Anvil Of Necessity

ANVIL OF NECESSITY

Stuart Slade

Dedication

This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of General Ivan Cherniakhovskii

Acknowledgements

Anvil of Necessity could not have been written without the very generous help of a large number of people who contributed their time, input and efforts into confirming the technical details of the story. Some of these generous souls I know personally, others I know only via the internet as the collective membership of “The Board” yet their communal wisdom and vast store of knowledge, freely contributed, has been truly irreplaceable. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Shane Rogers who provided much valuable insight into South East Asian and Australian politics and history.

A particular note of thanks is due to Ryan Crierie who willingly donated his time and great expertise in producing the artwork used for the cover of this book.

I must also express a particular debt of gratitude to my wife Josef a for without her kind forbearance, patient support and unstintingly generous assistance, this novel would have remained nothing more than a vague idea floating in the back of my mind.

Caveat

Anvil of Necessity is a work of fiction, set in an alternate universe. All the characters appearing in this book are fictional and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental. Although some names of historical characters appear, they do not necessarily represent the same people we know in our reality.

Copyright © 2007 Stuart Slade.

Contents

Part One: Anvil

Chapter One: World After War

Chapter Two: World Still At War

Chapter Three: World Going to War

Part Two: Hammer

Chapter One: Raised

Chapter Two: Poised

Chapter Three: Falling

Chapter Four: Striking

Part Three: Necessity

Chapter One: Demands

Chapter Two: Options

Chapter Three: Solutions

Chapter Four: Consequences

Epilogue

Part One – Anvil

Chapter One World after War

Wallsend, Tyneside, UK

“Good simple, solid grub, that's what I like. Not this foreign mucked-about stuff.” John McMullen's voice took up a sneering overtone. “Ree-Zot-Ow. Rah-vee-owli. Spar-get-ee. What's wrong with foreigners, why can't they eat honest meat-and-two-veg like normal people? Nah, they've got to muck around with everything.”

“I'm sorry luv, but its alt the shops have. I searched all day but there aren't potatoes to be had for love nor money. Tried everywhere I did. Even went down to the corner.” Maisie McMullen used the euphemism for the black market with the ease of long habit. “They didn't have none either, not for any price. Had some fish they said was cod from the Atlantic but it looked like herring to me. Didn't want to chance it. But the grocer had this risotto stuff, it was only one point for the box, and I thought it would be best. Looks a bit like potato don't you think?” She tried to smile bravely but tears were trickling down her cheeks.

McMullen looked at his wife crying, guilt at his outburst coiling around inside him. He hadn't been fair, she was doing her best to keep their home looking nice and trying to see they got as close to being well-fed as the scanty food rations would allow. It wasn't her fault there was so little food available and what there was didn't count as honest food for a British stomach. It was the damned Yanks who were responsible, what with them dropping their atom bombs on everybody. “Aye Maisie love. It does look a bit like a good mashed spud doesn't it? And it's pretty tasty when you get used to it. You've done us proud love, I don't know how you keep food on the table honest I don't.”

And that was the truth. The crops had failed in 1947, they'd started the year strong enough, but come harvest season, the ears of wheat withered and the fruit on the trees had shriveled. And the eggs, McMullen's stomach turned at the thought of what the eggs had been like. Even in the worst years of the war, the ration of an egg a week for each adult and one extra for each child under five had been maintained. Now, eggs had gone completely, only the dried egg ration, one packet per month per adult, was available.

Then, the winter had been terrible; it had started snowing in mid-November and hadn't stopped until March. The streets had been blocked up, what little transport was left had come to a halt. Coal was already rationed, then power had been cut as well. The gasworks had shut down, it had only been kept working by a miracle after the Yanks had bombed it, so the snow had just finished the job their Corsairs and Skyraiders had started. Old Missus Archer, they'd as good as kilted her. Two wars she'd survived, then she'd frozen to death, alone in her house. She'd just been one of thousands.

Still, the winter hadn't been all bad. The government had kept conscription running, but instead of putting the men into the armed forces, they'd formed them into shovel-gangs to dig the streets clear. That had at least been work of a sort and it had brought money into the house. Other conscripts had been sent into the mines, trying to get them up and running again, while more had been set to work on the railways. Nobody admitted it but it was the hard cases, collaborators and black marketeers, who'd been sent to work on the railways. It was dangerous work, the Yanks had dropped delayed-action bombs on the railway lines and a lot of them hadn't gone off.

The worst had been down south in Clapham. When the work teams had gone in to try and get the big junction there back into operation, one of them set off a 2,000 pounder. Killed more than two dozen it had. It wasn't just the danger, though, that made clearing the railways a job to be feared. In their relentless bombing of the railway system, the Yanks had found trains had started to hide in the tunnels so they'd drop their rocket-powered bombs on one end to cave the exit in, then toss some jellygas tanks in the other. Nobody got out alive from that death-trap and nobody who saw what the inside of the tunnels looked like afterwards ever forgot it.

Spring had come, such as it was, the snow melted and the work gangs were moved to other tasks; clearing bombsites, removing wreckage, trying to repair what could be repaired. McMullen had been working on clearing bombsites and learned the arts of that task well. It wasn't just a case of shifting the rubble out of the way; each piece had to be inspected for its salvage value. Intact or superficially damaged bricks had to be put carefully to one side for re-use, metal piping sorted and stacked for recovery. Also, the unending vigilance for unexploded bombs and rockets was critical. Every man had a whistle, if he saw something that looked like a UXB, he'd blow it and work would come to a halt. Then a bomb disposal team would come, check it and if it was a danger, either defuse it or blow it up on site.

Everybody had thought that when the spring came, the famine would be over. McMullen had drawn his seed ration from the Government office, gone to his allotment and planted them. He'd been there every evening, tending his little plot of land and babying his crops. Only, they'd come up sick and yellow, then died in the ground. He'd cursed his ineptness, tearing at himself with the accusation that he'd done something wrong to ruin his crop, but then he'd seen that the same had happened all over. It wasn't just his little patch, or the allotment area it was in, but the whole city. Then, on the radio, increasingly grave voices had revealed it wasn't just the whole of the country, the crops had failed across Europe. The winter of 1947/48 had consumed the last food reserves of the war-ravaged continent and there was nothing left. The voices on the radio didn't say so but people in the street knew the truth, it was the damned Yanks and their atom bombs that had caused the disaster.

Now, Britain and France and all the others were depending on charity for their survival. Canada and Australia were sending wheat and meat over. So were the Yanks, conscience money probably, McMullen thought. They thought they could buy their way out of anything. Spain and Italy had also joined in, shipping in as much food as they could to stave off the impending catastrophe. The coming winter was going to be another bad one, McMullen could feel it in his bones. It was still August but he could feel a chill in the air already. Another bad winter to knock a defeated Europe flat on its back again.

He finished off his supper and polished the plate with the last of his three slices of bread. “That wasn't bad Maisie, not so bad at all. Only a point you say? Well, perhaps them foreigners have something after all. Now, I got some good news for us.” He'd been bursting to tell his wife ever since he'd got back from his clearance detail. “The yard is opening up again. They're taking on workers and I start next week. I'll be a riveter again for a while. I'm back in a real job at last.”

Maisie McMullen forgot her depression and her face lit up. “Oh John, That's wonderful. How long's it for?”

“Couple of years at least the Union reckon. Two cruisers are coming in for a complete refit. Spent the war in Australia so they say, now they're off to South Africa. Here's the thing though. After that, the Navy's giving the yard a contract to build a submarine. Only that's a welding job there days so there are some coming over from Canadian Vickers to train us in welding. Union's got something to say about that. Welding's a riveter's job, stands to reason, but the steelworkers are claiming it’s their people who should be getting it. Union says could go to a strike in the end. Still, that's two years down the line they reckon.

His wife cleared the plates off the table. She had a surprise for her husband. When she'd picked up their weekly eight ounce bacon ration from the butcher, he'd told her there would be some sausages in tomorrow and she'd asked him to put three aside for her. Two points each. She'd also got a packet of the new instant mashed potato the Americans were sending over, just add boiling water the packet said. So tomorrow, her husband could have bangers and mash for his supper. That made ten points she'd spent this week, they still had six left and it was Thursday already.

Submarine Bunker, Faslane, UK

This was probably his favorite view, of all the spectacular sites in the great concrete bunker, this was the one that was truly awe-inspiring. After coming down in the lift and stepping out onto the gallery, he could see the whole of the left-hand bay containing the submarine trots stretched out beneath him. The right hand bay, the other side of the thick blast wall, had a problem. The roof of the bunker was massive, 30 feet of reinforced concrete topped with a further six inches as a fuse initiator. The Americans hadn't been able to drive a bomb though it, although the pockmarks in the top and the cracks showed how hard they'd tried. Then, one day, their Skyraiders had dropped a strange bomb, one that bounced across the surface of the water. Fortunately for the occupants of the right hand bay, the steel doors had been closed and they'd kept the strange bomb out but the blast had jammed tlie doors in place. The Germans had built the bunker so strongly, it was proving the devil's work to free them. Meanwhile, there were six perfectly intact Type XXIC U-boats in there, unable to get out.

All six spots in the operational bay were occupied, the first four by U-class submarines, the two furthest away by X-class boats. Commander Robert Fox could recite their names without prompting. Ursula, she was charging batteries, a plume of spray and steam was rising from the exhausts built into her after casing, only to be snatched up by the ventilation hood and carried away, outside the bunker. Then there was Undaunted, the last time Fox had seen her, he was limping into Churchill with her saddle tanks battered in where a German destroyer had placed its depth charges almost, but not quite, accurately enough to do for her. Next to her was Unbroken, the little submarine that had pushed right into the Kattegat and put four torpedoes into the German cruiser Prinz Eugen before getting back to Churchill with her fuel tanks dry. Finally Upstart was de-storing, she'd just come back from a training and monitoring patrol in the North Sea.

The Royal Navy had retained the U-class because they were largely British-equipped and were riveted. The later V-class had been divided out between the Commonwealth navies; they had American-supplied equipment and engines, ones that would cost hard currency to support. Anyway, the V-class were largely welded and it would take time to teach the British shipyard workers how to weld ships.

Right at the end of the line were two larger submarines, ones that overlapped the diminutive U class at both ends. A new class, one that incorporated all the lessons of the War. Derived from the U-class certainly, but radically different. Smooth, streamlined and as fast as a thief underwater. They'd been designed with a complete outer casing, not the saddletank design the British had used for so long. Still had four tubes forward but an extra set of reloads and two short tubes aft for the new anti-escort torpedoes. No gun. that was the big difference. No guns at all. Xanadu was the lead ship of the class, she'd made one patrol before the war had ended. Next to her, was Fox's new command, HMS Xena. New ship, just delivered from Canadian Vickers.

A command that he'd never expected to get. Fox had finished the war as a Lieutenant Commander with a splendid war record and, due to a complete inability to say the right thing to the right person at the right time, looked like finishing his career in the Navy as a Lieutenant-Commander with a splendid war record. In fact, by all rights, his career was already over. He had been passed over for promotion six months after the war had ended and had already started to look for a career outside the Navy. The problem was that the naval officers preferred choice for a post-military career, farming, wasn't practical in a Europe where crops just wouldn't grow and livestock died.

Then, during a particularly onerous meeting in Whitehall, a French Navy representative had started a long lecture on how the RN was going to have to learn to take orders from its betters, ones who hadn't run away to America but had stayed in Europe to make the best they could of things. The diatribe had been interrupted by Fox's fist breaking the Frenchman's nose. The resulting court martial had found him guilty (with extenuating circumstances) of 'Conduct Unbecoming' and sentenced him to a year's loss of seniority. That had put him back in the promotion zone and he'd been made Commander on the next list. Now he had command of HMS Xena. As he mounted the narrow gangway, he got the strange feeling that he was coming home at last.

Xena's wardroom was typical of a war-built submarine, everything done to save time and simplify construction. A central table flanked by seats that could be converted into bunks. A small bookcase, a barometer and a clock and a profusion of piping and ducts, punctuated by valve handwheels. It looked hideous but was severely practical. Exposed piping could be reached and fixed when depth-charging caused it to spring a leak, easy-to-access valves could be shut quickly when blasted open by near-misses. His officers were assembled, waiting for him.

“About time the bar was opened.” Fox said.

The wardroom noted the remark, the Captain's policy about the bar was vital for the happy running of the ship.

“Here's to us. Now that we're together for the first time, I want to make a few points about what I hope to achieve in our first commission. I won't be speaking in this rather pompous manner again, but we have a big task ahead of us. It's been almost ten years since the Royal Navy has been operating on a peacetime footing and we are all out of practice in that regard. The way we will have to do things from now on is likely to be quite different from anything we've been used to. It's not just a matter of going back to 1938, because we aren't in that world any more.

“The Americans changed everything when their bombers took Germany out and we're not certain what the new world is going to look like. I needn't add we're not the same Navy any more either, yon all know that. So to a large extent, we'll be making the rules up as we go along and writing the book as we do so. That's a hell of a privilege, and its one hell of a responsibility. In a very real sense, the navy for the next twenty years is going to be what we make of it in the next three or four.

“A lot of people out there are saying that we don't have a role, that Navies and Armies are obsolete and that all a country needs is a giant fleet of bombers. Well, I think they're wrong. They didn't look and see that it was the Navy that kicked the doors open for SAC's B-36s, they didn't look and see that it was the armies in Russia that bought the time to build those bombers. They didn't see that it was us, the Canadians and the British, who kept the convoys running to Archangel and Murmansk, who took the war into the German's backyard, the Channel, the North Sea and the Arctic. They don't see any of that, so we're going to have to show them.

“That's a big job for us and there aren't many of us to do it. You saw the boats here when you came in. Weil, apart from a handful of destroyers, that's it. The rest of the fleet is laid up, the Government can't afford to pay the crews, even at conscript rates. The eyes of the whole fleet are on us to set an example, to show the country and the rest of the world that we are still the navy. I think, with a bit of luck, we can do that and we should have a very good commission.”

The Wardroom picked up their glasses again. Fair enough, they said to themselves.

Chulachamklao Military Academy, Bangkok Thailand

This was the part that Sergeant Major (First Class) Manop Patmastana had been dreading. The first parade of new officer cadets and the first one under the new rules. The cadets were drawn up by size, tallest at the right, shortest at the left. As Manop walked down the line, he was filled with a growing sense of impending doom. It wasn't the uniforms, quite.

The Army, as was traditional, issued its uniforms in two sizes. Too large and too small, and left the individual cadets to make them fit. The results of giving this task to young men who had never handled a needle and thread before was painfully obvious. Hems and seams were uneven, pants legs were different lengths, threads were hanging down and, if Manop had looked, he was in no doubt he would see wounds where needles had been driven into fingertips. Idly, he wondered how many of the cadets had sewn themselves to their uniforms the night before. He relieved himself by screaming insults and abuse at the more obvious examples of ineptitude. Then he came to the part he was dreading.

The last four cadets were a striking contrast to the rest. The uniforms for example, the alterations might not be professional-grade but they were neat and serviceable. Alterations that showed a disturbing level of familiarity with the art of sewing things. They'd even let the chest of their jackets out slightly, and taken in the waist. Sergeant Major Manop looked at the back with interest. His guess had been correct, they hadn't got that right; pants intended for male soldiers didn't quite fit female rear ends. He leaned forward so his face was barely more than a few centimeters from that of the tallest of the female cadets then let loose with his best parade ground bellow.

“May the Lord Buddha have mercy on us. Who are you and what are YOU doing here?”

The woman's expression didn't change. “Officer Cadet Sirisoon Chandrapa na Ayuthya Sergeant Major. Special Entry Cadet, Sergeant Major.”

Manop swore under his breath, he'd been hoping she would get flustered and call him 'sir” which would give him an excuse to scream more insults. “Officer cadet? You call yourself an officer cadet? Only soldiers can be officers. You're not a soldier are you?”

“Not yet, Sergeant Major.”

“Not yet? Not ever. Women can't be soldiers cadet. Soldiering is man's work. You're not going to be a soldier, cadet, you're taking up the space of somebody who could be. Do you know what a water lily is cadet?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major.”

“Then you know it is very beautiful to look at, smells nice and is decorative. And it is also a useless parasite. No good to anybody. So you four are this company's water lilies. What are you?”

“Water lilies Sergeant Major.”

“Good.” Manop started to turn away when he heard behind him.

“Very militant water lilies,”

His face never changed, he was of the firm belief that if he smiled on parade, his face would crack. But underneath his scowl, his sense of doom and foreboding faded slightly. One at least of these, these aberrations, was ready to stand up for herself. Perhaps there was hope for the Army after all.

Flight Deck B-36H “Texan Lady”, 42,500feet over the North Atlantic

“Coming through Sir.”

Colonel Bob Dedmon pushed the nose of Texan Lady into a slight dive and was rewarded with an ascending “wheee” noise from the bomb bay tunnel. Then, the hatch opened and two hands emerged holding a tray. Sergeant King took it and held it while Smith extracted himself from trolley. Eventually, he made it up to the flight deck, retrieving his tray on the way,

“Here you are Sirs. Two coffees, black with sugar. Two steak sandwiches, ketchup and mayo. Yours has Swiss cheese on it. Major Clancy.

There was something about a steak sandwich that was unique when it was cooked over 40,000 feet up. Everybody knew it. Now, the war was over and the B-36s had a proper galley again, the weight had cut their maximum ceiling by 1,000 feet or more but now, in peacetime, that didn't matter so much. The galley was small but it made two-day missions much more comfortable. It took a long time to fly 10,000 miles at 250 miles per hour. Dedmon bit into his sandwich.

“Good, very good. Thank you Smith,” “Uomph thmadms yuus.”

“I think that's mouth-full-Clancy-ese for 'thank you' as well. How's it going back there Smith.”

“Pretty good Sir, The electronic pit is just getting their new gear set up now. The new coffee machine has been working just fine as well.”

“Glad to see we have our priorities in the right order. Want a helping hand getting back?”

“Please Sir.” Dedmon waited until Smith was back in his trolley then angled Texan Lady back into a shallow climb. The angle sent Smith back down the tunnel, removing the necessity of pulling himself through hand over hand.

“Bomb-Nav station? How we doing?”

“About four hours to feet dry sir. We'll be crossing the British coast just south of Glasgow, then heading over the North Sea, across the Baltic and doing the feet dry thing again over Petrograd. Then on to Moscow and landing at Sheremetevo. Weapons embarked are unarmed sir. Three Mark Fours and a Mark Five. We can arm them any time you say so. Engines are behaving themselves Sir. Even Number Six.” That was the engine that had been replaced after Texan Lady had been damaged during The Big One. It had never quite worked as well as the other five piston engines.

“What we going to do in Russia Sir?” Dedmon stretched in his seat, it was going to be a long flight. Phil Clancy was a new member of the crew, replacing Major Pico who'd left to help form NORAD. Clancy had still to get used to the idea that the B-36 could go anywhere it wanted, any time it wanted, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

“Just routine. We go there with Barbie Doll and Sixth Crew Member and stay for a few days. The Russians will ask us to fly around a bit, maybe overfly an area where the Germans are still holding out. In theory, if the Germans use gas again, we could do a laydown on them but that's fairly unlikely now. In a week or so, we fly home, another hometown takes over, then we go to Nevada. There's some sort of exercise due to happen down there.

Office of Sir Martyn Sharpe, British Viceroy to India, New Delhi

“Have you read the latest report Sir Eric? It just came in this morning, the Air Force has lost another one. Same story as all the others, the aircraft broke up in mid-air. We can't carry on like this, it's the fifth one we've lost this month. I've issued orders to ground the whole fleet until the problem is sorted out. It’s bad, but we can swallow it for a white, the Ostrich squadrons can carry the load until we get this sorted out. Is there any word on the investigations? I suppose the real question we must ask is whether the Hornet will be affected the same way.”

Sir Eric Haohoa thought carefully for a few seconds. There was a good reason why the post of Cabinet Secretary also contained the administration of the intelligence services within its remit. Both required the ability to distinguish what the important issues really were, as distinct from those that everybody thought were significant. Related to that was the skill in answering questions in the order the questioner needed, not in the order they were asked. This was one of those times.

“Sir Martyn, the investigation into the Mosquito crashes has reached some tentative conclusions. It is too early to make these public yet but the Accident Investigations Board thinks they have a handle on the problem. It's the glue, Sir Martyn. When de Havilland's originally designed the Mosquito, they used phenolic resins for the wooden structural members and the plywood composite skinning. That's all well and good, but they elected to use Casein as the glue in the joints between the structural members. Questioned on that issue, Sir Geoffrey said that it was partly a matter of economy, partly a matter of it being easy to work with and partly the fact that it has gap-filling properties that made allowance for manufacturing tolerances.

“That probably made a lot of sense in Europe where its cold and relatively dry and it was satisfactory in Canada where it was colder and drier, but out here, it’s a problem. Casein is basically just stiff cheese and the heat and humidity here is causing it to go moldy and lose strength. Also, it’s not waterproof and the wood in the airframe is getting waterlogged. That's particularly bad in the lower wing surfaces and it seems as if the break-ups with the tower wing surfaces disintegrating and their joints failing.

“This is hitting us in a few ways. One of them is very strange and ironic. We may not be a heavily industrialized country yet but we are a nation of carpenters and woodworkers. The components here are made to a much higher standard than de Havilland achieved elsewhere and their fit is much better. In industrial terms, we can work wood to much finer tolerances than the designers anticipated. So, there is less glue in the joints. That's good and bad of course, there is less glue in the joints to provide strength but we don't need the gap-filling character of Casein. Any adhesive that has the required strength will do. Another problem is unique to us. Casein is a milk product, A cow's milk product. We have serious problems getting Hindu workers to handle it. So de Havilland's recruited the assembly workers from Moslems.”

Sir Martyn looked up very sharply. “Sabotage?”

“Not as far as we can tell, more like they don't take as much care as one might expect of a more dedicated workforce. There may be some outright examples of sabotage but we haven't been able to find any. In any case, shifting to another type of glue will solve that problem as well. But, speaking of competence,” Sir Eric gathered his thoughts for a second. Getting de Havilland and Folland to set up shop in India had been a major coup for Sir Martyn, most of the other major aviation designers had gone to Canada or Australia. Being a bearer of bad news was a chancy profession at best. “We've been having a quiet word with some of the other aviation companies and de Havilland do not have a good reputation within the industry. Or rather they have a reputation for cutting corners and taking chances that other designers view with alarm. I think we may have an example here. It's not that anybody decided to use Casein as a glue in the Mosquito, its that nobody decided not to. De Havilland used it before so they used it again without considering the different circumstances.

“As to its effects, Sir Martyn, this may not be as severe as you fear. If these preliminary findings hold true, we will have to inspect all the in-service Mosquitos, find those that have deteriorated and scrap them. We can salvage their engines and guns, those are not affected by the problems and they represent the greatest burden on foreign exchange. We have Ostriches in store we can use to replace them. Our light bomber crews prefer them anyway. It may be much slower but it has greater firepower and its Pratt air-cooled engines are much less vulnerable to ground fire than the liquid-cooled Allisons in the Mosquito. And the Ostrich is heavily armored of course. The Russians didn't call it the Australian Sturmovik for nothing.”

Both men laughed. The way the name 'Australian Sturmovik' had passed through two languages, three accents and four countries to become “Ostrich” was fast becoming an aircraft industry legend. But then, again, so were the Australian-built Beaufighters. The Australians had taken the basic Beaufighter design from Bristol, cleaned it up and replaced the unavailable 1,600 horsepower Hercules radials with 2,250 horsepower Pratt and Whitney R-2800s. Then, they'd replaced the original four Hispano 20mm cannon with the same number of Russian 23mm Volkov-Yartsev guns and put six American ,50 caliber Brownings in the wings in place of the old .303s. With 2,000 pounds of bombs under its now-armored belly and eight 90 pound rockets under its wings, the Ostrich had proved a devastating close support machine. With the whole Mosquito project in growing jeopardy, it looked like the Indian Air Force would be using it for a long time yet.

“Fortunately, the Hornet won't be affected. It has metal lower wing panels and it is being built using a combination of phenolic resins and resorcinol glues that are not subject to water damage. We need to downplay the fact it's based on Mosquito experience of course. As to the Mosquitos themselves? We have to decide whether we wish to continue with them. We can change the glues and perhaps the wing paneling easily enough but repairing the aircraft's reputation may be a lot harder. Then, of course, there is the jet problem.”

“Or should we just bite the bullet and admit we got it wrong?” Sir Martyn tapped his teeth with the butt end of his pen. 'The Mosquito seemed sound enough a few years back but now it isn't fast enough or high-flying enough to avoid fighters. We could drop the aircraft completely and just concentrate on building the Hornet. The Americans are offering surplus B-27 Super-Marauders at very low cost. Really, we should be looking at buying jets but the fuel.......”

He sighed. Jets had made most piston-engined aircraft obsolete. The problem was that the world's oil refineries were geared up to produce gasoline, not jet fuel, and there was a worldwide shortage of the latter. A shortage not made any better by the Americans buying up what supplies were available. There wasn't a single oil refinery in India that could produce jet fuel, if the Indian Air Force went to jets, every drop of fuel they burned would have to be imported. Sir Martyn's economic experts were predicting it would be a decade at least before jet fuel was available in adequate supplies. Until then, nations would have to go on flying large numbers of piston-engined aircraft despite their vulnerability. That was why India was developing the Hornet, piston-engined certainly but about the best anybody could come up with.

“Low cost indeed Sir Martyn. They are offering B-27s at a cost that is barely more than the amount we pay for a pair of Allison engines for a Mosquito. Sometimes I think they are using their huge supply of surplus aircraft to crush everybody else's aircraft industry before it can get off the ground.”

“I'm sure that has figured in their planning. In fact I think we can be certain it has. If The Big One proved anything, it is that the Americans do not play games where their interests are concerned. As for de Havilland, I have heard much the same as you from different sources. Originally, we had planned on allowing the new company a free hand but this Mosquito business gives me cause to question that decision. I think the time may have come for the Indian Government to take a stake in de Havilland (India).”

Chapter Two World Still At War

Headquarters, Army Group Vistula, Riga, “The Baltic Gallery”

The timing of the message had been purely happenstance but it was making a valuable point nevertheless. An intelligence report, adding one more pin to a map where the horde of red made the addition difficult. There were so many hostile units that there was literally not enough space on the map for them all. Opposing them, the scattered line of blue pins looked desperately thin. Yet, the red mass was increasing every day as more units arrived from the Kola Peninsula. The surrender of Finland had allowed the Russian/Canadian Army that had held the peninsula for five long years to split. The Canadians were going home; the Russians were moving to liberate the Baltic provinces.

“And now, given the situation we see before us, how do you suggest we go about securing the territory we presently occupy against the attack that is building up?”

The Field Marshal's staff had heard the dangerously silky tone in their master's voice and quickly found excuses to be anywhere else. That tone meant some unfortunate had said something extraordinarily stupid and was about to get a lesson in the military arts. If the recipient was wise, he would say nothing and listen for the speaker was an acknowledged master of the art of war. The commander of Army Group Vistula was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

The listener waffled with a few aimless comments about moral ascendancy and the German warrior-spirit. Eventually, Rommel cut him of impatiently. “Yes, yes, yes. All very good and it sounds most impressive. But do you know our troops will fight at all? I cannot be sure of that and I have taken pains to make sure we do not put the matter to the test. In case you have not noticed, Germany has been destroyed. The men here have nothing left to live for, that is true, but equally, they have nothing left to die for. Your SS troopers may be determined to leave the world in a blaze of revenge-filled glory but my Landsers are not so sure on the matter. And, just remember, we have tens of thousands of civilians here as well. We must think of them as well. The last thing we want is what happened to Germany being repeated on us.”

“But the Americans are leaving, they are going home.”

“Really? Then explain this.” Rommel produced a copy of Life magazine, dated the week before. Its cover story was how Russia and America were working together to rebuild Eastern Europe. One of the pictures was of Sheremetevo airfield, a big airfield on the outskirts of Moscow. The story was of how the airbase, once a major military facility, was being converted into an international airport, but the photographs showed the line of B-36 bombers parked by the runways. The SS General stared at the pictures, his stomach involuntarily curling at the sight of the bombers that had wiped a country from the map. Rommel watched his expression, then changed his tone.

“The American Army is going home, yes. So are the Australians, so are the Canadians. A good guest knows when it is time to leave. But the Americans have left their bombers and it is fair to guess that those bombers will not be dropping flowers on us. That is the American doctrine now. They do not fight their enemies any more, they just destroy them.”

“The problem with fighting the Americans is that they do not know what their doctrine is and those that do feel no obligation to obey it.” The general smirked as he repeated the quotation.

“General, that sounds very fine when you repeat it in an admiring salon filled with civilians. But we are professionals. The Americans know exactly what their doctrine is and they apply it consistently and ruthlessly. It is called overwhelming force. They applied it before they brought nuclear weapons into the world and they continue to apply it now. You remember the battles along the Volga bend? How our attacks were smothered under a mass of American machines? How their fighter-bombers crushed every attempt we made to move, saturating our rear areas with fire and death? From what I have heard, it was even worse in France and England.

“Remember how their artillery followed every move we made, their massed battalions of guns pointed with the unerring precision of a sniper, switching from target to target with the delicacy of a ballet dancer? The Americans fight our blood and flesh with their machines and, win or lose, we lose. Their bombers sitting on a Russian airfield tell us all we can look forward to is more of the same. Overwhelming force, applied against a helpless enemy that cannot even pretend to defend itself. If, General, you look for a slogan to apply to our situation, I would recommend a different one. 'When rape is inevitable, the only thing left is to lie back and enjoy it.” We're going to get raped. General.” Rommel gestured at the situation map again. “And it is inevitable. If we have no choice but to fight then fight we will, if we can and for as long as we can. But if an agreement is possible, then we should lie back and enjoy it. However much it hurts.”

The SS General looked at the chart as well. Beneath the bombast, he was an intelligent, some said brilliant, man and knew a hopeless situation when he saw one. If Army Group Vistula stayed where it was, it would be crushed. If it tried to break out, it would be massacred. And if it broke out, where would it go? What would it do? Poland was an independent country again, crossing that country would mean an act of war. Or would it? The General was no longer sure of exactly what the status of Army Group Vistula was. The SS had never particularly studied the rules of war. “Is an agreement possible?”

Rommel nodded. “It may well be, yes. The last orders we received from Germany were from President Goering. They ordered us lo cease all offensive operations; take only the minimum actions necessary for self defense. That we have done. Germany was surrendering unconditionally and, as an element of the German armed forces, that applied to us. There is another factor though. Under international law, an offer of surrender is only valid when there are forces capable of and competent to accept the surrender available. One of the reasons why we have withdrawn from the Petrograd front was that by doing so, we avoided being in contact with any forces competent and capable of accepting our surrender. We made sure we couldn't surrender because we carefully avoided meeting anybody we could surrender to. That brought us time but we've run out of it. We can't retreat anymore, we are pinned against the coast. We are under orders to surrender and the Russians know it. Don't deceive yourself General, so do our men.

“However, surrendering a force like this requires organization and negotiation. The Russian commander, what's his name ... Rokossovski .... knows that as well. He wants a meeting so we can make the arrangements to surrender our forces. That meeting will be our chance to see what we can negotiate. We have a few cards we can play. Russia has been bled white, they'll want to avoid casualties if they possibly can and we are in Russian soil, they will not want the Americans dropping hellburners on us if it can be avoided. If we can make an agreement out of that, get our people treated decently, then it’s the best we can achieve. If not..”

“We fight”

“Exactly. But remember this, our country has capitulated and we are under orders to surrender. If we fight, we do so as lawless brigands and bandits. And that. General Skorzeny, means we would have no right to expect mercy from anybody.”

Khabarovsk, Siberia, Russia

The bands had been practicing their display for weeks and had got it down perfectly. The two, one Russian, one American, stood side by side on the parade ground belting out a long series of military marches. The spectacle was that only one band was playing at a time, they were switching program between them, never missing a beat with the transitions. Unless the spectators looked, there was no way to tell which was playing at any given time. Few thought to do so, it didn't really matter who was playing and, anyway, the spectacle in front was too, well, spectacular.

The American units were drawn up in front of the parade stand. One by one, the color bearer of each was stepping forward and the regimental color was dipped and cased. Then, carrying the furled color, the bearer stepped back while the Russian units opposite held their salute. The ceremony was marking the end of an era. The 84th Infantry Division was going home, and with it FUSAG-Russia, the First United States Army Group Russia was standing down. The men would be leaving by the big C-99 transports that had brought them, their equipment, the tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, trucks, would stay, donated to the Russians. A generous gesture, one not entirely prompted by the truth that it would cost more than the equipment was worth to ship it home. But, the men were going home, after five years away. First in, first out was fair enough but not too much of a sacrifice for the others. SUSAG-Russia would be following within months.

Some of the crowd were watching the figures on the parade stand. Two figures in particular, the dour, glowering figure of President Zhukov and, next to him, the dashing General Patton. Thunder and Lightning the Germans had called the pair and they had never worked out which they feared the most. Fighting Zhukov was a grim death-grapple with an enemy who never gave up and never gave in. Once battle was joined it went on until exhaustion prevented its continuing any longer. Fighting Patton was a different matter entirely, an exchange of maneuvers, a slashing exchange of blows, of American units that could mysteriously chance their facing through 90 degrees overnight, who would turn up hundreds of kilometers from where they were supposed to be.

Colonel Yvegeni Valerin was one of those who watched the Generals, not the parade. One of Zhukov's staff officers, it was his job to sort through the vast mountain of equipment that the Americans were leaving behind. Some of it was destined for the units reclaiming the captured territories in the West. The armored personnel carriers for example, they were proving a major revolution in fighting the groups of bandits that infested the area between Moscow and the pre-war frontier. Then there was the task of patrolling the new borders, making sure that the soil of Mother Russia was protected again. The American armored cars were good for that. And the artillery, Valerin was a good Russian soldier and a good Russian soldier never threw artillery away. Something the Germans had learned to their cost when the Russian Army lined their guns up wheel-to-wheel and blasted holes in the German positions by sheer weight of steel. Then there were the trucks. The scale of issue of motor transport in an American unit had stunned the Russians. Even in an infantry division, it seemed that nobody in the American Army walked.

But the American tanks? The M-26 in all its versions was hopelessly obsolete. It even had a gasoline engine, something the Russians and the Germans had dumped early on in the war. The later M-46 had a diesel engine and a new 90mm gun, one that outperformed both the German 88mm and the Russian 100mm. Well, the early versions of the 100 anyway, the Americans had sat down with the Russian designers, shown them a few tricks and some new ammunition concepts and the 100 had suddenly become a feared tank-killer. In exchange, the Russians had taken a look at the layout and armor on the M-46, shuddered and started to show the Americans a few tricks and the concept of sloping armor plate. The full result of the co-operation wasn't available yet, but would be soon. The American's new M-48 was much more Russian than the Americans liked to admit while the new Russian T-54 was much more American than the Russians liked to concede.

No, the American tanks and so much else of the donated equipment would be scrapped, its metal going into the blast furnaces that fed the huge armament industries around Khabarovsk. When Valerin had arrived here, back in 1942, it had been a small Siberian town, a backwater noted only for its vast railway marshaling yard. However, that yard had made it suitable for relocation of the industries that had been evacuated from the west and provide homes for the refugees who had fled from the Germans.

Then, the Americans had started to arrive, a trickle at first, then an ever-growing tide. When the Americans had arrived, they built things. Like a runway so large everybody else thought they were joking — until the first of the six-engined C-99 transports had started to land. They'd been landing steadily ever since, an Air Bridge the Americans called it, pouring men and equipment directly from American factories into the Armies fighting in Russia. The heavy stuff had come by sea, landing in the port of Vladivostok but the men and the priority equipment had come by air.

The Americans had done more than just build an airstrip. They'd started building factories so that they wouldn't have to fly common articles from America. They'd started to build oil refineries so they wouldn't have to ship refined oil products in. Their ''production engineers” had gone around the Russian built factories and suggested changes, a few things here, a few there. And Russian production had soared. Now Khabarovsk and dozens of towns like it in what had once been the wilderness of Siberia had become thriving industrial centers. Lately, the Americans were speaking of something else. Oil. Their petroleum explorers had come to Siberia and looked around, then got very excited. Siberia was oil-rich. Getting at it was going to be a problem but where there was a will there was a way.

Now, the Americans were going home. A wise decision. They had done their share; they had helped Russian hold the line against the onslaught from Germany. But, Germany had been defeated and now, Russia had to be recovered by Russians. Only there was something else happening. With Russia-in-the-west occupied, Russia-in-the-east had become an economic powerhouse in its own right. And now Japan, freshly installed along its recently-conquered Chinese border was eyeing that powerhouse.

Flight Deck B-36H “Texan Lady”, Final Approach, Sheremetevo Airbase, Russia

''One-Three-Five..............One Three Zero............One Two Five...........One Two Zero......... One One Five”

There was a lurch and the wheels screamed suddenly. “On the ground. Engines one to six, full reverse power. Argus, you missed ETA by 45 seconds. That's five bucks you owe the crew welfare fund.”

“First time in six months Sir.” His words were nearly drowned out by the roar as the six piston engines went into full reverse power, slowing the big bomber down. As it reached the start of the turn-offs to the taxiways, three jeeps came out from the side, one had a big “Follow Me” sign on its back, the others were armed with machineguns and took station either side of Texan Lady.

“Hey, look over there Sir. I didn't know the boss was going to be here.” Major Clancy was pointing at the side of the runway where General Tibbett's B-36, Enola Gay was parked in the dispersal area with her Hometown mates Bocks Car and The Great Artiste. Altogether, over a dozen B-36s were in dispersal, the whole area surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by Russian troops. He gestured at the wire, the guards and the two jeeps keeping station on the taxying bomber. “Those don't look too friendly.”

“Don't get the wrong idea. Moscow's been back in Russian hands for six months now and they're still a lot of hold-outs, deserters, bandits, you name it, loose out here. And you saw what's left of the city as we came in. There are people here who would kill for what we have in our galley. All this stuffs here to protect us, not to keep us in. This is your first trip to Russia isn't it Phil?”

“Yes Sir.”

“OK. You got the standard briefing then. Remember it. Few extra words of advice. When we get out, there'll be Russians meeting us with bread, salt and vodka. Take it, it’s a traditional welcome. All these people have got left is their pride and making us feel welcome is a big part of that. Something else to remember, these are just about the only people in the world who actually like us at the moment.”

The conversation broke off as Dedmon turned Texan Lady off the runway, onto the taxiway to the dispersal apron. They were passing a long line of Russian fighters, mostly piston-engined Lavochkin 9s and 11s but also a handful of the Yakovlev jets, a strange looking aircraft with its single jet engine hanging under the nose. Clancy searched his memory. Yak-17s, that was the designation.

He waved at the fighters. 'They any good Sir?”

“The Lavochkins? Damned good for piston-engined birds. They'll take down a German Ta-152 nicely, especially at low altitude. Against a B-36, they run out of steam 20,000 feet below us. The Yak jets are good little dogfighters, at least as good as the F-80, but they've got dreadfully short range. They top out just over 40,000 feet but they use so much fuel getting there, all they can do is go straight back down again. The Russians have the same problems the Germans had. They've hit the maximum power they can get out of a jet engine without some pretty advanced metallurgy and they don't have it. I hear our guys are working with them on that.”

“Sir, what did you mean these are the only people in the world who like us? We finished off the Nazis, didn't we?”

“Yeah, but the way we did it doesn't sit too well with an awful lot of people. Nobody's ever destroyed a whole country like that before and people are having a job getting their minds around it. At first people were happy enough to see the war was over, or so they thought, but it’s a year later now and they're looking at what we did to Germany and having second thoughts about it. And about us.”

“Don't they know what the Germans did? Are they insane, have they forgotten all of that?”

“For most of them, its second or third hand or even more remote. Just stories and old stories at that. Film of the destroyed cities in Germany is first hand and it's a new story, something they see today. And we have all the old questions coming up. Why should people at home be destroyed instead of the soldiers at the front? Why should people be killed when it’s their leaders who were responsible? All that stuff. The reality of what happened here is far away from them. The destroyed cities in Germany are on their cinema screens every week. So we ain't the world's most popular people right now. Whoops.”

Dedmon saw the “Follow Me” jeep break right and steered after it. He frowned for a second, he'd been late catching the change in direction and it seemed, just for a brief second, that Texan Lady had anticipated him, started the turn on her own before his own control inputs took effect. Imagination of course.

“Here, it’s different. The Russians know the Germans did, first hand, and they're still uncovering the worst of it. There isn't a family in Russia that hasn't lost members, some by the dozen. Did you know the Germans deliberately starved a million and a half Russian PoWs to death in 1941 alone? And that went on for six years.

“Take a look of those fighters. The one at the end there, Yellow-32. Painted on its nose. For Maritsa. Don't know who Maritsa was, might be his mother, his sister, his wife, daughter, whoever. But she was part of his family, she's dead and the Germans killed her. So every time that pilot kills a German he does it “for Maritsa'. Every one of those fighters has its own dedication. God knows what would have happened if the Russian Army had made it to Germany, with all the rage and hatred that has built up; they would have slaughtered everything in sight. It would have been a bloodbath.

“So of all people, the Russians understand what we did and why. And they honor us for it. They also remember something else, when they were fighting the Germans alone; we were the ones who came to help them. Oh, you and I know that there were other reasons for that and the Australians and Canadians were there as well, but to the Russians, we were what they saw. They reckon they owe us and anything they can do for us helps to pay off that debt. So, if you're offered anything as a gift, take it. And honor it. Just remember who gave it to you and a day or so later invite him on board for a sandwich.

“The only secrets we have here are in the bomb bay so there's nothing to worry about. And your guest will tell his grandchildren about the day he ate a sandwich on board the bomber that killed Berlin.”

Submarine Bunker, Faslane, UK

“Thank you for coming, Commander. How are you settling into Xena?”

“Very well Sir. She's a world different from the U-class or even the Vs of course. If we'd had them back in '45....”

“Indeed. Still, we've got them now. A few at any rate. You ready for sea, Commander?'“

“Sir. We've finished loading stores. Only four Mark Eights and a pair of the new anti-escort fish though. No reloads at all.”

“You won't be needing those. You'll be taking a boffin out for a ramble through the North Sea.” Commander Fox's face was suddenly seized by an expression of almost incoherent panic. Dark indeed were the tales of submarine commanders who had been assigned the task of taking boffins out on a ramble to gather information for their strange investigations. Some commanders so afflicted had never been quite the same afterwards, prone to inexplicable panic attacks and waking whimpering in the middle of the night. Fox himself remembered one such creature arriving for research purposes with seventeen trunkloads of instruments to be installed in Untiring. Then, twenty minutes before setting sail, demanding that three six inch diameter holes be drilled in the pressure hull. FOSM looked at him with a combination of amusement and sympathy. “Robert, you'd better join us in the Conference Room,”

The 'Conference Room' had once been the old German operations center and it still had a vaguely Teutonic air about it. Fox could imagine tine Kriegsmarine officers looking at the situation displays of the North Sea, the Arctic and the Northern Approaches while blonde German women auxiliaries moved the counters on the tables and brought the messages in from the U-boats. The Royal Navy had a similar operations center in Churchill, or had, it had been handed over to the Canadians now. Here, the operations table had been covered over with a cloth and there were charts scattered over it. Beside them, a character Fox thought of as being a typical scientific-looking fellow, was reading some sheets of data, his expression grim. Fox didn't like it when scientific-looking fellows had grim expressions. It usually meant nausea for somebody.

“Doctor Swamphen. I would like you to meet Commander Fox of Xena. He'll be taking you out on your next trip, Robert, Doctor Swamphen from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Research Establishment.”

“Doctor, pleased to meet you. Will you be bringing much in the way of equipment?” Fox's voice was so plaintive that his companions were hard put to stop laughing.

“Just that.” Swamphen pointed to a small carpet bag sitting on one of the stools. “And some equipment for taking water and bottom samples. Nothing that won't fit into a standard suitcase. Sorry about that, I've been spoiled I'm afraid. My last trip was on an American fleet boat. Harrowing trip, the ice cream machine only served six flavors. Crew nearly mutinied.” This time everybody in the room did laugh. The luxuries of the big American submarines were notorious. Still, the way things had worked out, it was the small U and V class boats that had done the really vital stuff. So much so, the Americans had bought V class boats from Canadian Vickers to replace their old S class. Fox felt himself warming to this strange scientist.

“You are familiar with these of course?” 'These' were charts of the North Sea. Fox wasn't just familiar with them, he could have drawn them in his sleep and the Admiralty cartographer wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the original and Fox's rendition. Swamphen looked rueful. ''Well, they're pretty good, the Navy's spent a lot of time drawing them and keeping them up to date. Inshore, they're fine and the coverage of the North Sea is pretty good. Outside those limits, we hardly know what is out there. The soundings are tens, perhaps hundreds of miles apart and we have no idea what's between them. Submarines are getting faster every year now, you mark my words, one day, somebody's going to plow straight into an underwater mountain nobody even guessed was there. That's one thing we've got to look at. We need better charts.

“That's one thing we're going to be doing. We need to know in detail what the seabed looks like and we need to know how the sea behaves. We've made a start, and to be honest, the answers are frightening. We know far less than we thought and most of what we did know is wrong. Commander Fox, everybody is talking about the next great step in ASW. They Type XXIs gave us a scare but we coped with it. Just. Mostly because we knew what the XXI was like and what it could do long before it entered service.”

And there, Swamphen thought to himself, we have to leave that little subject. Most of the Type XXI data had come via an organization called “The Red Orchestra” in Geneva and their activities had been very secret indeed. “We mined the Type XXIs into their ports, we nailed them as they came out of port, we nailed them when they tried to make their attacks, we harassed them on the way home and the mines were still there when they reached their home ports. Aircraft, helicopters, the fast destroyers fitted with ahead-throwing mortars, they kept the XXIs in check. Few of them managed to get to make a third patrol. Only you and I know the XXI is already obsolete. It did 17.5 knots underwater, your Xena does, what, 20? And the XXI was noisy, once we knew what to listen for; we could hear it coming a long way off. The next generation of boats will address that; we've already got some design ideas in that direction.

“So we've got to find ways of picking up the boats between leaving port and the time they reach a convoy. And we've got to find a way of detecting boats that are a lot quieter than the ones we have now.” Again, Swamphen decided this was a good time to keep quiet. There were rumors the Americans had some really innovative ideas coming up, ones being developed by a man called Rickover. Ones that could flush everything down the pan. He picked up again smoothly. “To do that, we need to know much, much more about the how the sea works, how the water and current patterns interact. We started to study that and in doing so we learned something rather worrying. Charles, old fellow, could you pull back that cover please.”

Fox was charmed to hear the august Flag Officer Submarines being addressed as 'Charles, old fellow.’ He was definitely beginning to like this scientist. Then he caught his breath. What had once been a flat operations display was now a contoured map of the countryside somewhere. It was vaguely familiar despite being painted an odd shade of blue. The moors behind Dartmouth perhaps? Then it clicked. He wasn't looking at the countryside at all; he was looking at a model of the seabed at the southern end of the North Sea. Somebody had painstakingly cut plywood sheets to the shape of the depth contour lines and assembled them into this model. It was fascinating, for all his familiarity with the charts, this model expressed the information in a revolutionary way,

“Great isn't it? We got the idea from a rather creepy bunch of Americans. They make three-dimensional models of everything, you should see the ones they made of German cities. Before they flattened the originals of course. One of the things we'll be doing. Commander Fox....”

“Robert” said Fox, his eyes glued on the model.

“Thank you Robert. One of the things we'll be doing is taking extra measurements to fill in the gaps here and refine this model. However, in getting this far we've discovered something rather worrying. You see this valley coming up the middle of the model? Well, a few thousand years ago, when the North Sea was still a flat plain between Britain and the Netherlands, that was the river Rhine. The Thames comes in here, it was a tributary of the Rhine back then and the river reached the sea up between Scotland and the Orkneys. Well, guess what. We think, we're pretty certain, there's still fresh water flowing down there. Fresh water doesn't mix with the salt water as much as you might think, the densities prevent it. That water is flowing from the Rhine's source, all the way under the North Sea, all the way to the Atlantic. At least, we think it is.”

“Uh-oh” FOSM was quick on the uptake. “All the way through Germany.”

“Exactly Charles. When the Americans, uhh 'took out^; Germany to use their rather delightful phrase, they dropped radioactive contamination all over the place. The worst hit was the water. The fallout fell into it and formed a slimy skin on the surface. A skin that was severely radioactive, chemically poisonous and corrosive. Anybody who got it on their skin found nothing could wash it off and it burned them alive, from the outside in by chemicals, poison and radiation. If anybody swallowed it, they burned from the inside out as well as the outside in. That alone killed tens of thousands, the ones who thought the water would shelter them from the fires.

“We never thought it was a problem; the radiation from that scum is severe but it was short-lived. More than 90 percent of it had gone within 12 hours. What we didn't realize was how chemically poisonous it was. It degraded alright but it was collected in the mud of the river bed. A mixture of heavy metals and long-lived radioactive fallout combined with the mud to make a contaminated sludge.”

“And that river mud is now being swept towards the sea?” Fox was beginning to appreciate the problem as well.

“Exactly. The light stuff comes down first, the heavy stuff follows more slowly, but it’s all coming down the rivers. Not just the Rhine but that's the one that worries us. Look at this.” Swamphen took an overlay out of his case and put it on the model. “You remember last year, there was some contaminated Herring from the North Sea sold on the black market, A dozen people died, lot more got sick? That was heavy metal poisoning, so we decided to have a look. We took water and seabed samples and found this area was being contaminated.”

The overlay was an orange film. Swamphen positioned it carefully. It showed a finger reaching out from the mouth of the Rhine into the North Sea. 'Then six months later, we measured again and found this.” Another overlay. The original area was now a brighter, deeper red and the area covered was noticeably larger. It was spreading along the valley where the Rhine ran under the North Sea. “Obviously, we need to look again and monitor the contamination. See how much comes down and how far it spreads. If it continues to spread at this rate, the North Sea fisheries may be permanently destroyed.”

The red patch of contamination glowered at the audience from the dark blue of the seabed model. Fox's voice was quiet in the room. “Do you think the Americans knew this would happen?”

“I very much doubt it. I don't think the Americans knew a quarter of what would happen when they planned the attack. Oh, they knew the initial results alright, but I think nearly all the long-term effects escaped them completely. In fairness, nobody could know all the aspects of what would happen in a nuclear until somebody tried one. I wouldn't say they experimented on Germany, just that it was a case of learning on the job as it were.

“When I was over there, one of their spooky nuclear planners told me that nuclear weapons weren't just big bombs, they were an entirely new class of weapon. Something unique in history. I think they knew the words but they didn't understand the full impact of them. We've got to find out just how bad these unexpected effects are.”

There was another long silence as the model cast its spell over the three men. Eventually Swamphen sighed. “You know the really ironic thing? All the studies we're doing on the seabed? Some of the American oil people saw them and got quite excited. They say there may be oil down there under the North Sea. Ironic isn't it. For most of this century, British policy has been orientated around getting oil from the Middle East. Now we may have an oilfield right on our doorstep. And if this contamination problem gets really bad, we may be unable to touch it.

Chapter Three World Going To War

Wallsend, Tyneside, UK

The riveters were the infantry of a shipyard. Like the infantry, their job appeared simple yet was really very difficult, there were thousands of them, and without them nothing of any significance could be achieved. Like the infantry, their day started early. John McMullen had got out of bed just after five, dressed in his woolen linings and trousers, his two-piece overalls and the inevitable muffler and cap. His wife had risen with him and adjusted his cap with the pride of a wife, seeing her man off on his first day back at a real job. It was still before dawn when he set out; guided by the widely spaced street lights, still gas in this part of town. As he walked down the street, more men came out of their homes, thickening the growing crowd that was drawn by brighter lights than those on the street. Lights shining through painted glass windows that drew the shipyard men down to their bars.

The pubs clustered around the yard gates were allowed to open at six, and what followed was as fine an example of industrial precision as any shipyard could hope to achieve. The doors of the pubs opened at six on the dot to reveal the long tables. Once, before the grim war and even worse peace, the tables had been loaded with cups of good strong tea and coffee, thick with milk and sugar, and beside them nips of rum or whisky. Now, there was only tea, weak, unsweetened and black while the nips were, well, the only way to describe it was 'something'. Home brew probably, the product of a still somewhere it was better not to ask about.

The men poured in and had just the time for a cup and a nip to scald their lips and throats before heading out again, their debt chalked up on the slates that hung behind the bar. McMullen wiped his lips on his sleeve as he left, running across the road before the yard gates locked at five past six. Woe betide the man who arrived after that time for his job would be lost, his place would be taken by another man who was already waiting in line for the chance. Then, the unlucky worker would be left with nothing but a cold walk home with empty pockets to meet an angry wife.

The two cruisers had arrived on Friday, warped in from the yard basin and tied up alongside the refit dock. Belfast and Edinburgh. Those were their names now but that wouldn't be for long. Their new nameplates were already waiting. Capetown and Pretoria. McMullen was on the Edinburgh work gang, an easier job than Belfast but more to do. Belfast, soon to become Capetown, had been mined early in the war, her back broken by a magnetic mine. She'd barely been repaired in time to make the run to Canada but at least she'd received some modernization while in the repair yard. The problem was there was heavy structural repairs, left unfinished from her mining, to be made inside the hull. Edinburgh hadn't been damaged so she was spared that, but she hadn't been modernized either so there was more minor work to be done before she would set sail as Pretoria.

“McMullen!” The gang foreman yelled and pointed at two plates waiting to be riveted. By the look of them, they would form pail of a new deckhouse. It would be built down here, then swung up to wherever it had to go. Nearby a fire was already burning fiercely, the rivet-heaters working their bellows and turning the lengths of steel in the fires. Glowing red hot they were yet not quite ready for use. Only when they turned white would they be thrown to the rivet catchers who would catch them in tins and ready them for insertion. Every so often a 'prentice would forget himself and try to catch a rivet in his bare hand. Then there would be a dreadful scream. For those working up top, the result of seizing white-hot steel in a bare hand was almost always a fall and a death. For those on the quay side, it was just a hand burned and crippled beyond use.

The steel plates weren't quite aligned properly; the holes drilled in them didn't quite match. It would have been the work of a second to shift them into line but the riveting gang were riveters and thus members of the Boilermaker's Union. Shifting steel plates was a job for a member of the Steelworkers Union and the start of riveting would have to wait until a couple of steelmen turned up to adjust the job. McMullen was lucky. As the siren went at quarter past the hour, two steelmen shifted the plates into line and there was a clang as a rivet landed in the cup.

As McMullen swung his hammer back he saw what appeared to be a snowstorm overhead, a cloud of white-hot rivets being thrown through the air to the men working on the gantries that surrounded the cruiser. Even as the howl of the siren faded, the deafening noise of a day's work at the shipyard started.

McMullen took his first swing. This was the critical bit. If the hammer didn't strike square, if the timing was slightly off, then the rivet would be distorted or loose. Not far behind the riveting gang was the check-man. He'd look at each rivet, inspecting it for tightness and accuracy. If it passed, he would take his white chalk and make his check-mark, a white tick across the rivet, a short down-stroke left to right then a long upstroke. If the rivet was suspect, it got an angry red cross. Then, that rivet would have to be drilled out and replaced. The system was simple. The riveting gang got paid for each white tick but fined double that amount for each red cross. Good riveters did well, bad ones didn't last long.

It was the rhythm that was important. A good team would have its rivets caught and in place before the riveter himself took his swing. A really good riveter didn't need the check-man to tell him whether the rivet was sound; he could feel it by the vibration in the hammer when it struck metal. Once the yard had used pneumatic hammers to drive the rivets home but that equipment had long gone. Taken to Germany for the shipyards there and then turned to radioactive slag by the Yanks with their atom bombs. So it was back to manual hammering. McMullen felt the good strikes all morning so when the siren went for tea-break, he wasn't surprised to see the line of white ticks behind him. Not a red cross in sight.

It was 15 minutes for a cup of tea, then back to the quayside. By the time the noon siren went, they had reached the end of the first long line and started the short side. Looked like the structure they were building would fit crosswise on the ship somehow. Didn't matter of course, what did was that there wasn't a red chalk mark in sight.

Thirty minutes for lunch. Tea and a wad. Or what had been a wad once, before the war. Then it had been a thick sandwich, two slabs of bread stuffed with fresh-fried bacon or ham. Came out the wage of course but few had complained about it. Well, no more than any good workmen complained about anything the bosses did.

But now the wads were thin and sparse things. Off the ration, that was the one good thing about them. But the bread was skimpy and where it had once been dripping with melted fat and butter, now the margarine was scraped thin and the sandwich was filled with strange things. Whale meat was one, some sort of nutty paste was another. No bacon in sight. Hardly food to fill a working man's stomach. Even a good union man like McMullen couldn't bring himself to blame the bosses, they were doing the best they could. The thin tea and meager wads, that was the Yank's fault. Dropping their atom bombs on everybody.

30 minutes on the dot. The men had been exchanging ribald jokes, traditional ones between the Unions, between the men who worked on the gantries and them as worked on the ground, between the veterans and the 'prentices. Then the siren went again and the joking stopped, drowned out by the roar and crash of the hammers, the pounding of the engines and the rattling of the cranes.

Five o clock, 11 hours on the job. Ten hours work. McMullen got his ticket from the check-man, taking pride in its totals. All white approvals, not a red cross all day. He went to the tally-office and handed it in. There was a stranger there, a big man with a reddened skin who looked at the ticket and nodded.

“This your gang McMullen?” The accent was thick and heavy, sounding as if the man had a bad cold. Sounded Dutch or German. Its shipyards had made Tyneside a surprisingly cosmopolitan city and McMullen pegged the accent immediately. South African. McMullen nodded and the man reached into a bag in the tally-office and gave each member of the gang a small envelope. McMullens fingers accurately gauged the contents. A two-bob bit.

“Gift from South Africa, bonus for a good job. Every gang has a day without rejects, gets the same. Every day without rejects gets you a bonus. Our Republic thanks you McMullen.”

McMullen left the factory gates fingering the coin. He didn't see the South African watch him leave, then note his name down in a small book. He was too busy rejoicing in his unexpected fortune. A bonus paid daily? Generous one too. By the time he got home, McMullen had already decided to give the first one to his wife, and make sure she spent it on herself. The smell of sausages cooking and the sight of mashed potato just confirmed that decision. A day's real work and a solid British supper. It had been a good day.

Chulachomkho Military Academy, Bangkok, Thailand

The officer cadets were sitting in ranks in the lecture theater. They'd spent the last couple of days being run from one place to another, learning the layout of the college, where they had to go and when they had to be there. Learning their place in the world which, as everybody took pains to remind them, was at the bottom of everything else.

Today, though, was a little different. Today they were, in a small way, in charge of their own destinies. Today they would be determining the course of their military careers. On the desk in front of them was a pad of forms several pages thick. It had to be filled out, completely and accurately. Right at the end, on the last page was a block where the cadets had to enter their choice for their selected army careers. Their Military Occupational Specialty or MOS.

“Cadets. Today you will be selecting the particular direction your army career will be taking. You will fill out the forms in front of you and enter the code for the military specialty which you want to follow. You will then be assigned to the studies appropriate to that MOS. Each of you has one of these.” The instructor picked up a book, almost three centimeters thick. “This contains all the MOS codes. Find the one that applies to your desired career and enter it on the last page. If you can't find the code or you have another problem, enter MOS 11B. It's a general course and we'll sort you out later.”

The attendants started to hand out the thick books while the cadets filled in the forms. The experienced cadets, the ones who had relatives already in the service had been tipped off and had been told their desired MOS code earlier. The far-sighted had also found their desired code out in advance. The cynical put down a code at random, any code other then 11B (as a result one delighted cadet found himself in Public Relations, two more became rural development specialists and one took up a short but very exciting career in explosive ordnance disposal).

As the attendants started to collect the books and forms, far too early for anybody else to look through the reference book properly, most of the Cadets put themselves down for MOS 11 B.

A few hours later, in the Commandant's office, the staff were going through the forms with satisfaction. It had worked again. The Commandant looked at the Instructor with a slightly pained air. “A general course Tawat?”

“Well Sir, some of them may end up as Generals.” A ripple of laughter spread across the room.

“Tell me Tawat. doesn't your conscience ever trouble you about this?”

The instructor looked thoughtful for a second. “No sir. Anyway, out of 100 cadets we have 84 volunteers for the infantry. It never fails to inspire me Sir how the Cadets always choose to serve in the infantry. Selfless of them.”

A ripple of laughter spread around the office again. However, the instructor was suddenly afflicted by a strange, troubling sensation of disaster. His ghost-guardian was warning him of something, he thought. He was making a mistake. Superstitiously, he quietly felt the Buddha amulet around his neck and was eased by the act of touching the image. Nothing could be that wrong, could it? Of course not.

As a matter of fact he was wrong. Everything was very wrong indeed. The years of bad karma earned by tricking poor innocent cadets into signing up for the infantry had suddenly come home to haunt him. His ghost-guardian had tried to warn him but failed.

The eternal balance of good and evil, of honesty and guilt, of rewards and punishment was just about to be evened out. In doing so, the Army's carefully-planned introduction of women officers to take over secretarial and office work in the military headquarters and administrative departments had run hard onto the shoals of unexpected hazards. For, unnoticed in the pile of forms that represented all those who had signed up for Military Occupational Specialty 11B (Leg Infantry) were those submitted by all four female Cadets.

Headquarters. Second Karelian Front, Riga, “The Baltic Gallery”

He didn't know which frightened him most. The sheer mass of forces that were being assembled or the fact that the Russians hadn't cared how much he saw of them. They'd just met his Kubelwagen at the agreed spot and he'd got into the jeep to be brought here. In doing so, the Russians had driven him right through their lines. And what lines they had been, a horde of tanks, T-44s, some with 85mtn guns, some with the new 100mms. Older T-34-85s. The SU-100 tank destroyers with their cross-hull rangefinders. Armored personnel carriers for the infantry, some with the stains on the paint where the American markings had been scrubbed off and replaced by Russian.

Oh yes, the Americans might be going home but their machines were still here. And, always, where the Russian Army went, so did its God of War. Artillery. The guns were ranks deep, parked wheel-to-wheel. The Russians didn't use artillery with the deftness and precision of the Americans, they just used it in such volume, with so many numbers that they crushed everything within range. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel hated the Russian artillery.

The headquarters was a wooden building, more than a lean-to, less than a mansion. Probably the home of a well-off farmer or woodsman. The Russians took him inside and his eyes took a second to adjust to the dimmer light inside. There was no mistaking the figure that sat behind the desk. Handsome, remarkably so and exuding a magnetic charm. Marshal of Russia Konstantin Rokossovsky was reputed to be irresistibly attractive to women. Rommel had heard that once Beria had tried to frame him by sending Stalin a long list of Rokossovsky's sexual exploits. When Beria had received his orders from Stalin, they consisted of two words “Envy Him.” Now when Rokossovsky saw the German entering he stood up,

“Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky. Commander, Second Karelian Front, Russian Army.”

Rommel was startled, he had expected to be treated with coldness at best, open rudeness was more likely. Proper military courtesy was unexpected and, instinctively, he responded in kind. “Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Commander, Army Group Vistula. German Army.”

Rokossovsky gestured to a scat. When both men were comfortable, he stared at the German intently. “German Army you say? Not President of the independent state of East Arselick?”

Rommel stared back. “Marshal. I am a German soldier, not a bandit. And I am still an officer in the German Army.”

Rokossovsky gave a single curt jerk of his head. “Then as a German officer you are aware that you are under orders to surrender unconditionally?'“

Rommel said nothing but took his pistol out of its holster. He could feel a couple of the guards tense but he continued to move slowly, dropping the magazine and racking the toggle so that the round in the chamber ejected and the action stayed open. He glanced quickly to check the chamber was empty and laid the pistol on the table in front of the Russian Marshal. The room was still and silent.

Rokossovsky picked the P⁷08 up and looked at it. “Engraved with your name I see. I will add it to my collection.”

“To the winner, the spoils Marshal.” There was a movement beside them and a Russian woman placed two bottles on the table, one vodka, one schnapps and two small glasses. She poured the drinks and stepped back into the shadows. Before she did, Rommel caught the glance she had exchanged with Rokossovsky. Obviously one of his lady friends.

“To peace.” The glasses touched. Then Rommel caught his breath. This was going to be the hard part.

“As ordered I surrender Army Group Vistula to you -unconditionally. But Unconditional surrender is one thing; the method by why we reach that end is something else. Marshal Rokossovsky. There has been too much killing already, let us not waste more lives on a war that has ended. We owe it to the men who fought for us that we arrange this surrender so that as few lives as possible are lost. But to achieve that, my men must have something to surrender for, a real hope of going home.”

“What makes you think they have a home to return to? You know what the Americans did to Germany?”

“I have heard the destruction is terrible, unimaginable.”

“No more than you deserve German, No more than you deserve. But there are....... options. For those who deserve them.”

Rommel looked at the Russian, waiting to hear the rest. Beneath his charm, Rokossovsky was a Russian general, he reminded himself never to forget that.

“For those who surrendered in accordance with their orders there are indeed .... options. The question is who deserves to be given that privilege and who does not?”

Rommel listened carefully. He saw now the trap this Russian had laid for him when he had first entered and how he had escaped it. This would take care. “Marshal, perhaps we can establish where we agree. In complex matters like this, there is white and black we can agree upon. Then we can make a list of all the areas that have gray within them and take that list away to think upon. Perhaps when we meet again, some of those areas may have a solution. With patience, all of them.”

“'Very well. I will start with a white issue. We have a policy for German PoWs. Those who are without blame, those who just served as any soldier served, they may seek refuge where they can find it. Norway and Sweden will take them in. So will Finland, and the Netherlands, Denmark and Britain. Or they may go home to Germany and try to rebuild what is left there. We will assume that those soldiers against whom we have no information are innocent of wrong doing. liul the solders only. Officers and n on-commissioned officers we must hold for further investigation. But for this white I demand a black. There are those who have committed the gravest of crimes against the Russian people. The partizanjaegers, the Einsatzkommandos and Einsatzgruppen, the scum of that kind. The ones are mad dogs and who will be put down the same way as a mad dog.”

Rommel allowed himself to relax slightly. A start had been made, a good start, better than he had hoped, “Marshal Rokossovsky, there is not a man who wears the gray of the Wehrmacht who will deny you your black. Or fail to help you find those you seek. But I must warn you that the people you wish are outside the Army chain of command. Even the SS units that are part of Vistula are technically outside my chain of command.”

'“You say you cannot enforce any agreement you make? Then why do we hold this meeting?”

“To find a way that we can enforce the agreement we make. Marshal Rokossovsky I could lie to you and claim that any agreement we make will be easy to enforce. I will not do that. We have a problem and we owe it to the men who have served us so well to solve it as best we can. But it is a problem indeed. The SS, they are the heart of that problem. If they choose to fight, there are no orders I can give to stop them.”

“Field Marshal Rommel. The Red Cross will be here tomorrow with information on the numbers of your soldiers various countries are prepared to take as refugees. Once we have those numbers we can arrange the surrender of the first of your units. They can send messages back when they reach their destinations, that will ease the doubts of the rest of your men. But, for the SS, if all else fails..” Rokossovsky reached into his case and picked out a picture taken from a bomber called Roxanne, one of a mushroom cloud rising skywards, a B-36 making its escape in the background.

Rommel looked at it sadly. “Yes, there is always that. Let us pray to God we can avoid it.”

“Amen” said Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky.

Aft Compartment. B-36H “Texan Lady”, Sheremetevo Airbase, Russia

“Now this is a cultured way to go to war. Texan Lady went to Berlin like this?'* The question came out mixed up with a steak sandwich, Swiss cheese and coffee. The coffee was good but the steak sandwiches just didn't taste the same cooked at ground level. Guards-Colonel Aleksandr Pokryshkin hadn't had the privilege of a high-altitude sandwich yet. And wouldn't, not unless he had a ride in a B-36 for his MiG interceptors were austere even by fighter standards. This flying hotel in the rear compartment of the B-36 was an amazement for him.

“No Sir,” technically Dedmon and Pokryshkin were equal in rank but the Russian's “Guard's” prefix was a tie-breaker. Getting that, being the commander of a Guard's Fighter Regiment, indicated something very special indeed. ''Texan Lady is currently a B-36H-3O Featherweight IVP. What that all means is she is stripped down for minimum weight. They even took away our ability to carry conventional bombs. All the racks and wiring were taken out when we converted from Featherweight III to IV configuration. Taking the wiring out alone saved 800 pounds.

“The P, though, indicates an aircraft in peacetime standard. That gives us back our galley here, the bunks we're sitting on. a coffee machine and a few other luxuries. When we go to war again, all that comes out and we go from IVP back to IV status. Takes about twenty minutes to do the job. All the amenities on board are palletized you see, we just lift them straight out. When we went to Berlin, we ate Army emergency rations, drank coffee from thermos flasks, slept on the deck back here in steeping bags and the comfort station was a bucket.”

“How high do you fly Colonel? We heard you made your bombing run from over 50,000 feet. How did you hit something from so high?”

Dedmon hesitated for a second. What the hell, he^’d been told to hide nothing, or more, precisely, he'd been advised that what he shouldn't tell, he didn't know. “Bombing's done by radar these days. We don't even train for visual bombing any more. Normally we cruise between 37,500 and 42.500 feet, that's primarily to reduce the fatigue on the fuselage from pressurization cycles.

“On paper, the service ceiling of a H-30 Featherweight III, that was our configuration when we went to Berlin, was 48,500 feet. Truth is though, that's service ceiling, defined as when our rate of climb drops to 200 feet per minute. In reality, we did the run to Berlin at 52,500 feet, we were maxed out at that point Texan Lady was giving us all we could ask from her. As a Featherweight IV I guess we could get to 54,000 easy. The RB-36s go higher but you'd have to talk to one of their crews about that. The Recon Rats don't talk much to the Bomber Barons. What are you flying now Sir?”

Pokryshkin was licking the grease off his fingers. “We are converting to MiG-9 jet fighters right now. Once we are operational on them we will make our first foreign deployment. Then, we are to be the air defense regiment for Moscow. We do not think the fascists will be foolish enough to try an attack on Moscow. Mostly they are trying to save their skins. Some are negotiating, some trying to tight us off. But, in truth, who knows what the fascist beasts may do in their madness? So we must always be on our guard. Over Archangel, we never had to worry about high altitudes. For us to fly as high as 5,000 meters was unusual. There, our Lavochkins were the equal of anything the fascists had. But now, the world has changed has it not?”

Dedmon was quiet. The history of the war on the Eastern front was studded with the names of sieges. The ones everybody knew, Sevastopol, Stalingrad, Petrograd, Moscow, and the ones only the historians and the military professionals remembered. Nizhny Novgorod, Smolensk, Kursk, Kiev, so many others that the American Navy had named an entire class of aircraft carriers in their honor. But of them all, there was one that had a chilling horror clinging to it, a cold that froze the bones, like the frigid fog that had shrouded the city during its calvary. Archangel.

The great port-city on the Arctic Circle that had marked both the northern end of the Russian front and the furthest edge of the German tide. Stalingrad had held for 150 days before falling, Moscow for 180. The street fighting in Archangel had lasted for 650 days and not one of those had been any the less ferocious than the worst of those in the other cities.

“Yes sir, it’s changed, and I hope for the better. Our nations should never have to pay such a price again. Perhaps when the world understands what Germany brought upon itself, it may decide that it’s time to find better ways to live.”

“I doubt it Colonel. In Russia we have a saying. 'The beast never dies, it only sleeps.' The world will learn for a moment but then it will forget. Perhaps this...” He was interrupted by a rumble in the communications tunnel that stretched for 80 feet through Texan Lady's bomb bay. The hatch opened and a boy started to clamber out, discreetly helped by Major Clancy. Pokryshkin beamed as he saw the delighted smile on his son's face.

“How did you like our cockpit son?”

“Very good Sir. Thank you. Sir.” The boy spoke good English although it was labored. Dedmon guessed his parents had taught him a few polite phrases and responses and rehearsed him in them.

“Would you like another hamburger?”

“Very good Sir. Thank you. Sir.” Yup Dedmon thought, carefully taught some polite phrases. In the background, he could smell Smith starting to cook another hamburger for the kid. The aft compartment had a warm, comforting air to it, reminded Dedmon of the local diner back home.

“What would your son like to be when he grows up?”

Pokryshkin translated the phrase into Russian, His son said something before grabbing his hamburger and eating. “He says he wants to be a fighter pilot. He apologized, but said that bomber pilots could kill more Germans but fighters protected the Rodina. Mother Russia.” He paused for a second and looked over to his wife who had been sitting quietly in a corner while the men spoke. Now she had tears on her cheeks. “We spoke of change in the world Colonel Dedmon? Now, here today, we have seen a small but important change. For many years we did not dare say 'when' our children grow up here in Russia. We said 'if they grow up. Now, at last we can say 'when' again.”

Suddenly Dedmon's mind came to a screeching halt. “Foreign deployment Sir? May I ask where you'll be you going?”

Pokryshktn grinned. “Nevada!”

Russian-Japanese Border south of Khabarovsk, Siberia, Russia

Sometimes, one could see a mistake coming and do nothing to avoid it. That time was coming fast. Soon, the border would be making a sharp turn northwards and the formation of Russian aircraft would make a terrible mistake and miss that change. They would then fly accidentally into Chinese - now Japanese - airspace. Ooops. Navigational error. Apologies all round. There were five aircraft in the group. One, an RF-63F Kingcobra was below them, its cameras ready to start turning. A thousand or so feet higher and behind the photorecon bird were its escorts. A flight of four Yak-15 jets, their pilots craning their heads around in their seats, watching for interceptors. They were being screened by radars, certainly from the Russian side and those radars were supposed to warn them of an impending attack. The Yak pilots trusted those radars just about as much as they trusted German promises.

They were also being tracked by Japanese radars and the Russian pilot's eyes gave them warning of the attack only a split second after their ground radars sent the message to their ears. Japanese interceptors closing from five o'clock high, estimated speed 800-kay. That meant Kendras. The Nakajima-built equivalent of the German Me-262.

The Japanese had been very reticent about making public their aircraft designations so the Americans had come up with a naming system. Women's names for fighters, men's for bombers. Much easier than remembering some foreign names and numbers. Senior Lieutenant Paul Lazaruski watched the Japanese fighters streaking in, carefully waiting his moment. Once, he'd done what many would consider impossible, he'd shot down a Me-262 with his old P-39Q. He'd seen it flying below him, limping for home after one of its jets had exploded, he'd dived on it and shot the cripple down with a careful burst of 37mm into its cockpit. The feat had got him a medal but it was pure luck. Now, he was flying a better match for the twin-engined jet.

“BREAK! BREAK! BREAK!” He and his wingman yanked their Yaks around to the right, the other pair of Yaks breaking left. The Americans, with their elegant turn of phrase, had once remarked that the Japanese pilots didn't do teamwork. Their fighter pilots looked on themselves as the modern samurai, seeking to engage their enemies in a one-on-one duel to the death. The American and Russian veterans knew teamwork was everything, they fought in pairs and if that meant winning a fight by shooting their opponent in the back, so be it. Winning trumped fairness, life trumped death.

That was happening now; the Yaks had split, opening a gap between them. The Kendras were diving into the formation, each Japanese pilot picking a target. Only, they weren't coordinating properly. Also, the Yak-15 was just a Yak-3 whose piston engine had been replaced by a jet. It still had the thick wings of a piston-engined fighter. That cost it in speed, it was 80 kays slower than the Kendra but those thick, high-lift wings meant it could turn tighter, much tighter.

The Yak was in a clawing turn, standing on its right wingtip, its throttles rammed all the way forward for maximum power, Lazaruski hauling the stick back into his stomach. Despite the power from the jet hanging under its nose, the Yak was shuddering on the edge of a stall, its controls vibrating. Despite his American-supplied g-suit, Lazaruski's eyes were blacking out as centrifugal force drove his blood from his brain.

Only the Kendra was going 80 kays faster and speed translated into centrifugal force and that translated into weight and that meant the loading on the wings was greater and that meant its turning circle, greater than the Yak's to start with, was too large. In his mirror, Lazaruski saw the Kendra drifting off to his left, trying and failing to follow his turn. He slammed the stick over and the Yak, bless its thick, drag-inducing high-lift wings rolled sharply. In his vision black was replaced by red as negative g replaced positive. Lazaruski came hammering around the reverse curve, his nose swinging towards the Kendra a few hundred feet away.

The Japanese pilot had seen what was happening and was trying to reverse his turn but speed and wing-loading were against him. His first turn had bled off too much energy, too much speed, loaded his wings too highly. He was starting to reverse his turn but Lazaruski had started first, he was there first, and being first meant far more than all the aerobatic skills in the world. Because his nose was swinging across, catching the Kendra, pinned like a specimen fly to paper by a needle made of speed and centrifugal force and weight.

Lazaruski's thumb stroked the firing button on his control column, gently, so gently, as gently as dew forming on the morning grass. His twin 23mm cannon roared, spewing a line of invisible shells towards the Kendra. Invisible for no hardened veteran pilot used tracer. The first sign of his burst was the bright flash of hits on the Kendra's nose then along the side of its fuselage. Its bubble canopy exploded from the hits and Lazaruski saw the pilot jerk in his seat.

He knew what would happen next, had seen it so many times. The pilot's hands jerked back, towards his wounded body, yanking the control column with them. The Kendra reared, loading its wings and snapping into a near-vertical climb. As it passed through its critical angle of attack, its left wing stalled out and it snapped over onto its back before dropping into a tight spin. Lazaruski was onto it like a wolf onto prey; bring his twin 23mm guns to bear.

“BREAK LEFT! BREAK LEFT!”

Instinctively he left his kill as his wingman screamed the warning. He was already in a left turn as the bright red tracers started to sweep past his aircraft. The second Kendra was coming at him hard and fast and was hosing him with his paired 20mm and 30mm guns. Lazaruski continued his bank, racking the little Yak around and turning his turn into a barrel roll that took him around the stream of fire. Veteran pilots never used tracer, the Japanese pilots were skilled, in technical terms probably the best in the world, but they weren't veterans.

As his roll bottomed out, Lazaruski slammed the nose down and started to dive away. He could almost read the second Kendra pilot's mind, the prey was getting away. But the Kendra was heavier, more than twice as heavy, and that meant it picked up speed faster in a dive. The Japanese pilot knew that as the Yak accelerated away, the speed difference between the two aircraft would diminish and then be reversed and it would be the Kendra that would close on the Yak. It would just take time.

The Japanese pilots saw themselves as samurai, fighting duels, one on one, honorable victory for one, honorable death for the other. The Russians were killers whose goal was to see they lived and their enemies died. As Lazaruski came out of his roll and extended, the Kendra dived after him. The Japanese pilot never saw Lazaruski's wingman finish his turn and swing onto the tail of the Kendra as it swept past in pursuit of its prey.

The wingman's guns hammered out the finale, a tracerless, invisible finale befitting an assassin. The torrent of 23mm shells slashed into the Kendra's wings, belly, fuel tanks, engines, shredding them, slashing fuel lines and causing a black-red sheet of flame to erupt from the stricken fighter. The Japanese pilot bailed out, his clothes and his parachute already aflame.

Lazaruski pulled out of his dive and swept around, looking at the hurtling fireball that had once been a fighter. No way was the parachute going to save anybody's life now. Below, he saw a mushroom as the fighter's wreck spun into the ground and, he thought, not far away the puff as a burning body hit the ground.

It was over. Of the three Kendras, one was dead, a second limping away streaming black smoke and a third was covering it. The Kendra was as short-legged as the Yak-15 and both aircraft were running dangerously low on fuel. Far too low to continue fighting. Below him, the RF-63 was already running home, its precious film safe in its belly. The four Yaks formed up and followed the Kingcobra.

An easy fight, Lazaruski thought. The Japanese pilots were superb, well trained and their aircraft were excellent. Only they'd spent years fighting Chinese peasants who had only a few hours in their aircraft before being thrown into battle. Today, the Japanese had met the fighter pilots who had survived seven years of war against the Luftwaffe's Experten. It wasn't the same thing, wasn't the same thing at all.

Reconnaissance and Intelligence Center, Khabarovsk

The Air Force lieutenant burst into the center with a broad grin on his face that told Colonel Yvegeni Valerin all he needed to know.

“We have our pictures?”

“Yes, Gospodin Colonel. The Kingcobra got back safely and its pictures were good. I hear the Japanese are already screaming with anger and threatening dire consequences. The escorting Yaks shot down one of their fighters and damaged another, Sir. I understand they will be making a formal complaint and we will, of course be making a full investigation of the regrettable error in navigation. It will, of course, be a thorough inquiry. I understand Chairman Shayvin of the Khabarovsk Military Region will be conducting it himself.”

Everybody in the room laughed. Few of its characteristics had survived the quiet death of Communism after Zhukov had become President but one that had was a remarkable skill for making bureaucratic activity a substitute for achievement. Even amongst the most pettifogging of the bureaucrats. Chairman losef Shayvin was legendary, It was whispered that lie had even left his grandmother behind to be taken away by the Germans because the old lady hadn't filed her travel application in triplicate. The Japanese were about to find out just how bureaucratic an inquiry could get.

The young lieutenant spread the pictures out on the table. “I'm afraid they ask more questions that they answer Sir.”

Valerin took the stereoscopic viewer and started to look at the pictures. What had appeared flat pictures now took on a three-dimensional life of their own. The first pictures were of what appeared to be an infantry camp close to the border. “How many men do you think are based here Lieutenant?”

“Military Sir? None Sir. That camp is abandoned.” “How do you know? I can see tracks all over the place.”

“Yes Sir, but look. They're all around the field boundaries, never across them. That's farmers avoiding trampling their crops. If you look at these pictures Sir, these are of an active Army base. You can see where the soldiers have ignored the field boundaries and trod down the crops.”

“Could they be bluffing us? Acting like farmers to hide their base?” A Russian officer might well think of that. It was hammered into them from the first days of their training. The three principles of warfare. Maskirovka, Maskirovka. Maskirovka. Deception, deception, deception. Never be straightforward when one can be devious. Never be open when one can deceive. Never do the obvious when an alternative exists. Misdirect, misdirect, misdirect.

“I don't think so Sir. Take a look at these shots; see how the trucks are parked to use the shadows and the terrain to make them less obvious. The Japanese are good sir, they know their business. They're doing things by the book on the bases we think are occupied. I think its genuine, they're pulling back a lot of their troops.”

“How many of the frontier bases have been abandoned?”

“From these photographs and the ones taken earlier, about a third. The problem is sir, now we're running into those other questions that I mentioned. We have coverage of only a very limited area of the border in length and an even more limited area in depth. Also, the reconnaissance aircraft we have, well their cameras aren't very good. They can't be, the RF-63 just isn't big enough to carry a good camera and it doesn't have the range to get very far along the front or the speed to get very deep. We could send an RB-27, they've got the range but they're well within the intercept envelope of a Kendra, even more so of a Layla. By the time they get deep enough, to see something, there'll be fighters all over them. We can get away with one border incident, not two.”

Valerin stared at the pictures. They were telling him the answers to the questions he had asked but not what he needed to know. The Japanese were thinning their border troops out. Did that mean they were confident the border was peaceful and they could send them to places where the need was greater? The Japanese-Chinese war was winding down now; the Japanese had everything of value, just a few Chinese holding out in the more remote areas.

Or did it mean that the Japanese were concentrating their troops ready for an incursion or even a full-blooded invasion. Eastern Russia was the powerhouse that was fueling the liberation of Western Russia. Another war here could be a disaster. Or were the Japanese pulling back, afraid of a Russian strike and so keeping a thin border screen while establishing a strong reserve? The pictures didn't tell him.

“Nikita Sergeyevich, have the organs of state anything to say that can help us?”

Khrushchev shook his head. In the old days, when it was Chinese across the border, the “organs of state” had known everything that moved. But then the Japanese had arrived and with the Kempeitai. Now those who might have spoken were too terrified to whisper.

“We must have more information. If the Japanese are going to attack, we must pre-empt them. We have no aircraft that can get pictures to help us? That can get far enough behind their lines to tell us what is going on? And do so in safety?”

The air force lieutenant shook his head. “We have no such aircraft. But there is one that can do just that.”

Chulachomklao Military Academy, Bangkok, Thailand

“I hate him. He's horrible.”

“Why?” Officer Cadet Sirisoon Chandrapa na Ayuthya squinted down the barrel of her Mauser. Bright shiny bore. Her hands moved quickly as she pressed the retention plunger in and screwed the firing pin assembly back into the bolt. As far as she could see, every last drop and fragment of cosmoline had been cleaned out of the rifle. She quickly wiped some excess oil off with a fragment of rag, then slid the bolt into place. Rifle reassembled. She quickly slid her bayonet out of its scabbard and checked that as well. 20 centimeters of steel, razor sharp on one edge, the first four centimeters sharpened on the other, the rest a vicious-looking sawback. Ten years earlier, the German instructors that had founded the modern Thai Army had been horrified by that sawback. During the First World War, accusations of barbarity had made them grind their sawbacks off. No answer yet. “Why do you hate him?”

“He's always picking on us, making fun of us.”

“Of course he is, it’s his job. If we can't take pressure here, how can we take it outside?” She clicked her bayonet back into the scabbard. “And we're strangers here, this is their club and we're forcing our way into it. You were in university weren't you? You were in a sorority? How would you have felt if the university authorities had ordered your sorority to accept members you didn't want? You wouldn't have liked it would you? And you'd have taken it out on them. Hazed them far worse than the ones you'd chosen.”

“But it's not fair. And he makes it so personal.''

“Whoever said life was fair? War is personal, when somebody tries to kill you, it’s very personal. And we're officer cadets, out there we'll be taking responsibility for other people. Sergeant Major Manop is part of a system that is trying to weed out the ones who aren't able to do that. For their own good as well as for everybody else's. So don't sit there and sulk saying you hate him. Beat him by not giving him an excuse to throw you out.” She slung her rifle over her shoulder. “Now wish me luck, I'm going into the tiger's den.”

She slapped the crude wooden partition twice with her hand, waited a few seconds then stepped through the hanging curtain into the main part of the barracks. Some of the men there stared at her resentfully; a few more mentally undressed her. One just went through the motions of doing so. Hmm, she thought, I wonder if the others have guessed about you yet. Other end of the barracks, she stopped in front of the Sergeant-Major's door and knocked respectfully. Sergeant Major Manop opened it.

“Officer Cadet Sirisoon Chandrapa na Ayuthya requests the Sergeant Major inspect Rifle, 7.92 millimeter Mauser Type Kar98k serial number 338250 Sergeant Major.”

Manop took the rifle and went to the table in the middle of the barracks, “This should be good, boys. Women like cleaning things don't they?” There was a swell of laughter around the room at the sally. One of the good things about being a Sergeant Major was that the cadets all appreciated his little jokes. His hands moved quickly and expertly as he stripped the rifle down, inspecting each part as he took it down. Then, he produced a pull through and a strip of white silk.

Sirisoon gulped, her rags had been cotton, that piece of silk would attract every scrap of dirt in the bore. She held her breath as Manop pulled the silk rag through the barrel. To her relief, it came out white, just the slightest hint of gray where the trace of lubricant had protected the inside of the barrel, Manop looked at her and nodded slightly. Then he unscrewed the firing pin assembly and took a stick with another scrap of silk rag wrapped around it. He probed inside the forward part of the bolt, looking for traces of the cosmoline that had been caked in there. Clean as well. Satisfied, he reassembled the rifle. When it was complete he was about to hand it back when he looked at the teak furniture. Looked again, then gazed sharply at Sirisoon.

“Treated it with linseed oil, Sergeant Major, then rubbed it with number twenty steel wool then applied more linseed oil.”

Manop nodded slowly. “How did you know that? It isn't in the book.”

“My father, Sergeant Major, he fought against the French in 1940. With the Queen's Cobra Division. We have the old Type 45 rifle at home, chambered for eight millimeter Siamese. Permission to take Nomenclature Test Sergeant Major?” Manop nodded. Sirisoon took a deep breath and pointed to the muzzle of the rifle. “Foresight Hood, Foresight, Foresight Hood Retaining Clip, Barrel, Cleaning Rod Half.” The list went on as she worked her way down the rifle, pointing to and naming each part in turn. Eventually she came to the Lower Butt Plate Retaining Screw and stopped. Manop stared at her.

“You forgot the Magazine Plate Release Plunger Spring Cadet. Get three strips of canvas and tie your rifle to your leg tonight. Help you to remember in future.” There was another swell of laughter around the room. Manop turned and pointed to one of the men. “You. Nomenclature Test in five minutes.” The man went white. “The rest of you, look at the furniture on Cadet Sirisoon's rifle. See how it has a silk-like sheen? That is how it should look. It is satisfactory. In most armies the furniture on a rifle is birch or cheap laminated wood but Our King gives you a rifle with the best grade teak we can find. So make sure you earn that privilege by seeing to it that your rifle is satisfactory also. Dismissed Cadet Sirisoon.” He tossed the rifle at her and she caught it neatly. Then he turned and went back to his room. But as he turned he gave her a slight acknowledging nod.

Office of Sir Martyn Sharpe, British Viceroy to India, New Delhi

“Well, we were expecting a damning report Sir Eric. Not quite this damning I admit though. Secretly, I must admit this report pleases me. The Commission of Inquiry did a splendid job, called the shots the way the evidence pointed and didn't pull any punclies. If we're going to have an efficient modern government here, we must have a system where situations like this are investigated properly. We must, must, learn from our mistakes, not sweep them under the table and pretend they never happened.”

There were times when Sir Brie Haohoa wished he had the Ambassador's ability to present one set of facial expressions while actually thinking something quite different. This was one of them. Sir Martyn's enthusiasm for open inquiries and Seaming from mistakes was all very well in theory but Sir Eric was a practical politician and could see the problems that reality tended to interject into such ideas.

There were those who objected to the path India was taking and the unfolding disaster at de Havilland (India) was ready-made ammunition for them. He leafed through the report issued by the Commission of Inquiry on Problems Experienced with Mosquito Aircraft. CIPEMA for short. They had certainly been thorough. If anything they could be criticized for being too thorough, they'd gone far beyond their official remit. They'd also suggested solutions to the problems they'd found, good workable solutions. Sir Eric sighed slightly, if the CIPEMA Report was anything to go by, the future for those who made a mess of Indian Government contracts would not be a pleasant one.

“They do commend your decision to ground the Mosquito, Sir Martyn. They also recommend a temporary solution that will keep the remaining fleet operational. Apparently, if the squadron maintenance units burn drainage holes in the lower wing panels, that will prevent the water build-up that caused the mid-air wing failures. Apparently burning the holes, rather than drilling them, prevents a rim of splinters forming inside and interrupting the water flow-out.”

“Temporary though. We can't keep them in service like that. The Americans have heard something, their DEME people are hammering on the Air Ministry doors already. Offering us surplus B-27Es at give-away prices. More or less saying we can have them if we come to Russia and take them away.”

“Very generous of them Sir Martyn, 'Disposal of Excess Military Equipment' indeed. We take their kind offer, kill off our own aircraft industry in the process and are stuck buying their spare parts for the next twenty years. I bet they didn't breathe a word about giving us the spares as well.”

“Not a word, Sir Eric, the matter appears never to have crossed their minds. The Australians are in a much better position than we are of course; they benefited greatly from Thwamap. They make the spares they need down there, the ones they need anyway. A glass of whisky?”

“Thank you. Thwamap, theThree-Way Military Assistance Program.” Sir Eric rolled the words around his mouth then washed them down with whisky. Thwamap had funded much of Australia's industrial growth during the war years. A triangular relationship between tbe United States, Australia and Russia. America had bought war material made in Australia, given it to the Russians and charged the money against Russia's lend-Lease account. The arrangement had made Australia an alternate source of supply for American forces in Russia and the Pacific. In turn, that had enabled the Australians to re-equip their strangled industry. Now Australia was leveraging that industrial development into a peacetime industry structure. “If we get the B-27s, can the Australians supply us with spare parts for them?”

“I do not know, but I think we both know somebody who does.”

“The Ambassador.” Sir Eric looked both pensive. It seemed that everywhere one looked these days, there was a Thai businessman acting as an intermediary. Smoothing paths, calming troubled waters, providing the funding necessary to get mutually profitable deals off the ground. All scrupulously honest of course, it was just that the English language appeared to have been written with the specific intention of enabling Thai banks to make money out of brokering deals.

To make matters worse, nearly all the big trading houses from Hong Kong and Shanghai were moving to Bangkok now that the Japanese were consolidating their hold on China. Australia was too remote, India was too poor, Thailand was central, peaceful and its Government was determined to be hospitable to foreign investors. “That's something we'll have to explore later. In the meantime, what do we do with Sir Geoffrey de Havilland?”

“We will follow the recommendations of the CIPEMA Report. There is no doubt about bis skills as a designer, he is probably one of the leading lights of his generation. The criticisms of the company are basically those of poor management and poor production engineering. The outline plan from CIPEMA is that we nationalize de Havilland (India). Sir Geoffrey can stay on as chief designer for one of its product streams. There's another man there who the report speaks well of. Chap called Folland. We can set him up as a second design stream.

“We'll tell Sir Geoffrey that we're taking the burden of running the company off his hands and bringing in production engineers to help him on that side of things. He'll go for it, its probably a lot better deal than he's expecting. CIPEMA have even given us a name for the new group. Hindustan Aviation. They recommend sixty percent of the shareholding be held by the Government of India, forty percent by the public.

“They are also suggesting that we have an external office to audit designs produced by all the aviation companies here. That's only Hindustan Aviation now of course. Others when they follow. They suggest we slow down on the various programs until that's done. The Hornet and Vampire fighters of course but also the Comet.”

“The Comet as well?”

“Especially the Comet. Heaven knows we need that aircraft. The ground transport network is terrible, you know that. It takes days of hard travel to get from one city to another, even by train. If we can establish an air travel system, it will help immensely. We've made a start with the Australian-built Dakotas and Lodestars but a jet airliner will put us ahead in that market. It may even become the standard for the whole region. The last thing we need is for the thing to start its career by falling out of the sky.”

Sir Eric nodded. The plan would play. Despite the collapse of communism in Russia, there were still a lot of people who believed in state-run and centrally planned economies and many of them were prominent in the Indian National Party. On the other hand, those looking to invest money in a country saw nationalization as barely better than outright theft. In fact, some did see it as outright theft. Given the loss of confidence resulting from the Mosquito program though, a sixty-forty split would satisfy both. State control, getting the company onto a sound financial and technical footing and offering the prospect of reverting to wholly private ownership later. As Cabinet Secretary, one of Sir Eric's responsibilities was to maneuver legislation through Parliament. This one wouldn't cause that many problems.

“I do have some good news Sir Martyn. I've heard from the directors of one of the new companies setting up. Bharat Ordnance. They've concluded the license agreement with the Swiss Oerlikon Company, allowing them to build Oeriikon's line of 20 millimeter and 30 millimeter guns here.

“Apparently, Oerlikon are launching a new range of guns, incorporating the lessons of the war. Which, of course, they are in a position to know since they industriously sold their guns to both sides. Anyway, the Swiss are sending out a team of their engineers to help set up the machinery and get everything in order. Apparently, they're going to stay for at least three or four years, until their Indian opposite numbers have been fully trained. They were quite insistent on that by all accounts, something about maintaining the integrity of the Oerlikon reputation.”

“Hmmm. Switzerland is right next to Germany. I don't suppose their engineers desire to put distance between themselves and that radioactive wasteland has anything to do with their decision?”

“I believe it just might Sir Martyn, it just might.”

Flight Line, Ramenskoye Test and Evaluation Establishment, Moscow, Russia

“That looks familiar.” The drab brown bomber was small to eyes used to ten-engined intercontinental giants. Four propeller engines on the leading edge of the wings, a nose smooth and without a raised canopy, it was almost, but not quite, familiar. “Its a B-29!”

Guards-Colonel Aleksandr Pokryshkin shook his head. “No my friend. It is a Tupolev Four, This one belongs to Long Range Naval Aviation. See?” He pointed at the tall fin, half way up the rectangular red white and blue Russian tricolor had a black anchor superimposed over it. Looking at the tail, Colonel Dedmon could see that it was differently-shaped from the B-29. Taller. Pokryshkin laughed. “Boeing designed an improved design for the B-29. First they called it the B-29D then when SAC refused to buy a version of the B-29, they renamed it the B-50. SAC still didn't want it but for us it was perfect. We don't have engines powerful enough for a bomber like your Texan Lady but we had for this. So Gospodin Tupolev went to Boeing and got a license to build your B-50 and here it is. The Tu-4, we made some changes of course,”

It was a challenge. Spot them. Dedmon looked over the airframe carefully, “The tail's different of course, taller. And the engine mounts are different as well. That'll be your engines. What have you got in her?”

“Shevetsov Ash-73TKs. Rated at 2,400 horsepower.” Dedmon and his crew exchanged glances. Only a fraction more power than the B-29 had. Barely half that delivered by the R-4360 engines on Texan Lady.

“Guns. You've got different guns. 20 millimeter cannon?”

“23 millimeter “Nudelman-Rikter. Twelve. Much better than the Brownings and even better than Texan Lady's 20 millimeter guns. But that is not the most important thing. Look underneath him.”

Dedmon was flummoxed for a second, he was so used to calling aircraft “she” that the male pronoun threw him. Then what he saw under the Tu-4 knocked his breath from him. A long cylinder, gracefully curving to a point at the front swelling to maximum a quarter of the way along its length, then tapering to a nozzle at the back. Trapezoidal wings, the tips cut sharply back, tail the same. And under the wing roots, two fat, open-ended cylinders with pointed nose-cones. It was painted white and it looked evil. “Whoa, this is something new. May I ask what this little beauty is?”

“We call it Sopka. Formally it is the Kh-1 anti-ship missile. We fire it from about 20,000 feet and steer it by radio control. All the bomb-aimer has to do is keep it on the line of sight between himself and the target. The rocket fires first and gets it up to speed then the ramjets take over. We are giving the first twenty off the production line to your “Navy so they can assess it.”

Dedmon reached out and ran his hand over the sleek nose. “Nuclear warhead here?” That would be American supplied, he thought.

“That is not the warhead, that is the rocket fuel tank. The warhead is in the middle. It is a shaped charge, one that can penetrate two meters of armor. And when it does it blasts the burning rocket fuel deep into the target. Rocket fuel, Grazhdanin Robert. Contains its own oxidizer so nothing can put the fires out. Not water not foam, nothing.”

Dedmon winced, now he knew why the missile looked so evil. The memory of the burning Shiloh slipping beneath the waves came to his mind. The ugly picture was erased by the howl of a fighter flying overhead. He looked up, a straight-winged bird, looking like the Yak-15s and 17s but different. Weirdly different. For all the world, the jet fighter circling overhead looked like a racing car. Cockpit well back, a huge long nose in front of it.

“That is our Yak-23.” Pokryshkin explained. “Our airframe, American engine. Much faster than the Yak-17. See that man over there.” He pointed to a distinguished-looking figure standing beside a camera stage. “That is Aleksandr Sergeyevich Yakovlev himself. The test pilots have been complaining about the undercarriage on the Yak-23. The fighter lands almost 80 kilometers per hour faster than the Yak-17 and they say the wheels are too weak and the hydraulics not strong enough to lock them down. Aleksandr Sergeyevich will have none of it. He will not admit that he may have underestimated the stress of landing the new aircraft. And Yakovlev fighters have always been cursed with weak undercarriages.”

The Yak 23 was approaching for its landing. The Americans were exchanging worried glances, their Russian friend was right, the undercarriage didn't look right. The Yak touched the end of the runway, bounced once and then all hell broke loose. The undercarriage collapsed in a shower of sparks and the fighter was sliding on its belly, starting a slow rotation to the left as it did. Even through the sound of its jet, they could hear the shrieking of tortured metal as the hard runway surface ground the airframe away. Then there was a dull whoomf as the fuel tanks exploded, engulfing the aircraft in orange flame.

Dedmon and his crew broke into a run, heading for the crash, knowing there was little they could do to help but wanting to try anyway. Even as the burning jet continued down the runway, leaving a trail of fire behind it, the cockpit opened. Incredibly, despite the sea of flames and the still-spinning wreckage, a figure leapt out of the cockpit, ran along the wing and jumped off. Immediately ground-crew were around him, blasting him with fire extinguishers and throwing dirt over him.

By the time the Yak had come to a halt, it was a hundred yards down the runway and had stopped in a greasy black and orange pyre of smoke and flame. The pilot got up, slowly and shakily, shouting something.

“Is he all right?” Dedmon asked.

“Oh yes. But he is very angry. He is an old friend of mine, Captain Viktor Bubnov. A man with a very hot temper. I fear it has just boiled over. He is suggesting that Gospodin Designer Yakovlev initiate a maternally incestuous relationship. Now, he is alleging that the Gospodin Designer is of German ancestry. Oh.”

The other side of the runway, the pilot in the singed flight suit had stopped shouting and was advancing on the Chief designer with definite menace. Suddenly. Yakovlev's nerve broke and he fled, hotly pursued by his nemesis. He tried to shelter behind the camera stand but Bubnov was following him, swinging kicks at his plump backside. Yakovlev had obviously decided that halting was a bad move and was frantically running away from the furious pilot. After their fifth circuit of the camera stand, the ground crew grabbed Bubnov and started calming him down. Yakovlev kept running for a few meters then stopped, sobbing for breath. Pokryshkin guessed that was further than the distinguished VIP had run in thirty years.

Beside him Major Clancy was looking exceptionally pleased. “l must remember that next time we're down at the Convair plant. You know, I think I really like Russia.”

Part Two - Hammer

Chapter One Raised

WalIsend, Tyneside, UK

“Why, Maisie luv, you look beautiful. Really.”

Maisie McMullen beamed with delight. She'd taken the South African bonuses her husband had earned, five of them in a six-day week, combined them with a few pennies she'd managed to save and her clothing ration coupons and bought herself a new dress. But it wasn't the dress that made the difference, it was the glow that shone from inside. For the first time in years there was hope of things getting better. She'd paid off the slate at the grocers and made a start at the butchers and the greengrocer. Soon, they'd be out of debt something that a few weeks ago would have seemed a remote, unlikely dream. Somehow, Wallsend seemed to have become a less grimy, less depressing place over the last few days. Work in the shipyard meant life brought back into the community.

“We've got a few pennies left after paying the rent, Maisie.'“ John McMullen could hardly believe it, the rent paid on a Fridays and it wasn't due until next week. Their landlord had been patient during the bad years, not that he'd had much choice. If he'd evicted one set of tenants for being late, their replacements wouldn't have been any better off. Still, he'd put up with late payment when times were bad. Now they were changing, McMullen took a stiff-necked pride in paying early. “How would you like to go down the pub? Been a long time since we went down to The Foundry together.”

Maisie McMullen’s beam got even bigger. It had, indeed, been a long time since they'd been out for an evening. The lean times, then the danger from the American “Navy carrier strikes, all had made people stay at home. “That's a wonderful idea. I'll get my coat.”

As McMullen closed the door of their home behind them, he realized his wife had been right about getting her coat, even old and worn as it was. McMullen privately promised himself that he'd swing a good hammer next week and get her a new coat even if he had to go down the corner to get it. There was an unseasonable chill in the air, even at the end of August, the air had a bite to it that shouldn't be there. Just wasn't right. Damned Yanks dropping atom bombs on everybody.

McMullen looked up. Early evening, the sky was clear but high up, so high and so faint it could hardly be seen, was a faint streaking of gray. When the sun set, it would catch that thin shroud and turn it into a spectacular display of color, everything from the faintest of pinks to the deepest, most intense scarlets. It had been more than a year since The Big One and every one of those days had seen sunsets so spectacular that they made the eyes water.

It had been the fires, according to the radio. The atom bombing in Germany had burned the cities, all of them, to ash but it had done something else as well. It had started forest fires across the country and, without anybody to put them out, they'd burned for weeks. The smoke had been driven so high that it couldn't come down and that was the cause of the sunsets and the unseasonable chill. Or so the radio said. Stood to reason, McMullen thought. It was the Yanks fault. It hadn't been fair how they'd ended the war like that, never given the Germans a chance. Just flew the bombers over and blew their country out of existence. That wasn't fighting fair.

He took his wife's arm and they walked down the street, together, greeting neighbors as they passed. That was something that came hard, five years of living with the Gestapo watching every move had left people reluctant to say anything they didn't have to. Only now were the old habits coming back. McMullen made himself a private bet that at least one of the people they were greeting as neighbors had been an informer.

Still, best forgotten now. Old Winnie, now Prime Minister Churchill again, had been right on that. Obsession with revenge lead to - Germany. Wallsend had nothing to be ashamed of, it might have had its informers and its Nazi sympathizers but it had also had its resistance. McMullen had been surprised when they'd come out into the open after the German surrender and he'd seen who they were and how many of them. Now, they were the town council and their leader was the Mayor.

“Here we are luv.” They'd reached The Foundry and McMullen held the door to the Saloon Bar open for his wife. Carpet on the floor, padded seats and booths down a wall. If he'd been on his own, he'd have gone to the Public Bar where the floor was bare wood and sawdust and the seats were simple stools. No decent woman went into the Public Bar. A man with his wife went to the Saloon Bar. Maisie had taken off her coat, catching the envious glances at her dress from the other women.

McMullen seated her in a booth and collected two halves of beer. Another thing that had changed. Once a man wouldn't dare order a half pint of beer. Men drank full pints and to do less invited ridicule that could last for weeks. Only, now, rationing meant that a pint cost a point so a man who went to the pub with his wife split their rationed pint into two halves, dividing it between them.

“Here's to us luv.” They chinked their glasses and drank. The beer was thin, watery stuff, a far cry from the rich foaming brown that they'd had years before. But it was beer and this was their first night out in years. They spoke of small things, of stories of experiences in the shops and down the corner. McMullen told his wife the funny stories of the yard, of the tricks played on apprentices. Especially the 'prentice who they'd sent to the stores for a “long weight”. Maisie McMullen had chuckled at that, sitting erect in her seat and sipping at her beer. After a while, they'd got their ration book out and started adding up the numbers to see if they could afford 'the other half’.

“Hey, Johnno, don't worry about that let me get it for you.” The thick South African accent made the name sound like 'Yunno'.

“Thank you Mister....” To his embarrassment, McMullen realized he didn't know the man's name.

“Piet. Piet van der Haan. Please, this round on me, I have a visitor's ration card and you deserve a beer. Never seen a man swing a better hammer. And this is your lady wife?”

Maisie McMullen flushed slightly. Her husband looked up at van der Haan proudly. “Aye Sir. That she is. My wife Maisie. And we both thank you for a beer.”

“On its way.” Van der Haan waved and the barman started to ready the drinks. “But not so much of the sir Johnno. Not the way for two good Union men speak to each other is it?''

“You're Union? I thought you were with the bosses.”

Van der Haan laughed, then paused to pay for the beers and have the points taken off his ration card. “Since when would a bossman know who was swinging a good hammer? Been a Union man all my life. Work the Simonstown yard.”

“Which Union Brother? Boilermakers?”

“Shipbuilders. We only have one Union per yard in the Republic. Everybody who works in a shipyard is a Shipbuilder. Except the kaffirs of course.” Van der Haan saw the puzzled look. “Blackfellers. You know. They just fetch and carry so there's no need for a Union for them. But for the rest of us, we're all Shipbuilders. Stops the bossmen playing one Union off against the others you see.”

“Does your wife mind you being away, Mister van der Haan?” Maisie McMullen’s voice was tentative, as if she wasn't sure she should be interrupting when the men were speaking.

“Call me Piet please. She's not happy about me coming here at all. Down in the Republic, we hear bad things about Europe. How the bombing made everybody sick and all. Tell you, haven't felt quite right since I came here either. Still, the bossmen had to pay a big bonus for us to come here so it’s worth it. Look forward to getting back though, that's the truth. Lord knows how I miss home.”

They chatted on, exchanging stories about the occupation and life in the Republic of South Africa, and McMullen insisted on ordering another round. Eventually they parted, van der Haan back to his hotel, the McMullens to their home. As they walked down the street, Maisie McMullen had a smug smile on her face because she had noticed something her husband had not. Their affable South African friend carried a gun under his jacket.

Headquarters, Second Karelian Front, Riga, “The Baltic Gallery”

The long lines of tanks and artillery had grown even thicker, denser, the cannon barrels seeming to bristle at the sky like some great steel porcupine defying the gods that lived beyond the clouds. Rows upon rows of them. Field Marshal Rommel hardly noticed. The professional part of his mind noted what he saw and even jabbed him into awareness when they passed something new, a long-range rocket battery- A bit like the German A-4 but a pointed cylinder instead of the A-4s graceful bullet shape. But, for the rest of the drive his mind was far away, churning over what he had learned. Or, rather, what he had been made to learn.

It had sounded so simple. Pick out a couple of units, ones that had no great crimes to stain their reputation, ones where the soldiers had just done their duty and deserved to find refuge where they could. He'd picked out some likely candidates and drawn their files to check them. Then, he'd been horrified by what he'd found. He'd checked others and found the same. There were no blameless units; there were no units without great crimes to stain their reputation. There were no honest, simple soldiers who had just done their duty.

Like most Wehrmacht officers, Erwin Rommel had convinced himself that the stories of vileness, of atrocities, of horror were all the work of others, the SS and the even more foul groups that followed them. The last 48 hours had shattered that comforting delusion. There were no clean, blameless units that had just done their duty. For the first time, he'd seen the truth of what the war on the Eastern Front had been like. It didn't help, it wasn't a comfort, to point to the Russians, or the Canadians or the Americans and say that they too had done the same. They had, but that was no excuse. It was their problem and their consciences would have to carry that burden. As he sat in his staff car, Erwin Rommel felt the vileness clinging to him and he believed he would never be clean again.

At the Russian headquarters, he saw the Russian infantry that surrounded it staring at him with cold, all-encompassing hatred. He'd seen it before, on his first visit, but then he'd dismissed it as the aftermath of war. It was a terrible feeling to understand how that hatred had been earned, to know that it was deserved. It was a relief to get inside where Konstantin Rokossovsky, ever the urbane and genial cavalryman, was waiting for him.

“Field Marshal Rommel, I have good news for you. The Swedes are prepared to take an initial five thousand of your men as refugees. They are even sending a ship, one of their Baltic ferries, to collect them. Finland and Norway are speaking of taking five thousand each also but we have no confirmation of that yet. Now, what white have you got that you can offer me?”

Rommel reached into his briefcase and took out three files. “My white is the 21st Panzer Division. They spend much of the war on occupation duty in France. As a panzer unit, they were used mostly for assaults and for counter-attacks, they took no part in anti-partisan operations and I can find few accusations against them. I suggest we start with the tank regiment first and then the artillery regiment. Then, if the five thousand are not yet filled, the two panzergrenadier regiments. The 21st is an old unit, regular Wehrmacht and they received fewer replacements than most.”

That was something Rommel had noticed, the units that had received the most replacements, the ones filled with the brain-washed fanatics from the Hitler Jugend, were the ones that had the records bad enough to turn his stomach. Across the table Rokossovsky nodded. He spoke to one of the Russian women who left, glaring at Rommel as she did. “I understand why you hate us now.”

Rokossovsky looked at him. “You do German? And why do we hate you?”

“I have seen what we did, even in the words of our own reports and statements. There can be no forgiveness for us. I do not expect any.”

“German, that is war. It is not a game, it is horror incarnate and unimaginable. Perhaps we had forgotten that and it took General LeMay to remind us, but we do not hate you for war. Do you want to know why we hate you?” Rommel nodded.

“Because you were so rich, you had so much. We had nothing. The men in the rifle divisions, the Frontniki, are peasants from collective farms. They were so poor, for them to have nothing was an improvement. Yet you, who had everything, came to our country and took what little we had and that which you could not take you destroyed.

“Two starving peasants fighting for a piece of bread can fight desperately and cruelly, they can rip with their teeth and gouge eyes but they fight with desperation, not hatred. But a starving peasant with a crust of bread who sees a rich capitalist rob him of his bread, take a small bite and throw the rest down a sewer has a heart filled with the blackest hatred imaginable.”

For a moment Rokossovsky's gracious demeanor slipped and Rommel saw the same blaze of loathing in his eyes. “There are many in Russia who strongly oppose letting any of the German soldiers return. They believe you should all be turned into slave labor, Zhukov's mules they call it, to be worked to death repairing the damage you have caused. President Zhukov does not agree with them. It would be very wise to ensure that he does not change his mind. Thank you Katya.”

A Russian woman had brought out a pile of files. Rokossovsky took the one labeled 21st Panzer Division and read it quietly. The silence in the wooden building was oppressive, while Rokossovsky read, absorbing the contents of the tile, Rommel mulling over what he had been told, the woman soldier staring at the German in the hope that the fury of her gaze might bring about his death.

“'Your white is acceptable German. As we discussed earlier, 5,000 of the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers up to the rank of Sergeant will be released to Sweden. The exceptions are the men on a list I have here. As their units disband, their equipment will be handed over to us, and their senior NCOs and officers will surrender themselves for investigation. I cannot speak for the NKVD and would not wish to do so but it is my opinion that the majority of those men will not have much to fear. Now we have my black. There is a unit we want more than any other. The Dirlwanger Brigade. An anti-partizan unit with a record that would make the devil himself weep for their victims.”

Rommel nodded. In his studies, he'd seen that unit's record and he guessed that it would be high on the list of Russian demands. “You may have them with my blessing. Of course, some may be dead when we deliver them. You will have no objection to that?”

“As the Americans say Field Marshal. Wanted, dead or alive. As they come. But if you do kill any, deliver their bodies. We demand an accounting for that unit.”

“Marshal. There is something I must say. In the Wehrmacht we believed we had kept our hands clean of the worst of this war. That the things spoken of in whispers were the doing of the SS and units like Dirlwangers. I cannot believe that any longer. Our hands are as stained as any; we believed otherwise because we wanted to and denied what our own eyes told us. The ultimate responsibility for what happened in Army Group Vistula is mine. I accept that responsibility and am prepared to, no, I insist on, being judged accordingly.”

“You will be, Field Marshal Rommel. But speaking for myself, brought up as a Polish Catholic, I will say realization of guilt is the first step towards redemption. And this war has caused enough guilt for all of us to share.”

Rommel relaxed. It was true, confession did ease the soul. He felt the crushing weight that had been squeezing his spirit out of him lift slightly. “Marshal, may I ask a personal favor? My family lived in Mannheim. Is it possible to find out from the Red Cross if any have survived?”

“I will ask, Erwin, I will ask. But I counsel you to drive any hope from your heart. The Americans know destruction well and practice it with skill and efficiency. For them, destruction is just a job, something to be done as quickly and as completely as possible. I believe Mannheim is in the center of the Ruhr industrial belt. If that is so, there will be nothing left. Nothing at all.”

HMS Xena, At Sea, Off Rotterdam

“Trim's on Sir. Ready to dive.” The Outside Wrecker, who trusted officers about as far as he could carry the submarine's main batteries, ran his eyes over the array of valves. What should be shut was shut and what should be open, which wasn't much, was open. All was right with the world.

“Take her down, 100 feet. Then watch the gauge. I want this boat so finely balanced she moves when a fish swims under us.” Commander Fox thought for a second. “Sonar, keep your ears open. If we hear revolutions anywhere near us, I want to know about it pronto. No matter what else is happening.” Fox reflected that too many submarines had been run down by surface ships because the officer of the watch had been fixated on getting the trim right.

“Swampy, I think we're over your undersea river now. I propose to get trimmed at 100 feet then we'll start taking depth soundings. Once we're over the old river bed, I'll put a tiny negative trim on her and we should settle down slowly. If you're theory is right and there's a fresh water stream down there, we should be able to sit on the interface between fresh and salt and let the flow carry us.” Fox glanced around the control room. “I want an honest answer. Swampy. Is the contamination down here enough to hurt us? Just how bad is it? I do have hopes of a litter of little Foxes you know,”

“Honestly, the water pollution isn't as bad as we feared. It’s short-lived and the contamination is fading as fast as it’s spreading. It’s the heavy stuff that's the worry and the problem is chemical toxicity as much as anything else. The figures I got so far indicate that the contaminated area is at about ten times background. Everything's radioactive you know, it’s a question of how much more so than normal. We're safe inside Xena although I wouldn't like to make a living swimming in the waters around here. Six months ago it was a little over eight times background. So my guess is that the initial surge of contamination is over. The amount coming down is nasty but its doing little more than keep up the levels as they fade from decay.”

“How soon can we eat the fish?” Fox knew the North Sea fisheries were desperately needed to help feed the population of the UK; Britain was so desperately short of food that the fisheries would be worth their weight in gold - if only the fish was safe to eat. Which, going by experience to date, it was not.

”That's a harder question. One of the contaminants is an iodine product that the fish preferentially absorb. We're going to have to catch some fish samples and take readings. If we can organize that, it would be a big help. But, my guess is that it could be a very, very long time before we see North Sea fish again. Now, let’s try and find my undersea river.”

Grenade Pits, Chulachomklao Military Academy, Bangkok, Thailand

“That's not good enough. Nowhere near good enough. You must do better.”

That could be the motto of the day, thought Officer Cadet Sirisoon Chandrapa na Ayuthya. Nowhere near good enough, she would have to do better. The day had started on the rifle ranges, shooting their Mausers for the first time. She'd laid down on the firing line and then felt the thumps as Sergeant Major Manop had kicked her legs into the approved firing position, none too gently she'd noted. It hadn't made matters any better when she'd noted that the “approved” position gave a much steadier hold on the heavy rifle.

She'd dropped a round into the receiver closed the bolt, taken careful aim and fired. The rifle had kicked savagely back into her shoulder and she'd seen stars as her erect thumb had jammed into her eye. Manop had laughed at her and explained why it was better to do things properly. The bullet had missed the targets completely of course, only the gods knew where it had gone. She'd tried again, keeping her thumb down and the rifle tucked into her shoulder. That shot had hurt less, but it was still a complete miss.

“You're snatching at the trigger. That pulls the rifle down and to the left. Squeeze the trigger, don't pull it. Equal pressure throughout the hand. Now try a clip of five.”

She had taken the stripper clip, thumbed the rounds into the chamber and started firing. No sign of the stick with a red circle on the end that marked the position of a hit. After the fifth shot had thrown up a spray of dirt from the embankment in front of the targets, a stick had appeared but it had a white flag on it, being waved in the traditional 'surrender' gesture. She'd laughed despite the sting. Behind her Manop had quietly picked up the telephone to the target spotters. “Cut it out boys. Its her first day on the range. None of the others has done any better.”

She'd fired off fifty rounds, the last few actually hitting the white target although scattered all over it. Then she'd taken her position behind the firing line while the next group of cadets started their shoots. Even with her little experience it had been easy to spot the mistakes they'd made and realize how much she had to learn. Then, they'd returned their rifles to the racks and set out to the grenade pits.

Once into the secluded area, they'd each been given a red-painted dummy grenade to throw. Up the range was a white line that marked the minimum acceptable range for a grenade throw. The cadets had thrown their dummy grenades then looked to see how they had done. There were a cluster of red blobs around the white line - and four well short of it. Nobody needed to be told who had made the short throws.

Beneath his impassive expression, Sergeant Major Manop was a deeply worried man. The four women cadets were studying harder than any of their coursemates, indeed harder than any he could remember. Their scores on tests and trials were high, well above average, and were particularly good in tasks that needed attention to details. Their equipment was clean and well-maintained. The problem was they were nowhere near the physical standards required, in fact, in virtually every task or exercise that required sheer physical strength; the women were coming out at the bottom. Not just by a small margin either, they were far short of the standards required and the specified physical training wasn't going to make up for that.

The instructors had discussed the matter at length. One had taken a day's leave to go to Bangkok and consult with the martial arts experts and fitness professionals down there. He'd come back with a revised training schedule and some insights into what the problems were. It wasn't just that the women were weaker; it was that their strength was all in the wrong places. It sounded trite, but women were different and the Army-specified training regime didn't allow for that.

The instructors were giving up their off-duty hours in the evening to give the women extra tuition using the exercises that the experts recommended but Manop wasn't even sure if that was a good idea. Even if an intense effort got the women up to the minimum acceptable standard, they wouldn't be able to maintain it once they left the Academy. Then, their lack of strength would catch up with them. Still, that might not matter. The Army was recruiting women to serve as secretarial and administrative staff, freeing up men for the combat elements. They probably wouldn't need the fitness training. As long as they could get through here....

He looked at Officer-Cadet Sirisoon waiting on him. “Cadet, did you ever do sports in your school? If so, any that involve throwing things?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major. Basketball and discus.” “Show me how you throw things your way.”

Sirisoon picked up a practice grenade, took a deep breath and threw it “her way'. Manop watched intently, it was a completely different set of actions using the whole body with different muscle movements and motions. When he checked the throw, it was a lot better, not nearly good enough but a lot better. Right, he thought, we have something to build on.

“You four women stay here.” He went to the loudspeaker system. “Live grenade throw, Repeat live throw. All personnel clear the grenade pits move behind the protective berm. Instructors, inspect the pit line, ensure it is clear. Signal when confirmed then take cover yourselves. This will be a short throw. Right, You four, take cover in the bottom of the pit. You'll see why.”

Once the clearances were in. Manop took a live grenade, pulled the pin then tossed it to where the women's practice grenades had landed. It actually took a mental effort to throw a grenade that close in. He dropped into cover. A second or two later, there was a deafening explosion and the sound of fragments flying overhead. Mud dropped into the pit. The women looked at him, wide-eyed.

“If you had been standing up when that went off, you would all now be dead. You must, repeat must, learn how to throw grenades to a safe distance. There is no alternative to that as you must now understand. It is literally a matter of life and death. If you do not pass here, no matter how well you do elsewhere, you will be washed out.”

He reached into his sack and pulled out four grenades, red-painted but with a white H on them. “I want you to come here for one hour every evening and practice throwing using these. Don't worry about doing it the way the book says, it doesn't work for you. Cadet Sirisoon, show the others how you threw just now. Don't worry about using this range, there are always staff here so just tell them I sent you. Understand?”

The women nodded and Manop handed out the dummy grenades. They were heavier, half as heavy again, as the normal practice grenades. The logic was obvious, get used to throwing something heavy and the lighter practice grenades would come easily. Or so Manop hoped.

Flight Deck B-36H “Texan Lady”, Main Runway, Sheremetevo Airbase, Russia

“Pre-flight checks completed. Preliminary checklist completed.” Major Clancy was reading from the multi-page list on his clip-board. He actually knew it by heart but SAC regulations stated the list had to be read, not repeated, “Engineering reports fuel and oil pressure normal for all systems.”

“Acknowledged.” Colonel Dedmon turned Texan Lady on to the main runway at Sheremetevo, her brakes squealing with the sharp turn. The Germans had built Sheremetevo for fighters; the runways were long and wide enough but some of the turns were tight for the giant B-36s. Behind him, a JRB-36K, Dixie Cupcake was following him. She'd only arrived the previous evening; the deployment of a new K.-ship was a sign of how important this mission was.

“Start jets one, two, three four.”

“Starting jets. Engine flaps closed. Windows, doors and hatches all closed.”

“Bombardier Compartment here. Secured and ready for take­off.”

“Engineering Compartment here. Secured and ready for take­off.”

“Aft Compartment here. Secured and ready for take-off.”

“All crew, stand by for take-off under normal power. Engineering execute Vandenberg Shuffle. This will not, repeat not, be a maxim urn-performance take-off.”

“Thank heavens for that. Those give me a terrible ache in all the frames down my left side.” The female voice had a definitely relieved note to it. Dedmon shook his head. One day, he promised himself, he'd get to the bottom of that voice.

“Power stabilized at normal settings. Jets one hundred percent power.” There was a pause as Texan Lady shimmied from side to side as her engines were run up and down. “Vandenberg Shuffle completed. All engines in forward thrust.

“Autopilot off. Nose-wheel steering off. Let’s go guys.”

Texan Lady surged forward, not the berserk dash of a combat take-off but still something that made the sheer power of the aircraft obvious. She picked up speed as the engines animated her bulk, accelerating her down the long runway, past the buildings that housed the maintenance and repair units and the barracks that housed the base personnel. There was another building, new and well-separated from the main part of the airfield. A building that looked like a fortress, because that was what it was. Guarded by a battalion of troops, it was where the SAC kept a forward-deployed stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Then, the pitch of the engines dropped as the wheels lifted clear and she was back in her element, in the sky again after more than two weeks on the ground. TDY in Russia was a good experience but it was good to be going home, even if they were going back the long way. Next stop Honolulu, a thirty seven hour flight away. Of course, there was a job to be done first. Instinctively, Dedmon glanced back over his shoulder. Behind him, Dixie Cupcake was running down the runway, nose lifted in the first stages of rotation. She'd be with them for the first part of the flight, then once her job was done, she'd be peeling off to land at the huge air base complex around Anadyr. On the taxiway, Barbie Doll and Sixth Crew Member were waiting their turn to take off.

Theoretically it was called an “Open Skies Navigation Exercise”. The name came from a new doctrine the United States had started to enforce over the last year. Open Skies. It explicitly stated that SAC's bombers could fly where they wanted, when they wanted and would do so. It was all wrapped up in political niceties of course. The information that was gathered on such flights would be made available to all as a friendly gesture, as a confidence building measure that would allow countries to know what was going on around them.

The stated idea was that countries would know what their neighbors were deploying in the border regions so that wars would not be started over groundless fears. Open Skies would allow countries to live in peace, not in fear that their neighbors were planning a secret attack. In reality the message was much simpler, 'we go where we want, you can't stop us and you'd be stupid to try. So make the best of it. We're here and we're watching. And, yes. We're carrying them.'

Dixie Cupcake was uniquely well-equipped for missions like this. Her number two and three bomb bays contained cameras, the like of which had never been seen before. They had a focal length of 240 inches and produced negatives that were 18 inches wide and 36 inches tall. Each camera was angled sideways so that it could photograph deep into the territory on either side of it. The aircraft carried enough film to monitor a thousand miles of border and, from 50,000 feet; the resolution was good enough to pick up a golfball. Even the film was new and unprecedented, Kodak had developed a special fine grain emulsion so that detail would not be lost.

Those cameras were the real reason for the flight today. The Russians were desperately worried that the Japanese were planning a strike across the border to try and seize the rich industrial areas that were growing up along the Trans-Siberian Railway. On the face of it, the worries were well justified. Geography and the demands of material supply had dictated that the new industrial plants be built along the railway route and that made them dangerously close to the border.

The war between the Japanese and China was winding down at last. Most of China had been occupied, precariously for certain, but occupied and was being 'pacified' in the traditional Japanese manner. There was still some resistance in the more remote areas but the war was essentially done. That left a large, battle-hardened Japanese force in China with little to do. They'd already tried to come north once, back in 1939, and now the possibility they might try again was too strong to be ignored.

Today, Dixie Cupcake's massive cameras would reveal just what forces the Japanese had deployed behind their border and, based on that, what the threat level really was. That would, in turn, determine how the Russians would react. If there was a threat, they were not inclined to wait for the other side to strike first.

“How many of these do you think we're going to do?” With the take-off over, Major Clancy was relaxing in the co-pilot's seat.

“Deployments to Russia? Or Open Skies exercises? Either way the answer will be the same. Depends who wins the election in November. Dewey's sold on both, Truman on neither.” Dedmon thought carefully. “The Democrats really don't approve of the way things are going. They want to see a much more, a more international approach to things. Truman will reflect that no matter what his own opinions are. Republicans are much more isolationist, they like the idea of us staying out of things and acting only in our own interest. President Dewey got away with a lot because there was a war on. Don't count on that to continue. So is forward basing in Russia and Open Skies more appealing to the Democrats who want us out there “interacting” as they call it? Or more in the Republican line of staying out of everything unless we have to drop a hammer on somebody who threatens us? You tell me.”

“Whoever wins, they're inheriting a basket of trouble, that's for sure. We have a lot of unfinished business with Japan. Have you read Sam Morison's new book, ‘The Unfought War'?”

“Not yet. Bought it and meant to bring it over with me but forgot. Any good? His history of the North West Passage was great.'“

“I'd say ^‘Unfought War' is interesting rather than great. He thinks the Japanese were going to go to war in December 1941 but backed off at the last minute when we reinforced the Philippines and sold all that stuff to the Indians. He makes a pretty convincing case of it, it really does seem like the Japanese were planning hits on the Philippines and Malaya but called them off because the odds against success swung that little bit too far.

“The trouble is, he ruins the whole case by saying the Japanese were sending their aircraft carriers to attack the fleet in Pearl Harbor.

He claims it was the extra maritime surveillance units the Navy sent out to Hawaii that made them cancel the Pearl Harbor raid he says they had in mind. Too much recon to get them in, so that left the Philippines and Malaya operations in the cold.”

“Yeah, right. Like anybody would be so damned stupid as to try and hit Pearl. And it had to be the navy who fouled up the Japanese plans didn't it? The bombers and fighters we sent to the Philippines had nothing to do with it nor did the Thais screwing over that Japanese division. That was back in December '41 wasn't it? Ole Sam's a great historian and a good writer but he needs to pedal the inter service rivalry back a bit. As for his opinions on international things, well, his book on the Washington Treaty negotiations was pretty dire. More or less said the rest of the world was out to get us and pulled it off.''

Dedmon paused for a second. “ Tell you something Phil, one thing a lot of people are going to be thinking. We dropped the hammer on Germany because they had no idea what was about to happen. They'd written nukes off as impossible and they just didn't believe anybody would come in as high and as fast as we did. How long before somebody gets to be able to pull the same trick on us? Pull something on us we can't defend against?”

Headquarters, Army Group Vistula, Riga, “The Baltic Gallery”

“You filthy treacherous, mother-humping pig dog!”

Rommel lifted an eyebrow slightly. He'd expected something much more fluent and original out of the highly intelligent Skorzeny. That was a disappointingly pedestrian string of insults. The Russian woman soldier on the cross-roads that morning had done much better. The women controlling traffic didn't blow whistles to give orders, they fired their PPSH sub-machineguns in the air. One of the Russian trucks had ignored her and tried to drive past. She'd emptied the entire drum magazine of her submachine gun into the windscreen and followed it with a magnificent tirade of highly imaginative obscenities. The officer in the truck had jumped out and run away to hide in the bushes. “A day in the life of the Russian Army.” Konstantin Rokossovsky had said, a chuckle in his cultured voice. He'd promoted the woman soldier in the spot and left orders that the officer in hiding was to be found and shot. Marshal of the Russian Army Konstantin Rokossovsky was a cultured and genial man but he was also a Russian officer and had no time for those who ran under fire.

“You sold my men out to get your own to safety!” Rommel's eyebrow lifted a little more. Really, Skorzeny should learn to think with his brains, not his balls. Time for a lesson in strategy.

“General Skorzeny. You did a staff officer's course. What did it teach you about priorities?”

“Mission. Men. Self. Of course. But...”

“And what is our mission?”

That knocked the wind out of Skorzeny's sails. He'd worked himself up to a point where he was in a fine fury. Now he had a contradiction to solve. “Well, our orders....”

“Are to surrender. So that brings us to our second priority. Our men. We owe our duty now to the men we command. We must both, both of us, work to save as many of our men as we can. And, of course the civilians, the women and the children here. You know what will happen to the women if the Russian soldiers break through don't you? But we now, both of us, have to plan and scheme to save our men. As many of them as we can. Some of them, like Dirlwangers murderers are far beyond saving. At most we can use them as sacrifices to save others. Make their miserable lives worth something at any rate. You might think of using your men to hand them over, or their survivors over, to the Russians. Might make them look upon you with a little less loathing.”

“Use my men to.....” Skorzeny was spluttering with affronted rage at the idea.

“Right. We may be called upon to make the greatest sacrifice of all. To go down in history as the men who sold out Army Group Vistula and die with nobody knowing that we did it to save the lives of the men who served us so well.” Rommel sighed, theatrically. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Skorzeny. The appeal to gott-und-dammerung romanticism had struck home. The SS General was thinking at last.

“Disarm and surrender the Dirlwanger Brigade. Then use your troops to hand them over. Who knows what the Russians will do then? The only excuse they accept is that somebody had joined the Partisans. Perhaps handing Dirlwanger's butchers over will seem like that.” Rommel stopped speaking, leaving Skorzeny to chew the problem over. He'd planted a seed, he decided to wait and see what happened to it. After all, there was enough night soil between Skorzeny's ears, something had to be able to grow there.

Flight Deck B-36H “Texan Lady”, 50,500 feel over the Russian-Chinese Border

“Entering hostile airspace now.” The voice from the bombardier section in the nose had a slightly tense note to it This was the first time Texan Lady had been in hostile airspace since The Big One more than a year before. The flight plan here was very different from the Russian reconnaissance mission a few days before. There, the Russians had used a quirk in the border to create a plausible “navigation error”. The B-36s hadn't bothered with subterfuge, they'd flown straight to the border, crossed it without a shred of pretense and would swing parallel to it almost a hundred miles inside Japanese-occupied China.

The three B-36 bombers were flying in a loose Hometown, two thousand feet below the lone RB-36 whose cameras were already turning, recording every detail of the ground below.

“Does this mean I'm going to get shot again?” The female voice had a distinctly dubious note to it. Phil Clancy patted his control stick.

“Don't worry, Texan Lady, we're far above any defense the Japanese can put up. We'll be OK.”

“That's what you all said the last time.”

Dedmon raised his eyebrows. They were used to the odd comments coming over the intercom now and then but that was the first time they'd actually had what amounted to a conversation. He shot a glance at Clancy, grinning in the co-pilot's seat. “That's new. Never had an answer before.”

“Ever talked to other pilots about our voice Bob?” Dedmon shook his head; he'd always looked on it as being a bit of private crew business. “I mentioned it to a few guys, jokingly you know? All of them laughed, but about a quarter of them were faking it. Some looked real shifty. My guess is we're not the only crew that has this and the shifty-looking ones talk back. So I thought I'd try it.”

“Electronics Pit here. We're picking up ground based radars from inside China. Japanese air surveillance radars. Two types, range and bearing and a height-finder. Guess the crew of that one must be doing double-takes about now. We're in evasion mode?”

“Sure thing Dirk. Revs and spacing all set as per specs. They won't get an accurate fix on us.” Phil, take her up to 51,500. Just to ease Texan Lady's mind. Tell Dixie Cupcake to make the appropriate change as well if her cameras won't object. We'd better do it now, this high, it'll take at least a quarter of an hour to make the climb.

Dedmon relaxed in his seat as the engine notes changed with the shift from level flight to climb. Technically, according to regs, they should all be in partial pressure suits but none of the bomber crews bothered. Most of them didn't even carry the suits. If pressurization went, they'd all pass out almost instantly without them but if that happened, they'd have far more to worry about than just being unconscious. One day, General LeMay would get around to reinforcing the pressure suit regulations but, now, they were politely ignored.

From up here, the ground had lost most of its individuality to a human eye. It needed the cameras to make sense of what lay below. Far below them, isolated clouds posed like islands on a strangely colored sea. It was very different to the packed terrain of Europe they'd flown over a year before. And, Dedmon reminded himself, this time if the mission went right, they wouldn't have to end up destroying everything. They had a couple of lessons for the Japanese today. If they learned the first one, there would be no need to proceed to the second.

“We're being painted. Fire control radars. Anti-aircraft type.” The voice from the electronics pit was calm, matter-of-fact.

“Roger. All Hometown aircraft, evasive action, no need to make it extreme. Follow my lead unless they get real close.”

The anti-aircraft fire didn't. The black bursts were way below them and scattered all over the place. Even if they'd been at the right altitude, they were too scattered. None of them would have come close.

“Hey, guys, we have the altitude of the bursts at 32,000 and 36,000 feet.” The voice from Dixie Cupcake sounded almost amused. “The Eyes in the Sky believe they are 130mm and 100mm guns. No sign of the I50mms we've heard about. Not that it would matter much.”

“Dixie, thank the Eyes for us. We can expect to see some fighters soon. Got the New Thing loaded?”

“Sure have Texan Lady. Locked and loaded, ready to go.”

Clancy looked down at the black flowers far below them. ''That's pretty pathetic. Why do they even bother,”

“Might be pathetic Phil but its better than anything we can do. You know how many heavy 3nti-aircraft guns are operational back home? One battalion of 90mm guns at Camp Roberts in California. There are probably more anti-aircraft guns firing at us now than the US even has. We've got a bit of light stuff around the cities on the East Coast, left over from the V-l attacks, but heavy stuff? We're as wide open as Germany was. As for why do they bother, they're trying. Just as our guys would try under the same circumstances and hoping against hope they get lucky. They don't know they don't want to get lucky of course.”

And that was the truth. That would be Lesson Two. Lesson One was “You can't touch us”. Lesson Two was “OK, so you could touch us. You really didn't want to do that.” The mission orders for that eventuality were in Dedmon's document pouch. Today, the flight tactics were different from The Big One. Then, only one aircraft had been loaded with a nuclear device. Now, all three bombers were carrying, in this case, two devices each. If one of the four B-36s was shot down, the rest would proceed to a point in Japan and laydown on a series of targets. Four in Tokyo, two in Yokohama. Open skies. SAC goes where it wants, when it wants.

“Bombardier Compartment here. We're picking up fighters, way below us, no threat. From performance, we think they're Kendras. That'll mean they top out at about 39,000. Guess is they were out anyway and just vectored in because they were available.”

“Agree. Keep an eye on them though. They may have those guided air-to-air things we saw over Berlin.”

The formation carried on, swimming serenely through the azure blue of the skies high over China. Far below them, the countryside was smudged by brown. A town with its haze of smoke and dust. Once again, the sky far below them erupted into a crazy pattern of black blobs. Scattered and far, far below them. No threat. That was the pattern for hours as the B-36s flew along the Russo-Chinese border.

“Barbie Doll here. We have two formations coming in. One very fast, estimated speed 600 miles per hour. Designating Bandit-One, provisional identification Layla. Other is much slower but is climbing steadily. Can't be sure but we have them as certainly piston engined. Designation is Bandit-Two, our guess is Fran.”

“Thank you, Barbie Doll. Well, let's see if Herr Tank's reputation survived his very timely demise.”

There was a snort of laughter around the flight deck. The Japanese Layla was a version of the German Ta-183, a swept-wing German jet that had “been on the verge of entering service” for two years before The Big One. Quite a few of the newer Japanese aircraft showed a lot of German influence, obviously there had been a pretty rapid flow of information from the Nazis to the Japanese. Probably bribes to get the Japanese to attack Russia from the east. Some of the aircraft were pretty good. Technical Air Intelligence had suggested that the Japanese designers were quite a bit smarter than their German equivalents. Once the Germans had pointed them in the right direction, they'd taken the ball and run with it. The Flying Tigers had confirmed that; they'd found the Kendra was a little bit faster, flew a bit higher and turned quite a bit tighter than its German ancestor. Better armed too.

So was the Layla the threat that the Ta-183 had conspicuously failed to be? Probably not, it still had the two problems that Tank, in his alleged wisdom, had tailed to correct, it was horribly underpowered, had barely more than 2,000 pounds of thrust, and it had swept wings. They looked great and aerodynamics showed they would be immensely valuable at speeds approaching 700 mph and above but the Ta-183 was 100mph short of that regime. At those speeds, swept wings had very poor handling characteristics but gave no real benefits. A few 183s, probably service test models, had been encountered over the Volga and they'd been shot out of the sky by the straight-winged American F-74s and F-80s.

Now, if the Japanese had cracked the engine problem and had put more power into the design, it might be a problem, Dedmon watched below then caught sight of the contrails below them. They'd caught the sun and turned an orangey-yellow. At least 10,000 feet below them, that would fit he thought. If it was anything like the German original, Layla would top out around 41,000 feet and would be really struggling anywhere over 30,000.

“Dixie Cupcake here. Confirm Bandit-One is four Layia type fighters. They're leveling out, touch over 42,000 feet, speed barely 300 mph. The Eyes say at least one pilot is having difficulty holding his bird, he's snaking badly. If he stalls out, he'd better leave. Bandit Two is a single aircraft, still coming in. Confirm its Fran. It's just possible we might have a problem here,”

Cockpit, Tachikawa Ki-94-II Five-Two, 48,000 feet over the Chinese Border.

He wasn't going to make it. For all the performance boosts and weight reductions, his aircraft just didn't have it in her. Her nose was pointed up still and her propeller was clawing at the thin air surrounding her, but she'd given all she had. The airspeed was virtually at nil, the fighter hanging on its prop, the controls mushy and useless.

Lieutenant Nishimura cursed, fluently in a mixture of Russian and English. Japanese was a particularly poor language for insults, Russian was so much better and English gave so much room for the imagination. His K-94 was a dedicated high altitude fighter, the best Japan could produce. It had a turbocharged radial engine that was boosted until the metal alloys screamed for mercy. The design had first flown in 1945 and the test pilots had got it up to 42,000 feet. That had seemed splendid but there was no real need for such altitudes, or so it seemed. Then the Americans had flown over the German defenses and suddenly the Ki-94-H was needed more than any other aircraft.

The aircraft had been stripped down, all its armor gone, its battery of 30mm cannon replaced by a pair of 7.7mm machineguns. It had a single radio to allow it to be vectored to its target. Nishimura had left his parachute back at base to save a few pounds more when the message had come that four of the American giants were crossing the border. Three Ki-94s had taken off but two had turned back when their engines failed. His own would have to be replaced after this flight; the grimly-abused radials had only a few hours life each. And for all that, the American bombers were still out of reach. He could see them, a triangle of three far above him and a single aircraft higher still. Trailing their white ribbons behind them while they serenely cruising past him as his fighter hung helplessly on its prop.

Flight Deck B-36H “Texan lady”, 51,500 feet over the Russian-Chinese Border

“Dixie Cupcake here. We have Bandit-Two topped out at 48,400 feet. He's hanging there, isn't going anywhere but too mule-headed to give up.”

“Read you Dixie Cupcake. Have you got the New Thing dialed in?”

“Sure have Texan Lady. Our electronics pit got him locked in nicely. We'll let him have it now.”

Cockpit, Tachikawa Ki-94-Jl Five-Two, 48,000 feet over the Chinese Border.

It was no good, they were out of reach. For all his efforts, for all the hard work, the Americans were still out of reach. Then Nishimura became aware of something strange, the faint mush of static on his radio had suddenly increased in volume.

“YEEE - HA - HA - HA, HOOOH - HOOH - HAAA - HEEE HAHA.”

The coyote laughter familiar to the world from hundreds of Walt Disney and Hanna-Barbera cartoons almost split his ears. He knew immediately what must have happened, the Americans had listened to his radio and isolated the fighter control frequency. Now they were transmitting a tape cut from one of their cartoons on his frequency. It went on and on, a mocking peel of hyena laughter that cut through his brain.

Enraged at the insult, Nishimura stroked the button that fired his machineguns, watching in furious wrath as the tracers arced through the air far, far short of their targets. But, even the featherlight recoil of the 7.7s was enough to upset the delicate balance that held his fighter in its place. It spun out, falling from the air as its wings and propeller frantically tried to grab enough air to regain stability.

It took Nishimura almost 20,000 feet to get his fighter back under control and for every one of those feet the vicious, derisive, mocking laughter tore at his ears. Low on fuel, his spirit crushed, Nishimura took his fighter back to its base.

Flight Deck B-36H “Texan Lady”, 51,500 feet over the Sea of Japan

“Right guys, fun's almost over. Dixie Cupcake, you set for Anadyr?”

''Roger that Texan Lady. We'll be heading north now. There's a Guard Fighter unit waiting to escort us in once we start to drop.” That was why they were off to Anadyr, Dedmon thought. The nearest base capable of taking a B-36 was Khabarovsk but that was too close to the Chinese border. Seeing a B-36 dropping down to land might just be too much temptation for the Japanese. So Dixie Cupcake would be flying far to the north and she'd have a regiment of Russian fighters to protect her once she started her descent. The three B-36s were off to Honolulu, they'd be overflying Japan then facing the long, long haul over the Pacific before landfall in Hawaii. Then, four days there and another long haul back to Maine. It suddenly occurred to Dedmon that when he landed back at Kozlowski, he'd have flown completely around the world.

Home of Retired Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, Nagasaki, Japan.

“When I was in America, there was a strange story.” Yamamoto looked at the figures that were sharing tea with him. They were bristling with rage at the casual way the Americans had ignored Japan's claim to control its airspace. Everybody had seen the contrails high, high in the sky as the American bombers had overflown the country on their way from somewhere to somewhere else. Open skies they'd called it and today, they'd made their point. The officers with him looked slightly confused. Since his retirement, Yamamoto had become something of an elder statesman in Japan, an advisor, using the prestige that age brought in this country to stop the young being carried away with enthusiasm. Disastrously carried away.

“American children all have puppies as their pets. When they go to school in their yellow schoolbuses they must leave their puppy behind for the day. All the puppy sees is their friend being taken away by this big yellow thing. Some just wait miserably for their friend to come back but the braver, more spirited puppies chase the schoolbus in an effort to rescue their human friend. Of course they always fail and must wait miserably like the rest. But, one day. a puppy, by great and valiant effort, caught the schoolbus and sank his teeth into its rear. Then he faced the question he hadn't thought of. He'd caught the schoolbus, what was he going to do with it?

“Ask yourself, like that puppy, if you'd intercepted a B-36, what would you have done with it?”

“Shot it down of course!” The officer looked around triumphantly. Yamamoto was pleased to see that the expressions of the rest ranged from doubtful to dubious with a couple of downright scepticals.

“And then the Americans would have bombed us like they bombed Germany. You know Germany don't you? That black, smoking, radioactive hole in the middle of Europe. You want our Japan to end up like that? The Americans sent us a message today. They overflew our country, with their nuclear-armed bombers and did nothing. They told us that if we do nothing to stop them, they would do nothing to us.”

“But we did everything in our power to stop them. We threw our best and our latest at them and they ignored it.”

“And in doing so. you told them everything there was to know about what our latest and best equipment could do to threaten them. Now they know exactly what our defenses can do. It is better that we do nothing and let them think we cannot stop them than try and prove to them we cannot. After all, what did we lose today? Other than a little pride?”

The officers looked around, each hoping somebody else would answer. Eventually, one took the plunge. “But now they know exactly what forces we have along the border,”

“And that matters because? We do not plan to attack Russia do we?” The officers shook their heads, The Japanese Army was redeploying away from that border. Far away. “Now the Russians know we do not have any intention of attacking them. They will not attack us, they have their plates filled with recovering western Russia after the occupation. The only reason they would have attacked us was fear that we would attack them and their desire to pre-empt any such attack. Now that fear has gone, we can expect peace on the border and that allows us to carry on with our plans elsewhere. And we have the Americans and their Open Skies to thank for that.”

Reconnaissance and Intelligence Center, Khabarovsk “My God, look at these pictures!”

Colonel Yvegeni Valerin looked at the film under his stereoscopic viewers. There was no doubt about it, the incredible pictures were too accurate, too detailed. The Japanese Army had gone from the frontier, just leaving a thin screen of border troops. The film went deep into China, and the story was the same. The Japanese Army had gone, all that was left was an occupation force, enough to keep the population in order and control minor incidents. Nowhere near enough to launch an attack. Valerin felt a great weight lift from his mind. Khabarovsk and the rest of the Siberian industrial heartland was safe. Of course that left just one small question unanswered.

If the Japanese Army wasn't here, where was it?

Chapter Two Poised

Chulachomklao Military Academy, Bangkok, Thailand “They're building a bridge.”

The truck had been sitting for almost a quarter of an hour before Officer-Cadet Sirisoon had looked out. The old bridge was being taken down and replaced by a new concrete one. Part of the program of rebuilding the country that was seeing the old structures removed and new ones put in their place. Concrete bridges instead of wood, blacktop roads instead of dirt. Roads and railways instead of canals but she didn't think so much of that one. Canals were part of her country, it was hard to imagine what it would be like without them.

The new bridge was half-built, one span was in place, linking an abutment on the side with a pier in the middle of the river. Now the workmen were building the other abutment and, when it was finished, the big mobile crane on the eight- by eight truck would swing the second span into place. That would be a long time yet, the little Army column, two jeeps and a truck, would have to use the temporary bridge.

She dropped the canvas back into place. In the back of the truck were eight cadets, the four women and four men. The women were bored, the men unhappy and resentful. This was an exercise, at a guess, one that would probably need the strength of eight men. Whichever sadistic instructor was in charge had put all the women cadets onto the same team. In the men's eyes, that put the entire team at a grave disadvantage in the muscle power department. In the highly competitive environment of Chulachomkiao, that was cause enough for resentment.

The truck jerked and started to roll forward. Obviously, the temporary bridge was available for use again. The cadets heard the creaking of timber under the wheels, then the slurping noise as the wheels spun in the mud the other side. Then they were heading down the road, the truck bouncing on the now-unimproved surface. Through the back of the canvas cover, Sirisoon saw a small village pass, a few houses, a temple, a small store, then they were off down a track through the countryside again. Twenty minutes after they'd crossed the river, they stopped and Sergeant Major Manop banged the tailgate of the truck with his stick. “Out, everybody out.”

They were in a patch of rough ground with a few trees and some scrub bushes. Best to keep away from those, that's where slithery friends would be sheltering from the sun. On one side of the trail was a large, a very large, block of concrete. Far too heavy to be shifted by a team even of eight men. Manop looked at the cadets and grinned. “Very well, we have a small task for you. Your instructor here had a keen desire to see this block of concrete on the other side of the trail. And since you are all so fond of him I volunteered you to move it. It’s a bit heavy but its only about forty meters. We'll leave you a jeep with a radio, call in when you've finished.” His grin grew positively evil as he climbed into the other jeep and followed the truck away.

Sirisoon watched them disappear then looked at the block. At a guess, it weighed well over a tonne, possibly two. There were various objects lying around. The test was obvious; use the objects to move the block. She look inventory; some logs, big, old, very hard. Seasoned until they were like iron. A jeep. Hmm, left unobtrusively in the back of the jeep was a length of towing chain and a set of tools. Quite a few spades.

OK, she thought, the answer is easy. Dig the ground out from under the block, sliding the logs under as rollers. Start at the front so the block is always supported. Then, once the ground was dug away and the block was on the logs, use the jeep to tow it over. As each log passed out behind the block, take it and put it back in front. With all the digging, fetching and carrying, it would be a very long, very hard. very dirty job. Dangerous too, if the logs moved while somebody was digging under the block, it could crush them. For all that, easy.

There had to be a catch.

She looked again. The ground sloped away and the slope was downhill to where the block had to go. THAT was the catch. Once the block was on the logs, the slope would mean it could roll. The jeep wasn't there to tow it, it was a brake, to stop the block rolling too fast. Idly she wondered how many teams had failed to spot that and written their jeep off when the block went out of control and plowed into it. Another thing, if it was used to hold the block from the start, that would make everything much safer.

She looked again at the cement monstrosity taunting them. One ring set in the concrete side, pointing away from where the block had to go. That was a hint for those with the wits to see it. Then she looked on top. Four more rings. Obviously, something like that had to be there, the Army had to have an easy way to move the block around. Suddenly Sirisoon's face broke out into a grin whose evil matched that of Sergeant Major Manop.

Behind her, the four men were arguing while the other women just stood and watched. Time to take charge, if nobody did, they'd be here all day and do nothing. She pointed to the men in turn. “You, you, you and you. Pick a comfortable piece of grass and lie down on it. Catch up on some steep. Rest of you come with me. I’l explain on the way.” Without waiting for questions she got into the jeep and started it up.

Bridge construction site, near Chulachomklao Military Academy, Bangkok, Thailand

The workmen like construction workers all over the world, erupted into whistles and cheers as the jeep pulled up. Four women got out, wearing shorts and white T-shirts, the fronts tied up in a knot. The women blew kisses at their admirers and made a bee-line for the site manager. One sat on his desk with her legs crossed, another on his lap. A third was already massaging his neck while the fourth, the one obviously in charge, was speaking earnestly to him. A conversation that was mysteriously assisted by some bottles of beer that had appeared from the back of the jeep. As it happened the little village store stocked Kloster beer, A good beer that was not so easy to get up-country. The conversation seemed quite animated and, after some more beer appeared, friendly. Eventually, the site foreman nodded.

It wasn't just the beer or the persuasive presence of the women. The foreman was an old soldier himself who couldn't resist helping to put one over on a bunch of officers. And he had daughters of his own and thought the instructors had played a dirty trick, putting all the women on one team. Serve them right to have it all blow up in their faces. Anyway, he wouldn't be needing the crane until afternoon and a little practice for the crew was helpful. Stop them getting bored.