Devil's Garden

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They came in fast, loud and with thunder clap surprise, the engines of the three hovercraft roaring like sea demons. The two smaller craft led the way, speeding in north of the main harbor to find narrow strands along the shore. Hovercraft 639 was up near the rail yard, landing on a narrow beach just south of a small oil loading area. The rail lines ran very near the coast here as they bent south toward the main harbor and the front ramp slowly descended as the craft stormed up onto the beach under the watchful guard of the twin 14.5mm machine gun turret. To anyone that saw it that evening, it may have appeared like a wrathful beast from the sea, 280 tons of metal roaring beneath the grey, low hanging gloom.

The plan was to hit the coast fast, and seize key objectives before the advancing German formations could reach the port. Hovercraft 640 landed about 200 meters south on a narrow gravel embankment fringed by a long stone jetty. Within seconds the front ramps were down and the rumble of the PT-76 tanks added to the cacophony of noise. They were relative relics by the year 2021, withdrawn from active deployment over seven years ago and replaced in all main line Naval Marine units by the T-80. But that new tank weighed over 42 tons, and the PT-76s scrounged up at the naval base at Kaspiysk weighed only 14 tons. Admiral Volsky had opted for anything he could get on the hovercraft, and so the legacy tank did the job better than anything new in the Russian inventory. It was actually designed to work with the old hovercraft they were using, and they went with it.

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