From Yekaterinoslav, the L59 didn’t make a straight course for the landing point south of Tobolsk. Instead, it went generally east-northeast to a spot about thirty kilometers north of Severodonetsk, then turned due east, passing over the Volga River well north of Tsaritsyn. From that crossing, another five hundred kilometers saw it turn on a course of forty-five degrees, heading straight for the Urals’ southern foothills in the vicinity of Krasnoshchekovo. All of these legs were lengthened by the fact that the ship took a zig-zag course, partly to avoid towns likely to have telegraph service and partly to cast doubt about their ultimate objective.
It wasn’t until they passed a point just north-northwest of Petropavel that Bockholt ordered a turn, due north, toward the landing zone south of Tobolsk.
And then…
Landing Zone A, south of Tobolsk
Daniil was back in the control gondola, having been awakened by Mueller, who looked completely worn out, a sunken-faced, slack jawed zombie.
One suspects, thought Kostyshakov, that it’s a tougher job than it looks from the outside.
This part they hadn’t really been able to rehearse. Kostyshakov hadn’t had any real choice but to kick the strategic reconnaissance team forward as soon as possible, with only limited guidance on how to prepare to receive an airship. The airship’s crew had had limited time to both figure out and then show the men of Fourth Company how to secure an airship.
Going to be a total clusterfuck, thought Daniil, especially in the dark… even with moonlight.
The moon, for that matter, was pretty low in the sky. We’re so fucked.
A sudden light from above, from the skin of the airship, caused Daniil to jerk his head up. But where is the light…
He looked out of one of the open windows and down. There, hanging below him, was a very bright flare, rocking from side to side as it descended under a parachute. I did not know they could do that.
Within a couple of minutes, Daniil saw a bright flash from below and forward, followed by a tremendous bang and a rumbling sound. A couple of minutes later four large fires sprang up, two by two, forming a rectangular box around a narrow inlet in what appeared to be an icebound lake, below.
“Very good,” Bockholt said, with something approaching a tone of wonder in his voice. Turning to Kostyshakov, he added, “I don’t think my own men could have set it up any better. They even got the wind angle as right as they could, given the terrain.”
“What now?” asked Daniil.
“Now we vent hydrogen to reduce buoyancy and descend. It’s a little tricky. It’s also incredibly wasteful of hydrogen; that’s why we wanted your troops to blow a hole in the ice so we can pump up water as ballast to make up for the loss of load when you all unload. I wish there were some other way to do this, but there isn’t. Maybe someday.”
Back in cargo, First Sergeant Mayevsky was kicking hammocks, some of them, and prodding others from below with a stick he seemed to have acquired from somewhere. “Up you turds! Up! It’s time to earn our pay again. And if any of you lowlifes have somehow been so negligent as to have let yourself freeze to death, so signify by staying in your hammocks. We’ll just throw you overboard from a thousand feet. Don’t worry; you won’t feel a thing…”
Interlude
Sovnarkcom, the Council of Peoples’ Commissars: Beware the Hun
The fire roaring in the hearth, combined with the body heat of the men assembled in the meeting chamber of the Central Committee, managed to bring the temperature in the room up to stifling—no mean feat in early spring in Petrograd. All the Party Commissars, from State to Railway Affairs, were gathered around the long wooden table that dominated the center of the room. Sitting at the head of the table, sweat glistening on the dome of his massive bald forehead, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin listened intently to the newly elected minister of agricultural affairs, Semyon Sereda. Sereda was the fourth man in as many months to occupy the Agricultural Commissariat since the October Revolution.
Lenin’s eyes were red-rimmed with lack of sleep and darted nervously about the room, from the faces of the Commissars to the doors and back again as he listened to Sereda’s litany of bad news. Seated at Lenin’s right hand, Yakov Sverdlov regarded his friend and leader with frank concern. It was only two months since the last assassination attempt on the man, less than that since they’d forcibly disbanded the democratically elected Constituent Assembly.
The strain is visibly aging Ilyich before us.
Still, worn ragged or not, no other man had the same vision, the same will. The Revolution needed Vladimir Ilyich Lenin at its helm. Sverdlov had long since renounced the God of Abraham, so he eschewed prayer, contenting himself with a fervent hope that Lenin would remain cogent and healthy enough to continue the work for a while longer.
Semyon finished his doom-laden report.
“… in summary, comrades, we have shortfalls in every crop imaginable. Worse than that, our ability to move produce from the farms to the cities before those crops spoil is diminishing daily due to sabotage by monarchists and other undesirables. Furthermore, the kulaks often hide the grain we so desperately need—or if we don’t send sufficient force, will often fight our troops to keep their grain.”
“Bloodsucking rich bastards,” Lenin said. “We know the problems, Semyon, what solutions might we enact?”
“Comrades, I wish your permission to commit a larger body of troops to redistribution activities and to incur summary punishment for kulaks who do not cooperate,” Sereda said. “The kulaks will be less likely to resist once they see a few of their neighbors hanging from a scaffold. Also, if we can focus the peasants’ and workers’ anger and anxiety on the rich landowners, that binds them all the more tightly to the Revolution.”
Lenin leaned back and stroked his goatee for several seconds.
“Yes,” Lenin said. “An excellent thought, Semyon, work with Trotsky to allocate the troops. Is there anything else?”
In the silence that followed, Trotsky looked at Sverdlov for permission to bring up the reports from Hungary. Sverdlov nodded slightly.
“Comrades, I have a matter that may be of some import,” Trotsky said.
“What is it, Leon?” Lenin asked.
“The first item is that the Germans have been recruiting former Imperial Guardsmen, in numbers that wouldn’t matter to their war in the west, but that could matter to us. In relation to this, comrades in Hungary offered us, as a show of good faith, a potentially troubling bit of intelligence. Reports of strange activities on the part of the German Army there,” Trotsky said.
“Where in Hungary?” asked Lenin.
“Somewhere around Budapest, but our friends have not been able to pinpoint a site.”
“That is hardly our concern,” Sereda said. “We are now neutral in their war. Besides, no location? It could be all fanciful.”
“Agreed,” Trotsky said. “It could be. But what if it’s not and the Germans want them for further operations against us? Perhaps something covert?”
“That seems a little fanciful, too,” Sereda said.
“Is it?” Sverdlov interrupted. “The Germans saw to it Comrade Lenin made his way back to Russia when it suited them. If our Revolutionary activities are worrying them now, it’s not inconceivable they might use the same tactics twice.”
“An excellent point,” Lenin said. “Ensure we keep funds flowing to our friends in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. If the Germans intend to use our own people against us, we must know about it.”