Opening Moves (The Red Gambit Series)

by Gee, Colin

  The young officer had learned valuable lessons since he had command forced upon him on the road from St Hippolyte, and he had grown in stature and confidence as the battle raged.

  Dragging the dying machine-gunner into the back of his half-track, he ordered the vehicle to make a further withdrawal and swiftly raised his head to judge the distance.

  Nikitin’s bullet entered the base of his skull and Laurent Mardin was dead before it exited through the front of his neck.

  Nakhimov moved between vantage points, taking in the growing pressure on the northern road and then the obvious advances of the enemy force pushing back his comrades in the lower courtyard.

  “Comrade Mayor!”

  Rispan jerked his head up and immediately looked to where the Starshy-Serzhant pointed. A few of his men were moving back from the North lists, most supporting a comrade unable to move by himself, funnelling past the now steadily burning forge.

  The Major had a DP team set up in the Mill Tower window, covering down into the yard. The weapon started its chatter, indicating that the enemy were pressing hard, moving up from the main gate area.

  Rispan, now equipped with an SVT, moved to the walkway above the casualty area and shouted down to a handful of paratroopers gathered around the fountain, pulling an enemy machine-gun into position in an attempt to use its firepower.

  “Get ready Comrades. We are leaving!”

  A bloodied Corporal waved in acknowledgement and hammered on the back of the man nearest him. As the soldier turned, he was thrown backwards, the impact of rifle bullets driving him against the wall three metres behind. The Corporal moved quickly and the heavy hammer of the .50cal rang around the courtyard, a stream of bullets reaching out into the Goumiers pressing up past the Alsatian House, dropping five bloodily to the stone path.

  A movement in the doorway of the house caught Rispan’s eye and he put six bullets into something that bled and disappeared.

  Fitting the last magazine into the weapon, he looked around for other alternatives. It seemed that the dead commandos and paratroopers spread along the walkway had already been visited by others in search of ammunition and weapons.

  Another look at the doorway. Nothing.

  He rummaged in a Commando’s pouch and found nothing of value.

  An enemy soldier suddenly appeared on the walkway and Rispan shot him down, sending the man over the balustrade, the strangely clad body sliding gently down the angled roof.

  In the recess of a shutter, he caught the welcome sight of a pistol and a grenade, which he immediately stowed about his person.

  Checking the situation below him, he saw the .50cal standing silent. The Corporal was hugging a shoulder wound as he harangued two other paratroopers, encouraging the reloading process and reporting the progress of the enemy soldiers.

  His grenade was out and in the air before Rispan could shout.

  “Move back now Comrades! Now!”

  The Corporal needed no second order and pushed his men towards the Mill Tower.

  The grenade exploded amongst a group of Goumiers, halting the rush in an instant. Two more faces appeared at the Alsatian house door and Rispan switched his attention to them, sending one flying out of sight in a spout of blood and gore.

  A burst of fire from the upper window of the house made him drop into cover but the burst was not meant for him. The last surviving member of the Corporal’s section disappeared into the Mill Tower, his two comrades lying desperately wounded behind him.

  The SVT brought a body tumbling out of the window to fall onto the stone below.

  “Stefka!”

  His fiancée had rushed to the dying Corporal and was doing what she could for the man.

  “Stefka!”

  A rifle grenade exploded on the window frame from where the DP was firing, silencing both weapon and crew instantly.

  “Stefka!”

  This time she heard and looked up just in time to see Rispan struck by a bullet that folded him double as it made its way through the stomach and out the small of his back. Blood gushed from his mouth almost immediately and he dropped to the stone.

  Kolybareva could not drag her eyes away from the still form.

  An orderly with her started to stand and was suddenly a mass of scarlet as a sub-machine gun hammered bullets into him at short range.

  Another orderly went to run for the Tower door and was also mercilessly shot down.

  Senior Lieutenant Doctor Stefka Kolybareva suddenly had stars before her eyes, the butt of an old French Berthier M16 rifle caressing her head, hard enough to drop the woman but not so hard as to deny her the full pleasures the Goumier had in mind for her.

  Through misty eyes, Kolybareva saw her senior medic gutted on a wicked Arab knife, his entrails spilling as the sharp blade split his stomach open. The agony dropped the man to his knees. Grasping the dying man by his hair, the Goumier ran the blade up one side of the skull and back down the other, removing the trophies that would mark his prowess in battle around the campfires of his tribe in the years to come.

  Throwing the screaming man to the stone, the tribesman moved on, joining others steadily working their way through the wounded men so invitingly gathered for them to harvest.

  Vision clearing, Kolybareva felt hands on her, dragging her across to the fountain where other hands pulled and tore at her clothing.

  Kusev, the youngest orderly in her medical section, was dragged up beside her, one of his ears dangling half sliced off, his lips split and one eye closed by vicious blows.

  The young man had no moment to gather himself as rough hands dragged him upright and threw him over the fountain trough. Both he and Kolybareva realised in an instant what the savages had in mind and the youth started to twist and writhe in an attempt to avoid the rape.

  A ‘gentle’ blow stunned the orderly, and he had little comprehension of his trousers being ripped off and a sweating Goumier penetrating him violently.

  Finishing quickly, the tribesman moved away to other pleasures and was replaced by another more sadistic rapist.

  His pleasures included violent rape of a kind that tore and ripped the young orderly, the pain clearing his stunned brain and permitting him to scream.

  Lance-Corporal Nikitin was about to descend from the Mill Tower when the sound summoned him back. Risking a quick look through the shattered upper window, he was both horrified at what he saw and powerless to interfere, his rifle empty.

  He checked the machine-gun but the DP was bent and useless.

  Nakhimov found him there as he quickly looked for stragglers before escaping himself. He too risked a look, which drew fire from the men in the courtyard not wholly immersed in the intoxicating slaughter of the wounded.

  “We must go, now.”

  Nikitin looked in disgust at his NCO.

  “But Alexsey, we will remember these bastards.”

  The younger man teetered on the edge of a useless sacrificial gesture, a fact that Nakhimov was only too well aware of and something he was determined to avoid.

  “We must go. Now! That is an order Comrade Yefreytor!”

  Discipline took hold and Nikitin moved towards the grapnel lines.

  Sergeant-Major Nakhimov was the last man in the tower, so he swiftly moved to inform Rispan that the withdrawal was complete.

  He stopped on the threshold leading to the battlements, the still body of his Major lying in front of him, still leaking blood on the stone.

  “Govno!”

  He turned and moved after Nikitin. Checking the situation in the road below, Nakhimov was encouraged to see Makarenko waving at him, signalling the all clear. Nikitin stepped away from the rope and moved off as directed by a Sergeant who returned to the line, holding it tight to assist in Nakhimov’s descent. The line rubbed his left hand badly, breaking the scabs and congealed blood that had sealed his finger stump, but the tough NCO lowered himself without complaint and touched down on the grass below.

  Starshy-Serzhant Egon Nakhimov was
the last member of Zilant-4 to evacuate the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg.

  0620 hrs Monday, 6th August 1945, North road approach to the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, French Alsace.

  The loss of their young commander had not stopped the 2e Compagnie from pushing hard, and Makarenko had his work cut out to hold the legionnaires back. In truth, the Paratrooper General had not fully appreciated the disaster he was leading and that he was recovering only a fraction of his force from the bloody battlefield.

  He pushed his men hard, stopping the legionnaires in their tracks, holding open an escape route for his troopers.

  He signalled to Nakhimov and moved to meet the man at the bottom of the line.

  “How many more Comrade? Time is short now.”

  “I am the last Comrade General.”

  Makarenko felt like he had been struck in the stomach.

  “Are you sure Egon? Mayor Rispan is not yet here.”

  “He is dead sir. They are all dead, including the wounded.”

  “Rispan dead?”

  Nakhimov simply nodded.

  “The wounded?”

  “Butchered before my eyes my General. Some dark-skinned bastards, cutting off ears with knives, slitting throats and stomachs. They are all dead, Sir.”

  His professionalism as an officer battled hard against the pain and despair of the losses of his comrades.

  Professionalism won.

  “Right, then let us get what is left of the battalion out of here. Get them moving north now!”

  The remnants of Zilant-4 fought their way north, killing legionnaires, being killed by legionnaires, finally evading the enraged French efforts to snare them.

  General Makarenko, once commander of the 100th Guards Rifle Division ‘Svir’, once commander of Composite Force Zilant-4, now commander of fifteen shocked and battered survivors of the assault upon the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, led the precious remnants of his force away.

  Later, as he and his group found a place to rest, he learned more of what had happened in the final minutes. His shock and anger at the disaster was replaced by a hatred and loathing for the dark-skinned enemy in the striped dress, one which found equal station with the hatred and loathing he had developed for those who had sent him on the mission which had uselessly spent so many young lives. Young lives that were his privilege to command and protect, and lives which he had led to nothing but pointless death on the orders of madmen.

  He promised himself that there would be a day of reckoning on both counts.

  0623 hrs Monday, 6th August 1945, Lower Courtyard, Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, French Alsace.

  Haefeli moved up quickly, partially because he was eager to get involved in the final stages but mainly because he simply had to know who or what it was that Russian paratroopers had come so far to destroy.

  Moving quickly up the ramp from the main entrance, he found the dying Goumier officer being tended by one of his men. The man had been hit in the stomach and thighs by a machine-gun burst and the Goumier tending him could do no more than comfort the Frenchman as he travelled into the darkness.

  Haefeli motioned to his own medic, whose assessment was already made. A double dose of morphine was administered and the man’s pain ceased forever.

  Lavalle strode up, his face cherry red with the extra exertions of catching up, the grimace of pain from exercising his wounded thigh apparent.

  “The area is not yet secure Colonel. I have had no reports as yet so we must be careful.”

  Lavalle, his face now under control, gestured to his friend.

  “Then we must let you go first Albrecht.”

  Smiling, the two moved forwards, smiles that immediately disappeared as high pitched screaming reached their ears.

  Neither was prepared for the sights before them.

  Butchered Soviet paratroopers lay everywhere, the absence of ears bloodily apparent on each corpse.

  At the fountain trough, a paratrooper, face down and bent double over the stonework, his backside exposed and bleeding, his most recent violator preparing for a second assault, oblivious to the two officers stood staring in disbelief at him.

  To the left, female legs, held wide open by two grinning tribesmen, her arms pinned by two more as a fifth Goumier plunged himself vigorously into the screaming woman. She too was face down as the unnatural violation ripped her painfully.

  A sixth Goumier was displaying her bloody breasts, one in each hand, held out to any of his comrades who wished to inspect them.

  What happened next was a blur, decent honourable men acting without thought, either for their own lives or for the consequences of their actions.

  Lavalle and Haefeli moved forward as one, producing their handguns.

  As they ran, both officers shouted an age-old cry for assistance.

  “A moi La Légion!”

  Such a call could not be refused by any legionnaire who heard it.

  The Colonel nearly blew the arm off the sodomiser of the unfortunate woman, his first bullet striking the shoulder. A second bullet took the man in the stomach as he lay on the floor. Haefeli took the life of the other rapist who collapsed over his victim, his ruined face spilling blood on the young Russian’s corpse.

  Lavalle’s next shots struck the man holding the bloody trophies, his throat and chest exploding as he flew backwards into the stonewall.

  The four men pinning the woman looked on in terror, knowing death was about to visit them. Haefeli’s Sergent-Chef emptied his Garand into them, two bullets each, the heavy impacts throwing them into disarray. One man moaned, only wounded. Haefeli shot him in the crotch.

  The legionnaires turned towards the larger group of Goumier’s, comrades of those they had just mercilessly dispatched, expecting to die in turn.

  The tribesmen seemed momentarily unsure of what to do until one of their older NCO’s spoke up, directing them to gather up their things and move on after the enemy.

  The arrival of more legionnaires from the 3e may well have aided his decision.

  The woman’s screams had subsided to a low, continuous moan of pain and anguish, expressing suffering way beyond the thresholds of human tolerance.

  The apparition pushed herself up on her arms, the bloody stumps of her breasts exposed, a knife in her side now apparent to the transfixed watchers.

  Every essence of their being implored them to help her but there was something about her struggle, something tangible to each of them, that instructed them to leave her, to let her make her efforts.

  She slowly stood, the blood running freely from her mouth, chest, side, and violated lower body. She took hold of the knife and pulled it slowly from her flesh, the pain making her eyes roll in her head.

  Still the Legionnaires stood immobile, knowing that the woman needed to do this herself.

  She dropped to her knees, her rapist groaning and bubbling, as red fluid gently seeped into his lungs.

  She spoke soft words in her native tongue to the Goumier, but they were not words of comfort, the venom and hate that they carried obvious to all.

  Gathering herself for the effort, Stefka Kolybareva grabbed the man’s genitals and twisted, the new pain washing over him in a wave. But it was as nothing compared to the extreme of suffering she visited upon him as she sliced away at his manhood, removing every tangible sign of his gender before pushing open his scarlet thighs and using his rectum as a scabbard for the bloody blade.

  Exhausted, and with huge blood loss, the hideously wounded woman toppled on top of her rapist, falling into merciful unconsciousness.

  Haefeli’s medic moved forward and the work to save her life began.

  No one noticed the single Goumier turn and walk briskly forward, his target, the back of the senior officer; the man who had shot his brother.

  The arm raised, knife about to plunge between Lavalle’s shoulder blades, his revenge was imminent.

  When the shot rang out all eyes immediately went to the source of the sound. A bloody hand on the b
attlements sagged, and the automatic pistol fell from its grasp, bouncing on the stone floor of the Lower Courtyard.

  Some intuitive sense made Haefeli check his men’s fire, the wounded Russian clearly no longer armed or a threat.

  Lavalle turned at the sound of a fall behind him, the headless corpse having dropped like a rag doll onto the dead Russian prisoner’s.

  The wound was immense, unusually removing everything from the lower jaw upwards. It was later discovered that the gun’s former commando owner, against orders and all conventions, had converted his bullets into dum-dums with quartered heads. The destructive impact of Rispan’s shot had put the Goumier down immediately and given no possibility of him fulfilling his act of revenge.

  More men were sent to tend to the man who had saved Lavalle’s life.

  “A close call Mon Colonel, a close call for sure.”

  Even the brave and the bold can be shaken by such things, and Lavalle was no exception. He knew how close to death he had just been.

  “Yes Albrecht. I was very lucky.”

  Composing himself, Lavalle got his thought processes back on track.

  Both men’s eyes locked and silent communication took place.

  “Yes. We will deal with these bastards later Albi.” Lavalle did not mean the Russians.

  “Now, let’s get some information out to our superiors and find out what the hell is going on here eh?”

  Nodding, Haefeli summoned a radioman.

  “You do it Albrecht. I think I will take some of the men and go on up.”

  He indicated the ramp that led up into the Château, the signs of battle evident, blood and bodies leading up into unseen places beyond.

  0657 hrs Monday, 6th August 1945, Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, French Alsace.

  Within half an hour, the Château was declared safe, although armed legionnaires patrolled everywhere in case some hitherto unsuspected hiding place disgorged enemy paratroopers.