Kransky, having dismounted the vehicle the moment he’d realised it wouldn’t start, immediately took cover behind the river side of the guard hut, noting with some thanks that the blast had also shattered most of the street lighting above them and further along the bridge. He took a few seconds to deliver 3-round bursts to the remaining few to complete the task, then slung the MP2K over his shoulder and reached for the canvas bag he’d brought with him, knowing he’d not have much time to do what needed to be done.
Jimmy joined him a moment later brandishing an old Winchester Trench Gun of First World War vintage, complete with a 40cm long M1917-pattern bayonet fitted beneath its muzzle, something that drew no small amount of surprised attention from Kransky.
“Jesus Christ…” he exclaimed, dragging pieces of his huge rifle from the bag all the while “… if the get that Goddamn close, we’re in trouble…!”
“I think we moight be in a spot o’ trouble already, if y’ hadn’t noticed, mate,” Jimmy shot back with a wry grin as he racked the first shell into its breech, amazingly displaying the thickest accent he’d heard so far from any Irishman he’d ever met, something Kransky found incredible for some reason considering how fluently the man had spoken German.
“Well…” Kransky grinned back, slotting the huge barrel of his .50-caliber rifle into its receiver and locking it into place, “I’m gonna do my best to make sure they don’t get that fuckin’ close…!”
“Jaysus, you Yanks have always got t’ have a bigger one, ain’t y’…!” Jimmy observed with an amazing amount of humour considering the situation as he took in the size of the weapon the American had just assembled.
“Buddy…” Kransky replied, his grin turning quite evil as he snapped his thermal sight into place and turned it on, “…this baby is the biggest there is, and when she fucks ya, you stay fucked…!” He slapped a huge magazine into the weapon and snapped back the bolt, levering the first of ten .50-inch rounds into the chamber.
A moment later, two rifle rounds slammed into the wooden frame of the guard hut a metre or so above their heads accompanied by a soft, wet thud as a third round punched a neat hole in the side of Jimmy’s head above his right ear. The left side of his face exploded in a spray of blood and flesh and he collapsed to the ground, already dead as the shotgun skittered away under the Kubelwagen.
“Ahh, shit…!” Kransky breathed in frustration, looking up quickly to catch sight of the two guards from the other side of the river advancing on them along the bridge with weapons raised. Kransky rose to one knee, threading his left arm and elbow through the sling for support by instinct alone, and raised the huge weapon to his shoulder. The shot was deafening, with McCaughey and Pearse on wincing in pain on the opposite side of the car, and one of their attackers collapsed to the road sixty metres away at the far end of the bridge, almost torn in half.
“Fuck me, Kransky!” McCaughey shouted nervously from the other side of the Kubelwagen. “And here’s me wishin’ we had some heavy artillery backing us up…!”
“Jimmy’s down…!” Kransky yelled back as another shot howled away off the bodywork of the car, not far from where the others were taking cover. The second guard had hidden himself now along one crenelated side of the bridge and was now firing indiscriminate shots over the top of the stone work, intending more to keep their heads down than do any real damage.
A stone structure built centuries earlier, the Finn River bridge at Clady was barely wide enough to allow one lane of traffic, and even then larger trucks needed to travel further north to Strabane or Derry. Presumably in recognition of the danger for pedestrians attempting to negotiate such a narrow causeway, seven sets of sponsons, for want of a better word, had been built into the edges of the bridge at roughly even intervals along its length on either side, looking from above like seven mirrored sets of shark’s teeth set into the sides of the road. It was behind the third of these redoubts that the guard had taken cover, lying prone now in recognition of the firepower he was facing and sending the occasional shot their way in return.
“We can’t make a break for it across the bridge if he’s still there!” McCaughey howled in frustration as another shot whined past overhead. The fucker’ll have us on a plate if we try to move.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Kransky muttered under his breath, rising momentarily to a standing position to improve his angle and waiting patiently for the right moment. Through the thermal sight, the stone of the bridge was as black as pitch, as was most of the surrounding environment. At the far end however, one small speck of bright white light showed through in the viewfinder – a white light in the shape of a man crouching with a rifle.
Just the very top of the guard’s head was showing – barely enough for a shot on a good day – and contrary to what the layman might think, a precision shot at such close range was no simple matter. With sights zeroed to five hundred yards or more, a rifle would shoot ‘high’ at closer targets and with such a small window of opportunity, a shot with the aiming reticle placed dead-centre on the target could easily go straight over the top.
The extra difficulty caused Kransky to pause for perhaps a second – maybe two – before his incredible skill and experience as a sniper told him precisely where to place his aiming mark. He lowered the rifle just a fraction, drew a half-breath and squeezed the trigger. There was another raucous report, smoke filled the air and the weapon recoiled heavily into his shoulder. By the time he returned the sight to target, the he could see the white outline was now lying prone and motionless, and for a moment it imagined that perhaps he might also have seen the white, flickering residue of a warm mist dissipating in the air above the body.
“He’s down,” he said simply, “now let’s get the fuck outta here before the cavalry arrives!”
“Let’s go!” McCaughey gave the order immediately, rising to his feet and staring in awe at the American, realising that he and his incredible rifle might possibly be the most important keys to their escape. “Pearse: on me and take the lead…! Support Kransky and keep ‘em off him so he can make proper use o’ that bloody great cannon of his!”
Stahl and Bauer reached the turn off to the bridge at about the same time that both pillboxes exploded, both men instinctively throwing themselves to the ground and thereby avoiding most of the shockwave that subsequently blew Rolfe Blatter off his feet and sent him sprawling awkwardly to the ground behind them.
“Scheisse, scheisse, scheisse…!” Bauer howled in frustration, realising their best chance of holding all the fugitives in one place had just gone up in two balls of flame. “Where are our men…? Where are our bloody men…?”
“They’re staying at a school on Bells Park Road, Mein Herr,” Blatter advised automatically, brushing himself off as he regained his feet.
“I know where they’re fucking staying, you idiot…!” The colonel snarled in return, enraged and in no mood for stupidity. “Why are they not right here where they are needed…?”
“They’re coming, Mein Herr… it takes time to assemble the men and organise the transport…”
“‘Transport…?” Bauer screamed incredulously. “They’re five hundred metres away! They could’ve run here by now! What the fuck to they need transport for?”
“They’re moving…!” Stahl advised tersely, cocking his rifle and taking cover behind a low stone wall at the southern edge of the road leading to the bridge. “He raised the rifle to his shoulder, trying to see through the haze of smoke and dust that pervade the area, but couldn’t pick out much more than shapes or movement in the darkness. “Only two vehicles, I think… the lead one may be stalled; it’s definitely not moving.”
There was the crack of rifle fire, followed by the deafening roar of something that sounded far bigger… something that none of the three SS officers believed to be of German origin.
“Dieser verdammte Amerikaner…!” Bauer snarled in disgust, the late arrival of his reinforcements momentarily forgotten. “Him and that blood
y panzerbüchse he carries with him! Remember, the captain of that bloody S-boat they dragged out of the water said he saw a tall man on the deck of the enemy vessel with a huge rifle… one that seemed to be able to hit his men through thick fog?”
“I thought we’d assumed the poor fellow was suffering from shock?” Stahl reminded, shifting his position uneasily and pulling a face. At that moment, a second deafening shot echoed through the darkness.
“You think he’s firing in broad daylight right now?” Bauer growled back with sarcasm. “It’s black as ein arsch des Arabers out there and he’s bloody well shooting at something…!” He came down onto one knee beside Stahl and cocked his own weapon, setting the selector to automatic and checking that he still had two full magazines in the pocket of his fur-lined combat jacket. “We shall need to be careful.”
“Sie denken so…?” Stahl shot back with a scowl and equal sarcasm. “I hope you remember your basic training, Franz: I suspect we’re going to have to use these…! Rolfe: I want you to cross the street, fall back to the inn and take up a defensive positon … if we don’t stop them here we’ll be joining you again soon enough…”
Mein Herr…!” Blatter acknowledged instantly, turning and running at good speed back the way they’d come. Despite being one rank junior to Bauer, Stahl had far more combat experience and his commanding officer had no qualms whatsoever about acceding to his superior knowledge in such a situation.
“Franz, I want you to take cover in the shadow of that shop doorway about thirty metres back along Urney Road… that one on the western side of the street. If they try to turn north, they’ll come straight for you and you’ll have a clear shot at the driver. D’you think you can handle that?” Bauer stared long and hard at his partner, ultimately deciding the moment called for honesty rather than pointless pride or arrogance.
“I’ll manage…” he replied firmly, convincingly enough for Stahl believed him.
“Good…! I’ll be right here at the wall. Remember, the headlights may blind you if you’re not careful so try not to look directly at them. Don’t bother with automatic fire – after the first two you’ll be shooting at bats anyway. Our rifles have a three-round burst feature for a reason, so make use of it: three rounds on target are better than fifteen over their heads, habe ich recht?”
“Naturlich, mein freund,” Bauer managed with a grin, having to admit that the idea of real combat was in fact frightening him more than a little. That it was so obvious in expression, he discovered, was also unsettling.
“Don’t worry, kamerad… we don’t need an army to take care of this Irish rabble: we’re Herrenvolk, are we not?” That Stahl said it without any sarcasm or irony whatsoever was somewhat heartening to his less experienced commander in that moment, and his partner’s confidence and resolve filled him with the sufficient self-belief to imagine that the three of them alone might indeed turn the tide.
“Sieg heil…!” Bauer said softly, meaning in completely for the first time in a long while as he gave a quick Nazi salute.
“Sieg heil…!” Stahl returned with a grin, and with that, Bauer turned and jogged back along Urney road to the north, crossing the street halfway down and taking up a kneeling position exactly where Stahl had directed.
“Scheisse…!” Stahl muttered softly, allowing his hands to shake once more now that he was alone and able to reveal his own nervousness. “Let’s hope they’re all as stupid as those fools in the Abwehr keep telling us…!”
At about the same time, Obersturmführer Blatter, having reached the inn once more, had decided to take one extra course of action of his own initiative before taking up a defensive positon as ordered; a stroke of pure genius that would ultimately save the lives of both his superior officers.
“Yes, damn it… I said leuchtgeschoss… leuchtgeschoss…!” He bellowed into the radio microphone, leaning over the table near the bar and clutching one side of the headset to his ear. “I bloody told you the coordinates, you idiot! Right on top of us…!”
Slamming the mike down in angry frustration, he quickly doused the lights inside the room and took up a crouching positon in the darkened doorway, facing north.
Moving at high speed while travelling backwards was difficult at the best of times, and that particular moment could never be included as such a time by any standard. It took both vehicles a good minute or two just to reverse the eighty metres or so to the nearest solid driveway, at which point the driver of the Austin Seven decided on sensibility over urgency and veered off into it, executing on a three-point turn.
The man behind the wheel of the Opel realised what he was doing eventually and slid to a halt with a few metres short of him, waiting as patiently as he could for his fellow Volunteer to violently crash the little sedan’s transmission into gear and start rolling forward. The Opel entered into the same manoeuver the moment the driveway was clear, with the Austin taking its turn to wait so they could both move in convoy for greater firepower.
Michaels took the opportunity to slide into the seat beside the driver. They’d lost the windscreen in the blast along with everything else, and he was now provided a clear field of fire right across almost all of the Austin’s forward 180-degrees. Kelly hung his head and upper body outside the rear window behind him, deciding two useable guns on that side of the vehicle was better that trying to use his weapon left-handed on the other and spraying hot cartridge cases into his own face. Over the sound of their own engines and the general background noise, no one heard the soft, distant ‘crump’ of mortars being fired somewhere off to the north.
The process of turning both vehicles around had taken enough time that the occupants of the stricken Kubelwagen had been able to catch them up on foot, taking up positon on either side of the road and jogging on ahead at a steady pace, keeping to the shadows of bushes and long grass wherever possible with Kransky hanging back perhaps ten metres from the rest and stopping every few moments to scan the way ahead with his thermal sight.
“Hold it…!” He called out sharply, loud enough for even the drivers to hear. “We’ve got someone with a rifle behind a wall about fifty yards up at the intersection. As they all stopped immediately, he took a longer, slower scan, pausing a moment and moving slightly to the right to allow himself a wide field of view down Urney Road to the north. “Another one of the bastards further down on the other side of the road, hiding in a doorway. Gimme a moment and I’ll take the sons-a’-bitches out…”
He centred his aiming reticle on the nearer of the two targets, deciding that if he could see the man’s heat signature through the wall he was hiding behind, it probably wasn’t thick enough to stop a .50-calibre slug. His finger was at the point of depressing the trigger when there was a loud, unexpected ‘whump’ directly overhead and everything in his viewfinder went completely, blindingly white.
Directly above Stahl’s head, an extremely powerful illuminating flare of almost 300,000 candlepower now drifted slowly toward earth suspended from a tiny parachute. Fired from a 81mm mortar set up in the quadrangle of the primary school Bauer and Stahl’s troops had been using as a billet, it had been a simple task to lob a shell five hundred metres or so to the area of the bridge. The moment that flare had ignited, its intense heat and light had overloaded the sensitive instruments of Kransky’s thermal sight and forced it to momentarily shut down, leaving him effectively blind. His finger had jerked the trigger in surprise, causing the round to go wide enough to shoot straight through a street sign not far from Stahl’s head, causing him to gasp in shock. The top half of the wooden pole above the point of impact was sheared completely off, toppling over and dealing the unprepared SS officer a painful blow to the back of his head and neck that left him momentarily stunned. More star shells burst overhead as he clutched at his head in agony, bathing the entire area in an eerie light with moving shadows as they wobbled their way downward.
With any advantage now lost, there was now nothing more to be done that run the gauntlet and make a break for it as
far as either Kransky or McCaughey could see. Almost in unison, they both began screaming “Go…! Go…! Go…!” as the Irishman began firing his revolver indiscriminately at the darkened shadows of the shop doorways on the distant side of the street and Kransky slung his rifle, taking up the MP2K once more and sending a few discouraging bursts in the direction of the stone wall, unaware the man hidden there was already effectively out of action for the time being.
The cars began to accelerate, with Pearse leaping up onto the running board of the Austin behind the driver, hanging on for dear life with his left hand across his body while clutching a Mauser M1932 machine pistol in his right. Spotting something in the shadows of a distant doorway, he raised the Mauser and let fly with several short, sharp busts as clouds of flame burst from its muzzle.
The other two ran along behind the Austin, taking some cover from it but also placing themselves between the Opel and any danger that might arise. Having emptied his pistol, McCaughey took a moment to drag a grenade from a web pouch at his waist, pull the igniting lanyard and heave it with all his might toward the distant shops.
Bauer, crouching in his doorway, flinched markedly as several rounds from McCaughey’s Webley struck the brickwork of the shops around him. Nevertheless, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel at the leading vehicle, his aim aided substantially by the starshells now floating overhead. He of course completely forgot in that moment of stress that UK drivers sit on the right side of the vehicle and instinctively lined up on the silhouetted head of the man on the other side, preparing to fire.
There was also a man hanging from the running board of the approaching car who must’ve spotted him at that moment, as fire suddenly erupted in angry bursts from a small machine pistol held in his free hand. More rounds slapped into the walls around him, one splintering the wood of the door behind, just above his head, and instinct alone he immediately redirected his aim toward the source of the fire.
Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2) Page 101
