Impasse (The Red Gambit Series) (84 page)

Four more bullets had struck him, but none vitally so, his ability to steer intact, although his clutch leg now felt too numb for words.

Whatever it was that was going on, off-duty or not, Riley wanted a piece of it.

Rousing his ten man section from their pits, he got them into order and deployed them in defence of their small building.

Nipping up onto the roof, he was able to observe the destruction of the Superfortresses and, more importantly to him, what
it was that seemed to be causing the mayhem.

Almost like a cartoon, the Grenadier Guardsman looked at the moving bowser, then at the
B-29 nearest him, the last in the line and, as yet, untouched

Looking back at the weaving fuel bowser, Riley made a decision
.

“
Right lads! Push up to the apron there, next to the marker.”

Faces were raised and they noted where the big Sergeant was pointing.

“You two,” he selected Jones and Newton, “Grab the Vickers and get it set up on that small rise to the side. You, get the daisy chain. Now move!”

The section moved as swiftly as they could and deployed towards the apron, setting themselves between the end
B-29 and the now fiery bowser.

Hoosen saw that the fire had followed his progress like a faithful dog, the early morning sky and its snow filled clouds orange in reflected light. Everything was on fire; aircraft, men, the very earth itself.

His breathing was labored now; a single bullet had taken him under the rib cage and hammered the breath from him.

‘
One more, just one more.”

He pushed the bowser on, cornering on the point of the revetment
and turned hard left towards the final bomber.

He screwed his eyes up, his vision impaired by fumes, by smoke and by blood loss.

“Fire!”

The Vickers started lashing the bowser with .303s, the front tyres simultaneously giving up the ghost.

Perhaps if they had done so independently, the result might have been different but, with the destruction of both came a sort of balance to the steering that enabled even the weakened Hoosen to control.

The radiator suffered under a number of hammer blows
, and steam and scalding water spurted from the holes.

A single rifle bullet
struck his shoulder, wrecking the ball joint and making him scream in agony.

The vehicle lurched and a stream of .303 bullets wrecked the passenger side,
visiting more damage on the corpse by his side.

But Hoosen’s
luck was holding out until the last.

The lu
rch took the bowser away from the daisy chain of mines that would have stopped it dead.

The lurch also took the bowser straight up and over the small rise on which the Vickers was positioned.

Newton and Riley were pulped in the blink of an eye.

The trailer bounced up and over the hump, coming down with such force that it split
at two of the numerous damage points, allowing a greater flow, almost emptying the few gallons still left behind in an instant.

Unable to control the vehicle, Hoosen just did what he could with the steering wheel, now unable to see anything but a hazy shiny shape some distance away.

The front wheels, devoid of rubber, struck the concrete of the slipway and generated enough sparks to light a thousand fires.

Only one was needed.

The trailer disintegrated with explosive force, the fireball shooting out the ruptured rear end like a flamethrower, removing Riley and his men in an instant.

The momentum of the bowser carried it forward and it closed
the small remaining distance to the surviving silverbird.

Hoosen coughed
clots of blood and his eyes went glazed, the totality of his wounds meaning that he did not survive to see the bowser come to rest against the bomber.

Nor did he live to hear the first of many huge explosions, as bomb loads cooked off.

All but one of the communists guerrillas was killed, the wounded survivor taken prisoner. His captors assured of the most horrible existence until they knew all that he knew. He lasted two hours.

By the end of the incident, Maaldrift was wrecked, its
silverbirds were all destroyed, and over four hundred casualties were either in the morgue or being cared for in the makeshift hospital, set in one of the hangars.

“Top of the morning to you, Sam.”

“
Merry Christmas to you, Dan.”

The two shook hands and moved off to the warmth of the staff car, the RAF marked Hudson already on its way to a hangar where its doubtful parentage could not be noticed.

“So, what brings you all the way here on Christmas Eve?”

“
I’ll save it for the group, Sam. But it’s a bloody can of worms and no mistake.”

The car arrived at Rossahilly House, the normal venue for the clandestine
meetings of the shadier arms of the Allied forces

Percy Hollander was away in Cambridgeshire with family but, as always, he placed the house at the disposal of the Intelligence services.

Major Generals Colin Gubbins and Kenneth Strong were absent, but Sir David Petrie was there on behalf of MI5.

Colon
el Valentine Vivian of the SIS had made it, although his vehicle had been involved in an accident en route from RAF Belfast.

Only Bertram Leonard had made it on time, the rest of the normal
attendees either away on leave or unable to answer Bryan’s call in time

The smells of their dinner pervaded the
smoky atmosphere, making them hungry, although the greater hunger was to find out what had so exercised the head of the Irish Army’s Intelligence Service that he had summoned the group to a meeting this close to Christmas.

Bryan stood on cue and walked to a board and easel, producing a map and pinning it in place.

The four pairs of eyes took it in, the roads, the sea and the buildings.

Bryan walked to the map that had been positioned on the wall long before he arrived.

Selecting the target carefully, he pressed the pointer to the north-west part of Éire and spoke but one word.

“
Glenlara.”

They all got it immediately.

“You’ve confirmed it. We’ve found the bastards!”

He nodded at Vivian in acknowledgement.

“Indeed we have. Your submarine base... and more besides, I think... it’s all here...at Glenlara.”

The rest of the meeting and the luncheon that followed was occupied by the nature of the response, the timing of the response and the depth of the response.

By the time the cigars were lit, the answers had been found.

Land forces, as soon as practicable
, and total annihilation.

Sam Rossiter, USMC, came up with the solution on all three counts, with the assistance of some underhand thinking by Dan Bryan
, and the expectation of some assistance from a Squadron Leader who had recently lost a brother.

To Leander, it must have seemed like a lifetime since his platoon had been butchered by silent Soviet ski troopers.

For many soldiers on both sides it had indeed been a lifetime, terminated in blood and darkness
, as their commanders, keen to appear active and full of fight, ordered their frozen men to cross the no man’s land and kill, sometimes seize, occasionally destroy, but always kill.

The boy had become a man in those
handful of days, going from the platoon’s worst soldier, to the platoon’s only soldier, and finally to the platoon’s Sergeant. All in seven weeks of enduring the unendurable.

And for what?

King Company’s position was the same one he had been in that night. Third battalion had not advanced one yard; nor had it conceded one either.

The 370th Regiment sat on the same line it had occupied seven weeks ago, as did the entire 92nd Colored Infantry Division.

The only things that had changed were the faces.

Men came and went, sometimes alive, often dead. After the incursions, snipers started to play their part, claiming the unwary and the unlucky.

Mortars joined in, adding their tree bursts to the litany of exciting ways to die during an Austrian winter.

And then the cold decided to make its presence felt, making all that had gone before a walk in the park.

The Sergeant’s eyes were fixed on the tree line ahead, watching, waiting, and prepared, his Garand on the trench parapet in front of him, covered with a white blanket, two grenades placed ready for use to the right of the rifle.

His eyes saw nothing and his ears detected no sounds.

The forest was silent.

No mortars came, no artillery
, and no snipers.

The enemy had attacked stealthily, just after 2000hrs
, and the work had been hot but brief. They went as quickly as they came, leaving a dozen bodies behind in the crimson snow.

Leander had done the rounds,
organized the removal of their five dead and the evacuation of the eight wounded.

His work done, he returned to his position, now occupied by him alone, his
terrified partner shot down as he turned and ran during the attack.

The blood had stopped flowing from his
own wounds; wood splinters in his shoulder and back, the slightest graze from a rifle bullet across his arm.

He did not complain, just maintained his silent vigil whilst his men, boys like he had been but a few weeks beforehand, nestled low in their holes and did all they could to keep the chill from their bones.

Leander had no greatcoat, just a padded jacket, a thick jumper, and a scarf round his neck, but he stood to his post, defying the cold.

The company commander, Captain Forbes, moved carefully through his positions, surpri
sing some who had fallen asleep, welcomed by others who had managed a small triumph over winter in the form of a warm coffee.

To the left of Leander
’s position one such victory had brought forth coffee for the four men in the hole, plus enough for more besides.

Accepting a cup for himself and Sergeant Leander,
Forbes worked his way round to the front of the Sergeant’s position, making sure he could be seen by the veteran NCO.

Holding the two mugs, Forbes moved forward and then stopped.

The coffee makers watched, wondering why until Forbes sat on the parapet to drink the hot liquid, merely setting the metal mug in front of the ever-vigilant Leander.

The answer to that was simple.

Frederick Lincoln Leander had long since frozen to death.

He had spent fifty-two days in the front line, seen combat on twenty-nine of those
, during which time he had metamorphosed from boy to man. Promotions had come, from Pfc to Platoon Sergeant, mostly via dead men’s shoes. Conservatively, it was estimated that he had killed twenty Soviet troopers, taken five prisoners and wounded countless more. For his troubles, his superiors had sent back recommendations for both the Bronze and Silver Stars, as yet to be confirmed or rejected.

On New Year
’s Day 1946, the Leander family was celebrating until the news was delivered by a family friend… and then they celebrated no more.

Artur Wilders had not always been a farmer. Indeed, the absence of his left ear, the eye patch and stiffened left arm would give away that once he had been a soldier; a German soldier.

He had been a member of the 320th Infanterie Division, fighting on the steppes of Russia
. Accidentally wounded by a German grenade, he risked being swept up in the Soviet advance, but the SS had come to the rescue and extracted his division, leading them to the comparative safety of the German front line.

Wilders owed the Schutzstaffel his life.

Hiding the ex-SS legionnaires came easy to him, an honour debt to be repaid.

He hid the two men in plain sight, as farm hands on the large estate. That both were wounded gave them the limps necessary to make their presence believable,
as relics from the Patriotic War, as the hated Russians called it.

It had not occurred to the occasional Soviet visitor that the wounds were more recent and still healing.

The large hall that Wilders had added to the main building was filled with his staff and their families, all good Germans first and foremost.