“Directions and money it is. But let’s make it rubles and kopeks for each part, with rubles being ten versts and kopeks being one.”
Mokrenko nodded sagely. “I think that works, but we’re going to have to be very careful to make our figures nonsuspicious.”
“Yes, we are,” Turgenev agreed. “Now let’s start working on enemy situation.”
“Invert numbers,” said Mokrenko. “One hundred and twenty-three would mean three hundred and twenty-one, for example. At least that keeps us, well, usually, from sending a suspiciously accurate number. And, if they’re the same, one hundred and thirty-one red guards, for example, we don’t have to be that accurate; we call it two thirty-one, which means one hundred and thirty two, and is close enough to the truth.”
“Okay… I can see that, Sergeant. Then… squirrel for red soldiers… mmm… martens for machine guns… rabbits for cannon… excellent condition is excellent troops… not of the best is rabble… more coming is more coming.”
“Let me try something,” said Goat. “So we see two hundred and five red guards around the tsar and his family, who are all together. The guards have eighteen machine guns. There are no cannon. Five hundred more red guards are coming in a week or ten days.”
“The message, then, would read: ‘The market here is good STOP I was able to pick up five hundred and two squirrel pelts STOP only eighty-one martens available from my dealer STOP no rabbit fur and no word of any coming STOP supposed to be one hundred and five more rabbit available in a week or ten days STOP quality of what we have is not of the best STOP shall I wait… ’ meaning, ‘the Romanovs are here, guarded by two hundred and five guards now. They are all rabble. They have eighteen machine guns, no artillery and none coming, five hundred and one, which is close enough, more red guards supposedly en route and expected in a week or ten days.’”
Turgenev stroked his chin. “That ‘shall I wait?’ It reminds me that we need to be able to receive a message, too, once we’re in one place to stay. Hmmm… my stomach is rumbling. Let’s go eat lunch; we can work as we eat.”
Range A (Rifle), Near Camp Budapest
Feldwebel Taenzler cracked the whip above the horses, being most careful not to hit them. These beasts were in much better shape than the poor miserable things turned over to the Russian battalion, about a quarter of which, at this point, had died, though the rest were on their way to recovery.
Taenzler had given some thought to the notion of butchering the dead horses and mules but, given that they hadn’t necessarily died of starvation, he’d recommended against that and the Russian commander had listened to him.
The pair gave a little forward lurch, setting both the limber and the Gulaschkanone into forward motion.
Fired by wood, the Gulaschkanone was a modern marvel. The Kanone part of the name came from the smokepipe mounted to one corner. The Gulasch? Well, that was a simple one pot meat dish that the device could make in its large central pot, as it could make any kind of stew, in sufficient quantity for about a company. The marvelous part included that the thing could do so while on the move, plus that it had a means of spreading the heat evenly across the surface of the main cooker. This was a double boiler of sorts between the cooking pot and the firebox, containing glycerin. It also had a tub to heat tea or coffee, as well as a kind of griddle.
What it could not do was provide much in the way of variety, stew or pasta or boiled vegetables were pretty much it, and only one of those at a feeding.
It would have been woefully overtasked for feeding a small battalion, as it was now, but then Taenzler still had the kitchen at the camp, plus plenty of cooks now, what with the additional Russians. He planned on feeding the crew working on range building, then going back to refill the stew pot, to bring hot stew to the men using the rifle range. He’d been around the German Army long enough to know who could drop what they were doing to come and eat, and whom he would have to wait upon, as they finished absolutely necessary tasks to a schedule. The firers fit into the last category, the range builders into the former.
The Pole, Chmura, recently assigned to the kitchen had proven a big help. At his translation of Ilyin’s suggestion, Taenzler and the cooks had begun scraping the Schmaltz directly into the daily stew, where, by dipping, the Russians ate it with considerably more relish than they had when it was spread on bread.
Though it’s perhaps just as well that they don’t know that the fat comes from crushed and processed Maybugs. I wish I hadn’t made the mistake of asking, myself.
The newly building range wasn’t far. It seemed like mere minutes before Taenzler found himself pulling on the horses’ reins to bring the Gulaschkanone to a stop at a likely spot. Chmura stood and, in Russian, called for the men to drop their shovels, collect their mess tins, and line up for lunch.
They didn’t need to be told twice.
“You know,” said Corporal Goat, on the road to the mess tent, “we might be being too paranoid here. All businesses have secrets they don’t want to share. Maybe we’d look more suspicious, not less, if we didn’t put in something that actually looked like a secret we were trying to keep from competitors.”
“Maybe put in a substitution code, you think?” asked the lieutenant. “Use it for something…”
Turgenev stopped progress, as did the other two, at the edge of a company street. It was stop or risk being run over by sixteen men, racing along in two groups, each group hauling a 37mm infantry gun on wheels, plus a small ammunition caisson ahead of the gun. Turgenev recognized Lieutenant Federov running along ahead of the first gun, while a Feldfebel he didn’t know paced the second. The three stopped to watch the drill.
“I know nothing about artillery,” Turgenev said, “but I’ve always found the drill involved to be a fascinating dance.”
First, Federov stopped, made a show of looking through the binoculars hanging from his neck, then thrust out one arm in a different direction from the one they’d been racing toward. Swerving to avoid hitting the lieutenant, the four men pulling the caisson made a tight circle to the left, stopped the caisson, let the pole drop, opened the ammunition chest and extracted four containers of ammunition, each holding sixteen rounds of ammunition and weighing, per container, about fifteen kilograms.
The men hauling the gun stopped it before running their lieutenant over, then lowered the trails to the ground. One of the three then pulled the pin that retained the front leg of a tripod, knocked that leg down into position, then replaced the pin. This locked the leg in place while turning the gun’s carriage almost into a tripod. He then pulled another pin, thus detaching the gun’s soon to be tripod from the axle.
The other two members of the gun crew joined to lift the gun slightly off the axle. The first man then rolled axle and wheels out of the way, to the left.
They then lowered the entire gun assembly to the ground. With the pull of another pin, the gun and recoil cylinder were detached from the pintle. The squad leader helped one of the men get the eighty-eight pound tube and cylinder assembly onto his shoulder. The tripod and pintle assembly took a bit of effort as well, but was longer, better balanced, and inherently more stable. The remaining crewman was able to walk it up to the vertical position, then bend, put his shoulder into it, and stand upright on his own.