Armageddon?? (91 page)

“About
twenty in this group, Sir.” Sergeant Stevens asked. “I think you’d better come
and meet our Senior Officer.”

Sergeant
Stevens led Captain Fleming and Staff Sergeant Garvie into a poorly lit cave.
They could see that someone was sitting at the far end hunched over what looked
like a table, though it was probably a large stone. Stevens saluted smartly and
introduced the new comers.

“Sir,
this is Captain Fleming and Staff Sergeant Garvie of 22 SAS.”

“Which
squadron?” The Senior Officer asked.

“G
Squadron, Sir, Air Troop.” Fleming replied, saying ‘sir’ because the voice
sounded like someone senior in rank to him.

The
figure, a veritable giant of a man at just less than two meters in height,
stood up and stepped forward into the light, Fleming and Garvie recognised him
at one. After all they had seen his photograph often enough.

“A
pleasure to make your acquaintance, Captain Fleming, Staff Sergeant Garvie.”
Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling, formerly of the Scots Guards, 8 Commando
and Special Air Service, said stretching out his right hand. “I take it you
have orders to extract groups like mine?”

Fleming
and Garvie had never shaken hand with a corpse, or was he a soul, and it was a
rather strange experience, yet Stirling seemed as alive as they did.

“Yes,
Sir I have. Our orders are to gather intelligence and evacuate as many military
personnel as possible.

“Can
I ask how many of there are you?”

“Twenty
three, some British, there are a few Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians, Indians, South
Africans and what not. We’ve got a Zulu here who died at Rorke’s Drift and his
stories are going to change the history books. I think I can speak for everyone
but we are pretty keen to do what we can to liberate this place, just give us
the tools. I for one have been waiting for eighteen years to give something
back to the demons.”

“We’ll
get evacuation laid on as soon as we can, Sir.” Fleming said. “Do you know of
any other groups near-by?”

“There
are small groups scattered all over now. Mostly, we’ve been keeping our heads
down and trying not to get found but the war’s changed all that. You know
there’s a liberated area up in the Fifth Circle?”

“Free
Hell Sir. Run by the People’s Front For The Liberation of Hell. That’s mostly a
Yank operation but we’re all involved in getting people out.”

“Well,
Yanks or not, you better get word to them, they’re in trouble. Our OPs have
spotted a big force of demons converging on the river bank opposite the area
they’re holding. About 30,000 foot sloggers and 1,300 fliers. No cavalry that
we can see.”

Fleming
and Garvie exchanged glances. Even with the influx of deceased volunteers and
the support of special forces units from Earth, a force over 30,000 baldricks
was too much even for modern weaponry to cope with. If that attack got
launched, it was going to overrun Free Hell. “Thank you Sir. We’ll get word
straight through and see what can be done.”

DIMO(N)
Transit Facility, Fort Bragg

“Colonel
Aidan Dempsey, Sir, a pleasure to meet you.” The current commander of 22 SAS
said once Stirling, who was the last man through, stepped into the transit
facility.

“Likewise,
Colonel.” Dempsey’s predecessor replied. “I can’t say I feel too clever
though.”

“I’m
afraid you can’t stay here too long, Sir. We haven’t solved the problem of
bring people back from Hell to Earth yet, but we’ll transfer you and your men
to an area of Hell we control. I understand you wish to offer us your
services?”

“Of
course, Colonel. Both myself and my men have been waiting for revenge for a
long time, and I think we can help you locate more groups like us. Just give us
the appropriate equipment and training and we’ll do the job.”

“It
will be a pleasure to have you in this fight, Sir. If you’ll just follow me
I’ll take you to Camp Brimstone.”

Chapter
Sixty Three

Third
Platoon, Second Company, Third Battalion, Fourth Regiment, 247th Motor Rifle
Division, Phlegethon River Front, Hell

The
BMP-2 was shut down, its hatches sealed and firmly dogged in place,
overpressure system on to prevent harpy gas and flame leaking in from outside.
Bullets were rattling off the armor plate as the three MICVs machine-gunned
each other in an attempt to drive off the hordes of harpies that were swarming
all over the vehicles, tearing at anything breakable. Last time Lieutenant
Anatolii Ivanovich Pas'kov had looked through the turret optics, a dozen or
more of the beasts were trying to bend the barrel of his 30mm cannon, he didn’t
think they had succeeded but he was reluctant to fire the gun anyway. He
hunched down, trying to ignore the acrid fumes from the gunfire that was
creating havoc with the harpies outside. Only, some of the acrid stench wasn’t
cordite residue, it was the smell of the harpies’ acidic blood attacking bare
metal. Certainly the chemical weapons-resistant paint on the BMP was protecting
most of the hull from corrosion but there were still parts that were vulnerable
to acid.

His
little command had done well at first. The Tungaska had fired its eight
laser-guided missiles and turned more that a dozen harpies into spiraling
explosions, then its 30mm cannon had started chopping more out of the sky. The
BMPs had joined in, their turret cannon selecting the closest harpies and
shooting them out of the sky. But there had been so many of them, more than
200,000 so the intelligence reports said, and the hundred or so that the 30mm
guns had killed were hardly noticeable. The rest had descended on the vehicles
and started their assault. Oh, Pas’kov knew that their claws and teeth would
not get through the armor but the harpies had other weapons as well. They
breathed fire and there was much on an armored vehicle that could burn. The
Tungaska had already gone, its engine compartment had caught fire and its crew
had been forced to abandon their vehicle into the flock of harpies. They’d
tried to run for the BMPs but they were brought down, torn apart and eaten
before they’d made more than a pace or two. Pas’kov had been glad of that in a
way, he wouldn’t have opened his hatches to let them in anyway.

“Ammunition
is running out.” The cry was from one of the two riflemen in the fighting
compartment of the vehicle. They were hosing fire out of the fighting ports in
the rear compartment, the steel floor covered with their expended cartridge
cases. The BMP was carrying more that its allowed load of munitions but the
rate of expenditure was such that even its enhanced stocks were getting short.
Pas’kov swung the turret, feeling the power traverse fighting the harpies
swarming outside, and let off a burst from his co-axial machine gun. The
harpies trying to bend his 30mm cannon barrel were caught unawares and the
heavy machine gun burst tore into them, spraying acid blood into the air and
causing their flesh to char. The cordite smoke-laden air inside the BMP got
more dense if that was possible, the heat rising further.

“Get
us out of here, we must pull back.”

“We
cannot, the transmission is jammed.” The driver’s words didn’t really make
sense but Pas’kov guessed what had really happened, the suspension was being
attacked by acid and the treads were jammed.

Instead,
he got the radio, with just a little luck, it might be working. The whip
antenna had long gone, torn off by the harpies, but the little blade antenna
might still be intact.

“Company,
this is Three. We’re running out of ammunition and are trapped. Our AA vehicle
is gone. We need final protective fire now. Right on top of us.”

Pas’kov
knew his company commander realized the same thing that Pas’kov himself had
done. Calling fire directly on his position was suicide, the guns would tear
the armored vehicles apart. But it was better to go that way than be shredded
and eaten by the harpies screaming outside.

“Request
approved. Being passed up. Hold on Three. Seal down tight. Full protocol.”

Guards
Special Mortar Regiment, Northern Front, Phlegethon River.

The
great 300mm rockets loaded into the Smerch multiple-launch rocket system were
black, with glaring yellow bands painted around their nose. No other rocket had
quite such vivid or elaborate markings and for a very good reason, nobody
wanted these rockets to be confused with anything else. Even the Smerch crews
were afraid of them and their cargo. They’d taken them out of their storage
boxes with painstaking care, only too aware that one accident, one slip meant a
ghastly death for all around them. Guards Captain Yurii Leonidovich Zabelin had
personally supervised the loading process himself and inspected all the firing
connections and status checks before reporting his battery ready to fire. Then,
he had been told to wait for the current barrage was the work of the heavy
guns. The Smerch launchers with their deadly black rockets would have their
time, when the right moment came.

The
radio in the command vehicle suddenly jumped to life. The right moment had
come.

B-52H
“Emma Peel” 28,000 feet over the Phlegethon River.

“That
makes life a bit better.” The red-and-gray camouflaged B-52s had burst out of
the murk at 28,000 feet and Colonel Haymen had pulled back on the lever that
operated the engine filters. They’d rotated though 90 degrees, so they were now
parallel to the air flow through the engines and the pick-up in power was
immediate. The Gray Lady was back to performing the way she should and the old
adage held true again. Never underestimate the Gray Lady.

“Hammer
Control, this is Storm flight, we’ve broken out of the clag at 28,000 feet. Air
is clean up here. Light still red, but visibility good. Tell the Bones to get
up here if they want a long, fast cruise.”

“We’ll
do that Hammer Flight. Be advised, a pair of B-29s did test drops for you.
Computed ballistic corrections hold true, no need to correct programming for
bomb drops.”

“Thanks
Control. And thank the guys in the Superforts for us too.” Haymen sighed
slightly in relief. That was one of the problems of fighting in non-Euclidean
hell, there had been no guarantee that the bombs stuffed into Emma’s belly and
hanging under her wings would drop true. The only way that anybody could find out
was to try and that was what the B-29s had been doing. Drop bombs, compare
impact points with those projected and calculate corrections. It had been a
long, arduous job, constantly dropping and recalculating, it was lucky the old
Superforts had been available to do it. Otherwise more valuable aircraft would
have had to be taken out of the line.

“Take
everybody up to 32,000. We can expect the drop order soon.”

“Hey,
wait for me.” The plaintive voice came from Major Hennessy at the back of the
formation. His “Vengeance Is Mine” was the only B-52D in the group of 72 B-52s
that were lining up ready for their strike. A museum recovery, it just didn’t
have the engine power of the Gs and Hs.”

“Come,
on, hurry up old-timer. We haven’t got all day.”

“Hurry
up? Hurry up!! I’ll have you know that at least our wings are level back here.”

Haymen
snorted. The B-52s had all been through a very hurried “Big Belly” modification
that had seen provision for 750 pound bombs increased from 51 to 80. The
problem was that the G and H models had a lighter wing structure than earlier
marks and now those wings were bent in a graceful curve from tip to root. Only
the solitary D-model had wings that were still uncurved. It still carried more
bombs as well, 88 instead of 80.

“OK,
OK. All Storm birds. The Superforts have confirmed the corrections, we can use
the programmed bomb drop. Waiting for word now.”

Command
HQ, Camp Hell-Alpha, Hell

“How
goes the day Tovarish General?” General David Petraeus stood in front of his
view screen, looking at the Russian commander at the other end

General
Ivan Semenovich Dorokhov was a harassed-looking man, already tired from the
volume of fighting that was going on. “It is a bloody day Bratishka. We are
holding them in the North at great cost but the force in the south has bitten
deep into the defenses. The North too will start to collapse soon, we are
already getting requests from the front line to bring down fire on our own
positions. The harpies in the north are pinning our men down, our artillery is
hammering the follow-on forces but soon they will have crossed the river and
then our positions will fall fast. Still, we have some tricks to play yet and
your bombers are ready I think.”

“On
your word Tovarish General, just give us the word. Good news, the air is clear
up where they are, they can hold up there for longer than we thought. And in
the South?”

“Bad.
The enemy there are half way through our defense zone. They are paying a
terrible price but they have naga carried by Rhinolobsters that are very
effective and the Wyverns have done us some harm. But our artillery hit the
nagas with white phosphorus and the Wyverns are no match for fighters. The
advance there will run out of power soon. But we might need to counter-attack
them before they can break through. It will be a finely-judged thing, whether
their advance runs out of energy before we stop them.”