Endgame (The Red Gambit Series Book 7)

by Colin Gee

  Once every two minutes, the mortars would advance towards the summit by one hundred yards, and he needed to keep his men as tight as he dared to get the full benefit of his plan.

  Again, he noticed that they were preferring cover to moving forward, so he took the decision to shout some more.

  Emerging from his hole, he waved the Garand and hollered at any men he could see.

  “C’mon you Buddaheads! Go for broke, One-Puka-Puka! Go for broke!”

  One or two at first, and then the rest followed, driven upwards by a mixture of bravery, stupidity, peer pressure, and inspiration.

  Above them, the sounds of growing resistance mingled with the crump of mortar shells, and men started to fall into the mud and puddles of height 570.

  A head bobbed and Takeo acted instinctively, putting two shots close by and then rolling away as the enemy rifle grenade exploded.

  He found a deep muddy puddle, and the cold water chilled him to the bone.

  Takeo came up for air without his helmet, but decided against wasting time locating it.

  He had missed his target, and the man rose again, this time dropping his grenade on the money and sending two of Takeo’s men flying in a mist of blood and other fluids.

  Medics started to be outnumbered by calls upon their skills.

  The rifle grenade position was in advance of the Cossack line and needed to be taken out, as Takeo could see it was already firing into the flank of some of the lead groups.

  He reached for his grenade but found it had gone, probably dislodged during the climb or his accidental bath.

  “Grenade that fucking position! Now!”

  Two men launched explosives at the Soviet strongpoint and both missed although shrapnel did its work by keeping heads down.

  “Follow me!”

  Takeo was up and running, his feet somehow finding traction in the mud, traction that was denied to his men.

  He arrived at the enemy position by himself.

  The man with the rifle grenade was just popping up again and received a kick in the face that stove in his temple with the sharpest of cracks.

  Another man, nose down in a box of grenades, neither saw nor felt the bayonet that rammed into the side of his neck.

  He was dead before Takeo blasted the bayonet free.

  One of the riflemen whirled and got off a snap shot that knocked the Garand from his hands.

  As the Cossack struggled with the bolt of his Mosin, Takeo simply threw himself forward in the hope of getting to the soldier before the rifle bolt slid home.

  Head met head in a sickening crash and both men recoiled and dropped, unable to grasp the moment as each was as disoriented as the other.

  Takeo’s radioman struggled over the lip of the position and saw the dazed Cossack.

  Five bullets later, the man’s head and neck were minced meat, the frightened Nisei soldier taking no chances and letting rip with the reminder of his clip.

  The charger pinged clear and he grabbed another clip, only to be thrown back as a burst of submachine-gun fire ripped across his chest.

  The newly arrived Cossack turned to Takeo and pulled the trigger.

  The PPd fired two bullets before it closed on an empty chamber, both of which sailed past well away from the recovering Major.

  He grabbed behind his back, trying to reach his sword before he remembered his pistol.

  The Russian dropped his useless weapon and extracted a Nagant revolver.

  Takeo rolled away and came up holding a Soviet rifle.

  He fired from the lying position and hit the man in the throat.

  However, he had inadvertently pickled up the rifle grenade and, whilst the heavy impact destroyed much vital for the sustenance of life, it did not immediately kill the man.

  More to Takeo’s growing clarity of mind was the now primed grenade that bounced off flesh and landed eight feet from him.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  He rolled over a dead body and flattened himself as best he could.

  It was enough to protect him and the grenade exploded, doing damage only to the dead and silencing the man with the ruined throat.

  Coming more to his senses, he grabbed the Garand from his dead signaller, took another two clips of ammunition.

  On examination, he decided that neither piece of the walkie-talkie was now fit for purpose.

  In the interim, the mortar barrage had moved on and Able Company were in danger of falling too far behind.

  He rose again, this time less steadily and, despite the thumping headache, rallied his men with more exhortations.

  “Keep going, men! Keep going! Get close to them! Go for broke! Go for broke!”

  He pressed forward, only to slip sideways and splash into one of the deeper man-made pools on the top of the slope.

  Takeo came up gasping for air, but with a clearer mind, the icy waters having done the job of a hundred aspirin.

  Rising up again, he realised that he had lost yet another weapon.

  Rejecting a search as an unnecessary delay, he pulled out his Colt 1911 and waved it in the air.

  “Charge! Charge! Charge!”

  A bullet tugged at his wrist, ripping away a flap of skin and severed his watchstrap; another opened up the crotch of his trousers.

  “Charge! Go for broke!”

  The line seemed to accelerate and come together as one entity and, despite the loss of more men, it crashed into the Soviet positions.

  1211 hrs, Tuesday, 18th March 1947, Saris Castle, Height 570, Veľký Šariš, Czechoslovakia.

  “Hold the bastards! Hold them, Brothers! Fucking hold them!”

  Kazakov was set back from the line and in a position to see without the distraction of having to fight for his life.

  ‘No good… no fucking good at all… Blyad!… Blyad!’

  He turned around to where his men lay and turned back again, suddenly unsure from which group to summon more manpower.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he went with his gut and decided upon Tarkovsky and he waved his arms before pointing down a certain line, indicating where he wanted the first reserve group to arrive.

  To Tarkovsky’s credit, the counter-attack group was up and running in seconds and ploughed into the line right on time, and in precisely the place that Kazakov needed.

  “Well done, Boris. Fucking well done, Brother!”

  If all had been equal, the Cossack captain would have flung the rest of his men forward and pushed the Amerikanski all the way down the hill… but all things were not equal,

  His men were tired.

  There was little ammunition.

  There were other threats.

  His orders were to hold, not go ‘gallivanting off around the countryside’ as he put it to himself.

  Plus, he wanted to preserve the lives of as many of his brother Cossacks as possible, and a counter-attack down the slope would only bring greater death and sacrifice with it.

  He screamed in anger as he watched Tarkovsky go down under a barrage of rifle butts and kicks.

  “Noooo!”

  He drew breath and screamed louder.

  “You fucking bastards!”

  Turning to the rear again, he sent the other unit down the same line, seeing that Tarkovsky’s men had lost heart as their leader died.

  He also waved across to Ryabkov, using both hands to send the first unit down one line and then indicating a direction change.

  Again, the cavalrymen showed their mettle and were moving quickly.

  Amongst the enemy to his front, Kazakov saw the enemy officer.

  He also realised that these Amerikanski were smaller men, none of them reaching the average height of his own Cossacks, and yet they fought with a ferocity he hadn’t seen since the woods where he had come close to death at the hands of fellow warriors; Gurkhas.

  This enemy officer was swinging a sword and firing a pistol, and was proving a rallying point for his men. Even as the first of his reinforcements arrived, the enemy st
arted to noticeably gain the upper hand and a few of Kazakov’s men started to run.

  He needed to stop that immediately so strode purposefully down the slope, calling the retreating Cossacks to him.

  They responded and he led them back into the fray. As he got to the top of the position, he quickly dispatched a wounded enemy with a single swipe of his shashka, taking the man’s throat down to the spine beyond.

  A second American company was almost on top of them.

  “You, soldier!”

  He summoned a panting man to his side.

  “Back up the slope there and off to the left, Find the reserve platoon and bring them to the hill’s edge… over there… see where I mean… that stand of trees there.”

  It was nothing more than a group of vertical sticks long since stripped of anything green, but it was enough for the soldier to understand.

  “Yes, Comrade Kapitan.”

  “Right, brother. The battle and our lives depend on you. Go like the wind and get those men there immediately. Go!”

  The man disappeared like a gazelle and Kazakov turned back to fighting the battle.

  Again, his men seemed to have the ascendency and he ordered those on the flanks of the main resistance to concentrate on the newly arriving enemy.

  The American officer was still standing, swinging his sword at all comers, and with success judging by the traces of blood on his blade.

  Those who chose to try and shoot him received a bullet in return, and his position, at a junction in the rough trench scraped on the lip of the slope, served to protect him from most direct fire.

  A bloodied NCO slid in beside Kazakov and it took a moment to identify Vassily

  “Ah, Yesaul.”

  He used the Cossack rank as he always did when the two men had only ears for the other.

  “You look like shit, Vassily.”

  Blood dripped from a number of places, some clear, other well hidden.

  “I feel like shit, Ataman. May I have leave?”

  “Later. For now, let’s rid ourselves of this little thorn, eh? Any grenades left?”

  “Fuck all, Ataman. Otherwise I’d have blown the little bastard up myself, He’s a fighter for sure. These bastards are Japanese… can you believe it? They swapped sides pretty quickly, eh?”

  “That’s interesting. I’ve an idea.”

  He spoke quickly and with little enthusiasm, the sparkle of battle gone from his eyes, and those of his senior NCO.

  Vassily Razin scuttled away, not feeling any of his wounds in particular, but generally feeling war weary and keen to rest.

  By now, most of the defenders were back pouring fire into the attacking Charlie Company, often with recently liberated American weapons, which the cavalrymen found to their liking, particularly the Garand, although less so with the M1 Carbines.

  As the last reserve platoon fired into the left flank of the Nisei attack, it faltered irrevocably, and started back down the slope with bullets kicking at men’s heels.

  A knot of attackers remained at the lip of the slope and, one by one, they were silenced.

  Not one surrendered, not that putting hands in the air would have made a difference to the Cossack soldiers, for they fought their war by a different set of rules.

  Kazakov, also now wounded in a manner he did not understand, limped to a position near the last few survivors, and watched as they were picked off, or fell to a bayonet or shashka.

  Some of his own brothers succumbed and he felt a wave of anger sweep over him as an old comrade, who had once watered his horse on the Volga, was thrown backwards by the impact of heavy Garand rounds.

  The rifleman was shot down from behind and crazed avengers took their time hacking away at the dead body.

  The enemy officer had shot another of Kazakov’s men before he went ahead with his plan.

  Calling for a ceasefire, he hobbled forward, aware of the growing wet feeling in his boot.

  He held his shashka in one hand, his Tokarev in the other and stood in front of the man’s position, exposed and vulnerable but sensing his plan would work.

  It was simple really.

  The man was Japanese, and everyone knew how their soldiers had a samurai honour thing going; he’d seen evidence of it himself when serving on the Eastern border.

  Kazakov would stand in silent challenge and, when the lunatic American came out, Razin would drop him to the ground.

  However, Takeo did not play the game as the Cossacks intended and Razin showed his hand too early.

  Kazakov screamed in despair as a bullet from the 1911 took the top of his senior NCO’s head off and spread the contents across the ground behind him.

  Appalled by the sight of the collapsed body, Kazakov found himself rooted to the spot and looking straight down the barrel of an automatic pistol. His own weapon was still pointed at the earth, and bringing it up for a shot would take more time than the bullet that would surely travel his way if he tried it.

  The Japanese-American waved his gun, encouraging Kazakov to throw his pistol away, which he did without taking his eyes of the man in front of him.

  The Colt 1911 followed suit and he cursed himself for not noticing that the enemy officer’s weapon was locked open on an empty clip.

  A scream brought him back from his annoyance, and he jerked into action as Takeo charged forward, katana raised to strike down.

  Kazakov took a step back and dropped to one knee as his wounded leg squealed new objection.

  “Banzai!”

  The katana swept down towards the cossack’s head, only to be met by metal inches from its target.

  Takeo thought his blow would go home and found himself slightly off balance.

  As he brought his blade round for another swipe his lower belly exploded in the most violent pain as a kukri was rammed hard through his flesh, jamming in his pelvis with the point exiting between the cheeks of his backside.

  His mouth was still wide open in a scream of extreme pain when Kazakov’s shashka swept across his shoulder and bit into the side of his neck, angling down into the body.

  Both his blades remained lodged hard in the bones of his dying victim, so Kazakov reached for his small knife and shuffled on both knees to where the American had fallen.

  The Nisei officer’s screams continued as the whole of the hilltop was bathed in the most incredible sunlight, the clouds seemingly moving aside to allow the dying Takeo one final moment of life’s beauty.

  Kazakov howled in fury as he plunged the knife into Takeo’s chest, continuing long after the man’s life force had left his body, and with each thrust yelling at his enemy.

  “Bastard!”

  “Fucking bastard!”

  Klimenti Ryabkov was the one who gently grabbed the arm and stopped the continued butchery of Takeo’s body.

  “Kapitan… stop now, Kapitan… he’s dead… very dead… we must leave this place, Comrade Kapitan.”

  Kazakov looked at the young officer’s face and returned to reality, immediately understanding the danger he had placed his men in.

  “Where are the Amerikanski bastards?”

  “They’ve all pulled back down the slope. Comrade Kapitan.”

  ‘Blyad! What have I fucking done?’

  “Get everybody off the hill… off the fucking hill now!”

  “But Comrade Kapit…”

  “Now, Klimenti, for the love of the Motherla…”

  The sound was there… the sound that had heralded death for so many of their brothers.

  ‘Too late… I’ve killed us all… you’re a fucking fool, Vasily! A fucking stupid fool!’

  Ryabkov was screaming at anyone, trying to get the men to escape the killing ground.

  Kazakov simply stood his ground and planted a foot on Takeo’s corpse, wrenching his shashka free.

  In anger and blind fury, he pointed it at the sky.

  It would not reach his enemies, who approached at a uniform three hundred and seventy miles per hour, a mile between e
ach vic of three aircraft, with fifteen aircraft in total.

  “Bastards!”

  The familiar large canisters tumbled down, two from each aircraft, causing panic amongst the running men below.

  1232 hrs, Tuesday, 18th March 1947, base of Height 570, Medzany, Czechoslovakia.

  Colonel Petersen gripped his binoculars as he watched the clearly crazy Soviet officer wave his sword at the approaching Mustangs.

  The renewed sun and absence of wind and rain granted him the air support he needed to finish the job, and he had come forward to order his boys off the hill before too many were lost.

  Had he had radio communications, Takeo and scores of his men would not now be lying in the open, red and ruptured.

  His hands gripped the binoculars tightly as he spotted a wounded soldier writhing in agony just below the crest.

  He was a Nisei.

  ‘Oh Mother of God!’

  There was nothing he could do, but he could not take his eyes away, as if to do so was almost dishonouring the man’s impending ultimate sacrifice.

  The first vic flew over and dropped on the far side of the hill.

  He had seen this before, and understood that the aircraft would walk the napalm backwards, which made it easier for them to see their targets as each vic attacked in turn.

  The hilltop was transformed into a burning sea in which the occasional swimmer could be seen, dying in extreme agony,

  As the final group of three Mustangs drove in, he risked a quick glance at the Russian with the sword who stood resolutely waiting for death.

  The final fireballs washed over both the sword-waving lunatic and the wounded Nisei.

  An hour later, Petersen arrived on the top of the hill as the grisly work was already in progress, some of his men tasked with moving the blackened pygmy bodies into a pile ready for a multiple burial when the graves registration units arrived.

  Charlie Company had earned the right to be first up the hill, and the tired Nisei had found no hint of resistance.

  The napalm had dried out much of the surface and the firm footing allowed the company to move quickly and start forming decent defensive positions, in case of a Soviet counter-attack.