Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  In the cold hard light of day, Eileen Donelson might well have labelled such male-oriented, over-protective sentiments as chauvinist or demeaning to her abilities as a military officer in her own right. Stuck in a slit trench with the best of the Luftwaffe bearing down on her team however, she was more than happy to accept any assistance she could get and the notification that eight of the twelve enemy fighters heading for their position had been shot down was welcome news indeed. All guns were pointed in that direction awaiting the appearance of their attackers, and the odds they faced against four were far better than they ever could’ve been against three times that number.

  “Bandits… bandits… ten o’clock…!” The call came over her belt radio from one of the men from Lloyd’s SAS troop, stationed with the nearer of the two Bedford-mounted Bofors guns and operating as a makeshift fire control officer.

  All eyes turned in that direction as their AA gunners sought out their targets and fine-tuned their aim. The four oncoming fighters had spread out into a loose, single line and were boring in at full throttle, not one of them higher than a hundred metres above the surface of the desert and appearing out of the dusty horizon at frighteningly close range.

  The Bofors guns opened up first, pink tracer lighting up the sky as they each picked out different targets and pumped round after round of 40mm shells downrange against the outermost aircraft of the enemy formation. All four J-4Ds began to jink and weave about the sky in an attempt to throw of the gunners’ aim but that task became exponentially more difficult as they subsequently came under fire from the lighter 20mm and .50-calibre weapons also awaiting their appearance.

  The sky around them was suddenly filled with a miasma of multi-coloured tracer in a variety of calibres and try as they might, each of the attacking fighters succumbed to the barrage one-by-one, although the last one did manage to fire off one final, defiant burst of 23mm shells from its own cannon before being shredded by the concentrated fire from four Browning machine guns. The wreckage slammed in to the ground with surprisingly little fire or explosion and slid dramatically across the summit of one of the nearby rocky outcrops before tipping over the nearer crest and falling into a smouldering heap at the base of the cliff.

  “Is everyone all right?” Eileen shouted loudly, checking everyone within earshot before repeating the query over the radio and receiving similarly positive responses.

  “So far so good,” Evan observed, almost feeling hopeful as he stood beside her in the trench, scanning the western horizon for any further sign of air attack. “Max’s boys will be here any minute now: we’ll be good as gold after that.”

  Captain Donelson, a dry smile on her face, was about to jokingly remonstrate against her friend and junior officer about not ‘jinxing’ the whole thing with positive remarks of that nature when the M16 half-track at the far end of the emplacements and trench systems suddenly exploded without warning, a huge, seething cloud of black smoke and crimson flame rolling slowly into the sky as debris and shrapnel sprayed about in all directions.

  “Where the bloody hell – ?” Eileen began to ask loudly, only to be forced to take cover as another vehicle – this time one of the Bofors-armed Bedfords – also exploded violently.

  This time however the incoming tracer had been spotted and the warning was spread about even as the sound of that second cannon blast reached their ears. There was no mistaking the origin of either shot now they were all staring in the right direction: dust and smoke rose into the air at two distinct positions from the other side of the Genaiva Road, perhaps six or seven hundred metres west of their position.

  The road itself at that point ran along a slightly raised bed relative to the general level of the surrounding land and through the howling winds and sand that filled the air, they could now make out the turrets of at least five light AFVs of various types, although their hulls were obscured by the height of the roadway itself. The head and torso of a man in a standard-issue Wehrmacht tank suit rose from the commander’s hatch of on of those near the centre of the formation, clearly watching them through a large pair of field glasses.

  “You will throw down your arms and surrender immediately…!” The German-accented English was as much of a shock to Eileen as the sudden destruction of two of their precious vehicles, not so much for the intent as for the fact that those words had issued directly from the speaker-mike of her own belt radio, using the very same frequency they all communicated through.

  Reactions around her were instantaneous as the combat-hardened veterans sprang into action. Lloyd grabbed Donelson physically around the waist and pulled her down below the level of the trench as others started firing their assault rifles at the enemy AFVs. Two of the Thors fired again as the remaining Bedford and the A13 AA tank attempted to bring their own heavier weapons to bear. Their recoilless 88mm guns belched huge clouds of smoke and flame to the rear as a pair of high explosive shells streaked across the intervening space and blew both Allied vehicles to pieces.

  This time however, they also heard the softer, flatter ‘crump’ of mortars from the same direction – although the firing crews were not visible – and a half-dozen large mortar bombs landed at various positions around the encampment a few seconds later, not causing any casualties but making it quite clear their newly-arrived enemy had plenty of light artillery support available.

  “This is your final warning…!” The unknown voice declared haughtily over the radio, this time at a raised volume and intensity. “Surrender your forces to us and you will not be harmed. Resist us, and every single one of your men will die…!”

  To back up that last threat, three of the Thors on the road opened up with their co-axial machine guns, slowing turning their turrets to spray a broad arc of intersecting fire right across the area of Hindsight’s trenches and dugouts as smoke poured into the sky in tall, greasy pillars above the still-burning vehicles. Again no casualties were suffered, but it’d been made completely and utterly clear that these vehicles were definitely prepared to inflict some should their orders not be obeyed.

  At that same moment, six P-21G/U8 Valkyries appeared behind the original arrivals on the far side of the roadway and slid quickly to a halt, their real loading ramps lowering quickly to disgorge several squads of Special Forces troops who immediately fanned out across the desert and began to advance slowly, weapons at the ready.

  “I give you five minutes to comply, Captain Donelson: five minutes… after which, we will destroy you…”

  “They’re using our frequencies…” Eileen murmured softly as true realisation sunk in and her expression morphed slowly from complete bewilderment to one of abject horror. “They’ve been listening to everything we’ve been saying!” Another pause and another terrifying thought. “They know my name… they know who I am…! How is that possible?”

  “It’s your call,” Lloyd observed with equal lack of volume, staring intently at her and purposefully ignoring her fleeting ‘moment of doubt and pain’ as he quickly steered her back to the situation at hand. “You want us to fight and we’ll fight to the death for you – you know that – but if we do, it will be to the death …”

  “We need to buy some time!” Eileen ventured desperately, forcing the nervous shake from her hands as she struggled to stay focussed on the problem. “Max will be here – we must buy them some time.” She shook her head, dismissing another idea before it had even been spoken. “Can’t warn him, though – they’re clearly monitoring our transmissions!”

  “Eileen,” Evan said with gentle force, laying a hand on each shoulder and turning her slightly to look her straight in the eyes. “They’re issuing surrender demands over our channels: I think Max already knows…”

  It wasn’t anything to do with the fact that Donelson was a woman in Lloyd’s eyes, but the fact that she had no real combat experience was telling and he needed to steady her enough for her own natural instincts to regain control of her fear.

  “It’s your call,” he repeated, this time with s
ome emphasis as he gave her shoulders a kindly, reassuring squeeze and gave just enough of a nod to register his acceptance of her authority… enough to demonstrate his unwavering belief in her abilities.

  There was one long, seemingly endless moment that must have lasted all of five seconds before something sharp and professional within Eileen Donelson finally took hold and galvanised her to action.

  “We’ve got to buy the others time,” she repeated, this time with complete confidence as she stared up into Lloyd’s eyes, giving a reassuring nod of her own. “Take sixty seconds to do an inventory on exactly how many PITAs and Bazookas we have on hand; then tell ‘em we accept their terms… tell the cheeky buggers we surrender…!”

  “No…! No…! No…! No…! Fuck, No…!” Thorne howled in wild denial, having heard every single word of the radio exchange. Although Eileen had grasped the immediate reality of the situation – that this mobile enemy force had undoubtedly been listening in on their communications – only Thorne as yet had truly realised the ramifications of that: that it had almost certainly been his multitude of queries and reports regarding Eileen’s position that had allowed them to make the intercept.

  “We’ll be there in a few more minutes, sir,” Morris assured from beside him in the APC, easily recognising the expression on the man’s face as that of someone very close to breaking apart under sudden pressure. “We’re goin’ as fast as we can…”

  “Not fast enough…!” Thorne howled back down the microphone in return, grasping a huge chunk of his own short hair and dragging at it painfully as he wracked his brain desperately for an idea. “Not fast enough…!” He was momentarily prevented from saying any more by Morris as the man tried to wrestle the microphone from his hands a second later.

  “For the love o’ God, sir, they can hear everything you say!” The NCO snarled, struggling with him and furious the man was taking so little notice of such important facts.

  “I don’t give a fuck about that, sergeant…!” Thorne snarled back in rage, fighting to bring the swinging microphone back under control with one hand as he raise his other, palm up, as if to hold the other man at bay, although at no stage did Sergeant Morris notice that Thorne had intentionally not released the transmit key. “Eileen’s about to be taken prisoner and were too far away to do anything about it… I don’t give a shit what they hear right now!”

  Without waiting for a reply, he ignored the man’s ‘death glare’ and instead held the microphone outstretched in one hand, for the first time clearly displaying the still-open transmission channel for all to see before releasing it and passing the suddenly very baffled NCO a sly wink.

  Reaching down to the radio at his belt momentarily, he changed the frequency to one the troop had chosen as a pre-set but never previously used and raised the mike to his lips once more, now showing little of the stress and hysteria he’d displayed moments earlier.

  “Jimmy… Alistair…!” He called softly, speaking directly to the commanders of the two Sentinel tank crews. “You guys are going to advance at full speed…! You’re both faster than anything else in this convoy and Eileen needs you both right now…!”

  “Understood…!”

  “Understood…!”

  The one-word acknowledgement came back immediately from each man, and the sound of the nearby tanks’ engines changed noticeably as both drivers slammed their throttles right to the floor. Their powerful, turbo-charged diesels were intended, in theory, to have a governed maximum road speed of sixty-seven kilometres an hour and a cross-country speed of roughly forty.

  The speed governors fitted to the prototypes had been one of the first things to be removed and discarded following tanks’ arrival in North Africa. Already at the head of the column, both Sentinels rapidly began to pull ahead trailing thick, greasy plumes of blue exhaust.

  “You’re leading them into a trap, sir!” Morris snapped angrily, realising what Thorne was doing but not happy he’d been used as an unsuspecting pawn.

  “This whole fucking thing’s been a trap right from the start…!” Thorne growled sourly back angrily. “They bloody know everything about us… or think they do, at least…” He shrugged. “Now they think we’re all stuck here together and maybe we can’t make it to relieve the others in time… we’ll see who gets their tit caught in the wringer today.”

  “Sentinel One here, Max…” Jimmy Davids’ voice was clear as it came through on the microphone Thorne still held close to his mouth. “Angus has been fiddlin’ about with the motor in this big bugger and he reckons he can screw thirty miles an hour out of her on this surface.”

  As Thorne rose from his seat and stared off at the retreating forms of both tanks ahead of them, he could indeed already see that XFV001 was beginning to pull slightly away from its partner.

  Around fifty klicks, the voice in his mind converted for him quickly, and even it sounded mildly impressed. Not bad for a road in that condition. Had he been less agitated, Thorne might’ve sworn he’d ‘heard’ a soft snort of derision at that point, echoing in the back of his mind. They’ll rattle the bloody fillings right outta their head, though…

  “Well done, Jimmy…” Thorne replied slowly, nothing but pure malevolence in his tone now as his eyes narrowed. “Well done you too, Angus.” There was a short pause, then he added: “Jimmy, they may or may not be expecting someone to come after them, but they’ve never come up against machines like the one you’re in right now and they’ll not be able to do a damn thing more than scratch your paintwork from the front unless they’ve a five-inch gun handy. No prisoners and no quarter – you understand me? I want those fucking bastards ground into the dust: execute every… last… motherfucking... one of them…!”

  Inside XFV001 Jake, Davids and the rest of his crew all heard that last, quite unorthodox directive and threw each other a very pointed, meaningful glance that passed around within the vehicle in turn from man to man. The moment lasted just a split-second, but in that time Davids was able to think about Hodges and Gawler, the crewmen he’d lost during the Invasion of 1940, and also of the hundreds – thousands – that had surely died since including many more during the Siege of London and the infamous Slough Breakout.

  “Orders acknowledged, sir,” he answered, his own eyes now fathomless and cold. “Will comply…”

  “Bandits inbound… bandits inbound…!”

  The call from the Tunguska threw all other thoughts temporarily to the rear of their minds now as the flak vehicle’s huge, bulky turret turned slight more to the west and let rip with a half-second burst from its twin 30mm cannon that sent forty shells arcing away low across the horizon amid streams of orange tracer. The guns were already adjusting their aim slightly and firing again as a tiny flash of red and black above the horizon confirmed the first incoming enemy shot down. Another J-4D was torn apart a second later, and the Tunguska fired for a third time as Mitch called a warning over the radio, tension evident in his voice: “Range three thousand and closing fast…!”

  To the left and right of the column, the pair of M7A1 Sweepers had pulled aside and come to a halt, deploying their own ranging radar and arming their twin 15mm rotary guns. Their systems were primitive by comparison to those of the 9K22, and their lack of stabilisation required them to stop before firing, but their weapons were powerful and accurate all the same and the enemy had now flown within their own effective range.

  “‘South-One’…” the fire control officer in one of the Sweepers called off quickly, the simple yet effective code alerting his opposite number in the other M7A1 to the fact that he would be targeting the aircraft on the extreme southern edge of the approaching enemy formations, ensuring neither wasted ammunition by engaging the same target.

  “‘North-One’, confirmed…” his counterpart acknowledged, and both pairs of weapons fired a second later, filling the surrounding area with the piercing, ripping sound of ‘tearing linen’.

  Although radar assisted with correct range and altitude, the guns were still aim
ed manually for all that and they therefore needed to fire far longer burst that the Tunguska for their fire to be effective. Twin torrents of pink tracer streamed away across the sky as they sought out their targets, both ultimately successful with one J-4D destroyed and the second damaged badly enough to force it out of formation and send it turning back the way it had come.

  “‘South-One’…”

  “‘North-One’, confirmed…”

  The Sweepers blasted another two from the sky seconds later, during which time the Tunguska had downed seven more with its own guns, but the enemy was drawing ever closer and ten still remained. There was now also the not-insubstantial problem of ammunition. The 30mm cannon of the 9K22 each fired at around 2,500 rounds per minute, and the magazines within its hull, housing seven hundred rounds per gun, were already almost empty.

  They could no doubt knock out two or three more aircraft but would be completely out of ammunition after that and would therefore be completely defenceless. Certainly the Sweepers could continue firing for a while yet, but they were slower to aim and far less accurate due to the vagaries of their manual control, and there was a very real chance that one or two of the approaching fighters might indeed slip through their defences with potentially devastating results.

  The Tunguska in the end managed to take out four more of the J-4Ds before its guns finally fell silent, at around the same time the few remaining fighters of the decimated III/JG2 Richthofen aborted their mission and turned away to the south-west, making a belated effort to escape the withering fire that had killed many of their comrades. The fire controllers on board the M7A1s also ceased fire the moment it was confirmed the enemy was in retreat, neither showing any interest in wasting ammunition on something that was no longer an imminent threat.

  “Well done, guys… well done…” Thorne acknowledged over the open channel, finding a rare moment of thankfulness that at least the aerial threat had been eliminated. The engagement had only lasted perhaps a minute or two in reality and most of the column, Thorne’s APC included, had continued on at full speed, the urgency of the current circumstances such that they’d not been able to avail themselves the ‘luxury’ of pulling off the road until the battle ended.