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.”