Free Blood and Ice by Leo Kessler

little mortar pit, even the red flag fluttering bravely in the centre of their perimeter.
    He had them completely at his mercy. Suddenly Obersturmbanführer Otto Habicht chuckled. It was an unearthly sound.

THREE
    The flare hissed into the still morning air like a bird of prey. Down below the startled Russians stared up at the green ball of light descending on their perimeter, staining the snow a sickly hue. Gradually the flare came to rest and died a slow, hissing death in the snow.
    Everywhere Suslov’s Grey Eagles clutched their weapons and stared to their front. The Major, upright next to his command post, machine pistol in hand, was as tense and uneasy as his men. What the hell was going on?
    Suslov darted through the scuffed snow and focused his glasses on the bend from which the Fritzes must surely come. There was no sign of activity. One thing he noticed, however. The campfires had gone out. Did that signify the Fritzes were going to attack? Or were they perhaps withdrawing, realizing that it would be impossible to pass his position. His heart leapt with sudden joy. He had stopped the Fritz drive through the mountains with only a handful of casualties – the men lost in the crashed glider. He swung round to his expectant men and opened his mouth to pass on the news. But no words emerged.
    For in that same moment, two things happened. Down below engines roared into life, among them the massive rumble of tanks. A second later there was a sharp crack high above his head. He glanced upwards in alarm. Just in time to catch the stab of scarlet flame burning across the snow.
    ‘ Alarm! ’ he cried at the top of his voice. ‘ Stand by everywhere! Mortars? ’ – his words were drowned by the crash of a medium sized shell bursting right into the centre of the perimeter and exploding with a hellish roar. The Fritzes had some how managed to get a gun on the height above them! In that same moment, the first halftrack burst round the bend and into the open.

    Schulze, crouched behind the long recoilless rifle took careful aim, just as the first halftrack came rattling up the mountain road. Controlling his breathing, he squeezed the trigger gently. The gun thudded against his shoulder. Hot blast swept backwards and the dark flash of the shell whizzed from the muzzle of the strange gun. The shell exploded right in the middle of the Russians manning the furthest mortar. They flew apart, as if punched into the air by some gigantic fist.
    ‘Excellent, Schulze!’ Habicht cried exuberantly and ducked as the first enraged burst of Russian machine-gun fire came zipping in their direction.
    ‘Load!’ Schulze bellowed. ‘Come on you big Cheesehead, move it!’
    ‘ In! ’ the, big flaxen-headed Hollander yelled and thrust the shell home.
    Schulze took aim again. He pressed the trigger. The gun cracked once more and Schulze cried, ‘Now try that one for size, you Popov pigs!’

    Suslov fought his panic. If his Eagles could only stop one of the vehicles now emerging from cover, they could still block the way over the pass. ‘Kolchak!’ he bellowed over the roar of the escaping German halftracks and the firing of the gun on the heights above them. ‘Knock me out one of those damn Fritzes. QUICK!’
    Suslov left him to it. He grabbed a rifle. ‘Boris, get some grenades – from that box there.’
    ‘Smoke?’
    ‘Yes,’ Suslov said impatiently, fitting the special grenade-launching device to the rifle. Finished, he kicked the nearest machine-gunner in the ribs. ‘You, swing round and give us covering fire up there.’
    ‘But you can’t get up there, Major,’ Boris protested, ducking smartly as another shell slammed home into the perimeter.
    ‘I know. But at least I can blind the swine, while Kolchak does his job. Come on.’
    Together the two of them doubled to the rear of the perimeter, while behind them the machine-gunner opened up, sending a stream of white and red tracer towards the narrow gap high up on the