Lions at Dawn (Kirov Series Book 28)

by John Schettler

  “But we don’t even have the key that was supposed to correspond to this place—assuming we’re on the right coordinates that man Dorland reported. We’ll never have that key, Elena. It went down with Rodney.”

  “Never say never,” she winked at him. “We won’t find it here—not in this time, but who’s to say we couldn’t find it in some other time.”

  “What? Some other time? You act as though we’re at liberty to just shift about as we please. We’re marooned, the way I see things. You believe that box sent us here simply to retrieve the key that was aboard the Rodney. Well, that’s all gone to hell, and what I see here in this little jaunt is just sour grapes. If there is another door here, and built of the stuff like we saw at Delphi, then we’ll never get through it with demolitions. That site looked to be damn near impregnable, save for that key—and where did that one come from?”

  “Gordon,” she said with an admonishing look, “we can deal with all of that later. Right now I’ve two missing men to worry about.”

  “Aye, you’re right, but how do you want to proceed?

  “Something is odd about these disappearances. It would seem to me that those men might simply backtrack and get to where they were before they vanished.”

  “At the moment, we have no way of knowing what’s around that bend up ahead in the passage, and anyone who gets cheeky enough to have a look goes missing. The path may drop off to a bad fall. It could be anything.”

  “What we do know is that getting forward seems easy enough, but getting back must be quite difficult. This bit with the rope getting severed like that is eerie. It’s as if the man was sent somewhere else, entered some kind of rift like those the American Physics Professor talked about. After all, that’s what we think these keys are supposed to secure. One was aligned right along that stairway at Ilanskiy, as Captain Fedorov reported.”

  “So you figure we’ve found another here?”

  “I can’t think of any other explanation, and it’s a one way ticket for some reason. Suppose now, in 1943, it’s easy enough to get around that bend in the passage. The man walks right in to a rift, and time spirits him away. But that inconvenient tether presents a little problem, so it just gets severed when he shifts. What you say might be correct. There could be a drop off there, or some other hazard. But think of it this way. If our men do shift to some other time, the passage may have changed. These formations have been fairly stable, but something could have happened between now and then that changed things. Suppose they shifted forward, but ten years before the time where they arrive, there was a collapse of this part of the passage. Now, when they look over their shoulder, there is no way back.”

  MacRae thought about that, then something darker entered his mind. “Suppose they move in time as you suggest,” he said. “But there’s no clear space for them when they arrive at the other end. Taking your collapse scenario, they could just be shifting forward into rubble and fallen rock. They could be…”

  The conclusion the Captain had presented was dark indeed. They could be dead, killed trying to manifest into solid rock. This rift, if that was what existed here, was unsecured. They had not found any engineered gateway, nor could they have opened it if they did, not having the key.

  “So what’s our play?” said MacRae. “Do we send in another man? Pardon the metaphor, but won’t that be like throwing good money after bad? Do we all just follow suit and try our luck in that passage. If you want my advice, I say we should secure this site, leave a team here on watch incase those men do get back, and get the bloody hell out of here. This place is eerie enough without having men slipping through cracks in time.”

  “The Macaque,” said Elena. “You know how damn clever those things are, and you saw what it had in hand with that candy wrapper.”

  “You’re saying it used this passage here to get to the future somehow?”

  “How else would it have that Milky Way bar? When we showed up, it fled this way on purpose. It must have known that this was no dead end. No… I think it knew exactly what it was doing. It went right up that rock to the top where we found that entrance. I think it used this passage before.”

  “To come and go? Then why can’t our men get back here?”

  “This might be a one way street,” said Elena, thinking. “Those Barbary Apes have been here so long that they must have explored every nook and cranny on the Rock. Nobody pays them any mind. They might have found another way back to this time—another segment of this rift. Look at all these caves and passages down here. Suppose the time rift here is like that, not just one locality, but a network like these caves. This route might go in one direction, and the Apes might get back here by another route.”

  “And how does that help us now? Our men are still gone—god only knows where.”

  “All I know is that the Macaque got through—to some place beyond that rock, and our men got somewhere as well. If they have their wits about them, they’ll try and follow that monkey.”

  “Monkey business,” said MacRae, shaking his head. “That’s what this has all come down to now.”

  Elena decided. “I’ll take your suggestion on how we proceed from here. We’ll leave a three man team here under Sergeant Keller, but I’ll not risk another man in that passage. Get Private Cooke back. I think we’ve proved there’s a rift here, but we haven’t found any gate or door that the key off Rodney might open. So we’re not in the correct place to transit this rift, and as we’ve seen, this is dangerous work.”

  “No argument there. But I’d pay a high price to get those men back, or to even know where they’ve gone. What further business do we have here? Is there any way we can get ourselves home?”

  “I don’t know. In fact, I’m not even sure that our home waters even exist any longer. The only way we’ll ever know where this rift goes is to either take that passage behind James and Barret, or to find that damn key that was on the Rodney.”

  “Assuming we ever find what it’s supposed to open here.”

  “Oh, we’ll find it Gordon. If it’s here, we’ll find it.”

  “I wish I was so confident in that, but giving you the benefit of the doubt, I’ll be the first to give the damn thing a good hard knock. We’ve no key, and we won’t get it open, if there is a door here. What’s the point?”

  Elena gave him a knowing look. Then she said something that opened a whole new set of questions for MacRae. “We’ll find that key,” she said. “Not here… not now. But we’ll find it.”

  Part X

  Stalemate

  “To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.”

  —Walter Cronkite

  Chapter 28

  On the Morning of January 12, 1943 O’Connor began his advance on Tripoli. Wimberly’s 51st Highland Division led off the ceremonies, the 2nd and 5th Seaforth Battalions advancing up the coast road behind the recon battalion. At this point, the main road turned inland at Homs before branching, with one road bending north again to the coast, and a second heading southeast to Tarhuna. Rather than taking either road, he sent the lead brigade of the 51st up a secondary road that still hugged the coast towards the defensive positions of the Italian Littorio Armored Division.

  Much to their own surprise, they caught the Italians napping that morning. The enemy had only probed at the line with light recon elements for the last two weeks, and the appearance of the British recon battalion seemed nothing more to the Italians. When it was suddenly followed by waves of infantry, rushing forward with fixed bayonets, chaos rippled through the outer shell of the defense, and the unprepared tank companies began a hasty retreat.

  Some men were still sleeping under their light M14 tanks. Others were just getting up to get morning fires started to shake off the desert cold and begin breakfast. The last thing they expected were the big Scottish infantrymen, raging in with bad intent. Behind them, the brigade artille
ry had followed the troops and was now starting to send a rain of 25-pounder shells over the leading edge of the infantry attack, concentrating much of that fire on the heights of Hill 151. That low nob was about 10 kilometers inland from the coast, and directly astride the main road which had bent that way again towards the village of Nagazza beyond.

  The advance was harried only by German planes, and there were several incidents where the columns were strafed as they pressed forward. O’Connor’s problem was that the German operation in Syria and Iraq had siphoned off a good part of the Western Desert Air Force. Four wings, two other fighter groups, and a bomber wing were all assigned to operations in that sector, leaving him with only two dedicated fighter wings and two bomber wings, one the American 12th Bombardment Group on loan to the RAF. While those bombers could fly from fields around Benghazi, his air superiority assets had far too few fields close enough to allow for quick turnaround.

  There was only the one good strip at Misrata, another at Bene Walid, and two more near Sirte, all well behind the front. It became necessary to establish two highway strip sites along the main coast road, one at Zliten, and the forward strip at Homs, but these could service only one squadron each of no more than 12 to 16 planes. So the early going saw Rommel enjoying something he had not had for a very long time—a slight advantage in the fighter duels contesting the airspace over the battlefield. His own fields were very close, west of Tarhuna, and numerous fields near Tripoli.

  Recon reports from the Luftwaffe were flooding in, and he could see what O’Connor was up to, a fast armored force probing south of Tarhuna, and a big push forming up on the coast. Initial reports from the Littorio Division were just frantic enough to prompt him to get on the telephone to General Randow with the 15th Panzer Division.

  “You had better get a regiment of Panzergrenadiers behind Negazza,” he said. “Our Italian friends seem to be a bit shaky.”

  “I have the 104th in position to move immediately,” said Randow, “and my motorcycle recon battalion has already reached that village.”

  “Good, but keep the rest of your division around Castelverde. Things may get interesting soon.”

  Rommel was looking at the big gap between that southern force probing towards Tarhuna, and the push near the coast. The ground just south and east of Tarhuna was very open, well suited to mobile operations, and he had Bismarck’s 21st Panzer Division sitting in road column like an arrow aimed right at that void in the enemy position.

  Funck’s 7th Panzer is at Tarhuna as I wanted, he thought. What if I did fire that arrow? I would have two good panzer divisions right in that gap. If I order the 90th Light up to grapple with this southern force, then I might turn those two divisions northwest for the coast.

  His instinct was to attack, not to simply sit in the favorable position he had occupied. He wanted to fight his enemy with sword and shield, and it was very like him to consider committing his reserve 21st Panzer Division to a bold attack like this, right at the outset. How might O’Connor operate to counter that?

  The report he got next enlightened him a bit. 1/7th Recon of Funck’s division had been well to the south of Tarhuna in that gap. When he saw the skies heating up with aerial duels, an enterprising Lieutenant Huber decided to get to the highest ground he could find, which was hill 402, about 12 kilometers south of Tarhuna. From that position he could clearly see a second division advancing up the road, and it looked like infantry.

  So that southern group of enemy forces is stronger than I thought, Rommel mused, his eyes playing over the map in his field tent. That will most likely be their 7th Armored Division on their extreme left, and they are supporting it with an infantry division.

  Now he resisted the urge to do two things he might have done at once in the older days. His reflex was to shoot that arrow immediately, and instead he decided to wait. The second was to forego the urge to leap onto a Storch and get up for a look at the battlefield himself. There were still too many fighter duels underway, and prudence argued against any aerial sortie at that moment. The old Rommel might have thrown caution to the wind, but this man was now chastened and wizened by much experience.

  This was all an aftereffect of the mellowing of his temperament during the last year when he had been forced onto the defensive so many times, his offensive plans checked by that damnable heavy British armor. He wanted to ascertain where it was, or whether it was even present, and he did not think his enemy would hold that card for long if this was the big push he thought it was. So Rommel waited for his opponent to make his next move, cautiously eyeing the Knight and Bishop O’Connor was already developing on his flank. He was content to move a single pawn with that order to General Randow, a measure of restraint that he seldom showed in the past. His other pieces would remain in his camp, behind the serried row of his pawns, the 164th Light, which held the high ground between the coast and Tarhuna.

  Perhaps my many setbacks here have sobered me, he thought to himself, thinking he might be losing his edge. We shall see.

  * * *

  O’Connor decided to go all out that first day and continue pressing the attack by 51st Highland into the late afternoon, determined to keep the fighting going into the evening if necessary. He wanted to get through that gap on the coast where the high ground began to rise slowly towards Tarhuna to the southwest.

  He had been behind the lines at the old ruin site of Sidi Surur, but he could not hear the battle there, so he wanted to get forward. He had Brigadier Todd’s 1st Tank Brigade with him as his Army reserve, and he rode with them all that morning into the afternoon, moving forward to the heights of Ras Ahmed, about mid-way on the road from Homs to Tarhuna. There he met with General Briggs of the 1st Armored Division, which was moving astride that road as he had planned.

  “Just got our first look at the Germans,” said Briggs. “The armored car battalion pushed down the road from Ras Ahmed, and there’s a Jerry MG unit here, at Gasar Da’uun about eight klicks on. Shall I push them out?”

  “Please do,” said O’Connor. “I’ll want this hill beyond that town as well, number 422. I’ve got 23rd Armored Brigade off to your northeast up the road to Homs. So I think I can safely send your division on to Tarhuna now. Southforce is flanking that position to the west. I haven’t heard anything from Horrocks down there yet, but no news is good news.”

  “What about the coast road?” asked Briggs.

  “Wimberly’s got Hill 151 overlooking the Wadi. That’s where the Italians have holed up. He’s making another push in the morning, and I’ll have two brigades from the 44th Home Counties Division up behind him by noon. Rommel’s a sly one today. He’s letting the Italians hold that coast road, but you know damn well that he’ll have a good reserve behind them. Yet he hasn’t shown me his panzers yet. He’s just sitting up on that high ground to either side of Tarhuna, like Wellington at Waterloo.”

  Briggs didn’t like the sound of that, for he knew they were already up against veteran German troops, very well led. Giving them the benefit of good terrain on defense was one more straw in their favor.

  “Don’t worry,” said O’Connor. “23rd Armored is ready to move, and that’s my hammer that will break the Italians, just you wait.”

  By dawn Briggs had chased the German MG battalion out of Gasar Da’uun, and he had scouts up on Hill 422. That gave him an eyeful, and now he could report that there were enemy tanks due west on the road, battalion strength.

  “They look to be screening Tarhuna at this point,” he said on the radio. “Do you want me to ruffle their feathers?”

  “Make it so. I’ll have a brigade of the Northumbrian Division come up to support you from the south.”

  Like an encroaching tide rising relentlessly towards that imposing high ground, the 8th Army was slowly making contact with the defense Rommel had put in place. The gap that Rommel had seen the previous day was now filling with elements of Briggs’ division, and that of Nichols with the Northumbrians. This was going to join Horrocks’ Southforc
e with Briggs in the center, and a discernable front was now forming on the battlefield.

  O’Connor would soon learn that 7th Armored had found a German airfield that had been set up well south of the road through Tarhuna, and they were already after it with their leading tank battalions.

  That was the field at Suq al Jum’ah, and it was the southernmost anchor of Rommel’s infantry positions, defended by Obersturmfuhrer Ramcke and a kampfgruppe of his tough parachute units. This was the one airmobile force that had not yet received orders to withdraw to a friendly port for shipment to Toulon. Those orders had been issued, but when Rommel saw them, he simply tore them up and put them to the fire. He would later claim he never received them if OKW got after him about it. In the meantime, he had a veteran parachute regiment at his disposal until OKW could sort the matter out.

  KG Ramcke was holding the rightmost flank of his line, from the airfield south, screening the height of Hill 542, and the stony pass at Ras Al Abar beyond it. If Horrocks could get through that, he would have effectively turned Rommel’s line. From there the ground descended towards the plain of Tripoli, a heavily cultivated region that approached the great city from the south. The paras were in good positions, and they held their ground, the British tanks stopping to pour on fire. Soon the Germans got support from a battalion of artillery from the 90th Light Division, and then the recon battalion and Panzerabwehr Battalion 605 came up to put in a counterattack.

  General Marcks of the 90th Light had his headquarters right there at Ras Al Abar, and he was committing his division reserve to try and hold that line. From there, his men were dug in all the way to the Tarhuna road, where the 50th Northumbrian Division was only now deploying two more brigades. Behind them, on that road, was Bismarck’s 21st Panzer Division, poised like a steel arrow in a crossbow. Rommel had pulled back the bolt, was taking aim, and now he decided to fire.