Opening Moves (The Red Gambit Series) (71 page)

Some enthusiastic machine-gunner sent stream of tracer skywards, narrowly missing the wounded bird. The wingman lazily pulled off his guarding position and conducted one quick strafe run of machine gun and cannon fire before returning to babysit his damaged companion back to their base.

Two men were hit by the strafing run, and both were killed, as aircraft cannon shells tend to be hard on the human body.

One was the young machine gunner who had climbed on the jeep and sent .50cal rounds skyward. The other was the airborne units senior Non-com, the hard-bitten old Sergeant, who had run to the boy to drag him off the gun, determined to beast him for attracting such unwanted attention.

The Sergeant had been with the unit since it was formed and had seen O’Malley and his comrades through many tough scrapes, pulling them through with his skill and courage. Once the consuming fire of the burning jeep had abated O’Malley promised himself he would bury Master Sergeant Thompson properly and mark his grave. It was the least that could be done.

Disturbed at the loss of the unit’s senior man, O’Malley drew a camel from his pack and lit it, even though 1 o’clock chow time was approaching. The rich smoke wafted around him as he crouched in his foxhole, wondering who would give the mess call now that Thompson was in bits.

His thoughts were disturbed by distant coughing, not from the throats of men, but rather distinctly, from mortars.

All around his position shells exploded, bathing the river and foxholes in choking smoke. No one needed to be told what was happening.

Machine gun fire could also be heard, but they were visiting their brand of hurt on someone else so O’Malley kept his head up for now.

The wind was very low and so the smoke stayed pretty much where it was laid, occasionally wafting one way or another as a small gust pushed it around.

Steadying his BAR into his shoulder, he checked around him to make sure his section were up and alert, ready to do their jobs when the moment came. The BAR was not his normal weapon but the squad needed the firepower and as its previous owner was back in the aid station having been clipped by a bullet in the second attack, O’Malley took the job.

More firing started, this time in the background.

A scream came from one of the men stationed just north of the bridge as he was struck directly between the shoulder blades by a smoke round. The unlucky man had bent over to pick up his helmet, dislodged by the previous round to arrive. He was dead before anyone could move to his assistance, spine smashed, lungs, and heart wrecked and bloody, the light smoke gently discharging from the unexploded shell making the corpse a particularly ghoulish sight.

To O’Malley’s left a carbine stuttered and he turned to chastise his man. The wind wafted the smoke and created an arched clear zone in which Soviet soldiers could be seen running hard straight at his position, holding wood, looted inner tubes, anything that would float.

No orders were needed and bullets reached out, dropping many at the full run.

The man next to O’Malley’s right side grunted and slithered down lifelessly into his foxhole as a bullet effortlessly blew the back of his head off and sent his helmet careening off to the rear.

The smoke closed in again just as the Soviets reached the water’s edge but there was no respite in the fire from the defenders, firing blind, killing and wounding the unseen enemy to their front.

O’Malley saw the flare reach its zenith before the smoke, moved by another breeze, engulfed his position completely.

Deniken grimaced as he ran, noting the bad luck as the smoke parted. His men were going down under accurate fire and there was little he could do except press forward with them.

Pausing to shoulder his rifle, he fired a shot and was rewarded with a helmet flipping away and the enemy dropping into his hole.

Deniken was an officer and, as such, should not carry a rifle, but he was an excellent marksman and his skills had sent many a German to his grave.

Encouraging his second wave forward, he sprinted for the water, snatching an empty petrol can from the dead fingers of a Russian soldier lying at the water’s edge.

He looked south towards the spot where Grabin was concealed and was rewarded immediately by the sight of a green flare lazily floating back to earth.

Try as he might, he could not hear the roar of tank engines and uttered a silent prayer to his mother’s god that the unknown tankers were competent after all.

As he dove into the water, he heard the crack of 85mm guns and knew they had joined the battle.

With rifle slung across his shoulders and using the petrol can as a buoyancy aid, he doggy paddled as best he could for the far bank, all the while bullets whipped like wasps around the struggling men.

He heard a distinct plop in the water beside him before his world went white and he was tossed skywards.

As the smoke concealed the attackers once more, O’Malley shouted at his men to throw grenades.

These flew from hands and dropped, some in the water and some on the banks.

One trooper was shot in the act of throwing, a random bullet emerging from the smoke and wrecking his wrist. The grenade dropped from useless fingers into the foxhole he shared with his buddy, neither of whom could escape before both died bloodily in a storm of shrapnel.

Screams could be heard as Soviet infantry endured similar deaths and mutilations in the smoke.

The wind started to gather strength and the smoke screen, no longer added to by mortars shells, moved at a walking pace to the northeast. Unfortunately for the defenders and attackers alike, the smoke from the blazing watermill now engulfed them, adding its acrid toxic fumes to those generated by the discharge of weapons and high explosives.

A bullet fanned past O’Malley’s head, kissing the helmet lightly.

He turned slightly left and saw an indistinct figure that he almost cut in half with a burst of .30 cal, the body immediately jerking backwards under the impacts, and was immediately replaced by another struggling shape that received the same treatment.

His eyes streaming from the mill smoke, O’Malley sensed rather than saw the grenade land adjacent to his foxhole and ducked as fast as he could. The man to his left did not hear his shout and was tossed against the side of his foxhole by the force of the explosion, surprisingly unscathed except for a ruptured eardrum.

The young trooper calmly changed magazines on his carbine, launching more bullets into the shapes in the smoke, rewarded with the occasional scream.

As O’Malley emerged from his hole in time to see the young trooper’s death. He was amazed to see him alive but his shout of congratulations was strangled as a stream of sub-machine gun bullets reached indiscriminately out of the smoke and destroyed the man’s face and neck.

Sprayed with blood, the Corporal continued his killing like an automaton, noting his dwindling supply of ammunition.

Deniken came to staring at the grass, front teeth missing, lips split and nose bleeding from the impact as he came to earth face first, neatly scalped and leaking blood from where a lump of the grenade had come very close to ending his life.

The rest of his body was still in the water, bleeding from a number of small shrapnel wounds and bruised from the energy blow of the water displaced by high explosive.

Looking around he saw others on the bank, lying low or firing back, depending on the bravery of the individual.

Behind him others were struggling across the water as best they could, and yet others were still, never to move again.

He had no weapon, his rifle probably consigned to the bottom of the river.

Looking around he saw the remains of a Soviet soldier still clutching a Mosin-Nagant rifle with bayonet attached. Moving sluggishly to his left, he acquired the weapon and pocketed some ammunition, not bothering to wipe the detritus of death from it.

He could hear the tanks on the bridge now, the distinct rattling of the track pins louder than the firing around him, main guns still reaching out to kill the American paratroopers.

Attracting the attention of those around him, he steadied himself, ready to take them forward into the defending foxholes.

Rising to his feet, he yelled his small group forward and they plunged into the thinning smoke even as some of them had the life plucked from them by American bullets.

O’Malley changed magazines but held his fire. It was the last one after all. Ready to hand by the side of his foxhole were one grenade, his M1911, and a combat knife.

He automatically winced as a Russian tank exploded in a fireball, victim of a bazooka team to the south of the bridge.

His attention was drawn to four others moving towards his rear, infantry hanging on for all they were worth and other running figures fanning out in support.

The bridge had fallen and it was time to bug out. He wondered where the order was, but the young inexperienced Lieutenant who should have provided it had broken down. He was mentally shattered and useless, cowering and crying loudly behind the watermill, where he was heard and dispatched by a compassionless Soviet sub-machine gunner.

The sounds to O’Malley’s left changed now and he became aware that his squad was being overrun, soldiers grappling, stabbing and screaming, slashing and shouting, all in a frenzy of close quarter combat.

Suddenly to his front came a group of seven Russians, all seemingly intent on running straight at him.

They saw him too.

Weapons spat bullets in both directions, and found their mark in American and Russian alike.

O’Malley did not feel his left arm break as two PPSH bullets struck home and shattered the lower bone structure, ruining his radial artery in their travel.

Neither did he feel his right ear nicked by another bullet.

He was aware of the bullets hitting the ground in front of him, throwing earth and pieces of grass into his eyes, reducing his vision.

Through his squints he finished his own work, putting down another Russian, the lifeless body flung backwards to join the three already cut down by fire from his BAR.

Three more enemy remained and he pushed the now useless Browning away and grabbed for his pistol, bringing it up and firing, simultaneously dropping another Russian as more PPSH bullets smashed into his right shoulder, wrenching him round like a rag doll even as he discharged the rest of his magazine uselessly into the ground.

He swung back round, suddenly aware of the tattered and bloody apparition stood over him and experienced excruciating pain as he was slammed against the side of his hole by an eighteen inch bayonet forcefully penetrating his upper chest. The blade travelled on and destroyed his trachea, blood pouring straight into his lungs in an instant. The unforgiving steel carried on, deflecting off his spinal column and out his back into the earth wall beyond.

It was stuck and no amount of twisting and pulling would free it, even with a boot planted firmly on O’Malley’s chest, so the Russian holding it chambered a round and fired point-blank to blast the metal free, reloading the weapon as he quickly moved on to do more killing elsewhere.

O’Malley had but a few seconds of active thought before darkness forever overtook the mental pictures of family and home.

It was still there. Slightly damaged and scorched from the heat of the burning tank, but the bridge that had cost so many lives still stood.

In Heiligenthal, fighting continued as the surviving four tanks and their accompanying infantry pushed hard for complete control.

Deniken sat beside the bridge near a burning jeep and watched as his wounded were brought in to be treated as best they could be. The dead were also being reverently recovered and he could not take his eyes off the lifeless form of the young medical orderly who had bandaged his arm that very morning. No marks on her body, just a small trickle of blood from her mouth.