Opening Moves

However, the confined space then worked against them, funnelling them forward one by one. A ‘Deux’ agent dropped the first three, two bullets a man, piling the corpses on each other as momentum drove the dead flesh on.

Caught in the act of reloading his Beretta, the agents head jerked back as a burst from a PPS took his life, his body slithering down the stairs and adding itself to the pile accumulating there.

The second agent, having dragged Crisp up the stairs, turned to help and was dropped by the same weapon, his lifeblood rapidly washing the stairs onto which he fell.

Crisp, the Thompson slung around his shoulder, groggily tried to get the weapon into action but could not disentangle himself. His hand sought and found the comforting butt of the Beretta pistol. Ears still ringing from the grenade’s blast, he brought up the handgun and put four bullets into the men moving up the stairs. The lead man fell back into those behind and the advance stopped in an instant.

Shaking his head, the Paratrooper Major quickly released the fouled strap and found the familiar shape and feel of the Thompson helped clear his mind.

It was the American sub-machine gun that stopped the next attempt to gain the stairs.

At the main staircase, Ramsey’s Webley had been emptied stopping an assault, paratroopers suddenly able to enter the garden from the North Ward, the resistance offered by Knocke and Valois having been smashed aside.

Mounting the stairs, a few were picked off from behind, commandos and orderlies with rifles dropping men from safe vantage points in the accommodation part of the Château Supérieur. Twenty-five steps carried the survivors up to the drawbridge leading to the Grand Bastion, but no further. A ‘Deux’ agent used his M3A1 Grease Gun to good effect, emptying the thirty round contents of his magazine and killing or wounding the lead five troopers.

The garden was rapidly becoming a slaughter ground, and the Russian paratroopers grew more desperate in their assaults to gain entry to the Bastion.

Every entrance was assaulted and mini battles raged, each the property of a handful of men from both sides.

The lower room was breached and paratroopers pressed in, the handful of defenders engaged in hand-to-hand combat around the stairs. Here the Soviets had the advantage and the defenders were pressed hard.

The agent covering the main entrance with Ramsey took a round in the stomach and collapsed on the floor, rolling dramatically down the stairs before coming to rest against the inner door, writhing in pain and out of the fight.

Three paratroopers threw themselves through the main doors, bodies made small but still expectant and scared.

One young Russian prodded the badly wounded agent in the throat with his SVT automatic rifle, the bayonet opening a nasty gash and silencing the Frenchman’s moans.

At the top of the stairs, Ramsey was reloading his pistol, one round at a time, aware that he was about to become part of a race in which there was only one winner and losing had a price.

The fourth bullet slid home into the Webley’s chamber as the SVT man saw the movement at the top of the stairs. The automatic rifle barked three times, each bullet missing the Black Watch Major, but each close enough to heighten Ramsey’s fear.

The three paratroopers rose as one as the fifth bullet went home, their shouts of ‘Urrah!’ adding to the pressure of the situation.

All three Russians fired from the hip as they bounded up the stairs, one bullet passing through Ramsey’s right armpit leaving no trace on his body.

The sixth bullet went home and the Webley was closed, the two actions joined together by speed and urgency.

Ramsey brought the handgun up in an instant and fired.

The first .455 bullet took the SVT man in the chest, throwing him against the left–hand wall with the force of the impact, the second missed, chipping the stonework on its way down the stairs.

Switching to the second man, two more bullets took him down, dead before he hit the stairs.

The third man ducked low and left, intent on driving his bayonet into the British officer. Ramsey twisted as best he could to avoid the blade and, in so doing, missed with his fifth and final shot. The Russian barrelled into him and both crashed to the floor, Ramsey winded and pinned under the not inconsiderable weight of the larger man.

The Soviet paratrooper, benefitting from the softer landing, recovered quicker. One hand found Ramsey’s throat and a knee pinned his opponent’s right arm as the Russian tried to retrieve a knife from his belt.

Ramsey started to see stars before his eyes as the pressure of the man’s steel grip grew and his free arm, desperately trying to find a point of weakness on his assailant, started to lose power.

The weight suddenly lifted from the Englishman’s chest and he was able to draw breath, choking and coughing, eyes misty and blurred, but not so much that he hadn’t seen the red spout as something burst out of the Russian’s chest.