by James Rouch
Even when the civilians no longer served any purpose, when his troops had burst clean through and were swinging south to roll down behind the NATO defences those headless sheep would be swarming through the countryside, blocking roads and rapidly becoming a logistical nightmare for NATO, with their demands for food, shelter and medical supplies.
In anticipation he put a gnarled finger on to one of the markers and nudged it forward an almost imperceptible distance.
For the next few hours he would not leave the map. All he needed was that and his telephone. It sat on the desk, the only white one among the several black handsets. In the next few hours it was not jut the success of the assault that would hang in the balance; his future, even his very life depended on this brief passage of time.
The gamble he was taking was colossal. He had siphoned off troops to form the attack division. Concealed them, trained them, equipped them. All they lacked was gunships and main battle tanks though he had obtained fifteen heavy tracked assault guns. Keeping them moving with their gargantuan thirst for fuel was a commanders nightmare but the quantities of light weapons his division had required and the ammunition, that had been easy to obtain. The quantities of such things in the Zone were vast, so great that no one really tried to keep a tally any more. Even the Soviet High Command, so meticulous about controlling every aspect of every function of its armies would take months to discover the materials that had been redirected, the infantry Division that existed on no Kremlin order of battle. Even the fleet of armoured personnel carriers and scout cars had been produced from nothing, battlefield salvage, vehicles that had been declared write- offs. He had them put through his own improvised workshops, even produced some new ones in an automobile plant they had over-run months before. He had reported it to Moscow as being beyond hope of being made suitable for vehicle production ever gain. Smaller factories, employing impressed East and West German workers and many Czechs and Poles had been turned over to production of essential bridging equipment and radio jamming sets to be mounted on trucks. And what he saw as one of his most successful diversions of supplies, the conversion of seventy new GAZ six wheel trucks to carry 210mm Katusha rocket launchers, plus sufficient reload rounds to last through a prodigious expenditure of ammunition during the opening stages of the battle.
And all this done secretly. The staff work alone had been a masterpiece of subterfuge, involving the setting up of a shadow HQ well away from this one. And all drawn from ex-staff officers he had combed out of the punishment battalions. At least forty senior staff officers had been found in the ranks of those outfits, and with them all the clerks, mapmakers and Intelligence staff he could want.
The secrecy so essential to his plan had been guaranteed by using those men. He had made their lives better, guaranteed they would indeed live longer than they would in the ranks of the penal battalions. An offer none had been able to refuse.
And the closest anyone had got to spoiling all that had been the dolt Pritkov, stumbling across a piece of paper that should not have even been here, let alone where he could find it. Too late for him to do any harm now though, Zucharnins’ men and their captive shield were on the march. By the end of the day he would have achieved the breakthrough that the High Command had been so eager to see but were too stupid to manage them selves.
Time after time they had forced him, usually before he was ready, to throw his division against the NATO defences of the cities. And that with second rate, reserve and untrained infantry, mostly with minimal armoured support. Such attacks went against the doctrines that had made the Russian army so successful in the Second World War. Cities swallowed army’s, diluted any assault until instead of progressing many kilometres every day a full strength division of fourteen thousand men would regard another couple of streets captured as good progress in the same twenty-four hours.
He wished he could be with that first assault wave. He could picture it. The sky torn by sheets of flame as the rocket salvos roared overhead. The dashing scout cars hurling forward to unleash their anti-tank rockets against NATO tanks and bunkers and the battle taxis exploiting every hole in the defences, dropping their troops to tackle difficult objectives. And at the heart of the attack the giant 152 and 210mm tracked assault guns blasting any strong-points.
Best of all, his infantry moving forward, propelling the lines of refugees before them and all that with virtually no fire being returned, the NATO forces falling back, abandoning everything, unable to retaliate for fear of slaughtering the ranks of the civilians.
For them it would be a death march. To keep them going the Russian troops would show no mercy.
* * *
The infantry and the accompanying refugees had traversed only a third of the way to the NATO line and already there was the crackle of gunfire as mopping up parties shot those who couldn’t, or wouldn’t keep up. Many of the people were wearing shoes never intended to be more than fashion accessories. As their footwear disintegrated so they began to hobble and finally to collapse with the pain inflicted by thorns and stones. The quick-witted tore off an item of clothing and wrapped strips around their bleeding soles. More slumped down, sat and waited as the sound of gunfire came nearer.
Old people suffered first, and the most. Unable to keep up they gradually fell back through the marching ranks until they were caught and killed by the military police units.
Linda carried one child on her back, dragged another two by their hands or their clothes, what ever it took to keep them moving and ahead of the trailing killers. She had risked falling back through the first twenty or thirty ranks from their original position near the front. Now they were in the midst of the Russian soldiers and she worked hard to ensure they lost no more ground.
Many of the civilians had not benefited from the tons of food delivered the previous day. A huge quantity, it had still not gone far among the mass of refugees. The younger men, the thugs, crooks and black marketers had grabbed a disproportionate amount, taking whole cases of canned goods that would have fed several families. The absence of drinking water had been worse. The cans of lemonade and other gassy drinks had only served to make people thirstier and now dehydration was making many ill and the numbers increased rapidly.
She had to drag the children aside as a squadron of armoured personnel carriers surged through the ranks close by. Their thrashing tracks caught several whose lack of hearing or inattention gave them no warning. It was a terrible sight as bodies were first thrown down and then lifted and smeared against the armour by the thrashing tracks.
Most sprouted weapons, from ports down their sides, from squat turrets with stubby guns surmounted by missiles and with heavy anti-aircraft machine guns on the turret tops. In many cases Russian infantry had boarded their hulls and now clung to any projection as they rode in to battle. Frequently they cheered as they saw the remains of run-down victims sprayed out behind them.
The whole was a scene from hell and Linda knew it was going to get worse, far worse.
* * *
Admiring himself in the gilded cheval mirror he’d recently had installed in his office Lieutenant General Grigori looked at himself He turned first left and then right, admiring the new uniform. How he longed to have the new insignia sewn on. He knew he would be able to do so soon enough, but in the meantime he had to cultivate patience, still more patience. It was only a matter of time before General Zucharnin would do something to put himself in serious disfavour with the Kremlin and then he would get his step up to command the front, his long deserved promotion.
Captain Pritkov was announced by his clerk and Gregori grunted, indicating for him to enter. This was annoying, the boy seemed to be forever running to him with valueless snippets of gossip. Usually he had already heard them from elsewhere anyway, but it didn’t do to discourage him. Who was to know when he just might come up with something really useful?
“General Grigori. There is something I think you should know.”
“Calm down, get your breath first.�
�� Good God, the fool had been running. By so flagrantly drawing attention was he trying to get a fresh line of gossip going? One that would not be to his advantage. “So what is so urgent.”
“This.” With a trembling hand Pritkov held out a sheaf of crumpled type written papers.
With an experienced eye Gregori flicked through the sheets and offered them back.” What of it. It’s a summary of recent supplies to some units, likely an infantry division”
“It don’t exist.” Pritkov could not keep the excitement out of his voice. “This information came by mistake to Head Quarters. It should have gone to HQ in the Bayreuth district.”
“Don’t be silly. All we have up there are some worn out infantry battalions undergoing training and being bought up to strength. They don’t even have an HQ of their own, they are run from here. If they were run as in independent command it could be done with one staff officer and a couple of sober clerks. If you could find them.” Grigori smiled, pleased with his little joke. “You think some one is opening a large black market cash and carry?”
“But there are is fact a reinforced division there. A yet I can find no information about it, they have no designation but they are there. And I have heard they are launching an assault on Bayreuth. In the morning, at dawn.”
“Rubbish.” Grigori called for a map and snatched it out of his clerks grasp, spreading it across an elegant marble topped table pushed against the wall in a corner of the room. “Damn it, I’m his second in command.” Grigori lowered his voice, almost whispering to himself. “It would not be possible to form and equip and then launch in to battle a whole division without my knowing. No, quite impossible.”
His forefinger tapped up and down on the map. “Anyway, what point would there be? There is one American supply depot in Bayreuth, but nothing else of interest. The border with Warsaw Central Command is only a few kilometres north so there would be no advantage in going that way and to the west its just farmland and forests. They charge into that and a dozen division would just disappear.”
“There is this as well.” Pritkov withdrew a single sheet of good quality paper from his pocket and handed it over.
“Now you want me to keep an eye on the Red Cross as well?” Gregori noticed the letter heading and its distinctive emblem. He read the five lines of the letter. It was often enough that they got this sort of thing from aid organisations. “A request for information. So what.”
“If you will read it again, the numbers involved, and the location.” Pritkov was almost hopping up and down with frustration as he waited for the general to unfold the letter again and go through it once more.
“…In the area of Bayreuth. A new refugee camp. A rumoured twenty thousand. Twenty thousand! That would be the biggest camp in the whole of the Zone!” Grigori spun around to the map again. He still had the letter in his hand but now he had unthinkingly crushed it into a ball.
“A mysterious division with armour and artillery bolted on to it…. twenty thousand refugees. Zucharnin has always favoured human wave tactics. He has used civilians to clear minefields by marching across them before now. Perhaps he intends to do something like that again, but the figure of twenty thousand, if it is correct, that has to be wrong. A few hundred to tramp over minefields would do any job adequately. But where, where would he…” realisation struck Gregori. “Shit, he’s going to use them to get his division through the NATO lines and wheel them south west to get behind Nurnberg and so threaten Regensberg from the rear as well”.
“I was right to come to you then?”
“Yes, quite right. This is valuable information. I shall not forget this.” With eyes only for the map Lieutenant General Gregori made a vague dismissive wave at the Staff Captain.
“Where to start!” Gregori’s brain clicked in to cold calculating mode. If even half what he suspected was true then at last he had Zucharnin where he wanted him. He made a fist and closed it so tight his stubby nails drew blood from his palm. Step one would be confirm the existence of the ghost division that his commander had formed. Then find out about the refugees and at the same time try and get confirmation that an assault was soon to be launched. He had to find out if he had surmised the object of the attack correctly. It had to be done quickly.
He wrenched open the door and bellowed for a pad and pencil. On successive pages he wrote brief notes, writing so fast and hard that he gouged the paper. Each one he ripped off, shoved in to the hands of a clerk and told him what staff officer he wanted to deal with the matter. That done he retreated back in to his office. So Pritkov had come up with the goods. Rather late in the day but it still gave Gregori a few hours advantage over any one else. Although the only other people that mattered were the oily politicians in Moscow and in particular the Army Committee in the Kremlin. It was how he presented all this to them on which everything hinged.
As he waited for the first pieces of the information to flow back to him he forced himself to be calm. He sat in his swivel chair and made it turn gently from side to side while he leant back with his hands behind his head. At the end of each turn to the right he again saw himself in the mirror. The new uniform looked good. It was going to look even better with the new badges of rank on the collar and cuffs.
* * *
The Iron Cow was being driven fast and being used as a weapon in itself. Twice Burke drove in to the centre of Russian artillery positions, scattering sandbags, equipment, stacks of ready use ammunition and gun crews in wild confusion.
The Russian reserve lines were only thinly held and the vehicle that launched itself at them from behind caught them all by surprise. With the cannon blasted away at point blank targets and machine gun fire hosing from the gun ports it charged in succession through a small field headquarters, a radar directed anti- aircraft site and a mortar battery. Only once in that first rush was a single shot got off against them. That was a shell from a dug-in anti-tank gun. Aimed at their rear after the vehicle had raced past, the shot from the towed 100mm gun ricocheted off the ground beside them and whirled high into the sky.
Snaking lines of trenches presented no obstacle but twice they encountered deep anti-tank ditches and had to run along parallel to them for some distance before finding crossing points. In both cases they were temporary wooden structures, very likely rigged for instant destruction but there was no one manning their defences. It was unlikely that any Russian would in any event have taken it on himself to destroy the structures in their path.
“I estimate these defence lines will be about three kilometres deep. The next one, the reserve line, will be the one most likely to be manned.”
“I think we’re coming up on it now major.” Burke sent the hovercraft through a long skidding turn to avoid a battery of field guns and charged through their vehicle park, the hovercrafts blaze of weapons setting several vehicles on fire and mowing down at least ten men as they dived for inadequate cover.
In keeping with usual Russian practise the guns were set out almost wheel-to- wheel and gun crews raced for them. They would be too late. By the time the heavy calibre weapons were loaded and aimed the Iron Cow would be out of sight. And it was, but only to run into other trouble.
Twice they took hits from small calibre automatic weapons, 7.92 and 12.7mm machine guns. The thick aluminium hull was proof against them but still they made a frightening hail of noise on the armour. The larger rounds in particular smacking the metal viciously hard, two of them boring into the thick ride skirt panels but just failing to penetrate.
They tore in to the reserve line at close to the machines maximum speed, using a short stretch of road unobstructed by craters or gun pits. A command car tried to drive out of their way and was clipped hard. Both its rear tyres punctured noisily as they were scrubbed sideways and then it was left rocking wildly, throwing out all loose equipment and its driver.
From the turret Libby sent cannon shells in to any potential opposition. A dug in T84 began to traverse its gun towards them, the commander, half out o
f the top hatch urging the gunner on by slapping the sides of the turret. As he realised the gun could not be brought to bear fast enough he reached for the roof mounted heavy machine gun.
Cannon shells from the racing APC splashed sparks and molten metal from the massive dome of cast steel that was all that was visible of the Russian tank. The machine gun was ripped away and one high explosive round striking the hatch in front of the commander snapped it back to crush his chest.
At the rear gun port Andrea unleashed a pyrotechnic stream of tracer and armour piercing bullets into a pair of radio trucks that stood close together, joined to each other and a tall mast by a mass of cable. The trucks soaked up the fusillade without apparent ill effect until a figure stumbled from a rear door, clutching his stomach.
Events were nowbeyond Major Revells’ control. Their driver had the skill; all he needed was the luck, to clear the succession of obstacles. Another anti-tank ditch looked to be a problem for them but it was an old one, had not been maintained and the sides had begun to cave in. Juggling the ride height and speed Burke was able to slide sideways in to the bottom of it and then at maximum power send them leaping up a rough slope of tumbled of soil on the far side and back on to the level.
Single shots and light machine gun fire were starting to make a continual patter on their flanks, creating a different sound when they hit the steel turret, aluminium hull or Kevlar ride skirts. A single round found a weakness in a joint and its super- hard tip made a pimple on the interior wall where it came that close to penetrating. Twice grenades detonated against the top of the hull, coating some of the vision blocks with speckles of carbon and filling the interior with the stench of cordite and burning paint.
“We’re through. Just the front outposts now.” Burke saw that the zig-zagging communication trenches were running away from their path, not across it. They were the ones that would enable reinforcements to get to the front line without showing themselves. Now thought the defences were fully alerted and a continual hail of small arms fire hosed across the Iron Cow from every direction. A cannon shell bounced off the turret side, another produced a loud grinding sound as it wrenched away a bank of decoy launchers and they swung back and forth on the armour, still attached by a single distorted fixing and a length of cable.