Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) (11 page)

Lieutenant Millard got the
assignment in 1/6th Australian Cav, and he led his troop, consisting of one
light Mark VI tankette and six carriers with infantry, up the narrow road. The
detachment planned to split into two groups of three carriers each, with the
tank in the middle, and with this modest force they thought to take the town by
storm. Lt. Millard deployed his men on the left, and Lt. Florence had the right
flank, but both groups immediately came under fire by mortars and machineguns
when the men began to deploy.

“Better tell the lads to get
back,” he said to his wireless operator, Corporal Oswell. But when he looked at
the man he could see he was clutching a wounded arm with a bloodied hand, and
was unable to send the signal. So Millard waved for the men in Lt. Florence’s
squad to fall back, then got on the Vickers MG to lay down covering fire on the
French positions.

“I hope the bloody artillery
spotters are having a good look at this mess!” he shouted. “Driver, get us
back!”

As the carrier tried to back off,
a small caliber mortar shell landed right near the front of the vehicle,
rattling it with shrapnel and blowing off a track. Millard and his remaining
crew leapt from the damaged vehicle, the ground around them peppered by enemy
fire. They made it to a low stone wall, unable to so much as raise their heads
further against the enemy gunnery.

“We’re in the soup now,” said
Millard. “Where’s that artillery?”

“I’ve good legs on me, sir,” said
Corporal Limb, his driver. “I think I can sprint back to the carrier and call
them on the radio.”

They waited until the French fire
slackened, then Limb ran for all he was worth, shots ricocheting off the
carrier even as he leapt inside. Amazed that he was still alive, the Corporal
reached for the radio set and found it dead, shot through by a machinegun
round. Then, as if in answer to the call he had hoped to make, the Australian
artillery fire began to register in on the French positions.

Lt. Florence got his men safely
back, but saw that Millard was still trapped. He jumped into his carrier,
gunned the engine, and made a mad dash right up the road towards Millard’s
damaged carrier, with no more than a pistol in his hand for a weapon. He
reached the scene, finding the carrier empty, as Corporal Limb had used those
good legs of his to make it safely back to the wall.

“Come on!” he shouted to Millard
and the others, maneuvering his carrier closer. The men were up and into the
vehicle, still under heavy fire, but they all made it safely in, and Florence
backed off. By the time they got back, a third of the men in the troop had been
hit and wounded, and the carrier itself had taken heavy damage. But they were
alive, and glad for at least that. Lt. Millard wiped the sweat from his brow
with a bloodied arm.

“Message from battalion,” said a
runner. “We’re to make ready to support the infantry attack.”

“With what?” Millard exclaimed.
He had one carrier and the Mark VI operational, and twelve men.

Chapter 11

The
German reprisal was
swift, as if perfectly timed to counter the launch of Operation Scimitar. The
hammer Hitler had spoken of as he berated his Generals was Kurt Student’s
veteran 7th Flieger Division. The paratroopers had been at Gibraltar as ground
forces, seized Malta by storm, and now had been ferried forward from their
bases in Greece to the Italian outpost on Rhodes. From there the Ju-52’s
refueled, and the troops made ready to spring on to their real objective, the
island of Cyprus.

A backwater outpost in the early
war, Cyprus had seemed isolated from the fires that were burning through Greece
and the Western Desert. There the East met West in a mix of Greek merchants,
shopkeepers and Turkish farmers, fishermen and craftsmen, though each group
huddled in well segregated settlements made of adobe like mud walled buildings.
The arable lowlands were covered with fields of barley, wheat and rye, and wild
flowers that lent their color to the landscape. Peasant farmers worked the
land, carrying their harvest along thin, dusty roads in Ox carts, or on the backs
of camel troops. Hills rose in green terraces, dotted with thick vineyards,
peach orchards, olive and fig groves, dotting the flanks of higher mountains in
the south and west. There were deep shady forests of oak, eucalyptus, cedar,
pine, and of course, cyprus.

In the larger towns of Famagusta,
Larnaca and Nicosia, the people mixed in commerce, black-robed Greek Orthodox
Priests, tall Turks wearing their distinctive red fez hats, veiled women
selling woven blankets at street concessions. The people seemed oblivious to
the hardships and privations the war had forced upon others. They lazed in the
warm Mediterranean sun, sipping black coffee in the cafes. Over the years the
Greek Hoplites had come, and the Roman Legions, and finally the swarthy Arabs
and Moors. Ancient ruins of these old empires still jutted from the high hills,
old Crusader castles built by the dour Knights Hospitaller, who once held the
island as a fortress outpost against Islam, keeping watch on the Holy Lands to
the east. The people had seen them all come and go over the long ages, but now
men were coming the like of which they had never imagined, tall fair skinned
Aryans falling from the sky itself with canisters of rifles, machineguns, and
mortars to bring war to this sleepy island.

III/7th Fallshirmjager Regiment
would land west of the capital at Nicosia, seizing two vital airfields. II/7th
would land at Famagusta to storm that city and its port facilities, and I/7th
would be split, with a single battalion targeting the airfield at Leftonika
northeast of Nikosia, and two more landing on the southern coast between
Famagusta and Limasol, where there were landing strips at Dkekelia and Kophinu.
The R.A.F opposed the landings as best they could, but with so many
Hurricanes
up in support of the ground operations for Scimitar, the German air assault
could not be stopped. Only one formation of Ju-52s was forced to abort when
planes off Crete caught it en-route, and successfully dueled with the three
Bf-109s in escort. Yet it was an important little victory, for the planes
turned back had been carrying the artillery.

Unlike Crete, Cyprus was not well
garrisoned, nor did it have any significant Cypriot militia force beyond a few
security companies watching the airfields. The only planes on the island were the
remnant of an F.A.A. unit at Larnaca, five
Swordfish
and five
Albacores
.
The tsland was defended by only two battalions of British troops, the Sherwood
Foresters and 2/7th Australian Cavalry. Being hit by a full division of crack
paratroops, they would have little chance of stopping the operation, or even
impeding it for very long. Churchill heard of the operation while still en
route back to England, and remarked that he hoped the garrison would simply
take to the rough mountain country in the southwest of the island and organize
a guerrilla campaign from there, but it was not to be.

There were two companies of the
Sherwood Foresters at Nikosia when the skies darkened with parachutes. Their
commander could see that he had no chance of holding the town with what looked
like a brigade sized force landing to the east and west. So he elected to try
and get south on the main road to Larnaca, leading his men out in any lorry
they could make operational. Second company at the head of the column made it
42 kilometers until they ran into a battalion of German paratroopers blocking
the road near the village of Aradhippou, just north of Larnaca. The 4th company
veered off the road and tried to bypass the German position, circling to the west
to try and reach a company of Aussie cavalry still holding the port.

1st Company of the Sherwood
Foresters, and a company of the 7th Australian Cav, were surrounded at
Famagusta by a well designed German landing on every side of the town. Further
west at Limassol, the last company of Sherwood Foresters got the order to take
to anything that would float and try to reach Palestine. With this inadequate
defense collapsing, it would now come down to how quickly the German troops
could occupy the key turf they wanted with leg units.

Another unit was also on the move
that first night, the 85th Regiment of the 5th Mountain Division that had been
in Rodos as part of the forces staged there. The convoy put to sea with the
French
Comandante Teste
, a large seaplane tender that had been converted
to a troop transport, two captured Greek steamers, and a pair of French
Destroyers in escort. They were the real naval thrust to be made at the
opening, a small, quiet task force that sped on its way in the shadows, while a
second French task force of fast cruisers and destroyers demonstrated by racing
through the Straits of Messina and heading west of Cyprus. The smaller task
force hugging the Turkish coast wasn’t seen, and made its way inexorably down
to the port of Tartus. German infantry were now in the Levant, though the
British did not yet know this as they deployed for the battle on the Litani
River south of Beirut.

* * *

On
the inland desert
flank, the 5th Indian Brigade had assembled at Irbid, Jordan, and stormed over
the border to Daraa. When it became clear that the French were not open to negotiation
there either, 3/1 Punjab and 4/6 Raj battalions took the town in a pincer
operation, overcoming the resistance quickly and turning the area over to the
Frontier Horse companies, many manned by Arab troops. They then pushed on up
the road to Sheikh Meskine, intending to take that place and the larger
settlement of Ezraa further east near the rugged lava beds of the Jebel Druz.
Their mission, as they advanced north, was to cover the long desert flank on
the right, and screen the advance of the center column.

There Kinlan’s “Sabre Force” of
Gurkhas and Scimitar light tanks was joined by Popski and the Mobile Force
returning from Habbaniyah. Major Popski found the commander of that force, a Colonel
Rana Gandar, and told him he was leading a contingent of Russian Marines that
would join this action.

“Russian Marines?” The Colonel
wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“Right-o, mate. I understand you
chaps don’t take to one another in your day, but this is our time here, and the
Russians are our allies. Make them your allies too. I’ve seen them fight, along
with those black suited commandos yonder. They call that lot the Argonauts, and
they know their business behind these machine guns as well.” He hefted the
assault rifle Troyak had given him.

Colonel Gandar listened, and said
nothing. He was a professional officer in one of the premier fighting units in
the world of 2021. The Gurkhas had had a long history in the British Army,
tough men all, hardened first by the high mountains of Nepal where they were
born, and these were the best of the best. They were ‘bloody good soldiers,’ an
understatement, for the Gurkhas had made a sport of war for countless
generations. This unit was designated a Light Infantry Battalion, as they did
not fight from armored fighting vehicles. Instead they carried the steel in
their impregnable souls, and on their back right hip, where each man carried
the dread curved Kurkuri long knife in a brown leather sheath.

Popski knew good soldiers when he
saw them, and these men filled the bill. They were not big men like the
Russians or Australians, and the British had often taken to calling them the
“little Gurkhas.” But they were hard as the hills that spawned them, fierce as
the wild wind on the high snowy peaks, though quick to laugh and with a warm,
amiable spirit. The Gurkha Sergeants, called Halvidars, were not the bawling
haranguing sort with their men. They didn’t have to be that way. Each and every
Gurkha was motivated from within, not by the hard hand of a drill Sergeant, and
would serve and obey unflinchingly, even unto death. There was no arrogance
among the officers, and the unit was a collective of equals at heart, and the
officers led only by virtue of their experience and time in the service.

Popski had known Gurkha infantry
in his time, finding them among the fiercest and most steadfast fighters he had
ever seen. They seemed to have no fear in battle. They would either live or
die, and many in his day still wore a top knot of hair so their Hindu god could
reach down and pluck them into the nirvana of some heaven if they fell, but it
was never theirs to decide that fate. That quality of fatalistic ardor when it
came to battle, and the modern weaponry Colonel Gandar’s troops would carry with
them, made them a formidable foe indeed.

“Where do you want us?” Popski
asked.

The Colonel said nothing, simply
nodding and pointing with his chin to a dry hollow some ways off. A Gurkha
never pointed, particularly with his finger. He might use a thumb if necessary,
or simply his chin.

His introductions made, Popski
went back to Troyak’s squads and spoke to them in Russian. “We’re signed on
here with the Gurkhas,” he said. “You men respect one thing in another fighting
man, and you’ll see it the minute you lay eyes on this lot—tenacity and skill.
They’ve got both in abundance, and you should be proud to stand with them. So
any rubbish you may still have in your pockets from your own time needs to be
buried, here and now. Today we fight as one.”

“We had no trouble fighting with
those Argonauts,” said Zykov. “It’s what a man does in a fight that matters
now, not who he is. They did right by us, and we did right by them. If these
here fight alongside us, they’ll be no problems—except for anyone who gets in
our way.”

That produced a swell of approval
from the Marines, and they quickly settled in for a field cooked meal, glad to
have their feet on dry earth for a time, instead of the swaying deck of the
ship. They soon got the word from Popski that they were “going in” through the
Golan heights.

“Tough bones there,” he said.
“Hard, stony ground, and beyond that the lava beds of the Jebel Druz country.
We’ll turn north before that, and head for Damascus. Our lot is to lead in the
Free French, and then we’re to let them have a go at the city and see if they
can take it. The Frogs may not want to mix it up, but from initial reports I’ve
heard, they’re fighting on the coast road.”

“We’re ready,” said Troyak,
chewing the last of his meal and swilling down a long swallow of water behind
it. In another hour they mounted the trucks the British had provided and moved
out as a ground force. The Argonauts drew a better ticket and got Dragon IFVs
from Kinlan, though no one would say he was playing favorites, even if he was.
The helicopters, particularly the three X-3s, would be held in reserve, or used
as fast, mobile fire support when called for, or as scouts. The KA-40 would
standby as a medical unit and supply ferry asset, though the Russians didn’t
care much for that.

“Think the Big Blue Pig could
outgun one of those fancy hybrids the British have?” a corporal asked.

“Stow that, Rykovich,” Troyak
reminded him. “The British are allies now, remember?”

They moved out, part of the
central force that was comprised of six Free French battalions, the Gurkhas and
the Scimitars of Sabre Force. The main opposition was from the Vichy 17th
Senegalese Infantry Regiment, three battalions, and these units fought nothing
more than brief delaying actions as they fell back towards Damascus. One
battalion thought to hold the gateway town of Kuneitra, but did not have the
strength to occupy the heights of Tel Abu Nida to the west, which were eagerly
taken by a company of the Gurkhas. From this wooded height, they could put well
placed mortar fire down on the French positions, a development that did much to
discourage further defense.

At the first sign of a ground
attack organizing, the Senegalese pulled out, heading northeast, then east
towards the rail line to Daraa. It was there that they ran afoul of the Free
French 4th Senegalese Battalion, and a troop of 8 Scimitars that had been leading
them up from the Yarmuk River Valley. There was a brief firefight, with
Senegalese riflemen on both sides starkly outlining the nature of the little
civil war that was now underway. The Scimitar tanks weighed heavily in the
outcome, quickly suppressing the enemy MG positions with their 30mm
autocannons, and allowing the Free French troops to push on through.

So while the Aussies fought their
way over the Litani River on the coast, “Sabre Force” had crossed the hard
ground of the Golan and was now preparing to move into the cultivated land
beyond. B Company of the Gurkhas raced ahead and took the bridge over the
narrow, winding river Awaj north of Sassa, which flowed east below Kiswah. This
allowed two troops of Scimitars to cross quickly over. In time, the whole
Gurkha battalion reassembled there, in a good position to outflank the growing
French defense further east at Kiswah.