Impasse (The Red Gambit Series)

by Gee, Colin

  ‘Sod it!’

  He moved backwards, reasoning that the barbs would give up their hold more easily.

  They held the greatcoat fast until, in an instant, they relinquished their hold and the wire twanged back into place.

  The nearest tin taunted him with its audible warning.

  A voice boomed out

  “Who goes there?”

  “The OP’s soddin’ bacon butties... now shut the fuck up!”

  Hardly text book but it had the desired effect. No Russian could have managed it and the owner of the voice knew the early routine. He already had his sandwich in his belly.

  White resumed the crouching advance and found the foxhole.

  That was pretty much all he found.

  No radio, no maps, no Ames.

  Just Gray.

  Gray was already cold and stiff, his throat cut from ear to ear.

  “Stand to! Stand to!”

  Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.

  Eddie Rickenbacker

  Chapter 104 - THE FEAR

  0435 hrs, Sunday, 4th November 1945, Frontline position, 400 metres north of Hinteregg, Austria.

  Up and down the Allied lines, soldiers were woken from their slumbers by cries of alarm, as Soviet raiders visited trenches and bunkers in search of intelligence and prisoners.

  Many men simply disappeared into the freezing night, others died at their posts. Yet others were fortunate enough to see or hear the threat before they were overcome, turning the tables on their would-be kidnappers.

  Nervous sentries called their units to arms and equally nervous officers filled the sky with magnesium light, or called down artillery to deal with a supposed enemy attack.

  Artillery and mortars exchanged their shells and bombs, as ranging shots, then battery, then counter-battery fire escalated the long-range exchange. And then it stopped, as quickly as it had erupted.

  Whatever happened, few men on either side of the divide slept that rest of that night.

  Private First Class Frederick Lincoln Leander, the worst soldier in his platoon, bar none, reluctantly rose up from the bottom of his position, unable to ignore the urgent whispers of the other occupant.

  He looked around with an inexperienced eye.

  Nothing.

  “Oh Lordy, it’s cold.”

  “Can it.”

  “Sorry, Sarge.”

  “I said fucking can it, Contraband!”

  Silence had descended again, except for the gentle patter of fresh snow falling... and the heavy breathing of the terrified.

  The sound of artillery was gone, its intrusion brief, but intense. Its flashes and bangs had added to the decidedly threatening atmosphere, illustrating trees long stripped of their shape, creating almost a gothic horror movie feeling to the frontline positions of the 92nd Colored Infantry Division.

  The occupants of the shallow hole were not friends; far from it. Circumstances had brought together Sergeant Clay and Private First Class Leander and placed them in the foremost position of King Company, 3rd Battalion, 370th Infantry Regiment.

  Everywhere was white, something that had become a joke to the Buffalo soldiers of the 92nd Colored Infantry Division.

  A number of humorous discussions had taken place about the wiseness of using black soldiers in a white environment. The humour of it was soon lost after a few men were lost to sniper fire and a number of soldiers started to cover their faces with anything suitable, from flour pastes to white paint, which brought forth more humour.

  In the main, the men accepted their lot and coped with the increasingly bitter temperatures, but some found their prejudices either resurfacing or reinforced, as they perceived some intent on the part of their white superiors.

  Clay and Leander came from different poles of the matter; the former, his rank hard earned in the face of extreme discrimination, saw bias in everything, racism in everything, hate in everything, and tempered his judgement with his own beliefs and prejudices, as his father and his grandfather had before him.

  Leander came from a privileged, educated background, one in which there was little or no tension between people of different colours, just an acceptance of difference without the fear and vitriol that normally went with it.

  He was different, hence his nickname, one that was intended to cause offence, with its roots back in the Civil War. His education and attitude set him apart from the majority and he found himself discriminated against by those who would, should, have called him brother, although it was his lack of soldierly skills that caused most angst amongst his peers and which set him at loggerheads with Clay.

  The Sergeant’s hand was suddenly raised and a finger marked out a direction down which both men strained their eyes.

  Nothing.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Ma eyes is playing tricks.’

  Nothing.

  ‘That moved!’

  Leander brought his own hand up, pointing slightly off to the right of the NCO’s, picking out the ‘something’ that he thought had just shifted slightly.

  The snow flurried, driven by a sudden wind.

  Nothing.

  A sudden single sound broke the reverie, and had Clay taken but a moment to think about it, a sound similar to that of a small stone thrown into the snow.

  But he didn’t and automatically swivelled to his right, eyes searching out the source whilst his soldierly instincts screamed at him for his stupidity.

  His companion hadn’t heard it so stayed ‘eyes front’.

  Those eyes widened.

  Something.

  ‘Oh my lord!’

  “Sergeant!”

  The nothing that had become something became more stark and real, subdividing into two then three rapidly moving somethings, white forms on a white background almost on top of the position already.

  Clay swivelled back to his front as his hands started to bring up his grease gun.

  The short barrel fouled on the iron hard edge of the hole, but his finger had already received the command to pull the trigger and the weapon started to chew the frozen earth as it sent out bullets.

  The first white shape was on him in an instant and Clay’s own camouflage, a simple bed sheet looted from a Gasthaus in Möggers, was indelibly marked with blood as a wicked blade slashed at his throat.

  The grease gun stopped and was dropped to the floor of the hole as approaching death took precedence, Clay’s hands grabbing at the wound in an attempt to stem the flow of blood.

  The enemy soldier reversed his blade and rammed it hard into the back of the dying man’s neck, killing him instantly.

  Leander screamed as the second figure loomed large over him, a similar blade beginning to descend.

  He ducked and the knife glanced off his helmet.

  Other calls of alarm rose up from nearby positions, as more Buffalo soldiers became aware of the enemy in their midst.

  A flare rose and silhouetted a number of Soviet ski troopers in various poses, from grabbing unfortunates for prisoners to plunging their Kandra knives into unprotected flesh.

  It was also, for some, a deadly distraction.

  Leander, the useless soldier, motivated now by survival, picked up his Garand and sideswiped his attacker in the face.

  The Russian went down hard and out for the count.

  The third man got his hands on the rifle but without sufficient purchase and Leander jerked the butt into his throat, crushing soft tissue and dropping the would-be kidnapper to the snow.

  Shots started to punctuate the night, as attackers and defenders brought more conventional weapons into use.

  The Garand jumped in Leander’s hands, pointed in the right direction by the trembling soldier but with no accuracy and both bullets missed.

  Knife recovered from Clay’s corpse, the Soviet ski trooper launched himself at the petrified negro soldier, content that he could easily overpower the man and bring ba
ck the prisoner that his Commander so wanted.

  He changed direction in mid-air as the Garand barked again, this time putting a heavy bullet through his stomach.

  The Russian thrashed about in the scarlet snow, screaming as the agony overtook him, attracting attention from both friend and foe.

  Leander turned around on the spot at speed, rapidly jerking into position to defend his hole, seeing nothing, then jumping to another point of the compass.

  By the time he looked due west, two more enemy troopers were almost on top of him.

  He screamed, not to encourage himself but out of pure fear, the two Russians clearly bearing the bloody marks of kills already made that night.

  The Russian with the PPSh took the first bullet low in the groin, the second in the right shoulder. The first bullet slowed him down, the second spun him away, the submachine gun flying at Leander and bouncing back off Clay’s inert form. As he went to ground, the Russian’s face connected with a tree stump and disintegrated as bone was shattered by the impact. Immediately knocked unconscious, the comatose figure came to rest on his back, in which position the veteran of four years of war silently drowned in his own blood.

  Leander’s screaming redoubled as his tears froze on his face and ice played havoc with his eyes.

  The first shot passed through the camouflage jacket of the last trooper, closely followed by the second, which missed by two feet. The third hit home.

  Leander’s Garand spat out its redundant metal clip, signifying that the weapon was empty, the metal falling to ground at the front of the hole, coinciding with the thud of the ski trooper’s body, left knee destroyed by the passage of the heavy bullet.

  The wounded man scrabbled for his own rifle, but it had fallen too distant.

  In desperation, he extracted a grenade and primed it, underarming it accurately towards the small hole.

  Leander ducked and the deadly missile struck his helmet, deflecting to the rear of his position.

  It exploded and brought silence to the man who had killed Clay.

  Slipping another charger into his rifle, Leander took deliberate aim on the wounded man to his front, but still needed three shots to put the man out of his increasing misery.

  Another grenade, this time better aimed, dropped into the hole at his feet. With reactions previously unsuspected, he picked up the deadly object and tossed it out, ducking his head before it exploded, heaping yet more ignominy upon the living and dead in front of his position.

  Standing upright again, Leander felt the products of defecation slide down his legs, his fright causing him to constantly soil himself.

  Three Soviet troopers approached, aiding a stumblingfourth man, a comrade, whose injuries were leaking rich red blood, soaking through the white snowsuit he was wearing.

  Leander screamed again and discharged his rifle indiscriminately, hitting the wounded man in the calf, bringing him down and, in the doing, causing the others to fall to the ground.

  One man recovered himself quickly and brought his PPD into action, the burst kicking up earth and snow all around the petrified black soldier but failing to cause him harm. None the less, the fear caused him to drop the new charger, then the Garand.

  The ski soldiers saw their opportunity and rushed forward.

  A PPSh is a superb close quarter weapon, capable of a phenomenal rate of fire.

  In the hands of a trained soldier, it is a deadly beast and was rightly considered the finest submachine gun of WW2.

  It could also be a very forgiving weapon in hands unfamiliar with its traits, and so it proved, as Leander scrabbled for the discarded weapon and brought it to bear.

  The sound of his screams disappeared in the rattle of automatic fire as the weapon belted out the remaining sixty-three bullets from its distinctive round magazine.

  Seven bullets found targets beyond the immediate threat, wounding two ski troopers and one buffalo soldier prisoner and dropping all three to the snow.

  Forty bullets missed any target, finding termination in frozen earth, wood, or snow.

  The remaining sixteen spread themselves between the three Soviet attackers.

  The middle soldier died instantly as three bullets struck him in a microsecond, smashing his face and turning his brain to mush.

  Either side of him white ski suits blossomed with scarlet buds and the other men went down, neither killed but both most certainly out of the fight.

  One lay silent but conscious, the blood bubbling on his lips.

  The other joined the screaming, his pain equally spread between the eight wounds he had sustained.

  Another grenade bounced nearby and exploded, its arrival and detonation simultaneous and not permitting Leander the opportunity to duck.

  One piece of metal sliced across his forehead, dropping a two-inch sliver of flesh across his left eye. Another piece smashed into his left elbow and stuck in the ball joint, bringing with it yet another reason for the young African-American to scream.

  Movement to his right focussed him and he pointed the PPSh at whatever it was.

  “Shit!”

  He had not realised that the weapon was empty.

  Some clarity descended on his mind and he turned to the body of Clay, grabbing at the pistol holster and the weapon within.

  A bullet thumped into his left shoulder, passing straight through without contact with vitals or bone, but jarring the elbow against the body of NCO and causing him to almost faint with the pain.

  A second bullet took the dead body in the upper chest and a third struck Clay’s forehead, sending parts of his skull and brains flying across the snow behind the position.

  The Colt 1911A came free and Leander swivelled, seeking out his attacker.

  No obvious enemy came into view but his vision was still restricted by icy tears of fright and pain in equal quantities.

  To his right, a shot was followed by a short squeal, signifying another life terminated prematurely.

  Again, to the right, the snow seemed to open like a set of theatrical curtains, permitting clear view of a group of four Russians carrying a kicking Buffalo soldier away. The curtains closed as quickly as they had parted and Leander was alone again.

  His right hand trembled, the automatic pistol shaking as he pointed it at any and every small sound that followed the end of the Soviet raid.

  Nothing.

  ‘I’m still alive. Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!’

  A distinctive crack made him jump.

  The Colt swivelled and he looked down the jumping sights as the broken branch descended to ground level, bringing snow with it.

  A soft thud behind him reminded him of a grenade and he ducked as best he could, not realising that another ravaged stump had surrendered its weighty load of snow.

  His wounded elbow banged into Clay’s metal canteen.

  He screamed, and relieved himself once more.

  “Medic! Medic!”

  There was no answering call, no repetition of his plea, save that which echoed off the increasing snowfall.

  Nothing.

  His eyes blurred as temperature, stress, blood loss and tiredness fought for control.

  He jumped as his mind sought to fight back and remain alert.

  He watched and listened.

  Nothing.

  “Oh Lordy, it’s cold.”

  Private First Class Frederick Lincoln Leander, only survivor of his platoon, slipped into the bottom of his little hole and passed out.

  1349 hrs, Sunday, 4th November 1945, the Kremlin, Moscow.

  The GRU briefing ended and Poboshkin waited expectantly.

  He had not been asked one single question throughout, everything he said apparently accepted without dispute.

  “Thank you, Comrade PodPolkovnik. That will be all.”

  Poboshkin swept up the documentation and stowed it quickly in his case before saluting and turning towards the heavy door.

  Beria’s voice followed him.

  “Oh, and please inf
orm General Nazarbayeva of our concern for her well-being, and that we look forward to the time she’ll be able to travel and brief us herself, particularly on her report regarding Pekunin’s treachery.”

  Poboshkin nodded by way of response and left.

  Stalin looked quizzically at the bespectacled NKVD Marshal and, with unusual humour, commented on the exchange.

  “Very touching, Lavrentiy.”

  “I meant no more than that, Comrade General Secretary. She’s competent and loyal to the Rodina, certainly more competent and loyal than that shit Pekunin.”

  Stalin grimaced and then pursed his lips, not wishing to be reminded that treachery had dwelt so close at hand but, now that it had happened, turning his mind to the matter.

  “How goes the NKVD investigation into the traitor?”

  Beria went straight for the glasses and handkerchief routine, betraying his desire to exercise care in answering.

  “We have established some unusual activity in the last two months, activity that’s now being interpreted in a different manner, given the circumstances. It will take time, as I’ve ordered my men to be thorough, but I think his betrayal started only recently. He’s no family that we can interrogate, Comrade. They died some time ago,” Beria studied the gleaming spectacles as he finished his verbal assessment, “And his Deputy also fell by our Nazarbayeva’s hand. Extremely efficient... and extremely convenient.”

  Beria had spoken at length for a number of reasons.

  He already knew that Stalin knew much of what he had spoken of, but he knew that Stalin did not know of the circumstances behind the demise of Pekunin’s son and family, and he hoped above hope that he never would. The official suggestion had been an overzealous approach by the investigating team. Those responsible had succumbed during their debriefing, as directed by the head of the NKVD, keen to tidy any loose ends.

  Beria’s attempt to throw some suspicion on Nazarbayeva was his own maskirovka, moving the Dictator on from awkward questions about the demise... ‘executions’... of Fyodor Romanevich Pekunin, his wife, and their three children.