Winter Warriors

groups puzzled Captain Dedmon. It seemed as if just as a crew got experienced enough to handle their big birds in the Arctic conditions of the Air Bridge, they would vanish, posted away to some other group. The official explanation was that they were assigned to crew training; giving new pilots some insight into the handling characteristics of the C-99 before they came up here to fly the Bridge.

It seemed as if more than enough experienced crews were being reassigned to train the number of C-99 crews needed up here though. There were rumors that more C-99 units were being formed and sent to the Pacific; used to move supplies and troops around. Dedmon knew for a fact that every so often a C-99 would turn up with a load of supplies made in Australia. Equipment that had been produced in Australian factories but paid for by the U.S. and charged against Russia’s Lend-Lease account. So perhaps that was where the crews were going. It would make sense, another Air Bridge lifting supplies up from Australia. With the C-99’s range and payload, almost anything could make sense.

Alongside the transport, a flock of ambulances were already following Arctic Express ready to pick up part of its cargo. That was another reason why Dedmon had brought his aircraft in carefully. The lower deck was full of casualties, almost 150 of them with doctors and nurses moving as best they could between the litters. Normally the faster C-54s were used for casualty flights but there had been a rush of evacuation cases. Arctic Express had been available so she’d been loaded up with the wounded soldiers. Another 150 passengers were on the upper deck. They were men coming home on leave. In a week’s time, they’d be on their way back to the Russian Front.

Dedmon swung off the runway, onto the taxiway, following the orange and black jeep that was showing him the way. As he cleared the long tarmac strip, he could see a C-99A at the other end starting to move, the first step in its long flight to Russia. He guessed that the troops on the upper deck would be watching, knowing that all too soon, they’d be on a flight just like it. The U.S. had been supporting its armies in Russia for three years and had got it down to a fine art. The heavy equipment went by sea; the men were flown in.

The jeep broke right, onto the hardstand and Dedmon followed it. Arctic Express’s tires squealed as he made the turn. Then, the rumble of the nose doors opening started as soon as the engines behind the wings spooled down. The casualties on the lower deck would already be the centers of a rush to get them off the aircraft and on their way to hospital. The very fact they were on this flight meant that their wounds were serious enough to be flown back to the Zone of the Interior, not treated in Russia. Dedmon’s thoughts were interrupted by the curious throbbing snarl that was the C-99’s trademark. The C-99A he’d spotted a moment earlier was already lifting off; its flaps pulling up and its undercarriage retracting as it set off to Russia. Behind it, a C-54 was already taking its place at the end of the runway. Its crew did their final checks before they left, probably for Anchorage, then Anadyr and down to Khabarovsk or one of the dozens of smaller strips that were spreading across Siberia.

The flight deck crew finished their shut-down checks and Dedmon signed the chit that handed his aircraft over to its ground crew. They’d take responsibility for her; get her prepped and ready for the next flight out.

“Anything special, Sir?” The crew chief tapped the clipboard reflectively. There had been a time when each crew had its own chief and own ground crew but that had all been changed. Now, maintaining the aircraft flying the Air Bridge was done on a production line basis. If a specialist’s services weren’t needed on one aircraft, then he’d be shifted to one where he was. That simple change had quadrupled the availability of the transports.

“No, Chief. She’s behaving real well. Like a true Lady.” Dedmon signed the remaining dockets and stretched himself out of his seat. His back and legs were stiff; it took a long time to get from Khabarovsk to Seattle at under 250 miles per hour. The navigators did a fantastic job on these flights. Before the Air Bridge had been set up, nobody had even guessed at the problems involved in making flights this long.

Inside the terminal, Dedmon’s crew started to disperse. That was another slightly odd thing about the Air Bridge. A lot of the pilots were the older, more experienced types, about half were already married with families. His co-pilot, Jimmy York, broke away to where his wife was waiting. Dedmon did a slight double-take at that. When they’d left, Susan York had been a blonde; now her hair was jet black. He’d heard there’d been some problems on the East Coast but that didn’t reach out here did it?

“Bob? Can I have a word with you for a minute?” Colonel Sutherland was almost running across the base building. Another slightly older man, a holdover from the pre-war Army Air Corps. “You’re going out in two days?”

“Guess so, Sir. Haven’t seen the orders yet.” It was a fair bet though. It took two days to turn the big, complex C-99 around and get her ready for another long haul to Russia.

“Take my word for it, you will be. A cargo of aircraft tires, I think. Look, I’m appointing you my new Operations Officer for the group.”

Dedmon mentally paused. “Tommy Kincaid’s all right?” Enough aircraft were lost on the Air Bridge; that was why the wings and tail were painted bright orange-red. Made it easier to spot a wreck in the snow.

“Oh, he’s all right, sure enough. Got his orders out yesterday, going to another group so they say. Why can’t they just let us settle down? I can’t be expected to run a transport group when my best crews keep getting transferred out. You’ll be gone soon; mark my words. Anyway, I want you to take over as Operations.”

Dedmon smiled his thanks and watched Sutherland scurry off. Why hadn’t Sutherland had his transfer orders yet? The slightly insubordinate thought made Dedmon smile as it crossed his mind.

Somewhere on the Kola Peninsula, Heading South.

“They’re catching up fast.” Bressler was right. Marosy knew it although he would rather not admit the fact. The Germans had started closing in once they’d got out of the deep snow in the valley. Now here, in the trees, they were moving a lot more quickly than the two American airmen.

“Might be time to pick our ground, Bill.” Marosy looked at the trees. There wasn’t much cover; the pine trees tended to kill off undergrowth. “There’s some rougher ground over there. It’ll give us some cover.”

Bressler winced. The day had been quite a come-down, from a semi-automatic 75mm cannon to a pair of .38 revolvers. There was a grim joke about those .38s. According to the aircrew, their only use was to make sure the Germans came in shooting. Getting shot was a lot less painful than slowly strangling on the end of a rope. “Won’t it be better to get a little further south, John? We can try and give these buggers the slip at least. Once we make a stand, it’s all over.”

Marosy tried to make his mind up but the cold was seeping into him. In the end, it wasn’t the possibility of getting away that decided him but a flat crack and an eruption of snow around them. The lead Germans had caught up, almost.

“Too late, can’t even get to the rocks. Down there, now.” The two airmen dived into a slight dip, one that offered only a bare margin of shelter. Even as they hit the bottom, bruising limbs on the rocks that were under the snow, more shots echoed around them. It was indeed a very bare margin of shelter.

There were more than a dozen Germans, moving quickly through the trees towards them. Marosy drew his pistol and cursed the Air Force that bought these weak and useless .38 revolvers when they could have had the Colt Ml911s. It was as if the Air Force had to consciously reject everything that its once-parent Army had selected. There was a short lull in the German fire as their troops moved forward. Marosy knew what was in their mind. They had a chance to get their hands on two of the hated fighter-bomber pilots that had first made their lives a misery and then tried to end it by dousing them in napalm. They were concentrating on that objective and he intended to make sure they didn’t achieve it by capturing this A-38 crew alive.

His .38 shot sounded feeble in the pine forest but Marosy was astonished by the result. At least three Germans had gone down. Even less explicable was that two quickly joined them, great blotches of red erupting over their white coveralls. At that point, Marosy was suddenly aware that the gunfire had changed, there was a staccato clatter of rifle fire but with it, a ripping noise that was far faster than any machine gun Marosy had ever heard. The Germans were cut down by the ambush. A few trying to retreat backwards through the trees but the gunfire followed them. They never made more than a few feet.

After the deafening sound of the gunfire, the woods seemed silent. Marosy and Bressler felt they couldn’t move as they watched figures get to their feet from a ragged L-shape that surrounded the obliterated German unit. Marosy raised his hands and called out “American pilots.”

One of the ski troops emerging from their positions called back. “We know.”

The man walked across while the rest of the troops started to check the dead bodies of the Germans. Out of the corner of his eye, Marosy saw one man dip his fingers in the blood of a German and smear it on the face of a