The cold swords flashed in the grey dawn, and the thunderous sound of ten thousand horseman shook the ground. At one point in the column, six armored cars put up a gallant defense, the machine guns in their armored turrets taking a fearful toll. But they could not stem the tide, and the Cossacks swept by, some hurling Molotov cocktails at the light armored vehicles, and adding more fire and torment to the morning. Others threw grappling hooks and the horsemen literally toppled two of the armored cars by dragging them onto their side, rendering them useless.
Soldiers shaken by the terrible explosion, yet still alive on the outer fringes of the detonations, were dazed and confused, some barely struggling to their feet only to be cut down by those flashing sabres. The carnage was terrible to behold, and soon the chaos of panic began to spread, from one platoon to another until the encampment became a rout. The Cossacks swept through like a tide of death until they reached the village ofKochernevo, just south of the main road. There the hard shorn horsemen galloped through the cobblestone streets, setting fire to every building they could reach with Molotov cocktails and torches-fighting fire with fire. This was the site of the enemy headquarters, and now all the Majors and Captains were put to the test of war, and they fled in all directions, many ridden down and slaughtered by the last waves of the cavalry.
There had been many battles like this throughout the long history of the bloody Russian civil war. Tartar and Cossack cavalry units prowled the Siberian woodlands, but were seldom deployed en mass like this against formed units of a modern army. Yet here they had caught their foe completely by surprise, shocked and stunned by Karpov’s deadly new weapons.
High above, Karpov was watching the battle with his field glasses, as he often did on the ship. He had become accustomed to thinking behind the protective cups of the eye pieces, and watching the action unfold, as if he was seeing it in a movie. It brought him closer to it all without having to go there himself and actually enter the fray, which is just as he preferred things. Combat was for stupid soldiers. He was a General, an Admiral, and soon to become a head of state. These soldiers were merely things he used to achieve his ends, as he had thought to use the awesome power of Kirov.
He saw the gallant and deadly charge, the carnage it inflicted, and was elated. But soon, he knew, the enemy would respond by bringing up armor from the heart of that mechanized cavalry unit. The shock of his attack had done its job, completely unhinging the enemy river crossing operation, and so now he turned and gave another order to Bogrov.
“SignalKalmenikov. Tell him to pull his Cossacks out and proceed to the rally point. And be certain they leave behind those gifts!”
The late Christmas presents Karpov was delivering were thickets of hand deployed mines, that were being dropped all over the ground as the horsemen withdrew. Now, when a more organized column of armored cars came barreling up the main road intoKochernevo, they got another nasty surprise, running right over the mines, which exploded to send the lead vehicle hurling up and then crashing down onto its side in another fiery wreck.
“Begin regular bombing now. Let them taste our conventional munitions.”
Abakan was high up, but a hovering zeppelin was a near perfect bombing platform, with unequaled stability. The long rack of 100 pound bombs were deployed from each gondola, and the rain of evil metal fell unerringly to the scene below, the bomblets erupting with more fury, setting off many of the mines and leaving the whole target zone a hell of fire and shrapnel. The last touch were the barrels of another mixture Karpov had devised with his engineers, a makeshift napalm that he sent careening down into the entire mix, ending the attack with the hideous assault of fire, even as it had begun.
The hammer had fallen. The lesson had been taught, but it now remained to be seen whether Volkov would get the message Karpov was delivering that day. He would soon learn that the heart and soul had been burned out of his 9th Infantry Division, and his 8th Armored Cavalry Brigade had been gutted. There would be no river crossing operation that day, and by nightfall the remaining units were beginning to withdraw down the long road west to Omsk.
Karpov monitored their slow, steady progress, content. Now he contemplated what he might say to Volkov after his little victory on theOb here. Should he offer the man a truce, demand the return of Omsk and withdrawal of all his divisions on Free Siberian territory to the south of Novosibirsk? He knew that Volkov had three big zeppelins operating there, the units Symenko had told him about, but thus far, only the 15th Division had been seen to cross the border zone. It was probing toward his defenses on the lower Ob.
