Brinkmann sighed, thinking, This is so much harder and so much more dangerous—to us, personally—than he seems to…
“And, yes, Brinkmann; I know the risks we’re taking. Would you rather have the Bolsheviks on Germany’s border, eventually, or to take a few risks now?”
Camp Budapest
Romeyko was ready to tear his hair out by the roots. After spending days, and nearly twenty-four hour days, at that, working with Weber and that aviator, Mueller, calculating how to get the battalion to western Siberia in five lifts, Kostyshakov had had the gall to come back and say, “Forget the animals, the fodder, and the wagons; they’ve all been taken care of for us.”
And then the inconsiderate bastard had had the effrontery, as he left the quartermaster’s office, to call over his shoulder, “Figure out, too, if we need to buy food there.”
Okay, then; let’s start by trying to work it as three lifts, with three days’ travel, loading, and unloading travel each way. That means the Fourth Company will be in flight or on the ground, needing to eat, for… mmm… three days out… six days until the next lift… six days until the last lift… then maybe one to get to the objective…
No, wait; assume we leave to cross the front—which Weber informs me has moved east a good deal—at night. Okay, that means we leave… mmm… after lunch on departure days. Two hours to load, since the animals and their fodder aren’t a factor anymore… so only one meal required in flight. Zweiback, cheese, and what passes for sausage. So only one pound, for dinner only, in flight, lift-off day. That saves two and a half pounds per man…
“Hey,” he said to one of the clerks, “get me that new German, Mueller. Tell him to hurry.”
“Yes, sir; you sent for me?”
“Ah, Herr Mueller, thank you for coming so quickly. There are some questions I cannot answer that I hope you can.” And he seems very young, but looks more than adequately intelligent.
“If I can, sir, and if it isn’t classified…”
“Well, only you can tell us what is and isn’t a secret. Here, look at the map.” Romeyko stretched their best large-scale map out over the chalkboards, brushing sticks of chalk away with one hand. “We’re going from here to—so it appears now—Tobolsk, Russia, or a spot a bit south of it. We don’t want to be seen crossing the lines, such as they are. So when are we going to have to take off, to make the crossing in the dark?”
“No matter what we do, sir,” said the German airship sailor, “if we’re leaving around the twenty-sixth of March, it’s not going to be all that dark?”
“No?”
“No, sir; it will be a nearly full moon up and it rises at about five-thirty, PM. The sun sets half an hour after that and rises just after moonset the next day. In that time frame, there is no time we can count on complete darkness. What we’ll do, though, is make sure that we never get between the moon and a major settlement. That should help.”
“Ah… so when would we have to take off to cross over near say…” —Romeyko’s hand searched the map—“this place, Yekaterinoslav, so that it’s as dark as it can be when we cross?”
“Let me think, sir… distance looks to be about eleven hundred kilometers.” Mueller turned his finger and thumb into a makeshift compass calipers and measured off the distance. “Yes, close enough to eleven hundred. We can travel at about one hundred and three kilometers per hour so… let’s call it eleven hours of flight to get to Yekaterinoslav. To cross lines at nineteen-thirty, well after the end of evening nautical twilight, we’ll need to leave at eight-thirty in the morning.”
Romeyko did some more scribbling on his chalk boards. “That should work,” he said. “We can feed an early breakfast and lunch, lunch out of Taenzler’s Gulaschkanone, right at the airship’s hangar.
“So let me see…” More chalky scribbling followed. “If we load for the first lift one hundred and thirty-seven men… at ninety of your kilograms each… and sixty-seven hundred kilograms of food… yes, that should work.”
“What about the horses and mules, sir?”
“Did no one tell you? No animals; our forward reconnaissance team has found us enough and more. We needn’t take wagons either.”
“Praise God,” muttered Mueller. “You can load more men or ammunition now.”
“Well, yes,” agreed the rat-faced Romeyko, “but then we’re on God’s work, no?”
Mueller only nodded, then said, “The skipper will be doing handstands of joy when he finds out he won’t have horses and mules shitting all over his airship.”
“Likely. Can’t blame him. Okay, now for lift two…” Scribble-scribble-scribble-erase-curse-throw-a-piece-of-chalk. Then pick up another and scribble some more. “Okay, lift two… one hundred and fifty-three men, mostly from Second Company, two infantry guns with limbers, one hundred and sixty-one kilograms, plus another two hundred and ninety-one in 37mm ammunition, plus forty-eight hundred kilograms of food. That sound sensible to you?”
Mueller couldn’t read Cyrillic, so had to go with Romeyko’s words. “We might need to put in some ladders to get men up to hammocks in higher spaces but I think that’s feasible, sir. Plenty of room for the guns and their limbers on the cargo deck.”
“Good so far. Now let’s think about third lift. It’s got to contain Third Company and most of what’s left of Headquarters and Support… one hundred and eighty-four men… two heavy machine guns with a ton of ammunition… just under two tons of food.” Romeyko shot an inquisitive glance at Mueller.
Said the German, “I don’t see a necessary problem, though sleeping space will have to be sorted out. I’m going to ask the skipper, when I see him in three days, if we can put in one hundred and eighty-four hammocks from the beginning, so we don’t have to screw around with reconfiguring while loading, in a no-doubt panic-stricken hurry.
“Ummm,” continued the German, slightly embarrassed, “sir, have you or any of your men flown before?”
“None of us, so far as I know,” said Romeyko, “and I certainly have not.”
“Then I’m going to ask the captain, too, if we can violate regulations and get everyone a little tipsy. I don’t even want to think about dealing with a hundred tough Russian Imperial Guards in a panic and running amok… in an airship.”
“Tell you what,” said the quartermaster. “You ask your skipper and I’ll talk my commander into it because, you are absolutely right, we do not want a panic.”
“So,” said Romeyko, “up to two and a half days in the air. Half a chetvert of vodka per man. There goes the food savings from feeding early breakfast and lunch. Oh, well.”
“One other thing, sir?”
“Yes, Herr Mueller.”
“I went up last night and watched your troops clearing one of the underground buildings you’ve set up. Those carbide lamps, sir? I asked one of your officers how they worked. Well, the skipper will not let them get aboard in anyone’s hands. That won’t be a negotiable point; they must all be collected and completely cleaned out of carbide. With the water chambers kept entirely separate from the carbide chambers.”
Romeyko groaned as he immediately saw the pain in the ass of that. “We’ve got a dozen different sizes and makes. If we don’t keep them together, it will be a pure bitch getting the right sections together again. We had one young idiot who set himself afire when he mismatched from two different types.”