“Yes, sir,” Brigadier Hampton said. The burly marine grinned. “We have plenty of experience in taking equipment intact.”
Somerville, who’d read of their battles against Jihadis, believed him. “Good,” he said. “Let’s get on with it then.”
Crete Theatre
Mediterranean Sea
28th May 1941
Dawn broke over Crete, showering waves of sunlight across the beautiful island. General Kurt Student picked himself up from the floor and looked blearily at the bottle in his hand. It was cheap Greek wine, Retsina, and he hated it. It was, however, the only kind of wine available to him, so he drank it to forget.
The noise of an Italian playing a horn solo, awakening the Italian troops, echoed through the base. Student scowled; his forces were not what he would have chosen, being mainly Italian troops deployed around the island, and a handful of Germans at the base itself. According to history, his forces would have taken Crete… but instead the island had been scooped up during the march to the Middle East.
“Shut them up,” he bellowed, though a haze of drunkenness. The noise of the SS sergeant, assigned to watch the Italians, shouting at them was worse. The troops on Crete were the dregs of the Italian armed forces – which meant that they were truly more dangerous to their allies than to the enemy – and he knew that they’d been sent to Crete as punishment. The only question was who was meant to be punished by the experience.
Me, probably, he thought grimly, splashing his hands in the sink. He splashed cold water on his face, and then started to shave. Three cuts later, he pulled on his jacket and admired himself in the mirror. Cursing, he rubbed the blood off his chin and headed out to give someone hell.
The guard straightened to attention as Student entered the main building, hidden within the mountains of Crete. He’d been here once before, when he’d commanded the defence, and he’d hoped to never see it again… but that had been before Malta, before the elite Fallschirmjäger had been swatted from the sky like bugs. A wave of dizziness came over him again and he swayed against the wall.
“Herr General?” His aide asked. Student glared wordlessly at him and stomped into the command centre. He was mildly surprised to see the piece of British technology remained in its place; after Malta.
“Report,” he bellowed, at the hapless radar controller.
“Nothing to report, Herr General,” the SS officer reported. “There has been nothing on our radars, and nothing on the passive system.” He waved a hand at the radar screen. “Only our own long-range flying boat, Herr General; there’s nothing out there.”
“You are dismissed,” Student said to his aide, and sat down in the command chair. Nothing would happen, he was certain; he’d been exiled from any chance at gaining revenge for his slaughtered men. “Another day of boredom ahead.”
The radar signal swept across Crete – and the image of the German flying boat refused to disappear. “It’ll see us if we come much closer,” Lieutenant Covarrubias warned. “I suggest downing it now, with a missile.”
“We could get it without setting off a warning,” Captain McTavish, commanding officer of HMS Daring, mused. He scowled; his ship’s archenemies, the crew of HMS Dauntless, had taken part in the world’s greatest and most one-sided sea battle, while they were stuck in the Mediterranean. “Program the Tomahawks for launch sequence; we’ll have to move quickly.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Covarrubias said.
McTavish picked up the microphone, instantly connected to the fleet five miles west of Daring. “Admiral, we can splash that bastard, but we’ll have to launch at once,” he warned. “Permission to open fire?”
“Granted,” Admiral Somerville said. “Fire at will.”
“He’s much more likely to be called Wilhelm,” McTavish muttered. “Lieutenant, you are cleared to open fire.”
A streak of light lanced away from the Daring. “Missile away, sir,” Lieutenant Covarrubias reported. “Tomahawk launch sequence confirmed; satellite downloads confirm GPS, targets set and tracking…”
“Fire,” McTavish ordered. Daring began to shudder as it launched Tomahawk after Tomahawk into the air, distributing death all across the German positions in the Mediterranean.
“German aircraft destroyed,” Lieutenant Covarrubias reported. “No sign of any signal before they were hit.”
“Excellent,” McTavish said. “Inform the flag; they can move in when ready.”
“Confirmed,” Lieutenant Covarrubias said. “Impacts registered at primary targets; satellite observation data reports that we hammered them hard. Only a handful of German aircraft, mainly fighters, on radar.”
According to what the Reich claimed was false history, Maleme Airfield would have been the site of a bitter battle seven days ago. The Luftwaffe had moved a couple of squadrons in when they’d taken the island, but half of the planes – and all of the better pilots – had been pulled out again for the operations in the Middle East.
A single Tomahawk missile slammed down on the airfield, detonating a FAE warhead just above the ground. The wave of fire blasted across the airfield, destroying older German aircraft and slaughtering German pilots and Italian troops. Other Tomahawks smashed into Italian barracks across the island, but ignored the main base. Even so, the destruction of an Italian barracks close by shocked the defenders.
“Get down,” General Student howled, shocked sober by the sheer violence of the attack. Ignoring his own advice, he peered out of the windows, scanning the island quickly. Half of the island seemed to be burning; he could see fires where his defence positions had once been. “Get me the Luftwaffe!”
“We’re being jammed, sir,” Rottenfuehrer Krause reported. “We’ll have to send up smoke signals.”
Student glared at him. He had very little command authority over the SS, but he knew that one German officer had pointed a revolver at an SS officer and offered him the choice between obedience or death. “I would have thought that the burning island would alert them,” he snapped. “Why haven’t they killed us yet?”
It was a more relevant question than it sounded, he knew, and Rottenfuehrer Krause gave it serious consideration. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “They should have blasted down the radar stations, at least. They did it in Norway.” A chime sounded from the future piece of equipment. “Uh oh,” he said.
“What is it?” Student snapped, running out of patience. His pounding headache didn’t help; he wanted to kill something. “An air raid?”
“It’s an invasion,” Rottenfuehrer Krause said. Student stumbled to the window and stared across the seas to the west. The looming shape of a battleship could be seen in the distance. “They want Crete for themselves.”
“Sound the alert,” Student said. Now he had something to kill. “We’ll give them a reception that they’ll never forget!”
“We hit the Luftwaffe pretty badly,” Tom assured Admiral Somerville. He waved a hand at the big display. “They have only five aircraft in the air, and none of them are coming this way.”
“Excellent,” Somerville said. He was more than a little stunned; he’d grown too used to watching swarms of German aircraft descending on him. “Land the landing craft!”