“Leave it to the Sappers!” one of the combat engineers shouted and with a gesture to his mate they left the gun pit and sprinted toward the unattended LAW80s. They paused to peer carefully down the street from cover before dashing into the road.
12.7mm rounds tore both men apart before they had reached the far side and they lay unmoving on the wet road.
We are terminally screwed now! Was Baz’s first though. They were caught between two fires and with nothing to fight back with.
The lead tank on the towpath just began to appear when it was hit again by the team across the river. The round had hit at an angle and had probably been aimed at its engine compartment but missed. The chance of penetrating the armour is greatest if the round hits square on, and all that this one did was distract and annoy, but both tanks stopped and swivelled their turrets to aim their main guns back over their engine decks.
Baz made an instant decision to save the last two sections of 15 Platoon and join the defenders of the autobahn bridge.
“Grab the gun and tripod” he told the gun crew before shouting to the occupants of the other trenches. “2 and 3 Sections grab your weapons, collect a box of link each for the gun and follow me!”
With the gimpy being returned to the light role by the gun crew he ran across the towpath and onto the damaged road bridge, stopping to urge the men on and waiting until the last man had run past before following them.
Their Bergans had been abandoned but a British infantryman fights out of his webbing and survivors out of his smock. Each man now had an ammunition box for the GPMG and his own weapon. Not a lot to be going on with but at least when the infantry arrived they would be equipped to see them off, hopefully. First of all though, they had to negotiate this damaged bridge.
Fat Fräuliens, Baz thought, remembering the now dead sapper’s words, exactly how fat and how much shopping would need to be in that trolley to finish the job the demolition charges had started, a week’s worth or just fairy cake comfort food for the evening?
The Soviet tanks were still firing back across the canal when Baz reached the damaged tarmac that marked the halfway mark across the canal. The bloody thing was bouncing beneath their feet like a mattress.
In front of him the GPMG gunner was flagging. Pte ‘Juanita’ Thomas was one of the older members of the platoon, into his thirties and could no longer sprint like a spring chicken. Baz drew alongside him and gestured to share the load. With the gunner gripping the barrel and Baz holding the butt they ran side by side, opening their legs and gaining on the remainder.
The bridge trembled as a T-90 pivoted through 90° on the on-ramp behind them. Baz could hear both his breath and the gunners coming in gasps, and the blood pounded in his ears. Any second now it would cut them down with its machine guns.
The tank did not open fire on them, its commander had been scared, and was now more than a little angry because of that. These damned English had hit his tank twice with anti-tank weapons and he had wet himself. He wanted payback.
“Run them down!” he ordered his driver.
Tubular metal bollards and a horizontal barrier barred the way to anything larger than a medium sized SUV, although clearly the trains that had once used the bridge had far exceeding their gross weight. It was just wide enough for the heavy goods vehicles that had taken over from the trains as the form of freight transport serving the barge port.
The barrel of the main gun buckled the height barrier, and a weld in the vertical support gave out. Next, the treads pressed against the bollards, the front of the T-90 rising up briefly before the bollards concertinaed.
It was a tight fit but the driver knew his business and holding he floored the tanks accelerator but having travelled only a dozen feet the bridge seemed to snap in the middle, plunging the vehicle into the canals depths.
Both Baz and the gunner fell as the bridge gave way, but unlike the eastern half of the bridge, this end was at an angle of about 30° and they scrambled the rest of the way to the bank and from there into cover with what remained of the platoon.
The anti-tank team joined them, both men a little worse for wear after twice having to crawl for their lives as tank guns blew away their concealment.
“Phew.” Someone said as the 94mm team arrived with their remaining LAW80. “Who shit himself then?” There was a very noticeable scent hanging around the pair like a cloud.
“No one has” growled one. “We’ve been crawling about on this bloody towpath trying to save your arses, is what we’ve been doing, but half of bleedin’ Germany must walk their dogs along here!”
Baz allowed himself to grin at the banter for a moment and then took a look back across the canal.
Four enemy tanks now occupied the ground 15 Platoon had held, apparently unwilling to climb the embankments onto either of the autobahns without infantry support. Even the LAW80s would have no trouble achieving a kill through the area with the thinnest armour on a tank, its belly.
They hadn’t exactly excelled themselves as tank killers and now the Soviets had free rein of the opposite bank and access to the demolition charges beneath the autobahn bridge, but there was nothing else he could have done, was there? He did not know what had happened to 1 Section or the sappers who had been with them either. There was no reply on the radio.
Calling up 13 and 14 Platoon he gave them a sitrep before turning his attention back to the dozen surviving members of 15 Platoon that he knew of.
The new boys were all a bit wide eyed with shock after their sudden introduction to the realities of warfare but the old sweats were looking calm even if they weren’t really, and that was proving positive with the new guys. Nev Kennington, the smelly LAW gunner who had twice hit the tanks, was getting ribbed but taking it in good humour, he was just glad to still be alive.
“Okay let move off, across this field and keep the hedgerow between us and them.” Baz instructed.
They all started to collect themselves and their weapons.
“Nev?”
“Yes, Corporal?”
“You take Pointer…I mean ‘Point’.” He added quickly.
“Piss off.” Nev answered but shuffled forward, his last remaining LAW80 over his back and his SLR at the ready.
“Yeah, Lead off Nev” someone said.
“We’ll Dog your steps” another voice added.
The new guys were joining in now; soldier-humour was proving a tonic.
“Leave him alone, he’s had a woof night.”
“Yeah, less Stick.”
“I want a transfer.” Nev grumbled and stepped off into the rainy night.
It had been an eventful day for the current head of the KGB, not all of it good, but it had certainly been profitable financially and there remained the task of securing a power base for her next step.
To the rest of the organisation, the General Staff and even the Premier, Elena Torneski was nothing more than the Premier’s ‘Yes Bitch’ and one with a timidity where violence was concerned, something of a source of amusement for them.
As she had stood with her uniformed aides beside the mine elevator awaiting their ride to Saratov West she had made several calls, the first being to a radio station but the last call had not been answered.
Major Oleg Kamavor and his three companions had sat in the rear of the Hind-D and watched Elena’s temper build from the moment they had entered the aircraft at the bunker site. They had been with her for several years, ever since she had emerged from the pack as a possible contender for executive level in the KGB. Her sponsorship had raised them from dirty work as mud bespattered Spetznaz troopers on the battlefield in Chechnya, to dirty work in suits wherever she had sent them. Their boss was a good looking woman to look at, and but for her sadistic streak, vengeful nature and contempt for men as a whole he would have found her very attractive. His boss did not take rejection well and it was therefore necessary to keep their distance from the young women she took as her significant others, all of them remarkably similar in looks to the girl they had been meant to subject to rape punishment in the dacha. Transgressions by these bed partners, such as running away, were punished by Oleg and his men and it was therefore a benefit not to have formed a liking for any of them.