Devil's Garden

Chapter 2

The artillery started falling on the rail yard ten minutes later. The first rounds were short, blasting the dense railroad tracks and sending splinters and fragments of the wooden ties spinning up into the air when they exploded. Soon the spotting rounds began to walk forward, until the Germans found the range as one plowed into the roof of the marshalling yard building with a loud crash.

“Stay low!” Troyak shouted. He had expected this, and now he radioed back to the Anatoly Alexandrov where Dobrynin was serving as a command and control relay station.

“We need you to find the German artillery and radio the coordinates, Chief. They’ll cut my men to pieces in half an hour!”

The rounds started coming in threes exploding just short of the building now, and one hitting a big crate storage area there. But Dobrynin had the Mi-26 up just off shore in the grey clouds, and it was using radar to track the arc of the incoming German fire. The onboard computers easily calculated the location of the German batteries, and minutes later the Chief was radioing back to Troyak with the information.

The Sergeant ran in a crouch, leaping behind standing crates when an artillery round smashed the overhead roof and blew a good section away. Pale light flooded in, illuminating the dust and smoke from the explosion. He was up and running again, to the back of the building and out a door where he had positioned his fire support teams. Now he stared at his map to cross index the coordinates, frowning to see that the German artillery was well north of the city, almost 7 kilometers out and well beyond the range of his 82mm mortars. But he did have one 120mm 2B11 Sani at hand, and it could put harassing fire on the German guns and possibly suppress them, or at least force them to withdraw out of range. That would buy them valuable time.

“Fire at these coordinates,” he ordered. “You can just make the range, and pour it on!”

The sound of the rounds popping off was reassuring, though he knew the Germans would quickly move their guns farther back. He made his way into the main building, an enormous warehouse with rail spurs that would allow train cars to be moved here for repairs. The northern quarter of the building had received three direct hits, and a fire was burning there now. Yet his men were disciplined, many veterans of the third Chechen war in this same region, fought in 2018. They had been under fire before, and hunkered down with grim determination.

Ten minutes later the barrage lifted, and Troyak heard whistles and deep throated shouts from non-coms on the other side. The Germans were making another ground attack with infantry, trying to cross their half of the marshalling yard to an island cluster of a few sheds and buildings about 100 meters from the main Russian position. They moved quickly, running low, but even after reaching the island they were soon disheartened to see that the artillery had not yet done its job. The Russian Marines opened up again with their AK-74s and the rate of fire they put out quickly stopped the German advance. Casualties were heavy, and the Germans fell back across the tracks to take cover in and around a number of old train cars there.

There came a brief lull, and all they could still hear was the sound of their own 120mm mortar firing behind them. Troyak knew the rounds were pounding the German artillery now, and the silence from the other side meant they had found the range. He reasoned it would take them half an hour to move the guns out to a position beyond the range of his mortar, but before that he would face yet another challenge-German tanks.

They heard the dull rumble coming from the north, and Troyak worked his way forward to a good viewpoint, raising his IR assisted binoculars. He saw a column of armor, five tanks advancing down the rail line just as the armored cars had come. The gritty Sergeant wasted no time. He pinched his collar mike and gave an order.

“Shilkov, is your team ready?”

“Ready, Sergeant.”

“Then say hello to those tanks and let them know we are here!”

Shilkov’s team was sitting behind an SPG-9 recoilless rifle with an effective range of 1300 meters using the 73mm PG-9VS shaped HEAT round. It could penetrate 400mm of armor, and with good accuracy using a laser optical sighting system. The Germans were about to get yet another nasty surprise.

* * *

OberleutnantWellman had neglected to tell Becker about the new hand held Russian AT weapon, but no fire could challenge the German tanks as they moved up, some 600 meters from the main rail terminal building-or so he thought. There came a sharp report and a streak of light from what appeared to be a small caliber AT gun. The lead tank in Becker’s column of five, a Pz III–L, was struck flush on its frontal armor by the HEAT round, which easily penetrated, even after being reinforced with an additional 20mm steel plate on top of the standard 50mm frontal protection. The Germans were being hit with ordnance designed to defeat heavy modern day tanks with armor over ten times the thickness of the Pz IIIs.

Wellman was shocked when the first panzer went up, smoking and set afire by the sudden hit. The Russian 37mm AT gun might penetrate 50mm of armor, but at the near point blank range of just 100 meters. They had not lost any of the newer Pz III–Ls with the extra 20mm steel plate to a 37mm gun since they deployed. The enemy 45mm AT gun was no better. Only a 76mm gun could have killed that tank, he thought, but he could see no signs of enemy armor here, though Westhoven had identified two tanks blocking the inland road to the south. His forward infantry had not identified any large AT gun position, so this had to be a new recoilless rifle. Two surprises in one day should have been quite enough, but the third surprise was jaw dropping.

The Oberleutnant watched, astounded, as two rockets came streaking out from the Russian position, finding Becker in tank number two and putting an end to his promising military career, and then smashing the number three tank for good measure.

“Mein Gott! Was werden sie schlagen mit uns?” What are they hitting us with?

The Russians called it the, Mongrel, but NATO called it the AT-13 Saxhorn-2 Anti-Tank missile, with tandem HEAT rounds. The weapon had taken down modern Israeli Merkava tanks in Lebanon, and so the relatively light armor of the Panzer IIIs was no challenge. The Germans could have rolled up a heavy Tiger-I or even one of their monster tanks from later in the war. It would have made little difference. The missile would have blown through the 185mm armor of a Tiger II with little difficulty.

Wellborn was on the radio at once. “Westhoven? Come in. What is your situation?”

The commanding officer had no better results on the inland road. “Heavy resistance! We can’t get armor into firing position. They’re hitting us with something new. We’re waiting for the 88s, and then we’ll put ranged fire on those tanks.”

“Same here-some kind of rocket. They just killed Becker and three of his panzers! Where is Kersten’s artillery? Why have they stopped firing?”

“They were hit by mortar fire and fell back another two kilometers out of range. We’ll get supporting fire back soon enough. And I’m calling for air support as well.”

“Air support? Way down here?”

“Meindel’s Stukas are up over the Terek now. Just you wait and see what a few 500 pound bombs will do!”

That was good news, but Wellman had a strange feeling in his gut about this engagement. “I don’t like this Generalleutnant. These weapons have neutralized our advantage in armor. I tried two infantry assaults but the volume of defensive fire is very heavy. We must have an MG platoon in front of us.”

“We thought the same, but listen, Wellman. I know the sound of every Russian machine gun we’ve ever seen. No, this is something new, and it’s some kind of light machine gun. This is most likely a Guards SMG platoon.”

“Well enough… But if the Russian infantry fights like this from here on out…” He did not have to finish the sentence. Thus far the Germans had been able to handle anything the Russian Army put in front of them, but Wellman had an inner feeling that the law of overstretch was now coming into play. They were reaching the high water mark for the tide of steel and fire that had swept into Russia. The enemy was fighting hard at Stalingrad, and now they seemed to be equally tenacious here, and at Grozny to the northwest.

A Guards SMG platoon? Yes, that made better sense. Perhaps something more was afoot here as well. He could feel it, sense it. Something was wrong with this engagement. His troops should have been able to sweep into that rail depot in an hour. Instead he lost six armored fighting vehicles and nearly a full platoon of infantry. The rest of the column was coming up, but he ordered their 75mm Infantry gun to deploy further back and was planning to use it in an indirect firing role. He took a deep breath, watching corporal Schmidt to his left, who had been listening to the whole conversation. Wellman gave him a sidelong glance.

“Don’t worry, Schmidt. Did you think they would give us the road to Baku without a good fight?”

“No sir. But they have been retreating for so long.”

“Yes, and it started to feel easy, didn’t it? Well it’s never easy when the other fellow says no, here I stand and you will have to come for me if you wish to pass.”

“Well what will we do, Oberleutnant?”

“You heard Westhoven. The Stukas will be here soon.”

He started pulling slowly on the fingers of his gloves, tugging at them, his mind thinking hard on something. Schmidt had seen that look on the Oberleutnant’s face before, and he knew that, quite literally, the gloves were coming off when Wellman fell into this kind of mood.

“Contact Second Battalion. Tell them to move their entire column up.” He squinted at his map. We’ll hit them on their right flank, through that oil tank farm. There’s good cover for an infantry advance there, he thought. And then we’ll just have to slug it out, building by building, until we reach that main warehouse. And we have SMGs too…

* * *

Dobrynin was on his radio, yammering in Troyak’s ear. “I’ll have to pull the Mi-26 out and return it to the Anatoly Alexandrov. German planes, Troyak. It looks like fifteen or twenty on the radar.”

Troyak did not like the sound of that. These would probably be those same German dive bombers they had faced earlier. The German’s weren’t stupid. They could see that he had the firepower on the ground to stop them, and what they really needed was concentrated indirect fire on the Russian position. In about fifteen minutes that artillery will be down on us again, but first things first.

“Troyak to all hovercraft. Track and engage incoming enemy aircraft! Troyak to Fedorov, come in.”

“Fedorov here.”

“We’ll need fire support from the Shilka. If you haven’t already done so, deploy your radars and prepare to fire.”

“We’re ready now,” said Fedorov. “I’m heading your direction.”

“What about Orlov?”

“Zykov is searching the detainment center now. I was going to look for the Commissar, but then the Germans attacked so I moved the ZSU to a reserve position.”

“Good job, colonel. Orlov isn’t going anywhere soon. Zykov will find him. Bring the ZSU up here to my position east of the lake. Just follow the railroad tracks. But watch out for those German planes!”

The SA-N-5 was an older Russian naval SAM, with two quad mounts on the big Aist 609 hovercraft guarding the harbor. Called the “Arrow” by the Russians it was an old friend, but nonetheless very capable of tracking and destroying the threat posed by the German planes. Soon the scene was much the same as when the Anatoly Alexandrov first appeared in the midst of a Stuka raid over the Caspian Sea. The arrows streaked up into the grey sky, eager to find targets with their passive IR guided noses, and soon they began to get hits. With a maximum range of just over four kilometers, however, the German planes were already over the target and screaming down in their diving runs.

Now Fedorov looked up through his binoculars as the motors whirred to elevate the quad 23mm guns on the Shilka. The Russian radar guided guns were soon firing at enemy planes well above the low cloud deck, beyond Fedorov’s visual range. The noise of the guns prompted him to let his binoculars fall to his chest and cover his ears. The guns were capable of firing at nearly a thousand rounds per minute, but with a typical ammunition load of only2000 rounds, they were most often used in short bursts of three rounds per barrel. That was still enough to put twelve 23mm rounds on a target, with good accuracy, and in sustained burst mode the gunners might fire 30 rounds per barrel and put out ten times that volume.

There were eighteen German planes aloft, and the missiles quickly got nine. The Shilka had already made four kills when the bombs began to fall. At least five Stukas made it close enough to release their 500 pound bombs, and now they came screaming down on the rail yard churning up the steel rails and wood ties as they exploded with thundering concussion. Three bombs fell in the yard and island between the two opposing positions, but two landed right on target, plowing right into the main depot terminal and warehouse receiving building where Troyak’s Marines were hunkered down.

The enemy planes wheeled away, the last one chased by a missile that could make a quick 6G turn to blow off its tail as it tried to flee north. The Germans had paid a heavy price, but the bombs they delivered had struck a hard blow.

“Fedorov to Troyak. Come in Sergeant.”

There was no reply.

* * *

Wellman clenched his fist when the bombs struck home. “Got them!” He had watched in horror as the sky was scored by what looked like Katyushas, but they were firing in small groups of four rockets each, racing up to find the Stukas as they tipped over into their final dive. He could not see how many planes were hit, but he could hear them going down, engines still screaming with wrath as they fell. The concussion of the bombs gave him heart, though he saw that most were falling short. Another two hundred meters and they would have hit his own position! Then the last two struck home and roared into the main warehouse and depot.

He heard the whine of artillery shells joining the awful noise of the battle. Kersten’s guns were back! Good! Now was the time to get his infantry ready.

“Schmidt! Get on the radio to A Platoon. Tell them to attack through the tank farm as soon as we lift the artillery barrage! We will move in that direction and support them.”

Wellman wanted to follow up the heavy weapons with a lightning swift infantry assault along the coast supported by reinforcements coming up from II Battalion, and the terrain near the tank farm offered the only good avenue of approach. On his own front he could throw the entire weight of his two companies in an attempt to occupy the island in the center of the rail yard, a cluster of small buildings and trees. From there they could provide flanking fire for the main assault on the coast.

“Schmidt… Signal II Battalion that they are to follow our A platoon as soon as they arrive. Now we storm these damn Russian Guards and make an end of this. Rockets or no rockets-this is work for good infantry, and of that we have plenty.”