ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (38 page)

“The only survivor’s Corporal, or just the fastest
runners?”

The major allowed the right amount of indignation to
show in his response.

“We
was
ordered out sir,
ordered to evacuate these wounded.” He nodded at the two stretchers, covered by
ground sheets so that just the boots of the occupants protruded.

“They died before we got here, so we’ll fight on with
your unit sir.” He gestured towards his men.

“That’s why we’re digging in…so we can give those bastards
some payback!” He saw a hint of uncertainty in the captain’s eyes.

“If we’d run sir, wouldn’t we just carry on going?”

The captain considered those words, and the Spetznaz
officer felt a sense of satisfaction when he saw the other nod in apology and
begin to turn away. His fingers relaxed their grip on the knife hilt, but then
the captain paused and asked who his officer was?

That the captain wanted a name was obvious, and for
all the Spetznaz officer knew this Britisher might well be on first name terms
with every damn officer in the Royal Marines, so he picked a name at random and
hoped his run of luck would carry him through.

The Padre had thought that he’d find some confused or
even shell shocked stretcher bearers stumbling around when he had first spotted
these men, but having got to them it had occurred to him they may have ‘done a
runner’ from their own unit once the going got tough. The marine corporal
however, was looking him straight in the eye as he stated their intention to
fight on beside his own unit, and the Padre regretted his earlier impression.
He was about to leave when it occurred to him that a mention in the regimental
diary might not go amiss at a later date.

“Who is your officer, corporal?”

“Second lieutenant Chartridge, sir…” The Padre knew
only two RM officers and both were colonels so the name of a ‘Subbie’ meant
nothing to him, but then the marine ended the sentence with, “…he’s our platoon
commander.”

The Russian knew that somehow he’d screwed up because
the British captain’s eyes narrowed.

“The marines don’t call their sub units
Platoons
corporal, they call them
Troop.”
With surprising agility he suddenly sprang across to
the stretchers and hauled off the ground sheet covering the nearest one.

“Good God above!
”

The British officer was transfixed by the sight of the
severed pair of legs and the laser designator lying upon the canvas instead of
a dead body, and the major leapt, aiming for the British captain’s throat but
missing it, slicing into the side of his neck instead. A look of shock came
across the captain’s face and he jumped backwards, a hand pressing against the
wound in an effort to stem the stream of arterial blood that was fountaining
from it. The major couldn’t let this man raise the alarm and went to grab him,
to stop him from getting into the open, but the stretcher tripped him. One of
the major’s men bounded after the mortally wounded captain who was still moving
backwards towards the edge of the thicket, his free arm extended towards his
attackers in an effort to ward off further injury.

The loader saw the Padre stumble backward into view
and then another figure appeared, swinging an entrenching tool with both hands.
The flailing arm failed to parry the blow aim at the neck, and the loader
shouted in alarm whilst reaching for the pintle mounted GPMG.

Alerted by the shout, the RSM raised his head above
the rim of the turret hatch in time to see the Padres headless body topple over
and his attacker dashing back into cover.

The Spetznaz major in the guise of a Royal Marine
corporal was no longer speaking in the tones of east London, he was cursing in
gutter Russian as he waited for someone on the other end of his radio to
acknowledge the fire mission he had just requested.

The first burst of fire from the Warrior did nothing
accept punctuate the fact that the jig was definitely up for the Spetznaz team.
Pieces of bark and an amputated branch fell to the muddy ground but the
Russians were all lying flat. The diggers pulled back on their equipment, lying
on their backs to struggle into the webbing before turning back onto their
stomachs. The major ceased his attempts to raise the gun line by radio, rolling
onto his side and pulling a smoke grenade from his pouch instead.

“Boys, when this goes off we all run like hell into
the trees uphill from here, the cannon on that fighting vehicle can’t elevate
above ten degree’s and it is only equipped with iron sights so they will be
firing blind.” He had been their officer for over four years and they trusted
him to get them out of this spot, he could see that trust in each man’s eyes
and it bothered him not one iota that he was lying to them now in order to save
his own skin.

“Keep the trees between you and that machine gun, and
keep on up to the top of the hill, we’ll RV there and I’ll lead the way through
a gap in the lines I noticed earlier…any questions?”

They could see the Warriors turret traversing as the
30mm cannon was brought to bear, and in the headlong flight triggered by the detonation
of the WP grenade, none of the runners noticed that the major was not with
them.

The dense smoke proved to be no obstacle to Rarden’s
thermal sight, and the two soldiers not brought down by the first cannon shells
were higher than the paltry ten degrees the major had told them of when the
second burst of 30mm caught them.

Arnie was not familiar with the Rarden cannon so he
relegated himself to the position of observer, and because he was not focused
solely on the fleeing shapes in the smoke he caught a movement out of the
corner of his eye.

The major had waited a few seconds until he was sure
his running men had the full attention of the NATO troops, before snaking away
on his belly in the opposite direction. He now needed to put some distance between
the action and himself, so it was a little frustrating when a webbing strap
became snagged on the lower branches of a sapling. The sinewy growth, barely
six feet in height, bent slightly and the tiny branches and leaves at its apex
dancing a wild jig under the influence of the majors efforts to free himself
before springing back into the fully upright position.

On the hillside, three still forms dressed as Royal
Marines lay in the mud whilst the other three thrashed and screamed, of these
one would make it whilst the other two would succumb to their wounds.

Arnie memorised the spot where he had seen the
agitation in the undergrowth before taking in the situation on the hill, the
wounded were calling out in Russian so it didn’t take a genius to work out what
the Padre had stumbled upon. The six who had broken from cover were out of the
fight, but there could be more of them.

“Gunner, cease fire…100 metres, half right, in the
thicket, watch and shoot.”

“
Rog’
”

“Driver, back up…stop, turn right…stop.” The Warrior
had pivoted about its axis and now the turret swung back until its 30mm faced
the same direction as the vehicle. “Driver, take us forward slowly.”

Arnie was relieved that the Padre’s head was
lying
face down when they reached the body, but he spared the
gruesome sight the merest of glances anyway. They passed the Padre, and the
Warrior nosed into the bushes and saplings that had provided cover for their
enemy. The weight of the armoured vehicle either crushed the undergrowth, or
the younger and suppler growth bent to the inevitable, only to emerge from
beneath the vehicles rear end and slowly straighten once more. 

In the scramble to buckle on webbing and gather up
their weapons, the contents of both stretchers had been bared to view by the
Spetznaz troopers and the Warriors driver deviated from course slightly in
order to crush the laser designators he could see upon them before
continuing.  

The major had paused momentarily on hearing the
British armoured fighting vehicles engine alter from its low idling murmur. It
rose in pitch as it approached and the major felt the first tinge of panic, and
his features took on a hunted expression as he looked about desperately for a
hiding place. He assumed that the commander of the vehicle would debus the infantry
section it was designed to carry before driving on down to the bottom of this
slope. The infantry, he thought, would then spread out in a line and like
beaters, and drive him on to the Warriors guns.

A short distance ahead was a thick, chest high bramble
patch some fifteen metres across with a tunnel-like badger run just visible and
he crawled rapidly towards it. The webbing was a hindrance and so he rolled
onto his side to unbuckle, and then shove it out of sight deep beneath the
brambles before easing his head and shoulders into the run. The barbs caught at
the material of his camouflage smock and trousers, pierced the palms of his
hands and left bloody scratches in his skin, but he forced his way on, ignoring
the pain and the barbs tore free. The run almost pierced the heart of the
bramble patch before curving around to the down slope side where the major
suddenly found himself staring at the entrance to the badgers set. It was an
old and well-established habitat that many generations of badger had occupied.
The creature that had first chosen this spot had found granite lay beneath the
earth but had persevered, tunnelling down at an angle, following a slab of the
rock for yards before it gave way to manageable earth, as such the rock formed
the floor of the tunnel and now bore the marks of its occupants claws, past and
present. Over the years the elements had played their part in eroding away at
the exposed entrance, the upper reaches however, were reinforced by the mesh of
roots of the overlying undergrowth and had therefore resisted better than the
bottom and sides, so it jutted above the entrance like a shelf. The Russian
majors feeling of panic gave way to one of relief when he took in the
dimensions of the excavation, and he wormed his way inside to where it tapered
down to the sets proper entrance, and four feet of deep shadow lay between
himself and the open.

Regimental Sergeant Major Moore had not dismounted his
handful of Guardsmen, he did not know what numbers or weaponry they faced,
except that they probably had no anti-armour kit or they would have used it
already. Arnie was at the ready with the Gimpy in the commander’s hatch from
where he had the advantage of height to observe, peering down into the brush,
seeking out his quarry with a finger applying first pressure to the weapons
trigger. He was getting queries over the air from the nearby platoons wanting
to know the reason for the gunfire, coming as it did from the ground lying
between the left hand depth and forward companies, so he gave a brief sitrep
followed by a terse

“Wait Out!”

The major smiled to himself in the darkness when he
heard the throb of the approaching engine and wiped at the sweat which had
beaded his forehead before resting his face against the cool granite he was laying
on. Only a diligent search by men on foot could have discovered this
hidey-hole, so he was safe for the time being and with luck the hunters would
assume he had slipped away and so abandon the search, so he could afford to
relax.         

The Warriors driver brought the fighting vehicle along
slowly, stopping whenever the RSM told him to but these stops were fleeting,
allowing Arnie only to satisfy himself that they had not overtaken their prey.
On one such pause however, the twenty-four tonne Warrior had settled, quite
suddenly to one side as the ground gave way beneath the left-hand track. Arnie
grabbed the side of the hatch to steady himself but after the initial list to
one side the vehicle now seemed stable. Looking over the side of the turret he
saw that some animal or other had apparently made its home beneath the bramble
patch their fighting vehicle had entered and the weight had collapsed its
tunnel. The Warrior obviously wasn’t going to tip over so he ordered the driver
to proceed and transferred his attention back to the job at hand.

The collapse had grounded the Warrior; the brambles
were crushed between its armoured belly and the earth. Its left track spun
around, churning at the soft earth until it was able to find solid traction,
but Arnie did not see the soft earth it churned at turn to a red paste speckled
with white bone fragments. The Warrior continued on down the slope until
reaching the line of field defences before the company in depth, but no sign
was there of any other infiltrator’s.

Soviet artillery was beginning to fall on the forward
companies now. Arnie reasoned that the movement he had seen was probably that
of a rabbit or a fox startled by the cannon fire, so he ended the hunt by
ordered the driver to take them back to the position covering the stream.

Pat Reed came off the air from a conference call with
the brigade commander and received a handful of messages from a signaller,
which updated him on several incidents taking place whilst the brigade
commander had held his attention. None of the items were awaiting a decision
from him or needed him to okay the appropriate action; they were being dealt
with already. The 155mm self-propelled SA90s of 40 Field Regiment were firing a
mission against the sunken lane, its rounds fused for airburst to best deal
with the enemy infantry there. A damaged Army Air Corps Gazelle carrying a
Royal Artillery officer had set down in a clearing behind the in-depth
companies, it had been spotting for the guns when a Fulcrum had come within a hair
of splashing it with a missile. It occurred to Pat that thus far they had
neither seen nor heard of any close air support by the Soviet’s against either
the Royal Marines or themselves today, so maybe SACEUR’s ‘forlorn hope’ had
paid off? More good news was that two of his best snipers, Stef and Bill, had
regained the battalion lines via 3 Company. Stephanski had ensured that the CP
knew the enemy infantry were not only fighting unhampered by the wearing of
respirators or gas masks, but also they were not even wearing their version of
NBC suits over their conventional combat attire. It was a fairly good
indicator, though not iron cast, that the enemy either had no stocks of
chemical weapons at hand anymore or they did not see the need to employ them.
This information was passed up to brigade as well as to the individual units
and sub units in 1CG’s area of responsibility. Pat also received his snipers
brief account of the final moments of 40 Commando, relayed to him by another
signaller.