Marosy thought carefully, An old proverb ran though his mind. “If you’re going to a fight, bring all your friends. And get them to bring their friends’ He knew few people in the American Army, let alone the Russians. He did have friends in the Air Force. To make matters better, he was trained as a forward air controller. “Knyaz, the switches for the junction, they are by that small shack, yes?”
“If this is the same as all the other lines, yes. And things are very standardized.”
“Well, suppose we had some air support. In fact, a lot of air support. Could we take that hut, it’s close to us, and hold it long enough to reset the junction and let the trains past? Then the trains pick us all up and take us North?”
Knyaz thought carefully also. His unit was small but very skilled and were veterans. If the Americans threw their aircraft in to the battle and kept the fascists under fire and if the trains were lucky, they might get past. And they might be able to pick up the remains of the ski unit. That was so many ifs but if they all came to pass, it would be good to ride a train on the way back home. There was the problem of the vehicles of course, but if their crews could take them further north, they could be picked up later.
“Can you get us air support?”
“Have you a radio I can use?”
“Sir, up ahead. Men in white.”
That could mean anything, Perdue thought. Everybody wore snow camouflage up here. It was very, very hard to tell who was who. The banana-shaped magazines of the German rifles were a pointer, certainly, but enough captured weapons were floating round to make them an unreliable guide at best. So who were these people?
“Sound General Quarters. Get the men with rifles ready. If this is an ambush, we’ll have to shoot our way out of it.”
Ahead, one of the white figures was standing on the railway line, waving his arms in the traditional “stop “ sign. Perdue had no intention of doing that, no intention at all. Not until the situation was a lot clearer than it was now. “Slow down a bit, but keep going.” Let the situation mature as the mud-puppies say. Trouble was if one let the situation mature long enough, it all turned into manure.
“What’s he doing?”
“Still waving, Sir. Now he’s making a ‘cut’ gesture. Looks like a guy on the carriers doesn’t it?”
“It does indeed.” Perdue’s binoculars were shaking too much from the vibration of the engine to allow clear vision but the guns carried by some of the men had the drum magazines of the PPS-45. That and the American-type ‘cut power’ gesture decided him. That and the fact he had a lot of riflemen on board.
The gamble paid off. The lone figure on the track ran forward when the engine came to a halt and saluted at the foot of the engine cab.
“Sergeant William Bressler, Sir. Navigator of the A-38 Hammer Blow, shot down a few days ago. We’ve been with a Russian ski unit since then.”
“Commander Perdue, United States Navy. We?”
“My pilot is Captain John Marosy, Sir. He’s with the rest of the ski unit. Sir, I’ve got bad news for you. The krauts have a reinforced battalion battle group around the junction up ahead. Mechanized infantry, artillery, those big armored cars with tank guns, you name it. They’re blocking the junction and the points are set to send you back south.”
That was it, Perdue thought, game over. Blow up the guns and hope we can infiltrate ourselves back North.
“Damn, we got this far too.”
“Sir, the ski unit commander has a plan. Captain Marosy is calling for air support. Given the situation, he thinks he’ll get it. The ski unit will attack under the cover of that air attack. They will seize the points and reset them. Then, while the aircraft are still bombing, you crank these engines up, open the throttle as wide as it’ll go and just crash through the krauts. The line north is fairly straight; it’s the southern branch that curves north. As you get clear, slow down and pick up the ski troops and then make a run north.”
“Not a man for subtlety is your Captain.” Perdue thought it over. There was a certain simplicity about the plan that made it hypnotically attractive. Just go flat out and crash through. “Suppose the krauts block the line?”
“They haven’t, Sir. I guess they expect you to either stop or take the southern branch. Their unit is pretty spread out as well; a Black Widow hit them last night and cut them up.”
“Know how that feels.” Perdue grunted. His mind played with the images of what he had been told.
“Well, it means that if the bombing pins them down, they won’t be able to concentrate on the ski unit.”
“How are we going to coordinate this?” Perdue decided that just running his guns past an entire kraut battalion was too much of an opportunity to pass up. Just like Farragut in the days of old.
“Captain says just watch, Sir. And listen out on this frequency. No need to coordinate in advance. You just stay put here and wait for the bombing to start. Then just come through as fast as you can.”
“Interesting document from Lucy, Loki.” Branwen put the file on Loki’s desk. “And a… messenger… from Sweden is waiting to talk to you.”
It was a bit hard to decide what to call the visitors from Sweden. Messenger was a good approximation but messengers didn’t have the powers to negotiate things or give opinions. Ambassadors would have been a good option, only sovereign countries didn’t send ambassadors to banks. Even to banks that were a lot older than most countries. Supplicant might be a good term, thought Loki, or delegate perhaps?
“What’s the document?”
“Very interesting. It’s a description of German plans to deal with damage from bombing attacks. Everybody was expecting to get bombed right at the start of the war, you know that, but it never really happened. There was Rotterdam of course, and a few raids on England, but mostly no bombing until the B-29 raids. And they’ve more or less stopped now. I guess H.G. Wells must be really upset. He was so proud of The Shape of Things To Come.”
“So, what’s the gist of it?”
“Basically, if heavy bombing of their infrastructure starts, the Germans plan to disperse and decentralize their facilities. They will split the existing large factories into many small ones; perhaps as many as forty or fifty. No manufacturing process other than final assembly of aircraft is to be permitted within one and one-fifth miles of airfields. They’ll organize their plants so that the primary plants are dispersed to at least two different places. That way a firm with four plants today will have eight or more different sources of supply. The idea is that if one or two of these places was destroyed, it should still be possible to maintain approximately the same level of production by using salvaged parts from bombed plants.
“The problem is that Speer and his teams believe that dispersal, in their experience, is costly and inefficient. A plant which is subdivided into many sub-units, feeder plants and small shops cannot possibly manufacture as economically as can one large integrated unit. They believe that dispersing the production facilities will reduce production by about 20 to 30 percent. This is due to the need for large control system with many non-productive workers, the duplication of non-productive departments, such as fire prevention, first aid, social and recreational activities, increases in supervisory personnel and the impossibility of duplicating highly specialized single-purpose machinery and equipment.”