ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (37 page)

They were not party to the command-in-chief’s
intentions, and did not know the orders were dependant on events elsewhere in
the world, so they continued to tip toe in the dark so as not to alert the
enemy as to their presence.

The captain ordered the vessel up toward the surface,
so that the floating antennae to be streamed. It was a daily occurrence,
listening for the order to attack and at first there had been an air of
expectation whenever they had done this, but that however had palled with the
passage of time.

At 100 feet the vessel had levelled off and 1800
metres of antennae cable had been streamed, but unlike past occasions a bell
sounded in the control room this time to announce high priority incoming
traffic.

The captain and the executive officer wore solemn
expressions after reading the received signal, and accompanied the weapons
officer to his panel where they supervised the input of amended targeting data,
adding Davao and Melbourne to their existing strike package of Pearl Harbor,
San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Guam.

Aboard the USS
San Juan,
7500m
behind
,
they listened to the Chinese boomer reel in the
antennae and return to her patrol depth.

CHAPTER
6

Germany.

One mile to the rear of his forward companies, the
regimental commander of the Czech 23
^rd
MRR was feeling a whole lot more optimistic than he
had twelve hours before. It had been expected that his regiment would lose anywhere
from 20% to 60% of its strength in successfully attacking the British marines
in their current defensive positions. The combat between his unit and that of
the Britisher’s was also expected to be a long, drawn out affair, and it was
probably more to do with the time element than concern for the fighting men’s
welfare that had prompted the Russians to present him with the services of one
of their Spetznaz units. The
units
commander had not
looked the most terribly enthusiastic of warriors when he had been shown into
the regimental commanders presence, but they were apparently quite recently
returned from operations on the other side of the line and may have felt
entitled to some rest. Despite his mistrust of special operations he had to
take his hat off to the Spetznaz major and his handful of men, wearing the
clothing and equipment of freshly dead Royal Marines they had infiltrated the
Commando position in a captured vehicle and pinpointed high value targets for
the artillery. They had wrought havoc with the marine units command and control
before moving on, and without doubt saving the 23
^rd
MRR, men,
equipment, and above all time.

In the attack on the marines position he had so far
only committed two tank and three APC companies, he still had one complete
battalion and two more tank companies waiting in the wings. The first British
positions were already under his control, including a slightly wooded rise, the
control of which allowed them access to the marines left flank. An attack on
that rise should have prompted reinforcement and priority of fire the second it
looked to be in danger of being successful, but no increase in shellfire,
airstrike’s or fresh troops had been evident due to the destruction of the
chains of command. His men had killed the marines in their holes before
occupying the position, and he was now ready to roll forward along the marines
flank prior to making a sharp right and rolling up the entire position.

The snipers were ready to vacate the hide as soon as
the marines began to appear in the lane were it topped the crest ahead of them.
So far they had seen only the casevac party, but neither man doubted that it
could be too long before the Commando began to withdraw, with its forward
companies beginning a reverse leapfrog, giving ground but always with two
companies covering as the other pair moved. That was the way things were done,
and nobody had told them to expect anything else.

Stef saw movement on the crest first, two hundred
metres left of the lane where a handful of men, some plainly wounded, forced a
way through the hedgerow there, hacking at it with machetes to widen a gap and
then dragging the wounded through it. More men appeared, this time in the lane,
and then the men at the hedgerow were joined by two Scimitars of the Blue’s
& Royal's, reversing into view whilst firing three round bursts back the
way they had come. A pair of men each dragged a wounded marine towards the
Guards lines, leaving a gun group and three riflemen to fight a rear-guard
action alongside the light armour, which had now reversed over the hedgerow. It
was a short, one-sided defence and both Bill and Stef watched open mouthed as
the four marines and the wounded on the reverse slope were cut down by
automatic fire, coming not from the front, but from the sunken lane. What they
had assumed to be Royal Marines of 40 Commando withdrawing were in fact Soviet
dismounted infantry using the cover of the lane to get as close as possible to
the next line of defence.

“Why weren’t the trees dropped across the lane, I
thought they’d been wired to blow, Stef?”

“Fuck knows, mate!” Stef grabbed the field telephone
receiver once again, to warn the CP.

The troops in the lane switched their attention to the
tiny knot of resistance beside the hedgerow, but it was not until two of the
marines had been hit that the remainder realised that they had been flanked,
but from their position on the crest the tankers were able to look down the
slope and into the lane. A Scimitars turret traversed to the right and it
opened fire, its 30mm cannon creating carnage in the narrow confines of the
lane, which was now seething with Soviet infantry.

The response from the lane was sudden and swift, a
Sagger left a thin trail of dirty exhaust as it flew across the intervening
space to strike the light tank squarely on the rear of the engine compartment,
the Scimitar’s cannon immediately fell silent and the vehicle began to burn
without any of the crew bailing out.

The surviving marines used the smoke of the burning
armoured vehicle as cover to make for a ditch running down the opposite side of
the field to the lane, but the surviving Scimitar moved only to place its
burning cousin between itself and the lane, gaining some protection at least to
its exposed rear. Neither of the snipers could see what the lightly armoured
vehicle was engaging, but its commander clearly felt that whatever it was, it
was a more serious threat than even the enemy troops at his back. The Scimitar
continued to engage the enemy in the dead ground beyond the hedgerow, but
moments later it was struck by a main tank round and exploded in spectacular
fashion, only its tracks remained.

Its killer emerged into view from out of the dead
ground, the T-72s main gun moving from side to side as it searched for another
target. The marine gained the ditch but not quickly enough to avoid being seen
by the T-72s driver who altered course once the hedgerow had been negotiated,
placing the armoured vehicles right hand track into the ditch and accelerating.
Mud and grass, gauged out of the ditch's bottom flew into the air in the tanks
wake, but then Bill vomited as he saw the airborne detritus turn red. 

“It’s time to go!” Stef pulled the ends of the D10
cable from the field telephones terminals and stuffed the instrument inside his
Bergan beside the Swiftscope. More tanks were appearing on the crest and Bill
wiped his mouth on a sleeve before crawling backwards away from the firing loop.

“We need to get a rift on, or those bastards will be
using us to line their wheel arches too.”

The ‘door’ to the hide was removed by Stef who emerged
into the daylight before reaching back to haul out their Bergans, and once Bill
had joined him they kept low and began to follow a pre-planned route, although
indirect, that made use of the best available cover back to their lines.

Arnie Moore, assisted by the Padre, guided the Warrior
into a natural fold in the ground that gave the vehicle total cover from view
from the front, and yet by moving forward just ten feet it would be in a
hull-down position and able to engage. He had noticed this spot several days
before, it was too narrow to accommodate a Challenger II or the older
Chieftain’s that the attached tank squadron had, but from this spot a Warrior
could cover the steeply sided stream that separated this battalion from its
neighbour on the left. Both units had of course sited positions to cover the
possible chink in the proverbial armour, but Arnie could visualise those
positions being swamped before any reinforcement could take place.

On the whole he thought Pat Reed had worked marvels in
motivating tired men into achieving the level of defence that they had. It had
been the commanding officer whom had seen the potential of making men spend
time with picks and shovels on the slope between 3 Company’s platoon and the
company positions. The hillside on the right of the battalion line was steeper
than on the left, and with a lot of sweat and blisters the men had managed to
make it damn near impassable to all but tracked vehicles with very, very
skilled drivers. Anyone advancing beyond the bounds of 9 Platoon would find the
gradient suddenly becoming quite severe and the natural routes blocked by the
simple expedient of placing several pine trunks on their sides between two
trees; on the uphill side of course. The trees braced the stacked trunks, which
could not be easily bulldozed aside owing to earth that had been piled behind
and hard packed. Beyond these obstructions the drivers would discover where the
earth had come from, the troops had crudely quarried six to ten feet in depth
in a band along the side of the hill. It wasn’t much but it would probably mean
the infantry having to debus and hoof it uphill whilst the fighting vehicles
tried to find another way around.

It had been impractical to attempt the same over by 1
Company; the slope was too shallow so mines had been planted where they could
be the most use.   

With the Warrior in position there was nothing to do
but wait, and the RSM felt the need for a mug of good Java, but he’d have to
make do with British Army freeze dried coffee granules instead.

“Do you have time for a coffee, Padre?” Arnie
commented, but he did not receive a reply. The Padre was squinting off to one
side at a thicket a hundred or so metres away.

“Padre?”

“Sorry sarn’t major, I thought I saw a stretcher being
carried into some bushes.” The battalion aid station and casualty collection
point was in the opposite direction to the one the bearers he was sure he had
seen had been heading.

Arnie was unaware that any of the battalion had yet
been injured and said as much, but the Padre apparently was not so sure.

“It will only take me a moment to check, RSM.”

Arnie was going tell his loader to grab a first aid
kit and accompany the Padre, but he was already striding purposefully away and
Ptarmigan was carrying the news that 40 Commando had been overrun. Arnie
glanced after the retreating back before shrugging; he and his crew had more
urgent work to be getting on with, but he told his loader to keep an eye out
for the Padre from the commander’s position, and then got busy himself.

The Spetznaz major had spent an hour and a half
looking for a position such as the one he was now in, with line of sight to not
two, but three prime targets, a company CP, an ammunition resupply point, and
the enemy battalions principle command post.  This spot was also
sufficiently divorced from the enemy defensive positions as to be safe from all
but an unlucky round from his own side’s artillery, but they would not of
course tempt fate and his six remaining men were hacking at the ground with
entrenching tools. The only fly in the ointment was a nearby enemy fighting
vehicle that had since turned up, and although he and his men carried only
small arms and grenades, he had the means to make it disappear permanently if
it did not move on. All in all, the major considered that he and his men had
done quite enough for one war and the time was approaching for them to sit the
rest of this one out. After the next three targets were taken out their
communications gear was going to ‘malfunction’, and he had no intention of
putting his ass in harm’s way again. With continental Europe in Soviet hands
there would be a period of chaos, where an intelligent man with a touch of ruthlessness
could set himself up in business before the forces of law and order again
appeared. Food shortages would be the most obvious of the woes about to befall
the western Europeans, but the major had sufficient contacts in the army supply
services to ensure sufficient stocks. After all wars, food becomes a more
important currency than even gold, for a while at least.

Before ‘Civilisation’ was again fully restored; the
major intended to be Europe’s wealthiest. It was this dream he was focussing on
when he suddenly noticed a middle aged, and apparently unarmed British captain
had entered the thicket and was glaring at him and his men. Incongruously the
British officer did not appear to have a personal weapon with him, and he
wondered what kind of fool ventured out unarmed during a battle?

“Who is in charge here?”

The major allowed a surreptitious glance toward the
enemy APC before answering, and noted that its turret was still facing to the
front but a figure in its turret was looking towards this section of undergrowth
with a pair of binoculars. His men had paused in their digging, and two were
eyeing their weapons that lay close by, but by a barely noticeable shake of the
head he conveyed to them that they were to make no sudden moves. Under the
current circumstances, killing this man had to be an act of last resort.

“That would be me, sir.” The Russian officers accent
was pure East End of London, and the captain was unaware he was conversing with
the enemy, but he wasn’t done with the major and his men either. The slightly
portly captain was looking hard at him.

“And just who is
“Me,
sir”…
I don’t recognise you, Corporal?”

“Corporal Brown, sir.” The major let a hand slide
behind his back, where the fingers curled around the hilt of an ugly looking
fighting knife with a serrated blade that he wore on his belt. “This is what’s
left of my section; we are all that remains of 40 Commando, sir.” 

Although the Padre had the greatest respect for the
fighting qualities of the Royal Marines, there was something unsavoury, and
distinctly seedy about this individual.