Re: Blood and Iron

Chapter 730: Operation Sandgeist

The War Room smelled of ink, steel, and cigarette smoke.

Bruno sat at the head of the oval table, sunlight bleeding through the tall windows behind him.

Before him lay the dossier stamped Special Directive: Operation Sandgeist.

Across the table stood his circle: senior officers of the Imperial Army High Command, the heads of the Imperial Intelligence Bureau, and the Secretary of Public Order, the man responsible for shaping the Reich’s press and public morale.

No one spoke.

The photograph of General Patton’s corpse rested in plain view.

Bruno closed the file with deliberate calm.

“The Americans have lost their lion,” he said at last. “But they’ve gained a ghost.”

The director of intelligence, Admiral Reimann, cleared his throat.

“Field reports confirm chaos within their ranks. Entire convoys refuse to leave the coastal cities without armor support. They’ve begun referring to our commandos as the Ghosts of Algiers.”

The Secretary of Public Order gave a faint, calculating smile. “Shall we deny it, Reichsmarschall? Or give the legend room to breathe?”

Bruno’s gaze shifted to the wall map of North Africa, its red pins glinting in the lamplight. He spoke without looking up:

“We deny nothing. We confirm nothing. Fear grows best in silence.”

A ripple of acknowledgment moved around the table, quiet, restrained, professional.

“Let them believe the desert itself rejects them,” Bruno continued. “That the wind carries our bullets, and the sand buries their courage. Patton’s death will serve better as a myth than as a victory.”

Reimann slid a slim packet forward.

“Interceptions from their coastal headquarters,” he said.

“You’ll want pages three and five. They’re rotating officers on forty-eight hour schedules because junior staff refuse to drive the roads at night. Work crews in Oran and Casablanca report sabotage even when none has occurred; a tool misplaced becomes proof of infiltration; a tire burst becomes evidence of mines.”

“Their imagination is now our quartermaster,” Bruno said. “We should indulge it.”

A general from High Command tapped a knuckle on the table.

“With respect, Reichsmarschall, they are pushing more armor inland. Reconnaissance from Tlemcen shows their new Liberty tanks escorting supply columns. If they maintain that pace, they’ll have a forward depot established within the month.”

“And when they do,” Bruno said, “they will have tethered their tempo to steel and fuel in a desert that eats both. The harder they harden, the slower they move. What matters is not that they start building, but that they never finish.”

Bruno stared at the pictures of the tanks. Inspired by his own designs, over the course of decades the allied powers had worked together to create a tank that would have been an apex predator in 1945 of his past life.

But was now sadly obsolete compared to his own armor and munitions. A thought he couldn’t help but express with a slight tone of disdain in his voice.

“These so-called Liberty tanks we have seen coalescing in North Africa are not a threat to us. Over the years we have performed extensive testing of our Panzerfausts against our own Panzers, which are vastly superior, and found that anything without explosive reactive armor and composite hulls is dead in the water against a single well-placed shaped charge.”

Nobody dared to voice disagreement. Not because Bruno was intimidating but because they were all too aware of how frighteningly powerful a Panzerfaust was in the hands of an infantryman against all armor fielded across the globe save for their own.

The Secretary of Public Order folded his hands. Shifting the conversation back to a more proper topic.

“Rumors multiply when facts are scarce. If we say nothing, the Americans will eventually invent a proof that suits their needs: a name, a face, a single ’mastermind’ they can pretend to kill.”

“Good,” Bruno said. “Give them a shadow to bayonet. They will spill fuel and blood chasing it.”

A junior aide, new enough to still carry nervousness like a smell, spoke up.

“There is one request from the Army… sir. The Jagdkommandos ask for night-vision shipments prioritized to the Algerian detachments. Their after-action report notes that the Americans cling to daylight like a superstition. They’d like to make the superstition practical.”

“Approved,” Bruno said. “Send them our newest lenses and deny their existence in any ledger. If a quartermaster asks, they are mining lanterns.”

Night vision was a technology Bruno had been fostering early on. It primarily served on vehicles, armor, aircraft, and naval vessels.

But recent developments fostered early night vision scopes and goggles for the use of individual infantrymen.

They were similar in design to those that would have been wielded by elite forces during the Vietnam War of Bruno’s past life.

And these were now being spread to his own special operations forces as quickly as the factories could produce them.

Reimann turned a page.

“One more item. Allied radio traffic out of Halifax mentions retaliatory measures. They believe Patton’s death was the work of renegade bandits, pride, perhaps, but their senior staff do not. Washington is reorganizing convoy doctrine. They will escort labor crews with armor even within perimeter roads. Our estimates suggest every mile of road they attempt will demand five to guard. It is unsustainable.”

Bruno let the silence hang, then nodded once. “Then let us be sure they never escape the arithmetic.”

He stood. The chairs around the table creaked as the others rose with him.

“Your task is simple. Intelligence, feed their myths sparingly, and never twice the same way. High Command, give our hunters everything that helps them see what others cannot. Public Order, if asked about ’the Ghosts of Algiers,’ gives only a shrug and a cigarette. Men defend themselves against facts. They surrender to stories.”

The meeting dissolved into the quiet choreography of aides and ashtrays.

Files closed. Pens found pockets.

The photograph of Patton slid back into its sleeve without ceremony, as if the dead general were simply a receipt to be filed.

At the door, the Secretary of Public Order paused. “One caution, Excellency. The Americans are now in love with their grief. They will spend it. Grief makes mobs, but it also makes martyrs.”

Bruno’s expression did not change. “Then give them dessert enough to bury both.”

He left the War Room to the murmur of footsteps and the scraping of chairs. Outside, Berlin’s daylight was thin and methodical, the kind that keeps books balanced and trains punctual.