English.”
If a quarter of what the Soviet radio and newspapers were saying was true-always an interesting question, as Anastas Mouradian had reason to know-the Nazis were doing their level best to smash the English expeditionary force for presuming to change sides. And, as any Soviet citizen had reason to know, the Nazis’ level best was liable to be entirely too good.
“Do not-I repeat, do not-bomb English positions,” Tomashevsky went on. “English soldiers are crossing the Soviet lines. They will be repatriated so they can rejoin the struggle against Fascism. English troops will mark their positions with Union Jacks spread out on the ground.”
All sorts of interesting questions occurred to Stas on account of that. The Union Jacks might ward off Soviet bombers, but they’d surely attract the Luftwaffe. Which worried the English more? And how would those soldiers get back to their homeland? By sea from Murmansk or Arkhangelsk, running the U-boat gantlet? Or would they go down through Persia and take ship there… again, running the U-boat gantlet?
“Questions?” Tomashevsky asked.
Stas’ hand went up. Tomashevsky pointed to him. The Armenian didn’t ask any of those questions. He knew he wouldn’t get an answer for them. No, the one he did ask was purely practical: “Excuse me, comrade Colonel, but what do we do if we suspect the Germans are setting out Union Jacks to keep us from bombing them?”
“Bomb those positions,” the squadron commander answered. “But you’d better be right if you do. Our superiors will not be happy if they hear reports from the English that the Red Air Force attacked them.”
You’ll end up in the gulag if you bomb Englishmen. Mouradian had no trouble working out the underlying meaning there. By the looks on the faces of the men around him, neither did they.
When he and his bomb-aimer went out to their Pe-2, the young Karelian said, “We’ll have to be careful about what we hit.” He wanted to make sure Stas got it.
“Yes, I figured that out, thanks,” Mouradian answered dryly. Ivan Kulkaanen nodded back. His expression remained serious, and he seemed not the least bit embarrassed. Staying out of the gulag was important business, at least as important as fighting the foreign invaders.
Sergeant Mechnikov greeted his superiors with, “So it’s back to bombing the Nazis, is it? Well, the bombs don’t care whose heads they fall on.” Plainly, he didn’t care whose heads he dropped them on. And why should he? His work stayed the same no matter who the enemy was.
One of the crews had FOR STALIN! painted on its Pe-2’s fuselage in big red letters, right behind the Soviet star. Did that make them more likely to be reckoned politically reliable? Or did it just make them more likely to get shot down? If it made both more likely, did the one protect more than the other endangered?
Soviet life was full of interesting questions.
The Pe-2 jounced down the unpaved runway and climbed into the air. “A lot more power than the old SB-2,” Stas remarked as he leveled off.
“Well, I should hope so!” Kulkaanen exclaimed.
“It was a hot plane once upon a time,” Mouradian said. “One of these days, this beast will be just as obsolete.”
“Oh, sure,” the bomb-aimer said. “That’s the way things work.” He took it for granted. If his narrow, New Soviet Man-style soul held any room for nostalgia, he wouldn’t be so weak as to show it.
I’m supposed to be a New Soviet Man, too, Stas thought. For some reason, the indoctrination hadn’t taken with him, the way a smallpox vaccination sometimes didn’t. He wondered what had gone wrong in his case. Maybe it was just that he was an Armenian. He wasn’t so good at swallowing things whole as most Russians were… although plenty of his countrymen were, or at least seemed to be, ideal New Soviet Men and Women.
A few badly aimed rounds of antiaircraft fire came up at them as they droned southwest. They were still over terrain the Red Army held. Some New Soviet Men down below feared they belonged to the Luftwaffe. That made those nervous gunners New Soviet Idiots, but it happened on almost every mission.
Sergeant Mechnikov expressed his opinion of the antiaircraft crews through the speaking tube. The Chimp couldn’t have put it better. Mouradian wondered how-and whether-Kuchkov was doing these days.
What should have been the front was mostly confusion. English troops were crossing the Soviet line. Red Army men were rushing in to take their places and tear a hole in the enemy position. The Germans were doing their damnedest not to let any of that happen.
Bombs burst among the English positions. Stas looked around, wondering whether some of his squadronmates were dropping too soon. But those bombs didn’t come from Soviet planes. The Luftwaffe had bombers in the neighborhood, too: Mouradian spotted two stacked V’s of Do-17s.
The Flying Pencils were unmistakable, and not just because of the yellow band the Nazis painted on the fuselages of their Ostfront aircraft. No one else built bombers with such skinny bodies. Even the Germans used that Flying Pencil nickname for their Dorniers.
No matter how slim the Do-17s were, they didn’t perform much better than the USSR’s obsolescent SB-2s. Stas’ current mount could fly rings around them. The Pe-2 was pretty skinny, too, since it was originally intended as a heavy fighter. And so… Stas swung the Pe-2 into a sharp right turn.
“What the-?” Kulkaanen exclaimed.
“I’m going to get after those Germans,” Stas answered.
A moment later, another startled question came from his radio earphones. He gave the squadron CO the same answer. Several silent seconds followed as Lieutenant Colonel Tomashevsky considered it. At last, he said, “Our mission is to keep the Fascists from harassing the English now that they’ve come to their senses. You’re doing that. Good luck.”
“Spasibo,” Stas said dryly. He noticed that none of the other pilots was peeling off to attack the Dorniers. That made his own job harder. It also made his Russian comrades as imaginative as so many oysters. He chuckled sourly. Tell me something I didn’t already know, he thought.
One of the things he did already know was which Flying Pencil he wanted: the last and highest in the second V. That was the fellow least able to protect himself, and also the one whose buddies could help him least.
The Do-17’s pilot and crew didn’t notice him till he was almost close enough to open up. Only one machine gun at the back of the cockpit would bear on him. He had two forward-firing machine guns, and two 20mm cannon to go with them. As tracers whipped past the Pe-2, he watched chunks fly off the German bomber’s wing. Flame licked, caught, spread. The Dornier went into a spin the pilot hadn’t a prayer of controlling.
Kulkaanen whooped. “Good shooting!” he yelled.
“Thanks.” Stas wanted more German planes. But the Flying Pencil he’d attacked must have radioed a warning to its friends before it went down. The rest of the Do-17s dove for the deck as fast as they would go. He might have caught them had he chased them. Then again, 109s might be on the way to give them a hand. A Pe-2 could give a good account of itself against a Messerschmitt, but it wasn’t something you wanted to try unless you had no choice.
He did have a choice, and made it-he flew back toward the rest of the Soviet bombers. He also had a mission to fulfill. Even though he’d shot down the German plane, he still needed to do that. Orders were, and always would be, orders.
To say Hideki Fujita was not a happy man was to prove the power of understatement. He’d got demoted to corporal for letting the three Americans escape from Pingfan, and he’d got a hell of a beating besides. Then, when neither Japanese nor Manchukuan patrols managed to stumble across the white men on the loose, he got another beating, this one worse than the first.
Adding insult to injury-literally-he remained on watch at the Americans’ compound. His superiors left him in no doubt about what would happen to him if any more Yankees got away. That would be the last mistake he was ever allowed to make.
Self-preservation made him tighten things up even more than was usual at Pingfan. The Americans’ compound ran by the clock, as if it were a factory cranking out Fords. Any prisoner in there who was late for a roll call or a lineup or even slow in bowing to a Japanese guard got pounded on with fists and boots and rifle butts.
Fujita would have done worse than that to them had the scientist-officers who ran Pingfan not made it plain they needed the Americans in relatively good shape. That disgusted him. He couldn’t even wallop the Yankees as hard as his own people had walloped him-some of his bruises were a long time fading. Where was the fairness in that?
