“How am I supposed to get there, its forty odd miles away?”
The CO looked at him.
“Try asking somebody who gives a shit,” and walked away, leaving the man stood alone on the muddy track.
The clear skies of the previous day had reverted to a thin overcast of cloud. Nikki had survived the night and had come too twice, only to lapse into unconsciousness once more. The sea was gentler at the moment, as it had been for most of the day and the trio’s garments had dried, tied as they were to a thick handling strap, which ran across the roof of the raft. They could do nothing about the salt that stained them a washed out colour and remained in the fibres of the clothing, it irritated the skin but at least they were warmed once they had donned them again. Nikki had been redressed and left wrapped in the survival blanket. Earlier, Sandy had awoken from a fitful sleep feeling nauseous and worried that it could be radiation sickness. Chubby did not think so, they were miles to the west of the detonations and the wind was blowing south, as it usually did in these climes.
With the coming of daylight, they had taken stock of their meagre supplies. The raft had a tiny still, that filtered seawater into the drinkable variety but it was painfully slow, producing just a thimbleful every two hours’. Food was another worry, they had at most just three days’ worth so had, after much debate, used the survival kits fishing line and hook, baited with a pickled pilchard which had so far been ignored by its live kin.
The flyers rescue beacons had been switched off, they were unaware of any friendly forces anywhere close enough to be able to effect a rescue, but they were aware that the enemy would probably be monitoring every frequency, they did not want to fall into their hands.
The day was spent checking on Nikki in between Sandy’s introducing Chubby to Blackadder fanhood, even offering to demonstrate the making of Private Baldrick’s alternative cappuccino… the offer was hurriedly declined!
Smoke and dust reduced visibility for the Russian paratroopers manning the forward OP beyond the autobahn junction. NATO had been pounding their positions every thirty minutes with an hours’ worth of shelling, for the last twenty-four hours’. Inside the OP, the Russian on watch glanced at the timepiece on his wrist; it was about time for the enemy guns to make their presence known again. The burnt out hulks of a pair of Marder APCs and two Leopard II MBTs sat out to their front, along with over a hundred corpses, resulting from the Germans only effort so far to dislodge them. Their division had landed with beefed up 2B11, 120mm mortar assets, six batteries of 122mm D-30 howitzers, and thirty of the light PT-76 tanks, which had been unloaded from IL-76 transports before NATO reorganised in the air. Of the thirty-nine mixed ZSUs that the plan called for, only nine had been delivered. The remainder had been on transports that had turned back in the face of renewed NATO air superiority. The Su-37 cover had been disjointed by air refuelling problems and the resupply airlift was haphazard at best. The armour, guns and AAA that had not made it in, were now sat on the edge of an airfield, along with two field hospitals and their staffs, because ammunition now had priority, except that there wasn’t much making it in. NATO had IR sensors for its AAA too, and a lot of it was plotted up around the city. The Russian stealth fighters could defeat radar but not the heat seekers, and the lumbering Il-76 transports had to get right down on the deck in order to get through. The transports did not fly like crop-dusters and had no terrain following radar; four that had attempted the feat were now smeared across hillsides.
There were four men manning the OP, all experienced soldiers and good at their job, which was staying out of sight and reporting on all enemy movement. The OP had been sited to observe where an enemy would ideally form up before an attack on their positions a thousand or so metres behind them. The only practical spot was at the bottom of an embankment, in an autobahn service's car park, which was out of sight of the Russian forward fighting positions, and accessed by a service road in dead ground.
If the paratroopers in the OP had made a mistake, it was in calling down artillery on the German troops and armour whilst they were in the service area.
German GSG9 troopers in their military role now, rather than anti-terrorist, had spent over a day in snipers ‘ghillie suits’ sniffing out the OP. In fairness to the Russians, they had been rather limited by the terrain in their choice as to where they could site the observation post. The OP was on its own; it did not have another post watching its back, so there were no Mk 1 eyeballs covering their ‘6’, just electronic ones. Small, telescopic masts that looked a lot like natural vegetation created a photoelectric fence that ringed the blind spot at the rear, where the OP could not see. The GSG9 troopers, who had discovered the masts knew the OP was nearby, and very carefully removed soil so as to create a man-sized gully, which allow them to crawl under the ‘fence’ and search beyond it. When the OP itself was found they placed several items on, and around it. For the past six hours’ every whisper the paratroopers made had been recorded, they knew the paratroopers names and the style of VP, voice procedure that they used on the field telephone. The Russians had radios and cellular phones, but the radios were not in use for security reasons and the cellular’s had no ‘whisper’ facility that would allow them to speak into them in hushed tones yet still be heard normally at the other end.
The Germans were now ready and had four men 100m from the OP, all of whom listened to the first shells pass overhead and waited for them to land on the enemy blocking position. As the sound of the detonating shells reached them, one of the troopers pressed the button on a small transmitter.
Four half-pound charges of PE, plastic explosive, blew off the OPs turf and earth roof and killed or seriously injured the occupants, who were in no position to resist when the GSG9 troopers sprinted up and emptied their G3 assault rifles magazines into them.
The Russians had buried their field telephone landline, it was now located and a German telephone attached in place of the now smashed Russian equipment.
With the OP neutralised, the first British armoured vehicles began arriving in the service area five minutes later, 3 (UK) Mechanised Brigade had been blooded in a defence posture, it was now about to go into the attack.
Orbiting at 49,000’ east of the autobahn junction, in the clear but moonless sky, Spirit One dropped its single item of ordnance and continued its circular track, as it 'lasered' the aiming point below. There was only one squadron of operational B2 bombers, and this was the unit of bat-like stealth bombers first mission of the war. NATO signals intelligence had been listening diligently for the Russian airborne division’s radio traffic, and found… silence. In order to get some kind of picture as to where the Russians were in the Leipzig area, they had to DF, direction find, their transmissions, as well as carry out ground and aerial recce’s. The answer to this apparent silence was quite simply that the enemy was utilising the cities still active cellular system by using mobile phones to communicate. In a city filled with people still using phones, but unable to phone outside the city, it was impossible to separate the chaff from the wheat.
The 2000lb laser guided ‘Bunker Buster’ would penetrate 60 feet below ground before detonating and destroying both cellular and landline communications, bringing down the thirty-two floors of the Leipzig telephone exchange at the same time. The Russian forces would have no option but to switch on their radios and NATO could then locate the transmitters, as well as make life generally difficult by jamming their transmissions.