1634: The Baltic War (52 page)

"Roger, Woody, we'll be waiting." He glanced at the windsock outside the unglazed window. "The wind is from the southwest at about ten knots." Another glance at the barometer on the counter. "Set altimeter at three zero zero two. Give us a couple of minutes to clear the field."

Jesse was about to send Alois to find Dev and Ent, when the two brothers burst into the door. Jesse wasted no time.

"Go out there and get those people and wagons off the field. The aircraft are arriving in about eight minutes." The two spun about and raced back outside, yelling as they went.

Minutes later, the field was cleared and Jesse stood in the door of the operations shack, holding the mike and listening to the growing hum of engines.

"Ox, this is Eagle Flight, one minute out. Request permission to land."

Jess took one last look around before answering. "Roger, Eagle Flight is cleared to land."

The four aircraft approached from the south in a tight finger four formation, with the Gustavs in the first three positions and the Belle in four. The formation rapidly grew in size and the sound rose to a powerful multipitched growl as Woodsill brought them overhead and past at about two hundred feet. Alois stared in fascination at the aircraft, mouth agape.

Jesse noted the tightness of the formation with professional approval. The three Gustavs looked very impressive with the thin wooden skin of their low wings and fuselages painted a rich gray-blue with the red, black and gold USE flag toward the tail and large red numbers, 1, 2, 3, painted on their vertical stabilizers. Sun glinted off their greenhouse-style canopies and Jesse suddenly grinned at the ferocious red and white shark mouths painted on the Gustavs' noses. The Belle in the formation looked positively dowdy by comparison.

Jesse murmured, "It's okay, old girl. Don't pay any attention to the youngsters, you still look beautiful to me."

At the end of the field, Woody shook out the formation into line astern and climbed up into a comfortable downwind, still moving north. Trailing fifteen seconds apart, the aircraft followed him into the distance, finally turning one by one back to the field. The machines glided over the demolished orchard, crossed the perimeter fence, set down neatly spaced across the landing zone, and began to taxi toward the hangars.

Jesse let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. By God, they had an airfield.

Copenhagen

Prince Ulrik stared dubiously at the two dozen or so small vessels lined up next to each other in Copenhagen's harbor. They weren't more than thirty-five feet long, at a guess. "I suppose they'll do."

The rising inflection at the end of that sentence turned it into a question. Baldur Norddahl shook his head. "For our purposes here, at any rate. Look at it this way, Your Highness. We only need to go a short distance. Then, either way, it won't matter."

"It
would
be nice to have enough of a boat to make an escape, Baldur."

The Norwegian hesitated, for a moment, then said, "Ulrik, I doubt very much if we'll have a boat left to make an escape in the first place. I hope you're a good swimmer." For good measure, he added with a grin, "I swim like a seal, myself."

"You would," grunted Ulrik. But he didn't return the grin. The fact that Norddahl had used a personal form of address meant that he was dead serious.

"I read some up-time accounts of spar torpedoes," he half-protested. "I had them obtained after we agreed on this scheme."

"That must have cost a small fortune, getting them that quickly."

"It certainly did." Ulrik attempted a grin himself, although he suspected it was a sickly affair. "But I'm a prince, you know. I
have
a small fortune."

Actually, he didn't, since Christian IV kept his sons on a tight leash, financially. But it hadn't mattered, in this instance. The king had also informed his money-keepers that Prince Ulrik was to be given a free rein with spending on the new naval weapons.

"It's true that the
Hunley
sank, after using a spar torpedo, but it was a submarine. Most of the surface boats that used spar torpedoes seem to have survived the impact, well enough. For certain, the one that Richter's husband used in Amsterdam survived."

Baldur gave him a skeptical look. "I read the same accounts. First, the accounts are spotty, since the biggest use of spar torpedoes was by the Russians against the Turks and the American texts had no details. Secondly, the
Hunley
was not operating submerged when it destroyed the
Housatonic—
yet it sank anyway."

"But nobody knows
why
it sank," the prince pointed out. He wasn't really arguing the matter, though, just trying to draw out Baldur's logic. "And there's still the example of the Amsterdam attack."

The Norwegian adventurer shrugged. "Ulrik, there's simply no way to know. What I can tell you is this: From the reports, Higgins and his men were using a heavy boat. They had to, really, in that bad weather. We, on the other hand—"

He jerked a thumb toward the slim galleys tethered nearby. "—at your orders, I remind you, are using light boats. The damn things are just barely big enough to hold a crew of rowers and either an eighteen-pounder cannon or a one hundred pound keg of explosives at the end of a thirty-foot spar."

"We need to move as quickly as possible," Ulrik pointed out. "And I didn't see any reason to risk the lives of any more of our men than necessary."

"I'm not arguing that. I agree with you, myself. But the fact remains that once one of those charges goes off, five or ten feet below the surface, we'll get as big a water column as anything a mine produces—and we'll be sitting not thirty feet away in what amounts to a cockleshell. Maybe the boat will survive, who knows? But I'm pretty sure it'll be upended, if not shattered outright, and we'll be dumped into the water. Like I said"—the grin came back—"I hope you're a good swimmer."

Ulrik stroked his beard for a moment. "Well, yes, I am. Not as good as you, I'm sure, since I'm not a crazy Norwegian. But I can make it to shore, if I'm still conscious. Better wear light clothing, though—even though the water will still be very cold."

Baldur glanced down. "Yes. And I do not recommend those cavalry boots. Barefoot would be best."

"A prince, going to war in his bare feet? That's ridiculous, Baldur. However, I do have a pair of sturdy slippers that I can kick off easily."

His half-sister Anne Cathrine had given those to him as a gift, as it happened. Ulrik made a note to have a servant blacken them with boot polish and remove the tassels. Their current color—bright green, with red trimmings and lemon-yellow tassels—would look just about as stupid on a prince going to war as bare feet would.

"Do you have any cheerier things to tell me?" Ulrik asked a bit grumpily.

"I certainly do. Come here and look at these."

Two minutes later, Ulrik was looking just as dubious. "That's
all
? Just these ugly-looking—I won't tell you what they remind me of—things?"

Baldur chuckled. "I know what they look like. Shit stuffed into a wooden tube with a fuse sticking out of them. But they'll work. I tested them out in the woods, a few miles north of the city. As God is my witness, I love those up-time texts. It's just sugar and saltpeter, you know, in the proper proportions. The only tricky part is that you have to melt them together carefully, not letting the stuff get too hot or stirring too hard."

Ulrik didn't ask what would happen if you didn't do it properly. From experience, he knew that Baldur would regale him with grisly details. The Norwegian took a peculiar pleasure in mishaps and disasters.

"Do we have enough smoke rafts?" he asked.

"Yes, we've got a dozen. Half the galleys will tow those into action, while the rest tow the floating mines. In the end, I won't be surprised if those mines do more damage to the enemy than anything else we've got."

"Do you really think Simpson will be fooled?"

Baldur raised his hands, in a gesture that was halfway between uncertainty and devout hope. "Who knows? But I think so, Ulrik, yes. You've been in battles. You know how chaotic and confusing they are. A man's natural tendency is to react to any threat immediately, without taking the time to wonder if there might be a bigger threat coming after them, that the initial assault is partly designed to disguise. Even generals and admirals do it. Them, most of all, perhaps, since they have entire armies and fleets to lose if they react sluggishly."

He'd lowered his hands by then. "So, yes. I think Simpson will concentrate on destroying the ships, not wondering until it's too late whether they're distracting him from something else. Coming like a spear through the smoke, seen too late to parry."

Ulrik smiled. "It's a nice image, I admit. Let's hope it turns out that way."

"I'm sure it will," Baldur said stoutly. "And I'm willing to wager that if I studied Snorri's sagas I could find exactly such a successful maneuver."

"Those take place in Iceland. Anything can happen in Iceland. Those people are crazier than Norwegians."

Norddahl scowled. "Your Highness, I am deeply offended. They most certainly are
not.
"

Minden, on the Weser river

"We'll leave two hundred men with you; that's all I can spare," said Turenne.

"Should be enough," said Philippe de la Mothe-Houdancourt. The young French nobleman stroked his nose, a habitual gesture of his that Turenne thought was most unfortunate. Philippe had the sort of very prominent nose that invited ridicule.

Not from soldiers, though. The
mestre de camp
, as France referred to its regimental commanders, was a very capable officer and well thought of in the cavalry.

"Should be enough," he repeated. Then, dropping his hand, Philippe glanced at the stone bridge that spanned the Weser. More than a century old, it was still in good shape despite being over two hundred yards long. "That'll be easy enough to defend against anything but an army, and we hardly need to worry that the bishop's garrison will challenge us."

Turenne chuckled. "No, that's not likely, is it?"

Minden was an independent principality under the authority of a bishop—but the exact identity of the bishop was in dispute. The Lutheran bishop who had ruled Minden, Christian von Braunschweig-Lüneburg, had died the year before. While his Brunswick cousins debated over which one of them should inherit the seat, a Catholic counterclaimant named Franz Wilhelm von Wartenberg laid claim to it himself. He was a morganatic relative of Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, and his younger brother Ferdinand, who controlled the archbishopric of Cologne as well as nearby Munster.

In short, the political situation was another example of the reason the Germanies were generally considered a political laughingstock by powerful European dynasties like the Habsburgs and the French Bourbons—or had been, at least, until Gustav Adolf and Mike Stearns began unifying the Germans. However, for Turenne's immediate purposes, the political uncertainty in Minden was a blessing. It meant the town's garrison was not in the least inclined to fight a desperate and ultimately hopeless battle against an invading force ten times as strong. As soon as Turenne had appeared at the town's outskirts and demanded an immediate surrender, the garrison had complied.

It was still a bit risky, leaving behind only a force of two hundred men to hold the town and its critical bridge across the Weser. But Turenne thought it would be enough. Philippe was certainly a better commander than the Swabian drunk who was the nominal head of the garrison; his troops were far better trained than those of the garrison, who were the typical mercenary dregs you usually found in such units; and, of course, they were far better armed. Having every cavalryman in his force equipped with a Cardinal rifle was a tremendous force multiplier.

Besides, there was a danger in leaving too many soldiers in Minden. The complicated patchwork quilt of principalities in the northwestern Germanies had been a major theater of the war in its early years, and had been badly ravaged by all armies passing through. It still hadn't recovered much, which meant that the pickings would be slim for any large body of soldiers who stayed in Minden. Philippe's unit would get badly frayed, quickly, if they needed to send out plundering expeditions—and the inevitable outrages committed by a sizeable force so engaged might stir up the population. Whatever else, Turenne could not afford to leave behind enough men to simply squelch any resistance. So, he deemed it best to leave a minimum. There was enough in the way of provisions stored in Minden itself that they could get by for a few days.

"Two hundred, then," the marshal repeated. "If all goes as planned, we'll be back very soon anyway."

De la Mothe-Houdancourt grinned. "With a large army in pursuit, thank you very much."

Turenne returned the grin with a smile. "Perhaps—and perhaps not. It's hard to say without knowing Torstensson's exact dispositions. The pursuing force would almost have to be USE troops. It's not likely that either the duke of Calenburg or the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg would send an army after us. And by the time we get back, Jean de Gassion should have arrived to reinforce you."

De la Mothe-Houdancourt's grin never wavered. "If all goes as planned . . . I believe that's covered by the American expression 'famous last words.' "

Turenne shrugged. "Yes, but who's to say? I see no reason that Murphy's Law itself isn't subject to Murphy's Law. Now and then, you know, things
do
go the right way."

He turned toward his horse, and swung into the saddle. "Look for us in three days, Philippe. Four, at the most. We'll take Neustadt tonight, and the target on the morrow. Two days should be enough to gather up the plunder and get back, but let's allow an additional day just in case. If we're gone more than four days, we've had a disaster. If there's no sign of us on the morning of the fifth day, just get back to France. You can tell de Gassion those were my orders."

The mouth of the Elbe

When Mike got to Ritsenbuttel, he found a very tense situation. The crew of the
Achates
hadn't been able to do much to get the boat working again, since the critical repair couldn't be done until Mike arrived with the needed equipment—which had had to be brought all the way from Magdeburg.

Instead, they'd spent most of their time and energy getting the
Achates
ready to be scuttled and helping the Marines man the jury-rigged fortifications on the docks that gave the disabled warship what little protection it had.

Protection from whom? Commander Baumgartner didn't really know, but he seemed to be one of those people who invariably expect the worst. Perhaps a mob of outraged townspeople, although that didn't seem too likely. Being as how most of the townsfolk were huddling in their homes, far more frightened by the warship and its crew than vice versa. An enemy cavalry raid, perhaps. Or an enemy cutting out expedition, sent from . . . wherever.

Since Mike didn't know anything more about fixing warships than he did about commanding military operations, he left all that to the experts. Now that they had several of the timberclads and a regiment of soldiers to guard them, along with the equipment they needed, Baumgartner and the crew of the
Achates
were able to relax and get seriously to work on the repairs. Meanwhile, Mike took the first necessary steps to secure the area as a whole.

"Yeah, you heard me, Christopher. A parade. I want half the infantry and all the cavalry and dragoons turned out by midafternoon, ready to go. We'll parade right down the main street in Ritsenbuttel, with the band leading the way."

So, Colonel Fey joined the ever-growing
the-prime-minister-is-crazy
club.

By evening, however, the ranks of the club had thinned drastically. Down to only one man, in fact. Proving once again that he was a true and veritable Scotsman, Captain Richard Henderson stubbornly spent the whole evening sitting by himself at a corner table in the town's largest tavern, glaring at the ridiculous proceedings around him and muttering predictions of imminent disaster.

He didn't even have the satisfaction, any longer, of having Captain Hamers on his side. Proving to everyone's satisfaction that he was indeed no true Scotsman, Juan Hamers spent the whole evening carousing with his crew—and trying his best to serenade one of the barmaids into his bunk on the ship, by singing one love song after another to her. Unfortunately, the songs were all in Spanish, which the barmaid didn't speak at all, and he carried a tune even worse than Mike did.