The Autobahn’s bridge, like most post war bridges in Germany, had been built with demolition in mind, for an occasion such as this; cavities for demolition charges were built in to the design.
The first refugee had been 500m from the bridge when it had gone up, and once the rubble and dust cleared refugees stood on the shattered eastern ramp, staring silently at the safety of the western bank, now denied to them.
As the Major in command of the demolition team had pointed out, Spetznaz and fifth columnists were causing havoc with the lines of communication, and they just couldn’t take the chance that some of them were using the refugees as cover, to seize the bridge for their own forces to cross over.
Most of the refugees had moved on, trying to find other ways across but several hundred had camped out on the eastern bank, oblivious to the danger that they were in.
The refugees also posed a hazard to the security of the NATO troops still on the far bank, acting as a tripwire for enemy troops advancing ahead of the main force. The battalion had a listening post out, well dug-in and cammed up but several times refugees foraging for firewood had walked over the hide.
Big Stef was in the hide, just over a mile east of the river. His new partner was a battlefield replacement, a ‘stab’, stupid TA bastard at that, not even a Guardsman. Bill had green Velcro patches on his camouflage smock under his ghillie suit that were missing the ‘RMP’ flash that once sat there. It was bad enough that the man was a copper in civilian life without advertising his ‘weekend monkey’ hobby too, so the flashes were deep inside his bergen. Stef didn’t know how well Bill could shoot yet, he wasn’t entirely happy with the staff sergeant's field craft but to be fair he hadn’t had a lot of practice, and it did seem to be improving as old lessons were remembered. He did know that Bill was an SCO19 firearms instructor so he hoped the man could hit what he aimed at. The last crop of replacements had joined them during the final day at Leipzig airport. Most were ex-regs but there were a few from TA infantry regiments whose establishments rendered them too small to take the field as formed units so they were battlefield replacements. Bill was the only non-infantry wallah, posted in to bolster the under-strength sniper contingent.
Bill seemed pleasant enough, but Stef was no stranger to being on the receiving end of Queens Regulations, he didn’t like ‘monkeys’ much, as squaddies called the Redcaps.
Bill was the first to spot the Russian eight wheeled BTR-80A; it was taking advantage of the slope down toward the river to coast along the autobahn with its engine idling. Big Stef listened as Bill called in a real live fire mission for the first time in his service, and grudgingly accepted that it was faultless. Two and a bit minutes later the BTR-80’s, 280hp KamAZ-7403, engine roared as it propelled it backwards to escape the mortar rounds that had been called in.
“I think it’s time to foxtrot oscar, Bill.” Stef pushed away the turf and wood hatch at the rear of the hide, checking that the coast was clear before pulling himself out and reaching back in for their Bergens, which Bill passed up to him.
The sniper’s ghillie suits were lined with thermal suppressant hessian, this lowered their heat signatures rather than eliminated them completely, and the face and hands would still show up on a thermal imager. The strips of overlaid cloth, designed to break up recognisable shapes hung off them as they crawled toward dead ground that would give them cover from view from the autobahn.
They skirted a hastily erected refugee shantytown as they neared the river; it was spread along the fields bordering the river and had to be bypassed. Both soldiers walked quietly so as not to draw the attention of the refugees in their tents and brushwood and fertiliser bag shelters.
On reaching the bank they took cover whilst Stef called up the far side for a small assault boat to collect them. The mortar fire landing a mile away had roused the refugees who either made preparations to move on before the dawn or whispered in frightened tones to one another.
The sound of twin outboard motors got the attention of the refugees as the assault boat approached the eastern bank; it prompted a stampede toward the spot it was heading for.
“Oh, bugger… this doesn’t look good,” said Bill as he used his night goggles to try and work out which would arrive first, desperate civilians or their transport.
There was little doubt in either soldier’s mind that it could get ugly, pretty bloody quickly and they backed up to the water's edge with their weapons in their shoulders. As the assault boat reversed its engines to prevent its impact with the river bank, the leading knot of refugees got to within 30m of them and Stef fired a round above their heads. It stopped them all in their tracks, except for one woman who paused only momentarily. She had a bundle in her arms and the man next to him held a small boy, the couple were breathing heavily from the exertion of running. There was a rapid exchange of German between the couple and the man obviously didn’t want to relinquish the boy at first, but she spoke sharply at him, before changing to a much softer tone. The pounding of feet was getting louder as the larger group of refugees began to catch up, and the man lowered the boy to the ground. Taking the boy's hand the woman hurried forward towards the snipers, ignoring the levelled weapons. “Bitte, bitte,” was all she said over and over until she reached Bill’s side. At first he thought she wanted to come with them, but she thrust the bundle at him, forcing him to lower the rifle and nestle the bundle in his left arm. Turning to Big Stef she picked up the boy, who couldn’t have been older than three or four and held him out to the soldier. Big Stef kept his rifle levelled at the crowd whilst trying to avoid eye contact with her.
With a slight bump the assault boat nudged the bank behind them.
“Are you people comin’ or not?” a testy voice asked from the boat.
“Jesus wept!” Stef finally said under his breath. “Cover the people on the bank!” he shouted over his shoulder. As he heard a weapon in the boat being cocked he lowered his own and took the child from the German woman.
“Danke… danke shon!” she whispered and she kissed him on the cheek before turning away, a hand to her mouth and shoulders hunched as she walked back toward her partner who came forward, put his arms about her and led her into the crowd, out of sight of the children they had given up.
Stef and Bill got into the boat, which reversed away from the bank as a great tide of refugees arrived, shouting imploringly at them. The boats cox’n opened the throttles and brought them around, heading back to friendly lines. About a thousand people now lined the bank, many were crying as they saw salvation departing.
In the dark neither Stef nor Bill could see the faces of the cox’n or the Royal Engineer sapper who was riding shotgun. “Bollocks… I feel really unclean.” the sapper said at last to no one in particular.
The small boy sat bewildered and frightened between the strange soldier’s knees as the boat bounced along, he winced and looked up fearfully as Stef ruffled his hair. Stef looked over at the shape of Bill.
“What you got there?”
Bill was unwrapping the bundle and uncovered a tiny face, his nose wrinkled at about the same time.
“It’s a shitting machine of indeterminate sex, I think?”
“Well the Razman is just going to love this… not!”
Shuang Cheng-Tzu, the ‘East Wind launch facility’ of the People’s Republic of China’s space program, near Jiuquan in Kansu Province on the southern rim of the Gobi Desert, was constructed in 1963 on the orders of Chairman Mao.
The facility’s two hundred-something buildings along thirty miles of the Etsin River are built from materials brought in along a spur line of the Urumcji-Lanzhou rail line. The railway is virtually the only way to reach the facility and the PRC’s ICBM silos that are also sited in the region.