“Yes, that’s the place exactly!” Ritter was also amazed. “You know of them, major?”
“I dunno if I should tell you this,” Kransky breathed deeply before continuing “but I was there that night… the night the family was killed.” There was a long moment of silence and intent stares before Ritter’s mind made the right connections.
“Mein Gott, you were the sniper! You shot that trooper.” As Kransky nodded, Ritter acted in a completely unexpected manner and instinctively reached out to grab the American’s hand, shaking it strongly. “You saved the boy that night… probably both of them… of this I’ve no doubt! They’re with my wife’s now, only because you gave him the chance to escape.”
“I didn’t know the kid was okay… I couldn’t hang around to find out,” Kransky shrugged and gave a self-deprecating smile, and in that moment of revelation, his impression of the German officer went from neutral tolerance to grudging admiration. “I’m glad to know it worked out okay. Look after him, okay buddy?”
“If I make it through this day I shall certainly try to do just that.”
“Well, have a little faith there,” the American almost smiled, clapping a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “You won’t be on your own when you ‘go over’… I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” He jerked his head back toward the barrel of the huge rifle slung over his shoulder. “You’ve seen what I can do.”
Thorne was back beside them a moment later, his expression quite serious as both of the others looked up and noticed there’d also been a distinct change in the general tension around the tank crew.
“Forward scouts have reported enemy movement near Sellindge… that’s only a couple of klicks down the road.”
“How long have we got?” Kransky asked, his mind and senses instantly sharp and alert.
“How long’s a piece of string?” Thorne asked with a grim smile. “Your guess is as good as mine, but probably no more than five or ten minutes if they mean business.” He glanced about at the surrounding landscape. “Better get ourselves some cover… things might well be about to turn very ugly!”
The defenders waited in tense anticipation as the dark silhouettes of enemy armour began to appear in shadows and glimpses beyond the trees on either side of the A20 coming up from Hythe, staying well away from the road at all times. The approaching enemy were well-trained and conscious of the danger of ambush, and were therefore avoiding any situations that might allow defenders to launch a surprise attack. Most of the civilians fleeing the coastal areas had already struggled past 7RTR’s position that late in the afternoon, although some stragglers were still forced to vacate the road and seek what shelter they could find as the alert was raised.
The howling of enemy engines could be heard here and there overhead, but the lowering cloud cover made the shapes passing by above dark and indistinct: visibility and the weather in general were now so poor that any aerial attack would be almost suicidal. In any case, no one on the ground below was stupid enough to open fire and draw their attention, and without provocation to aid their targeting, picking out the dug-in, camouflaged positions under the trees would be near impossible in those conditions.
Kransky decided to stay well clear of any gun emplacements or tank pits, and instead dragged himself into the lower branches of some nearby trees, seeking a little height to better put his rifle to work. Seated with his head poking out of Grosvenor’s commander’s hatch, Davids noted with surprise that the Australian had slung his own strange-looking rifle and instead produced a small and unusual black device that appeared to be a camera of some sort, although it looked like none he’d ever seen before. Thorne crouched beside him on the hull decking to his right and rested the thing on the turret roof to provide a steady view. It was barely bigger than the man’s hand, with a long tube protruding from the front that Davids assumed had to be some kind of lens, and he also noticed with intrigue that there was a tiny, colour viewing screen set into its backing plate that removed any need for Thorne to stare through the viewfinder mounted in its top edge.
Davids forced himself to return his attention to the danger approaching from the east as the device clicked and whirred beside him, and Thorne took pictures of the distant enemy. The pictures he was hoping to capture on the digital camera might well provide them with intelligence that was useful for later operations, albeit operations possibly staged from the other side of the planet.
“That fancy-lookin’ rifle o’ yours mightn’t be much use agin’ tanks, sir, but I warrant it’ll be more use than takin’ holiday snaps o’ the buggers!” The sergeant observed softly without sarcasm or malice.
“Oh, this’ll be useful enough, sergeant,” Thorne replied with a dark smile, “but I do wish I’d something a bit heavier to throw at the bastards, I’ll admit…”
…like a fucking nuke or three…! He added in sour silence for perhaps the millionth time in the last forty-eight hours, cursing over the discovery not one of them had thought possible in all the months since they’d arrived in that era: that their temporal ‘jump’ back from the future had made the fissile material in all of their thermonuclear weapons completely inert. It seemed that ‘Curly’ and ‘Mo’ — the two remaining B83 weapons they possessed — would work well enough otherwise, but until equipment existed in that era to refine and machine sufficient bomb-grade plutonium, the weapons were no better than a pair of one-tonne paperweights.
German recon units appeared at the distant line of the trees at that moment. Several Weisel light tanks drew to a halt at the edge of the woods as troopers deployed from the rear of a pair of Marder infantry fighting vehicles behind them, spreading out to cover their flanks. With a light mist rising, and poor visibility that was becoming progressively worse as evening approached, it’d be unlikely they’d be able to pick out the concealed British defences across three hundred metres of hazy open fields.
“Years here ahead of us, and the bastards still can’t be original,” Thorne growled to himself, ignoring Davids’ quizzical expression as he zoomed in on the vehicles and took several pictures of each one in turn: to him, the P-1C tanks were instantly recognisable as direct copies of 1980s-vintage British Scimitar light reconnaissance vehicles.
“Never seen anything like those before, sir,” Davids mused uncertainly from his commander’s hatch, observing the arrivals through a pair of field glasses. The infantry vehicles were substantially larger than the light tanks, were armed with a long-barrelled, automatic cannon mounted in a small turret on one side of the forward hull, and appeared to be derived from a full-sized tank chassis of some unknown type.
“SS recon units…Totenkopf division…” Thorne noted clinically, continuing to take pictures as he spoke “…I can see the ‘Deaths Head’ insignia on the turrets.” He grimaced as he took in a trivial piece of information. “Yellow unit numbers… interesting…” He snapped his attention back to the matters at hand. “Those light tanks will be the advanced guard,” he advised Davids. “The heavies won’t be far behind them.”
“CO wants us to hold off until they’re right out in the open… to only fire once they’re within two hundred yards,” Davids explained, relaying the orders they’d all been given. “I just hope the bloody clouds up there keep their bloody aircraft off our heads.”