“Hacker, Badger. Cover.” The two soldiers moved out to about twenty metres distant and kept watch while Tag and Wilf examined the white parachute canopy, torn and entangled in the branches halfway up the twenty metre tree. Suspended from it, still strapped into his harness, his neck and one of his arms at an impossible angle, was the pilot they had been seeking.
“It’s no good, Wilf, he hasn’t made it. Shall I shin up and cut him down? Get his dog tags?”
“No, leave him. The Sovs will find him eventually. Best they find him as is.”
“What now?”
“We continue with the original task.”
Wilf called the team back in and ran through the next set of actions they would need to follow. The original task had been to lay up and monitor armour and troop movements along the E30 autobahn, reporting back to 1 BR Corps to assist them with their intelligence build-up, enabling them to decide troop dispositions to meet the massive force coming towards them. They also helped bring in the two Jaguar SEPECATs. The explosions and roar of jets had ceased, indicating that the British ground-attack aircraft had done their job and were running the Soviet air-defence gauntlet again in an effort to return to their base. The team had been taking it in turns to sleep, two on, two off, keeping as fresh as possible for the next stage of the mission. Although it had been disrupted, as a consequence of the downed pilot, they could still continue with their mission. The team had been tasked with approaching and identifying a tank division headquarters, its likely location picked up by an Electronic Warfare unit west of Hanover. They would eventually need to move south, passing beneath the E30, and locate this headquarters, report back and potentially initiate some sabotage.
“Shall I call in about the pilot, Wilf?” asked Badger, the patrol’s signals specialist and the team member who carried their Clansman PRC-319 radio, an additional five kilograms on top of his other equipment.
“No, we can send it as part of a routine message later. I want to get us out of here and back on track.”
“Route?” asked Hacker.
“Take us to the E30, but keep this side of the 122. I want to have a look at the junction.”
“That’s going to be like a bloody hornets’ nest,” proclaimed Badger.
“I know, but we might as well take a look-see while we’re in the area.”
“We’ll need to keep tight, guys,” added Tag. “We’re right in the middle of one of GSFG’s main access routes.”
Nods of heads confirmed that they all understood the risk they were about to undertake.
Hacker led off again, taking them south; more slowly this time, knowing that the Soviets could be anywhere in the area, and there was always the potential that a much larger force than theirs could come looking for the pilot. After recrossing the Bruchgraben, Hacker steered them along a different hedgerow, bearing south-west, where, after 600 metres, they re-entered the forest, much further to the west. After nearly a kilometre without interruptions, apart from two more helicopters roaring overhead, the sounds had disappeared into the distance. The indication was that they weren’t going to land close by. Hacker brought them to within spitting distance of the E45 off to their right and the E30 to their front. The growl of tanks and the noise of other armoured vehicles could be heard moving east to west, the Soviets building up their forces ready to strike at the heart of northern Germany.
Wilf was concerned. Had they been drawn out of their hide too soon? They were right in the middle of a vortex, an enemy build-up, and it wouldn’t be long before advanced units started to occupy the very forest they were now in. There was also a danger of NATO artillery strikes on this very position. That frightened him the most, spurring him on to complete this task and get the hell out of here.
“Take us a little closer,” instructed Wilf. We need to do a damage assessment.”
“OK.”
The raised slip road, connecting the E30 with the E45, was directly in front of them. The large intersection, where the two major motorways crossed each other, covered an area of two kilometres by two kilometres and was heavily wooded, providing the team with lots of cover.
Wilf turned to Tag. “You and Hacker stay here. Badger and I will do a recce.”
“How long?”
“Thirty minutes tops.”
“OK.”
The two men made their way to the top of the embankment, waited while a convoy of three Ural-375 troop transports drove by, then, ensuring the road was clear, ran across to the trees on the far side.
“Where to?”
“Go right,” whispered Wilf.
Badger led the way. Bearing right through the trees, they came across the loop that allowed northbound traffic to come off the E45, turn in a tight circle, almost driving back on themselves, and get onto the east bound E30. There were four of these loops in total, one at each right angle where the roads crossed.
“It’s like bloody Spaghetti Junction,” hissed Badger, referring to the M6 junction near Birmingham, his home city.
Wilf knew exactly what he meant, but didn’t respond. They made their way to the top, lying down along the edge, watching out for enemy traffic on the loop, but it was quiet, the noise of military convoys still to their south. Up and over and they were soon inside a dense copse, taking their time now as they got closer and closer to the intersection of the two motorways. Both their heads snapped to the left as they heard an engine revving, followed by the distinctive sound of caterpillar tracks. Hunched over, they moved to the edge of the copse, stepping around and over lumps of reinforced concrete and bits of steel, towards the southern edge of the slip road loop. Far off to the left, a ZSU-23/4, self-propelled anti-aircraft gun was adjusting its position, the crew buttoned down inside for the moment. Ahead was a tangled mess. The entire upper section of the six-lane E45, along with the two slip road feeds, had collapsed on top of the E30. Now it was an entangled mass of chunks of concrete, longer broken sections of reinforced concrete, mixed in with bits of overhead gantries and twisted steel barriers. No one would be using this interchange for some time to come.
“Now we know why the feeders are so bloody quiet.”
“Yeah,” responded Wilf. “The Box-heads have done a good job of blowing this lot up.”
“This’ll slow the buggers down.”
“We’ve seen nothing north, so they must have built some sort of bypass to the south, to take traffic around it. We can check it out on the way to our lay-up point.”
“Yes, and radio it in. Tell the RAF boys to get their asses over here.”
“Do that at our next stop Badger. At the same time we can let them know how effective their strike was and how the Soviets have got round it. Maybe they’ll want another crack at it.”
“Time to go?”
“Yeah, come on.”
They made their way back to where they had left Hacker and Tag. Then the SAS CPU patrolled carefully east through the forest where they had identified a lay-up point, where they could wait until darkness. Once last light was upon them, they could head south and carry out their task of locating the enemy headquarters. In the meantime, sleeping two-on, two-off, they could continue to monitor the steady build up of Soviet forces.
Chapter 10
“I hope you’ve brought some decent vodka with you, sir?”
The two officers who had just entered the tent stood over Lieutenant Colonel Trusov, Commander of the 2nd Battalion, 62nd Guards Tank Regiment, 10th Guards Tank Division, as he twisted a map around on a small collapsible table, peering at it in the dim light provided by two oil lamps. He had been the only occupant after throwing out the rest of his officers, needing time to reflect on what he needed to do to ensure his unit was ready for any further tasks, although his men, and machines, were badly in need of a rest.