This was a well-planned attack, allowing the infantry to dismount and attempt to take out his tanks by surprise from relatively close in before committing their own armour. Only now could he hear the sound of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles closing on his small group of defenders.
The rain wasn’t helping his Mk-1 eyeballs as he squinted through his binoculars but he was pretty sure there were vehicles moving parallel to the autobahn here too, also heading west.
The western side was currently clear of enemy but that could quickly change.
A vicious firefight was taking place down at the junction. He tried to recall how many the Feldjäger and engineers numbered. Was it twenty or so?
The combat engineer’s Marder was engaging targets Franklin was unable to see unaided but which included a Sagger team. He heard a missile launch and immediately the Marder’s 20mm cannon opened up, with the result that the missile went ballistic. He could only hope that the cause of that had been a dead Sagger crew as the firing on both sides petered out.
The rattle of tracks and drive sprockets grew louder from the northwest and again the Marder’s cannon opened fire, only to be cut short by a T-90’s main gun.
The Soviet tank troop advanced now with their main guns silent but the machine guns active, hunting down the field police and combat engineers at the junction before at last appearing from beneath autobahn 39 where it straddled autobahn 2.
Behind the tanks, the infantry tore down cables and cut wires. Not all the wires were for demolition and a white flash, accompanied by a scream, drew a rueful smile from Stiles, the ramrod of a power line maintenance crew back in Madison County.
Behind him the mortars were firing almost continuously now, swivelling first one way and then the other. That at least was something that the attackers seemed to lack, that and artillery.
“Small mercies.” Franklin muttered to himself. “Anymore where those came from, big fella?” he asked, looking up at the heavens, but all he got was wet.
At TP 32, nine miles to the west of TP 33, the sound of cross-country tyres humming on the tarmac somewhere in the distance had L/Cpl Green, 352 Provost Company RMP, looking westwards before checking his watch. Their own ‘rover’ had only left on route maintenance a half hour before, but maybe they had found the problem quickly. Nevertheless he took the big flat bottomed Bardic lamp and turned a dial at its top to select a red filter before setting it carefully on the ground where it both illuminated the caltrop spikes, and its glare would conceal him from clear view in his shell scrape.
In the covering trench set further back they were used to the eccentric antics of the loner, but they knew the story of how the Russians had killed his colleagues and left him for dead, so they made no comment about his habits and he went about his business undisturbed.
They far preferred it when Maggie was pointsman though, she was quick with the banter and far better looking.
“Here we go.” Captain Sandovar said speaking over his shoulder to the six men crammed together in the rear of the Landrover.
“We have just a little over five minutes now before our friends make their presence known. So deal with the sentries quickly and neutralize those bridge demolition charges, understood?”
The British military number plate from their short wheelbase FFR now adorned this vehicle. The signing trailer had been left behind amongst the burnt out cars and vans at the rest stop with the bodies of Maggie Hebden and Tony Myers beneath its tarpaulin.
The young man had shown courage in his refusal to divulge the password of the day, even after one ear had been removed and dangled before his eyes by Sergeant Viskova. Captain Sandovar had therefore played good guy to Viskova’s sadistic bad guy and explained that they were paratroopers merely attempting to regain their own lines. In return for the password they would remove his and the young ladies boots and leave them stranded. If he refused however, well his men had not been with a woman for quite some time and his colleague was a good looking girl… he had left the threat unspoken. Of course the young soldier had not been aware that Viskova had been rather over enthusiastic in his disarming of the fair young lady and she was already extremely dead.
“Thirty two.” he had said at last.
“Thirty two?” Sandovar had queried, looking into the British soldiers eyes.
There was anger but no hint of guile in the young man’s return stare and Sandovar had nodded confirmation to Sergeant Viskova who had immediately cut his throat.
One Landrover pretty much looks like another and this one slowed before it entered the chicane, switching its dipped lights off so as not to illuminate or dazzle. They were all on the same side, were they not?
However, having stopped there was no sign of a traffic pointsman anywhere.
Sandovar opened his door and stepped out into the rain, using a hand to shield against the glare of the lamp as he looked about.
“Halt!” a voice said from somewhere beyond the lamp.
Sandovar squinted against the light. He could hear the Landrover’s chassis creak as his men slowly lowered themselves over the tailgate and extended the telescopic body of a 66mm LAW as quietly as they could. He quickly spoke with a raised and authoritative voice to cover the noise, and to act as a distraction of course.
“Captain Brown, 101 Provost Company, where the hell are you?” and took a step forwards.
“I said ‘Halt’…sir.”
The challenger was not apparently intimidated by testy senior officers.
“Thirty?” the voice said at last.
“Two.” Sandovar answered and took another step.
“I didn’t tell you that you could move, did I sir?”
Sandovar heard the unmistakable sound of a safety catch being released.
In the covering trench the soldiers from 1 Wessex grinned at the officer’s discomfort. More than once this military policeman had caught hell from officers like this, but having been shot once by someone in an officer’s uniform he clearly didn’t give a crap when they kicked off. It was good sport to watch.
“When you go out the gate at Chi, do you turn left or right for the Wellington Arms, and what side of the street is it?”
Captain Sandovar almost stammered a “What?” but that would have been a serious error. ‘Chi’ was slang for Chichester, the RMP training depot, wasn’t it?
He took a guess and trusted to bluff and bluster, allowing the handle of his fighting knife to slip out of his sleeve and into the palm of his hand unseen.
“Turn right, it’s on the left….and now you and I are going to have a conference without coffee, young man!”
His men were all out of the vehicle now, poised and tense, the LAW was armed and the firer need only step from behind the Landrover to take out the trench.
Captain Sandovar, the stolen Landrover and his Spetznaz team disappeared in a hail of flame, fire, black smoke and ball bearings.
Staff Sergeant Vernon had been trying without success to reach the signing vehicle owing to the jamming that had begun a half hour before. The DEL connection was apparently broken. Only the field telephones were working. He now stumbled from the TP, gaped at the western traffic point for a second before shouting.
“STAND-TO!..STAND-TO!”
It was a fairly unnecessary order as the thunderclap of sound that reverberated across the sodden landscape had carried that message already.
Rudely awoken bodies were pulling on webbing and fighting order, grabbing personal weapons and running to their assigned stand-to positions.