"Too right mate!” Colin chuckled. “Never rely on the safety assurances of someone in an office, a hundred miles away from the site of a pre-planned explosive event.” His earpiece came to life; the company commanders transmission cutting off any further whispered banter.
“Hello all stations One, this is One Nine, DRURY LANE… out!”
“Here it comes, boys and girls!”
There was a series of high-pitched cracks in rapid succession from high overhead, up above the clouds, and then silence.
The last time Oz had been on a battlefield when this weapon had been used was on the Wesernitz. He had been up to his nuts in muck and bullets at the time, and hadn’t known the MLRS had taken out an entire enemy regiment until after the battle. The constant scream of incoming mortars and shells, explosions and small arms fire had drowned it out.
“Is that it?” he whispered to Colin, somewhat disappointed. The roar of thousands of explosions, lasting several seconds but seeming much longer, drowned Colin’s answer out.
“As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted.” Colin repeated once it was over. “It sounds a bit like a shed load of firecrackers going off in the distance.”
“Yeah right… firecrackers the size of shit-house doors!”
Colin was peering over the top of the ditch at the large mass of trees, where it was apparent that something other than wood and rabbit droppings inhabited the target area. There were several secondary explosions, and small arms ammunition was cooking off in one of the fires, the glow of them showed in the fading darkness.
They both ducked involuntarily as first one pair and then a second pair of fighter-bombers screamed overhead, heading for the fires and secondary’s. Neither soldier saw the aircraft drop their ordnance, but fire boiled up above the treetops, and the whiff of petrochemicals reached then on the breeze.
“I love the smell of… ” began Oz, as he started to recite the line from the film, but Colin cut him off abruptly, drawing his bayonet and wrapping the blade against his helmet to draw attention.
“Well, I don’t… whoever invented that filthy stuff was never in the infantry.” He held up the bayonet until he heard the sound of others being drawn from their scabbards, and then fitted it to his SLR, giving it a test tug to ensure the retaining lug had taken.
From behind came the sound of the battalions 81mm mortars firing off the first mission, and Colin stood up and scrambled up the side of the ditch to kneel on top. The men of No.1 and No. 2 Company, 1CG left the ditch and paused on one knee, bayonets fixed and awaiting the command to advance through the wood.
Nikoli removed his hands from over his ears and realised he was still screaming in mortal terror, and he wasn’t the only one either. The air was full of the scent of spent explosives, petrol vapour, wood sap and something else… the iron tinted scent of fresh blood. He raised his head out of the shell scrape and looked furtively about, the air was hazy with smoke and the trees were no longer heavy with snow resting on their branches. Something had taken numerous bites out of every tree in sight; wounded limbs hung down from freshly torn trunks, and amputated branches lay everywhere.
Nikoli had attended lectures and seen footage of the effects MLRS and its M77 submunitions; he now knew that it was possible to stay alive in its killing zone, only if below ground level. Five thousand, one hundred and fifty two of its grenade-like submunitions had landed on the large wooded area, thank Christ they have no airburst capability, were his thoughts.
Crawling from position to position he took stock, one bomblet had landed on a man as he lay in his hole, another paratroopers head had been poking up at the wrong moment, and was pulverised. Two men were concussed, and five more had minor wounds from wood splinters and sundry flying muck, all were badly shaken up.
The night was on the retreat, yet the glow from the area where they had cammed up their transport, a quarter of a mile away, was visible due to the napalm dropped on the already burning vehicles. There was another glow northeast of them, and although they did not know it, an assortment of stolen NATO vehicles was also burning fiercely.
To the northeast of Nikoli’s paratroopers was another soviet unit, manned by unconventional troops more used to being delivered to, and extracted from lightly defended rear areas than stand-up fights.
The special-forces unit commander had performed ambushes, assassinations, kidnappings, poisoned water holes and delivered booby-trapped kids toys to the outskirts of villages in Afghanistan and Chechnya during his service. However, his only experience of conventional tactics had been during his basic training, and his style of leadership did not include the rigid discipline one might expect of a military unit. At CQB, close-quarters battle, he and his men were deadly, but in conventional warfare they were found wanting. His men were living in the vehicles and two bunkers that housed the equipment and munitions caches, there were no trenches dug, as they did not expect to be in the combat zone for a protracted period, or have to defend the site. Sentries had been in the open, squatting under groundsheets out of the worst of the elements, where they could provide early warning, and contain intruders who may stumble upon them, but little else.
Major Kolsov awoke to the sound of the world ending, even though the heavy door to the bunker was closed against the elements. Scrambling for his weapon he headed for the ladder to the bunkers door, pausing only to stamp hard on the trapdoor to the bunkers lower level, to silence the sound of female screams coming from below. At the top of the ladder he flicked a switch, extinguishing the single electric light bulb, and pushed up the door until it locked open. Peering out cautiously he saw his second in command doing the same from the other bunker twenty feet away.
“Captain… report?”
The other man had been looking in another direction and jumped, obviously shaken by what had taken place. “Er… cluster bomb attack, I think… ”
He glanced down as something was shouted to him from within that bunker, and then looked back.
“No one is answering their radios… I will send two men to check.”
Their own vehicles, a half dozen APCs from various NATO armies, a Landrover, a Humvee and a German civilian police car were only three hundred metres away, in the centre of an area aflame with napalm. Everywhere that Kolsov looked showed the effects of anti-personnel weapons, so he shook his head.
“Don’t bother, they are beyond help… we stay in these uniforms and move out… fast, in five minutes.”
His Captain started to descend from sight and then stopped. “What about the prisoners… can they run, do we take them?”
Kolsov gave a harsh laugh.
“The way we’ve been using them, I doubt they can walk.” Sliding down the ladder he pulled on Wermacht equipment and stuffed extra ammunition inside the pockets of the camouflage jacket. There was little else of immediate use to him in this bunker, older uniforms from the clothing cache in the lower level had served as his bed, 1950’s khaki battle dress jackets bearing the shoulder flashes of Divisions long since disbanded. This level was a store for petrol, grenades, small arms and ammunition; the neighbouring bunker held explosives, medical supplies and rations. Once he was certain he had everything he needed he strode over to the trapdoor, lifting it open. Two faces peered up at him, squinting against the light entering from above. The German policewoman had been the driver of the police car they had seized; her partner had been tossed down an embankment after his throat had been cut. She had been spared for the same reason as the other occupant; both she and the USAF radar operator captured at Geilenkirchen AFB were young and pretty. Their faces had a haggard look about them now, bruised from repeated rapes by Kolsov and his men. Kolsov smiled coldly at them before closing it once more and securing the bolt that held it closed. Carrying over a jerrycan of petrol he carefully removed the pin from a hand grenade and lay the petrol can on its side atop the trapdoor, wedging the grenade beneath where the cans weight would hold the spring-arm in place until the can was moved. He had little doubt that the two females would call out once they heard friendly voices overhead, and some gallant young NATO soldier would try to release them. A second jerrycan was emptied onto the floor, and he grinned maliciously when the flammable liquid found its way down to the lower level through the gaps between the trapdoor and its frame. The prisoners terrified screams would serve to attract attention, providing of course that they had not shouted themselves hoarse by then.