“Working on exactly that, mate,” Thorne confirmed, clapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He then went on to outline what they intended to do with the C-5M as soon as it had landed. “I’ve got Hacking working on communications with AHQ Iraq – if all goes well we’re only gonna be taking ‘em as far as Habbaniyah, but it’ll be a bloody uncomfortable seven hundred miles if we don’t get everything we can out of that bloody plane before we take off!”
“Well, I’ll be happy to do my bit in lightening the load,” Alec replied, both men turning their gaze toward the southern skies as they at that moment picked up the growing sound of the Galaxy’s return. “They’ve two spare fuel tanks and another reload of Sidewinders in that hold I’ll be more than happy to take off their hands – I topped off my tanks with the Extender while we were waiting for this blasted sandstorm to settle down but I’ll need more than just internal fuel for the return journey: I’d rather not go through the experience of inflight refuelling any more than I absolutely have to on the way back.”
“It’s been a bloody long trip; do you need something to eat?”
“I brought along a few snacks to keep my energy up,” Trumbull shook his head quickly, an almost embarrassed grin flickering across his features momentarily, “but if you’d kindly direct me toward the nearest amenities…?”
“Say no more…” Thorne chuckled in return, knowing exactly where he was going with the conversation. “Lenny over there…” he continued, pointing a finger at the NCO seated behind the wheel of the jeep he’d arrived in “…can run you across to the hangars over yonder for a quick slash… I should think the old back teeth would be floating after a nine-hour bloody flight!”
“Quite…” Alec observed awkwardly, remembering in that moment Thorne’s occasional tendency for overt crassness, something he’d somehow forgotten in the time that had passed since they’d last seen each other, although he himself would’ve thought two years spent in Australia should generally have desensitised him to such behaviour “…I’ll be back in a jiffy, Old Chap.”
With that he made off toward the parked vehicle ad good speed, the nature of his distress somewhat obvious in the vaguely stiff-legged nature of his gait. Thorne deciding that considering the great effort Trumbull had gone to in making the trip there, he would make every effort to not make fun of him… not for a few minutes, anyway.
“Beatrice calling Dogberry… come in please… over…”
“Five-by-five, Beatrice,” Thorne snapped quickly, any hint of levity instantly forgotten as he lifted the radio mike to his lips the moment the call came through. “What have you got for me?”
“About five hundred bloody refugees, Dogberry, for a start…” Donelson shot back quickly, and he cringed as he clearly heard the worry and frustration in her voice. “The first loads are on their way back to you now, Max, but I’ve got a really bad feeling about all ‘o this… We’d damn sure better be able to offload them all in Iraq: the MPs are managing to keep ‘em under control at the moment… just… but I dinna want to even think about how they’d all cope with being jammed into the back of that bloody Galaxy like bloody sardines for nine or ten hours if we can’t get in at Habbaniyah…”
“I’m not happy with it either, Eileen, but I can’t think of any alternative that doesn’t involve leaving most of them to die here...” Thorne replied after a moment’s thought, moved by the seriousness in Donelson’s voice. Her accent was clearly heavier, a sure sign she was under stress at that moment, and his instinctive desire to do something to alleviate that was almost a reflex action. “Believe me, if there was any other way I could think of that was anywhere near as palatable, we’d be using it! Close the gates if and when you reach eight hundred: with the buggers we’ve already got waiting, we can’t risk many more than that… Thorne out…”
You’ve not much time left… the thought flared in his mind, urgent this time and with little of the usual sarcasm or attitude.
“Not now, for fuck’s sake,” Thorne snarled softly, taking care that the transmit key on the mike he was holding definitely wasn’t activated. “I don’t have time for your shit right now.”
No time for anything! No time! You have to get out of there!
“No shit? You work that out all by yourself?” He almost grinned at that, the unspoken observation seeming so obvious as to be completely unnecessary, and turned back toward the runway as the huge bulk of the C-5M Super Galaxy howled past in the distance, the wheel clusters of its main undercarriage barely more than a few metres above the ground as it crossed the near end of the runway. For a moment, Thorne glanced nervously up at the clearing blue sky, real doubts and concern finding him now that their escape was so close.
Watch the skies all you like, but you’ll still not see them coming!
Silence then within his own mind, but that last, desperate warning struck home nevertheless, leaving Thorne’s heart beating hard with sudden fear, and he threw his eyes about wildly for a few seconds as if the warned-of threat might somehow appear before his eyes.
“When you get back home,” he said softly to himself, real strain in his voice in that moment, “you’re gonna talk to a fucken’ shrink about all this shit!”
Part of him almost believed he was being honest.
Even with a relatively light payload on board, the Galaxy had used almost 1,500 metres of runway in its landing run, and the process of turning around and trundling back to the southern end of the strip wasted several all-to-precious minutes. A large crowd of both base personnel and refugees had begun to grow by that stage and already now numbered greater than six hundred, many staring in awe and terror at the incredible sight of the impossibly-large aircraft. A thinly-spaced cordon of armed men held the throng at a safe distance, but anyone with an ounce of intelligence could easily see that there’d be no chance of maintaining control should a panic break out.
Thorne was having none of it as the transport reached the near end of the concrete strip, painstakingly turned itself around again and – finally – came to a complete halt close by, the rear loading ramp already opening in preparation.
“Go… go… go…!” Thorne howled, barking orders at ground staff and Galaxy flight crew alike as the ramp finally lowered completely. “I want the reloading of the Lighting finished in ten minutes… Group Captain Trumbull will supervise: put as many men on it as you need to get the bloody job done! Loadmaster…!” He bellowed as a squad of ten men jogged up into the aircraft’s cavernous hold, Trumbull in the lead.
“Sir…!” The tall, extremely fit, ex-USAF master sergeant was at his side at attention in an instant, giving a crisp salute.
“Take a squad and start stripping everything non-essential – and I mean everything –out of this crate! We’re going to be transporting a load of refugees out of here numbering better than a thousand and possibly as high as fifteen hundred and we’re going to need to save every ounce of weight that we can if we’re gonna get this big bastard in the air again.
“Sir, yes sir…!” The man responded, immediately moving off to gather the necessary men to carry out his orders.
There was the roar of a revving engine and, seconds later, a 2½-ton flatbed GMC truck drove straight down the ramp and out into the open. It turned right and headed off directly toward where the F-35E was parked a few dozen metres away behind its own security cordon. Alec Trumbull had returned by that time and stopped to stand beside Thorne for a moment as both men watched it drive off.
The rear bed was loaded with a large, metal framework that took up most of the space, upon which were hung six long, narrow crates (three to each side) while two far longer, streamlined fuel tanks were strapped to an overhead rack, both identical to the ones Trumbull had been forced to dump over the Sinai earlier that day.
“You’ve got yourself all set up,” Thorne observed approvingly, noting the large fuel tank fitted down the centre of the cargo bed, hidden in between the side-mounted crates.
“Just something I’ve been tin
kering with in my spare time,” Alec shrugged humbly, inwardly quite proud of his creation. “We’ve developed it as a complete, modular unit that can be bolted straight onto the rear of any suitable flatbed truck or other cargo vehicle. Carries six hundred gallons of jet fuel, two spare drop tanks, six stations for bomb bay reloads – bombs, missiles or whatever you choose – and a full load of ammunition for the gun pod, plus all the tools and equipment required to reload one aircraft in very short order. This one’s tailored for the Lightning, of course, but we’re looking at rejigging it to suit the other prototypes I’ve sent you reports on over the last six months or so.”
“Well, unfortunately you’re gonna have to torch this one as soon as it’s done, Alec,” Thorne advised apologetically, hearing the pride in the man’s voice. “We’ve no room for it on the way back and I’m not leaving anything useful for the Krauts if I can bloody well help it.”
“Very sorry to hear that, Old Chum,” Trumbull conceded sadly, recognising the necessity of it but not feeling any happier about the idea.
“Don’t worry, mate: I’ll buy you a gross of the bloody things when we get back,” his friend promised, vaguely sympathetic but not interested in wasting any more time. “Now get on over there and make sure one of the silly buggers doesn’t end up shoving a Sidewinder up the air intake or something equally stupid!
Unterseeboot U-1401
Mediterranean Sea, 80km north of Alexandria
U-1401 cruised comfortably across the surface of the Mediterranean, pushed along at ten knots by her powerful primary electric motors while her smaller, diesel-fuelled secondary engines charged her huge banks of lead-acid batteries. A brand new Type-XIV U-boat, she was one of only four operational vessels within her class which was, in truth, little more than a ‘transitional’ model developed from the smaller but far more numerous Type-X fleet submarine.
Possessed of greater length, beam and draught, the boat displaced approximately 1,900 tonnes surfaced and was capable of fifteen knots when either submerged or running on the surface. Six 21-inch torpedo tubes were mounted in her bow as per standard practice, however U-1401 and the others of her class carried far fewer reloads than the Type-X in the interest of saving unnecessary weight and was visibly quite different, the most obvious change being a six-metre long extension added to the rear of the sail.
The existence of the Type-XIV had to that point been a fiercely-guarded secret, known only to a select few within the upper echelons of the Kriegsmarine and the OKW, and it was within that ‘humped’ fairing that the boats carried their primary offensive weapons. Behind the conning tower and the periscope housings, four metre-wide, circular hatches were fitted flush into the sail’s upper surface.
Inside the main fire control room, Korvettenkapitän Otto Kretschmer kept careful eye on his weapons control officers while his XO went on with the task of actually conning the boat in the next room. The thirty-year-old Prussian had joined the then Reichsmarine at eighteen and had never looked back, serving on a number of surface ships during the 1930s including the light cruiser Koln a year after Theodor Detmers. He joined the U-boat force in1936 and took command of his first boat, U-35, a year later.
By the time of the invasion of September 11, 1940, Kretschmer had become the most successful U-boat commander of the war, sinking in excess of 200,000 tons of Allied shipping. Renowned for his use of ‘silent running’ tactics –combined with his general aversion to the use of radios when on patrol – had earned him the nickname within the service of ‘Silent Otto’, and he had been a perfect choice to command the lead boat of this new class: vessels whose whole existence would rely on the ability to remain silent and invisible to the enemy at all times.
“How are my target co-ordinates, leutnant…? Our launch window is small and I most definitely do not wish to disappoint the Reichsmarschall…!”
“Inertial guidance on weapon four coming on line now, Mein Herr,” the chief weapons officer replied smartly, eyes never leaving his instrument panel for a moment as he pressed one earpiece of his coms headset to his ear with two fingers and received constant updates from engineers working elsewhere within the ship. “Ten minutes to finalise the revised target data and secure the silo bulkheads prior to firing.”
“Well done, Herr Leutnant…” Kretschmer observed, taking note of the time on his wristwatch. “I believe your men have bettered their last set of drills by at least thirty seconds so far: a fine effort considering this is not an exercise. Oberleutnant Schaeffer…!” He called out, directing the next set of orders through the open hatchway leading to the main control room. “Status report…!”
“All systems operating perfectly, Mein Herr,” his XO replied quickly, having just completed a sweep of the surrounding ocean through the main search periscope. “Weather is clearing with visibility out to two or three nautical miles now. U-1404 is on station two thousand metres east of our position and we have Marineflieger units enroute now to provide air cover.” Both men knew such protection was unnecessary in the current climate, however no U-boat commander forced to operate on the surface ever complained about having air support. Sea state is moderate but calming: certainly not rough enough to present any problems.”
“Very good, Hugo… very good,” Kretschmer replied with a grin and a faint nod.
Elements of the 132nd Ariete Division
Al Sweis-Ismaileya-Al Zerai Road, south of Kibrit
Tenente Pascucci flinched along with the rest of his crew as another bracket of high explosive shells landed around them, one close enough to send earth and fragments caroming off the Semovente’s outer hull. Pushing through shattered fields of date palms laid waste by shelling and the metal tracks of armoured vehicles, 1st Squadron of the 235th Semovente found the western bank of the Suez Canal not far off to their right as they continued to advance, little more than two kilometres from the southernmost sections of Kibrit’s outer defences.
The Allied lines north of Agruda had collapsed quickly with most of the retreating forces pulling back toward Suez. Once the initial layers of minefields had been painstakingly negotiated, the advancing Axis forces were subsequently able to manoeuvre with complete freedom within huge expanses of open, empty desert ranging from the outskirts of Suez itself right up to Fayid, a few kilometres north of Kibrit.
Pascucci gave a grim expression as he considered that last thought, realising that it wasn’t entirely accurate. While Allied resistance had been shattered and was all but non-existent throughout most of that vast area, there were still huge numbers of displaced civilians in various states of disarray, most of them heading south toward Suez and some hopeless idea of sanctuary that could never be anything more than a pitiful dream.
The lieutenant himself had witnessed several incidents in which German units, most of them Waffen-SS, had found difficulty in drawing a distinction between refugees and enemy troops – Pascucci suspected intentionally so in the majority of cases – and some terrible and very bloody massacres had resulted. The images had left his entire crew feeling sickened and quite uncomfortable about what they’d seen: proud Italian soldiers that they were, none of them were Fascisti and none took any joy from the wanton and senseless murder of unarmed civilians.
They had their orders nevertheless and they pressed on with their advance following the fall of the southern Allied lines, their particular unit detached from the main bulk of the Ariete almost immediately and instead gathered together with other fast-moving armoured units sent further north to form the southern flank of a concentrated offensive aimed at what was reported to be a hardened ‘nut’ of defences around RAF Station Kibrit.
Another barrage landed, this one further away, and Pascucci urged his men on, honoured to move forward at the head of the formation escorted by AB41 armoured cars and L20/40 light tanks on either side. Although one of the 25-pounder shells could definitely destroy their M41L with a direct hit, he knew in reality how unlikely that actually was and that ‘movement was life’, as was usually the case in
modern armoured warfare.
The force itself was relatively small – just a few dozen light and medium tanks, tank destroyers and armoured cars along with perhaps a company of mechanised infantry in German-made P-6 infantry fighting vehicles – but it would no doubt be sufficient for the task at hand. Their intended use wasn’t to lead the charge in punching holes through the enemy defensive lines but rather to support the offensive’s right flank, ensuring that the enemy would not be able to outmanoeuvre their advance or – which was far more likely – make any attempt to escape to the south or slip through the noose that Axis forces were now tightening about the air base.
The actual job of mounting the assault itself fell to the armoured might of the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler, currently approaching Kibrit in full force from somewhere off to the north west. Judging by the constant rumble of guns and indistinct flashes of detonations visible in that direction below the hazy horizon, Pascucci suspected they were already engaged with the base’s outer defences, although no confirmation had come through over the radio as yet from local command.
No one knew exactly what sized force would be defending Kibrit – the sandstorm had precluded any attempts at aerial reconnaissance – but most were expecting their opposition to be vigorous in its execution: history had shown time and again how hard an enemy could fight when there was no longer an avenue of retreat available.
The lieutenant’s attention was brought sharply and completely back to the present task at hand in that moment as all heard the ear-piercing shriek of a fast-moving shell as it screamed past very close to the Semovente’s left flank and detonated some distance behind, spraying earth and shrapnel all over mechanised units to their rear. No howitzer or field gun firing high-explosive made a sound like that, and all of the crew knew that sound meant just one thing: a high-velocity anti-tank shell fired from an Allied tank or gun emplacement somewhere to their front.
Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2) Page 87