Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) by John Schettler

Author:John Schettler [Schettler, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: The Writing Shop Press
Published: 2014-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

Part VII

Wolf in the Fold

“History never repeats, but attitudes and arguments, dilemmas and excuses, clichés and delusions recur with the inevitability of a sun setting on successive empires.”

—Karl E. Meyer / Shareen Blair Brysac: Kingmakers

Chapter 19

The evening passed uneventfully, as Troyak had predicted. They saw the French move what looked to be a few platoons of infantry into positions at the edge of the town. A few set up in the palm groves, and one squad had moved into the old Roman ruins, but otherwise no attempt was made to approach the Chateau. It was what he did not see that encouraged him most—enemy artillery. The troops assigned to this garrison did not seems to have much in the way of heavy weapons. He noted machineguns, and a few mortars, but no other guns. Mortars would be hard to aim and fire on a position like this, he thought. And our mortars will be much more accurate to take out any that try—as long as our ammunition holds out.

“Zykov,” he said to the Corporal. “How many rounds did they drop off for the 82s?”

“About a hundred each, but that includes ten smoke rounds and five illumination rounds.”

They had brought in a pair of 2B14 Podnos mortars, a lightweight system that was sometimes called the M82. A muzzle loaded, drop fired system, it could range out a little over 4000 meters with HE rounds and had a good rate of fire. Troyak had one on the north apex of the fort, and one on the south tower. The two AGS-30 autogrenade launchers were placed in the center, east facing apex of the fort, in the towers above moat bridge and gate. The hill they were on commanded the entire scene, and Troyak knew that any attempt to take this fort with infantry would be suicidal for the attackers. The flanks of the hill were too steep, and the towers had good fields of fire in all directions, with view slits on multiple levels.

No. This fortress could only be broken by firepower, which is why he was relieved that the French here seemed to have no artillery. The only other threat they had considered would be an air strike, and for that they brought along four Ilga ‘needle’ hand held SAMs, and one satchel held four replacement missiles. It was a thin shield, with only 8 missiles, but was more than any comparable force of that day could claim by way of air defense. If they got into real trouble from above, they could also call on the KA-40, which had been rigged out with pods of air-to-air SAMs as part of its mission loadout.

Around midnight, the watch saw a small squad of legionnaires moving quietly towards the flanks of the hill. The men watched with interest and the five man group labored up the hill, moving from one gully to the next, and trying to be as stealthy as possible. They could not know that they were being watched on infrared and night vision equipment, and seen as easily as they might be in broad daylight.

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