Winter Warriors

CHAPTER TWO: A CHILL IN THE AIR

From above, the railway tracks looked like three snakes sliding side-by-side in the snow. If the observer above looked closer he’d see that there was another kind of snake down there, three trains, side by side on the rails. A long way between them, almost half a mile, but still there. Trains that were 14 carriages long. A very astute observer might realize there was something very strange about the fourth carriage in the train.

It was the long barrel that gave the game away. The train was a railway gun and its entourage; the wagons that held the massive 2,700 pound projectiles, the bags of charges, living accommodation for the crew, cranes to lift the loads and anti-aircraft guns to protect the whole assembly. The curves on the tracks allowed the gun to be trained at any point within a wide arc. Together, the three supercharged 16-inch 50-caliber guns could put down a devastating barrage of fire on a target up to 40 miles away.

Here and now, on the Kola Peninsula as winter drew in, railway guns had suddenly regained the importance they had lost when aircraft had taken over the role of long-range artillery. Most times during a Kola peninsula winter, the weather was too bad for aircraft. Even if they could get up, it was too bad for them to strike accurately. Weather didn’t affect the big guns. If they knew the position of their target, they could strike at it. When they did, their power was devastating.

The allies had learned that in the winter of 1942-43, the first full Russian winter the American troops had experienced. They’d suffered at the hands of the German railway guns, so they’d brought their own. Four 14-inch L50 railway guns at the Washington Navy Yard had been hastily converted to Russian railway gauge and shipped to Murmansk. They’d been followed, a year later, by six 16-inch L50s; guns that had been in store ever since the battlecruisers they’d been designed for had died under the Washington Treaty axe. The 14 inchers and three of the sixteens were down at Petrograd, at the western end of the Kola Front. The other three 16s were here, at the eastern end.

Commander James Perdue’s reverie was broken by the sound of a siren going off. It was the alert that a shoot was about to take place. He’d barely had time to register the noise and start to act before the train lurched and began to move. Forward, that would mean the gun was training to the right. If the target had been to their left, they ‘d have been moving backwards. Their gun, affectionately known as Curly was too large to have a turntable mounting, instead it was moved along the curved tracks. There were marks at regular intervals along the curve, each marking the increments by which the barrel was swinging. When the fire control system gave them the deflection needed, the engine would move the forward wheel of the gun-carriage so it was level with one of those marks. All that the gun crew needed to do was elevate to the specified degree and make a fine adjustment to the bearing.

The train shuddered and stopped. Then Curly rocked gently as a fine adjustment was made. Perdue was already heading back, down the accommodation car to his gun. He knew what was happening. The crane had lifted a 2,700 pound semi-armor piercing projectile from the stack on the flatcar and loaded it onto the conveyor. Now it was being run to the gun where it would be rammed into the breech. Behind it, the magazine cars had opened and powder bags were being brought forward. The number was determined by the range to the target. Curly had originally been designed to take eight bags but had been modified to accommodate up to ten. That level of supercharge would wear out the barrel but it wasn’t a problem. When that happened, they’d get Curly rebarrelled.

“How many charges?”

“Full load Sir.” This was going to be good. Curly’s barrel was already arcing upwards as the hydraulics drove it into the fire position. A crash seemed to shake the whole frozen landscape and a brilliant ball of fire lit up the sky. Curly sent its projectile off towards whatever target it was that had caused the commotion. A split second later, far off to the right, Larry sent its shell on its way to the same target. Perdue assumed it was the same; they usually were. Over on the left, the third gun, Moe fired its shell. The last one off, Moe’s crew would get their legs pulled about that. Curly’s barrel was already dropping as the gun returned to the load position and the railway engine pushed the gun train back to the mark.

The German railway gunners could get off one round every six minutes; the American navy men fired twice that. Larry must have done slightly better because the 16-incher got its shell off a split second before Curly. Moe brought up the rear again. Four shells each later, the guns ceased fire and their locomotives pulled them back to the rest position. Perdue hoped the target, whatever it was, had been duly grateful for the effort made on its behalf.

“So you are the idiot who destroyed my heavy artillery battery.” Major-General Marcks spoke thoughtfully. Outside, his aide quietly crept away. When ‘Old Lenin,’ as he was known behind his back, spoke thoughtfully, being somewhere else was a very good idea.

Captain Wilhelm Lang knew how to deal with this situation. It was necessary to take action, to show initiative. This was one of those cases where bending the rules was actually a good thing. It showed a concentration on fulfilling the objective, of gaining the required results, a good thing. “Sir, yes sir. But I have been on the long-distance radio link to a friend of mine in Army Group headquarters. He’s fixed everything. We will have new heavy guns here to replace them in a week or less. Well before we are required to bounce off.”

Lang looked at his General with what came perilously near to a smirk. It faded when he saw the irascible general going white.

“You used the long-range radio? How long ago?”

“I just came off it, just before I came in here, I was using it for five minutes, perhaps ten.”

Marcks grabbed the telephone on his desk. “Emergency evacuation now! Everybody out! Clear the area, as far as possible.” Then he pushed past Lang and headed for the door. Outside sirens wailed.

The headquarters area was a madhouse. Corporal Krause was already running the engine of Marck’s kubelwagen. He started to roll as soon as the General was in the back. Lang pulled himself in as the little vehicle sped off down the road plowed through the snow. Around them vehicles were moving. Each took as many of the headquarters staff as they could scoop up. Krause threaded his kubelwagen through the throng, heading as far away from the camp area as possible.

They made it. Krause drove the kubelwagen straight at a tree sticking out of the snow, hit the brakes and spun it around. As he did, Marcks leapt out and looked down on the HQ area nestling at the foot of the ridge. Lang had waited until the vehicle had stopped and left more circumspectly. “Best driver in the division Krause is.” Marcks was still watching the base.

“I don’t understand….”

“Have you never heard of radio intercepts?”

“Of course, I’ve read the manuals. I wrote some of the more important ones myself.” Lang was almost-smirking again. “But there was high ground between the transmission site and the Ivans.”

“Not the Ivans you have to worry about…” Marcks was interrupted by an escalating roar. Beside him Lang could swear that he saw a black streak race down across the sky and hit the center of the now-deserted headquarters. There was a white puff. For a split second, he thought the shell was a dud. Then the whole center of the camp bulged, looking for all the world like a saucepan of milk boiling over. It inflated and rose upwards, impossibly large before bursting open to send a shotgun hail of frozen mud, snow and ice into the air. The two officers dropped flat as it scattered down around them. Even before it had landed, a second shell had slammed into the area, a little to the south of the main camp area. A third landed to the west of the camp. The ground rolled and shook, punching Marcks and Lang with body blows from the repeated concussion of the Shockwaves.

It went on and on, shell after shell slamming into the camp. The semi-armor piercing shells penetrated deep into the frozen earth before exploding. The boiling milk of the ground threshed and contorted under the remorseless hammering. As the ground wave from the last shell passed away, it collapsed as if the heat had been taken from under the pan. What was left of the HQ area was utterly devastated. Not a single building left standing. The ground itself was destroyed, snow and mud stirred and shaken into a blended, featureless nothingness.

“As I was saying, it’s not the Ivans you have to worry about. It’s the Amis. You see, Lang, the Amis are rich. They fight their wars with machines. When we fly a Tante Ju transport up here, everybody fights for centimeters of space, for every kilogram of load, because we do not know when the aircraft will be available again. When a mother in Arkansas wants to send her little boy some cookies, if there is no space on the aircraft, the Amis build another one.

“Some of those transport aircraft are stuffed with radio intercept equipment. For some reason the Amis call them Rivets. They orbit safely behind their lines and listen for somebody foolish enough to use their radio links. When they find one, they triangulate for his position. Aircraft are good at that; they can establish a long baseline quickly. So, they get a quick, accurate fix and send it in. In this case to a railway gun battery north of here. Your call was a gift to them. A long call like that, they had every chance to get hold of it and fix the position exactly.

“Then that railway gun battery fired on us. You saw those shells? They weigh 1,300 kilograms each and they penetrated thirty, perhaps forty meters into the ground before exploding. The ground down there is like quicksand. It’s been shattered, powdered. We can’t go back there until it freezes solid again. Lang, so far today you’ve destroyed one of my artillery batteries and my headquarters. Could I ask if you have any plans for the rest of the day?”

Lang shook his head dumbly, still shaken by the immensity of the explosions that had destroyed the base. He’d never thought of railway guns, had no idea of their terrifying power and accuracy. It was a lesson he knew he would never forget.

There was a lot Marcks wanted to say but Lang was on first-name terms with more important people than he could easily count. For the moment, Lang was untouchable. Sarcasm would have to substitute for the more direct action he longed to take. “Well, if I may be permitted to make a suggestion. Have you considered serving the Fatherland by transferring to the Russian Army?”

“How was the flight?” The question meant more than it sounded. ‘The flight’ was a long trip for the Pan American Constellation. It was a civilian airliner in name only. It had military-style seating and equipment; its Pan American paint job was a gesture towards the countries on its route. The first leg on the outward journey, Washington to Lajes in the Azores, was trouble-free enough, both were American territory, although the ever-cynical Achillea had her doubts about Washington. The second leg, Lajes to Casablanca, was where the fun kicked in.

Casablanca was technically Vichy French but it was actually run by the Free French. To be more precise, the faction of the Free French lead by Admiral Darlan. So, there was a constant underground war going on between the various groups and the resulting level of intrigue and conspiracy was surpassed only by Cairo. The third leg, Casablanca to Rome was even more interesting. There that the civilian cover of the Constellation was essential. Italy was a neutral in the war. Its economy was booming as a result and Mussolini had every intention of keeping it that way. So, the airliner had to be civilian. The final leg of the journey was the train trip from Rome to Geneva where Igrat, Achillea and Henry McCarty would meet up with Loki and pick up the monthly economic intelligence data. It was a regular trip and the question had actually been ‘did you get the data?’

“Pretty good. We got the stuff. Had a little trouble in Casablanca on the way out though.”

“Germans?”

“Nah, OSS.” McCarty leaned back in the limousine seat. Let me tell you about it.”

Gusoyn grinned to himself. McCarty was an excellent storyteller and this promised to be good.

“Special operations are for skilled professionals, not amateurs.” The local OSS man leaned back in his seat, radiating scorn for his company. Behind him, Igrat looked around the Cafe, it was empty, even the staff had made themselves scarce. In Casablanca, everybody knew when shady stuff was going down and those not involved took off in any convenient direction. It wasn’t that they were afraid of the authorities. It was well known that the Vichy police only arrested the innocent as a last resort. It was just smarter not to be involved.

Frank Barnes was emboldened by the lack of response to his comment. “And look at you. You’re supposed to be couriers for some important documents. An old man and two women. Weak, undisciplined civilians. You need to be in peak condition and have specialized training for this sort of thing. I’ve a good mind to make a report to Washington on this. What would happen if Nazi agents attacked you? Huh? Suppose a Nazi came at you with a knife?” Barnes pointed at Achillea. “What would you do? Huh?”

“I’d take it out of his hand.”

“This isn’t funny. A Nazi could take that case away from you right now. Look, let me teach you what to do.” Barnes reached into a pocket and pushed a pencil across the table. “Pretend that’s a knife and come at me with it and I’ll show you the tricks.”

Achillea looked down at the pencil. “No need to pretend. Uhhh, wait a minute.” She got up and walked across to the counter where a selection of chef s knives hung on the wall. She inspected them for a minute before selecting one, not quite the longest but one with a broad, strong blade. Then she touched the edge with her thumb and pushed her lower lip out in disgust. Blunt as a spoon. She disappeared through the service hatch and a few seconds later the sound of a knife being drawn across a sharpening steel rang through the empty cafe.

Frank Barnes started sweating slightly. “I’m only trying to help you know. This is a dangerous business, too dangerous for amateurs. You should leave it to us.” Igrat smiled at him; in the other corner, Henry just stared

“Madam, you can’t come in here. Staff only.” The cafe manager’s voice was smooth and cultured, although muffled by the closed service door.

“Hand please.” Achillea’s voice was abrupt. A split second later there was an outraged squeal followed by an irritated “still blunt.” The sounds of a knife being sharpened grew in energy.

“Uh, I just hope my old war wound won’t interfere with this.” Barnes was sweating heavily now and glancing around. The cafe was still empty. Then the service door swung open and Achillea stepped through. Her eyes fixed on Barnes and she dropped into her habitual crouch, knife in her right hand, down low, point aimed unerringly at Barnes’ groin.

“Err, good Lord, is that the time? I have to make my scheduled call to headquarters.” Barnes tried to rise, but his foot got caught in something and he half-tripped. Igrat steadied him and helped him to his feet. “Perhaps we can schedule this another day.” He was backing towards the door now, colliding with it, trying to open it the wrong way before finally getting out. He climbed into a passing taxi and was swept away.

“I wonder where he’s going.” McCarty sounded vaguely amused. Achillea sighed with disappointment and put the knife back in its rack.

“I don’t know, but he’s in for an interesting time when he gets there.” Igrat sounded smug as she reached inside her blouse. “I’ve got his wallet.”

Gusoyn’s snort of laughter almost caused him to crash the car as he backed out of the parking spot. “When did you give it back to him?”

“Give it back? Moi?” Igrat’s eyebrows arched. “It’s going to his boss as soon as we’re in the office. That fool could have messed up the delivery with his grandstanding.”

McCarty nodded, for all the incident’s funny side, it could have been a serious breach that endangered the information pipeline and they were all aware that the information they carried was literally priceless. Then he frowned. “Iggie? Wasn’t there some money in there?”

“There was.” Igrat confirmed. One of McCarty’s eyebrows lifted. “New hat. And the cutest little switchblade for Achillea. It was mine by right of conquest after all. To the victor the spoils and all that.”

The eerie wailing of the sirens sounded the all-clear and the room relaxed. A few seconds later the telephone rang and Phillip Stuyvesant picked it up. He listened, absent-mindedly nodding as if the person on the other end could see him them acknowledged the message briefly.

“Three missiles Sir. One shot down, the other two hit south of here, down around Alexandria. Both exploded in open country, no casualties this time. My guess is they were trying for the torpedo factory.”

“Not a damned chance, not with those things. If they were aiming for anything specific it was for the East Coast and they did well to hit that.” President Thomas E. Dewey sounded relieved. The wild inaccuracy of the Fi-103 ‘Doodlebug’ didn’t mean that they couldn’t do a lot of damage.

“Coastal have backtracked the missiles and we’ve got a good fix on the sub that launched them. Navy PBJs and a hunter-killer group are prosecuting it now. They won’t get away.”

That was a bit hopeful, Stuyvesant thought. The casualty rate for submarines launching missile attacks on the East Coast is around 50 percent. A bit safer for them than attacking convoys but not that much more. Outside, Washington was shrouded in darkness. Anybody breaking the blackout would be on the receiving end of a shouted “Put out that light!” and a stiff fine. That was the lucky outcome. It was not unknown for people careless with their lights to be accused of signaling to submarines off shore. Their neighbors took a dim view of that supposed act. As a matter of fact, the FBI had been unable to substantiate a single accusation of signaling to German submarines, but the very fact the accusations were being made was a symptom of a deeper problem.

“So, Seer, progress on Downfall?”

“We’re getting started Sir. For all its faults, JANSP-23 provides us with a base to start from. It’s given us the magnitude of the task we have to undertake even if it overstates the measures needed to execute the mission.” Stuyvesant, already better known in military planning circles as ‘The Seer’ after his USSBC code-name, paused for a second. The Joint Army-Navy Strategic Plan No.23 had enormously overstated the number of atomic devices needed to destroy German war-making potential. It wasn’t that they’d overstated the task; they had underestimated the sheer destructive power of the new weapons. It was easy to say ‘equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT’ but another thing entirely to appreciate the incredible destruction that implied. Only when one saw the mushroom cloud boiling upwards, felt the ground shuddering under one’s feet, heard that all-encompassing, crushing roar did the reality sink home. But then, nobody had, until Trinity back in August. Stuyvesant had been there and he had realized then that ‘destroying German war-making potential’ with these weapons actually meant totally destroying the country.

It quite surprised him that the realization was taking so long to sink in. Didn’t people realize that the moment the doctrine of strategic bombardment was accepted, it axiomatically meant the complete destruction of the target country? Because it was impossible to draw the line between where the war-making potential of a country ended and the purely civilian began? Years before, when Mitchell and his supporters had proposed Strategic Bombardment as a ‘humane’ alternative to the slaughter of the Western Front in World War Two, Stuyvesant had seen where it would lead. As the doctrine had gained strength and its supporters had seen it become an accepted doctrine worldwide, his worst fears had been confirmed. Technology was advancing so fast that it had outrun the ability of people to understand or control it.

“We’re convinced it has to be The Big One?”

“Yes indeed Sir. It has to be. What we have is a one-shot deal. We have two complementary military secrets of equal importance, nuclear weapons and the ability of the B-36 to overfly enemy defenses. If either is prematurely compromised, the whole thing falls apart. The first blow has to be cataclysmic, so appalling in its power that the enemy cannot continue the war. Anything less just doesn’t have the necessary impact. I think even General Groves is coming around to that opinion now.”

“He put up a good fight.” Dewey chuckled. The long duel between General Groves and General LeMay had been a spectacle to behold. “When can we go?”

Stuyvesant thought carefully. “Assuming that projected B-36 and nuclear weapon production stay on schedule, sometime during the first six months of 1947. We’re shifting device production to the Mark 3 now; they’ll be entering the depots early next year and we’ve got six Bomb Groups equipped with B-36Ds either operational or working up.”

Dewey was horrified and his voice showed it. “Seer, mid-1947? In eighteen months time? My God man, do you understand we are losing 800 men a day on the Russian Front? And you want us to wait another 18 months? Do you realize that means almost half a million men are going to die out there while we wait for the bombers to be completed?”

The Seer suddenly looked very old and very, very tired. “438,000 to be precise, Mister President and yes, we all do understand that. The Big One is the only chance of ending this war quickly. Say again, the only chance. If it goes off half-cocked, if we try half measures, it will fail and this war could go on for years, decades even. Our death toll then will make a half million seem very small.

“Mister President, when we throw The Big One, it’ll do two things, quite independent of the attack itself. One is that it will tell the world that nuclear weapons are possible and give pretty much everybody a few good clues on how to build them. The other is that it will tell everybody that high-flying bombers are very hard to intercept and give them clues on how to build them as well. How long after a failed Big One, Mister President, will it take Germany to build its own long-range, high-altitude bombers and the nuclear weapons to arm them? Months? A year? Won’t be much more than that. Or how long will it be before the doodlebugs coming over have nuclear tips? And what about Japan? We have to wait Mister President, we must. It’s the hardest thing of all, to have a deadly, war-winning weapon and to wait until the time to use it is right, but it is also the only thing we can do. Any other way lies disaster.”

Dewey nodded. In his head, he could see the inevitable, undeniable logic; his mind’s eye also saw the lines of graves, lines that lengthened inexorably with every day that passed. “Can we hang on? Can the Russians hang on?”

“The people are getting tired, Mister President. Tired of the casualties, tired of the wartime shortages and rationing, tired of the blackout, tired of the deadlock. We need a victory, a big one. The German breakthrough last year was a bad shock for morale but this endless stalemate is worse. The Russians will fight on. Without us, their ability to do so effectively is questionable. The Russian military industry has lost most of its coal supplies and more than half its energy resources. Virtually every industrial complex they have, including the ones we’ve built, is short of fuel, power and metals. Now, there is some good news. Our oil industry people have been to their Siberian oil fields. The Russians had very poor extraction technology and those fields can produce, and are producing now, much more than they got out of them in the 1930s. Even better, our oil people say we haven’t even found the king and queen fields yet, let alone the emperor field.”

“King, queen, emperor? Doesn’t sound very egalitarian to me?” Dewey’s voice had its usual dry humor back.

“Sir, oil fields come in a hierarchy. From the smallest up, Squire, Duke, Queen, King, Emperor. The structure of an oil-producing area is an Emperor field, surrounded by two or more King and Queen fields and they’re surrounded by Duke and Squire fields. All existing Siberian production is coming from Duke and Squire fields. The undiscovered oil wealth that’s potentially there is enormous. Until recently, we were shipping Siberian crude to US refineries and then shipping products back but we’ve started building refineries in Russia itself. We have tuned up their metals mining facilities, coal recovery. Thank God the Russians have no objections to strip-mining, but they’re still short of everything, from people to fertilizer. Without us, their ability to hold is arguable at best. And we need a victory, a big, decisive one.”

“Is there hope of one? Or do we have to wait until 1947?”

“Sir, this morning I would have said no and yes respectively. That’s changed. We’ve just got the latest intelligence digests through. Triple source confirmed.” Dewey shook his head slightly; he didn’t want to know the sources. The Seer wished he didn’t know either sometimes. The data came from three separate routes. The Geneva spy ring called the Red Orchestra, run by Loki, a second spy net nobody could quite identify called Lucy and an ultra-secret code-cracking operation called Ultra. Between them, they gave a brilliant insight into German strategic plans.

“Mister President, shortly we will be running out big pre-winter convoys through to Murmansk and Archangel. A huge supply convoy, more than 250 ships, that will carry enough munitions, fuel etc. to keep the Kola Peninsula going until spring.”

“A convoy that big? There’s a saying about eggs and baskets.”

“I know, but in this case it doesn’t apply. A given submarine attack can only sink a given number of ships regardless of the number in the convoy. So, a big convoy has proportionally fewer losses than a small one. Also, a big convoy isn’t significantly easier to find than a small one so one big convoy is less likely to be found than the equivalent number of ships in a series of small groups. Mathematically, we’re much better off with big convoys. We’ve got to get this convoy through before winter really sets in. That’s when the ice boundary moves south and pushes us too close to occupied Norway for comfort.

“Anyway, with the main convoy will be a smaller but an equally important one, a troop convoy carrying the Canadian Sixth Infantry Division to Murmansk. We know that the German fleet plans to overwhelm the escorts for those two convoys and destroy them. Simultaneously, they plan to launch a land offensive that will take advantage of the supply crisis caused by the destruction of the convoys to take the Kola Peninsula. With Murmansk gone, Archangel and Petrograd will fall, and the Canadian Army in Kola will be destroyed. That will free up a mass of German resources for the main front.

“Sir, we had planned to cover those convoys with a single carrier group, while the rest pounded northern Scotland. In view of this information, I suggest we use all of the groups to set up an ambush and sucker-punch the German fleet as it heads north. The Germans don’t really understand naval warfare.” Nor do I, thought Stuyvesant, but I know a lot of people who do. “The initiative is with us, we decide when to send the convoys out, we decide when and where the battle will be fought. We wait for good weather, give our carriers every edge we can, and then we turn them loose on the German battleships. We can wipe their fleet out. That’s a pretty valuable goal in its own right, but it’s also the victory I think people need.”

“And how long do we have to wait for the weather we need? Months?”

“The Gods are smiling on us, Sir. We had a rough fall up there, but the weather magicians tell us we’re in for a spell of fine weather. By North Atlantic standards anyway. We can go as soon as possible. Now if we wish.”

“And the land battle?”

“On Kola? If the supplies get through, we can win that as well. Or at least make sure the German offensive goes nowhere.”

Dewey nodded. It made political and military sense. That was a rarity, usually the two demands opposed and contradicted. “Very good, Seer. We’ll make it happen.” Then his face fell again as the image of the ever-lengthening lines of white crosses in the snows of Russia returned to haunt him. “You’re right, we’ve got to win something, somewhere.”

“Pickets in place Sir. We’ve got four PBJs overhead. They’re dropping sonobuoys now.”

Captain Albert Sturmer nodded. That made twelve hunting platforms gathered around the position of the Type XXID that had launched its missiles at Washington. Eight were modified Gleaves class destroyers. They had been stripped of their anti-aircraft guns and three of their five-inchers after they had been phased out of service with the carrier groups. Now, they had three Hedgehogs, a big trainable launcher in place of B gun and two smaller fixed weapons amidships. Between them, the three launchers could put down a devastating barrage of charges. They also carried an array of depth charge throwers aft and big, one-ton depth charges in their torpedo tubes.

If this had been a long-range hunter-killer group, they’d have had at least one jeep carrier with them, a CVE stuffed with Avengers and Bearcats. Instead, the PBJs overhead were the Navy’s version of the Air Force’s B-25J Mitchell. They had sonobuoys and an ASV radar, plus homing torpedoes in their bellies and rockets under their wings. For the endgame, they had their noses stuffed with machine guns; eight in the nose itself, four in packages on the aircraft side. Just in case the Germans decided not to go down with their ship.

The Type XXID had two choices. It could run as fast as it could, and the Type XXI was fast underwater. By doing so, it could clear the area and make the search area much larger. The problem with running at high speed for any length of time was that doing so depleted its batteries. Within an hour or so, it would have to charge them. Even using its snort, that would make the job of finding it easier. Worse still, running at high speed meant it was generating flow noise and that also made finding it easier. That was why the PBJs were dropping their sonobuoys. One of the things the Navy had learned from the experiments with the modified British S-boats in Bermuda was what frequencies to listen for. That and the experience of the first wave of Type XXI attacks during late 1944 and early 1945.

The other choice facing the Type XXID down there was to go slow and try to creep away. That had the advantages of extending battery endurance, to days if necessary, and cutting noise to a minimum. That would make it hard to detect. The disadvantage was that going slow meant going very slow indeed; four knots, barely more than walking pace. The missiles fired at Washington an hour ago had come from here. If the Type XXID that had fired them was going slow, it was still somewhere here, alive and well and with plenty of battery charge. If it had gone fast to clear datum, it was somewhere within a radius of 16 miles with dead batteries.

“Anything from the PBJs?” Sturmer snapped out the request. “Nothing on the buoys, Sir.”

“OK, Sweep the area, active search.” Two destroyers were sitting out on the flanks of the formation, ready to lash the water with their active sonars. The old sonars had been “searchlight” systems with a single beam. They had been fine for tracking the old, slow Type VII and Type IX U-boats but the Type XXI was fast enough to run between the sweep of the tracking beam. The current sonars had been modified and used three beams in an overlapping fan. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a good enough solution until the new generation of scanning sonars left the laboratories and joined the fleet. Whenever that was.

Still, the new sonars gave the Type XXI down there another set of choices. It could accelerate and run between the net of tracking beams but that would deplete battery life and make noise that would be detected by the passive sonobuoys from the PBJs. Or, it could keep going and try to sneak away. A third choice was to try and get to the bottom and sit there. Sturmer paced the bridge waiting for the hunting systems to tell him which choice the U-boat skipper had made.

“Contact Sir. Grayson has picked up something on the bottom.” Option Three, then, Sturmer thought. Gone to ground.

“Set up a line attack.” The waiting six destroyers were already formed into a line and they curved around to the location from their left-hand picket destroyer. They were accelerating to attack speed, a speed that left their own sonars blind. It didn’t matter. They were being coached in by the two pickets that lashed their contact with all the sonar power they had available. Earle shuddered as her Hedgehogs fired. The big bow launcher put down an eight-shaped barrage of the small charges, the two waist Hedgehogs added their circles, overlapping the center of the eight. The other five destroyers in the line laid down their own patterns. The result was a maze of intersecting circles that gave the submarine underneath little chance of escape. Even a XXI couldn’t outrun the carefully planned web that was dropping on it. The same attack pattern had driven old Type VIIs and Type IXs from the sea.

On board Earle the crew waited. Hedgehog rounds only exploded if they hit something hard enough to activate the fuze. The mud of the sea bottom wouldn’t do it. Opinions were divided about that. Some people preferred the heavy Squids carried on the Canadian destroyers, their charges exploded at pre-set depths and gave a satisfying mass of explosions. On the convoys to Russia, American and Canadian destroyers worked together; Hedgehog and Squid complemented each other. That was why not many German submarines survived to make a second voyage and very few made a third cruise.

Two explosions sent columns of water skywards. The destroyers turned to bring their depth charge throwers into action. The ten-charge patterns went over the side, covering the area marked by the Hedgehog round explosions, then Earle lurched again as her torpedo tubes fired a one-ton depth charge square over the position of the contact.

Now, they had to wait while the water cleared from effects of the explosions. Sturmer resumed pacing the bridge again.

“It’s still down there!” The voice from the sonar room was the epitome of frustration. There was no way a bottomed submarine could have survived the hammering that had just been handed out.

“Damn. Order Grayson and Mayo to drop a pair of one-tonners each on it. That should blow the damned sub apart.” Earle had the picket role now; she painted the contact with her sonar and coached the other destroyers in. Then, even her sonar picture vanished as the water was roiled by the massive explosions of the big depth charges. There was an anguished wait while the trace cleared and a sigh of disappointment. The submarine was still there.

“Sir, I’ve got an uneasy feeling about this.”

“What’s up, Nav?”

“Sir, we’re not that far from where Porter went down a couple of years ago. It’s possible, more than possible, that’s her wreck. There’s a lot of sunken ships around here, but she’s the best candidate.”

Sturmer nodded; it made sense. No submarine could take the pounding that had just been handed out. It had to be a wreck on the bottom. And that meant their real target had had that much time to get clear. In fact, the German skipper had probably chosen this point for his launch for just that reason. It was time to start over.

Starting over didn’t do any good. The destroyers and aircraft crossed and re-crossed the search area; one that was expanding with every minute that passed, and found nothing. As the night went on, the hunting group was slowly forced to accept that the Type XXID had got clean away.

At dawn, Sturmer went back to his cabin. The Germans had used their best technology and every skill at their command and blown up a few trees and possibly the odd skunk. The Americans had used their best technology and skills and pounded a sunken wreck. All that effort, all that skill wasted, all that expenditure for nothing. It struck Sturmer that the night hunt had been a pretty good metaphor for the war as a whole.

“The sentries are out Tovarish Lieutenant. I have a rota set up. They will be relieved at 20 minute intervals. The storm out there is getting worse.”

The arctic storm hit hard and without warning. The winds picked up, the skies clouded over then the snow started coming down. The wind blending the fall with the loose covering already on the ground to create a white-out that reduced visibility to near zero. Outside was just a white mass. There was no way of knowing what was ground, what was sky, what was solid, anything. In the white-out, a man could walk into a tree never having seen it.

The Siberians knew these conditions well. They’d grown up with them, and they’d seen the storm coming. They’d parked their snowmobiles and the three captured Kettenkrads in a hollow where they’d be sheltered from the biting wind. Then they had built themselves a “Zemlyanka,” a ground-house. They’d dug a cave in the deep snow, then continued to dig for another 2 meters into the ground. Fortunately, on Kola, the ground wasn’t permafrost so it could be dug out easily. They’d covered the pit in the snow with wooden sticks broken off from nearby woods, put more snow over it, leaving just a small entrance. They’d taken care to see that entrance looked no more than a simple dark hole under a rotten tree. They’d even built a dummy zemlyanka close to their vehicles, maskirovka, always maskirovka.

Sergeant Pietr Ivanovitch Batov had arranged the sentry roster with care. A man who spent more than twenty minutes outside would freeze to death. He’d arranged for them to be relieved before that could happen. The men had been divided into three teams of six. Every twenty minutes, two men would come in and spend the rest of the hour warming up again while two more went out to keep watch. Each team of six men would rotate that way, 20 minutes on duty and 40 minutes warming up, for three hours before another team of six relieved them. There were 18 men in the unit; each group of six would have six whole hours to rest. The storm could last at least that long.

Lieutenant Stanislav Knyaginichev looked around the zemlyanka. It was cramped, not from necessity although that had played a part, but from design. Men grouped together shared warmth, those apart wasted it. Warmth was the key to life. There was another reason as well, morale. Keeping men’s spirits up was as important as food and warmth in surviving the arctic. Knyaz had something to help him with that.

“Bratya listen. So, you want to hear some new stuff from the papers?”

“Yeah, sure.” The voice from the back of the zemlyanka was only marginally interested.

Another voice cut in. “Anything new from Tovarish Ehrenburg?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Knyaz reached into a pocket. “I have his latest speech. This is one called ‘Kill’.” That did it, there was a stir of interest and approval. Ehrenburg knew what the Frontniki thought and his pamphlets found ready acceptance with them. “Now listen. Here it is.” Knyaz shone his dim torch on the dog-eared paper and started to read.

There was a mutter of approval around the crowded snow house. Knyaz could sense the men nodding. “But not everybody feels this way. In Pravda, Tovarish Georgy Aleksandrov replies to ‘Kill’ with an article entitled ‘Tovarish Ehrenburg Oversimplifies’. I have not got the full text here, but Grazhdanin Aleksandrov says that the fact the Gestapo hunt for opponents of the regime and appeal to Germans to denounce them proves that all Germans are not the same. He says it is the Nazi Government that has brought about this calamity in the name of national unity and that very act proves how little unity there is. He says that we should punish the enemy correctly for all his evil deeds and that the slogan of ‘kill them all’ oversimplifies. What do you think.”

“Grazhdanin Ilya doesn’t oversimplify!’ The voice was belligerent and the outburst met with another mutter of approval.

“Tovarish Aleksandrov needs to spend a few weeks out here. Then we’d hear him speak of ‘oversimplifying.’“ Another voice, another mutter of approval.

Knyaz smiled slightly in the gloom of the zemlyanka. There had been a time when an article in Pravda had been the epitome of truth; that was after all what Pravda meant. Woe betide anybody who argued with it. Those days had gone at last. “So bratya, we capture some Fascists.” There was a chuckle of grim, cynical laughter at that idea. “Hypothetically speaking of course. One of them produces his Communist party card and claims to have been a Member since 1920. What should we do with him?”

There was a pause while the soldiers thought it over. Then their new brat, Kabanov, spoke up, hesitantly. He was still uncertain of his new-found status and whether it gave him the right to speak up. Before being conscripted, Kabanov had won prizes for dialectic in his school and had been picked to go to one of the Moscow universities. After the war of course. He didn’t want the men around him to think he was posturing or trying to curry favor with their officer. He knew he’d won a little respect in the ambush a few days before and he was afraid they’d think it had gone to his head. “The others we kill straight away. That one, we should beat him before we kill him.”

“And why should we do that bratishka?”

“Because he should have known better. When a wolf takes a baby from its cradle it is not because the wolf is evil, it is because he is a wolf. It is his nature to prey upon the helpless. We kill him for his act but that is all. When an evil man does evil things it is because it is in his nature and he knows no better. But we expect better of a communist. He should know that these things are evil and refuse to take part. If he knows better but takes part anyway, then his blame is all the greater. Tovarish Aleksandrov forgets that. He is right, there may be good Germans, but if there are, then their blame is all the greater. They deserve death; not less, but more. For they knew good and evil and chose the evil.”

There was a swell of appreciation and Knyaz heard somebody give Kabanov an approving swat on the back. Now, the tricky bit. “But, bratischkas, bad things happened in the Rodina as well. What do we make of that?”

That caused a silence. There had been a time when Knyaz would have disappeared for making a statement like that. Also, many of the younger soldiers had a positive image of Stalin and thought that he was a great politician. They’d remembered him for his small period of pre-war urban welfare and the idea that he might not be perfect was troubling for some of them. Even in this shadowy zemlyanka, force of habit made people measure their words. Then, a voice spoke carefully from one of the gloomiest parts of the shelter.

“But it has been put right yes? Perhaps bad things were done in past years, Tovarish Stalin had bad advisors who deceived him but those who did that have gone. They have been replaced.” By us was the unspoken addition. Nobody quite knew what had happened at the end of 1942; they knew everything had changed since then. The NKVD had been broken up between various armed services and the intelligence branch had been re-named back to CheKa. The spy problem had been too serious to allow counterintelligence would vanish completely from the frontlines. Knyaz remembered how Germany easily obtained the Soviet offense or defense plans in 1941-1942. That hadn’t been done without the help of massive infiltration. In his heart, Knyaz knew what had happened. When one needed working structures but also had to change their “image” so to speak, purging several key perpetrators could work wonders.

“Tovarish Stalin died a hero in Moskva. We all know that. And anyway, whatever problems we had happened here, we did not force them on others.”

“Right, bratishka. We saw that bad things had happened and we put them right. Where are those in Germany, the ones who should have put things right? Of course there are none. If we can change things, why do not the Germans? This is what Tovarish Aleksandrov forgets. The blame of the good is all the greater if they do not resist evil. And let us never forget that the Fascists are here, in our Rodina.”

“So are the Americans?” This voice was very hesitant. Everybody knew that it was the Americans with their wonders who had saved their beloved Lieutenant.

“But we invited them to come and they came as guests, with gifts and friendship. And they fight beside us, to drive out the Fascists. Remember what Gospodin Zhukov says. ‘It does not matter whether a man fights under the Red Star or the White Star as long as he kills Fascists.’”

The approval was more than a murmur; it was a subdued roar. In the eyes of these soldiers, the Americans had their faults, a tendency to softness and mercy being one. But, they had one great redeeming virtue. They had invented napalm. Anyway, Stalin’s propaganda had rarely touched the United States with the fervor it had used to pummel states like the Reich, France and the British Empire. So the soldiers were a bit more open to the idea of the Americans as their allies, all in the spirit of proletarian internationalism.

In the background, Batov tapped two men on the shoulder and they went outside to relieve the sentries. A few seconds later, the two men who had been relieved joined the zemlyanka. There was a quiet muttering as they were brought up the date on the discussion. Knyaz passed his flashlight and the pamphlet over so the men could read it. A good meeting he thought, one that had fortified the men’s spirits and intensified their resolution. And all thanks to Tovarish Ehrenburg.

Photographic was a bad joke. Bad Brew II did everything except take photographs. Communications intercepts, radar intelligence data, collecting radar images of the coastline in general and of coastal towns in particular. The latter could, just, be defined as photographic. Sort of. Bad Brew II didn’t even have a bomb bay any more. It was sealed shut and converted into an electronic intelligence gathering center. That didn’t matter too much; nobody in their right mind would send a bomber over Germany again. Bad Brew II’s crew were only too well aware of that.

The Third Photographic Group had once been the Third Bomb Group and they had taken part in the Ploesti Massacre. To be more honest, they’d been one of the four groups that had provided victims for the Ploesti Massacre. The Third had sent 27 B-29As on that raid. Bad Brew I had been the only survivor. Two engines shot out, their wings and tail riddled with bullets and shell holes, a quarter of the crew dead and half the survivors wounded; they’d survived because they’d turned back early. The lonely flight back had been an epic struggle to survive. Their B-29 had got them home, how nobody could work out. Rationally, there was no reason why the aircraft should have kept flying, but it had. They’d made it back to base. The undercarriage had collapsed on landing and the aircraft had been written off, a constructive total loss.

The Third had been pulled out of Russia, reorganized as a Photographic Reconnaissance group with RB-29s and then sent to Iceland. Their new assignment, photographic reconnaissance sounded safe enough, but it wasn’t. The RB-29Cs operated alone, under cover of darkness; gathering their data as they penetrated closer and closer to hostile territory. Their casualty rate was around ten percent. That was low by the standard of the Russian-based bombing campaign but it was still cripplingly high by rational analysis. Statistically, a ten percent loss rate meant a given crew had a seven percent chance of surviving a tour of duty.

The rewards were worth it. A completed tour of duty meant the crew went back to the continental United States and were then reassigned to the Pacific. Deterring the Japanese by spending hot days on Pacific Island beaches, relaxing and drinking beer, spending warm nights relaxing with affectionate maidens from the Pacific Islands.

Some of the crews had made it, left the Third and went home. Then they vanished. Too busy relaxing with island maidens to write letters was the standard guess. Recently one whole Photo Group, the 305th, had been withdrawn from Keflavik and vanished as well. Another reinforcement for the Pacific; another reason for the Japanese to keep quiet and not annoy the American Eagle. The Germans might be able to stop the B-29. It was a very good bet that the Japanese would have a much harder time trying.

“How’s it going?” Captain Jan Niemczyk wanted out of the North Sea at the earliest possible time. As soon as they’d got their radar pictures of the coast and, especially, Hamburg. That meant a long penetration into hostile airspace. An airspace that held night-fighters.

“We’ve got the pictures command wanted. You reckon the Navy pukes from the carriers are coming down this way?”

“Gotta be. I’ve heard they’re planning to bring their carriers further in. No other reason for us to be this far inside enemy-controlled airspace. Any emissions?”

“Coastal radars only. They’re probably tracking us; signal strength is well over threshold. Command says the Germans are too short on gas to send fighters out for a single aircraft.”

“Yeah, right.” Niemczyk’s voice was loaded with cynicism. “Anybody asked them about the birds that don’t come back? All eaten by wolves, perhaps?”

There was a bark of laughter around the flight deck. The command line was simple. The aircraft that came back made no reports about being intercepted by night-fighters. Ergo, the Germans didn’t send night-fighters out after single aircraft. Much like the nature-lovers claimed there were no reports of people being eaten by wolves. The fault in the logic was the same in both cases. People who were eaten by wolves didn’t live to make reports. Nor did RB-29s intercepted by night-fighters.

“Hamburg coming up on the radar screen now, boss.” The mapping radar under the belly gave good pictures, particularly where there was water and ground to give vivid contrast. Built-up areas showed up well also; bright white on the dark background. “We’re taping the images now.”

“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Right. Boss, uh-oh.”

In the cockpit, Niemczyk decided that the words he hated most in the English language were ‘uh-oh.’

“What’s the problem?”

“Airborne emissions boss. Fug-220 Liechtenstein. A night-fighter. Signal is above threshold; he’s after us.”

“Time to go home.” Liechtenstein probably meant a He-219. A thoroughly nasty beast; fast and heavily-armed. Radar wasn’t that good, not up to the standard of the American fighters, but the German night-fighter crews knew their business. Bad Brew II was in trouble. “Engines full emergency power. Where is he coming from?”

The RB-29C had four radar receivers; one in the nose, another in the tail, one in each wingtip. A skilled operator could use those to get a rough directional cut on the radar source. Bad Brew II had a very good operator indeed. “He’s behind us, Sir, off to port.”

“How far out?”

“From echo strength, I’d say 15 to 20 miles. Perhaps 25. Want me to jam him boss?”

“No. Keep the tricks for later. Tell me when he’s dead astern. We’ll make him work for his dinner.”

At this altitude, the RB-29C could manage 390 miles per hour, subject to the engines overheating. If the books were right, the He-219 could manage 416. That gave it a 26 miles per hour speed advantage. The night-fighter wouldn’t catch the fleeing reconnaissance aircraft for 35 minutes at worst, 45 minutes at best. The battle would take place anywhere between 250 and 300 miles north of here. The same books said He-219 had a range of 960 miles. The question was, where had he come from? Just how much fuel did he have left?

“Cloud level is at 20,000, Jan.”

“OK, we’ll head for it. How thick?”

“Weather braniacs said a 5,000 foot layer. There’s a hell of a storm system running through. It’s not too bad here, but Kola is getting really pounded.”

“That gives us some room to breathe.” Niemczyk put Bad Brew II’s nose down and watched the speed build up. 395mph. That put the Heinkel behind them between 40 and 55 minutes away from closing to gun range. Anywhere between 260 and 360 miles north of their present position. There was another catch. Bad Brew II carried a lot more fuel than the fighter behind her, but supplies weren’t limitless. If she ran at full power too long, she would run out of fuel also.

It was a strange sensation. The individual minutes seemed to drag by, yet every time Niemczyk looked at the instrument panel clock, the hands seemed to have jumped forward. “Where is he?”

“Dead behind us. Estimated two, perhaps three miles; no more than that. May be less.” They were already in the cloud layer, the gray-white shroud clung to them. The enemy radar could still see them, but the crew on the fighter would be searching for the dark shadow of the bomber. The RB-29C had an edge there. Its bright silver finish didn’t have much of a shadow. In the air, it tended to be shadows people saw, as dark patches on a light background. Contrary to myth, matte black was a very bad color for a night-fighter.

“Everybody to an observation panel. Watch for the slightest shadow.” Originally the B-29 had had multiple remote controlled turrets with their gunners in blisters. The RB-29C had discarded them and the blisters had been replaced by flat, transparent observation panels. “Mickey, you’re the most likely to see him first. Yell out at the slightest hint. Just don’t fire.” The twin .50 caliber tail guns were Bad Brew II’s only armament. There was a big argument about ammunition for them. Some crews carried heavy tracer loads in the hope that streams of fire would scare off a night-fighter. Niemczyk thought that was insane; tracer pointed both ways and revealed the bomber’s position as clearly as a neon signpost. Bad Brew II carried not a single round of tracer.

“Shadow, behind us.” It was Donovan in the tail turret.

“Drop chaff. Jam that radar now.” Niemczyk waited until the chaff cloud deployed and the jammer in what had once been the bomb bay was pumping out energy. Then he hauled Bad Brew II around, breaking left as hard as the airframe would allow. Behind them, the faint shadow in the mist passed their tail. Niemczyk was already reversing the turn, putting Bad Brew II on a parallel course to the fighter, falling behind it. Then, he saw something weird and unexpected. Streams of light headed up from the ghostly shadow in the cloud. Tracers? Upwards?

“You see that Jan? He’s got cannon firing upwards. What the devil is he playing at?”

“That’s new. Logical though. Cannon like that will gut a bomber. The braniacs need to know about them. They were probably firing on an estimated position when they lost us.” In front of them, the shadow faded into the mist. Niemczyk thought carefully. He must know we aren’t in front of him, that means we must have turned. So he’s going to turn as well, right or left? Did he think we turned right or left? We went left, will he guess that? Mentally, Niemczyk flipped a coin, then broke right. The longer he could keep the fighter from picking him up again, the better. On instinct, he pulled the stick back and started a slow climb. The speed dropped. The laboring engines drifted even closer to the red danger zones on the temperature gauges. The R-3350 was not the most reliable engine ever built. Just how long could they take this abuse?

“No sign of emissions. He hasn’t picked us up yet. Wait, I’m getting sidelobes. No main pulse, just sidelobes.”

“Feed jamming energy into them. Try and make him think we’re heading northeast and diving.” In fact, they were heading northwest and climbing. Once again the minutes were ticking past. Bad Brew II broke out of the cloud layer, allowing her silver skin to shine in the feeble light of the new moon. Niemczyk cut the engine power back to cruise allowing the needles on the temperature gauges to drop a little away from the danger zone. Their speed dropped to 250 miles per hour as a result. In his mind, Niemczyk saw the night-fighter maneuvering, circling to try and pick up its target again, diving in the belief that the target had dived away from him, trying to gain separation. Then, he’d have come out the cloud layer below and realized he’d been fooled. That would put him at 15,000 feet and Bad Brew II was at 22,500. The He-219 was underpowered. It had a climb rate of around 1,800 feet per minute. The fighter would take four and a half minutes to regain altitude. By the time it got out of the clouds, it would be another 20 miles behind them. If they were lucky.

“There it is!” The waist observer had seen the dark shadow of the night-fighter, silhouetted against the white of the cloud layer. “Behind us, 235 degrees. At least eight, nine miles away. Not as good as Niemczyk had hoped, the night-fighter pilot must have realized early what had happened and made a good guess on his target’s course. Still, Bad Brew II’s engines had cooled down a little and that allowed him to go back to full power. Behind them, the He-219 started to follow, then broke off and curved away, heading south east for home. Niemczyk breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief and turned northeast, for Iceland and his home base. He had a long, long story to tell to the debriefers who hadn’t believed that the Germans sent night-fighters out after single bombers.