Opening Moves (The Red Gambit Series) (56 page)

A rifle grenade exploded on the window frame from where the DP was firing, silencing both weapon and crew instantly.

“Stefka!”

This time she heard and looked up just in time to see Rispan struck by a bullet that folded him double as it made its way through the stomach and out the small of his back. Blood gushed from his mouth almost immediately and he dropped to the stone.

Kolybareva could not drag her eyes away from the still form.

An orderly with her started to stand and was suddenly a mass of scarlet as a sub-machine gun hammered bullets into him at short range.

Another orderly went to run for the Tower door and was also mercilessly shot down.

Senior Lieutenant Doctor Stefka Kolybareva suddenly had stars before her eyes, the butt of an old French Berthier M16 rifle caressing her head, hard enough to drop the woman but not so hard as to deny her the full pleasures the Goumier had in mind for her.

Through misty eyes, Kolybareva saw her senior medic gutted on a wicked Arab knife, his entrails spilling as the sharp blade split his stomach open. The agony dropped the man to his knees. Grasping the dying man by his hair, the Goumier ran the blade up one side of the skull and back down the other, removing the trophies that would mark his prowess in battle around the campfires of his tribe in the years to come.

Throwing the screaming man to the stone, the tribesman moved on, joining others steadily working their way through the wounded men so invitingly gathered for them to harvest.

Vision clearing, Kolybareva felt hands on her, dragging her across to the fountain where other hands pulled and tore at her clothing.

Kusev, the youngest orderly in her medical section, was dragged up beside her, one of his ears dangling half sliced off, his lips split and one eye closed by vicious blows.

The young man had no moment to gather himself as rough hands dragged him upright and threw him over the fountain trough. Both he and Kolybareva realised in an instant what the savages had in mind and the youth started to twist and writhe in an attempt to avoid the rape.

A ‘gentle’ blow stunned the orderly, and he had little comprehension of his trousers being ripped off and a sweating Goumier penetrating him violently.

Finishing quickly, the tribesman moved away to other pleasures and was replaced by another more sadistic rapist.

His pleasures included violent rape of a kind that tore and ripped the young orderly, the pain clearing his stunned brain and permitting him to scream.

Lance-Corporal Nikitin was about to descend from the Mill Tower when the sound summoned him back. Risking a quick look through the shattered upper window, he was both horrified at what he saw and powerless to interfere, his rifle empty.

He checked the machine-gun but the DP was bent and useless.

Nakhimov found him there as he quickly looked for stragglers before escaping himself. He too risked a look, which drew fire from the men in the courtyard not wholly immersed in the intoxicating slaughter of the wounded.

“We must go, now.”

Nikitin looked in disgust at his NCO.

“But Alexsey, we will remember these bastards.”

The younger man teetered on the edge of a useless sacrificial gesture, a fact that Nakhimov was only too well aware of and something he was determined to avoid.

“We must go. Now! That is an order Comrade Yefreytor!”

Discipline took hold and Nikitin moved towards the grapnel lines.

Sergeant-Major Nakhimov was the last man in the tower, so he swiftly moved to inform Rispan that the withdrawal was complete.

He stopped on the threshold leading to the battlements, the still body of his Major lying in front of him, still leaking blood on the stone.

“Govno!”

He turned and moved after Nikitin. Checking the situation in the road below, Nakhimov was encouraged to see Makarenko waving at him, signalling the all clear. Nikitin stepped away from the rope and moved off as directed by a Sergeant who returned to the line, holding it tight to assist in Nakhimov’s descent. The line rubbed his left hand badly, breaking the scabs and congealed blood that had sealed his finger stump, but the tough NCO lowered himself without complaint and touched down on the grass below.

Starshy-Serzhant Egon Nakhimov was the last member of Zilant-4 to evacuate the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg.

0620 hrs Monday, 6th August 1945, North road approach to the Château du Haut-K
œ
nigsbourg, French Alsace.

The loss of their young commander had not stopped the 2e Compagnie from pushing hard, and Makarenko had his work cut out to hold the legionnaires back. In truth, the Paratrooper General had not fully appreciated the disaster he was leading and that he was recovering only a fraction of his force from the bloody battlefield.

He pushed his men hard, stopping the legionnaires in their tracks, holding open an escape route for his troopers.

He signalled to Nakhimov and moved to meet the man at the bottom of the line.

“How many more Comrade? Time is short now.”

“I am the last Comrade General.”

Makarenko felt like he had been struck in the stomach.

“Are you sure Egon? Mayor Rispan is not yet here.”

“He is dead sir. They are all dead, including the wounded.”

“Rispan dead?”

Nakhimov simply nodded.

“The wounded?”

“Butchered before my eyes my General. Some dark-skinned bastards, cutting off ears with knives, slitting throats and stomachs. They are all dead, Sir.”

His professionalism as an officer battled hard against the pain and despair of the losses of his comrades.

Professionalism won.

“Right, then let us get what is left of the battalion out of here. Get them moving north now!”

The remnants of Zilant-4 fought their way north, killing legionnaires, being killed by legionnaires, finally evading the enraged French efforts to snare them.

General Makarenko, once commander of the 100th Guards Rifle Division ‘Svir’, once commander of Composite Force Zilant-4, now commander of fifteen shocked and battered survivors of the assault upon the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, led the precious remnants of his force away.

Later, as he and his group found a place to rest, he learned more of what had happened in the final minutes. His shock and anger at the disaster was replaced by a hatred and loathing for the dark-skinned enemy in the striped dress, one which found equal station with the hatred and loathing he had developed for those who had sent him on the mission which had uselessly spent so many young lives. Young lives that were his privilege to command and protect, and lives which he had led to nothing but pointless death on the orders of madmen.

He promised himself that there would be a day of reckoning on both counts.

0623 hrs Monday, 6th August 1945, Lower Courtyard, Château du Haut-K
œ
nigsbourg, French Alsace.

Haefeli moved up quickly, partially because he was eager to get involved in the final stages but mainly because he simply had to know who or what it was that Russian paratroopers had come so far to destroy.

Moving quickly up the ramp from the main entrance, he found the dying Goumier officer being tended by one of his men. The man had been hit in the stomach and thighs by a machine-gun burst and the Goumier tending him could do no more than comfort the Frenchman as he travelled into the darkness.

Haefeli motioned to his own medic, whose assessment was already made. A double dose of morphine was administered and the man’s pain ceased forever.

Lavalle strode up, his face cherry red with the extra exertions of catching up, the grimace of pain from exercising his wounded thigh apparent.

“The area is not yet secure Colonel. I have had no reports as yet so we must be careful.”

Lavalle, his face now under control, gestured to his friend.

“Then we must let you go first Albrecht.”

Smiling, the two moved forwards, smiles that immediately disappeared as high pitched screaming reached their ears.

Neither was prepared for the sights before them.

Butchered Soviet paratroopers lay everywhere, the absence of ears bloodily apparent on each corpse.

At the fountain trough, a paratrooper, face down and bent double over the stonework, his backside exposed and bleeding, his most recent violator preparing for a second assault, oblivious to the two officers stood staring in disbelief at him.

To the left, female legs, held wide open by two grinning tribesmen, her arms pinned by two more as a fifth Goumier plunged himself vigorously into the screaming woman. She too was face down as the unnatural violation ripped her painfully.

A sixth Goumier was displaying her bloody breasts, one in each hand, held out to any of his comrades who wished to inspect them.

What happened next was a blur, decent honourable men acting without thought, either for their own lives or for the consequences of their actions.

Lavalle and Haefeli moved forward as one, producing their handguns.

As they ran, both officers shouted an age-old cry for assistance.

“A moi La Légion!”

Such a call could not be refused by any legionnaire who heard it.

The Colonel nearly blew the arm off the sodomiser of the unfortunate woman, his first bullet striking the shoulder. A second bullet took the man in the stomach as he lay on the floor. Haefeli took the life of the other rapist who collapsed over his victim, his ruined face spilling blood on the young Russian’s corpse.

Lavalle’s next shots struck the man holding the bloody trophies, his throat and chest exploding as he flew backwards into the stonewall.

The four men pinning the woman looked on in terror, knowing death was about to visit them. Haefeli’s Sergent-Chef emptied his Garand into them, two bullets each, the heavy impacts throwing them into disarray. One man moaned, only wounded. Haefeli shot him in the crotch.

The legionnaires turned towards the larger group of Goumier’s, comrades of those they had just mercilessly dispatched, expecting to die in turn.

The tribesmen seemed momentarily unsure of what to do until one of their older NCO’s spoke up, directing them to gather up their things and move on after the enemy.

The arrival of more legionnaires from the 3e
may well have aided his decision.

The woman’s screams had subsided to a low, continuous moan of pain and anguish, expressing suffering way beyond the thresholds of human tolerance.

The apparition pushed herself up on her arms, the bloody stumps of her breasts exposed, a knife in her side now apparent to the transfixed watchers.

Every essence of their being implored them to help her but there was something about her struggle, something tangible to each of them, that instructed them to leave her, to let her make her efforts.

She slowly stood, the blood running freely from her mouth, chest, side, and violated lower body. She took hold of the knife and pulled it slowly from her flesh, the pain making her eyes roll in her head.

Still the Legionnaires stood immobile, knowing that the woman needed to do this herself.

She dropped to her knees, her rapist groaning and bubbling, as red fluid gently seeped into his lungs.