Crescendo Of Doom (11 page)

The sudden appearance of
Tunguska
had changed all that. Now the fleet might have a hard fight when it reached Ilanskiy. They expected at least two other Siberian airships were lurking there on overwatch, the
Abakan
and
Angara
, the two ships that had successfully defended the place during the first raid mounted by Volkov, albeit with a little help from Kandemir Troyak and the heavy weapons fielded by the Russian Marines. With
Krasnoyarsk
and
Tunguska
now maneuvering to Ilanskiy, the odds were not as wide as Volkov had hoped.

“We’ll have six airships to their four,” he said darkly. “What about their ships out east?” He was asking about the Siberian eastern flotilla, where two more battleships,
Irkutsk
and
Novosibirsk
were supporting Kolchak in his uneasy watch along the frontier with the Japanese empire.

“The last word we had, as of 6:00 this morning, still had both those airships near Lake Baikal. That’s about 700 kilometers to the southeast. They might be here by dusk if they were summoned.”

“Not a very satisfactory situation,” Volkov steamed. “This will simply not do. Send to fleet command in Orenburg. I want every airship they can get their hands on mustered to a new division and heading east within the hour. Any ship that broke off and ran from the enemy here will answer to me personally, from the Captain on down through every crew station. I came here to command this damn operation, not to involve the fleet flagship in the fighting, yet now that is inevitable. We were hit back there, is the damage controlled?”

“A minor breach on the number six gas bag,” said Kymchek. “Gas volume was off fifteen percent there, but the engineers have patched it and re-inflated. Aside from some minor welding on the airframe, the ship is in good fighting trim.”

“Very well…” Volkov had a harried look on his face now. “What’s your assessment, Kymchek? Is this the place to have this fight?”

“It will be a risky operation, sir, but with all our troops landed, we’re committed here.
Pavlodar
and
Talgar
may get back west soon. If their damage is not great they could return with reinforcements.
Krasnodar
and
Stavropol
have already completed loading operations and should be underway soon. They will have troops as well.”

“You sound worried, Kymchek.”

“Well sir, the 11th Siberian Rifles are still down there. Karpov planted that division here last month, and they’ll have artillery. We hoped this unit would be rushed to the Ob River line after our attack started there, but at least a full infantry regiment remains here. The rail lines must be interdicted, in both directions, or we will likely see even more enemy forces arriving.”

“And the operation on the Ob River?”

“We’re still heavily engaged there. Three divisions are on the line, the last two are maneuvering north, but the Siberians have brought up the damn Tartar cavalry there. They won’t stop a regular division, but they’ll damn well slow us down. The woodlands are thick on that flank, with nothing in the area you could call a road. Our faster armored cars and lorried infantry will have a rough time there. I would not think we could count on any rapid movement east from the Ob River line, but we knew this from the outset.”

“Yes, you were quick to point that out the moment I proposed this operation. Something tells me you have been a reluctant warrior in this from the very first.”

“Sir, I will do all in my power to serve your interests and see that we prevail here… but—”

“But what, Kymchek?”

“But I’m a realist, sir. We can cut the rail lines here, tear up the tracks, but with our forces divided between Kansk and Ilanskiy, the prospect of taking the latter is not good, particularly if they do have the artillery I expect here, or even armor.”

“Armor? You said nothing of that before.”

“The 11th Siberian has a mobile element, with a full company of light tanks and two motorized rifle companies. It was in my report, and could be on the scene now. In any case, it will not be far away.”

“What kind of armor?”

“Armored cars, lighter T-60 and T-70 tanks.”

“We can stop those tanks, yes?”

“With what, sir? We brought no AT guns with us here. The men have AT rifles, grenades, and a couple 76mm recoilless rifles for direct fire support, but little else to stop an enemy tank.”

“Then we’ll hit them with our 105s from above. That was the plan from the beginning. I’m going to pound that Siberian Division all night if I have to.”

“Assuming we win the airship battle here.” Kymchek needed to say that, risky as it was. What good was his advice if he didn’t have the backbone to speak his mind?

Volkov shook his head, staring at the map, then decided something. “The plan to take the bridges at Kansk is to be scrapped. Instead that force is to simply tear up the rail lines east of Kansk and then fall back on Ilanskiy. I’ll want our entire ground contingent focused on that objective—and get that message off to fleet command. I want every airship we can find. I don’t care if we strip the entire front, by god! That bastard pulled a fast one here, and he’s not going to get away with it. I want the rest of the 22nd Airmobile division out here immediately!”

“There’s one other thing, sir—the objective.”

“The railway inn in the center of town. I want that under my thumb as soon as possible.”

“But why, sir? What is so important about that inn?” Kymchek knew it was dangerous to ask this again, but his need to understand the objective was paramount.”

“Just
take
it, Kymchek. I don’t care if we sacrifice every god damned squad in the brigade, but you take that railway inn! Understand? No more questions about it. Just get the job done!”

“Aye sir.”

Kymchek saluted and re-sealed the capsule hatch, leaving Volkov with his broken brandy flask and map. This wasn’t how things were supposed to pan out. I should be high above that storm, receiving reports on the ground fighting while I dined in my stateroom. Now look at me, huddled in this damn escape pod!
Orenburg
was never supposed to enter actual combat. I had eleven other airships with me to do that, but things have changed with the wind. Now this whole plan seems cursed. Karpov appears here out of thin air, coming right out of the heart of that storm. When this is over I’m going to find out how he managed that. In fact, that interrogation will be the only consolation I have in this affair.

Yet that ship of his…
Tunguska
is a match for
Orenburg
, and Karpov is too damn good at the helm. This could get very dangerous, and very soon, but I’m going to get to that railway inn if it’s the last thing I do.

Even as he thought that, another part of his mind realized how desperate and stubborn he was being here, and how rash and foolish. Suppose you do take the inn, it chided him, then what? Are you going to just sit there surrounded by your ground troops while Karpov summons every unit he can find within 300 kilometers of this place? And the inn itself is of no use to you now, correct? It was demolished in that earlier raid mounted by Sergie Kirov, and has not yet been rebuilt. What are you doing here? You’re making this a personal little vendetta, when you should be thinking in broader strategic terms. The Germans are about to launch their big operation against the Soviets. You should be back in Orenburg, planning how best to support that attack. Instead…

Vendetta!

Part IV

Return of the Fox

“Destiny always rings three times...”

―
Muriel Barbery

Chapter 10

While
Troyak and Fedorov were watching the advance of the German 7th Machinegun Battalion at Raqqah, and Karpov and Volkov were vectoring in their forces at Ilanskiy, another warrior was about to rise from the ashes of his own making. Erwin Rommel had been a chastened and brooding general at Mersa Brega, sullen as he watched his mobile troops from the 5th Light Division digging in to hard defensive positions. Memories of the last war haunted him when he saw the men stringing wire and sewing fields of mines. It was a war of trenches, and great thundering artillery, dreadful moments in the space between barbed lines of death, and then came the gas, choking, asphyxiating, maddening.

Rommel had fought with the Württemberg Mountain Battalion of the elite
Alpenkorps
, where he quickly showed the genius for tactics and quick thinking on the battlefield that was to be his hallmark. His audacious infiltration tactics behind enemy lines had produced astounding results at times, where in one instance he had captured 1500 Italians with a single squad of five men. Then, leading a company of just 100 men, he had unhinged the defense of an Italian strong point garrisoned by 7000 troops! The Iron Cross and the coveted Blue Max that he so cherished were just some of the fruits of that labor. But the war was not all dash and medals. It was dreadful.

It was the tank that had broken the awful, grinding stalemate of the Western Front. The first cumbersome charge of the unwieldy metal land forts was a dismal failure for the British, as shocking as it was to the German soldiers who initially faced those growling behemoths. The tanks were unreliable, slow, ponderous in the mud of the rain sodden fields. They broke down, slipped tracks, found their guns jamming in the heat of battle, and too often caught fire. But the devious minds that had conceived them persisted, and eventually they tried again, and broke through.

Within months the sledgehammer charge of armor was used to batter the deeply entrenched lines of the enemy, breaking through for the infantry to cross that deadly space that came to be called no man’s land, and win the hour. In the years between the wars, the Germans had mastered the art of armored warfare, developing tactics and methods that would prove equally shocking to the British and French when their blitzkrieg was let loose in 1940. Rommel had been one of the grand masters of the panzer divisions, the leader of the fabled 7th Panzers, the Ghost Division. It had advanced farther and faster than any other division in the campaign against France, and Rommel’s exploits, and the favor they gained with Hitler, had led him to this privileged position as commander of the newly formed German Afrika Korps.

He remembered his promises to the Fuhrer all too well, yet now, as he stared at his motorized infantry digging in, his shoulders slumped with unwanted resignation. Before him lay a vast desert which was the perfect open field for his fast moving shock columns of tanks, armored cars and infantry. Yet the very same weapon that had led him to fame and the heights of command here, had also been his undoing—the tank.

This time it was an enemy tank, one so awesome in its power and capabilities that it rendered his entire armored force obsolete in a single stroke. He had advanced with breakneck speed and characteristic dash in the first Libyan offensive, sending the British reeling and then driving right past their last strongpoint of Tobruk and across the Egyptian frontier. Then, at an insignificant hamlet named Bir el Khamsa, and just as he was to deliver the final blow that might lead to a breakthrough to the Nile, something came out of the deep deserts to the south that stunned his veteran troops and sent them staggering back in a headlong retreat.

Tanks, massive new heavy tanks fielded by the British that were truly awesome to behold. They were twice the size of the older Matildas, a tank that had a tough skin and was already difficult to kill with the light guns on his armor, ranging from 20mm to 50mm. Rommel had adapted by taking the superb 88mm flak gun and deploying it as an anti-tank weapon, and with remarkable results—until now. This new British tank was so heavily armored that it shrugged off hits from a 50mm gun as if they were pebbles, and was even impervious to the dread flak 88!

Look at me now, he said to himself. I told the Führer I would deliver him Libya in two weeks time, and that I did, but I could not hold it long enough to have any sense of the victory. He asked me to stop O’Connor, and that I did, but the reversal and shame of defeat has dogged me ever thereafter. These new enemy tanks are so powerful that our only recourse is to stand on defense, dig in behind wire and mines, and register every gun we have to saturate the field with artillery. It is the first great war all over again, and it is maddening to sit here like this, simply waiting for the enemy to choose the moment he will strike.

At first it seemed he would not have long to wait. The British had followed his retreat west, sending their veteran 6th and 9th Australian Divisions in the wake of the Italians, and it looked as though they planned to fight a battle to take Benghazi. The Führer demanded the place be defended, but Rommel was not going to commit his precious German infantry there. So he ordered six Italian Infantry Divisions to dig in around the port city, where they also waited for the enemy to attack, but it never came.

The British have a head on their shoulders after all, he thought. They realize that without Malta, Benghazi is of little use to them. We can pound it day and night from the air, and besides, they have a port of equal capacity right behind them in Tobruk. So Rommel was not surprised when he saw the two Australian infantry divisions withdrawing, and posted near Tobruk instead of coming down to Mersa Brega to face off against his own troops.

They aren’t stupid, he thought. They know that they can hold the line much easier near Tobruk. Now any move I make will be seen ten days to two weeks before I can get anywhere near them, giving them ample time to prepare. And if I do move again, I must cross 500 kilometers of desert before I can even begin to contemplate battle. There is no way I can do that until I am reinforced here, and well supplied. Paulus was correct.