Crescendo Of Doom (7 page)

We must get to that airfield, he knew. That is where those fighters must have come from, and that must be my principle objective here. I am told the 7th Machinegun Battalion is coming from Aleppo. When will they arrive? Don’t count on them doing your work for you, he chided himself. The airfield is north of the river, and the main road to Aleppo is to the south of that barrier. The 7th will have to take one of the two bridges if they want to get into the town, so all the real objectives of worth beyond that are mine for the moment.

Time to get busy.

Chapter 6

Troyak
saw the Germans coming on his night vision goggles. He was noting the movement of the men carefully, seeing them deploy, luminous green shapes in the eerie dark. A recon team and three squads in waiting, he noted. He gave a quiet hand signal to his fire team, just five men here on the high knob of Hill 272, and another five under Zykov on Hill 264 to the northwest. Neither team was adequate to the task it had been given, but at least he had men on both hills, which was better than yielding one to the enemy without a fight.

Yet when he saw the forces deploying below, he knew his five man team was going to be easily flanked. They simply could not cover all angles and approaches to the hilltop, so he immediately called for Chenko to bring up his team from the airfield and cover the ground between the two knobs.

His own grim prediction was soon to be proven true. The Germans moved in Altmann’s platoon, along with all the men in Reinhardt’s Schwere platoon, which had assembled to support this attack. Troyak could see them moving, and settling into depressions in the ground below, and he instinctively knew what he was looking at. They were selecting good firing positions for any heavy weapons they might have, and once he had allowed the enemy to settle on ground of its choosing, he called Popski at the airfield.

“We’ll be under attack soon,” he said. “They’ll probe my position first, and pay for that, but they’ll follow with mortar fire soon after. I’ll send you a grid position for our mortar team. Are the helicopters ready?”

They were.

Two of the three X-3s were revving up again to provide fire support that Troyak believed would be the decisive edge here. The third X-3 had departed south to reconnoiter the German advance, and pick up more fuel from their operating base. They would use only half as much as they could carry by making the flight down and back to the T3 Pump station, and so for the moment their airborne fire support was limited, though even one X-3 was a formidable addition to his firepower here.

On Troyak’s order the Podnos 82mm mortars opened the game, the first rounds whining in to fall on the German positions below. He could see the men reacting as they should, going to ground, yet still advancing under any cover they could find. They know enough not to get stuck under that fire, he thought. These are well trained men, and they’ll outnumber us three to one or better for this first engagement. No matter. We have the firepower to stop them here.

His confidence was not unwarranted. Just as the enemy began to answer with their own 5cm and 8.1cm mortars, the first of the X-3s was up and over their position, quickly finding the enemy mortar teams and moving to attack. The hiss of the rocket pods soon followed, and would be a hard shock to the Germans when the missiles hit home.

The Hydra 70 had an old pedigree, developed from plans laid down for a distant cousin in the late 1940s after the war. The Mark 40 was a fin folding unguided aerial rocket made by the U. S. Navy, serving in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the newer Hydra 70 had the same simple design. The Navy was now deploying a guided version using lasers, but the X-3s had the older rockets, all unguided, but with a good 8 kilometer strike range. They had two seven tube pods mounted that day, which could use single or ripple fire to engage targets. Unguided or not, the optics on the X-3 were going to get the missiles where Lieutenant Ryan and his sidekick Tom Wicks wanted them, and that was right on the three 81mm mortar positions in Reinhardt’s Schwere platoon. They put three missiles on each position, getting all three mortars and then angling to look for other targets of opportunity.

“Good shooting Tommy!” said Ryan when he saw the results.

“Always aim to please,” said Wicks in return. “What’s that yonder at about three-o-clock?”

Ryan pivoted his X-3, the powerful high resolution optics and cameras painting the ground where Wicks was pointing. He could clearly see the Germans deploying another weapon, and then it fired, sending a round out toward the high ground that smashed into the shoulders of the hill.

“Looks like some kind of Recoilless Rifle. Take it down, Wicky.”

“Right-O, LT.” Wicks fired, three more rockets snaking in to the target in short order. The resulting explosions blasted the weapon, sending it careening up and away from its original firing position.

“A good hard knock, Tommy.”

“That’s why they call me Tommy Knocker,” said Wicks. “Shall we give them a taste of the minigun?”

* * *

Troyak
saw the rockets go in with lethal accuracy, and soon after the snarl of the minigun raked the ground below. It fell on the men of Reinhardt’s platoon, inflicting heavy casualties where they scrambled on the relatively open ground. The Germans had finally recovered from the shock and were now directing machinegun fire at the helo, forcing Ryan to bank and climb away from the scene. But the job had been done, and the heavier support weapons in the Schwere platoon had been taken out, as Troyak expected. Now it would come down to guts and small arms fire, but the Russians had plenty of both, and now possessed the heavier mortars, the Germans having no more than a single light 5cm tube in each platoon.

Over on Hill 264, Zykov watched the battle begin with a big grin on his face. While a part of him whispered that the fight was unfair, offering due respect to the Germans who had to face their modern weaponry and firepower, the greater part sided with that grin. When men were out there with rifles, and coming to kill you, then any advantage on your side was welcome without scruples or any regrets. He knew that the enemy would hit them with any weapon they had, and so the Russians would do the same, no questions asked.

In that passing moment, he thought of Captain Karpov, the hard fighting commander of the ship through so many battles at sea. Karpov knew what Zykov accepted as a matter of course. You hit the enemy hard, knock him down, and if he gets up to fight again, then that’s your fault. That was the cold rationale of war, and every warrior subscribed to it on one level or another.

* * *

When the X-3’s climbed they suddenly saw something on the ground to the west, and Ryan veered in that direction. “Argo Leader, this is X-1 overwatch. Be advised of a truck column north of the river and inbound on your position, over.”

“Copy on that, X-1. Care to form the welcoming committee?”

“Will do, Argo Leader. Ryan out.”

The column Ryan had spotted were the first arrivals of the German 7th Motorized Machinegun Battalion, dispatched to this position some time ago by the division commander, von Sponeck. They had driven all day and into the night to reach Raqqah. One company had found a bridge just barely able to support the weight of the trucks, and with a little shoring up from the engineer platoon, they made it across. The rest of the battalion was on the main road south of the river, which would lead to the better bridges now being held by the Argonauts.

Ryan decided to have a look around, signaling the other X-3 to scout south and then rejoin his bird over the river. They soon began to piece together a picture of the gathering fight, as all forces in the region were now sending troops to this place, marching to the sound of the guns. Due south, they spotted what looked to be another German force at first, but when Ryan reported the movement to Popski, the gritty Colonel simply smiled.

“No Germans will be coming out of that desert,” he said. “Take another look. That has to be Kingstone’s flying column up from Palmyra.”

It was.

The first elements of this scout force were arriving with the fast moving motorized cavalry units. Glubb Pasha had scouted the way, and was also leading in a detachment of his Arab Legion. This force would soon run afoul of the advancing companies of the 7th Machinegun Battalion south of the river, and another small action would begin there in the pre-dawn hours.

In the meantime, Ryan was rejoined by the other X-3 helo, designated X-2 for this mission, and together they applied the same deadly medicine to the oncoming truck column north of the river. The Hydra 70’s took out the lead truck, stopping the column in its tracks as all the infantry spilled out and bled onto the ground around the trucks, looking for cover. Wicks shot up two more trucks, and then the minigun took its pound of flesh out of the column, raking the snake’s back with its snarling bite.

The Germans were stunned by the attack, as it seemed that lightning was simply flashing out of the sky at them. They could hear some kind of aircraft overhead, the hard thump of the rotors and growl of the helo engines, but they could not see the beasts that were gouging them now. After those first moments of shock and awe, the Germans soon reacted by opening up with every machinegun they had, nine MG-32s in this single company, and they were raking the sky in all directions, the hot tracer rounds streaming up like a fountain of molten lead.

“That’s done it,” said Wicks.

“Good enough, Tommy,” said Ryan. “Let’s get round to the south along the river and see what’s there.” He knew that was the main axis of the German retreat from Dier ez Zour, and the helos swept across the river, overflying the budding meeting engagement between Kingstone’s men and the other two companies of the 7th Machinegun battalion. Off to the southeast, they soon saw another long line of an advancing column. A motorcycle platoon led the way, followed by what looked to be a full battalion of motorized infantry, the first arrivals of the 65th Regiment.

“How many rockets left in those pods, Wicky?”

“I fired four salvoes of three, so I’ve only got one left in each pod,” said Wicks. “Time for a reload, but we’ve still got the minigun.”

“Aye, two rockets won’t do much good here. There will be more behind this lot too, but it’ll be dawn before that column gets up north. Let’s hold what we’ve got and get back to the fight near the airfield.”

“What, and help the Russkies?”

“Our
allies
this time out me boyo, so see that you put those last two rockets on the Germans.”

* * *

Ramcke’s men reorganized and tried that hill while they still had at least the cover of darkness, but Troyak had more for them than they wanted. They had two RPGs, five AK-94K assault rifles, and one autogrenade launcher, and that weapon was enough to decide the issue and stop the attack. The rate of fire was almost as good as a heavy caliber machine gun, only the 30mm grenades packed a much greater wallop when they hit.

So the men of Altman’s platoon learned the same hard lesson that Wolff’s men had been taught early when they tried to storm the high fortress at Palmyra. The fight had come down to firepower and guts, and though the Germans made a brave attack, firepower trumped their hand, and they were forced back with heavy losses.

Leutnant Jung’s platoon attempted to flank the hill, moving to the south and making for the northern outskirts of the town, but Byng had been closely monitoring the fighting and had moved one of his two reserve fire teams into the town there to plug the gap. Jung’s men ran into a well laid ambush, and the Argonauts stopped the flanking attempt, forcing the Germans to take cover in any building they could get to.

Further south, Feldmann’s Brandenburgers were advancing through the suburb of Samara close by the river. A second platoon from the Schwere company, and the men from Schulte’s platoon were on their right with Ramcke’s Headquarters unit. It was not long before the Brandenburgers realized that the British were in the main town ahead, most likely guarding a small foot bridge over a canal that bounded the town on the east.

“They’ll be watching that bridge,” he said after reaching Ramcke’s HQ shack, an old, weathered barn just outside the east edge of Samara. “Shall I organize an attack while we still have darkness?”

“Don’t bother. From every report I’ve received the British seem to have night eyes! Our men can’t make a single move without being seen. No. I’ve just received word from the main column. The 65th Regiment has its first battalion just a few miles south. They’ll be here by dawn.”

“So we wait?”

“They have artillery, Feldmann. Thus far the British have bedeviled us with those fighter planes firing rockets. The game now is to get the Artillery into position and put fire on that airfield. There’s also a battle forming south of the river. Donner’s MG Battalion is there.”

“Good!” Feldmann smiled. “Things will be going our way soon enough. The more the merrier! I’ll get my men into position, and we’ll be ready to take that footbridge. If you can get us a little support fire, all the better.”

Ramcke returned the man’s salute, shaking his head at his brash bravado. He was Abwher, not regular army, and not even a member of the Brandenburgers. Those troops were the best the Germans had, and Ramcke had every cause to believe they could deliver on Feldmann’s boast. But the way the man associated himself with the commandos, as if he were one and the same, seemed just a little too much self-aggrandizement on Feldmann’s part. The man wanted to run with the big cats, but I wonder if he has any teeth or claws himself? He wants to take that footbridge? Very well, at dawn he gets his chance.

In the meantime, I’ve lost twenty more men tonight. Come daylight we may finally get a look at these British planes that have been hurting us. Yet for now, there’s no point contesting that hill. It will likely take my entire company to have any chance there given what I’ve heard from Altman and Reinhardt.