“No!” screamed Tanaka. He had been double-crossed. Years of painstaking research had vanished. Someone had stolen his work.
Lieutenant Natalya Tarasova looked out the bubble canopy of her Yak-1b fighter aircraft. All she could see for miles were clouds and more clouds. Cursing her luck, she turned her head and saw her wingman, who, like her, was a female fighter pilot assigned to the Red Air Force’s 590th Fighter Aviation Regiment. Both women had scored kills over Hungary earlier in the year, making them unique among the mostly young and untried men of the regiment as they had at least seen combat. Nicknamed the Angel of Death by her co-pilots, Tarasova may have been barely nineteen years old, with straw-blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, but she was the best pilot in the regiment and no one from the colonel on down doubted her hatred of the enemy. Originally flying cover for the soldiers landing on islands to the north of Matua, the pilots were now free to scour the skies for any Japanese planes that may have been foolishly sent to try to stem the Soviet advance.
Tarasova peered down at her fuel gauge and saw that they would soon have to turn back and head for home. Swearing to herself in frustration, Tarasova couldn’t believe that her aviation regiment hadn’t seen a single Japanese plane since the invasion of the Kuril Islands had begun. She had two kills to her name and was eager to bring down three more planes before the war ended, so she could become part of a small but elite fraternity of female aces. Seeing that her day would probably end in frustration, Tarasova was about to tell her wingman that they needed to head home, when, through the clouds, she spotted something. Her heart began to beat faster. She turned her head so she could see better. A smile soon formed on her face. Flying just below them was a Japanese transport plane, trying to use the clouds for cover.
“Oksana, look down,” said Tarasova into her radio handset.
With a wave of her hand, Oksana indicated that she also saw their prey.
As they had practiced many times before, Tarasova took the lead as her plane, like an eagle, dove out of the sky, while Oksana formed up slightly back, always ready to help should she need to. A second later, Tarasova saw the transport plane fill her gun sight. Depressing the trigger on her small steering wheel, she felt her fighter’s 20mm cannon and 12.7mm machine gun fire in unison. Tracers, like long, red lines cutting through the air, streamed toward her target. The plane shuddered slightly as she fired off a five-second burst into the fuselage of the Japanese plane.
Tanaka was about to stand up and order the pilot to turn the plane around, when the fuselage of the plane violently erupted inward. Bullets and long, razor-sharp splinters of metal tore through the aircraft as if it were paper. Professor Kase died instantly when a 20mm cannon round tore through the plane and struck him in the midsection, cutting him in two. Blood flew everywhere, making Tanaka cringe as far back as he could in his seat. The noise of bullets tearing through the plane was deafening. Tanaka screamed in fear and brought his hands up to block the terrifying noise. As quick as it happened, the attack stopped. As he looked out of his blood-splattered window, his heart sank when he saw two Soviet fighters dive straight past their transport plane, missing them by only a couple of meters as they disappeared into the clouds.
In the cockpit of the doomed plane, the young Japanese pilot broke out in a cold sweat. His mouth went dry with fear. He hadn’t expected to have to fly for his life. Remembering his flight school training, he banked hard right and dove straight down, hoping to lose their attackers. A moment later, he looked out of the side window in his cockpit; a feeling of dread seeped into his tired body. He was far too inexperienced to tangle with the two fighter planes that were undoubtedly lining themselves up for another attack. He barely knew how to fly the plane, let alone any combat maneuvers that might help him shake their attackers.
In the back of the plane, Tanaka grasped for whatever he could to stop himself from flying about inside the rapidly diving plane. He felt his stomach rise up into his chest. Fear filled his mind. His palms became sweaty. He had never been so terrified in his life. Looking over his shoulder, Tanaka saw that the army major had also been hit during the attack. A long, deep gash cut into the dying man’s chest; bright red blood bubbled out of the wound. All of a sudden, the plane shuddered in the air as the left-hand engine began to spew a long trail of dark, oily smoke behind it. Tanaka wasn’t a pilot, but he knew that they no longer had any chance of escape with only one undamaged engine. He closed his eyes and prayed that the end would come quickly. With shaking hands, he reached into his briefcase, pulled out the picture of his parents, and held it tight to his chest. If he was going to die, he didn’t want to die alone.
With a wide grin on her face, Tarasova watched as the doomed Ki-56 transport plane tried to turn back toward Matua Island. She knew it was a futile gesture on the pilot’s behalf; the damage she had inflicted on the plane was too much for it to remain aloft for much longer. Deciding that she had best finish the transport plane off before her fuel gauge slipped any lower, Tarasova deftly brought her fighter in line just behind the transport plane. She looked through her weapons’ sight and fired off another long burst from her machine guns. She watched as the Japanese plane banked over and then plummeted out of the sky straight at the dark green waters of the Pacific Ocean barely a hundred meters below it. A few seconds later, the plane struck the water as hard as if it had hit land, shattering apart. The ocean quickly wrapped itself around the doomed Ki-56 and then like an unseen hand, it pulled the plane beneath the waves. The plane slowly began its long descent into the depths of the ocean. Not even bothering to see if there were any survivors, Tarasova broke radio silence and informed her base that she had scratched a Japanese transport, giving her three kills. Turning back to the north, Tarasova and her wingman flew home without giving any thought as to what had happened today and whom they had killed; it was something that would return decades later, threatening to bring about a new and even deadlier conflict.
2
Death stalked the night.
The tropical downpour stopped as suddenly as it had begun, replaced by a warm wind that raced through the lush jungle valley. Under a dark, cloud-filled sky, a brown-haired capybara warily stepped out from under the branches of a low-hanging tree and raised her snout up, sniffing the night air; behind her, three small pups rooted in the wet ground looking for food. Something unseen — but very real — in the dark told the capybara to be wary. She had already lost one pup to an ocelot earlier in the day, and she wasn’t in the mood to run into any more hungry predators. The night came to life with the sound of gunfire. She had heard that sound before and didn’t need to be told that trouble was coming. With a loud grunt, she turned about and led her litter back away from the path just as two people emerged out of the dark, running for their lives down the narrow trail.
Stopping for a few seconds to catch their breath, the two rain-soaked people looked back over their shoulders, peering into the nearly pitch-black night, hoping that they had somehow managed to lose their pursuers in the thick tangle of trees. The sound of a flare rising up into the night told them otherwise. Realizing that they couldn’t stay where they were, together they turned and continued running down the slippery, mud-covered animal trail, knowing that to stop was to die. They ran as fast as their tired legs could carry them. Together they pushed on, tripping and stumbling over gnarled roots protruding up from the soaked ground. Barely able to see, they put their heads down, and together made their way down the winding trail.