The Eastern Front(110)

No, Wojtowicz was almost certain that the USE authorities had been alerted by some misstep on the part of Morton, not Jozef himself. And they could torture the sergeant for eternity without learning where Jozef was living, because he'd never told him.

Still, he might be missing something. It was best simply to leave Wismar immediately, abandoning the possessions he had at the boarding room. Nothing there had any sentimental value; it was just practical stuff.

Jozef passed through the door and locked it behind him. He'd leave the key with the concierge on the way out of the hotel, as he always did. Excessive caution led merely to annoyance. Too little caution could lead to far worse places.

Such as the one Sergeant Morton was probably going to inhabit for the rest of his life. Assuming that life didn't end shortly at the end of a hangman's noose or in front of a firing squad.

Jozef's guess, though, was that the USE authorities would be satisfied with a life sentence. They might even be satisfied with the minimum sentence under USE law of twenty years for treason. Anyone who interrogated the sergeant would soon realize the man was every bit as dumb as he seemed. Jozef was quite certain that at no time during his dealings with Morton had it even occurred to the radio operator that the information he was passing on was for any purpose except the one he'd been told—improving the odds for grain speculators.

Sadly for Morton, so far as Jozef knew, the laws of the USE did not allow for a plea of innocent on account of imbecility. The laws of Poland certainly didn't, despite the astonishing concentration of imbeciles in its government.

Wojtowicz had never wished any personal ill on the American sergeant, but he'd always thought this day would probably come. So be it. His nation had not invaded the USE, after all. Poland was rather the victim of foreign aggression. If one of the aggressor's minor minions wound up dangling at the end of a rope, the nephew of the grand hetman of Poland and Lithuania would lose no sleep over the matter.





Chapter 35


Southwest of the Wolsztynr

Mike Stearns was irritated but trying not to show it. The last few days had put everyone's nerves on edge. As the crow flies, the distance from Zielona Góra to the town of Wolsztyn was about twenty-five miles. In good weather and with decent roads, an army could march that distance in a day and a half, two days at the outside. But they weren't crows, and the few roads had been in terrible condition. It had taken them three days to get to the town. Mike had pushed the last day's march into the evening, so they'd be able to get a couple of miles north of Wolsztyn. But from here, they still had maybe ten miles to go before they reached Gustav Adolf and his Swedish forces. Mike was going to try to cover that distance by late afternoon, but it was more likely that they wouldn't make until the following day.

At that, they were doing better than the First or Second Divisions, even though they'd had to come a longer way. Knyphausen and the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg had discovered—too late to do anything about it—that the area west of the Obra river in their vicinity had been turned into what almost amounted to a swamp. They were lucky if they moved their divisions four miles in a day.

They weren't going to be able to help Gustav Adolf in his coming battle. None of the USE divisions were. The way things looked now, the Third Division would be the first to arrive, but unless Koniecpolski decided not to launch an attack—and Mike could see no reason he would do so—they wouldn't get to Lake Bledno until after the battle was over.

According to the radio reports Mike had gotten, the king of Sweden had taken positions just south of the town of Zbąszyń, on the northeast shore of Lake Bledno. The weather had finally cleared and the planes had been back in the sky for the last two days, so they'd known where Koniecpolski's forces were. They'd arrived in Zbąszyń the night before and would surely be attacking the Swedes right about . . .

Now, Mike figured.

It was amazing how rapidly the grand hetman had gotten to Zbąszyń. Apparently, Koniecpolski had left his infantry and heavy artillery in Poznań and come south with just his hussars and light artillery. But that still gave him a third again as many men as the king of Sweden had with him. Maybe half again as many. Troop counts made from aircraft were only approximations.

True, all of the Swedish troops were now armed with SRG rifled muskets firing Minié balls. Some of their units, in fact, had copies of the French Cardinal breechloader that USE armories were now making. (It seemed fair enough to swipe the French design, seeing that they'd swiped it from the up-time Sharps rifle.)

The problem was that the officers and noncoms of Gustav Adolf's Swedish army were mostly old school veterans, set in their ways and slow to adjust to the new realities produced by the SRGs. That was quite unlike the situation in the USE Army, which had been created almost from scratch over the past two years. Some of the officers were hidebound, yes; but almost all of the sergeants were young men who'd recently volunteered. They didn't have any bad habits to get rid of.