In the time that the enemy had held the building, they had obviously helped themselves to some of its contents and the new occupants had thoughts along the same lines. When Arnie Moore and Colin had returned after gathering up the AKMs, they found British and Americans alike hurriedly doing up flaps on bergens.
“I’m not going to say anything,” Colin had begun.
“… so long as you can still carry your kit… without ditching any of your own equipment and without getting pissed.” By which he meant drunk rather than angry. However at that point there had been a shuffling sound and Guardsman Robertson and the other Tyneside ladies’ man, Aldridge, came huffing and puffing into view carrying an enormous boxed, widescreen television set, which according to the packaging came complete with a Surround Sound system, DVD, Blu Ray and Video. They’d frozen when they saw the two warrant officers looking directly at them.
“And just what may I ask, are you going to do with that thing?”
Both young soldiers spoke at once.
“It’s for me Mam… its ‘er birthday next week.” stammered Aldridge.
“It’s for me Granny, she’s an ‘undred t’morrer!”
Arnie Moore had chucked away to himself.
“Boy Colin, you sure do bring up your boys to look after the lady folk!” but Colin’s face showed no such amusement.
“Put it back where you found it, and do it now!” However, once they had shuffled and puffed back out of sight he’d allowed a big grin to spread across his face.
“When I joined the Second Battalion, 2CG, it was away in Cyprus and I got stuck on the rear party at Chelsea. The boys were in the thick of it as UN Peacekeepers, dug in on Nicosia airport between the Greek National Guard and the Turkish Paras. In the middle of the battalions territory was the bonded warehouse. I remember going to the docks at Southampton with the rest of the rear party to collect the heavy kit that wasn’t airlifted back by Herc’. We didn’t have Milan’s then, the anti-tanks were equipped with the 120mm ‘Combat’ a recoilless anti-tank gun, and damn great things they were. There were two customs officers stood with their backs to us on the edge of the dock, chatting away to each other and having a fag… that’s a cigarette mate, not someone who is light in the loafers. Anyway, a Combat was lowered onto the quayside in nets, and we were getting it unravelled, ready to hook up to a ‘rover, but the muzzle cap came off, and that barrel was stuffed with fags, camera lenses, bottles of Uzo and single malt that started to slide out. We were shovelling that stuff back in like men possessed, and the whole time those two customs men were just ten feet away.”
“The spoils of war, eh?” Arnie smiled.
“We don’t get combat pay in this man’s army, so I reckon I can turn a blind eye to a small amount of wealth re-distribution!”
Back in the present, a group of Russian paratroopers had run behind a nearby building, leaving one of their number lying motionless in plain view after the defenders opened up on them.
“Hurry up with that stuff!” The 82nd’s RSM shouted at the two teams he’d detailed off, to utilise forklifts in fetching bags of cement from the building site. The cement bags were being stacked like sandbags inside the warehouse around the firing loops, which the 82nd men called ‘forting up’, whilst the Brits called it sangar building.
There had been an unusual lull in the firing, which the Warrant Officers took as ominous. ‘Someone’s planning something nasty, I can bloody feel to it. Make sure you people get some top cover on those things, all kinds of shit is going to be falling on our heads otherwise.”
Three of the Warriors were in the building site, taking advantage of the additional protection afforded by stacked piles of building materials. The drivers and Rarden gunners had cammed up the vehicles by leaning sheets of plasterboard against the vehicles. From there they could cover the rear of the warehouse whilst the fourth Warrior was parked between stacked aircraft luggage containers at the side of the building, its barrel peeking between the stacks. The AFVs had been ordered not to open fire or reveal their presence unless it was an emergency, because no one else had appeared from the NATO lines to support them, and neither Moore nor Probert thought much of the ‘last man, last bullet’ option. If it got too hot, they would bug out, and it would be quicker and safer to ride back to friendly lines aboard the AFVs than it was to try running across 700m of flat, open ground.
Colin had tried to get some friendly air, mortars or artillery on line for when they needed it, but no one had made them any promises.
On the roof of the maintenance shed opposite the warehouse, three of Nikoli’s paratroopers had finished prying loose bricks with their bayonets and now had firing loops from which to fire down into the tiny NATO enclave. Down below, their comrades had done the same.
Nikoli himself was calling in a mortar fire mission on the warehouse, emphasising to the MFC, mortar fire controller on the other end, that he and his men were only 300m from the intended target. He wanted the first ‘belt’ of mortar rounds to be ‘over’ rather than ‘under’ when they landed. His other two sections were in the building they had left previously, and they would emerge and flank the right side of the warehouse once the mortars had the range. He cursed as NATOs white noise swamped the airwaves, and consulted a list before changing to the next frequency shown, once there he re-established contact with the mortars.
Hobbling up, his sergeant carefully lowered himself down onto a toolbox, taking care to rest just the right buttock on the hard surface.
“Are we set yet, sir?”
“Six minutes,” he replied and swung the short-range radio onto his back.
“Get them under cover in case those fools can’t shoot straight… call them down from the roof too, once the fires adjusted they can go back up.”
The next few minutes were a flurry of activity as drain covers were removed and the Russians, with the exception of Nikoli, took cover. The young lieutenant had to be in a position to observe the fall of shot, something that could not be achieved from below ground.
He could clearly hear the mortar rounds pass overhead and heard them exploding somewhere but couldn’t locate the fall of shot, there were too many buildings obstructing his view. The only thing to do was to ask them to repeat the shoot with smoke rounds this time and when they came in he spotted the smoke way off to the left and it took five adjustments before the warehouse was straddled.
“Right boys, get to work!” he shouted to the section that scrambled out of their holes and began firing through the loops they had made in the walls. The metal staircase rang with the sounds of three pairs of boots hurrying up to the roof. Once he heard them firing up above he changed frequencies and listened for a moment before shaking his head in frustration. The next frequency on his list was also being jammed so he changed for a second time, and ordered the remaining sections to begin their flanking attack.
By the time Colonel General Alontov arrived at the airport, one side of the bonded warehouse had collapsed outwards, dropping a portion of the roof into the building, but the defenders had beaten off the sustained efforts of the platoon of paratroopers under Nikoli’s command. Two Guardsmen and an 82nd Trooper had been killed, whilst four more had been injured by enemy fire or falling building materials, the injured were all now aboard the Warriors. They had prevented the Russians from flanking them and left seven enemy paratroopers dead from the attempt.
Ammunition was beginning to worry Arnie Moore, despite his constantly controlling the fire being put down. As is the normal practice, the troops had been numbered off for ease of command and control; he had a voice saving device in his hand in the form of a compressed air operated rape alarm. The high pitched shriek of the alarm was audible even to the machine gunners in mid burst, and they would cease-fire and listen out for his commands.