Orlov saw the woven gold and white on red felt of an NKVD officer’s badge on the man’s sleeve, a colonel from the insignia on his hat, and the man was looking him over from head to foot.
“You are Commissar Molla?” Orlov’s finger moved to the trigger of the pistol in his jacket pocket, and two of the other men now seemed tensely alert. He knew if he fired and killed this man he was a dead man himself, but he did not care.
“Molla is down the road. If you have orders for him, give them to me. I’ll see that he gets them.”
Orlov shook his head. “Sorry comrade Colonel, I was told to speak directly to the Commissar. Where is he, please?”
The colonel did not like that. He was a man accustomed to seeing other men do exactly what he told them, and without any lip or hesitation. He was, as the fat man in the red brick building had hinted, one of Beria’s men. Lavrentiy Beria was the notorious head of the state security apparatus, and he had some very vile habits that often saw him send men out to sweep the villages for young pretty women, particularly when he was near his old homeland in the Caucasus as he was now. The colonel put his hands on his hips and squared off to Orlov, anger evident on his face.
“Did you hear me, Captain?”
Orlov noted the leather straps crossed on the man’s chest, the prominent collar boards, thick black belt with a gold star in a square buckle, flared pant legs above black leather boots. Another damn officer, he thought, his hand tightening on the revolver.
Haselden squinted through his field glasses and saw the group of NKVD men taking to another tall man, and something did not seem right to his well trained eye. The group was tense, one man in the back was pointing a sleek submachine gun at the newcomer. Something was wrong here. He peered through the glasses, adjusting the focus and thinking that this might be their man. He stood a head above the others, and his uniform was different. Clearly he was not like the other NKVD men they had been watching near the warehouse from their well concealed cover blind.
“Damn, Sutherland. Have a look at this. Could that be our man?”
Sutherland took the field glasses, careful to note the sun so the lenses would not catch the light. He took a long look and sighed. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “He’s too far away to get a good look at him.”
“But the whole scene looks suspicious. Looks like trouble.”
Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a church bell ringing out a warning in the town. Sutherland pivoted slightly, re-focusing on the distant river to the west. “Well, well, well… Looks like we’ve got company.”
Even as they finished they heard the distant, mournful mutter of machine gun fire, and then the high whistling fall of an incoming round. There was an explosion near the river, a little south of the main town site, then another and another.
Haselden knew the sound of those rounds. They were coming in from an 8-cm schwere Granatwerfer 34 German mortar. The weapon earned a fierce reputation for its good range, accuracy and rate of fire during the war, though this was more likely due to the expertise of the men who used it. Haselden could see that these were simple covering fire rounds, getting the range as much as anything else, though those machine guns had to be firing at something.
“Looks like Jerry is crashing the party,” said Sutherland.
“It certainly does,” Haselden returned, steely eyed.
As the first rounds came in the group of NKVD men acted quickly. Three had their weapons trained on Orlov and he was hustled up into the back of a truck. Haselden had to think quickly. “Look, Davey, if that’s our man he’ll be out of town and heading north on a truck if we don’t move now.” His sibilant whisper conveyed the urgency of the moment as he reached for his STEN gun.
“Well we didn’t come all this way for nothing,” said Sutherland firmly. “Let’s get on with it then.” He looked over his shoulder, flashing a hand signal to Sergeant Terry, who was quickly mounting a round on the nose of his PIAT and slapping home a C-clip cartridge on to top of the Bren Light Machinegun he was manning. The Sergeant was their fire support man, and on Sutherland’s signal he opened up on the front of truck with the LMG in a series of brisk, short bursts.
Haselden and Sutherland were up and running in a low crouch, closing on the back side of the warehouse. There was shouting, men running out of every door in the old building, weapons ready, and over it all came the whine of more German mortar rounds and now the distant growl of an armored car.
The two commandos fell in behind some cover, with Sutherland rolling to one side and already laying down covering fire. The NKVD men scattered, jumping behind any cover they could find and Haselden was up and running. He reached the warehouse and tossed a flash-bang grenade through the wide open door, then ran north along the back of the building.
Sutherland was starting to take return fire in crisp, burps from the Russian submachine guns. Now Sergeant Terry swiveled his Bren to the left and barked out a return, forcing the black Ushankas to go to ground. Sutherland was immediately up and running in towards Haselden’s position. Smoke was coming from the open back warehouse door, and now Haselden tossed another flash-bang around the corner of the building. He was very near the truck, but heard the engine thrum and saw the vehicle starting to move. He looked back at Sergeant Terry and flashed him a quick hand signal. Terry had the PIAT up in a second and the sharp pop of the round firing bit the air. The warhead struck the front right door of the truck and exploded like thunder. The vehicle rocked with the blow and a fire started.
Now Haselden was around the edge of the warehouse, STEN gun at the ready, and firing as he went. Sutherland was right on his heels as they leapt for the back of the truck. Haselden reached it first, peering into the back through the thickening smoke. It was empty, and his eye soon saw why. The canvass top near the front cabin had been torn back and was dangling loosely in the smoky breeze. Obviously the men who had scrambled inside had dislodged the canvas and slipped out when Terry’s Bren gun first bit into the steel of the engine cowling. He swore under his breath, then wheeled on his team mate, his arm stiffly pointing down the line of trucks.
Sutherland saw him turn and fired again at something on his left, then he moved as fast as his feet would take him, running the opposite direction, down the long nine of trucks that were all suddenly moving, their engines thrumming, wheels spinning madly in the dirt as the drivers gunned the big engines. The whole column was working its way back on to the road, and as Sutherland approached he could hear the screams of women and children.
Damn, he thought. The man was nowhere in sight, nor was there any sign of the bloody NKVD men. He heard the renewed firing of Sergeant Terry’s Bren, and now he looked to see what appeared to be a full company of brown uniformed infantry running from the edge of the town, up this very road, and across a wide field to positions at the edge of the Terek river.
Haselden saw the men coming, heard the crack of small arms fire, the bullets whizzing by, but he had not seen what Sutherland knew. He was bravely providing cover fire in the hope that Sutherland could get to their man, but it was a hopeless cause. Just as he realized that the Russians were about to make a final rush at his position, he fired one last sharp burst from his STEN and then fell back, reaching into his breast pocket for a command whistle.
Haselden blew three shrill notes, the signal to fall back to the secondary position they had scouted and prepared earlier by an old barn. He knew he had to get quickly back to a position where he could cover Sergeant Terry’s withdrawal with the heavier weapons and he raced to a low stand of grapevines at the edge of the vineyard that had once filled the warehouse with barrels of wine. That was in a better day, and the long, regular rows of vines had not been properly pruned or well cultivated this year when the war came south. Yet they were enough to give him a little cover, and he laid down a base of fire, seeing Sutherland dashing into the same plantation off to his right.
Terry made a skillful withdrawal, and the chaos of the German attack now commanded the full attention of the Russians. The three men eventually fell back along a stream bed that wound its way around the north fringe of the vineyard and made a breathless rendezvous behind an old weathered barn.
“Bloody hell,” said Haselden. “Anyone hit?”
The others were winded, but unharmed. Sutherland eyed his right shoulder where a bullet had just nicked his jacket. “Now what?” he breathed heavily.
