by Andy Farman
“Leave it to the Sappers!” one of the combat engineers shouted and with a gesture to his mate they left the gun pit and sprinted toward the unattended LAW80s. They paused to peer carefully down the street from cover before dashing into the road.
12.7mm rounds tore both men apart before they had reached the far side and they lay unmoving on the wet road.
We are terminally screwed now! Was Baz’s first though. They were caught between two fires and with nothing to fight back with.
The lead tank on the towpath just began to appear when it was hit again by the team across the river. The round had hit at an angle and had probably been aimed at its engine compartment but missed. The chance of penetrating the armour is greatest if the round hits square on, and all that this one did was distract and annoy, but both tanks stopped and swivelled their turrets to aim their main guns back over their engine decks.
Baz made an instant decision to save the last two sections of 15 Platoon and join the defenders of the autobahn bridge.
“Grab the gun and tripod” he told the gun crew before shouting to the occupants of the other trenches. “2 and 3 Sections grab your weapons, collect a box of link each for the gun and follow me!”
With the gimpy being returned to the light role by the gun crew he ran across the towpath and onto the damaged road bridge, stopping to urge the men on and waiting until the last man had run past before following them.
Their Bergans had been abandoned but a British infantryman fights out of his webbing and survivors out of his smock. Each man now had an ammunition box for the GPMG and his own weapon. Not a lot to be going on with but at least when the infantry arrived they would be equipped to see them off, hopefully. First of all though, they had to negotiate this damaged bridge.
Fat Fräuliens, Baz thought, remembering the now dead sapper’s words, exactly how fat and how much shopping would need to be in that trolley to finish the job the demolition charges had started, a week’s worth or just fairy cake comfort food for the evening?
The Soviet tanks were still firing back across the canal when Baz reached the damaged tarmac that marked the halfway mark across the canal. The bloody thing was bouncing beneath their feet like a mattress.
In front of him the GPMG gunner was flagging. Pte ‘Juanita’ Thomas was one of the older members of the platoon, into his thirties and could no longer sprint like a spring chicken. Baz drew alongside him and gestured to share the load. With the gunner gripping the barrel and Baz holding the butt they ran side by side, opening their legs and gaining on the remainder.
The bridge trembled as a T-90 pivoted through 90° on the on-ramp behind them. Baz could hear both his breath and the gunners coming in gasps, and the blood pounded in his ears. Any second now it would cut them down with its machine guns.
The tank did not open fire on them, its commander had been scared, and was now more than a little angry because of that. These damned English had hit his tank twice with anti-tank weapons and he had wet himself. He wanted payback.
“Run them down!” he ordered his driver.
Tubular metal bollards and a horizontal barrier barred the way to anything larger than a medium sized SUV, although clearly the trains that had once used the bridge had far exceeding their gross weight. It was just wide enough for the heavy goods vehicles that had taken over from the trains as the form of freight transport serving the barge port.
The barrel of the main gun buckled the height barrier, and a weld in the vertical support gave out. Next, the treads pressed against the bollards, the front of the T-90 rising up briefly before the bollards concertinaed.
It was a tight fit but the driver knew his business and holding he floored the tanks accelerator but having travelled only a dozen feet the bridge seemed to snap in the middle, plunging the vehicle into the canals depths.
Both Baz and the gunner fell as the bridge gave way, but unlike the eastern half of the bridge, this end was at an angle of about 30° and they scrambled the rest of the way to the bank and from there into cover with what remained of the platoon.
The anti-tank team joined them, both men a little worse for wear after twice having to crawl for their lives as tank guns blew away their concealment.
“Phew.” Someone said as the 94mm team arrived with their remaining LAW80. “Who shit himself then?” There was a very noticeable scent hanging around the pair like a cloud.
“No one has” growled one. “We’ve been crawling about on this bloody towpath trying to save your arses, is what we’ve been doing, but half of bleedin’ Germany must walk their dogs along here!”
Baz allowed himself to grin at the banter for a moment and then took a look back across the canal.
Four enemy tanks now occupied the ground 15 Platoon had held, apparently unwilling to climb the embankments onto either of the autobahns without infantry support. Even the LAW80s would have no trouble achieving a kill through the area with the thinnest armour on a tank, its belly.
They hadn’t exactly excelled themselves as tank killers and now the Soviets had free rein of the opposite bank and access to the demolition charges beneath the autobahn bridge, but there was nothing else he could have done, was there? He did not know what had happened to 1 Section or the sappers who had been with them either. There was no reply on the radio.
Calling up 13 and 14 Platoon he gave them a sitrep before turning his attention back to the dozen surviving members of 15 Platoon that he knew of.
The new boys were all a bit wide eyed with shock after their sudden introduction to the realities of warfare but the old sweats were looking calm even if they weren’t really, and that was proving positive with the new guys. Nev Kennington, the smelly LAW gunner who had twice hit the tanks, was getting ribbed but taking it in good humour, he was just glad to still be alive.
“Okay let move off, across this field and keep the hedgerow between us and them.” Baz instructed.
They all started to collect themselves and their weapons.
“Nev?”
“Yes, Corporal?”
“You take Pointer…I mean ‘Point’.” He added quickly.
“Piss off.” Nev answered but shuffled forward, his last remaining LAW80 over his back and his SLR at the ready.
“Yeah, Lead off Nev” someone said.
“We’ll Dog your steps” another voice added.
The new guys were joining in now; soldier-humour was proving a tonic.
“Leave him alone, he’s had a woof night.”
“Yeah, less Stick.”
“I want a transfer.” Nev grumbled and stepped off into the rainy night.
Borisovskiya forest: 230 miles SSE of St Petersburg, Russia.
It had been an eventful day for the current head of the KGB, not all of it good, but it had certainly been profitable financially and there remained the task of securing a power base for her next step.
To the rest of the organisation, the General Staff and even the Premier, Elena Torneski was nothing more than the Premier’s ‘Yes Bitch’ and one with a timidity where violence was concerned, something of a source of amusement for them.
As she had stood with her uniformed aides beside the mine elevator awaiting their ride to Saratov West she had made several calls, the first being to a radio station but the last call had not been answered.
Major Oleg Kamavor and his three companions had sat in the rear of the Hind-D and watched Elena’s temper build from the moment they had entered the aircraft at the bunker site. They had been with her for several years, ever since she had emerged from the pack as a possible contender for executive level in the KGB. Her sponsorship had raised them from dirty work as mud bespattered Spetznaz troopers on the battlefield in Chechnya, to dirty work in suits wherever she had sent them. Their boss was a good looking woman to look at, and but for her sadistic streak, vengeful nature and contempt for men as a whole he would have found her very attractive. His boss did not take rejection well and it was therefore necessary to keep their distance from the young wo
men she took as her significant others, all of them remarkably similar in looks to the girl they had been meant to subject to rape punishment in the dacha. Transgressions by these bed partners, such as running away, were punished by Oleg and his men and it was therefore a benefit not to have formed a liking for any of them.
Torneski herself dealt with unfaithful lovers, or if they were beyond her physical reach then someone would deal with them in the precise way that she did, following her instructions to the letter.
The Antonov 72 which had lifted off from Saratov West at the premier’s instruction was initially cleared westbound to the KGB-run nuclear weapon storage facility north of Kursk, where Torneski was to authorise the release of two battlefield weapons and personally supervise their transfer to the control of the front commander, General Borodovsky, for immediate use.
Ten minutes into the flight, Torneski ordered the pilots to divert to Rossiya Moskva where a Politburo Kamov KA-60 had taken them to a helipad ten minutes’ drive from her dacha. Her driver, another of her sponsored talent, had collected them in her Zil.
“Now there’s going to be fireworks” whispered one of his men as they’d drawn up outside.
Katriona, her latest squeeze, had not answered any of the calls on the government network cell phone Elena had given her, nor the landline at the townhouse she shared with Torneski. It could have been that the girl had left Moscow for safety reasons as the capital was a big and obvious target for a nuclear strike by the West, should things go that way, but the car owned by Katriona was sat outside the dacha, and so was another that no one recognised.
“Stay here, but wait for my call.” Elena had ordered sternly.
Ten minutes later the call had come and they had trooped upstairs to the same room they had waited in days before. Elena was in the basement emptying her safe of documents, cash and the means to access her secret funds, but her shoes were outside the door where she had left them.
The mattress was still where it had been that night but there were two naked bodies upon it now, green eyed, chestnut haired young Katriona had been astride her secret male lover, confident in the belief that Elena would be away until after the war was won. She had been very new, the tattoo all the boss’s girls wore was not complete, just an outline of a dogs paw on that buttock which had looked so good in tight jeans. She had not heard the door open or Elena in her stocking feet walk up behind her.
“Christ, look at the blood.” one of his men had said disgustedly. “This isn’t the first time she’s offed one of her sluts this way…can’t you sell her on strangulation, lethal injection or anything else that’s easier to clean up sir?”
Oleg had sighed wearily and knelt to retrieve a single empty brass .45 casing that sat upon the varnished pine floor. No it was not the first time, but it seemed to be the favourite method by which Torneski destroyed pretty things she had no further use for, at the same time denying anyone else the pleasure of gazing into the girls beautiful faces. Katriona had been shot in the back of the head, and the heavy round had exited through her face to enter her lover’s forehead.
“Just shut up before she hears you, and fetch a mop and bucket.”
An air defence alert had delayed their return to Rossiya Moskva airport by the same means but they had then flown to the Deputy Premiers bunker in the forest north of Borisovskiya.
Arten Strombolovich was the perfect deputy leader, loyal but less able than the Premier, and lacking the imagination that was required to be ambitious.
Pale faced and shaken at having just received confirmation of the destruction of the Premiers bunker, he had at first voiced surprise at her presence which had only slowly turned to suspicion.
The bunker’s guards, and the Deputy’s bodyguard, were all her people, so once his family had been dragged from their beds and had guns at their heads he had abdicated the Premiership in her favour. New heads of the armed forces were quickly on the job and the Front Commander had been arrested and replaced.
Ariete Task Force
Autobahn 2
The 155mm PzH 2000s relocated their gun line to the top of the hill fort but the Ariete tanks were on the move west before their arrival.
So far luck had been with them, despite losing five infantry fighting vehicles and their compliments in the ambush at the cutting. That was Lorenzo’s opinion anyway.
Two of his tanks had been damaged but not seriously enough to warrant immediate repair, and they had destroyed five enemy tanks plus another five IFVs. What concerned him though were the American company commander’s sightings of vehicles on the forest firebreaks heading west. This was not something Pierre Allain had expected, an attempt to seize two of the vital junctions, and not just the one.
A quick radio conference with the English at the next junction had confirmed an attack by enemy tanks was ongoing,
although the Soviet armour was standing off and softening up the defenders, as it waited for the infantry that had escaped his own tanks.
Were there just four or five Soviet MBTs remaining, or was there another tank company out there?
His cavalry regiment’s recce vehicles were again leading the way, but more cautiously now. Two were three hundred metres apart in the forest to the north of Autobahn 2, trying to locate which route the enemy had taken. A second pair was doing the same thing to the south. The remaining Lince was driving in a zig-zag fashion along the autobahn so as to hard-target for enemy tank and Sagger gunners.
“Six, this is Echo Two Five, over?”
Lorenzo was up in the hatch of his damaged Ariete, again getting wet despite his best intentions.
“Six, send over?”
“Echo Two Five, we’ve been following the firebreak the IFVs took when they bugged out, the track marks are easy to follow, and then they are joined by more at a firebreak intersection.” The grid reference was added.
“Six, How many, and can you tell if they were tanks or IFV’s?”
“Echo Two Five, no way of telling what made them, but I reckon a squadron’s worth, the ground here is pretty chewed up.”
It went along with had been deduced regarding the numbers involved in the earlier breach between 3 Para and 1 Wessex’s positions.
Apparently the Soviets had got it wrong too, and had expected a NATO reaction from the north, not the east, and had committed a company against each of the junctions while having at least another company in a blocking position to the north straddling the valley road from Lehre and the Vormundberg beyond.
Consulting his map, Lt Col Rapagnetta saw the thick pine forests on the valley slopes either side of a road bordered by fields with stone walls typical of this area. A good spot for a tank company to halt a much superior force, probably from ambush. Fortunately Lorenzo had chosen the less tactical but speedier approach or they could have driven straight into that.
If he were the Soviet commander he would have relocated when the attack on TP33 failed, but would he merely reinforce the tank company attacking the junction at TP32 to ensure success quickly, or would he be covering the eastern approaches too?
Lorenzo ordered the tanks to halt briefly upon the autobahn while he carried out a hasty reorganisation, combining the tanks of the units into two groups, a full squadron and a troop of three.
To the south the Americans single remaining M1 was leading the cavalry regiment Pumas through Bieinrode and into Brunswick from that direction. His aim there was to initially demonstrate to the east, drawing out the enemy in that direction thereby allowing the infantry to reinforce the junction by swinging up from the south. The 5th Cavalry Regiment’s infantrymen had the Israeli Spike ATGW man-pack system which the English were in dire need of at TP32.
With the reorganisation complete he led the squadron of ten into the forest and onto a parallel firebreak to the much used one and headed west with the Lince vehicle on point.
Russia
Had this been a Hollywood movie then there would somehow have been a rear-view mirror that would have been present
in the cockpit to capture the back view, the awful light in their wake as they flew north. Major Caroline Nunro and Captain Patricia Dudley, USAF, were combat aircrew veterans so killing was not something new to them. It was sanitised in comparison to what an infantryman experiences and it was easy not to dwell on an aircraft they had ‘splashed’ having contained at least one other human being, with family and loved ones who would grieve. The ground target that they ‘neutralised’ may contain dozens, but they never saw them, just the explosion, a successful strike.
Tonight they had seen nothing more than the light of several suns through the filtered screens, and felt some of the ground effects, a fraction of what an air or surface burst would have had. But they flew in silence, in a kind of shock, knowing that nothing about themselves would ever be the same again, and no one who knew what they had done would look at them in quite the same way either.
Moscow was still on high alert of course and a fuel costly detour brought them to thirty miles out from the forest airstrip.
Patricia broke communications silence, using relaxed VP on the heavily encrypted channel.
“Surf Club receiving Petticoat Express on Secure Eight, over?”
Silence followed.
“Surf Club receiving Petticoat Express on Secure Eight, report my signal, over?”
There was still silence.
“This doesn’t seem good.” Caroline commented. “Do you think they already hightailed it out of there?”
“No way of telling.”
“If they have gone then we have an hour’s fuel at best before we hit the silk and hike the last thousand miles to friendly lines.”