Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) (31 page)

But how could he get back there
if the stairway was gone? How?

Tyrenkov was watching Karpov
closely, and could see the machinations of his mind working, and the sudden
flash of anxiety in his eyes.

He isn’t sure, he thought. The
little Admiral with delusions of grandeur doesn’t really know what he wants to
do yet. Has he figured out what I concluded just moments ago? The stairway at
Ilanskiy was destroyed in 1941, and might not ever be rebuilt. Has that finally
occurred to him, or the fact that we’re all living on a short lease here? He decided
to voice the concerns in his mind, and asked another question.

“One other thing, sir. Suppose we
do commit ourselves to look for Volkov here. We had better be quick about it,
and we will need all the help we can get. Because what happens to me in 1913,
four years from now, when I am scheduled to be born? Do I suffer the fate of Konev,
Symkovich, and Lavrov? Will I just keel over and die on the day of my birth? Will
all the crew die that way, one by one as they reach their year and day of birth?”

Karpov seemed surprised by that
remark, his eyes narrowing as he thought. “An interesting dilemma,” he said. “I
have never considered that. Yet four years would be more than enough time for
us to find Volkov, with or without help from my Great Grandfather and the Okhrana.
Don’t worry, we’ll make sure you never have to face that paradox. As soon as we
conclude operations here, we’ll return to 1941 to see how things turn out.”

“Can we return, Admiral?”

“Of course!” Karpov tried to
sound confident, in control, but Tyrenkov could hear the edge of uncertainty in
his voice.

“But then we’ll have another
problem, sir. You said that first incident with the propulsion system aboard
your ship sent you to 1941, and I can only assume that you arrived later in the
year, because you were obviously alive and well in March when we departed for
England. That said, what happens to you on the day your ship first arrived? Do
you just keel over and die as well? I may have a four year lifespan if we
remain here, but if we return, your candle may be burning very low.”

Part XI

Edge of
Chaos

“Even
a single grain of sand
reveals
a profound truth about the way the world works. Some of the most recent
investigations related to chaos theory have centered on the critical point where
a series of small variations produces a massive change of state. In the modern
terminology, this is called "the edge of chaos."
One of the examples of this is that of a pile of
sand… When the pile reaches this critical point, even a single grain would be
capable of dramatically affecting all around it. This seemingly trivial example
provides an excellent "edge-of-chaos model," with a wide range of
applications, from earthquakes to evolution; from stock exchange crises to
wars.

―
Alan Woods / Ted Grant

Chapter 31

The
Knight’s Cross of the
Iron Cross was just settling on the chest of Generalleutnant Alfred Ritter von
Hubicki, the commander of the 9th Panzer Division. He had received it for the
exploits of his division in the recently concluded Balkan campaign, but its
luster was suddenly dimmed that morning when Brigadier Kinlan’s attack fell on
his line like the Hammer of God.

There was only brief warning when
the big 155mm rounds began falling on the forward positions. The guns were so
far to the south that no one heard them fire, only the whine of the shells as
they fell in the dark, then the hard thump and tremendous power of the high
explosive rounds hit home. It was a brief, but violent barrage, and it was
extremely accurate, walking right through his main positions and causing a
considerable dislocation, and many casualties.

Then there came a distant rumble,
which soon resolved to the telltale sound of mechanized vehicles on the move.
Moments later dark shapes loomed in the distance, and the troops were
experienced enough to know they were under attack by armor. Sergeants on the forward
line called back to the Panzer Jager teams manning the 3.7 inch AT guns, those
that remained intact, and hands tightened on weapons all along the line. Then
the firing began, and a Sd.Kfz 251 was suddenly struck by a heavy round and
ripped apart. The 8 ton vehicle keeled to one side, a burning hulk.

A wedge of five Challenger II
tanks of the Highlanders 1st Company were in the vanguard, their massive shapes
emerging from the smoke of the artillery barrage to the dismay of every man who
saw them on the line. They were huge fast moving chariots of death, the massive
turrets rotating and firing, machine guns spitting tracer rounds into the line
as they came. The German division had fought in Poland, Holland, France, Greece
and Yugoslavia, but had never encountered anything like the storm that was upon
them now.

The troops expected the enemy
tanks to stop and take up firing positions, but they did not stop. Firing on the
move, the metal behemoths simply crashed right through the line, their machine
guns cutting down men on every side, and that long, terrible main gun belching
fire at vehicles and gun positions to the rear.

There had not been a shock like
this since the first appearance of tanks in the Great War, and in spite of the
hard lesson given Rommel at Bir el Khamsa, the full realization of what the new
enemy tanks could do had not yet trickled down through the rest of the army. It
was a monster that simply could not be challenged, let alone killed. No
anti-Tank gun possessed by the troops could harm it, and filled with the hubris
earned from its previous victories, the men of the 9th Panzer Division had not
sewn landmines as a defensive measure. In fact, they had been planning to
assemble and move south that morning to attack, but their enemy had beaten them
to the punch.

Behind the hard tip of the spear
came the Warriors, also moving fast, their 40mm guns cracking away in sharp,
well controlled three round bursts. Thank god there were not many, thought
Sergeant Muller as he watched the scene in near shock. He was on the radio at
once, calling for tank support from the 1st Battalion of the 33rd Regiment in
position directly behind the line. The battalion had a strong group of 54 PzKpfw
III, 18 PzKpfw II and 18 of the heavier PzKpfw IVD infantry support tanks, and
now the Germans launched a sharp counter thrust, their armor churning forward
through the open fields in attack.

“Tanks!” called Lieutenant Horton
on the radio. “Front left!”

He keyed the position on his
digital display, assigning the symbol for enemy armor, and within a millisecond
every vehicle in the battalion had the threat information on their screens.
They were able to turn and react immediately, groups of five Warriors rotating
their turrets to engage the oncoming threat, and the big Challenger IIs opening
the action at long range.

The Highlanders had pushed right
through the lines of the Panzergrenadiers with both companies, and now Colonel
‘Sandy’ Sanderson committed his breakthrough force, the heavy platoon of ten
more Challenger IIs. They surged forward with the Warriors of his third reserve
company behind, to even the odds, and then some. His battalion was facing 90
German tanks, but now he had 43 Warriors and 20 Challenger IIs in the attack.
Two Warriors had been damaged and were ordered back to the start line, but the
bulk of Sanderson’s force was unscathed. The fire they put out, seeing their
targets at long range with their thermal sensors, was devastating.

One by one the German tanks were
hit and destroyed. It was the Challenger IIs that wreaked the most havoc, their
heavy rounds completely obliterating any target they found. A three round burst
from a Warrior was enough to put serious hurt on the German tanks, though some
survived to get off shots of their own—until a Challenger rotated that massive
turret and blasted them to hell.

Generalleutnant Hubicki was
stunned to hear the frantic calls of his tankers on their field radios. He knew
his second tank battalion was on the right near the river, and barked an order
that it should move to attack, but he was too late. The Mercian Battalion had
swept over that ground, and had already engaged the German armor in another
devastating, uneven armored duel.

The attack was so violent and
swift that it smashed completely through the 9th Panzer Division, devastated
the armored reserve battalions, and pushed right on to the north. The presence
of the Challengers was unanswerable. Had the Warriors been alone, it might have
been a difficult fight, but the Challengers could see and hit the enemy before
they even came into firing range, and the British tankers were decimating the
German armor, leaving the Warriors to engage anything they missed. It was about
15 kilometers to Rayak, and by mid morning the British were attacking the
airfield, where they soon encountered fresh German troops that had been
marching south in a long dark column on the main road.

Horton stopped, opening his top
hatch to get a look with human eyes. He peered through his field glasses,
seeing trucks and vehicles ahead, and troops rapidly deploying on defense.
Suddenly a barrage of artillery fire began to come in and he knew this fight
was far from over.

“Another column,” he said,
quickly buttoning up. “Get word back to Kinlan. Black uniformed troops ahead,
in force, north of the airfield. How’s our ammo Jimmy?”

“Running thin,” said his gunner,
James Crocker. “Twenty rounds left. We’ll need to get to an ammo truck soon.”

“Not bloody likely,” said Horton.
“The supply elements are thirty kilometers behind us by now. The Gurkhas
haven’t even swept the ground we just rolled over. So make every round count.”

It was good advice, for the dark
uniformed troops he had seen deploying were the men of 3rd battalion, Nordland
Regiment, of the Viking Motorized Division. The trains had come in that night
at Homs, and the men had hastened to get their vehicles ready for a night march
south. Behind them would come the men of the Germania Regiment, and the Westland
Regiment in reserve. Von Wietersheim would have his entire Korps in the field,
and the Vikings were a large formation, with three battalions in each regiment,
a recon battalion, MG Battalion and Pioneers.

Now, after a long hard drive of
nearly 75 kilometers from Merdjayoun, Kinlan’s two battalions were coming face
to face with a division that would establish one of the fiercest reputations
for combat in the war.

* * *

A
Bedouin in the Desert
Cavalry Company that had moved to the extreme left of the French position was
up on Jebel Aassafir, north of the airfield at Palmyra, when he heard the
strange sound of beating wings in the dark. The hard thumping in the distance
soon resolved to an evil sounding drone in the sky, and his eyes scanned the
overcast cloud cover with fearful glances. He had heard entirely too much, and
was convinced something was very wrong. A hasty withdrawal down the
mountainside, to a place as far from the sky as he could get, was the only
thing on his mind.

The KA-40 was up again that
night,
moving above the heavy clouds as
before, unseen, but clearly heard. Fedorov had made the decision to extract the
Marines and yield the fortress. It was either that or they would face a long
siege, certain attack, and with dwindling ammunition in the face of heavy odds.
Instead they would take to the helo, and fly east to the T3 pumping station for
a meeting with the British senior officers.

“Getting
back up those ropes might not be as easy as getting down them,” said Fedorov.

“Don’t
worry,” said Troyak. “There’s a harness and winch. It’s all motorized. Just
hang on tight and they’ll haul you right up.”

“With
the Germans firing at my hind end the whole way?”

In
the end, that is nearly what it became. The Marines assembled on the roof of
the fortress, gathering their equipment into the supply canisters. Two man
teams were posted on either side of the fort, and then the helo was vectored
in, roaring out of the north, a dark looming shape against the overcast sky.

The
Germans in the ruined encampment below were quickly into fox holes, as that
sound had been accompanied by withering attacks from the helo’s minigun, though
few had ever laid eyes on the beast. They would hear it, up in the dark mist,
and then the terrible fire would begin, with lethal accuracy, right on the
mortar and gun positions. The enemy could see in the dark! So the mortar teams
got as far from their tube emplacements as possible when they heard the
thrumming in the sky that night.

Wolff
heard it, still frustrated and angry that he had not been able to take that
hill. He stepped out from his headquarters at the Temple of Bel, and raised his
field glasses, studying the top of the hill closely where the hard stone walls
of the old fort jutted like a broken tooth. What he saw next was as puzzling as
it was alarming. There was clearly an aircraft of some sort there, but it was
not moving! The roar of its engines was apparent, and he rushed to a field
phone, finally realizing what was happening.

“A
helicopter!” he shouted at a staffer. “The British have some kind of new
helicopter.” He had heard of them of course, and knew the Luftwaffe was testing
some experimental models, though he had never seen one—until now.

“They
are pulling their men out! I could see them on the ropes. Get hold of third
battalion! I want them to attack that hill at once!”

His
quarry had sat their impudently for days, answering his tormenting mortar fire
with equal fire, and daring him to try another attack. They were obviously
special forces of some kind, he realized, admitting a grudging admiration for
the audacity of this attack. Now they were slipping away!

The
field phones rang in Diocletian’s camp, a jarring sound in the backdrop of the
old ruins. Sergeant Hermann answered, taking the order that they were to attack
immediately, and passing it on to his Lieutenant. Moments later the men were
up, and moving across the open ground towards the hill. The MG-34 teams were
already beginning to put out covering fire.

Up
on the hilltop, Fedorov was in the harness Troyak had described, buffeted by
the heavy downwash and deafening sound of the helo. Yet he heard something whiz
past him in the dark, and then saw the streak of tracer rounds reaching for
him. The overwatch teams began returning fire with their automatic weapons, with
Troyak down on the crenulated wall barking orders and seizing a Bullpup
machinegun. He stood there, implacable, like a part of the fortress itself, the
weapon jutting from his hip as it belched hot gunfire on the advancing German
infantry below.

He
could barely hear the whistles of the enemy, signaling one platoon after
another to advance., and now the fire on the hill became more intense. He saw
one round flash into the rotors of the KA-40 sending a shower of sparks down
from above. Then he heard a deep growl, the minigun answering with its angry
reprisal. He looked up to see the terrible stream of what looked like molten
lead erupting from the spinning barrels of the gun, and could only imagine what
it must be like to be under fire from such a weapon. Popski’s words haunted
him… It was murderous.

Then
he felt a hard tug on the cable from above and he was pulled rapidly up to the
helo. Four other ropes were down, and the Marines were up them with amazing
speed. Then, to his horror, he saw one man fall, hit by enemy fire and shot
clean off the rope. His body scudded against the edge of a stone tower, and he
saw another man lunge for him, unable to reach the man as he fell. The sight of
the Marine’s body falling into the deep shadows of the trench was agonizing.
Then, to his amazement, he saw that Troyak had fixed a rappelling line around a
stony abutment and was quickly up and over the ledge!

My
god, he thought. What is he doing? Three other Marines moved to the scene, with
one man securing the line while the other two poured out fire from their
automatic weapons. The German infantry was now half way up the hill, a dark
tide on the pallid ground, advancing in slow rushes. If they could reach the
brow of the hill before Troyak could get out of that trench…

Then
he turned when the pilot shouted something from the main cabin. “Incoming
aircraft!” In a pulsing moment he thought they were now under attack by German
fighters. The minigun had finally expended the last of its ammo, the barrels
slowly rotating to a stop in the smoke of their own fire. Now the enemy
infantry was hastening forward, and the defensive fire was slackening as the
bulk of the Marines were already aboard. To men fired their assault rifles from
the open hatch of the helo, and an enemy round zipped past the door—another
striking the sliding hatch with a whine. Then Fedorov saw dark shapes in the
sky to the west.