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North of the Aral Sea on April 25, torrential rain was pouring in. Streams mixed with melting snow and ice caused the water level of the Sheret River, which flows through Mount Akdem, to soar by two metres. Hundreds of simple wooden boats, large and small, were parked in the previously unnavigable river, and Soviet soldiers were hauling 122mm howitzers off the boats and transporting them to the top of the mountain by the primitive method of carrying horses. On the high ground, Lukin, dressed in a rubber raincoat, stood in the middle of the pile of corpses, and two battalions of Chinese soldiers lay in a mess in the bloody mud. In front of them and around them, there were several times the broken remains of Soviet soldiers who were being removed. On the left and right sides of the heights, a whole tank corps, a cavalry division, and five infantry divisions were erecting pontoon bridges to consolidate the victory.

"Comrade Commander, Commander Zhukov is here."

During the correspondent's reminder, Lukin turned his head and saw that Zhukov had climbed up the slope by stepping on the muddy road, and immediately after meeting, he held Lukin's hand: "Comrade Lukin, you fought this battle beautifully. With the enemy's methods, he fought back at the enemy. ”

Zhukov rarely boasted, but the sneak attack on the heights of Mount Akdem was really well fought. Taking advantage of the melting snow, rising rivers and torrential rains in April, Lukin broke through the line of defense by drifting down in a wooden boat at night. The entire offensive was almost similar to that of the Wehrmacht's crossing of Lake Balkhash, which not only took advantage of its familiarity with the environment and geography, but also played a tactic of returning the favor to the other. But Lukin had no expression on his face, on the contrary, he shook his head: "Comrade Zhukov, the price we paid is also very large. You see. He pointed his hand and looked solemn: "There is only one regiment, but it blocked the strong attack of our two divisions for a whole night, and at the cost of five thousand casualties, they finally ran about a battalion away." Very tenacious, tactical and disciplined, Comrade Zhukov. Our enemies this time are very, very difficult. ”

Unlike most of the Soviet military's top brass who were secretive about the Chinese Wehrmacht, Zhukov and Lukin were among the few servicemen who dared to speak positively of their opponents. In their opinion, what is inferior is inferior, there is nothing to hide, and only by clarifying the shortcomings can they know how to fight this war. But he did not think that the Chinese Defense Forces had reached the point of insolvency, like the high ground in front of them, as a newcomer, although supported by the locals, in terms of roots and familiarity with the environment, it was far inferior to the Slavic peoples who had been operating here for hundreds of years. So he lightly avoided the topic. He said: "Comrade Lukin, we should look forward, the post-war situation between Germany and France is becoming more and more favorable to us. ”

Lukin nodded, the Battle of France suddenly disrupted the map of Europe, and the German tanks were deep in the Great Plains of France. It means that the USSR could release at least half a million armed forces from Europe to Central Asia and the Caucasus. Coupled with a steady stream of recruits, he already has a chance for a full-scale counteroffensive, which is also the main factor in his surprise efforts to seize the high ground. Therefore, he immediately asked about the battle in the direction of Tashkent, knowing that as long as Tashkent is still there, then the Chinese defense forces on the opposite side will be pinned down by at least 600,000 troops, otherwise this counterattack will have to pay a greater price.

"I'm here to fight back." Zhukov waved his hand. Let the correspondent spread out the map, and the two of them squatted in the mud to study. "The latest news, they have already launched a general offensive on Samarkand yesterday, and there are only seven of our divisions here. It's hard to really block it, but it should be possible to delay it for four or five days. I also asked Comrade Apanashchenko, and he said that even if Samarkand was lost, he would still have 30 divisions and 5 international columns in his hands. He also armed the surrounding population, keeping the total number of troops at about 370,000. According to him. The fortified fortresses have managed to hold off the enemy, and the intensity of their attacks has been decreasing for a month. From the analysis of various signs, it is obvious that they do not have the means to deal with the fortified fortress, and the intelligence says that there is no artillery more than 305 mm in their country that can deal with the fortification, and the power of the bomb is too small in front of the fortified fortress, so even if we start looking for a way in the first place, it will take a long time, and this is our best chance!

After a winter, our supplies have been replenished, the snow and ice have melted, the roads have thawed, Comrade Stalin has ordered 35 divisions from the South-Western Military District, the Moscow Military District and the Don Military District to support us, and the first troops have arrived in Omsk. In this way, I was able to draw 15 divisions and 2 tank corps from Omsk and Petropavlovsk. My plan was that my 15 divisions and 2 tank corps would set off at once, join the 12 divisions of the Don Army group, which had arrived from Ufa, and cross south from the junction behind you. This will fool the enemy's aerial reconnaissance and make them think that these are the forces you have gathered to continue the attack. As soon as their attention was drawn here, I would attack Rezikazgan and Kyzylorda directly. You see, they have relatively weak forces here, stationed in Zhezikazgan are the two newly transferred infantry divisions of the Second Army and the Twenty-fourth Army, and Kyzylorda has only two divisions of the First Army and two Kazakh rebel divisions, and one Polish division is being assembled in Turkestan and can be transferred. Even with the Poles, there were only 12 divisions in total, including only two tank divisions, and the temporary military railway from Kyzylorda to Rzezkazgan had not yet been opened to traffic, so they could not quickly support each other. Therefore, as long as these two places can be occupied, the connection between the north and south of the Aral Sea can be cut off from the roots, Tashkent will be relieved and the enemy's forces in Urgench can be surrounded! ”

"Your job is to put on a posture to break through from here and draw the enemies of Karaganda and Pavlodar to you." Zhukov's finger drew a circle on the heights of Mount Akdem, and then a diagonal line pointed sharply at Zhezkazgan and Kyzylorda.

"Let's go, go back to headquarters."

Lukin also thought it was good, and immediately pulled Zhukov back to the command post to continue his research. After going to the command post to listen to the detailed offensive steps and objectives, he was more worried about the troops' ability to break through the front line. But Zhukov had his own approach: "Comrade Lukin, I have studied their offensive methods in detail, and most of the time they use the air force for front-line support, and tank clusters cover the infantry attack. In defense, they also relied on armored forces as support points, using aircraft to block the battlefield at 10 kilometers in the front line, and the infantry was responsible for the final position defense. In Navoi, for the first time, they used the tactic of infantry guiding tanks, but such tactics were not good in open field areas, so I believe they would use the most convenient method. ”

Knowing tactics and cracking tactics are two different things. The Wehrmacht's tank point infantry line ring defense tactics are perfectly matched, no matter which direction the assault needs to face flanking fire, plus the air force is 10-30 kilometers in front of the line of defense to do the battlefield blocking, it is easy to break up the assault force through strong firepower. In this way, when the soldiers rush to the position, they no longer have any swarm advantage, and they are easily cut and eaten by tanks and infantry. In response to this situation, Zhukov came up with a way to shorten the offensive distance. First of all, a tank army was used to break through to the flank desert, attract the air force, gather a large number of old tanks and armored vehicles, and take advantage of the opportunity of the decline in the frequency of aircraft sorties at night. Quickly transport infantry to the front of the line. At the same time, a large number of heavy artillery pieces were deployed behind 12 kilometers to cover and destroy the first-line positions with strong firepower, and when the first round of troops and tanks was consumed to tear apart the defensive line, the T34 tanks that were put into the main force were interspersed inward along the gap.

Lukin pondered for a while, Zhukov's short-range tactics were actually to actively sacrifice a large number of obsolete old tanks. Cover infantry to shorten the attack distance. This tactic would have been distressing last year, but with the arrival of thousands of T34 tanks per month in the European direction, it already has the capacity to consume. What's more, Zhukov already has 200 of the latest T34/57 tanks in his hands, and it is no longer the same as he was at once in the face of the 31 and 36 tanks on the opposite side.

So he immediately said: "You can go south from Asnata to the south of the Kurgalgin forest, which is so dense that you can avoid the reconnaissance of the planes." It takes three days to get to the Ultau Mountains. The altitude here is 500 meters, it is hilly, and if you can break through here, there is no bad terrain that can stop the tanks. ”

"Okay." After Zhukov wrote down the route, he solemnly handed over the latest password to Lukin: "This is the latest password for Moscow." In this counterattack, we need to change it every three days. ”

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"Report, Karaganda report, they found new signals."

In the communications and intelligence center of the Almaty theater of operations, a second lieutenant wearing a headset tears off a letter paper. After comparing the Tashkent signal that he had just received next to him, he quickly walked into the office behind him.

Within this intelligence center. Hundreds of non-commissioned officers in communications, mathematics, and cryptography are required to handle 5,000 communications a day, from the lowest white to the highest gold, and listen to radio and some wired telephone contacts on both sides of the battlefield. In addition to communications, it is also the intelligence center of the Central Asian theater, analyzing thousands of pieces of information every day, including the most important radio contacts of the Soviet army.

"The new signal appeared east of the Aral Sea two hours ago, and I have already compared that the telegram from Tashkent an hour ago has not yet used the new cipher." After the second lieutenant finished the report, he handed over the two copies of the signal spectrum to the major in the office. The major immediately signed his name after the comparison, wrote the word purple and returned it to the second lieutenant: "Purple, immediately forward it to Beijing and ask for decipherment." ”

Soon, a purple top-secret telegram with multiple layers of encryption, representing the highest level, flew to the back of Beijing's Ministry of National Defense, hidden in the Xishan Forest, by the General Directorate of Strategic Intelligence. Major Chi Buzhou, a cryptography expert at the Strategic Intelligence Agency, tore off the telegraph on the automatic receiver, glanced at it, and then ran quickly to the decipherment room. "Mr. Rozoki, the Soviets have changed the password again." In the office, several math and cryptography experts of different colors were busy, and Chi Buzhou walked up to Luo Zuoji, who had become the deputy leader of the cryptography team.

"Changed again?" After Luo Zuoji came to China, he immediately joined the cryptanalysis team of the General Directorate of Strategic Intelligence, and the Enigma cryptanalyzer he brought was also highly valued by Yang Qiu. With the exposure of the Katyn tragedy, he is already desperately serving China.

Luo Zuoji frowned, flipped through the records at hand and found that the password change was four days earlier than the normal weekly change of the Soviet army. In wartime, there are only two possibilities for such a sudden code, either by discovering that the enemy has deciphered his code, or by a new military operation. So he didn't dare to delay, and immediately took Chi Buzhou to take the elevator to the code-breaking office on the third floor of the basement.

The codebreaker is actually a large, open basement, the centerpiece of which is a transistor computer about the size of a car in the center. Since the birth of the Xingchen No. 1 computer, the 3010 computer team led by Hua Luogeng has been tackling day and night, and Yang Qiu has also poached a large number of transistor manufacturing talents in the economic crisis, put forward the topic of developing PN transistors, and finally came up with the finished product for the first time in 1937. Not to mention the benefits of transistors, the size of a computer is enough to make it dozens of times smaller. Compared with the original Xingchen No. 1, the Xingchen No. 3 in front of you is also a model that combines keyboard and punching, and it cannot be regarded as a real logic computer, but the computing speed is five times higher than that of Xingchen No. 1, the operation is more simplified, and the life is longer. Of course, the cost is also extremely expensive, and the price of a single unit is enough to purchase a Tarzan-class destroyer. The main reason is that it is not yet possible to break through the difficulty of engineering mass manufacturing of electron tubes, especially in high-temperature sintering furnaces, how to control the steps of integrating special substances into transistors has been solved in large-scale processing so far, so the transistors currently used are all manufactured in the laboratory, and the yield rate is less than 5%. Fortunately, it is a time of war at any cost, so the Ministry of Defense has purchased five units in one go, in addition to the aerospace, aviation and national air defense intelligence center, one is here, and the other is in the computer research center of the Wuhan National Defense University.

Solving ciphers is a complex calculation, and a computer built specifically for the Intelligence Bureau requires the use of more than a dozen methods, such as the Enigma cryptanalyzer, Professor Kazmaltz's calculation method, and Hua Luogeng's logical calculation method. Therefore, after the two arrived, dozens of staff members immediately entered the new signal through the huge and complex operation console keyboard to store the tape, and then put it into the special data box with the pre-made punching paper after the captured Soviet code. Each time a staff member stuffs a card full of holes, the workbench needs to perform a complex calculation.

The speed of addition and subtraction calculations of 25,000 times per second does not mean that the new cipher can be solved immediately, although each country has a core code when formulating the cipher, but the Soviet Union and even Eastern European countries have very strong mathematical ability, so after a night of continuous calculation, the preliminary analysis of some of the information contained in the new radio signal. It's partial, but it's enough to make a judgment.

"Major." Luo Zuoji handed the translated telegram to Chi Buzhou, grabbed the fast food delivered by himself and hurriedly ate two bites, and then threw himself into the analysis of this new cipher with everyone. For him, the emergence of the Xingchen-3 computer not only raised the Enigma cryptanalyzer they studied to a new level, but also opened a transparent window, so each decipherment work is actually a breakthrough in mathematics and computers.

Chi Buzhou also likes this kind of work, but he needs to hand over the deciphered telegram to Director Yan Baohang as soon as possible. He was a little comforted by the fact that 80 percent of the staff here were his partners, and the results of Luo Zuoji and other experts from other countries would eventually converge on the 3010 computer team in Wuhan