John Schettler - Fallen Angels - 9 Days Falling, Volume II

“Now what?”

“It’s no good here. We’ll have to get down there and take cover in those reeds. Make sure you don’t leave anything. Let’s get moving!” He turned his head. “Nice and quiet like now.”

“Right-O, Jock. Always did like a midnight belly crawl with the frogs.” Sutherland winked at him, and the three commandos crept silently away from the road, seeking better cover in the reedy fringes of the marshland to the east. The bridge they had selected as a choke point was right at the narrowest neck of the Terek River as it flowed east to the Caspian. They had to move about a hundred yards to the reeds, but once there they found good concealment. Behind them there was nothing but murky, wet ground descending to marshland now.

The fens fell off to a wide lake, festooned with reeds and floating muck. It separated the river from a long spit of sandy ground beyond it that pointed to the north like a great finger, marking the place where Corporal Severn waited on the coast with the swift boats. Haselden had radioed him earlier on the wireless and told him to move south that night under cover of darkness. With any luck Severn was due east of their position by now, though he wondered how things would play out from this point.

“This is no good here,” said Sutherland. “We’ve no decent field of fire. Sergeant Terry’s Bren won’t do us any good at all down here.” They could see the trucks coming up the road to the very place where they had been concealed just moments ago, and then slowly maneuvering to turn about. Sergeant Terry shook his head, unhappy.

“How in the world did I find myself lying here in a muddy bog on a night like this,” he muttered.

“You were most likely a troubled youth,” Sutherland jibed. Then they hushed, heads low as they watched the trucks pull up. Haselden was fishing about in his jacket for the map, and the wan gleam of moonlight gave him just enough light to read it.

“Nothing behind us, mates. Just a whole lot more of this muck and mire. That there is the delta of the Terek, six bloody miles of it to the coast.”

“They’ll get cross that river in half an hour and onto those trucks. This must have been arranged,” Sutherland whispered.

“Right you are. The only question is what do we do now? We can’t move south on their flank from here. The damn road is going to skirt the edge of that marsh lake behind us for a good eight miles, and we’d be easily seen. We could wait here and then follow them south, but they’ll leave us well behind them in no time.”

“Then we’ve no choice,” said Sutherland. “They’ll have to turn all those trucks about and will most likely load up. We’ll have to jump the last one in the line. Maybe we’ll get lucky and our man will be riding that one.”

“Maybe not,” said Haselden, “but I don’t see any other way now, Davey. Let’s work round to the right a bit. Good cover in these reeds but move slow. Fix silencers and it’s pistols and knives now. We can keep our Stens, but that Bren isn’t going to do us any good in a situation like this, Sergeant. I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it.”

Sergeant Terry nodded grimly, and was already looking to find a spot to conceal the weapon and ammo belts in the reeds. Now it was coming down to stealth and subterfuge, not firepower and ambush. Their faces were painted black beneath their dark berets, and each man lightened his load, keeping nothing more than food, water and ammo. Haselden handed off his Sten and numerous ammo clips to Sergeant Terry to compensate him for the lost Bren. “I’ll lead with pistol and knife,” he whispered. “Let’s move.”

They worked their way slowly through the reeds, careful not to let them rustle and move as they passed. It was move, wait, listen, move again, slithering along the damp ground like snakes, but in this way they were able to get to a position on the Terek, very close to the bridge that Sutherland had blown. Now he saw that his demolition charges had only damaged the bridge itself, and the span remained largely intact. There was a gaping hole in the wood of the bridge bed, but still enough room to one side for a man to edge by and carefully cross. The NKVD were rigging ropes to provide additional hand holds at this spot, and they were sending the women from the column across first.

“Must have had a dodgy charge,” Sutherland whispered.

“Hush up, Davey. I count five men there, and there’s probably that many or more with those trucks. See that tall fellow? I think that’s our man. Look, there he goes now.”

They could see a tall, stocky man making his way over the bridge, with two NKVD soldiers following behind him. Haselden strained to see him as he crossed, and noted that he continued on past the last truck. Just our luck, he thought. Now we won’t know which truck the man is in. But he decided not to curse his luck just yet. It remained to be seen just how this situation would develop. There would certainly be soldiers assigned to the last truck, but how many?

“Look, lads,” he said quietly. “When we move it will have to be quick and dirty. “There will be men for that last truck, and we’ll have to get them all, and quiet like. What we don’t want is for one of those bastards to fire his weapon and warn the others up front, so I’ll want to move just as the last of this lot begins to mount that truck. Move on my hand signal.”

The other men nodded, realizing this was perhaps the most dangerous moment of their trek thus far. Yet it was their stock in trade, as each man was a highly trained expert in close combat, and ready for the job at hand. They were settling down on instincts born of training, reflex and adrenaline now, an ancient language of muscle and nerve. Another part of their brains took over, and they became low, stealthy prowling things in the night, their senses keened up to a razor sharpness, eyes moving, minds calculating without words or logic; limbs ready to spring for the kill.

The soldiers had herded all the women forward, waiting for all the trucks to slowly back and turn themselves around on the narrow road. One man was issuing loud commands, pointing at men and gesturing. They loaded five or six women in the back of each truck, seven vehicles in all, and then two NKVD men boarded to keep watch on them. The officer walked forward, obviously to take up a position in the first truck. There were three men left over.

Haselden tensed up, hearing the engines gunning as the lead trucks in the column began to move out. The last of the three men had come from the bridge, a cigarette hanging from his lips as he hefted his rifle onto his shoulder. Two others were getting ready to mount the tailgate of the truck. It was now or never. The noise of the other trucks would provide perfect sound cover. He moved.

Haselden just crawled up onto his knees, stood up and casually walked to the back of the truck. The man with the cigarette turned his head, dumbfounded. The British Captain was holding out a pack of fresh cigarettes, smiling as he stepped up to the man. Then that moment of confused surprise became a blur. Haselden drove the base of his hand right into the man’s nose, thrusting up in a hard blow. A second soldier had one knee up on the tailgate and a swift kick took out the support of his other leg. Both men were down and Sutherland was up next to the Captain now, easily handling the third soldier, parrying the blow of his rifle butt, slipping inside and getting the man’s neck and head in a hold that saw him go slack in no time at all. A swift chop to the neck settled the man who had fallen with Haselden’s kick.

The three NKVD soldiers were down and out, nice and quiet like, just as Seventeen wanted it. Then the three British commandos quickly removed the fallen soldiers’ jackets and hats, and mounted the truck in their place.