Winter Warriors

by Stuart Slade

  “Checks and balances. Sounds familiar. I agree Stuyvesant. General Donovan, your plans to form a single centralized intelligence service are rejected. I do not wish to see them raised again. Also, you will attend a meeting with the Strategic Bombing Commission to determine which of the operations run by your OSS will be better placed in their custody. With that decision, I call this meeting to a close. May I say I hope never to have to deal with a matter of this character again.”

  Corrective Surgery Ward, Bethesda Hospital, Bethesda, Maryland

  “How is she Doctor?”

  “Much better than expected. She is a very strong young woman and her constitution is remarkable. Do you know the fractures in her ribs are already beginning to knit? Quite remarkable. That’s not so good in one respect, her nose was also beginning to knit so I had to rebreak some of the bones. The damage is quite severe, there’s no hope of returning her nose to its original shape but we spent the morning going through some pictures and Miss Shafrid has picked a new nose she rather likes. I think she’ll be very happy with it.”

  “Thank you Doctor. Send the account to me personally, it will be paid by return.”

  “Paid? My dear young man.” That was a joke thought Stuyvesant though he was still slightly pleased by the phrase. “If you wish to pay me, send a donation to my institute for burn patients up in Canada. So many young men are being so badly burned in this war. To help a young woman this way has been a blessed relief. She will fully recover, most of those poor young men will bear their scars until their deaths.”

  “Can we see her?” Inanna broke across the Doctor Maclndoe’s obvious distress.

  “Of course, her young man is away for the moment, but you can all go in. I must caution you, she looks very bad at the moment, the original injuries plus the bruising from the surgery. So, it’s important you don’t show shock. But otherwise, she is recovering very well.

  Quite remarkable.” Sir Archibald, went off, down the corridor to where some other patients were awaiting their turn for his services.

  “Well, I don’t need make-up to play a clown do I?” Igrat was laying on her bed, surrounded by flowers, chocolates and fresh fruit.

  “Mike?” The Seer spoke drily.

  “Mike. How he got all this stuff I do not know. The black market must have done well. I’ve given some of it away already and I bet he’ll have more when he gets back.” Igrat tried to smile then winced at the effort. “Everything OK?”

  “Everything’s fine honey. Donovan’s crashed and burned. So badly he’ll never be a threat to us again. That centralized intelligence idea of his could have been bad for us.”

  “What?” Lillith’s voice was sharp, questioning.

  “Can you imagine a greater danger to us that a centralized intelligence service with all the national records available to it? At best, hiding would become really hard, at worst impossible. So it had to be stopped.”

  “You. You had the whole thing planned didn’t you? You sent Iggie into a meat grinder knowing what would happen.” Lillith’s face had changed completely, her skin had drawn back, outlining her bones in sharp relief and her eyes stood out. At this point she looked more like a vulture that anything else. “You played your games and Iggie got beaten into a pulp and you never even warned her. In the name of all the gods, she’s your daughter!”

  “Uh-oh.” Naamah’s voice came quietly from the back of the room.

  “Lillith, NO!” Igrat’s voice, blurred as it was cut right across the outburst. “Phillip did tell me. I knew the whole plan right from the start and I volunteered for it. It was OK with me. He explained why we had to do it and I agreed with him. I knew the risks, but I believed in Henry and Achillea. We just didn’t believe Donovan would go this far. Right? Now don’t make me talk too much again, it hurts.”

  Lillith relaxed, her face returning to normal. “Sorry, Phillip. I didn’t mean to......”

  “Don’t worry about it. Everything worked out in the end, that’s all that mattered.”

  The party left, but Naamah remained behind for a moment. She sat quietly beside Igrat’s bed. “That was a lie wasn’t it. You didn’t know what was going to happen. Or what the plan was.”

  “I didn’t. Oh I guessed some of it, but Phillip didn’t tell me and I didn’t volunteer. I just trusted him. But remember what happened when Lillith last went into vengeful harpy mode? Our family almost broke up forever and I couldn’t stand that. So the truth remains buried. Right? Because if you tell anybody, I’ll throttle you.”

  Naamah chuckled. “Right, and I stand warned. You just get well. I can’t stay, I’ve got a one o’clock with General Donovan.”

  Hospitality Suite, United States Strategic Bombardment Commission, Blair House, Washington D.C. USA.

  “Why isn’t Stuyvesant here himself?” Donovan sounded aggrieved and put out.

  “He’s got other business. In Bethseda. But I have full authority to act on his behalf. Tell me General, how was your steak?”

  “Delicious, I thought steaks like this were unobtainable except on the black market?”

  “My family has a farm in Kansas. They keep us supplied with striploins.”

  Donovan spooned up the rest of the mushroom sauce with the last piece of steak. “This was excellent, thank you for cooking it. You’re not eating any?”

  “I’m a vegetarian. Don’t eat meat. Anyway, cheese salad does well for my lunch, I have to watch my figure.”

  “So, where do we go from here?” Donovan was back to being testy. In addition to the humiliation this morning, he wasn’t feeling very well. Overeating probably.

  “Well, we need to have unrestricted access to all intelligence data on German industry. Of course we already have most of it but if there is any we don’t have, we need it. And we need to know our courier system won’t be compromised again. Other than that....”

  Donovan leaned back. If that was all he was going to lose, things weren’t too bad. “Nothing else?”

  Naamah looked at the clock. Over 45 minutes since Donovan had started eating. “Just one thing, you really shouldn’t have had Igrat beaten like that. She’s a nice girl. She sleeps around a bit, well a lot really, but she never did any harm to anybody who wasn’t threatening her. There was no need to do all that to her.”

  “So what are you going to do, kill me?” Donovan’s face was split with a grin, one that quickly changed to a grimace as his stomach cramped. He gasped and doubled up, slumping over the table.

  “I already have, General.” Naamah picked up his fork and pushed a tiny fragment of mushroom left on his plate. “Have you ever heard of death cap mushrooms?”

  United States Strategic Bombardment Commission, Blair House, Washington D.C. USA.

  “Warning Boss, Mike’s on his way up.” “Right Lillith, action stations.”

  The Seer sat back and relaxed, he’d been expecting this. He’d reckoned it would take the morning for Mike Collins to get over his grief and work up a head of steam. Then, he’d be coming this way. Well, it looked like he’d got here. The door suddenly hurtled open, bounced off its hinges and almost laid out the man storming through.

  “You bastard Stuyvesant.”

  “Actually no, Mike, my mother and father were married when I was born.”

  Collins blinked, then set out again. “You sent a wee girl to do a job rather than risk your own cowardly hide. And she got smashed up because of you. So get out from behind that desk and fight like a man.”

  Styvesant grinned. “Mike, look behind you.”

  “You’ll not fool me with that old trick.”

  “Just humor me, look on it as respect for tradition if you wish.”

  Collins glanced behind him. Then turned his head a little more carefully. While he’d been shouting, Lillith and Naamah had quietly entered the office and were pointing M3 sub-machine guns at him. They were carefully positioned so they could kill him without endangering anybody else.

  “Hiding behind women again?”

 
; “If necessary Mike. Won’t be the first time. I do what’s necessary to win Mike. Whatever is necessary. Always remember that.”

  “And you’ve not the courage to fight fair like a man.”

  “Mike, I’ve always believed if I get into a fair fight, it’s because I made a mistake. I never fight fair. I never have and hopefully I never will. Just remember, if you’re within ten feet of me, you can be sure there’s a gun pointing at your back somehow. Now calm down. Igrat’s going to be all right, it’s just you’ll have to look after her for a while.”

  “And then you’ll send her on a courier mission again.”

  “Of course, it’s something she’s superbly good at. Don’t try and take that away from her, Mike, not unless you want to lose her. Iggie’s a free spirit, try and protect her with cotton wool and she’ll smother. Just settle down with her and go along with the ride.”

  “So send me along with her.” Collins was calming down and Stuyvesant waved Lillith and Naamah away.

  “Mike, I can’t do that. Her safety depends on her own abilities and those of her bodyguards. You’re a lightweight, a playboy. Ask yourself, if she was going out again with somebody like you protecting her, would you be happy about it?”

  Michael Collins thought about that for a long moment. “No, I would not.”

  “I thought not. Want a drink? I’ve got some Irish whiskey.”

  “I’ll not say no, though drinking with you is not what I thought of doing when I came here.”

  Stuyvesant poured out two shot glasses of whiskey and added a drop of water to each. Collins took one and sipped it gently. “Good stuff. I’ve not had this good in many a year. Will Ireland ever recover?”

  Stuyvesant drank down his own glass and looked at the drop left in the bottom. “Recover? Perhaps. They’re a tough people but they’ve never had it this bad. They have a chance, I’ll say that.”

  “They’ll have a chance and you’ll not say more than that. You’re a heartless, cold, man Stuyvesant. I would not want to be you.”

  “You don’t have to be. But just ask yourself what you do want. Holiday’s over, Mike. You’ve had your party and you’ve had a vacation. Now decide what you want to do with your life. Winter’s passing, spring is on its way and this war will be over one day. Just try and work out what you and Igrat want to do in the spring.”

  United States Strategic Bombardment Commission, Blair House, Washington D.C. USA.

  “Gentlemen, the room is secured and no unauthorized personnel are in attendance. The meeting may now proceed. Firstly, although General Donovan was invited to attend this meeting, I regret to tell you that he was taken seriously ill this afternoon. He collapsed in the building and was rushed to Walter Reed Hospital. There, it was determined that he has suffered from complete renal collapse and advanced cirrhosis of the liver. He is currently in a coma and is not expected to recover consciousness. The prognosis is that his condition is terminal and he has two days, perhaps three before toxemia kills him. We will therefore proceed without him.”

  “No great loss.” LeMay grunted from his seat.

  “Curt, he won the Medal.” General Groves was shocked at the attitude in the room to the news.

  “I know, we honor him for what he did then, just as we condemn him for what he tried to do today. Philip, what he tried was beyond reason. I’m sorry Les, I can’t find it in me to forgive that. Trying it was bad enough, trying it and fouling up was worse. I’m glad he’s out of this meeting.”

  “I didn’t even know he was cleared for ‘Dropshot’.” General Groves was curious.

  “He was not. He would have been here for discussions related to conventional bombing only.” The Seer passed around the packages of data received from Geneva. “Gentlemen, this information relates to the plans made by the Germans for countering the effects of a strategic bombing offensive against their industrial heartland. Naturally, they were preparing for conventional bombing only.”

  There was silence in the room for almost half an hour as the members of the Dropshot Supervisory Committee read through the translated German papers. Eventually, General LeMay put his pile down, shuffled them into a neat stack and spoke quietly past his pipe. “Well, that ends any thought of a precisely-targeted bombing offensive.”

  “I must agree General.” The Seer also spoke quietly. “There’s no point in trying to take out a key industrial sector. If we succeed, they’ll just strip less essential sectors to repair the damage. There are no key sectors, not ones we can destroy anyway. If we try, it’ll be a battle of attrition, trying to run them out of industry before we run out of bombers.”

  “You know what this means don’t you?” Groves was also speaking quietly, the secrets of the B-36 and the atomic bomb were so huge that they made any attempt at drama look absurd. “Conventional strategic bombing was always doomed to fail. We can’t do enough damage fast enough to take down a complete industrial infrastructure.”

  “I hate to say it Les, but you’re right. Back in the 1930s, we were wrong. No other way to say it. We couldn’t do it with B-29s, we sure as hell couldn’t do it with B-17s and we won’t be able to do it with B-36s. It has to be nuclear.”

  “And I hate to say it Curt, but you and Stuyvesant were right. We can’t just take down a portion of their industry and expect them to fold. These documents show they mean to keep fighting as long as they house a machine tool in a brick outhouse. For the record, I formally withdraw my reservations on waiting for The Big One. We have to take the whole lot out at once. The Little One and the interim variants cannot work.”

  Stuyvesant looked around at the room and the nodding heads. “Does anybody wish to maintain their reservations on the record?” The heads all shook. It was decided. It would be The Big One. Quietly he wondered if Loki would ever realize what decision the information he had provided had been responsible for.

  Bridge, USS “Gettysburg” CVB-43, Flagship Task Force 58

  “Captain, thank you for allowing me on your bridge.”

  “You’re welcome Captain Lokken. We’re just pulling into Churchill now.” The exchange was interrupted by a blast on the ship’s siren, one that was picked up by other ships in the formation. The dawn seascape seemed to reverberate with the sounds.

  “What is happening Captain?”

  “Nothing to worry about. Two of the light fleet carriers are leaving the Fast Carrier Force. They’re on their way out to the Pacific Fleet. They’re just getting their send-off. Look over to port, you can see their replacements, Shiloh and Chickamauga. Sister ships of Gettysburg.”

  “Two more great carriers like this one. It wouldn’t have mattered if we’d won would it? You would have just built more ships and come right back.”

  “That’s right, captain. And since we won, we’re going to build more ships anyway. The Atlantic is our lake now, we’re going to go boating.”

  Lokken nodded slowly, watching the long line of ships enter the huge natural harbor that was Churchill’s reason for existence. “And so it will go on.”

  “Not for you Captain, as soon as our Doc releases you, you’re off to a prisoner of war camp. An officer’s only one of course.”

  “I would wish to stay with my men. What few there are left.”

  “I bet you would Captain, but it’s less trouble all around if we separate the officers from the enlisted men. So, it’s an officer’s camp for you. Don’t sweat it, I’m told the conditions are quite good and the Red Cross has its representatives on site. So, don’t worry, for you the war is over.”

  Military Hospital, 71st Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula

  Lang woke up, carefully and uncertainly. The last thing he remembered was the flames scorching his skin. His men had been rolling him in the snow to put him out, He couldn’t feel the burns now but that could just be anesthetic. In fact, he felt remarkably comfortable. He just lay on the bed, luxuriating in the feel of the soft mattress and the sheets.

  “Comfortable are we, Major?” An acidic voice cut t
hrough his daze. Major-General Marcks was looking down at him.

  “Sir, Sir?” Lang was flummoxed by the words but wasn’t quite sure why.

  “That’s right Lang, its Major Lang now. And you have a piece of over-decorated tin to go with it. Also your friends on the General Staff want you back.”

  “General Sir, tell them to go to hell. I’ll stay here, if you want me of course. And if I’m able”

  “Asbach spoke quite highly of you. Thinks you have the makings of a good soldier. And your wounds are not severe, your greatcoat took most of the fire and your gloves protected your hands. You’ll be happy to know your silk scarf survived intact, in fact your men have it under guard for you. They’ve already beaten up one man who tried to steal it. But I’m not supposed to know that.”

  “The men Sir? How many escaped?”

  “Most who survived that last battle. We lost another halftrack to a Grizzly but that was all, and the crew of that escaped. The battle’s over Lang. We’re back to where we were before it all started. Just there’s a lot fewer of us. And the Finns are out of the war, they capitulated after the Amis burned Helsinki to the ground. This Winter War has not gone well. Asbach said it wouldn’t and he was right. Fortunately, the Navy has taken the blame, we were all betrayed by them you know.” Marcks was absent-mindedly rubbing his ear.

  The way that Marcks spoke of Asbach suddenly sank in. “The Colonel Sir, how is he? How is Asbach?”

  “Asbach is alive, although he was not as fortunate as you. Or perhaps more fortunate, depending on how one looks at it. His burns were much more severe. His injuries make him unfit for any kind of military service. He’s going home. He left a message for you though, he says that when you get some leave, if you have nothing better to do, drop in and see him. The two of you can kill a bottle or three of his family brandy.”

  “I’ll do that Sir and, Sir, may I......”