Conrad's Last Campaign (24 page)

I was wrong about the fifty miles of clear road. We weren’t even clear of the mountain pass before the harassing attacks started. Less than two hours later, we were moving at a good dozen miles an hour through the pass when gunfire sounded ahead of us.

We were moving with a pair of forward flankers on the left and right and two pairs of scouts straight ahead of us when the Mongols managed to hit the left flankers and both pairs of center scouts at about the same time. Two dozen Mongols appeared out of camouflaged holes in the ground, firing rifles and arrows at close range. Two warriors died instantly from rifle shots, one was mortally wounded by a hail storm of arrows, and no one was unscathed. All but one of the Mongols died during the battle and the Big People ran down the one escapee and finished him off.

I had never even considered the possibility of such a sneak attack by Mongols. Hell, they were light cavalry and supposed to ride into battle. We changed the order of march and replaced the pairs of scouts with lances of scouts and pressed ahead. Speed was still our best protection.

An hour before nightfall, we were past the low mountains and out onto the Mongolian steppes. The men were exhausted, but I drove them to build a simple palisade before we bedded down. We ditched around the entire camp and built a four foot sod wall around the twenty mile perimeter before settling down for the night. War was really here now.

Two days later I received an early morning call from the captain of
Wanderlust
.

“We’ve been watching a sizeable enemy camp for about two days. They moved out this morning and are headed in your direction with about twenty, twenty five thousand men. The way you’re closing, you could run into them well before nightfall.

“The formation is odd. They’ve got about ten thousand men in a group out front, but the main force is trailing a few miles behind. Maybe they’ll be moving out to flank you.”

I had read about this often repeated Mongol tactic. “
Wanderlust
, the Mongols are famous for rope-a-dope tactics. They engage a larger force head on and then pretend to retreat. They lead the enemies on until his horses are tired, and then they switch to fresh horses, join their reserves and wheel around to attack. They beat European armies again and again with that tactic.

“Watch for any signs that they are going to try that with us.”

“Yes, your grace. Now that you mention it, we can see that the main force is leading a large number of spare horses.

“Hold it. Hold it. Damn! I’m looking down at an airplane, and it isn’t one of ours.”

“Are you certain of that,
Wanderlust
?”

“I’m the only Christian Army thing flying within a thousand miles. I’m at sixteen thousand feet and I’m looking down at a bright red airplane at maybe six thousand feet. Hold it… I’ve got my spyglass now. It’s not an airplane. There’s no engine or prop. It must be just a damned good glider.

“Wait a minute. Correction. It is powered! The damned thing just lit off a rocket engine. Shit! It’s a damned rocket plane, and it’s coming up in our direction!

“Emergency dump all ballast!! Open all hydrogen fill valves! Full ahead! Bow elevators full up. Rig for altitude. Let’s get out of here.”

The last think I heard before he remembered to key the mike off was the sound of alarms going off in the airship cabin.

The radio was silent for several minutes. When the captain came back to the mike, he was almost laughing with relief.

“We’re out of danger. We grabbed our masks and bounced up to about thirty thousand feet before the plane dropped off. The damned thing climbed straight to about fifteen thousand and the pilot lit off another rocket booster, but he never got close. He fired an explosive rocket when he peaked out, but it made nice fireworks about a thousand feet below us.”

I asked for a description of the strange plane. “It was a high wing monoplane, fabric covered and designed with very large glider-type wings. I would guess that the rocket engines are strictly for emergency boost. The thing was too slow and clumsy to reach much over twenty thousand feet.

“They had to know that we were here. We’re so high up that we’re damned near invisible from the ground. Also, I don’t think the thing is normally armed. It carried a rocket in a tube attached to the side of the fuselage that looked like a slapped up job.

“My guess is that they had reports about us and they tried to kluge up a reconnaissance glider to take us out. As long as we maintain altitude, it isn’t a big danger for us.

“However, while the thing is obviously too small to hold a radio, it could over fly you and then drop a message on its headquarters, so don’t assume that the enemy is unaware of your location.”

There was another long silence.

“My first mate just told me that they have succeeded in taking us out of action for awhile. We had to dump all of our ballast for the emergency climb. By the time we dump enough hydrogen to get down to a normal altitude, we’ll be too low on gas to stay here. We’re going to have to return to base now or risk being stranded on the tundra.

“Captain Helman should have the
Zephyr
here late tomorrow, but I’m afraid you’re blind until then. Good luck, lord.”

Good luck? I thought things were bad enough when the Mongols came up with rifled muskets. Now they had aircraft. I wondered what else they had cooked up. In a year or so, would they be bombing
Poland with nuclear bombs made from cast bronze and rice paper?

Secretly, I was happy. My doubts were gone. This proved that we had to take them out now, before they became a bigger threat. I knew now that the expedition was the right decision.

I decided to postpone the battle until morning.

We camped for the night in a mountain valley, surrounded on three sides by mountain walls and by a palisade on the fourth side. I stationed troopers on the mountainsides to watch for intruders and sent out nighty-night squads on the open side. Normally the Big People provided all of the watchdog duty we needed, but in combat zones, I often sent out some of them with night riders. The riders would nap in the saddle or on the ground near where the Big People were grazing and if the Big People detected any incursion bigger than they could handle, they would nudge the troopers awake to provide firepower where needed. Traditionally, the teams would announce themselves to intruders with the phrase
nighty-night
before they fired. The sounds of short bursts of firepower in the night were actually soothing to those of us in camp.

I decided to move the staff meeting outside into the fresh spring air. We met even before the camp was established, but night had come early and was just cold enough to require cloaks as we sat around the fire on logs and boxes munching our dinners and drinking fresh brewed beer. I was enjoying the beer, the fire, and the cool breeze that tickled the exposed skin under my fur cloak, but not the companionship. The boss gets respect, get listened to, and gets obedience, but the boss never gets to hear the latest jokes and if he wants to hear the latest gossip, he has to hire spies. It is the greatest price of leadership.

As the eating slowed down and the drinking sped up, I announced, “Gentlemen, our scouts tell us that we are only a gross miles from the Mongol capitol. Tomorrow we will have a delightful battle with the Mongols and tomorrow night we will camp under the walls of Karakorum.

“The Mongols are going to execute a strategy that has worked well for them against the European knights in the past. They will seem to attack viciously and then retreat. In battle after battle, they got the knights to chase them until their horses were exhausted, their battle order in disarray, and the knights themselves tired. Then the Mongols would meet up with their reserve forces, jump onto fresh horses and counterattack the exhausted Christians. It worked in battle after battle.

“It also worked fast. As you who have been cavalry in the days of standard horses, you know that when you load a horse with two or three gross pounds of knight, armor, saddle, and weapons and then run it at full trot, the horse tires quickly. Within a few miles, they are useless in fighting the Mongol counterattack.

“Of course, we won’t have those problems tomorrow. Our Big People can run any Mongol horse to death and have enough energy left to dance on its grave all night. Sir Grzegorz, it will be your men’s job tomorrow to hide that fact. Your Wolves will have the key role tomorrow.

“Your Wolves could easily defeat any Mongol force that faces you man to man, or perhaps horse to Big Person, but then we would only get the diversionary force. The main Mongol force will scatter if they think they are losing, and we don’t want to be chasing them all over Mongolia engaging in small firefights, so tomorrow we will bait them into chasing us.

“This meeting will be a short one, but you each face a long evening because your orders for tomorrow require careful coordination and once the attack starts, we will be moving too fast for radio carts to keep up and even too fast for message runners. Tomorrow depends upon everyone knowing his job and doing it on time without orders.

“The order of march tomorrow will be a little different than usual. We’ll move as one unified body spread out across the landscape. The Wolves under Sir Grzegorz will lead the way. All of the Wolves need to travel together spread across the front of the column. As I said, they are the key to our success.

“Sir Wladyclaw, your mounted infantry will follow the Wolves. Place all little space between them and the Wolves. Intersperse enough mobile infantry between the machine gun carriers to provide support and cover when the battle starts. I would suggest about ten men to support each gun.

“Reserve about a fifth of your men to guard the baggage train, artillery and wagon mounted guns. They’re going to get left behind if the battle goes as planned and we don’t want them left without defense.

“Baron Kowalski, you’ll take command of your artillery and all the wagon mounted guns. Sir Wladyclaw will leave you a contingent of mounted infantry. When the Mongol chase starts, your job will be to guard our baggage train. Don’t try to keep up. Circle the wagons, set up a strong defensive perimeter and then use your best judgment to decide when, or if, to move forward to join the rest of us.

“If the Mongols act as they usually do, there will be a frontal attack early in the day. The Wolves will take them on. Sir Grzegorz, try not to kill all of them, as we want them to think that their plan is working. You must impress on your men that this part is play acting, very important play acting. The Mongols will break off and seem to retreat. The Wolves will lead the chase. Keep close enough to them to discourage their artillery but carefully do NOT catch up to them. If you catch them before they rejoin their main group, we’ll be chasing Mongols for weeks. Scream, yell, shoot guns, and look as if you are hell bent on battle, but no not catch them.

“Sir Wladyclaw, your men will follow. They must not intermingle with the Wolves because they have a different job to do. Stay close enough at first to look as if you are trying to keep up, but immediately begin to drift back until there at least three gross yards between your men and the Wolves. Try to look tired, in case the Mongols are watching.

“If the Mongols are true to form, they will link up with their main force, jump on fresh horses and counter attack. At that moment, two things have to happen simultaneously. The Wolves must put up a token resistance and then retreat. Behind them, Sir Wladyclaw’s men will dismount, assemble their machine guns and set up a fire line over as wide an area as they can cover.

“The Wolves will lead the Mongols right back to you. As soon as the Wolves pass the fire line, the machine guns can open up on the Mongols. Take lots of bullets. You’ll have a lot of targets. Everyone will pull up behind the fire line and wait for the machine guns to do their work. When they are done, we counterattack. The Wolves will sweep right, half the mounted infantry will sweep left, and I will lead the rest of the infantry up the center.

“The two flanking columns have the most important job. They need to move fast, surround the remaining Mongols and kill them before they can scatter.

“When the battle is over, I want to move on quickly to
Karakorum before they have time to react. It is a hard gross miles ride, but if the battle goes well we can do it tomorrow.

“Now you gentlemen have a hard night ahead of you. This entire operation must be coordinated without radio wagons or runners or even signal flares. Every officer must know his part perfectly before he beds down tonight.

“Drill them in the moves. The Wolves fight the Mongols initially while the Mounted Infantry holds back. Everyone chases the Mongols, but the Wolves take the lead while the machine gun carriers hold back enough to give themselves time to set up a firing line. The Wolves try to look surprised then the main force attacks them and pretends to retreat. No one fires a weapon until the Wolves are safely behind the fire line.

“Sir Grzegorz, you have the hardest job tonight. The Wolves will lead the attack because they are our elite force and they have earned the honor, but they are not good at holding back and have had no practice even pretending to retreat. You must convince them that this is a clever and honorable trick. Stress the humor in the situation, talk about the look on the Mongol faces when they run into the machine guns, but convince them any way you can to follow the orders.”