Breakthrough (The Red Gambit Series) (62 page)

“Smoke!” he shouted, pulling his own smoke grenade and arming it in one easy movement.

Five smoke grenades skittered across the track creating an effective screen within seconds.

“Move right! Charge!”

The squads rose as one and angled right, Hawkes’ call being vindicated within seconds as tracer lashed through the smoke into the area they had previously been.

Picturing the scene in his mind’s eye, he ran into the smoke, hoping that the unequal combat he had witness
e
d had not yet ended.

Emerging from the smoke
,
he instinctively pulled the trigger, putting down two of the
Soviet
s that had cornered
Timmins
. One of the others lay with a shattered skull, courtesy of a swinging blow from
Timmins
’ Thompson
, which broken and useless submachine gun was still clutched in his hands, the young Lieutenant desperately fending off his assailant.

Sergeant Hawkes ploughed into the back of the Russian, sending him flying and into the ground
,
where three kicks in the face from
Timmins
drove his jawbone into his brain.

Both men turned and ran on, stopping at a double doorway. Dead men from both sides lay on the threshold, freshly killed, blood still seeping from multiple wounds.

Hawkes risked a quick peek and received a peppering of brick splinters for his pains, at least two automatic weapons covering the entranceway.

Two more
paratroopers
joined them and military sign language explained the plan.

A grenade went through the doorway, deliberately bounced off the door to get a reverse angle.

Timmins
and the other soldier made a
human
chair and Hawkes stepped up, gaining enough height to see through a narrow window in the upper wall.

One of the sub-machine gunners was holding his face in his hands, grenade splinters having ruined it.

Another four men concentrated intently on the
expected
assault route
through the door
, a fifth
was
deliberately aiming his Mosin rifle at a suddenly terrified Hawkes.

The Garand spoke first, two bullets killing the rifleman,
whose
reactions were
slowed by the blast effects of the grenade.

Another Russian was shot before a PPSh started to destroy the window around him, forcing him to rapidly drop from sight.

“Let’s go!”

Hawkes rushed the door and rolled rapidly, his last three bullets hitting the PPSh gunner, smashing the weapon from his hands.

Not realising he was alone,
Timmins
having stumbled and brought down his comrade
s
, Hawkes pointed a rifle he knew was empty at the two remaining defenders.

After two seconds they dropped their weapons and raised their hands.

Hawkes breathed a sigh of relief, not knowing that the appearance of
Timmins
and his two men had made all the difference.

A medic also arrived and made his way straight to the Russian with the ruined face
,
whose cries of pain were becoming increasingly loud and penetrating.

Detailing one of the men to ride shotgun over the medic,
Timmins
moved on.

In the main building, a bloody stalemate had developed.

Upstairs, heavy machine guns lashed out in all directions, even causing casualties in King Company to the north-west.

Inside, the dog-legged staircase was
an
unassailable barrier that had already claimed the lives of four airborne troopers in the first rushed attempt to
gain
the
upper floor
.

Occasionally
,
a
Soviet
grenade would bounce down the stairs, forcing the troopers back into cover
,
and scuppering any attempts to gain good positions.

Detailing a sergeant to command, Marion Crisp went off to reconnoitre the situation and come up with alternatives.

Eagles outside the building were coming under fire from
Soviet
soldiers upstairs, so much so that it seemed almost impossible for any more men to get up to the farmhouse itself.

Crisp turned back and almost ran headlong into
Timmins
.

Dropping into cover at the base of the farmhouse wall, he explained the tactical position, although a possibility had immediately suggested itself.

Both
Timmins
and Hawkes turned to look at the roof of the garage
building that
they had recently taken, checking out how it joined the main building.

“Same as
,
JJ. I will get you and Sergeant Hawkes some more men and
you’ll
give it a go.”

He checked his watch and grimaced.

‘20:0
7 hrs
!’

They had already fallen well behind schedule, such had been the defence so far.

‘Fucking hell.’

His mind suddenly digested the picture in front of him and within seconds he had attracted the attention of a bazooka man from the HQ Company.

More sign language and within a minute the team was set up ready to go.

Eight other men from the machine
-gun platoon were placed under
T
immins
’
command and the plan was set.

On cue
,
the bazooka spat its rocket out, accurately entering the window nearest the garage. What damage it caused was unknown to those outside. A second rocket followed for the next window, and so on, until five had been fired, none being wasted outside of the structure.

Inside, they had caused devastation and death.

On
hearing
the second explosion
,
Timmins
propelled himself out through the hole in the garage roof, and
across the tiles
towards the side window of the main farmhouse. The
Soviet
rifleman positioned there
had escaped the explosions unscathed and
shot
the
US
officer
down instantly, his wounded body dropping and rolling off the roof to the ground below.

Hawkes, his Garand reloaded, avenged the officer, decorating the garish floral wallpaper behind
the
Russian with brain matter.

He threw himself
through the window
and dropped into the first floor bedroom, quickly beckoning the others forward as the sounds of increased firing gave testament to the diversion organised by Crisp.

The curtains were smouldering, small red bull’s eyes coming and going with every breath of wind. A small fire burned in a pile of clothes next to the door.

Two badly wounded and unconscious
Soviet
soldiers lay on the bed, two others
,
beyond help
,
lay on the floor.

A
Soviet
medical orderly came through the doorway
backside first, dragging another wounded comrade behind him.

One of Hawkes’ troopers smashed the butt of his
carbine
across the back of the
orderly’s
neck, dropping the man on top of his dying charge.

The rest of the assault team gathered in the bedroom and Sergeant Hawkes quickly formed them ready for the attack. A quick look through the door was all that was needed and Hawkes held a grenade out for the rest to see. Resting his Garand across his thigh
,
he used his other hand to inform the group of his plans.

Nods and grins indicated their understanding.

The clip sprung off and the deadly charge bounced along
the upstairs hall, coming to rest behind a group of four
Soviet
soldiers behind a barricade at the top of the stairs.

The weapon exploded and two of the Russians were propelled over the heavy table they were hiding behind, both men landing hard on the stairs. The Airborne troopers below shot
them
immediately, unsure if either was still capable
,
or even alive.

The other two defenders were
thrown
aside by the blast and their resistance ended.

Hawkes stepped through the door and immediately felt a bullet tug at his arm as it passed through the tunic, nicking the skin on its way
to hitting
one of the troopers behind.

Sensing
,
rather than seeing the enemy, Hawkes dropped and rolled, discharging his entire clip into the ceiling where he now saw a
n open
hatch
way
in
to the loft. As he swif
tly rammed another charger home
, the damaged ceiling started to bleed, drops of bright red blood
raining
freely on the carpe
t
below.

The rest of the assault
force swarmed through the doorw
ay, having been held up by the
fallen
body of their comrade
,
wounded
by the
bullet that had nicked Hawkes.

Fanning out according to instructions, two man groups moved through the upper floors, killing and wounding, their appearance
behind the defenders
a surprise.

The team that moved through the rooms hit by the bazooka found less resistance, much of the grisly work already done by high-explosive.

As soon as the upper hall was secured, Hawkes hollered the agreed word down the stairs.

“Geronimo!”

Identical
shouts
rose to meet
his
own
,
and quickly fellow troopers were springing up the stairs, confident that the way was now clear.

A rattle of
automatic weapons
gave them a direction in which to move, and the first four men moved to the back route to support Hawkes’ men.

The next group secured the landing area, and were accompanied by a bedraggled Major Crisp, now sporting a head bandage.

In reply to Hawkes’ unspoken question, the officer
grinned
the grin of
a man
made
slightly mad
by the proximity of detonating explosives
.

“
Someone
was passing on the
plan
and yelled ‘Geronimo’ to his men.”

By the way Crisp looked at the back of the Corporal positioned defensively at the top of the stairs, and the way the man hunched in shame, the responsible party was close at hand.

“I ran out and got
blown up
for my goddam troubles!”

The Corporal seemed to shrink further.

“No harm done
,
and lesson learned.”

Crisp slapped his hand on the shoulder of the Corporal by way of forgiveness, although he promised himself a quieter and sterner word when the battle was over.

Lieutenant Timmins, his jacket bloodied and rent, gingerly mounted the stairs.

“Hell
,
I thought you were a goner
,
Lootenant!”

Hawkes moved forward and assisted the wounded officer through the gap in the barricade.

“Fortunately he was a lousy shot
and just clipped my side. Also
I fell on something soft.”

His words coincided with
everyone realising
that something truly awful was clinging to his battledress, a realisation that was both visual
ly
and nasally challenging.

As one, the men surveyed the unfortunate man, unconsciously moving away from the awfulness he carried on himself.

Crisp couldn’t help himself.

“What the fuck have you been swimming in
,
JJ?”

Tearing his eyes away from the apparition, Crisp acknowledged a signal from a Sergeant, indicating that his team had swept the area clean.

“A dead cow, boss.”

Looking at himself, he added
,
unnecessarily.