He'd never seen one before, but it was what he'd been expecting. Had feared most, in fact, until the final moments when they launched the attack on the oil field.
Chapter 50
"They're trashing the whole place, Mike," Jesse's voice came over the speaker. "There's a good two thousand of them. I think they're starting to pull out now. There's smoke everywhere. They're burning everything they can."
Sighing, Mike lowered his head. "Can you get any sense of the casualties?"
"That's not too bad, from what I can tell. I think most people just ran off, rather than trying to put up a fight."
Mike didn't bother asking about Underwood. There was no way, even from a slow, low-flying Belle, that Jesse could see faces well enough to recognize anyone. He'd just have to hope that Quentin's stubbornness had given way soon enough to get him out of danger. Mike didn't like Underwood personally, but he didn't wish him any ill beyond political failure in the next election.
"Okay, Jesse, you may as well come on back."
"Give me a minute. They're all staring up at me, but I can't see any signs that anyone's getting ready to shoot. I want to take one really low pass, to see some more details."
"Jesse…" But Mike broke off the rest. Colonel Wood wasn't reckless. If Jesse thought it was safe to get within musket range, Mike wasn't going to second-guess him.
Seeing how low the airplane was coming this time, Turenne realized abruptly that he'd been so fascinated by watching the flying machine that he'd overlooked a simple duty. That was an enemy machine, after all.
But when he looked around, he saw at once that it was too late. All of his cavalrymen were mounted, and all of them were doing exactly what their commander had been doing: sitting in their saddles, staring up, their mouths half-open. Not more than one out of three even had a rifle in their hands any longer, most of them having scabbarded their Cardinals in preparation for the march.
On the other hand, Turenne's carelessness probably didn't matter anyway. Now that he'd finally had a chance to observe one of the fabled American aircraft in person, Turenne could see how much luck had been involved when the Danes shot down one of them in the battle at Wismar.
Luck-and the recklessness of the pilot himself, who'd flown directly at a warship with a company of marines mustered on deck and ready to fire a volley.
But this pilot had never given Turenne that chance, even if the marshal had been ready to take advantage of it. He'd stayed too high for muskets, and, even then, had never flown a straight path long enough for men on the ground to have been able to predict where his course might be intersected with a volley of musket balls.
And the thing was so fast. Turenne hadn't realized that, at first, because of the airplane's altitude. But now that the pilot was bringing it very low, the machine's real speed was evident. Turenne had hunted birds with a shotgun. He knew how difficult it was to track the creatures and bring them down-and this plane was coming faster than almost any bird could fly.
It swooped by, almost right over Turenne's head. The marshal watched it go, off toward the Elbe.
"Mike, we've got a real problem on our hands."
Mike winced. "Yeah, no kidding. Our small petroleum industry just got a really big monkey wrench tossed into it."
"Worse than that, Mike. They couldn't really have done that much damage to the oil field. We'll lose a few weeks' production, that's all. Two months, tops."
Mike's wince turned into an outright grimace. As the air force commander, Jesse knew better than almost anyone how tight the petroleum reserves were for the campaign Gustav Adolf was about to launch. They had enough in reserve to cover the needs of the campaign itself, most likely. But the king of Sweden had just had a lid placed on any further ambitions he might have had. At least, if those ambitions required anything that needed petroleum to operate on.
Which meant there had to be something really bad on the way.
Sure enough:
"They've got breechloaders, Mike. Carbines, I'm pretty sure. Probably every damn one of them. I was pretty sure they did, just from what I saw from higher up. That's why I wanted to make that last low run. I saw at least three of those cavalrymen reloading."
Mike drew in a breath. "They might be flintlocks."
"Yeah, maybe. I couldn't see that much detail, of course. But I'm willing to bet you dollars for donuts that they're using percussion caps. Prepared cartridges, for damn sure, since no cavalryman wants to be fumbling with a powder flask. And whether they're flintlocks or percussion locks, Mike, there's no way in God's green earth those guns aren't rifled. I can't say I ever much cared for the French, but nobody ever accused them of being morons. Why bother with a smoothbore breechloader?"
Mike didn't doubt it himself. Which meant that if the French had been able to manufacture enough of those breechloaders to supply their whole army, one of the major technical advantages the USE had been counting on in the coming campaign had just vanished. Instead of being-by far-the best hand weapon on the field, the SRG rifled musket would be second-best. The French would have the same range, with the added advantage that their soldiers didn't need to stand up to reload.
"Thanks, Jesse. I'll get someone in there as fast as I can, to see what we can find out. In the meantime-I've already talked to him-General Torstensson is sending down three cavalry companies and a full regiment."
"You can tell him there's no point in sending the infantry regiment. He may as well keep them, with a battle looming. These guys are pulling out of here, Mike. The lead elements were already on the road by the time I got here. They'll be long gone before the cavalry arrives, much less the foot soldiers."
After Jesse got off the air, Mike took another deep breath before he began a new round of radio calls. Gustav Adolf was not going to be a happy man.
After the plane finally disappeared, Turenne ordered the march to resume. He spent the rest of the day until they reached the bridge at Minden mulling over the airplane.
He came to two conclusions. The first was that, under the right circumstances, he was fairly certain that a large enough volley could bring down one of the aircraft, if it flew low enough. Muskets might even do it, but Turenne was sure that Thibault could figure out something better. Bombards of some sort, firing canister or perhaps grapeshot, that were specifically designed for the purpose.
The other conclusion was obvious. France had to get its own air force. Give it more than a few years, and no army without aircraft could possibly hope to win a war.
Turenne had never really understood that, until this raid. He'd read the reports compiled by French intelligence agents concerning the USE's use of airplanes in the fighting around Luebeck, of course. But, in truth, he hadn't been that impressed. The flying machines simply couldn't carry that great a load of munitions. Aside from the occasional lucky hit, they were more of a nuisance than anything else. The real damage they did was to the morale of the soldiers, since the pestiferous devices were so very hard to defend against.
After the past few days, Turenne understood how much he'd underestimated the things. True enough, as weapons they didn't amount to much. Not yet, at least. But he'd simply overlooked the monstrous advantage they provided an army in terms of reconnaissance.
Which should have been blindingly obvious from the beginning, especially to a cavalry officer like Turenne. Reconnaissance, after all, was one of the primary missions of cavalry.
By the end of the first day of the raid, Turenne had started peering nervously into the sky every few minutes. Realizing, finally, that all his plans could be wrecked by one airplane that flew overhead and spotted him. It wouldn't take any more than that. The aircraft didn't need to fire a single shot or drop so much as a stone or an empty bottle. All it had to do was pass along the word to the enemy's commanders-who, until the last day or two, could have gotten a large military force into position at the oil fields before Turenne arrived.