Winter Warriors

CHAPTER NINE: SNOW DRIFTS IN THE WIND

“They got the bridge.” There was a triumphant note in the report. It wasn’t often that air-ground cooperation went smoothly but this time it had. A recon aircraft had spotted the trains heading west. That had been a disaster for the mechanized column. The destruction of the bridge had left them stranded on the wrong side of river and the nearest crossing point was about an hour’s drive east. There just weren’t any to the west. That had put them so far behind the escaping trains that there had been no chance of catching them. Only the recon aircraft had got through to its base, the group commander had worked miracles getting a flight of eight bombers armed and off and the pilots had been phenomenal. The bridge had gone down. Now, the only way for the trains to escape was east. Right back into the arms of the mechanized column.

Asbach got his maps out. “We can drive along the rails. They’re pretty much clear and give us a good footing. We should be able to get, what, 25 kph?”

“I think so. And the train cannot go much faster, it will have to back all the way. Can a train back that far?”

“I do not know. Do we have a railway man in the column?”

“No, not this column. I read the personnel files the night before we left.”

Asbach raised his eyebrows slightly. That was taking devotion to paperwork a bit far. “A bit of advice, Lang. Just read two or three files and remember a key fact from each, a commendable one. Then repeat it in front of the men. They’ll think you know everything. The rate this front eats men, we will never keep up with doing things the right way.’ He watched Lang nod slightly, absorbing the message. Then Asbach frowned. “What are these here?”

Lang peered closely at the point Asbach was indicating. “These are old Finnish maps of the area?”

“What else? They are the best we can get. These date from 1936.”

“Well then, those look like markings for mines. Coal probably, might be iron ore.”

“Lang, have you ever seen a coal mine without a railway spur and marshalling yard? And look, see how those mines are between the two lines? Do you want to make a bet there is a railway line there?”

“And if those mines are coal, the engines can stock up on fuel. Perhaps water as well. If there is a railway line there.”

“There must be. If there are mines there are railways. That will be a way out for them. If the lines are still there.”

Asbach stared at the map, chewing distance, speed and time over in his mind. “How about we try this, Lang. We go west, along the railway lines to this point here. If the trains are coming this way we’ll meet them by then. If we have not, we assume there is a line across this gap, through the mines. Then we turn north and head though the gap here up north to this junction. We can wait for the trains there and they will walk right into our arms. See, it’s like a triangle, the trains must go along two sides while we can cut up along the third.”

“But if the trains are coming east, just slowly?”

“They still have no way out. The rest of the Corps is heading north off to our right. There’s no way out there. We will not get the honor of capturing the guns but the guns will be captured. But the more I think on this, the more sure I am that there is a railway spur not shown on this map. The Russian maps are useless. They are never right; that’s why we use Finnish ones. We head west then north Lang, and intercept the guns at the junction of the east-west and northern lines.” Asbach grinned in a friendly manner. “And we can get you your first piece of over-decorated tin, yes?”

A second destroyer had joined Z-27 in the harbor. Becker read her bow number with some difficulty; the ship was blackened by fire and badly burned. Still, he made it out in the end. Z-20. She had been one of the destroyers with the carrier group. By the sound of it, she was now the only survivor of the Scouting Group. Becker was staring at her when he heard a sound behind him.

“Z-20. She’s got a lot of survivors on her, all of them in a pretty bad way. Admiral Brinkmann as well.” Colonel Ian Stewart was standing behind him.

“Thank God, I’m not senior officer here anymore.” Becker was genuinely relieved. He was tired, sick, he just wanted to rest.

“I’m afraid that’s not so Captain. Admiral Brinkmann is,” Stewart hesitated, “not himself. Not at all himself. He had to be carried from Z-20, and he’s… uhhh… unresponsive. In the previous lot I think the medics called it shell-shock. I must ask you to carry on as Senior German Officer. Otherwise, I’ll have to ask one of the destroyer captains and, well, you’ll do a better job I think.”

Becker nodded. “Very well Colonel. What do you want me to do?”

“Two Free Royal Navy minelayers, Ariadne and Manxman, are on their way down. They’ll be in after midnight. Ariadne was due to go back to the States for a refit but she’s doing this last run extra. She’s empty; she can be loading your men while Manxman unloads supplies. I want you to go through all the survivors collecting here in person and pick out the sickest. They go back to Iceland first. The fitter men can wait for the next runs.”

“Enlisted men take priority of course.” Becker was simply stating a fact. No officer worthy of his rank would take an early ship out and leave enlisted men behind.

Stewart nodded. “Aye, goes without saying. Each minelayer can take about two hundred, so we can get four hundred out tonight. We have nearly two thousand of your men here, from Lutzow and the destroyers. And few are in good health. It’s a fourteen hour run from here to Iceland. You’ll have to get the men ready for a fast boarding. The ships have to be well out by dawn.”

Becker nodded. The last thing these men needed was to be trapped on another sinking ship. As if to reinforce his thoughts, the vicious growl of a radial engine split the afternoon open. Becker almost whimpered as he recognized the sound of a Corsair and dived for the ground. The dark blue fighter skimmed overhead, pulled up at the end of its run then came back. For a moment, Becker thought it was a strafing run or even worse he’d see the ugly, wobbling tanks of jellygas split away from the aircraft. He was wrong. The Corsair charged overhead then vanished off into the afternoon sun.

“Photo-reconnaissance ran. That was an F4U-7P. Probably getting pictures of the ships here.” Stewart saw Becker staring at him from the ground. “We get to be very familiar with American aircraft here.”

Becker climbed to his feet, a little sheepishly. “Colonel, I’ll get the sickest men selected and ready. One other thing.”

“The name’s Ian. We’ll be working closely together for the next few weeks I think.”

“I am Martin. Ian, I disabled the scuttling system on Lutzow and Z-27, but on Z-20? It may need to be attended to.”

“Aye, it will. You need help in seeing to this?”

“No, I think not. I can take some of my men to do it. But if you could have some of your men to aid us if it gets ugly?”

“I’ll see to it, Martin.”

“The General will see you now Sir.” The airman in the outer office put an accent of almost supernatural terror on the first two words. Stuyvesant followed him in.

“The Seer’s here.”

“Right, you are dismissed.”

Stuyvesant waited until the door was closed. Like all the USSBC offices, this one didn’t have an intercom system. Too great a chance of it being left on and the wrong words getting broadcast. “I had a word with a few people, Curt. We can’t get any big birds built to stripped down configuration. Consolidated are getting ready to shift to the E series and it would disrupt that. What is happening is that Wichita have six C-ships in house and they’ll strip those down for you. Take out all the guns but the nose and tail mounts, all the armor. Be ready in six weeks. That’ll give us an idea of what we can achieve by stripping them down. I’ve got a couple of my people working out what else we can strip out from them and what the likely gains will be.”

LeMay thought for a moment. “I can find no cause for complaint with that.”

“Another thing, Curt. I was thinking about your crew problems. Would it help if we brought the B-29 groups back from Russia? They’d act as cadres for more units; might accelerate the build-up.”

“Not a good idea, Phillip. Two reasons, one is that crews aren’t the problem; we’re getting as many as we need by using the Air Bridge as a training ground. We just take them off the C-99s as we need them. The other is that those B-29 outfits are hard-luck groups. Take a notional group right, we’ll call it the 49th Bombardment Group. There isn’t a 49th Bombardment in the USAF. It arrives in Russia, its inexperienced, a bit sloppy. Don’t fly the boxes as tight as they should perhaps, a bit careless on making their turns. The Luftwaffe give it a pasting, shoot down a lot of birds. So our 49th gets a load of replacements who are even less experienced, a bit sloppier. So the 49th gets hit again. Soon, its efficiency is shot to hell. It’s a hard luck group, nobody expects anything good of it. They don’t expect any good of themselves. Pretty much all our B-29 groups in Russia are like that now. Once we’re done, I don’t plan to keep any of them. I have neither the time nor the inclination to distinguish the incompetent from the merely unfortunate.”

“Which reminds me, Curt, you said that if we had to, we could put 150 bombers at Germany?”

“Mixture of Bs, Cs and Ds. Be a hell of a mess but we can do it. I’ve put all the best groups, the ones that have the most experience and a reasonable strength on hand in the First Air Division. We’re just starting to form the Third Air Division now. Four groups per Division, 300 birds total.”

“Right, well, if Germany does a special test, we go straight away. With whatever we’ve got. At the moment we have three Model 1561s and 24 Mark 3 s either in the dumps or final assembly. Production is leveling off at around 10 Mark 3 s per month. What I suggest is my people do a short target plan, updated on a monthly basis, using whatever we have. Give that to you. You can work out how to do it with what bombers you have. If it does drop in the pot and Germany does do a test, then we can go with the latest plan.”

“We can do that. We’ll keep that between ourselves though. If people know there is a small-scale emergency plan they’ll want to use it right away. We do not want that issue re-opened.”

Stuyvesant laughed. “That we can be sure of. It was damned hard work convincing General Groves that we shouldn’t be trickling the packages onto their targets as they came off the production lines. I can imagine circumstances where that might work, if the enemy was on the verge of defeat for example, but we don’t face that situation.”

“Trouble with the Army, they never understood the strategy of air power. Always thought of doing things in small packets. Same when I took the ‘17s south on friendly visits. Army never understood what was involved. Stuyvesant, we’ve got a chance here to crush an enemy from the air, totally. We can’t waste it.”

“No, we can’t. And we won’t.”

“How are the tracks, Tovarish Major?”

Major Boldin pushed his lower lip out and thought the matter over carefully. “The diesel has taken its two carriages over the ridge safely, that is for certain. But the Mikados and the guns? They are a very different matter. It is as we feared. There have been more than five years, five winters, since this mine was closed and the track beds have been damaged. The sleepers are breaking up. There is much risk that the rails will spread apart when the full weight of the guns bears on them. If that happens then it will be all over.”

“What can we do?” Perdue was frustrated. He didn’t like being dependent on other people for the safety of his guns but he had no choice. Anyway, the ASTAC Major and his crew were proving their skills were real enough. The way they had cleared these old tracks and started their inspection proved that.

“Perhaps your men can get the first gun coupled to the two engines. Mine are walking the tracks now. We have some spare ties and other pieces to repair the worst damage. And we can fill in the bedding where the freezing has moved it. Then we can move your first gun to the top of the ridge.”

Perdue nodded and turned to the crew of the lead Mikado. “Jones, Allen, couple both Mikados to Curly and get ready to tow it up to the top of the ridge. There’s a siding up there, so leave Curly up top, come down and get Moe, take it up as well.”

“Sir?” Jones’s voice was curious, wary.

“We’ll have to turn the trains around at the top. Major Boldin says we can do that using the siding at the top of the ridge. We’ll put the gun in front and the engines behind it for the descent the other side. That way the locomotives will act as a brake and stop the guns running out of control.”

“With respect, Sir. No, Sir.” Jones was deferential but firm. Perdue stared at him; he hadn’t expected that. The other side of the rail, Boldin’s eyebrows met his hairline. This was something new to him. He’d never seen an American officer shoot one of his own men before. Well, there was always a first time for everything and this looked like it would be one of them.

“The other side of the ridge is as steep as this one, steeper perhaps. With the weight of the gun, it’s going to pick up momentum very quickly. If we put the locomotives behind the gun, they can act as a brake, they can prevent the gun from picking up speed and running out of control.”

“With respect, Sir, that won’t work.” Jones bit his lip. Before being drafted for the Navy he had handled heavy freight trains all over the United States and twenty years of that experience told him the right way to do this was not the way this officer thought it was. But how to explain it? “Look, Sir, meaning no disrespect Sir, but think on this. If we have the gun in front and the engines behind as you suggest, the weight of the gun will be pulling one way and the pull of the engines in the other. If we have the engines in front pushing back against the gun, the gun will be trying to push down, the trains pushing the other way. The first load is tension, the second is compression. We don’t want a doubled tension load on the drawbar. It’ll distort it at best; at worst it will rip the bar clean off. We could end up with the couplings so damaged we won’t be able to pull the guns at all.”

It made sense. Perdue had to admit it. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the diesel shunter arriving. It was about to make the next trip over, towing the battalion command car and a battery fire control car over the ridge. Up on the long cut that lead up the side of the ridge, he could see the Russian railway engineers walking the tracks, carefully inspecting the rails to make sure they would be secure for the guns.

“Very well Jones. Do it the way you recommend.” And may the Good Lord help you if you ‘re wrong was the unspoken addition.

“Very good Sir. We’ll take Curly straight over, up one side and down the other. Then we’ll leave the gun there and come back for Moe. Save a bit of time as well that will. Major Boldin, Sir, your men, have they got grit they can throw on the rails if we start to slip?”

Boldin started, slightly shocked that the aging railwayman was still alive to speak with him. He wouldn ‘t have been if this was a Russian Army unit. Speaking to an officer like that, it could get a man shot. Or worse. “Yes, we have that. The men will walk beside you with it ready.”

“Right then. Mr. Perdue, Sir, we’ll get rolling with Curly as soon as the shunter reaches the top.”

“Make it so. And, Jones, I’ll be riding in the cab with you. I want to see how this goes. Lieutenant Tavernor. Are the guns and other cars fully rigged?”

“Yes, Sir. Cars and guns can be blown any time we have to.”

“Good. If the Krauts turn up, don’t hesitate to blow what’s left this side of the ridge.” Perdue paused for a second, a thought occurred to him. “Jones, why don’t we put the diesel behind the guns with the two steam engines in front? The diesel won’t push or pull, it’ll just act as a sort of safety stop, prevent the guns putting too much stress on the couplings.”

“That’ll work, Sir. We’re to wait until it rejoins us this side?”

“Correct. We can use the delay to make sure everything’s secure this end.”

The sun was starting to set by the time the first train started its run up and over the bridge. Jones had started the strange consist moving, taking the slope slowly and steadily. Alongside the two locomotives, Russian ASTAC engineers were walking. Every so often they would sprinkle handfuls of grit under the wheels. Jones could see Perdue watching curiously. “Improves traction Sir. We’ve got wet steel on wet steel here. That’s why we’re taking everything so slowly. If Mike here starts to slip or the gun does, we’re in a world of hurt. Just like driving on ice; take it slow and steady, don’t do anything sharp. Guess our tankers learned that, Sir.”

Perdue chuckled. The tribulations of American tank crews trying to move their Shermans and Grants during their first winter in Russia had been notorious. There had been a joke that one could follow an American unit in those first months by the line of Shermans upside down in a ditch. Still, they’d learned, just as Perdue was learning now. “Is that why the slope is so shallow? When they said it was steep, I was expecting something much worse.”

“Three percent is bad, Sir. For a train like this, and these tracks are six and a half or even seven percent. We’d think long and hard before building track like this in the States. If there was another way around, we’d take it. Situation like this, we’d have drilled a tunnel before taking track over the top like this.” Jones was interrupted as the locomotive lurched suddenly. Perdue saw him go pale and check the load behind.

“It’s OK, Sir. The bedding must have been loosened by the ice. It shifted a bit.” He looked behind again. “Thought so. The ASTAC guys are already there, packing it back in.”

“This is dangerous isn’t it?”

“That it is, Sir. Going down will be worse just the way you said. Still, it’s something to tell my grandchildren about. We won’t be stopping on the crest if that’s all right with you, Sir. Going straight down, it’ll put less strain on the drawbar.”

Perdue nodded. The train eased up onto the ridge and he took the opportunity to look out. The view was beautiful; the reddening sun reflecting off the snow fields below. Ahead, he could see the wide sweep as the track made its 180 degree curve before heading down the other side of the ridge. All too soon he was looking down at the track dropping away in front of him.

The train crew were working hard, stopping the great gun they were pulling from starting to build up momentum. Perdue had no idea what they were doing and he was beginning to realize just how presumptuous his ‘planning’ had been. He really had no idea what was going on. Trying to keep out of the way, he looked out of the cab again. This time he watched the Russian engineers try to get the right amount of grit under the wheels of the locomotives. Without any warning, one of them took some steps alongside the tracks and slipped. It might have been a patch of ice, it might have been a sleeper that was broken and jagged. Whatever it was, he lost his footing and fell against the locomotive. In a second, he had fallen under the wheels. Perdue heard the scream ending abruptly as the train ran him down.

The sound was still making him shake when the two Mikados got Curly down to the sidings at the other end of the ridge. Perdue jumped off the train. He’d already decided to stay here with Curly while the engines went back and got Moe. After that, it was just a matter of resorting the trains again and getting back under way. There was a cloud of steam around him. He heard the train’s whistle sounding before the two Mikes set off on the long haul up the slope. As their sound died away, Perdue suddenly felt very lonely.

It seemed like an age had passed before the two engines reappeared with Moe behind them and the little shunter making up the rear. It was far into dusk; in the fading light, Perdue could see the constant stream of gravel and ice being dislodged by the weight. Moe was visibly swaying as the gun’s weight compacted the railbed and crushed the gravel weakened by years of ice-bound neglect. Once, Perdue thought they’d lost her. The gun started swaying and then appeared to lurch downwards. The dusk dimness highlighted a shower of sparks that shot out from the lead Mikado’s wheels, then Jones, or the other engineer on the locomotives caught her, or perhaps the little diesel had added just a bit of stability and they brought it back under control. Or had it just been a trick of the light? Eventually, Moe joined Curly on the sidings that had once served the northern mine. Perdue looked thankfully at the two guns and reboarded the first Mikado.

“Jones, we’ll keep the diesel here to move the carriages around. The two Mikes can get the rest of the trains. Take as many trips as you feel easy with, the hard part’s done now. There’s coal here as well. We’d better stock up before we pull out.”

They were all suggestions, not orders. Jones nodded in agreement. “Good plan Sir. Although the coal here is pretty foul stuff.” He paused for a second. “That last trip was rough, Sir. We nearly lost Moe when the bed gave way. Still, it all worked out at the end.”

It was called a Cab Rank. Six Williwaws circled the area, high enough to be safe from flak and Spirals. Their engines were throttled right back and the mixture leaned out so they could stay for as long as possible. They were waiting for a call from one of the hedgehogs down below; Canadian infantry units cut off by the Finns. Only, the Canadians weren’t trying to get out. They had dug in and were staying put. They were fighting the Finns with artillery and airstrikes. That was why the Cab Rank was here. A forward observer on the ground would call them directly and put them on the target. Or he’d coach in one of the little Australian Boomerangs. They would mark the targets with white phosphorus smoke rockets for the bigger, faster, Williwaws.

We’re a strange team, Flight Lieutenant Digby Dale reflected. The Boomerang was something the Australians had cobbled together from a trainer and a few spare parts they happened to have available. Intended as a fighter, it had been too slow for the job, but its small size and agility made it perfect for the Forward Air Controller job. Boomerangs had been supplied to the Canadians and Russians for that job. The Russians used them as night harassment raiders as well. There was a whole regiment of Russian Boomerangs flown by women. Or so Dale had heard.

The Williwaw, or the Williwarmer as it was disrespectfully called, was pretty much cobbled together as well. The starting point had been a Canadian attempt to fit an R-1830 radial engine to a Hurricane. That had been an attempt to make use of the airframes that were piling up in Canada after the Coup in Britain had shut down supplies of Merlin engines. The obvious candidate for the Canadian-built Hurricanes had been the Allison V-1710, but American aircraft needed all available supplies of that engine. So the complex job of converting the Hurricane airframe to a radial engine had started. Halfway through the effort, Hawker engineers had arrived with blueprints for a better aircraft called the Tornado. The only problem with the Tornado was that it needed one of two British engines, the Sabre or the Vulture, neither of which was available. So Canadians and refugee Brits sat down together and redesigned the Tornado to use the American-built R-2600 engine. It went into production in 1943 as the Chinook. It still equipped quite a few Canadian squadrons. More had gone to the Russians as Lend-Lease.

In the fullness of time, the Chinook’s performance was found wanting and more power was needed. That had led the engineers to shoe-horn an R-2800 into a developed version of the airframe to produce the Williwaw. 71 Fighter Squadron had only received its Williwaws a few weeks before and were still getting used to them. It was fast and agile, no doubt about that; but what Dale really wanted was a jet. Just like the Yanks and Krauts had.

“King Flight, this is Duffle. Come on down, target is green smoke, say again green smoke.” There were a string of numbers that gave him his coordinates. Dale did a wingover and dived down, followed by the other two members of King Flight. Hard to see in the fading daylight was a cloud of green smoke. Spotting rounds probably fired from mortars. He lined up and squeezed the button on the control column. It unleashed the twelve rockets under his wings. There were bright red streaks coming the other way, as always they seemed to be coming straight for him only to flash past on either side. Lucky these were Finns down below. The Germans had a lot more Flak guns and a lot more skill in using them.

The green smoke was being lacerated by rocket fire. Dale shifted his finger and released his two 500 pound bombs. The snow-laden trees were approaching fast. He had just enough time to fire a quick burst from his cannon and that was that. Dusk was coming, time to go home. Behind him, the ground erupted as six 500 pound bombs speared the center of the green smoke cloud.

“King Flight, this is Duffle. Well done lads. Target had been done to a turn. Off you go; mummy’s waiting.”

Dale led his flight away, on the long haul back to their base. 71 Squadron had been lucky. Their base hadn’t been targeted by the Huns with their damned rockets. He’d heard that the American bases had taken a right pounding the day after the storm. That was the trouble with the Hun rockets. Their doodle-bugs were easy targets for a fighter or anti-aircraft units, but nobody had come up with a way of stopping the German rockets yet. There were even rumors that the Russians had captured some intact and were trying to copy them. Still, useful as they were, they still couldn’t replace a manned fighter-bomber.

“Break left, break left!”

The alert broke through Dale’s reverie. He hauled the stick over and rammed the throttles forward to full emergency setting. The Williwaw stood on its wingtip and spun left. Dale’s eyes grayed out as the G-force drove blood from his head. He still caught a glimpse of the attacking aircraft as they flashed by. Twin tail, single jet engine mounted above the fuselage. He-162s.

Dale reversed his turn, swinging in to attack the pair of German jets. It was too late, they were already far away and streaking back towards German-occupied territory. They were a hundred miles per hour faster than the Williwaws and were using every scrap of that speed to get clear. Dale had read the intelligence reports on the He-162. They rated it well as a fighter but it had only 30 minutes of fuel on board. That meant its pilots were restricted to a single pass at a target. Unless they were over their own bases, they simply couldn’t hang around to dogfight.

The two retreating aircraft were the only ones. Dale had been half expecting another pair of He-162s to come out of the clouds, but the attack was over, barely a second after it had begun. There was a black stain across the sky. One of the three Williwaws in the formation hadn’t got the message in time or had been a bit slow in making his turn. The aircraft was now a funeral pyre on the snow below.

“Control, this is King-1 here. We just got bounced by two He-162s. We lost H-AB. The 162s got away clean.”

“162s? You sure of that?”

“No doubt. Single jet above the fuselage, twin tails. And they went through us like a bat out of hell. 162s for sure.”

“Confirm King-1. Control out.”

A hundred miles to the north, the fighter controller slipped her earphones back. There weren’t supposed to be He-162s on this front. That didn’t excuse King-1, though. It was the old case of endofmissionitis. They’d been on their way home so they’d dropped their guard. And paid for doing so.

“Curt?” The Seer looked around the dimly-lit room. A half-built car was in one corner, a pair of greasy, coverall-clad legs stuck out from underneath. Another half-person in even dirtier coveralls was bent over the side of the car, apparently working on where the engine should be.

“Socket wrench, quarter inch.” The voice came from under the hood. The Seer picked up the required tool and passed it to the outstretched hand. “Thanks.” The hand vanished inside the car again.

“Phillip?” LeMay’s voice came from under the car. There was a faint rumble and a wheeled platform with Curtis LeMay on it rolled out.

“Curt, the cover story’s out; we released an official statement an hour or so ago. It tells the world that a C-99, on a routine training flight prior to assignment to the Air Bridge, crashed on take-off. No survivors. Nobody’s questioning it; no reason they should. That’s one good thing about the big birds going in. They’ve so much fuel on board, by the time its finished burning up the magnesium and aluminum, all that’s left are the engines. Nobody can tell what the thing was.”

“Hell of a thing to say about 15 men isn’t it? They burn up so thoroughly nobody can tell what they died in. Phillip, have you met General Francis Griswold? Commander, Third Air Division. Frank, this is Phillip Stuyvesant. More commonly known as The Seer these days.”

“Pleasure to meet you General. I see our current situation is much like our professional relationship.” Griswold looked puzzled. “I get the tools and you guys use them.”

“Very good, Stuyvesant. I used to follow the races where the yachts your yard built ran through their paces. Didn’t know it then of course. I was surprised to find you were the man who owned Herreshof behind the scenes. Always thought you were an aircraft man.”

“Got interests all over, Sir. The yachts were more a matter of love than anything else. Long time ago, I met a Navy Senior Chief who taught me how to handle a sailing boat. Sort of caught the bug. What on earth are you two up to here?”

“Frank needs a car for his family. Can’t buy a new one of course. So we got an old chassis, an engine and the rest of the parts and started to build one. No cause for complaint so far; project’s going well. Even with gas rationed the way it is, people still want a car if they can get one.”

“And we just burned up a couple of hundred thousand pounds of the stuff. Any idea why the big bird crashed, Curt?”

“Wing Commander is coming down tomorrow to tell me all about it. On the carpet in front of my desk.” Griswold gave a grim chuckle. There was a piece of moth-eaten carpet in front of LeMay’s desk where those who had explaining to do stood until their explanation met LeMay’s exacting standards. “You know what he’ll tell me? ‘I can’t understand it, Sir. They were my best crew.’ They always are, have you noticed that?”

“Can’t speak ill of the dead syndrome?”

LeMay shook his hear irritatedly. “Hell no; I could understand that. It really is the experienced crews who go in for idiotic reasons. Pure negligence on their part. The stupid, inexperienced crews don’t crash. You know why? Because we have manuals for every single job on the big birds. Doesn’t matter what. Pilot, navigator, radio operator, each has his manual. It’s got all the procedures laid down. The inexperienced follow them exactly, by the book. It says ‘read the check list out. Don’t do it from memory.’ So they read the check list exactly the way they’re supposed to. But you get some smart-assed crew who think all that stuff is for the new recruits, not for them. They’ve got ‘experience.’ So they take short cuts, ignore procedure and one day it kills them.”

“Any idea what cased this crash?” Griswold was interested. His formations were only just starting to run through the training process.

“First assessment? They tried to take off with a propeller in reverse pitch. There’s no mention in the tower report of them doing a Vandenburg Shuffle before heading off. That’s one thing the Wing Commander will be clearing up for me tomorrow; just how many of his crews miss the Shuffle. Before he takes over his new command at Wendover.”

Griswold winced, Wendover was a hellish posting, right on the Utah/Nevada border. One could lose all one’s money gambling in Nevada and then have the Mormons in Utah make one feel really bad about it. Nobody liked Wendover. Some people even preferred the Aleutians. LeMay caught the gesture and continued. “People get killed in war. Can’t be helped. But if I ever meet the men who died under my command I want to be able to tell them ‘we did everything we could to prepare you. We made the best plans possible under the circumstances. We maximized enemy casualties and minimized our own. That having been done, I consider your life to have been properly expended.’ Won’t make them feel any better of course.”

“One thing’s been bothering me a little, Curt. You told me that there were going to be four groups to an Air Division? My people ran some numbers today and that seems too few. If we go by base location and capacity, we should be able to have eight groups in each Division. I know the normal span of command is three to five but it might be a more efficient use of resources to go for eight.”

“I’ll take that under advisement Phillip.” LeMay was interrupted by the bang of the outer door opening. Blackout regulations meant all the buildings on Andrews had double doors. A second later, the inner doors opened. An airman entered, blinking owlishly at the lights and squinting around.

“Hey guys, need a hand here. My battery has gone dead.”

“We might have a spare around here somewhere.” Griswold was very carefully keeping his voice neutral. “We’ll help you put it in.”

“No need for that. I got a spare at home; saw it for sale a few months back and grabbed it for when the old one died. Didn’t think it would go this soon, though. If you can give me a push to get started, I’ll swap them over at home.”

A few minutes later, LeMay, Griswold and The Seer watched the masked tail lights of the car vanish into the darkness. LeMay broke the silence that had followed the bang of the car being push-started. “That’s a smart kid. Thought ahead to the time when he would need a new battery. Anybody see what his name was?”

“Badge said ‘Martin’.”

“I’ll keep him in mind.” LeMay granted suddenly. “I hope that kid never finds out who we were.”

“Why, Curt?”

“If he ever discovers who he asked to push his car, he’ll drop dead of heart failure.

“On the whole though, it is better not to get shot down.”

Lieutenant Stanislav Knyaginichev translated the American’s remark and listened to the guffaws of laughter from his men. They’d built the zemlyanka quickly and efficiently as usual. In the process, they’d ‘shown’ the Americans how to do it as a way to stop them from trying to help and thus disrupting the well-oiled routine. Then they’d shared their vodka and food with the two pilots. The Americans had rewarded their generosity with ground attack mission stories that usually featured vivid descriptions of German units being doused with copious quantities of napalm. Russian units never seemed to tire of those accounts. The last story had ended with their Grizzly being hit by a ‘Spiral.’ That had taken a little translation work but eventually they had made it. Then one of the Russians had asked a question about fighters.

“Rifleman Kabanov asks if you have fighter escort when you fly against the Hitlerites?”

“Our Grizzlies, usually no. We fly low down and there we are faster than the fighters, except the jets of course. But if we fly higher up, as bombers rather than ground attack aircraft, then we have an escort, yes. When I flew A-20s, we always had escorts. Usually Thunderbolts. If we were lucky we had Yaks to protect us.”

There was a stir of pride when Knyaz translated that. “So the Russian pilots are better then.” It was more a statement of satisfaction than a question.

“For us in the bombers yes, very much so. The Yak pilots remember their duty. They chase off the fascists but then stay with us in case more arrive. Our fighter pilots leave us to attack the enemy aircraft, but then go chasing off after them so we are unprotected when more Hitlerites appear. We were always pleased when we heard a Yak regiment was to be our escort.”

“And now we shall escort you as well.” Knyaz shifted to Russian. “Bratischka, the fascists have advanced north of us but they have not broken through. Our men have formed a defense line further north and the Hitlerites have failed to penetrate it. The Finnish attack has also failed. They have broken up the Canadian division they attacked and isolated it in small pockets but those pockets are holding out. Not just holding on but their artillery and aircraft are bleeding the treacherous fascists white. We are winning this one, Bratischka. Now, our orders are to head north as well, to rejoin our parent unit. And, of course, to bring our American friends back with us. Let us do that task well, Bratischka. You have all heard how they have made the fascists suffer for invading our soil.”

The two ships were blacked out; just shadows that were very slightly darker than the land against which they were silhouetted. Becker ran his eyes quickly over them. Three large funnels amidships; two twin four inch guns forward, one twin mount aft. They sat high out of the water. Their freeboard was increased by the mine deck that was the whole purpose of their design. Today, that mine deck was an extemporized field hospital, crowded with German seamen; most were badly burned, all suffered from exposure. Becker had picked the worst casualties for the first run to Iceland. The Faroese Islanders took their fishing boats out in the pitch black night to help speed the loading process. Once again, Becker had been awed by their skill at handling the small craft and their dedication to helping the wounded.

“Aye, they’re good people in these Islands. They can hold their heads high in any company I can think of.” Colonel Stewart was watching the two minelayers getting ready for sea. “The thing is, if our positions were reversed, they would still be doing the same. They don’t care who’s right or wrong in this. They’re sailormen and when they see fellow sailormen in trouble, they drop everything to help.”

“We could learn a lesson or two from them.” Becker lapsed into silence. His mind was occupied by the images of the battle. The screams of the men burning as his ship had been hammered, the way she had shaken as the hits reduced her to scrap. And, always, the vicious snarl of the Ami jabos as they had pitilessly pounded her. They’d won in the end. His Lutzow was dead, a hopeless wreck on the rocks.

“I got the reports from Task Force 58. The destroyers attached to the battle line have picked up some more survivors. They combed the battle area but the numbers aren’t good. A couple of hundred. Stewart kept the rest of the message to himself. By the time the Americans had finished pushing aircraft too badly damaged to be worth repairing over the side, they had lost almost 500 planes. And yet, Halsey was going to take another swing at the British Isles before he left to repair his air groups.

“There’s one last group of survivors to be loaded before the minelayers pull out. They’re on the way out now.”

Becker looked curiously at the Scottish Colonel. “I thought we had the worst of the wounded on board already.”

“We have. These are something different. Some of my boyos speak German and they’ve been listening to what was being said. Quite a few of your lads are pretty devout Nazis so we’ve separated the worst ones out and are getting them out first. Better for us that way, they’d be the ringleaders in any trouble. Better for you, they’d be the ones to dispute any orders you give.” Becker nodded. It made sense. “One thing, Captain. We separated out the ones we could recognize. We can’t have got them all. The ones that are left aren’t going to appreciate the difficulty of your position and they won’t like the way the ships have had their scuttling systems disarmed. If I were you, I would watch my back very carefully.”

The M27 Sheridan tanks of the 27th Canadian Armoured Regiment (The Sherbrooke Fusiliers) had stopped all along the road leading to the besieged Third Canadian Infantry Division. Night had fallen. Too many German tanks had night fighting equipment to make chancing a nocturnal firefight acceptable. Better to wait until daybreak when the Allied fighter-bombers would be swarming over the battlefield again. That was the theory, anyway.

Captain Michael Brody didn’t have much time for theory. He had even less when he could see the brigade chief of staff approaching. Although his military career hadn’t been that long, it seemed otherwise. Any length of time on the Kola Front felt like eternity and had taught him a senior officer never brought good news.

“Michael, do your boys feel like a little night-time drive under the stars?”

“Sir?”

“That’s my man. The infantry have got a wee problem and they’ve asked us for some help. Take a look at this map. There’s a dominant hill up ahead, with a house on it. Old farmhouse, probably, but it’s got thick walls and the infantry couldn’t take it without tank support. Anyway, infantry battalion commander came to me and said ‘Give us a couple of tanks old man, they’re just parked alongside the road with the crews getting cold and bored.’ I gave him a good cursing of course, told him my boys needed some sleep. Anyway, all said and done, I promised him a pair of tanks to shoot up that house for him so his men could capture it. You were my first choice for the job, good of you to volunteer. Here’s the orders, off you go.”

The Chief of Staff took off down the road again, back to the Regimental headquarters. Brody toyed briefly with the idea of shooting him with the coaxial machine gun but dismissed it. There were probably written copies of his orders back at HQ so it wouldn’t do any good.

“Sergeant, we got a job to do. There’s this little house on the hill over there, it’s on the reverse slope, I guess we could hardly see it. The krauts have an artillery observation position there. Defenses are ringed around it; trenches and a mortar battery. The infantry want us to blow it apart. We got a good HE load?” It wasn’t really a question. The sixty-odd rounds of 90mm they had on board were split evenly between HE and HVAP.

The house was indeed on the reverse slope. There were times when Brody would have preferred the old M4 Sherman with its low-velocity 75mm. The arching trajectory meant they could have dropped shots over the ridgeline. The 90mm gun was flat trajectory; the first two shots only succeeded in blowing the roof off. Then Brody and his companion tank went up the hill along with the infantry riding behind the turret. Something the Canadians had learned from the Russians; in operations like this, tank-riders were decisive. As the house rose into view, the two tanks methodically pumped more shells into it.

Behind the hill the Germans had trenches and a mortar battery. The Sheridan was almost blind when closed up. Brody, like most of the other tank commanders in the Sherbrooke Fusiliers, drove his tank with the turret hatch open. This time it paid off. The Germans hadn’t been expecting tanks at night and they were caught completely flat-footed by their appearance. While the Sheridan’s main guns blasted the little house, the bow and turret top machine guns laced tracers into the defensive positions around it. The German mortars were firing over the ridge at the infantry they assumed were making their way up the slope. It was the first time Brody had ever seen mortars close up. By the look of it, it was the first time the Germans seemed to encounter a Canadian tank at close quarters. Brody snapped out short bursts from his .50 machine gun. The big slugs tumbled the German infantry as they tried to organize a resistance to the tanks.

Behind him, Brody heard the infantry commander yelling “Go forward! Get ‘em boys!” The Canadian infantrymen jumped off the back of his tank. His driver was spun his tank left and right, trying to give the infantrymen cover as they rushed forward into the German pits and trenches. His machine gun was useless. It was too high up, and couldn’t be brought to bear close in. The powers that be had thought of that and given Brody a Capsten Mark V SMG. He sprayed it at a group of Germans who were trying to run towards the smoldering ruins of the house. Another German suddenly appeared with a Panzerfaust aimed directly at him. The infantry were too fast for him. Three of them were all over him, their bayonets and rifle butts rising and falling.

Brody had reached the mortar pits. The Germans were still trying to fight but it was hopeless. He drove over the pits to crush the mortars. His driver shifted the tank right-left-right as he crushed their crews under his tracks. Brody heard the screams from beneath him but had more important things to think about. The tank accelerated out of the pit, Brody still firing his Capsten at the Germans fleeing in front of him.

Ahead of him he saw a red light in the treeline. “Gunner, engage left! Infrared Searchlight.” The turret spun and the 90mm crashed. Almost simultaneously there was an explosion on the frontal armor. The flash blinded him and Brody felt his face burn. Ahead of him, the red light went out as both Sheridans pumped shells into the position of the half-track. That was the weakness with the German night-fighting system. They had to have infra-red searchlights to illuminate the targets. There was another brilliant flash off to the left. He heard the shell scream just in front of him. His driver didn’t need orders, he spun the tank around to face the German tank. That was another advantage of fighting opened up; when the hatch was open, everything could be seen. His crew noticed anti-tank guns as soon as they started firing, and started maneuvering at once. If they waited just one little bit they’d get hit in the side. It was bad news to be hit in the side; a frontal hit wasn’t so dangerous.

The 90mm guns crashed again. This time there was a fireball from the treeline. The German crew hadn’t been fast enough. They’d given away their position with the muzzle flash from their gun and they hadn’t cleared position fast enough. The American 90mm would make very short work of a Panzer IVK. And had.

If there were more tanks, they’d pulled back. They couldn’t save the house. If they stayed, the Canadian infantry would be all over them. The two Sheridans started backing up, moving to a position just behind the crest of the ridge where they could sit in overwatch. The infantry commander was jogging up and shouting. “Hey tracks. We’ve got a medic; you look like you could use him”

Brody felt his face. It was covered with blood and he could feel a steel fragment stuck in his cheek. He waved acknowledgement at the infantrymen. Once his tanks were in position, he decided it was time to take advantage of the offer. The first aid post pulled out the fragment and bandaged his cheek. Then they gave him a half full bottle of vodka to take away the pain.

“Anything moving down there?”

The radar screen was masked under a curious cone-like arrangement that was supposed to shut out all non-essential light and make the dim display more readable. It worked, after a fashion, but it meant that the radar operators on the F-61D Black Widows could be picked out by the circular bruise around their faces. The constant jolting of an aircraft being flown at low altitude meant that resting one’s face on anything would result in steady, minor injury.

“Can’t see anything, Boss.” Sergeant James Morton squinted hard. There had to be something down there. The Germans had staged a major offensive, both sides of Lake Oneda, and had run into heavy opposition. There had to be supply columns moving up behind the lead German elements, there just had to be. Nothing was moving in daylight, the Grizzlies and Thunderstorms were seeing to that. So, the supplies had to be moving up at night. Which lead back to Lieutenant Quayle’s question. Was anything moving down there, and if not, why not?

“They could be man-packing stuff, Boss. We wouldn’t see that on the radar.”

“No way Jimmie. The krauts have thrown the best part of their Army Group Vistula into the attack. Lot of tanks, even if they are moving slowly. There’s got to be gas trains and ammunition moving north. Don, anything you can see out the back?”

Donald Phelan looked out through the glazed portion of the F-61s central fuselage nacelle. The whole rear section of the nacelle had been made transparent; why Phelan couldn’t quite work out. Probably it stemmed from the Black Widow’s ancestry as a night fighter somehow but it did seem excessive. Technically, Phelan was the aircraft’s gunner, controlling the quadruple .50 caliber machine guns in the turret on top of the fuselage. His real job was to look out for targets on the ground below. The F-61s had been replaced as night fighters by the faster, more agile Grumman F-65 Tigercat, but they’d found their role as night intruders. They could lift a fearsome array of bombs and rockets, while their SCR-720 radar had proved very useful at finding targets in the darkness. It was a pity that radar wasn’t showing anything now.

“I’m going to try a bit further south. The Germans may be moving north more slowly that intelligence is suggesting. That would mean their supply convoys will be further back.”

Evil Dreams turned south. Her R-2800s droned steadily, her radar swept the ground ahead of her. This was the hard part, actually finding something to shoot at. Once she had a target, Evil Dreams had the bombs and rockets, not to mention her four 23mm cannon, to do something fairly disastrous to it. But first she had to find it. The minutes ticked by, slowly draining the fuel from her tanks.

“Hey Boss, got something.”

“Worthwhile?” There had been all too many times when a F-61 had expended its bombs and rockets on a target of little value only to have a rich group turn up when she was on her way back home, her racks and magazines empty.

“Collection of vehicles; definition isn’t good enough to count how many.” There was a rustling of maps in the bulky radar compartment. “OK, there’s a railway junction ahead. East-west line meets a north-south line. I think the contacts are clustered around the buildings at the junction.” The resolution of the SCR-720 wasn’t that good, it was barely adequate to show that the targets were there.

“OK, we’ll take them down.” Quayle swung Evil Dreams around in a wide curve, getting her lined up on the radar contacts below. There was nothing to be seen down there. Every unit on Kola knew that keeping itself blacked out was essential if they were to survive. The Americans had their sophisticated Black Widows with their array of weapons and radar. The Russians had their partisans on the ground, all too ready to spot a target and steer in one of the little night-intruder Boomerangs. The Germans had their night fliers as well; everything from the old Hs-123 biplanes to Ju-88Gs and He-219 night-fighters. An array of nocturnal pests whose activities condemned the troops on the ground to a night of sleepless darkness.

“Target’s in front of us now Boss.” Quayle reached down and selected the inner bomb racks. They had something new, a device that allowed three 500 pound bombs to be carried on a single pylon originally intended for a single 1,600 pound weapon. The price paid was that the triple rack was draggy and pulled their speed down. That’s why a wise pilot dumped those bombs first. Next step was to put the nose down, taking Evil Dreams into a long, quiet dive that allowed him to throttle the engines back. No point on giving the targets more warning than I have to.

Morton quietly read the range to the cluster of targets on the ground ahead. Then, he stopped; they were too close in for the radar to be effective. It didn’t matter. Quayle had seen the shadows of the buildings in front of him and had lined up perfectly. Then, he punched the bomb release and slammed the throttles forward. The big Black Widow leapt forward with the added power from its R-2800s. Staring out of the back transparencies, Phelan saw the ground erupt with the six explosions from the bombs. Then two more, bigger, fireballing blasts.

“Secondary explosions, probably fuel or ammunition going up. Whatever had been down there, we’ve hit something.” He paused a second. “Problems Boss. We’ve got a bandit out here. I’m picking up Lichtenstein emissions and we just gave him the flaming datum to end all flaming datums.” Morton scanned his radar warning equipment.

There was no indication where the enemy night-fighter was, but it was out there and it had a good idea where the intruder it was hunting could be. Phelan slid away from his observation post and climbed into his gunner’s seat. If they couldn’t find the enemy night-fighter, defending against it would be his job.

In the cockpit, Quayle was weighing odds. The fighter couldn’t be to the south or west of us, otherwise we ‘d have picked it up. It had to be north and east, probably on its way back to base. And it had to be above us. In daylight that would be a bad disadvantage for Evil Dreams but at night, things were different. The lower aircraft would be hidden against the shadows of the ground; the higher aircraft would be silhouetted against the brighter sky. Provided the differential wasn’t too great, the plane below had the edge. Quayle remembered something else; an urgent intelligence warning that German night-fighters carried upwards-firing cannon. No. Here, now, being below was good.

As Evil Dreams turned, her radar scanning arc cut across the sky, searching for the hostile night-fighter. The Germans had a radar warning system too; one that could detect the SCR-720. That was probably how they knew Evil Dreams had been in the area.

“Got him, Boss. He’s turning our way but we’re behind, below and outside his curve. About 5,000 yards ahead. Closing steadily, his speed’s around 200, perhaps 250.” Quayle glanced down, Evil Dreams was doing just over 330 mph. Within two minutes, they should be able to see the target. Theoretically, it was possible to do an entire intercept using radar sightings but nobody ever did. They waited to see their target first.

“He’s straightening out Boss. Probably going to reverse his turn.” That would make sense, the German pilot would be snaking, trying to expand the search arc of his radar. This time though, the turn would take him right across the Black Widow’s nose.

“Got him! There he is.” Quayle ran the identification through his mind. Twin radial engines, twin tailplanes, glass cockpit extending to the nose. A Heinkel 219. That was good, they were the best night fighters Germany had and downing one is a real prize. The German fighter was dark against the sky. To cut down shadows, the Germans painted theirs dappled gray. The Americans used a darker slate gray.

“Turret locked forward, Boss; transferring gun control to you.” Phelan settled back. His turret was now part of Evil Dreams’ forward-firing gun battery.

The He-219 was already starting her reverse turn. Quayle corrected slightly and started to turn with her. The red pipper on his gunsight moved up the aircraft’s fuselage to a point just forward of its nose. A quick glance to check that he had selected all eight guns. A gentle squeeze on the trigger was all it took.

There was no stream of tracer. No sensible night fighter crew used the stuff. He could see the shells strike, the brilliant flash of the 23mm shells ripping into the German’s cockpit; the smaller flashes as the 0.5 machine gun bullets danced across the disintegrating mass of metal and plastic. The He-219 was armored, but Evil Dreams’ 23mm guns had been designed to bust tanks. An aircraft was easy meat for them. The American and Australian crews had fallen in love with the V-Ya cannon and they were taking most of the production these days. The Russians preferred the heavier 37mm guns for their ground attack aircraft, so everything had worked out.

Up ahead of them, the He-219 was a mass of flame. It spun out of control. Quayle ceased fire and throttled back, diving away to get clear of the blazing wreck. The night’s work wasn’t over yet.

There had been no warning. They’d heard the engines of course and knew there was an aircraft up there. They hadn’t known who or what it was. The younger men, those with the sharpest ears, said it was twin-engined. That had seemed right. It wasn’t one of the Russian women in their damned sewing machines. That meant it was either American or German. Everybody knew which way the odds favored in that bet. So they had listened carefully and heard the engines fade away as the unidentified aircraft departed. Lang had almost started to relax when Asbach had suddenly leapt up. “He’s coming back; get down!”

Lang had obeyed even though he couldn’t work out how Asbach had known. He’d thrown himself flat just as the quiet purr of engines turned into a roar that almost drowned out the whistle of the bombs coming down. Then the sound of both was lost in the explosions. Lang counted them; four, five, six. By the glow that suddenly lit up the night he knew that some of them had bitten. He looked up, cautiously, carefully. One of the buildings around the station was ablaze where a bomb had flattened it. A trio of half-track trucks were a mass of orange-red flame. One of the sub-units had just lost its reserve fuel. Not a great cost. If the unit had been concentrated, it might have been far worse. Asbach insisted they disperse though, and his experience had, once again, paid off.

“There are two aircraft up there.” The young sergeant was speaking almost to himself. “I think one of them is ours.”

That would mean a night fighter come to rescue them, probably drawn by the explosions. Lang listened carefully. The young man had been right; there were two aircraft up there. It was a fair bet they were stalking each other. He watched, the time seeming to drag by. A crash and rattle was clearly heard over the sound of the engines. It was to the north of them. Lang swore he could see the muzzle flash of the plane’s guns. There was no doubt about where the other plane was. It exploded into flame, a brilliant red crucifix against the dark night that twisted and fell, distorting as it tumbled from the sky.

“I wonder who it was?” Lang couldn’t help ask.

“We’ll never know. Nobody got out of that alive.” There was a crash. The flames seemed to spread out as the destroyed aircraft hit the ground, ten, fifteen kilometers north of them.

“Everybody get to cover, disperse away from the buildings.” Asbach rapped out the orders. If the American aircraft had survived, it would be coming back.

“Going back for them, Boss?”

Quayle shook his head, then keyed the microphone. “Don’t think so. They’ll be dispersing down there. Anyway, I’ve had a thought. I was wondering why they were grouped around a rail junction.”

Phelan thought for a second. “They were waiting for something. Supplies.”

“That’s my guess. They must have moved pretty fast to get here and I bet they’re down on gas. Ammo too, probably. So, they’re waiting for a resupply. Now, since they’re waiting for a resupply by a railway line, doesn’t that mean the supplies are coming…”

“…by train.” Morton finished the sentence off.

“Right. If we work back along the rail lines, we should find that train. A whole trainload of supplies. Jimmie, plot me a course to follow the railway line west. Don, back to your turret. The guns are yours. That kraut may have had a friend.”

Evil Dreams fell back into its usual routine. The Black Widow cruised west. When the contact came, there was no mistaking it, a brilliant return whose glow lasted the entire sweep of the scanner. “Boss, we’ve got it. Big train by the radar echo. There’s a lot of metal down there.

“Any friendlies down there?”

“We’re far behind enemy lines, Boss. Must be as supply train. Krauts must be desperate to run a train this big. Either that or they’re really short of engines.” That was part of the briefing the night intruder pilots got. The Germans were desperately short of locomotives. They’d started the war short. They’d looted the countries they’d conquered to make up the numbers. That had left them with a mixed fleet it was impossible to maintain. They’d never built, or captured, the heavy cranes and wreckers that were needed to salvage damaged or derailed locomotives. The path of the German armies was marked by a trail of rusting locomotives abandoned by the tracks they had left. Then the partisans had displayed incredible imagination in sabotaging what was left and the Americans made busting trains a specialty. All in all, the German railways were in a sad state

“Check the book anyway, Jimmie.”

Morton got his briefing notes out. It only took a second to check. “Nothing friendly round here boss. There’s a Navy train getting out but its far to the west of us; other side of the river and heading north by now. This one’s a kraut, no doubt about it.”

Quayle banked the Black Widow around and headed north before turning down to hit the train side on. Recommended method of hitting trains was to strafe along their length; there was a good bet this train was loaded with ammunition and flying along it was a sure way to get hit by debris. He thought for a second, then selected the twelve five-inch rockets hanging under the outer wing panels. Selector set to two. They would fire of in pairs; each pair a split second after the one before.

Once again it was the shadows that were his first indication of the target. To his surprise there were three separate trains and he’d blundered; he’d lined up on the last of the train convoy. It was too late to do anything about it. He gunned his R-2800s and made his pass, pouring the rockets at the engine and cars behind it.

“Gee, look at that secondary!” In the back, Phelan was watching the eruption and fire as the rockets tore into the target. It had been a beautiful pass.

“There’s a plane up there.” Perdue was searching the sky but he could see nothing. The aircraft seemed to have turned away, whatever it was probably didn’t matter too much. Then he heard the faint growl of the engines picking up and he knew it would matter very much.

It was sheer luck that he saw the twin-boom Black Widow. It streaked across his trains, pouring rockets at the poor little shunter at the end of the line. The orange streaks of rocket fire gave him just enough light to make a tentative guess. The roaring fire as the rockets exploded in the supply of diesel fuel and propellent bags stored in one of the shunter cars confirmed it. A Black Widow night intruder had spotted the trains and decided they just had to be German. Perdue swore to himself, damned Black Widow squadrons hadn’t been informed we have been forced to change their route.

“What’s the colors? For God’s sake hurry!”

“Green to white.” The voice was unidentified, unidentifiable in the roaring noise of the inferno that had engulfed the shunter and its consist.

Perdue grabbed the flare gun and rammed the correct flare into it. Time was short. The Black Widow would already be turning for another pass at the trains underneath. The flare went skywards; burning green, then turning to white. Even before it had completed its burn, Perdue fired a second, then a third. It must have been enough because the Black Widow thundered a few feet overhead without firing.

Quayle was lining up on the remaining parts of the train group when the flare exploded almost in front of him. At first he’d thought it was a spiral but it had burned green, turning to white. Two more had followed it.

“Don’t shoot Boss! It’s one of ours.”

Morton’s scream of warning stopped Quayle just in time. As Evil Dreams flashed over the trains, he saw the two great guns in their carriages. “Jimmie, that Navy train; was it railway guns?”

“Sure was, Boss.”

“Well, it isn’t far to the west of here. We just shot the holy living shit out of it. We’d better warn control, we’ll radio it in.”

The shunter and its consist were a write-off. Eighteen Americans and six Russians had died with it. Perdue was already having their graves dug beside the tracks. It was hard to tell which corpse was which, the combination of diesel fuel and propellant had charred them beyond recognition. Perdue knew he was probably burying Americans in a Russian grave and vice versa, but he guessed it didn’t matter too much. They’d fought together, died together, did it really matter which was which?

The bang and roar shook Captain Christian Lokken out of his uneasy sleep. For one hideous moment, he thought he was back on his shattered Gneisenau, experiencing again the merciless pounding from the Ami jabos. Then he saw lights above him and the instructions on the cabinets. The gray paint; the stenciled note ‘Property of the U.S. Navy.’ Almost as soon as it registered there was another bang and roar directly overhead.

“Noisy aren’t they Captain?” The voice was professional-cheerful, the one doctors used to critically ill patients whose chance of survival was still in doubt. “Aircraft taking off. We’re launching strikes, hitting targets around Londonderry. Especially the SS barracks and training center there.”

“A carrier? How?”

“You were transferred over from the Charles H. Roan last night. The destroyers are doing what they can, but they’re just not equipped to handle casualties like this. You’re a very sick man, Captain.”

Lokken slumped back into his cot. “My crew, how many survivors? Do you know?”

“We think a total of fifty three. There may be more in the Faroe Islands; three of your ships made it there. Two destroyers and a cruiser. We think there may be between 2,000 and 2,500 survivors on board them.”

“And you will be bombing them again.” It was a flat statement. After the nightmare of the day-long assault, Lokken couldn’t believe the Americans would leave those ships afloat. A thought that was emphasized by another bang and roar over his head.

“I don’t think so. We sent a photo-Corsair to have a look. The cruiser’s on the rocks, finished. The destroyers are Free British prizes. Anyway, Captain, you’ve got pneumonia, frostbite and Lord knows what else. Rest for a while; later I’ll give you some exercises to get the fluid out of your lungs. If you want to survive, it’s critical you follow the instructions I give you. Another thing, don’t even try to leave the sickbay. The change in temperature will kill you. Going for a walk is literally more than your life is worth.”

The doctor left the sickbay, nodding to the two Marines on guard outside. His words to Captain Lokken had been the absolute truth but not for the reasons he’d given. A lot of Gettysburg’s crew were Irish. The majority of them reckoned they had scores from ‘the old country’ to settle with a convenient German. There was another bang and roar from overhead. More Corsairs on their way to pound the SS units headquartered around Londonderry.