by David Bishop
"Fire!" Ralf shouted, slapping Willy on the back. The Panzer's main gun spat silver-tipped death at the vampyr horde, Martin already poised with the next precious projectile before the first had its spent shell ejected from the breech. "Gunther, take us in - full speed ahead. Helmut, once we're within range I want that machine gun firing non-stop." The crew shouted back their compliance, concentrating their focus on exploiting the element of surprise.
"Fire!" Hans commanded, pointing at the cluster of Rumanians gathered at Ordzhonikidze. On either side of him German guns pumped silver-coated shells into the air, paying special attention to the rear ends of the T-34s. That was one of the Russian-built tank's few weak spots. If they didn't hit it in precisely the right place, the Rumanians would have the chance to turn and charge the anti-tank crews' positions. The gunners had heard enough about the ruthlessness of this enemy and the effectiveness of the T-34 to know how painful that would be. "Keep firing!" Hans bellowed, struggling to be heard above the boom of the guns.
"Dive, dive, dive!" Klaus ordered his Staffel, a dozen Ju 87s following his lead as he tipped the Stuka at the scrambling mass of men and machines below. His target was the collection of Hurricanes on the ground, his aim to blow them apart before the vampyrs could get back into the air. As his Stuka approached 300mph, Klaus remembered his distaste for bombing planes on the ground, during the first day of Operation Barbarossa. That was merely three months, but it felt like a lifetime. He grimaced at his former naivety. The cruel realities of this brutal war had beaten that out of him. He applied the plane's air brakes, for once enjoying the nerve-racking screech they created. "I hope it scares you bloodsucking bastards back to hell," he snarled, pressing the release button for his bombs.
Three of the T-34s were destroyed in the first fusillade, well-aimed shots blowing apart the formidable tanks. Shrapnel flew sideways from the explosions, killing dozens of human thralls and sundering the flesh and bones of any vampyr it hit. The initial wave of dive-bombers accounted for all but two of the Hurricanes, blowing the Rumanians' aircraft apart on the ground. Toma had got back to his plane in time to avoid the Stuka, as did Locotenent aviator Zaharia. They taxied along the flat field past the burning, broken remains of the other Hurricanes, trying to find enough space for take off amid the carnage.
Toma could see a second wave of Stukas tipping over in the sky above them, beginning another bombing run. "Zaharia, get your plane in the air - that's an order."
Toma urged his Hurricane forwards, away from the plummeting Luftwaffe planes. But Zaharia's aircraft had become entangled with debris from another Rumanian aircraft. Toma glanced back in time to see his colleague killed by a direct hit from the Stuka. The vampyr managed to get his plane into the air, but he failed to spot one of the bombers that was still pulling out of its dive. The two aircraft collided a few metres off the ground, burning wreckage raining down upon a company of vampyr cavalry. The horses screamed, flinging their riders to the ground and trampling them underfoot before collapsing from shock.
Then came the Panzers, accelerating out of their hiding places beneath trees and burnt out buildings, catching the remaining Rumanians still on the ground by surprise. Twenty German tanks converged on the vampyrs, blasting shell after shell into the midst of the chaos. When the projectiles exploded, silver-flecked shrapnel was flung through the air. Every Rumanian hit by the metal fell shrieking, dozens dying or losing limbs within moments of the assault beginning.
Next to attack was a host of German soldiers on Zundapp motorcycles. Each had a sidecar passenger armed with a MG 34 light machine gun. Once the motorcycles were within eight hundred metres, the passengers opened fire, one hand pulling the trigger while the other fed a linked metal belt of ammunition into the weapon. Each round was silver-tipped, delivering a fatal wound when shot into the head or heart of a vampyr. The Rumanians had a moment to scream their rage before exploding into dust and ash. The motorcyclists circled around and around the vampyrs and their thralls, each machine gun accounting for a dozen or more of the enemy.
Last came the infantry, running into battle on foot, each man armed with a rifle or machine pistol, a silver-tipped bayonet protruding from the end of their weapon. They waited until the motorcyclists had withdrawn, then charged the bewildered vampyrs amidst the carnage. The battle ebbed and flowed, first one side gaining the ascendancy in this ground war, then the other. Eventually, the German's superior numbers began to make their mark, slowly reducing the Rumanians' strength. By the time the remaining Rumanians on the ground outnumbered their human thralls, there were less than fifty of each left alive. But vampyr crews had fought their way successfully back to the three intact T-34s and brought them to bear on the battle.
The tanks opened fire first with two machine guns, shooting anyone that moved. Germans, thralls, even other vampyrs were shot indiscriminately - but only the Rumanians were able to get up again. Then the T-34s began firing their main guns with devastating effect. Two Panzers were blown apart by the first salvo, while another was shredded by the second.
Inside his Panzer, Ralf was shouting orders at the men on motorcycles, exhorting them to get in closer to the T-34s. "Approach them from the rear. Use stick grenades on the track plates. If you don't put them out of commission now, they can still turn the tide."
Witte was among those riding a Zundapp around the edges of the battle. His sidecar passenger had been killed early on, forcing the sergeant to withdraw. Ahead of Witte, one of the T-34s and a Panzer were rolling towards each other, the Russian tank swivelling its turret round to take aim. The sergeant gunned his motorcycle's engine and surged forward, one hand reaching back to pull a stick grenade from his waist belt. A vampyr cavalry officer appeared in front of Witte, brandishing a curved sword and snarling something in Rumanian. The sergeant swerved slightly, using the empty sidecar as a battering ram against the vampyr's legs.
Witte was almost alongside the T-34. He shoved the head of the stick grenade under his arm and used his free hand to unscrew its base cap. When the looped cap came free, he yanked it hard, counted to three and wedged the grenade inside the tank's track plates. Witte was still turning his Zundapp away when the device detonated, the blast throwing him and his motorcycle into the air.
"No!" screamed Hans, who had been watching the sergeant through a pair of binoculars.
The moon was shedding pale blue light on the chaotic scene, but most of the illumination came from muzzle flashes and burning wreckage. Hans kept watching but saw no movement from Witte's crumpled figure; the sergeant's body was one amongst many. The T-34 targeted by Witte had been immobilised beyond it, its track blown apart on one side. But the turret, main gun and machine guns were still active. Hans watched as a Panzer rolled remorselessly towards it, perhaps ten metres away and getting closer by the second.
Moments before the two armoured vehicles would have collided, the German tank skewed sideways and opened fired at point blank range. Its shell punctured the gap between hull and turret on the T-34, exploding the turret into the air. Meanwhile, the German infantry were fighting their way through the wounded vampyrs on the ground, shooting some and bayoneting the rest when close enough for hand-to-hand combat. The battlefield was fast becoming a sea of maroon mud, blood saturating the once dusty soil.
Not all the Rumanians died alone, a cluster of them forming into a small circle, trying to fight and bite their way out of the Kessel. Any German foolish enough to venture within arm's length was grabbed and their throats torn open by the fiends. As the Rumanians moved they picked up any discarded weapon that came to hand, using these to blaze a path through the Germans. It was Erfurth's Panzer that put a stop to them, opening fire with both machine guns, shredding the last vampyrs on foot with a hail of silver-coated rounds.
That left the final two T-34s. Hans commandeered one of the Zundapps and launched himself towards the battlefield, determined to do his bit. He used a Luger to despatch several mindless thralls that lurched towards him, then abandoned the moto
rcycle when confronted by an oncoming T-34. Diving off the bike, he fell beside another German soldier. Hans was about to apologise when he recognised the face next to him. It was Kral and he was dead, clutching a Stielhandgranate as if his life depended upon it. Another of the originals gone, Hans thought sadly as he prised the weapon from Kral's fingers, but his loss would not be for nothing.
Each stick grenade had been augmented with a silver plug, designed to fragment when it detonated. Hans climbed the rear of the T-34 and tried to wrench open the turret hatch. It was secured from the inside, while the other hatches had plainly been welded shut, no doubt for the Rumanians' own safety. Hans's boot stubbed against a small circle on the roof of the turret, close to the hatch. He thought back to the briefing Ralf had given about vulnerable spots on the T-34. Didn't the Russians sometimes resort to using signal flags for communication? And wasn't the port for that on the turret roof? Having commandeered the Soviet vehicles, the Rumanians might not have thought to weld this port shut.
He crouched beside the turret and tried to open the port. After a moment's resistance it gave way, the circular hole offering enough space to accommodate a stick grenade. Hans undid the base cap on his device, then tugged on the cord inside. He rapped his knuckles on the turret to get the attention of those within. A pair of yellow, venomous eyes glared up at him through the small porthole.
"This is for Franz Kral," Hans said, shoving the stick grenade inside.
He took one jump down to the hull and then dived off the tank, clearing it as the Stielhandgranate exploded inside. Black smoke leaked from the turret port and the tank ground to a halt. Another soldier followed his example with the final T-34, putting that one out of action.
Ralf gave a shout of joy over the radio, nearly deafening everyone listening. "We did it! We stopped the bastards. We got them all."
Overjoyed by the news but still uncertain, Klaus flew his Stuka low over the battlefield, tipping one wing down for a better look. Once battle had begun on the ground it hadn't been safe to continue with the bombing runs, so the Staffel remained on patrol in the sky. He and Satzinger cheered as they passed the corpse-strewn field below. More than a hundred dead thralls littered the landscape, but too many brave German soldiers also lay unmoving in the mud.
Little remained of the vampyrs, beyond the vehicles in which they arrived, piles of ash and those who had been wounded but not yet finished off.
One by one, the Panzer crews emerged from their tanks. Erfurth and his men clambered out to get a better look at what little was left of this formidable foe, while Ralf and his men were busy clapping each other on the back, rejoicing at their victory. Others followed their example, cheering and singing. The infantry moved among the wounded vampyrs, despatching the last of the Rumanians with a single, silver-tipped shot into the skull. Hans was more intent on finding Witte, desperate to see if the sergeant was still alive. He was delighted to find the grizzled veteran leaning against a wrecked motorcycle, one leg folded awkwardly beneath him.
"First my hands, now this," Witte said with a smile. "I'm beginning to think you're jinxed."
"You should consider me a good luck charm," Hans replied. "You'd probably be dead by now if it wasn't for me." Ralf appeared and embraced his brother warmly.
"We did it," the tank commander said proudly.
Hans nodded, too happy to speak.
"What time is it?" Witte asked.
Ralf checked his watch. "Close to midnight. Almost Sunday."
"A day of rest," Hans said, his voice thick with emotion.
"Hopefully," Ralf agreed, before turning back to Witte. "Why do you ask?"
The sergeant smiled, a cunning malevolence in the corner of his eyes. "Because the real battle is about to begin. But this is one fight you have no hope of winning."
Chapter Twenty-Two
SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1941
Hans stared at Witte. He did not understand. "What do you mean? We've beaten the vampyrs and destroyed them all, and their thralls. It's over."
The sergeant shook his head slowly, while gesturing at the carnage around them. "This was merely a prelude, the rumble of distant thunder before the rainstorm begins. When that storm comes, you'll be washed aside."
Hans crouched beside his mentor. "You must be concussed, Josef. You aren't making any sense. Let me see if you've got a head wound-"
Witte grabbed Hans by the wrist, hissing a reply in the young soldier's face. "Fools. You thought you were luring the vampyrs into a trap, but they knew all along about this pathetic plan of yours. I told them. They let you have your little victory, knowing you would exhaust yourselves in the process, exhaust your supply of weapons. The vampyrs you defeated were the weakest, while the strongest were held back from the fray. Now midnight has come and the battle begins afresh. Only this time you are the ones encircled and they are the ones crushing you within the Kessel. If you believe in a god, whoever he may be, then this would be a good time to get down on your knees and pray."
Hans ripped his arm free. "I don't believe you. I don't believe you are a traitor."
"Why not?" Witte asked. "I've been a servant of my Lord Constanta since our first night in Reni. He found me that night, turned me. I burned those dead Russians on his orders, to conceal the vampyr's presence among you. I delivered that fool Brunetti to my lord after one of his reports from the front line came close to exposing the truth. But this has been my greatest achievement - insinuating myself into your confidence, goading you and your brothers into this futile attack."
"But Constanta attacked you on the road out of Berislav, he crushed your hands."
"A small price to pay for confirming your complete and utter faith in me. Every step of the way I have manipulated you, boy. I used you to expose the elements within the Wehrmacht who might one day have been a danger to the vampyrs. And in one stroke you'll be destroyed."
Ralf drew his Luger and aimed it at the sergeant's face. "I saw you attack one of the T-34s, you immobilised it. Hell, you even used a sidecar to cripple one of the Rumanians."
"But I didn't kill any of them, did I?" Witte replied. "Besides, my lord sent them here as sacrificial lambs. What did you once call it? Oh, yes. Bait for the trap."
Helmut ran across the battlefield towards them. "Ralf, your brother Klaus is on the radio. He says there are more vampyr coming this way. Hundreds, maybe a thousand!"
Witte smiled, a quiet satisfaction evident on his face. "My job here is done," he announced smugly. "And your doom is at hand."
"Speak for yourself," Ralf replied tersely, and shot the traitorous sergeant through the brain. Ralf spun round, firing his Luger three times in the air. The other Germans fell silent, their celebrations abruptly muted. "We've been duped. All of this was a trick, a ruse to lure us out into the open, so the vampyr could attack us in force. Get back to your tanks and your guns. We've got to escape from here before they encircle us. Helmut, get back to the radio and call high command for help. We'll never survive the night without outside intervention."
Nobody responded. All of them were shocked by the sudden reversal.
"Didn't you hear me? Move!" Ralf bellowed.
The Germans started running. Vampyr planes appeared in the sky, wave upon wave of bombers and fighters passing before the moon.
"God in heaven," Hans whispered. "Have mercy on us all."
Klaus resisted the urge to soil himself when he saw what the vampyrs had ranged against them. Hours ago, before the first battle began, he had thought the Kampfgruppen's collection of thirty-six Stuka and twelve Bf 109 fighters would be overkill. They were outnumbered two to one by enemy aircraft, a blizzard of Hurricanes threatening to blot out the moon. On the ground below he could see three columns of vampyr tanks racing towards the killing ground, at least ten T-34s in each column. Swarming beside these were what looked like cavalry; company after company of riders on black horses. After that came the infantry. There were hundreds of them, marching towards the small field where his brothers were trappe
d.
Satzinger was whispering a prayer in the gunner's seat.
"I didn't know you were a religious man," Klaus said quietly.
"I'm not," the major replied. "But it seemed like a good time to start."
"There's so many of them. What do we do?"
"The Stuka will be slaughtered in minutes if we try to win this battle plane to plane," Satzinger said. "Better to use them for their true purpose: dive-bombing the enemy on the ground. Leave the dogfighting to Messerschmitts. At least they have a chance against the Hurricanes."
"But there must be a hundred Hurricanes, and only a dozen-"
"It doesn't matter," Satzinger insisted. "I doubt many of us will see the sunrise. Better we give those on the ground a chance. While our fighters engage the Hurricanes we dive-bomb the vampyrs and use the Stuka as tank-busters. One well-delivered bomb from us can stop a T-34 or decimate a company of cavalry." The major twisted round. "You must do it, Oberleutnant. It's the only chance any of us have."
On the ground, Erfurth and Ralf led a Panzer charge to the west, but they were met by a blockade of T-34s. The booming Soviet guns ruptured two of the German tanks, driving them backwards. The Panzers tried creating another salient to the south, but that was met with more T-34s and swooping Hurricanes.
After losing three more tanks and being forced into another retreat, Ralf accepted the inevitable. He activated his radio link to Erfurth. "We're surrounded. Better we form the best defensive position we can, than getting picked off one at a time."
The Feldwebel refused to listen to reason. "I am the senior officer in this Kampfgruppen," he insisted. "I decide the best strategy, Vollmer."
"For the love of God, we're being torn apart. Don't let your pride get us all killed, man."
