Breakthrough (The Red Gambit Series) (47 page)

“Get away!” he shouted at the medics, “Go and tend to our own men
,
you bastards!”

The two
Soviet
medics rose and moved off to where their own casu
alties were being collected,
well looked after by the newly arrived battalion medical section.

Skotolsky
,
his eyes now wild, turned to
the
young
Captain
,
Pryskov
of
Armoured
Engineers,
who had
dismounted from his tank
to share
a cigarette with his crew
s
.

“Kill them. Kill them all.”

The engineer officer swallowed hard, exchanging eye contact with his men.

“They are prisoners
, Comrade May
or. No threat now.”

Skotolsky dragged his eyes away from the Frenchmen and spoke in a hiss.

“Kill them now, or I will kill you
,
Comrade
Kapitan
.”

The tank’s gunner slipped his hand towards his own holster
,
unnoticed by the mad Major.

“
No,
I cannot do that
. In conscience, I cannot do that,
Comrade May
or.”

The
Tokarev
barked twice and Captain
Pryskov
was dead before his body
bounced off the
side of his tank.

The gunner struggled with his weapon and also received two bullets, dropping
him
to the ground
,
screaming in agony
.

“Conscience? Your conscience counts for nothing, you scum!”

Another shot silenced the scream of pain at his feet.

The
Tokarev moved
to
threaten
the next in line.

“Kill them, now soldier; now!”

The hull gunner fum
bled with his holster and turned towards the nervous Frenchmen.

“Not with that
,
you fucking idiot! With that!”

The hull gunner climbed the front of the tank and slid inside
to where Skotolsky pointed
, attracting more attention from the nervous prisoners.

Those guarding them
understood and
increased the distance between themselves and those about to die.

No gout of flame satisfied the Major’s lust for blood and death.

He shouted in through the open drivers hatch.

“Kill them
,
you bastard
,
or you are dead meat. Kill them!”

The petrified gunner had no more petroleum jelly and tried to explain to the mad man, drawing nothing more than
point-blank
bullets and instant death.

Skotolsky dropped off the front of the OT34, turning to the other tank nearby, waving at the Sergeant in charge.

“
Starshy
Serzhant, kill them now
,
or you will get the same. Move!”

The sound of running feet made the man turn, and the Medical Officer from the battalion
aid
section arrived, with two men in tow.

“What in the name of the Rodina are you doing, Comrade?”

Looking at the Captain with crazy eyes, Skotolsky raised his weapon and fired.

A
PPS
ripped the relative silence,
smashing
the
lunatic
officer
against the tank
.
The bloody form dropped
on
to the roadway.

Helping the wounded Doctor to his feet, the two orderlies with him applied pressure to his radial artery and hurried him away to the aid station.

The young Corporal driver
replaced
his half-empty magazine and moved to the tank.

Skotolsky was dying, his bo
dy rent by over a dozen bullets,
his life blood spilling onto the concrete beneath him.

He looked up at the familiar face and smiled.

The familiar face sneered and spat
at the dying man
,
casually aiming his sub-machine gun.

T
hen
,
they both died together.

Acting on their
last
orders, and in the absence of contrary ones, the 76th’s
Katyushas
fired another full volley into the French defences.

Skotolsky
,
the mad man
,
hadn’t stopped them.

Pryskov
,
the novice
,
hadn’t stopped them.

Semenchenko,
the new commander and
devoid of proper knowledge, hadn’t stopped them.

Five of the valuable OT34’s were lost in that strike, along with many of their crews.

The survivors of the 11th’s 3rd Battalion, gathered in the town but not hidden in cover, suffered badly. After the battle
,
the battalion was broken up and used to fill gaps in the 11th’s other units.

The medical aid station had ceased to exist.

Two of the American engineers managed to cling to life for a few hours before slipping away, the efforts of the
surviving
Soviet
doctors in vain.

Three French prisoners survived the strike, and two of them lived out the day.

A desperately wounded Corporal of the Regiment du Tchad, who would eventually succumb to infection in the second week of September, and a dazed Lieutenant Alain Mercier, whose broken arms seemed a small price to pay to survive such carnage.

Choices are the hinges of destiny.

Pythagoras.

“Well, you
sure
are
a sight for sore eyes
,
Walt.”

The welcome was genuine, the
handshake firm.

“Glad to be back, Sir.”

Major General Walter
Bedell-Smith
had served as Chief of Staff to Eisenhower during the German War, returning to the States immediately after the end of hostilities.

“Are you well
,
Walt
?”

“
Very
stiff but my brain still works, Sir”

“There is work for your brain here and then some, Walt.”

Eisenhower looked at his watch and did a quick calculation.

“Get yourself settled in. Have some chow and prepare yourself
,
Walt. Theatre briefing is at 1000 here. See you then.”

A further handshake was exchanged and Smith was escorted away to a suitable room
,
where he could shake off the
rigours of his awful journey from the States.

Smith had been onboard a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, which had departed
Newark AAF, New Jersey
,
on the morning of 8th August, for the short hop t
o RCAF Greenwood on Nova Scotia.
Having dropped off an RCAF Wing-Commander and his staff, involved with the Tiger Force ‘Very Long Range Bomber’ project, the C-54 was scheduled to deliver its remaining passengers to
RAF Northolt,
UK
.

From there, they would go their separate ways, or at least that had been the plan, which failed the moment the
crippled
C-54 belly-landed in the
Gulf
of
Maine
, thirty miles from anywhere dry.

The survivors, eleven in total, were picked up the following day by a Catalina of the hastily
reconstituted
5 Squadron RCAF.

After a period on hospital, Smith again made the transatlantic attempt, his aircraft having to make an emergency landing at RAF Belfast as a fuel leak robbed the C-54 of its legs.

He found a ride to
Paris
in a C-47, and
spent the time chatting
with
one of his co-passengers, a USMC Lieutenant Colonel, who was extremely knowledgeable about the European situation.

Both men travelled together, all the way to the Trianon Palace Hotel, where they went their separate ways.

Naked
,
and steadily dripping water and soap bubbles onto the expensive wool carpet, his still-damp fingers tainted the
thin
paper
,
as he examined the written message that the hollow-handled knife had surrendered up.
The breakfast tray had been brought to his room by a new man he only knew by sight, the precise staccato sequence of knocks causing him to rush from the bath in the full knowledge that it was not just food that was being delivered today.

Any reply he made would be collected with the dirty crockery, exactly fifty minutes after the tray had been delivered.

The message was comparatively long, directing a course of action that would undoubtedly place him in extreme danger.

He swore in the way he had taught himself to do.

“Skurwielu!”

‘
Govno!
’

The briefing kicked off with the horrendous developments in the area of French First Army, where the remnants of the 14th Infantry
had simply disappeared
,
and the powerful 2nd
French
Armoured had been
all but
annihilated
, opening up a huge gap.

“And De Lattre says there is no chance of a recovery?”

Bedell-Smith shook his head.

“
Then
I see
little
choice
,
Walt. We have to acknowledge
that
we are now split
,
and move our units accordingly.”

Major-G
eneral Smith eased his aching back, both hands pushing in on his sides, his eyes not leaving the situation map.

“I
understand
,
Sir
. They have guaranteed Swiss neutrality
,
and we could use the border to ease our situation some.”

Eisenhower knew his man. There was a ‘but’.

“Sir, can we trust that? What if they decide to drive through
Switzerland
and into
France
or
Italy
beyond?”

The Allied Commander drew deeply on the cigarette and composed his reply.

“If we try and hold the line, what damage will be done, could be done? If we prepare to fall back now
,
then we can gain ourselves some breathing space, some time to establish.”