When Eagles Burn (Maddox Book #1)

by Jack Hayes

  The pathetic pinging of ricochets could be heard on the outside of his armoured shell.

  He just had chance to see one of his smaller BT-5s plough across the top of the open dugout, catching two of the defenders beneath its tracks – the other ducking away to avoid decapitation.

  “That’s right,” he yelled. “Ignore their anaemic outer line. We’ll be in amongst their forces and slaughter them where they stand!”

  As they charged forward along the main track toward the camp, there was a crashing of trees to his far left. His pincer movement was complete – the two other tanks from his squadron thrusting toward the German position from the other end of their complex.

  Now they’d be fighting on two fronts.

  He could already see the fear gripping the defenders, unsure which group to attack first.

  A flicker of movement, up the slope, towards the entrance to the mine shaft.

  Komelkov’s gaze instinctively shifted.

  “Holy mother of God,” he whispered.

  Emaciated, near corpses stagger, forth from the hole into the ground. They blink as they pour into the daylight, trying their best to run, shambolically, as though the earth had vomited forth bats in human form in the midst of the day against their will.

  “They’re Russians!” Temur exclaimed.

  No sooner had the mine labourers began their flight than a line of Germans drew in near the machinery by the sluices. The soldiers raised their guns and began to mow the slaves down.

  “Bastards,” Komelkov bellowed. “Train all weapons on those Nazis. I want them dead! Dead!”

  CHAPTER 40

  Maddox stared in disbelief at the battle through his binoculars.

  “Bad?” Walker asked.

  “Total carnage,” Maddox replied.

  “What’s the strength of the Russians?”

  “At the front is a T34-85,” Maddox said. “It’s flanked by two BT-5s.”

  “Well,” Walker said, “I guess they don’t do things by half.”

  “Certainly not,” Maddox continued. “They’ve a couple of T-26s chomping through the trees over there too. A nice flanking manoeuvre. They’re in danger, though.”

  “How so?” Walker asked. “They look like they’re tearing strips out of the Germans.”

  Another volley of blasts from the Russians threw soil and scree into the air. Tents blasted apart and Nazi youth were tossed like rag dolls.

  “They’ve pushed too far in,” Maddox said. “See the trenches they ploughed over at the start?”

  He pointed to six men, crawling out of their dugouts and across the land toward the back of the tanks.

  “Tanks are vulnerable to infantry when they’re unsupported,” Walker nodded.

  “Exactly,” Maddox replied.

  At the front of the line of Germans was a major. In his hands: a sticky bomb. The makeshift explosive device, if attached to the underside of a tanks or its tracks would be devastating. He gestured to one of the men following him, who had a similar device, to head for a second Russian vehicle.

  The Germans were about to even the odds.

  “So, what’s our plan?”

  “Wait until they’ve finished knocking seven bells out of one another and move in to secure the diamonds from the weakened victor,” Maddox said.

  At that moment, his attention was caught by the lieutenant at the mine conveyor. An explosion from a tank shell shattered the leather belt and spattered fragments of it across the rock face.

  The lieutenant reached out and grabbed something, drew to a crouch and began running as quickly as he could away from the battle.

  Maddox trained his binoculars as closely as he could on the fleeing man.

  “Scratch that plan,” Maddox said.

  “Why?” Walker asked.

  “That German has a pouch in his possession,” Maddox said. “And I’m willing to bet it contains what we’re here for.”

  He grabbed his Sten.

  “Okay everyone, let’s move.”

  ***

  Beck dived as low as he could. He willed himself to become the earth. The whistle and buzz of the shells as they dropped through the air seemed cut short by the deafening boom as soil and loose talus rained down.

  Beck opened his eyes.

  His uniform was pitted and burnt in places as though flaming moths had gnawed holes through it. A charred arm lay in front of him, poking through what remained of the conveyor.

  Next to it was an oily lump of diamonds, stuck bubbly to a smoking strip of the belt.

  His head bobbed to see if he was still a target.

  The bucket of detergent, knocked on its side, still had a centimetre of water swilling inside, held in place by the slight incline of the slope.

  He grabbed the tarry mound and thrust it into the liquid.

  “Please, please, please,” he muttered. “We only need one or two more.”

  The water blackened, the grease washing away between his fingers.

  He pulled his arm sharply back and, still belly down on the floor, opened his palm.

  One, two…

  Three!

  “Ha!” he grinned.

  But where were the pouches?

  They had been resting on the ground beside him.

  Frantic scrabbling.

  Success.

  Both lay, protected by a plank from the sluices, untouched nearby.

  He slithered across.

  The larger one, containing the normal diamonds, he tied closed and slipped into his outside pocket. The smaller one, wrapped tightly closed with a ribbon, he prized open. At the bottom he counted seven stones. His lips broadened. He tipped the additional three inside.

  Ten gems.

  More than enough, under the circumstances, to guarantee he didn’t face a firing squad upon his return to his masters.

  He resealed the container and checked the Russians.

  They were advancing deeper into the camp. Bodies of his platoon littered the escarpment. Nieder was nearly at the back of the lead commander’s vehicle.

  “Let him keep the cabbage eaters busy,” Beck thought. “I’m getting out of here.”

  He moved to a crouch and began to follow the line of the cliff face.

  Fortunately, he and Nieder had long ago planned an escape route just in case the base was overrun.

  No-one would catch him now.

  CHAPTER 41

  Nieder inched closer to the back of the tanks.

  They were arranged in a triangle. The larger T34, clearly the commander, was perhaps ten metres in front of the other two. Their advance into the compound had slowed as the road gave way to the loose scree that ran into the escarpment up to the cliff face.

  Their compatriots, the two tanks charging in from the forest, well there wasn’t much he could do about those, they were ploughing through the tents. His men in the camp had gone from an efficient fighting machine to school girls dancing giddily because someone had thrown a snake among them.

  If Kalb had been there, he could have rallied them.

  But it was too late for recriminations.

  He needed to take down the three beasts in front of him.

  If he could slice the head of the viper, he could still contain the situation.

  Arm over arm, he crabbed between the tanks – right in their blind spot. His men, behind him, had the shorter journey to the backs of the more lightly armoured vehicles. The turrets of all of them faced toward the conveyor.

  With the first volley they demolished the sluices, machinery and generator.

  Beck!

  He needed to move faster.

  He rose to his feet, half crouch.

  A glance over his shoulder.

  One team reached the back of a BT-5. With a grimace of triumph, the private slapped the sticky bomb – a gelatine coated sock, filled with explosive, to the underside. The second team – lacking an explosive, had orders to shove grenades in the vulnerable exhausts at the back and roll them under the wheels the m
oment the other explosives went off.

  A rattle and thunk ahead of him.

  Nieder dropped back on his belly. He was between the animals now. If anyone popped their head through a hatch and saw him, he’d be cut down where he lay. Ahead the mighty T34 was losing traction. Even as its track churned on the loose stones, they flew out behind it.

  Nieder raised an arm to shield his face. His other hand clasped firmly around his own sticky bomb.

  He needed to get closer.

  His heart thumped in his chest as though a giant tympanum being thudded for all it was worth to the rhythm of some unheard orchestra.

  His mouth was dry. He was barely ten metres behind the armoured shell. He knew well the narrow plate patch – the tank’s only weakness.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Beck by the mine entrance get to his feet.

  “That coward is running off!” he hissed. “Damn him.”

  The whirr of the tank turrets drowned even the almighty pounding of his heart. They drew a bead on the mine entrance.

  For the first time, Nieder was no longer in the blind spot between them.

  Time was out.

  Back on his toes.

  He ran.

  Another pounding volley from the tanks. They bombarded the cliff above the mine. Boulders the size of cars crashed down through the entrance, sealing it tight. In all probability, the tunnels inside would have collapsed under the withering fire.

  Nieder heard a muffled cry from inside one of the BT-5’s.

  He knew what would come – they’d pin point him with the machine gun on the front and he’d be dead in seconds.

  “Now!” he yelled.

  He closed the gap to the T34.

  Vaulting the back, he slapped the greased sock onto the back of the tank.

  He saw the BT-5 closest to him line its machine gun with his chest.

  The explosion was enormous.

  The sticky bomb slapped on its underside ripped a hole in its thin hull. Fragments of molten metal liquidated everyone inside.

  The second BT-5 was now spinning in his direction. Nieder leapt.

  Behind the tanks he could see his men, having shoved their grenades home, sprinting back for the trees.

  A second detonation.

  Nieder dived.

  He hit the gravel.

  The air was knocked from his lungs as he landed badly, somehow twisting his elbows beneath his body. He scowled as the stone scrapped the skin from his forearms.

  Pings and clangs as though someone had thrown a jug of pfennigs at the far side of the T34; vicious shrapnel from other exploding tank. The larger tank shielded his body as shattered fragments of the BT-5 flew in all directions, metal confetti.

  He didn’t have time to savour the moment.

  He was running again.

  He had to put distance between himself and his own stick bomb before the thing went off.

  Then, he had to catch Beck before he fled with their passport to freedom.

  And rip his intestines from his thieving, cowardly belly.

  CHAPTER 42

  Maddox ran out of the cover of the boulders 100 yards from the mine, charging toward the battle.

  “Walker,” he shouted. “Take Fallon, Patterson and Marlowe. Drop your skis and keep the Russians and Germans busy down here on the rocks. Whoever wins, wipe them out. Conley and Sledge – you’re with me. Bring your skis with you. We have to stop that lieutenant before he gets wherever he’s going – and I’ve a feeling it’s somewhere up on top of that snow lined cliff.”

  Sledge and Conley both nodded.

  “Wait a minute,” Walker shot back. “You want us to fire on the Russians?”

  “Just do it,” Maddox replied.

  ***

  Komelkov heard the two tanks beside him explode.

  “Shit – we’re in trouble now,” he snarled.

  Infantry.

  He could hear the ricochets as their debris chinked off his own armour. Without the machine guns on their turrets, he had no way to deal with soldiers running around his own vehicle – and if they got to the vulnerable back plate…

  He grabbed his gun and barrelled through the hatch.

  Twisting left.

  Two German soldiers.

  He fired.

  One of the soldiers tumbled. The second turned and fired his submachine gun. Bullets clattered around the hatch. Komelkov returned fire, knocking the youth from his feet.

  The Russian hoisted himself out of the tank and rolled onto the ground. He heard the scrabbling of rubble to his right, spinning, he saw Nieder rising to a run.

  “I have you now,” he hissed gritted teeth.

  His finger squeezed tight around the trigger.

  A hail of bullets.

  Instinctively he ducked.

  A flash of confusion.

  They weren’t from his own gun.

  Flashes as they sparked off the front of his tank.

  He went flat on his side.

  Eyes drawn to the source.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Four troops in snow camouflage were vaulting across the land, bombarding both the Russians and the Germans.

  Nieder was escaping.

  “Finns?” he exclaimed.

  Three more of these white-clad commandoes were sprinting along the top of the escarpment. Only one had his face visible. Dark-haired, a captain’s three pips on his shoulders, a Sten gun in his grip.

  “British!” he roared.

  His thought train was cut short as the world around him exploded in ear-drum bursting eruption.

  He was flattened against the scree by the blast wave.

  CHAPTER 43

  Walker saw the ball of fire from the T34 and realised what had happened – the German had managed to place a charge on the thinner back panel. As he and the others surged down the slope, he spun his Sten to focus on the escaping major.

  It was an unlikely shot.

  Stens were notoriously inaccurate over anything further than 30 yards and the major was pelting towards the trees, at least 150 feet away.

  Still, Walker rattled off a short burst of rounds.

  Too late.

  The wily Nazi bastard chanced a quick glimpse over his shoulder and then bowed beneath the outer branches of the forest.

  “Should we follow him?” Patterson asked.

  In the main camp, the two remaining Soviet tanks were making short work of the stragglers in the German defence force. Canvas, torn apart by the tracks ripping across them and wrapped around the turrets by slashed guy ropes bellowed as they patrolled back and forth, machine gunning any resistance.

  “No,” Walker replied. “We have our orders. We need to take down those remaining tanks before they figure out they’re on their own and chase after Maddox.”

  “Four men against two tanks,” Patterson shrugged. “I suppose we’ve faced worse odds.”

  At that moment, one of the armoured T-26s rotated its slender cannon in their direction.

  CHAPTER 44

  Maddox stumbled as he ran across the talus.

  The long skis and poles attached to his backpack, made him unbalanced as he ran across the rugged terrain. The German lieutenant was still at least two hundred yards ahead and scrambling on his hands and knees up a narrow path that steeply climbed to the top of the cliff face.

  “So, you did have a backup escape plan, after all,” Maddox muttered.

  Maddox was grabbed by the back of his haversack and craned bodily back onto the soles of his boots by Sledge in a single, swift move.

  Conley whipped past.

  “Come on,” the sergeant shouted as he streaked by.

  “Conley!” Maddox called out. “Wait!”

  But the boy was in no mood to stop and continued running.

  “Damn it,” Maddox panted as he started trying to catch up.

  “None of us is as young as we were,” Sledge replied as he jogged alongside Maddox. “You can’t expect to keep up with the k
ids forever.”

  “True,” Maddox said. “Too damn true.”

  Conley reached the bottom of the slope. Lieutenant Beck had groped his way to the top and rolled over the lip. The ground up there was still covered with snow and as he kicked his way onto the plateau, a flurry was flung into the air.

  Conley was making good pace.

  Beck stood once he was fully over the top and peered back down at Conley, almost a third of the way along the incline. Beck’s chest rose and fell heavily. The condensation of his breath clearly visible as it left his lips as though a fire were smoking deep within his gut.

  Maddox and Sledge reached the bottom of the slope at the same time.

  Beck lifted a pistol from his holster.

  He aimed and fired three rounds.

  Sledge barged Maddox aside.

  He needn’t have bothered.

  Beck was so exhausted the bullets were wildly inaccurate, harmlessly chipping the ridge above their heads. But Conley was now halfway to the top and Beck was lowering his weapon to take the Englishman down. Conley was in no position to return fire. He needed his hands simply to maintain his grip on the ledge as he crawled higher.

  Sledge rammed his Sten into his shoulder. Its familiar bark filled the air. Maddox dropped to one knee and aimed along his rifle. He too launched a withering volley at the German.

  Beck disappeared from sight. Conley was two-thirds of the way up.

  “After you,” Sledge gestured to the path up the cliff, little wider than bar stool and strewn with loose pebbles and grit.

  “Keep us both covered,” Maddox replied.

  ***

  “Split up,” Walker yelled. “That’ll at least give them two targets.”

  He and Fallon barrelled down the slope, heading for the tree line, hoping to sneak behind the tanks and come at them from behind. Patterson and Marlowe charged along the top of the escarpment, making for the former entrance to the mine.

  The tanks unleashed another round of shells.

  They bounded down the slope, half slipping, half jogging.

  The ninety horsepower engines of the T-26s churned as they began ploughing their way across to where Walker was running.

  A last German futilely raised his submachine gun and clattered off a full clip at the lead machine. Even with its slender armour, the burst had no hope of killing the men inside. The tank’s 7.62mm Degtyaryov machine gun twisted in its mounted position.