The Sergeant was in constant communication with Zykov and Chenko, who was leading the number three platoon behind him. He knelt, raising a silent fist as a signal to his own squad, which crouched low, waiting. Then he spoke through his collar microphone to Zykov.
“There’s fire on my right coming from that thicker woodland,” said Zykov.
There’s a flooded march just beyond it, and a causeway from the settlement north of that area leading right into town behind the railway inn.” Troyak was consulting his map. “So we’ll have to follow the rail line in. It will swing down and approach the inn from the southeast. I’ll lead. Bring your men up on my signal.”
Troyak checked his weapon, then waved his men on. They crouched low, moving like black shadows, out from the trees and along a narrow footpath that was leading them to the rail line. As they approached, Troyak suddenly heard men shouting in a dialect he recognized. They were reaching a culvert near a short stone rail bridge when a light machine gun opened up on them. Thankfully, the fire was not well aimed, but it sent his men to ground.
Troyak listened, recognizing some words from the Khanty dialect, one of 36 indigenous languages in the Siberian region. Troyak knew several, and many words from others, and this one was common along the Ob River valley. So he decided to try something, and raised his voice.
“Hey, watch out! Who are you shooting at?” He spoke in the same dialect.
Silence. The gun stopped. Then a hard voice spoke. “Who are you? State your unit.”
Troyak decided any designation would do, and he knew his map, so he extended the ruse further. “7th platoon,” he called out keeping that well open to interpretation. “We just came up from Nizhniy Ingash! What’s going on here?”
“What are your orders?” The voice was still hesitant.
“We need to get to that damn railway inn!” The truth served the Gunnery Sergeant well enough, and he just let it stand there.
“Anyone on your right?”
“Don’t worry, Sergeant.” Troyak knew who he was talking to now, another NCO in charge of this squad he was facing, and he had sized up the situation to understand that this was a reserve unit positioned behind the tree line to the north to watch these roads. He needed to convince this man he was a friend.
“Your flank is clear. We scouted the rail line the whole way in. Come on, you’re wasting time. We’ve got the heavy weapons.”
The other voice did not respond for a time, and then finally called back.
“Come up to the rail bridge!”
Troyak did not want to risk his men, so he decided to go alone. He signaled that they should remain in place, and moved up quietly to a small stand of trees just below the bridge. He saw movement ahead, through the bridged culvert, and surmised the other sergeant was there. Then he could see him, raising his fist in salutation.
“How many are you?” The other Sergeant still had a guarded edge to his voice. The sound of gunfire increased off to the north.
“I have three heavy squads,” Troyak said quickly.
“Come ahead then. The rail line is clear all the way to the town center.”
Then came the sound of heavy weapons fire, and Troyak looked up to see an amazing and unexpected sight. A huge steel grey zeppelin had descended from above the town, a vast shadow from above, and its black gondolas were spiked with gun barrels that were now pouring heavy rounds on the town’s defensive positions.
The battle that Troyak had crept up on was bigger than it sounded. West and north of the town, two companies of the Grey Legion 22nd Air Mobile, off the Oskemen, were attacking a single company of Karpov’s 18th Siberian Rifles. The remaining two Siberian companies had broken into six platoons stretched along the town’s northern edge, with good fields of fire over the lower wetlands to the north. But at least three more full companies of the 22nd were deployed to this sector. One was pushing in between the action farther west, and attempting to flank the extreme left of the Siberian line. Two others were trying to fight their way across a small causeway that Troyak had identified on his map earlier. If they won through they would soon swarm through the town center and easily overrun the railway inn. Troyak’s Marines had approached from the far right, where the Siberian line hooked south through a woodland area to the rail line.
Small arms and machine gun fire was already thick at the causeway, but the line had held, the stubborn Siberians holding tenaciously until the sudden appearance of the airship. Now it was blasting the Siberian positions from above with 76mm recoilless rifle fire from its main gondola, and a heavier gun up front on the bridge gondola.
Oskemen was back.
The crafty Petrov had swung south below the cloud deck while the Angara was struggling to descend and take up the chase as Karpov had ordered. He hid there until Angara came down after him, and once the two airships were feeling their way through the clouds at about 1000 meters, he fired flare rockets off his starboard side, then turned hard to port and dropped ballast for a fast climb. Oskemen broke into clear air, but when the Captain on the Angara spotted the flares slowly descending on parachutes, he took them for the running lights of his enemy, and maneuvered to gain position on them. When he fired his forward gun off the bridge gondola, Oskemen’s sharp eyed watchmen made out his position, and Petrov maneuvered off his tail.
Minutes later the Oskemen nosed down again into the soup, all guns blazing on the big fins and elevators of the Angara, returning the insult it had endured when first ambushed at the outset of the engagement. Yet Petrov’s gunners were very good, and they put three 105mm rounds into the big vertical rudder that completely jammed its useful operation. Angara could not maneuver, and could do nothing more than to climb into the thickening clouds and try to hide from the other ship, but Petrov had other business. He immediately turned south, racing to support the troops he had put onto the ground, and now he arrived in the thick of the assault on Ilanskiy, his heavy guns lending much needed fire support to the Grey Legionnaires.
Troyak had no idea which side he might support in this fight, but he was talking to this one, a fellow Siberian, and so he decided that he could do one thing to easily convince this cautious Sergeant that he was a friendly force.
“Hold on!” he called to the other man at the far end of the railroad bridge, still crouching low, suspicious of this sudden incursion on his flank in the midst of a firefight.
Troyak pinched his collar mike and delivered a quick order to Zykov. “Put a needle right through the main gondola on that airship!”
Zykov barked back the order and his SAM team of two men quickly off shouldered the hand held weapon, which looked like an old style bazooka, and was fired in much the same way. Seconds later the SAM streaked up at the big target above, boring right in on the main gondola as Troyak had ordered, and blasting through the thin shell with a bright orange explosion. One of the three 76mm guns there was destroyed completely, the other two pods riddled with shrapnel, and there was a fire amidships on the gondola that quickly involved the number three engine.
The Russians defending the town hooted jubilantly, their voices obviously surprised and delighted with what had happened. “Good enough, Sergeant?” Troyak shouted to the shadow by the bridge. “Come on! I need to get my weapons teams up and we’ll finish the job.”
He heard the other Sergeant shouting again in the dialect he understood, telling his men to stand down. With no time to lose, Troyak waved his squad forward, and the Marines rushed on, Troyak in the lead. They passed into the culvert and under the rail bridge, and saw the Siberian Sergeant staring sheepishly at these big, well muscled men in dark camouflage uniforms and mushroom top Kevlar helmets. Troyak grinned at the man, clasping him on the shoulder.