John Schettler: Three Kings

Karpov heard the three loud booms from far below, saw the bright red-yellow fireball ignite with their fury, and a slow smile crept onto his face. It worked! One of the three fireballs was slightly off target, very near the tributary, but that was also good, for it smashed a pontoon bridge under construction there. The other two had fallen amid the encamped enemy division, and thousands would not awaken that morning for reveille-a wakeup call that was never to be heard.

“Excellent!” Karpov said aloud. “Now! SignalKalmenikov to start his attack!”

That night, the thick woods to the north of the site had been slowly infiltrated by Karpov’s tough 2nd Cossack Cavalry Division. The men moved like shadows on their grey white steeds, emerging from the tree line like a sweeping fog. They moved out at thecanter, the mass of horsemen slowly gaining speed until the bugler sounded the attack. Then the Cossacks drew their cruel curved swords and came charging south toward the main road that led back to Omsk.

There were elements of the 2nd Armored Cavalry, armored cars, motorized infantry, who had also been roused by the thunderous explosions to the east near the river. The Majors told the Captains, and the Captains told the Sergeants, with orders shouting the alarm as the charge came in. The Sergeants told the buglers, and the buglers thought to raise their horns to rouse the sleeping men, but the Cossacks told them all.

The cold swords flashed in the grey dawn, and the thunderous sound of ten thousand horseman shook the ground. At one point in the column, six armored cars put up a gallant defense, the machine guns in their armored turrets taking a fearful toll. But they could not stem the tide, and the Cossacks swept by, some hurling Molotov cocktails at the light armored vehicles, and adding more fire and torment to the morning. Others threw grappling hooks and the horsemen literally toppled two of the armored cars by dragging them onto their side, rendering them useless.

Soldiers shaken by the terrible explosion, yet still alive on the outer fringes of the detonations, were dazed and confused, some barely struggling to their feet only to be cut down by those flashing sabres. The carnage was terrible to behold, and soon the chaos of panic began to spread, from one platoon to another until the encampment became a rout. The Cossacks swept through like a tide of death until they reached the village ofKochernevo, just south of the main road. There the hard shorn horsemen galloped through the cobblestone streets, setting fire to every building they could reach with Molotov cocktails and torches-fighting fire with fire. This was the site of the enemy headquarters, and now all the Majors and Captains were put to the test of war, and they fled in all directions, many ridden down and slaughtered by the last waves of the cavalry.

There had been many battles like this throughout the long history of the bloody Russian civil war. Tartar and Cossack cavalry units prowled the Siberian woodlands, but were seldom deployed en mass like this against formed units of a modern army. Yet here they had caught their foe completely by surprise, shocked and stunned by Karpov’s deadly new weapons.

High above, Karpov was watching the battle with his field glasses, as he often did on the ship. He had become accustomed to thinking behind the protective cups of the eye pieces, and watching the action unfold, as if he was seeing it in a movie. It brought him closer to it all without having to go there himself and actually enter the fray, which is just as he preferred things. Combat was for stupid soldiers. He was a General, an Admiral, and soon to become a head of state. These soldiers were merely things he used to achieve his ends, as he had thought to use the awesome power of Kirov.

He saw the gallant and deadly charge, the carnage it inflicted, and was elated. But soon, he knew, the enemy would respond by bringing up armor from the heart of that mechanized cavalry unit. The shock of his attack had done its job, completely unhinging the enemy river crossing operation, and so now he turned and gave another order to Bogrov.

“SignalKalmenikov. Tell him to pull his Cossacks out and proceed to the rally point. And be certain they leave behind those gifts!”

The late Christmas presents Karpov was delivering were thickets of hand deployed mines, that were being dropped all over the ground as the horsemen withdrew. Now, when a more organized column of armored cars came barreling up the main road intoKochernevo, they got another nasty surprise, running right over the mines, which exploded to send the lead vehicle hurling up and then crashing down onto its side in another fiery wreck.

“Begin regular bombing now. Let them taste our conventional munitions.”

Abakan was high up, but a hovering zeppelin was a near perfect bombing platform, with unequaled stability. The long rack of 100 pound bombs were deployed from each gondola, and the rain of evil metal fell unerringly to the scene below, the bomblets erupting with more fury, setting off many of the mines and leaving the whole target zone a hell of fire and shrapnel. The last touch were the barrels of another mixture Karpov had devised with his engineers, a makeshift napalm that he sent careening down into the entire mix, ending the attack with the hideous assault of fire, even as it had begun.

The hammer had fallen. The lesson had been taught, but it now remained to be seen whether Volkov would get the message Karpov was delivering that day. He would soon learn that the heart and soul had been burned out of his 9th Infantry Division, and his 8th Armored Cavalry Brigade had been gutted. There would be no river crossing operation that day, and by nightfall the remaining units were beginning to withdraw down the long road west to Omsk.

Karpov monitored their slow, steady progress, content. Now he contemplated what he might say to Volkov after his little victory on theOb here. Should he offer the man a truce, demand the return of Omsk and withdrawal of all his divisions on Free Siberian territory to the south of Novosibirsk? He knew that Volkov had three big zeppelins operating there, the units Symenko had told him about, but thus far, only the 15th Division had been seen to cross the border zone. It was probing toward his defenses on the lower Ob.

“Signal Big Red. We return toKaa-Chem. But we will take a roundabout course to throw off Volkov’s spies, and navigate there tonight under cover of darkness.” He was looking at his map as the operation concluded, well satisfied.

“Yes Bogrov, war is war. You can either be the one on the delivering end of an attack like the one you just witnessed or you will one day end up on the receiving end. War is war, and we do what we must. But doing it first is the best way, before your enemy gets his stinking hands on your throat. We could have fought a hard defensive battle here. An opposed river crossing would have been very costly for Volkov’s troops. But the best defense is a good offense, and I have just demonstrated that clearly enough.”

“Aye sir,” said Bogrov. “That you did.”

Far away to the north, other men were hidden away in tunnels as they pondered the fate of Gibraltar, weaving the tangled web of war. The lights burned late at Whitehall. In the Admiralty bunker, the lights had first been turned on 27th of August, 1939, and they would burn continuously with their own stalwart glow of resistance for six years, until finally turned off on the 16th of August, 1945. Admirals Pound, Tovey, and Fraser were present that day. As Tovey seated himself at the table, he had the fear that he might soon be scapegoated for the disaster of Convoy HX-69, and the escape of the German battlegroup that had slipped past his guard. To his great surprise and relief, Admiral Pound took full responsibility upon himself for the debacle.