''One-Three-Five..............One Three Zero............One Two Five...........One Two Zero......... One One Five”
There was a lurch and the wheels screamed suddenly. “On the ground. Engines one to six, full reverse power. Argus, you missed ETA by 45 seconds. That's five bucks you owe the crew welfare fund.”
“First time in six months Sir.” His words were nearly drowned out by the roar as the six piston engines went into full reverse power, slowing the big bomber down. As it reached the start of the turn-offs to the taxiways, three jeeps came out from the side, one had a big “Follow Me” sign on its back, the others were armed with machineguns and took station either side of Texan Lady.
“Hey, look over there Sir. I didn't know the boss was going to be here.” Major Clancy was pointing at the side of the runway where General Tibbett's B-36, Enola Gay was parked in the dispersal area with her Hometown mates Bocks Car and The Great Artiste. Altogether, over a dozen B-36s were in dispersal, the whole area surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by Russian troops. He gestured at the wire, the guards and the two jeeps keeping station on the taxying bomber. “Those don't look too friendly.”
“Don't get the wrong idea. Moscow's been back in Russian hands for six months now and they're still a lot of hold-outs, deserters, bandits, you name it, loose out here. And you saw what's left of the city as we came in. There are people here who would kill for what we have in our galley. All this stuffs here to protect us, not to keep us in. This is your first trip to Russia isn't it Phil?”
“Yes Sir.”
“OK. You got the standard briefing then. Remember it. Few extra words of advice. When we get out, there'll be Russians meeting us with bread, salt and vodka. Take it, it’s a traditional welcome. All these people have got left is their pride and making us feel welcome is a big part of that. Something else to remember, these are just about the only people in the world who actually like us at the moment.”
The conversation broke off as Dedmon turned Texan Lady off the runway, onto the taxiway to the dispersal apron. They were passing a long line of Russian fighters, mostly piston-engined Lavochkin 9s and 11s but also a handful of the Yakovlev jets, a strange looking aircraft with its single jet engine hanging under the nose. Clancy searched his memory. Yak-17s, that was the designation.
He waved at the fighters. 'They any good Sir?”
“The Lavochkins? Damned good for piston-engined birds. They'll take down a German Ta-152 nicely, especially at low altitude. Against a B-36, they run out of steam 20,000 feet below us. The Yak jets are good little dogfighters, at least as good as the F-80, but they've got dreadfully short range. They top out just over 40,000 feet but they use so much fuel getting there, all they can do is go straight back down again. The Russians have the same problems the Germans had. They've hit the maximum power they can get out of a jet engine without some pretty advanced metallurgy and they don't have it. I hear our guys are working with them on that.”
“Sir, what did you mean these are the only people in the world who like us? We finished off the Nazis, didn't we?”
“Yeah, but the way we did it doesn't sit too well with an awful lot of people. Nobody's ever destroyed a whole country like that before and people are having a job getting their minds around it. At first people were happy enough to see the war was over, or so they thought, but it’s a year later now and they're looking at what we did to Germany and having second thoughts about it. And about us.”
“Don't they know what the Germans did? Are they insane, have they forgotten all of that?”
“For most of them, its second or third hand or even more remote. Just stories and old stories at that. Film of the destroyed cities in Germany is first hand and it's a new story, something they see today. And we have all the old questions coming up. Why should people at home be destroyed instead of the soldiers at the front? Why should people be killed when it’s their leaders who were responsible? All that stuff. The reality of what happened here is far away from them. The destroyed cities in Germany are on their cinema screens every week. So we ain't the world's most popular people right now. Whoops.”
Dedmon saw the “Follow Me” jeep break right and steered after it. He frowned for a second, he'd been late catching the change in direction and it seemed, just for a brief second, that Texan Lady had anticipated him, started the turn on her own before his own control inputs took effect. Imagination of course.
“Here, it’s different. The Russians know the Germans did, first hand, and they're still uncovering the worst of it. There isn't a family in Russia that hasn't lost members, some by the dozen. Did you know the Germans deliberately starved a million and a half Russian PoWs to death in 1941 alone? And that went on for six years.
“Take a look of those fighters. The one at the end there, Yellow-32. Painted on its nose. For Maritsa. Don't know who Maritsa was, might be his mother, his sister, his wife, daughter, whoever. But she was part of his family, she's dead and the Germans killed her. So every time that pilot kills a German he does it “for Maritsa'. Every one of those fighters has its own dedication. God knows what would have happened if the Russian Army had made it to Germany, with all the rage and hatred that has built up; they would have slaughtered everything in sight. It would have been a bloodbath.
“So of all people, the Russians understand what we did and why. And they honor us for it. They also remember something else, when they were fighting the Germans alone; we were the ones who came to help them. Oh, you and I know that there were other reasons for that and the Australians and Canadians were there as well, but to the Russians, we were what they saw. They reckon they owe us and anything they can do for us helps to pay off that debt. So, if you're offered anything as a gift, take it. And honor it. Just remember who gave it to you and a day or so later invite him on board for a sandwich.
“The only secrets we have here are in the bomb bay so there's nothing to worry about. And your guest will tell his grandchildren about the day he ate a sandwich on board the bomber that killed Berlin.”
Submarine Bunker, Faslane, UK
“Thank you for coming, Commander. How are you settling into Xena?”
“Very well Sir. She's a world different from the U-class or even the Vs of course. If we'd had them back in '45....”
“Indeed. Still, we've got them now. A few at any rate. You ready for sea, Commander?'“
“Sir. We've finished loading stores. Only four Mark Eights and a pair of the new anti-escort fish though. No reloads at all.”
“You won't be needing those. You'll be taking a boffin out for a ramble through the North Sea.” Commander Fox's face was suddenly seized by an expression of almost incoherent panic. Dark indeed were the tales of submarine commanders who had been assigned the task of taking boffins out on a ramble to gather information for their strange investigations. Some commanders so afflicted had never been quite the same afterwards, prone to inexplicable panic attacks and waking whimpering in the middle of the night. Fox himself remembered one such creature arriving for research purposes with seventeen trunkloads of instruments to be installed in Untiring. Then, twenty minutes before setting sail, demanding that three six inch diameter holes be drilled in the pressure hull. FOSM looked at him with a combination of amusement and sympathy. “Robert, you'd better join us in the Conference Room,”
The 'Conference Room' had once been the old German operations center and it still had a vaguely Teutonic air about it. Fox could imagine tine Kriegsmarine officers looking at the situation displays of the North Sea, the Arctic and the Northern Approaches while blonde German women auxiliaries moved the counters on the tables and brought the messages in from the U-boats. The Royal Navy had a similar operations center in Churchill, or had, it had been handed over to the Canadians now. Here, the operations table had been covered over with a cloth and there were charts scattered over it. Beside them, a character Fox thought of as being a typical scientific-looking fellow, was reading some sheets of data, his expression grim. Fox didn't like it when scientific-looking fellows had grim expressions. It usually meant nausea for somebody.