Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  “You see, rottenführer…” he continued, pointing out the details of authorising paperwork that was quickly becoming sodden in the guard’s hands “…Gruppenführer Barkmann has urgent business with our attaché in Irland and is expected in Donegal first thing tomorrow morning for a special meeting.” He completely ignored the second guard as he went around the Kubelwagen and shone his torch into the vehicle, checking each stony face within with his slung submachine gun close at hand. “He was hoping to make it to his accommodation there tonight in time for a meal and a good night’s sleep…”

  Jimmy wore the uniform of a scharführer, the equivalent to a sergeant in the British Army and a full two ranks higher than that of the guard with which he was dealing. The daring combination of dropping Ernst Barkmann’s name along with such a thinly veiled threat was almost as effective a verification of their identity as any paperwork he might provide.

  “Of – of course, Herr Scharführer… I apologise for any delay… I – I need only to take some notes down for my logbook – it will be just a moment or two…”

  As he hurried back to the guard hut and the second trooper moved on to the Opel behind, Jimmy allowed himself a soft sigh of relief, tightly clutching his hands on the steering wheel to prevent them from shaking.

  “Yer doin’ well, Jimmy… just a minute or two more and we’ll be breathin’ the fresh air of Ireland again…”

  “You’ll be breathin’ in more than that shortly,” the driver shot back through clenched teeth, only partially joking. “Much more o’ this and I’ll be shitting meself…!”

  There was a pause that lasted much longer than a few moments, with the lance-corporal clearly talking on the phone inside the hut for some time before hanging up and venturing out again into the rain.

  “My apologies, Mein Herr,” he began, nervous agitation clearly showing in his voice over the prospect of offending the highest-ranking SS officer in Northern Ireland. “There has been a slight delay… our Local Area Command has requested a moment just to confirm an official authorisation for the crossing… it will be no more than a moment or two…”

  “I hope so, rottenführer…” Jimmy replied without falter, impressively maintaining an air of superior disdain as his stomach churned with fear. “I’d hate to have to ask you to explain the reason for this delay to Herr Barkmann himself…”

  “Of course, Mein Herr… a moment of the general’s time… no more, I promise you…” Despite his NCO rank, the guard looked like he couldn’t possibly be more than eighteen or nineteen at best – possibly much younger – and his colleague looked no older, the full-sized submachine gun over his shoulder seeming huge next to his diminutive frame.

  Kransky watched the guard as he moved back into the hut and once again raised the phone to his ear. The guy had seemed nervous as hell, something that had immediately raised his suspicions, but in all fairness that could just as easily be the fear of pissing off some high-ranking Kraut general rather than anything more sinister.

  I don’t get ‘paid’ to assume the best though, he pointed out to himself, one hand still resting on the grip of the MP2K under his coat.

  He turned his head to the right, glancing back to note that the other guard seemed to be moving along as normal, flashlight raised but keeping his free hand away from his own weapon; all of which seemed consistent with the actions of a man going about his normal duties rather than someone about to spring a trap.

  He wasn’t on the phone though… maybe he doesn’t know what the other guy does…

  Turning his head back the other way, he peered out into the drizzling rain at the pillbox on the left side of the road, standing in the middle of a muddy field perhaps twenty metres away from their positon. The ugly muzzle of the heavy machine gun within, which Kransky knew was a direct copy of the American’s own .50-inch Browning – wasn’t even pointed at them and was instead aiming off into the distance somewhere to the left, seemingly untended as the crew inside got some well-deserved rest. Again, nothing about the scene suggested there should be any reason for danger.

  At that moment, his eyes’ focus shifted slightly and instead centred on the more distant buildings up on the Urney Road that lay a little more than a hundred metres away across the open fields on which the pillbox sat. There was only one lit building up there on the other side of the road – it appeared to be an inn of some description – and his eyes had picked up movement as someone had opened the front door of the structure and stepped out into the night.

  It was impossible to see any detail of course from that distance, but the one thing that stood out in Kransky’s mind in that moment was that the silhouette of whoever it was, backlit by the brighter lighting from inside the inn, had most definitely been holding a rifle of some sort. As he gave the scene his full attention now, he picked out two more armed men exiting the building and judging by the speed with which their shadows crossed in front of the lighted windows, they all appeared to be running back down Urney Road toward the intersection turning on to the bridge. Turning his gaze back to the guard inside the hut, still on the phone, their eyes locked and in that moment, the man’s terrified expression gave him everything he needed.

  “They know…” He called sharply, awkwardly dragging the MP2K from beneath his coat with one hand as he used the other to fumble with the door handle.

  “Are you fookin’ mad…?” McCaughey snarled in return, anger and fear equal partners in his tone as he grabbed the American’s arm, although he also instinctively clutched at his own revolver all the same.

  “Three guys with rifles just ran out of an inn up on the main road, headed our way! That son-of-a-bitch is stalling us!” He snapped back, pausing just long enough to reply.

  “Then drive, Jimmy! Ram the gate!”

  “Those pillboxes will cut us to ribbons before we make it halfway!” Kransky snarled. Only chance is the river, and not even that if we don’t fuckin’ do it now…!”

  “And what chance have the rest of ‘em got, back there and still in their cars?” McCaughey pointed out.

  Kransky realised that the rottenführer inside the hut had spotted the weapon in his hands at that moment and had started screaming something into the receiver of the phone still at his ear, one hand fumbling for the pistol at his belt. Without a moment’s hesitation, the American raised his tiny submachine gun and sent a silenced three-round burst through the man’s forehead at point-blank range.

  “Mary, Mother o’ God!” McCaughey breathed, anger departing now and leaving just terror in his words as the young guard crumpled inside his hut in a spray of blood and flesh. “Do it, Pearse… do it now before they kill us all.”

  As McCaughey kicked open his door and tumbled out into the road, Pearse stuck his right arm out through the open window and raised his hand high holding a bulky flare gun. With a crump it discharged a single, pinkish-red ball of brilliance that hurtled skyward on a faint trail of grey smoke. The drivers of the two cars behind, already briefed on just such an occurrence, saw that flare hissing upward and instantly warned their passengers to keep their heads low and cover their ears.

  On the opposite banks of the Finn on either side of the bridge, two three-man IRA fire teams had been waiting in hiding since just after dusk, each group as cold and sodden as any man standing guard that night. The banks along the river at that point were thick with bushes and long grass and it had been no great feat to approach without being detected by forces on either side of the river.

  Their mission brief was a simple one, and they’d prepared themselves the moment the approach of the three vehicles had been observed. The red flare that arced above them now was the signal they’d been waiting for and as one, the gunner of each team at that moment raised an Australian-made PITA recoilless rifle to his shoulder and waited for his loader to ram a shell home.

  “HESH loaded…!” Came the cry from behind each a moment later, followed by a tap on the shoulder and the assurance of “…BBDA clear…!” As both loader and supporti
ng sniper dived sideways for cover, each man took a moment to sight his weapon and pulled the trigger.

  Based on a Realtime design known as the M2 Carl Gustav (or the M3 MAAWS in US Army usage), the Mark 2* PITA had earned its nickname in Australian Army usage of ‘Charlie Gutsache’ for a number of reasons, not the least of which being its overall weight and fierce back blast when fired. The weapon was well-loved for all that and could be devastatingly effective at short ranges in the right hands.

  At a range of little more than 100 metres, there wasn’t even any need to use the spotting rifle fitted to the weapon’s main tube to confirm aim. From either side of the bridge, within a second of each other, two 84mm high-explosive squash-head rounds streaked across the River Finn, the tracer in each shell’s base a sparkling star that reflected dazzlingly against the black waters below. Each shell struck their intended target dead centre, the three kilograms of plastic explosive within each warhead thudding heavily against the curved outer concrete walls of the pillboxes. Each deformed into a deadly ‘cowpat’ against the surface before being detonated by impact fuse a millisecond later.

  The troops manning the pillboxes were largely teens of almost enlistment age – perhaps fourteen or fifteen – under the command of select, higher-ranking NCOs considered too old to serve in the current Wehrmacht – these older men were generally experienced veterans of the Great War or other men with intelligence who were possessed of minor infirmities of one sort or another that also prevented their enlistment in the regular armed forces.

  In Realtime, toward the end of the war, boys and old men like these would’ve eventually been called up for the Volkssturm in desperate defence of Germany in those last, dark days of 1945. In this case, they were being called to serve for a far less desperate reason, although they were no less needed for all that. Maintaining full strength forces in North Africa and the build-up of forces along the entire Bohemian border with the Soviet Union, along with a massively-expanded Kriegsmarine and the continuing occupation of Continental Europe had left Nazi Germany with a telling shortfall in manpower that could not be quickly addressed.

  With Hitler himself opposed to the idea on ideological grounds, Germany had been slow to accept the transition of women into factory and production roles traditionally held by men. The concept of women working on production lines, construction and in hard manual labour – as had occurred to free up fighting men in most of the Allied nations during the Realtime war – was an anathema to the Nazi ethos of envisaging women as the ‘mother’ of a strong Germany, ready to produce many strong male children for its victorious armies in years to come. It was an opposition it had taken many years for Reichsmarschall Reuters to overcome, and had only barely been properly implemented in the months prior to the invasion of Poland.

  As an interim ‘fix’, boys of the Hitler Jugend were conscripted into such units as the Border Guards of the Germanische-SS or for other such ‘low-risk’ occupational duties, leaning the ‘trade’ of soldiering under the expert tutelage of seasoned First War veterans still capable of making a contribution to the war effort. A youth who did well in his tour of duty as a border guard might well see himself automatically transferred into the Wehrmacht or the Waffen-SS with the rank of lance-corporal or even corporal upon his sixteenth birthday, while those who excelled intellectually might also be ‘fast-tracked’ into accelerated officer training programs upon reaching the same age.

  Even Great War veterans were human however, and an endless succession of completely uneventful months spent watching over a complete ‘non-event’ of a border crossing had lulled the NCOs in command into an extremely false sense of complacency. As the troops under them usually learned from their superiors, the younger boys too were completely unconcerned as the small convoy had arrived at the checkpoint that evening.

  That the guard hut had received a strange message from an SS officer nearby demanding the cars not be let through was certainly unusual, but it was cold and wet and very late, and the officer in question – an Obersturmbannführer Stahl - was well-known within the SS community in general as a ‘troublemaker’ who excelled at making work for others. Not one man thought to train their machine guns on the motorcade or, for that matter, to even load the weapons.

  Even as Kransky killed the boy inside the guard hut, there was no sound of a shot nor did the suppressor fitted to the weapon allow any tell-tale muzzle flash. Only one of the young troopers inside the southern bunker at that moment happened to glance out through the firing slot, and even as he saw something spray the inside of the hut and his friend crumpling to the ground, his innocent mind – having never experienced combat – didn’t immediately make the necessary connections to recognise what was happening. The first real notification of anything being awry was the firing of the flare from the Kubelwagen at the head of the group, by which stage it was far too late.

  The pillboxes’ walls of reinforced concrete weren’t intended to be proof against dedicated anti-tank weapons. The most they’d been designed to defend against were smallarms fire and the occasional grenade. Both were gutted and torn open like foil wrapping as the two warheads hit, killing all inside. Pieces of concrete and torn iron lattice sprayed high into the dark sky on two huge flowers of smoke and red fire. It was only that the shells had struck on almost the exact opposite side of each structure that ultimately saved the cars on the road, which otherwise almost certainly would also have been destroyed in the blast. What was left of each pillbox effectively shielded them from the worst of it, the remnants looking for all the world like the rotted remains of a giant’s teeth.

  The second guard outside, still unaware of the silent death of his colleague in the hut, was lifted by the blast wave and smashed against the side of the Austin Seven at the convoy’s rear. He collapsed to the ground in a dazed heap, only to be shot through the head a moment later by McCaughey who was now lying prone beside the Kubelwagen.

  He rose to his feet once more, his first instinct to climb back in and ram the gates at high speed only to realise that inside, Jimmy was cursing virulently and struggling with an engine that wouldn’t start. It refused to turn over, and instead a ragged grinding noise was issuing from the vehicle’s rear.

  A quick inspection revealed a piece of iron lattice perhaps half a metre long had speared right through the back of the vehicle, impaling the rear-mounted engine and rendering it useless. That it had possible saved the life of at least one of the car’s occupants was a small mercy indeed as oil and radiator fluid poured out onto the road below with the hiss of steam. Jimmy also found that the transmission appeared to be jammed in first gear, and try as he might he was unable to force it back into neutral.

  Which all meant that with a ruined engine it would be impossible for the other cars to push it out of the way for a clear run across the bridge, and they were now left with a broken vehicle blocking the road to safety with the muddy verge on either side far too likely to see any car bogged that tried to go around.

  That left McCaughey with the unenviable alternatives of either making a hundred and fifty yard dash on foot across the bridge with two young teens or of making a faster escape by car back the way they’d come before reinforcements arrived. He couldn’t afford to spend much time considering the decision.

  Inside the Opel, Evie and Levi both screamed in fright as every window shattered in the explosion, spraying their heads and backs with shards as the horrendous noise left a terrible ringing pain in their ears. Sitting to their right, Lowenstein made sure they stayed bent double and threw himself across them as best he could for protection. The car rocked terribly on its wheels as if threatening to tip over with the force of the shockwave, but it held itself upright eventually, saved from the full brunt of the blasts on either side by what was left of the ruined structure of the pillboxes themselves.

  As their driver lifted his head once more from below the relative safety of the dashboard, the first thing he saw was a muddy, pistol-wielding Seán McCaughey waving desperately wi
th his free hand and clearly mouthing the words Get out of here…!’. He could see the damage to the vehicle in front of them, could see that McCaughey was ordering them back the way they’d come, and needed no greater incentive than that. With a short prayer of thanks as the engine kicked over first go, he jammed the Opel into reverse and turned his head as far back as he was able to see where he was going.

  The Austin at the rear of the group had suffered similarly in the explosions and had come through in similar condition. Its driver too saw McCaughey’s order to leave and acted as readily on it as his colleague. Both men began reversing madly back toward the Urney Road intersection, the lanes at that point far too narrow to safely turn round even had they wanted to waste the time in doing so.

  Kelly and Michaels, both seated in the rear of the Austin, quickly produced weapons they’d found hidden under blankets on the floor of the vehicle, and jammed the muzzles through a gaping rear window filled with jagged shards of shattered glass. With German ammunition far easier to come by on that side of the border, both were of enemy manufacture – a 9mm MP2 SMG identical to that held by the dead guard by their car, and a folding-stock variant of their standard-issue G1 assault rifle firing high-velocity 5.56mm rounds.

  Brendan, seated beside the driver in the Opel, pulled out a .45-calibre Thompson M1928, complete with a pair of old-fashioned fifty-round drum magazines. Taking care to remove any remaining glass from the door frame, he lifted himself out into a seated position on the window sill of the front passenger door to afford himself a clear field of fire should any threat arise. That he was able – barely – to keep himself steady with the sheer strength of his legs locked against the inside of the door and not fall out of the car completely was a testament to the power the man as he cocked the old Tommy Gun and looked for a likely target. Without a word, the driver reached back and handed Lowenstein a Colt .45 automatic along with two spare magazines. He took it with just a nod and cocked the weapon, well versed in the use of handguns and rifles after two years on the run from the Nazis.