Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  “...Orders that will be obeyed just as soon as we’ve dealt with this remaining threat, Herr Feldwebel, is that understood?”

  Sergeant Drescher was no fool, and it was clear to all concerned save except for Schreiner, that their unit had been all but wiped out. Withdrawal under such circumstances would carry no shame whatsoever – it was nothing more that common sense – yet it was also clear that the SS officer before them was at that moment not in the slightest bit interested in anything sensible and ultimately, a German soldier was expected to follow the orders of his superior implicitly.

  “Understood, Mein Herr,” the man sighed with resignation, slipping a meaningful glance in the direction of Gottleib while his superior wasn’t looking.

  “Good fellow!” Schreiner nodded with forced cheerfulness, checking the weapon he’d been handed and cocking it. “Now, let’s see about sorting out the rest of these Tommi arschlöcher, yes?”

  Trumbull was almost beside himself with worry as he circled above the battle area, having watched the entire scene unfold through his EOTS and unable to in anyway further influence the outcome. There was no doubt that there were survivors on both sides – he caught occasional, fleeting glimpses of men moving about on foot below through the swirling dust clouds – but as to the identity of those men he was none the wiser. He was also unable to determine much else regarding the relative position of the two remaining forces. His thermal imaging systems, which had been nominal at best in detecting even the engine heat of armoured vehicles against the ambient background temperature of the desert itself, was completely incapable of picking up human beings in the same environment.

  With temperatures now pushing upward of thirty-six degrees – a situation exacerbated further at ground level by the hot, dry winds of the whirling sandstorm – there was now almost no variance at all between the average temperatures of the human body itself and that of the surrounding environment. That fact basically meant that anyone still alive and on foot below was now invisible to the only visual sensors Trumbull possessed that were capable of penetrating the sandy maelstrom below.

  Already tired and at times finding it difficult to think clearly, the discovery that he was now also unable to raise Thorne by radio had raised his level of concern exponentially to the point almost of hysteria.

  “Beatrice, this is Harbinger...” he called out desperately to the only other friend nearby still able to hear him. “I have no visual on Phoenix, Beatrice... repeat: I have no visual on Phoenix... also no response to communications. All enemy vehicles are neutralised, but I have no information on remaining ground forces from either side.” He paused again, tilting the aircraft into a tight turn and using the manoeuvre as an opportunity to once again scan the ground below in vain for any clear sign of life. “We need immediate assistance, Beatrice. We need someone there on the ground now...!”

  Well aware of the situation and no happier about it. Eileen was already on the move aboard one of the group’s remaining GMC trucks that had miraculously survived the entire battle so far, hidden away to one side as they had been at the bottom of a shallow wadi some distance from the main engagement. Lloyd sat beside her and the driver in the cab of the truck while a squad of heavily-armed SAS rode in the rear cargo bed and Sentinel Jake thundered across the desert beside them as escort, matching their speed comfortably over the rough, uneven ground.

  She already knew Trumbull well enough to know he’d be blaming himself for not spotting the breakaway enemy forces earlier. She knew that the truth of the matter was that it was no one’s fault and that such situations were part of the chaotic, uncontrollable nature of battle itself. She also knew none of that reality would make any difference to Alec, as the growing desperation in his voice gave clear testament.

  “We’re on our way, Harbinger,” she assured quickly, throwing a pointed and very concerned glance at Lloyd; one that he matched with similar one of his own. “On our way at best possible speed...”

  “He’ll be okay...” Lloyd ventured, trying to sound more confident that he really felt and not quite managing it.

  Eileen gave no response, instead continuing to stare directly out through the windshield at the sandstorm around them with her hands held firmly in her lap, nails digging deeply into her own palms.

  “I have seriously fuckin’ had enough of being thrown out of fucking vehicles for one fucking day!” Thorne howled angrily, hysteria in his voice as he dragged himself around to the exposed underside of the upturned GMC, trying to reassure himself that the diesel from its ruptured fuel tanks, pouring out all over the desert nearby, was in fact quite safe from ignition unless exposed to either significant explosion or compression. The latter was unlikely at present however the same could not be said for the former considering the current environment. That his position behind the wrecked truck was nevertheless still the safest cover available to them as he looked about the surrounding area said a great deal more about the poor nature of that environment that it said anything about his choice of hiding place.

  His left forearm was gashed from wrist to elbow where he’d landed heavily on it, and several tiny yet incredibly-painful slivers of shrapnel had caught him in the back and side. He felt okay internally so far as he could tell and they were certainly quite small wounds, but he could feel blood trickling down his body all the same inside his shirt and he had no idea what havoc the metal shards might still wreak on his internal organs – if severe damage hadn’t already been done that he didn’t yet know about.

  “Maybe you might want to think twice next time about mouthing off at Jerry over the radio, sir… I think you might’ve annoyed them a smidge…” Morris pointed out drily beside him, wincing in pain as he wrapped a bandage tightly about his right leg, just below his knee. A larger piece of errant steel had sliced neatly through the leg of his battle fatigues and carried on through the other side, taking a sizeable chunk of the back of his calf along with it as it went. He’d managed to strap a shell dressing about the wound but it was still bleeding slowly through the thick wad of gauze, and he suspected a tourniquet was going to be necessary if it didn’t improve very soon.

  Both men wore goggles now as protection against the sand whirling about them, and each had managed to scrounge a rifle and several clips of ammunition from what had been strewn across the landscape as the truck had overturned. That they’d in some cases been forced to search dismembered remains that had once been living, breathing human beings was something neither cared to think about.

  “No shit, Sherlock…” Thorne observed grimly in return, barely managing a thin smile of his own at the obvious understatement. He hefted a fully-stocked M2A1 rifle in his hands and checked the loaded breech for the fifth time in two minutes, nervously peering around the rear of the GMC and noting with some relief that the area appeared to be clear for the time being. Thick palls of oily, black smoke poured into the sky from the pyres of burning vehicles that dotted the landscape around them, while they too were then surrounded in turn by the shattered remains of the dead and dying of both sides, the screams of whom were now becoming all too audible.

  “We’ve gotta do something for some of those poor buggers,” Thorne added softly, an edge growing in his voice as the hysteria returned, not helped in the slightest by those growing cries of agony. “We might be able to save some of ‘em if we can get ‘em back to cover.”

  “Unless they need more than some Band-Aids or aspirin,” Morris growled sourly, having been lucky to salvage bandages for his own wound from what remained of the truck’s first aid kit after 23mm cannon fire had shot it to pieces. “Can’t call for any bloody help neither, can we?” Morris had fallen on the belt radio as they’d been thrown from the truck. Its broken remains now lay some distance away now, discarded the moment they’d realised they were now truly alone. He shrugged. “Gotta try though all the same, sir, and that’s God’s honest truth.”

  Using the stock of his own rifle as support, the sergeant forced himself into a standing positi
on and rested for a moment against the truck body, not pleased with the pain it caused him but ultimately able to stand on both feet after a fashion.

  “Don’t think I’ll be giving Jesse Owens a run for his money any time soon, sir, but I think I can walk well enough.”

  “Max…” Thorne insisted in that moment, glancing up at the NCO and managing an honestly warm smile for the first time. “The name’s Max, Arthur: I think you’ve earned it, mate…”

  “Well… ‘Max’… y’ think y’ can cover me if I nip out and bring back some mates…?”

  “Arthur, you can barely bloody stand, let alone run out there and drag someone back with you! Continental drift would get the poor bastards back here quicker!” There was no malice in the sarcasm, only recognition of the reality they both faced. “Thanks for the sentiment, but I really think it’d be better if I was the one going out there to face the music.”

  “The CO would kill me if I let you go out there and get hurt,” Morris protested, not liking the idea at all. Officers were generally a precious lot in the eyes of senior NCOs – particularly those of staff rank – and usually needed a sensible sergeant about to keep an eye on them.

  “Actually, I suspect there’d be a few in High Command that might actually be pleased if I copped a ‘packet’, just so long as they still got access to all my neat little ‘toys’,” Thorne replied with a morbid smile, well aware of his own reputation for difficulty held by many in the Australian and American military hierarchies. “Anyway,” he added, shaking his head dismissively, “I’m still the best person for the job if we really wanna help anyone out there... right?”

  As much as the man beside him wanted to argue… as much as the idea of allowing a high-ranking officer to walk directly into harm’s way grated against everything he’d been trained for as a senior NCO… the fact remained that Max Thorne was completely and utterly correct. Slim as the chance of anyone surviving out there for long was, the possibility that Morris would make it back alive with his movements so badly handicapped was so low as to be non-existent. He could definitely still hold a rifle though, and he’d been the best shot in his unit five years’ running.

  “Whenever you’re ready then, Max…” The NCO answered finally, giving a solemn nod as he cocked his own rifle and moved to stand by Thorne at the very rear of the wrecked GMC, aiming the weapon directly over the other man’s shoulder.

  “No time like the present, I guess…” Thorne observed, tension in his voice as he steeled himself against his own fear. “Keep this one handy…” he added, placing his own rifle on the ground “…it’ll only slow me down, and you might find it quicker than reloading.” Much as he didn’t want to part with the power of the rifle, he also had to accept that the weapon would be far too bulky for the job he was about to perform and he was likely to need at least one hand free, if not both.

  He reached down to the large holster at his belt and withdrew a strange-looking, slab-sided automatic pistol with what appeared to be a small flashlight mounted beneath the muzzle, ahead of the trigger guard. A tiny beam of pencil-thin green light lanced out from beneath the light’s lens as Thorne pressed a stud on the side of the device.

  “‘Speed Gordon lent you his ray gun, did he? That thing fire anti-tank rounds too...?”

  Thorne missed the reference, unaware that the Flash Gordon comic strips of the late ‘Thirties had been retitled for Australian audiences due to the negative connotations of his first name (‘flash’ at the time meaning something ‘showy’ and somewhat dishonest). The ‘ray gun’ remark in reference to the laser sight mounded beneath his pistol however was received loud and clear.

  “These old eyes ain’t what they used to be,” Thorne grinned as he snapped back the slide of the Heckler & Koch USP Tactical and levered a .45ACP cartridge into the breech. “This little green bugger ain’t any ‘ray gun but it sure as hell helps me aim... see...?” He waved the weapon about in his hand, and Morris stared in wonder as the tiny green laser spot matched the movement against the rear of the truck. “Anyway, I was always more a fan of ‘Westerns’ meself…” He paused for a moment, gathering his courage once more, before snugging his ‘boonie’ hat down tighter on his head and adding finally, with a wink: “…Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker…!”

  With that he was up and moving as fast as he could manage with safety, pistol held out before him and ready with the iridescent beam of the green laser sight beneath its muzzle whipping this way and that, intermittently, eerily visible through the clouds of swirling dust as Thorne advanced toward the cries of an injured man through the haze.

  Within moments he’d come across an armoured corps lance-corporal, the man completely incoherent and groaning in agony over burns that had charred the sleeves from his tank suit and singed the hair and eyebrows right off his head. Both legs below the knee were a blackened, smouldering mass that stunk of burnt flesh and caused Thorne’s gorge to rise in his throat. His boots had clearly been burned away from what was left of his feet, but it was otherwise difficult to tell where the material of his tank suit ended and the flesh of his legs began. What remained was a mixture of the two that appeared to have been fused together by the terrible, intense heat produced when diesel fuel actually reached a high enough flashpoint to maintain ignition.

  “Come on, mate…” Thorne croaked softly, somewhat glad that the man was at present too far gone to really understand what was happening. Safing and holstering the pistol, he lifted the moaning tanker over his back in a classic fireman’s lift and made a beeline back toward the shelter of the truck, trying the entire trip back to ignore the additional cries of agony each step produced as the wounded man’s charred legs bumped against his back.

  There was no humour now with either of them as he lowered his first recovery gently to the ground behind the truck. Morris alternated between doing what little he could for the man and keeping Thorne covered as he immediately darted out again, pistol once more in hand, and sought out his next ‘mercy’ target.

  Three times more, he went out and returned with men suffering varying states of injury. There were Corporal Tims and Private Chalk, both British Armoured Corps, who’d suffered minor wounds and had been located taking cover behind other wrecked vehicles some distance away, while another private and lance corporal from the 2/28th were also recovered, both unconscious, with Chalk helping Thorne carry one of them back as the pair had returned from his own recovery.

  By the time he’d returned that fourth time, the unidentified tanker from his first foray had died of shock in spite of everything Morris and the others tried to prevent it. The sergeant didn’t bother to advise Thorne; there didn’t seem much point in the end and the Hindsight CO was in any case too far into ‘the zone’ for anyone to risk breaking his concentration as he took off out into the open for a fifth time.

  Morris could now dedicate all his attention to providing him with cover at least as Tims, nursing only a sprained wrist and a suspected case of mild concussion, now took over the care of the wounded with what little resources the possessed. No one considered the situation optimum however it was the best anyone could come up with under the circumstances, alone as they were.

  Thorne had disappeared into the haze off to the south-west and had been gone for some time now – well over two or three minutes – when the sergeant caught sight of shapes moving toward them from further north. Hope rose in his heart for just a moment, desperation willing the newcomers to be some kind of allied relief force, but the outlines became clearer as the drew closer and quickly took on the all-to-familiar shape of Wehrmacht camouflage smocks and ‘coal scuttle’ helmets.

  “Chalk… Tims… grab a rifle each, you buggers: we’ve got company!” Even as he hissed an urgent warning to the other two mostly able-bodied men of the group, he never once took his eyes from the approaching panzer grenadiers. Resting the forward stock of the rifle against the upturned rear bumper of the GMC, he sighted along the top of the weapon, flicked off the safety and prepared to fire
.

  It was at that moment his heart sank in abject horror as he caught sight of Thorne returning from the south-west once more in his peripheral vision, perhaps six hundred metres from the advancing Germans. Neither group could probably see the other as yet, but Morris could see both and he could also see clearly that they were moving toward each other on a sharply convergent course.

  “Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger…!” He hissed softly, not seeing any possible way to avoid some kind of full-scale engagement. It would be far better for the wounded men beside him if the German patrol were simply allowed to wander past none the wiser, but their current path would take them right into that of Thorne, who wasn’t currently concentrating at all on what was around him as he lumbered along, almost bent double as he was beneath the weight of yet another injured man.

  Morris made the decision quickly for all that. There was no way he was about to sacrifice a fellow soldier in return for his own safety, particularly not that of an officer.

  “Stand ready by the other end of the truck in case they try to flank us, fellas,” he ordered with quiet confidence as he lined up his sights on the nearest grenadier. “Things are about to get a bit bloody lively.

  His first quick, aimed shots forced the approaching men to immediately throw themselves flat against the hard earth, making them extremely difficult to see clearly through the howling storm, and it was impossible for Morris to tell whether he’d actually hit anyone. Return fire immediately hammered into the opposite side of the truck body, causing every conscious man to flinch and also throw themselves flat in return.

  Two staccato bursts from a light machine gun churned up the earth close to Morris, followed quickly by the dull thud of a grenade launcher firing somewhere in the distance. He too went prone and not a moment too soon as a 40mm HE grenade exploded nearby off to the left, sending fragments and debris rattling off the rear of the truck where the sergeant’s head and body had been seconds before. More fire followed, preventing him from getting a good look at what was happening out in the open, but he managed to get one last, quick glimpse of Thorne as he veered off to the south, looking to place some distance between himself and the enemy.