behind the fallen tree. “Don’t move and don’t go for your weapons.”
Shield’s hands reflexively twitched towards his Sten.
“Don’t be a fool,” Maddox growled. “Let me handle this.”
Jouhki had removed his skis and backpack and was pacing slowly across the snow. Maddox recognised the Lahti-Saloranta M26 in the Finn’s hands immediately. Supposedly a ‘light-machine gun’, at a hair over 20lbs in weight, it was anything but. It took powerful muscles to be able to hold such a weapon, let alone handle the recoil with enough confidence to brandish it without resting the mounting stands on something solid.
“Good morning,” Maddox said.
“I have three other men hidden around you in sniper positions, ready to shoot if needed.”
“Normally a Finnish platoon has two M26s and two ten man squads,” Maddox said. “If you’ve only got three men trained on us, you’re either lost or heavily depleted.”
“That hardly matters,” Jouhki replied. “Since I’m the one with a gun trained on you. Now, you’re English, that much I picked up when you started talking – which means you’re the enemy, fighting alongside the Russians. Is that why you’re here?”
“We’re not your enemy,” Maddox said. “And we’re certainly not here to fight alongside the Russians. Why don’t you lower your weapon and we can talk?”
“Why would I want to do that?” Jouhki laughed. “I have the advantage.”
“Perhaps,” Maddox said. “Perhaps not. It’s clear you could use some help. We sure as hell could use yours. Perhaps we could come to an arrangement?”
“An arrangement?” Jouhki said. “The arrangement is that you lower your guns and backpacks to the ground and then I decide if I’m feeling charitable enough not to shoot you all.”
“Hmm…” Maddox replied. “I think not. But, just let me confer with my colleagues.”
Maddox glanced at Patterson. Patterson let out an ear piercing whistle.
There was motion through the trees as three Finns, in separate places, were marched out at gunpoint by Marlowe, Fallon and Walker. Each Finn had his hands up in surrender.
The partisans kicked heavily with their boots as they staggered through the snow. The irritation at being rounded up by such amateurs at arctic warfare was clear on their features.
“I’m impressed,” Jouhki said. “And a little surprised. You didn’t look that capable as we tracked you.”
“We’re Jungle specialists,” Maddox shrugged. “Strip away the cold and a forest is a forest.”
“I still have you in my sights,” Jouhki replied. “I suggest you let my men go before things turn ugly.”
Sledge stepped from behind a mighty trunk and jabbed the barrel of his Sten into the back of Jouhki’s neck.
“Well this getting awkward,” Maddox said. “How about everybody lowers their weapons together and we discuss you helping us with some of your local knowledge?”
Jouhki did not comply.
“Not until you tell me why you’re here,” he said softly.
Maddox had no desire for a firefight in close range with the Finnish commando. He had no doubt his team would win, but Jouhki would manage to get off a burst of rounds before being killed. That could mean Patterson, Conley or himself ended their lives with a belly full of lead in the next few minutes.
He glanced at Shield.
The sergeant was staring straight back at him, eyebrows raised, as though to say: ‘your move, Maddox.’
“There’s a German mining operation,” Maddox said. “It’s not far from here. It’s sending diamonds back to Berlin that are being used to make a deadly new weapon. We’ve been ordered to shut it down. That’s all we’re here for – we have no quarrel with you.”
“Then you’re in luck,” Jouhki said.
He slowly lowered his gun, then slung it on his shoulder.
“I’m no fan of the major that runs that operation,” he said. “I suspect he killed a local boy we handed over to him as a scout. The kid had been illegally mining in the abandoned shafts and was trying to smuggle what he’d obtained to Switzerland. The idiot got in bed with the wrong people and found himself caught by the police.”
Maddox signalled his men to release the Finns. The two sides warily regarded one another and then began to head back into the undergrowth to grab their kit as Maddox and Jouhki moved closer.
“I suppose the Nazis stepped in, then, and confiscated what he’d dug up,” Maddox said. “That’s when they discovered the blue diamonds.”
“You heard about those?” Jouhki asked. “I only picked up drips and drabs. What’s so special about them?”
“Apparently the technical boffins can use them to make better ways for us to kill one another,” Maddox replied. “Which is why we’re here. We have to stop the Germans.”
“Like I said,” Jouhki replied. “I’m no fan of the commander – a sociopath called Nieder. I won’t stand in your way. But they’re just about the only thing stopping the Russians from swamping us right now. So I’m not willing to aid and abet you.”
Maddox nodded and thought for a few seconds.
“If the Germans can use these things to make better weapons,” Maddox said. “The Russians sure as hell can. What’s the likelihood of the Red Army over-running Nieder’s position?”
“Fifty-fifty,” Jouhki said. “The Russians have five tanks on their way to him now. And that’s just this time. If they fail, they’ll send more. However, Nieder is – how you say? – a special kind of arsehole. Forewarned that the Russians are coming, I think he’ll give them a run for their money.”
“Can you tell us where Nieder’s mine is?” Maddox asked.
“I can,” Jouhki replied. “But I don’t think it’ll do you much good. You’re 8 men. He’s got forty up there, plus captured slave labourers. And this morning, after we told hi
m about the Russian advance, he said he’d bring up reinforcements.”
“It seems to me,” Maddox said, “that both you and I have aligned interests, after all.”
“How so?” Jouhki asked.
“You’re short on equipment,” Maddox said. “I don’t think you warned Nieder out of the goodness of your heart. I think you intend to hit his supply train. And we want to do the same.”
“You’re an astute man,” Jouhki smiled.
“You’re low on soldiers,” Maddox said. “We’d stand a better chance with twelve men working together than either of us on our own.”
Jouhki chewed on his tongue as he watched his team returned through the trees with their reclaimed kit. They looked bedraggled. Certainly, his small band would struggle to take on an entire German convoy.
“You make a persuasive case,” Jouhki said.
Maddox opened his map out further and showed it to the Finn. Jouhki pulled a glove from his hand exposing his fingers to the freezing air. If he felt the cold, he didn’t show it.
He ran his digits across the paper as he took in his bearings and compared them with the chart.
“So, in the spirit of cooperation,” Maddox said, “you know the land. Where would you hit the German reinforcements?”
CHAPTER 15
“Kalb!” Nieder bellowed through the mine entrance.
His voice echoed as it reverberated down the heavy stone walls.
No answer.
He kicked his heels. If Kalb hadn’t been such a formidable warrior, he’d have made an example of his continued insolence. Much as he didn’t like him, Nieder had a grudging respect for the sergeant. He’d first seen him at a railway station in Krakow, loading captured Poles onto a train bound for an internment camp.
A bombing raid had started.
The leader of the Polish soldiers immediately used the distraction to overpower a nearby guard. With a captured gun, he’d shot a second German and suddenly there was the possibility of the outnumbered Wehrmacht forces being stampeded by the captured East European rabble.
Nieder was in the station manager’s office.
He withdrew his pistol from its holster and stalked outside, firing immediately on rioters. One, two, three – the bodies started falling. But as each dropped, two took their place. As they overran their guards, they were picking up weapons.
Kalb was the next target for the crowd.
No hesitation, the sergeant pulled the trigger on his submachine gun.
A perimeter was mown in the advancing prisoners. Those behind had pause for thought. Kalb kept firing until his finger clicked on an empty magazine. Seizing their moment the Poles rushed forward again.
Kalb span the gun round and broke the stock on the nose of the first man to approach close enough. He whipped it round again, hooking the magazine like a pickaxe into the skull of the next.
The weapon was stripped from his hands.
He didn’t blink.
Cleaver-sized fists closed and punched the face of the Pole who had dared to disarm him.
Nieder bounced down the steps of the station, continuing to fire into the crowd.
The hoofed thumping of reinforcements as German soldiers released the danger of this uprising and were ordered along the station platform.
Taking aim, they launched a volley into the Poles.
Bodies were littering the floor like felled trees.
The Poles stopped their advance.
Another round from the Germans.
The Poles retreated – their brief chance at potential freedom had been snatched away.
Hands raised, the East Europeans backed up and dropped the few guns they’d grabbed.
As they moved back, they parted around Kalb, his face bloodied from fist fighting, the sergeant stood, muscles bulging, snarl on his face, his fingers tightly wrapped around the throat of the Polish leader who’d started the uprising.
With a huff akin to a roar, he rattled his victim until the last gasp gurgled from his lips and tossed him asunder.
Nieder had immediately requested Kalb for his team. He wanted that brute force among his men when he fought. Little had he known at the time, Kalb was smart too. Whereas the combination could have been a potent one, instead, it often manifested as insubordination.
Nieder had always regretted the decision to add a man to his command who always seemed so contemptuous of his orders.
And yet, he’d never risked doing so much that Nieder had been able to discipline him and bring him into line.
Or maybe he had – but the last look of desperation on the face of the Polish commander as his neck snapped between Kalb’s palms had made even Nieder wary of unleashing the beast within?
Nieder twitched with irritation at the thought.
“Kalb!” he barked, louder this time.
The sergeant slowly rumbled up the tunnel to the surface.
“Major?”
Nieder eyed his subordinate.
Chastise him now?
Brutality and intelligence. No. Those skills would be useful here in the snow.
Particularly for the mission Nieder had in mind.
“I don’t trust the Finns,” Nieder said. “Assemble ten men. I want you to go and ensure our convoy makes it here in one piece. If they so much as blink in its direction I want them dead. You understand?”
Kalb lifted his chin.
“Perfectly,” the sergeant replied.
CHAPTER 16
Maddox stared through his binoculars at the German convoy.
A long trail of Germany’s finest were winding their way through the forest track. Their leader, a lieutenant, stood proud and rampant, jutting out of the tank at the front of the convoy. Sunlight glinted off the glass of his driving goggles.
Despite the monotony of what must have been an all-night journey up from their main base, the soldiers sat in rigid lines in the back of the half-tracks. Maddox ran his binoculars across their faces. They were clean shaven. The buttons of the uniforms glinted despite their matt, pebbled finish as they bounced up and down on the uneven road.
Fresh men.
Not jaded cynics – broken souls who’d been chewed up in the icy winters of this frozen war.
But the spit and polish wasn’t that of raw recruits; it was the burnished pride of professionalism. Veterans. Rested and tested.
“Shit,” Maddox muttered. “They don’t do things by half, do they?”
“What have we got?” Patterson asked.
“I count three Hanomags,” Maddox said. “Two with cannons.”
The Hanomag was the Heer’s vehicle of choice as an armoured troop carrier. Its proper name was the Sonderkraftfahrzeug 251 and it was designed to carry the Panzergrenadiers of the German mechanized infantry corps into battle. They were so popular that more than 15,000 had been made and so proficient that they were always in demand.
Sending three at such a crucial phase in the war was a strong indication of just how high a priority had been given to Nieder’s mining operation.
“It’s a feat,” Marlowe said. “But we’ve faced worse. With twelve men, we should be able to ambush them.”
“It gets worse,” Maddox said. “There are two trucks, presumably loaded with equipment. Plus, there’s an armoured car at the back of the convoy and a Panzer at the front.”
“What kind of a Panzer?” Walker asked.
It was a good question. One Maddox didn’t especially want to give the answer to. The Nazis were sending reinforcements to counter a Soviet armoured column and they were doing it in style.
“A Königstiger,” Maddox replied, lowering the binoculars.
Patterson’s face was white.
“We’re screwed,” the sergeant said. “A Tiger II has armour over 4 inches thick on the front. We’ve got nothing that can punch through that. The only weak spot is a small patch on the rear – and good luck getting close when it’s got so much cover from the half-tracks and troops inside them.”
“Yep,”
Walker agreed, rubbing his eyebrows. “That’s seven vehicles and a ridiculous amount of firepower. I don’t see how, even with us and the Finns working together, we can pull this off.”
“Bullshit,” Maddox replied. “We’ll just have to come up with a clever plan.”
“What do you have in mind?” Jouhki asked.
Maddox lifted the binoculars back to his eyes and scanned the narrow icy path between the conifers. Shifting back to the vehicles, he watched the lieutenant bend down and shout orders to the men below him, out of sight inside the Tiger II.
The lieutenant’s own binoculars were passed through. He brought them to his face.
“Everybody down,” Maddox said. “Jerry’s suspicious and taking a gander of his own.”
Maddox dropped to his chest.
The snow was cool but not freezing against his skin. It melted quickly, seeping into his uniform.
Jouhki, Walker and Patterson joined him.
“Do you think he saw us?” Jouhki asked.
“He’d have had to be monumentally lucky,” Walker replied. “We’ve five miles away, between the trees.”
“But we’re on a hill,” Maddox said. “Even if he didn’t consciously catch us, something in the back of his mind prompted him to start searching. We’ll need to be more cautious. This guy’s no fool.”
“What do you want to do?” Jouhki asked.
“I want to hit him as soon as possible,” Maddox replied.
“You have an idea?” Walker asked.
“Yes,” Maddox replied. “But it relies on Aku.”
“What do you need?” the Finn asked.
“I need to know exactly what supplies you took off the last convoy that passed through,” Maddox said. “Was there a PanzerFaust?”
The PanzerFaust – literally ‘Tank Fist” – was a cheap, single-shot disposable tube that contained an anti-tank warhead.
“There was,” Jouhki said. “We used it yesterday on the Russians. We only had one.”
“What else was there?” Maddox asked.
“What you’d expect,” Jouhki replied. “A lot of it wasn’t salvageable after the hit. We managed to carry away about a month’s worth of rations for my men, 10 boxes of ammunition – mostly 9mm rounds, three cartons of dynamite, shovels, medical supplies – bandages, mostly, fuel drums and pump oil for the mine generator, candles, some pots and pans, pick axes, flares, a spare radio, a few canvas tents and some other random tools.”