“These are the right woods, aren’t they?” Rudel asked through the speaking tube. He wanted to make certain he didn’t do anything idiotic.
Sergeant Dieselhorst’s quick “You bet, sir” went a long way toward reassuring him. Dieselhorst might not respect the Fuhrer as much as he should, but he was the kind of man who went to extraordinary lengths to keep from endangering anybody on his own side. Sure enough, he went on, “The river curls behind the trees and then goes into them, just like it does on the map. For a change, the map and the landscape match up great. We’re where we ought to be, all right.”
“Good. If I put the bombs in amongst the trees, then, they’ll come down on top of the Russians,” Hans-Ulrich said. Using Stukas for a job ordinary bombers might have done wasn’t efficient. A blind man could see that. But if no ordinary bombers could be spared, bombs from Stukas were better than nothing-as long as they landed where they were supposed to.
He yanked hard on the bomb-release lever. The explosives under the Ju-87’s wings and attached to the fuselage’s midline fell away. He watched the bombs tumble down toward the treetops-but only for a moment, because Sergeant Dieselhorst’s rear-facing machine gun suddenly gave forth with a long burst. “A Rata! A fucking Rata!” Dieselhorst yelled.
The names Marshal Sanjurjo’s soldiers and their German allies had hung on Russian fighters in the Spanish Civil War stuck, even if the Germans were facing them thousands of kilometers from Spain these days. Biplane Polikarpovs were Chatos; the shape of the cowling for their radial engines made the nickname fit.
Later Polikarpov monoplanes also had flat noses, but the Spaniards and Legion Kondor flyers called them Ratas — Rats-to distinguish them from the biplane fighters. They were no match for a Bf-109. When you flew a Ju-87, though, that seemed much less comforting.
Bullets slammed into the Stuka from behind. The Rata flashed past and swung into a tight turn, obviously intending to make another pass, this time from dead ahead. No matter how grossly inferior to a 109 the Polikarpov fighter was, it could outrun and outmaneuver a dive-bomber as if the Junkers plane were nailed in place in the sky.
Rudel did everything he could. He fired bursts from his twin forward-facing 7.92mm machine guns. He tried to turn away from the ugly little monoplane with the big red stars on its green-painted fuselage. The Rata looked as if it were homemade, possibly by someone who didn’t know much about airplanes. But Hans-Ulrich might have been trying to fly a rooster against a hawk.
A bullet scarred the Stuka’s windscreen. If that hadn’t been made of thick armor glass, the round would have scarred Rudel, too, or more likely left him too dead to heal and scar. More rounds hit the armored engine compartment and the wing. Even if the engine was armored, the instrument panel screamed that the Ju-87 was losing fuel at a hideous rate and overheating even faster. Some of those rounds got home despite the protection.
The engine coughed, farted, ran smoothly for a few seconds, and then coughed again. Smoke started pouring out of it.
“You there, sir?” Sergeant Dieselhorst sounded worried, and with good reason, too.
“I’m here,” Hans-Ulrich answered. “I was hoping you were.”
“We going to have to bail out?”
“Well…” Hans-Ulrich didn’t want to say yes. German parachutes left a lot to be desired, even if merely having a parachute would have made a pilot from the last war jealous. The idea of coming down near-or maybe among-the Ivans didn’t thrill him, either. But the engine coughed one more time, then crapped out altogether. A Stuka glided better than a brick, but not a whole lot better. Sometimes the outside world answered questions for you. “Yeah, Albert, we’ve got to bail out.”
Dieselhorst tried to make light of it. “Not like we’ve never done this before, right?”
“Right.” Rudel’s voice sounded hollow, even to him. They’d been shot down once before, over France. Had the poilus caught them, they probably would have been taken prisoner. No guarantees with the Ivans, none at all.
But if they didn’t get out now, they were guaranteed dead. Pilot and rear gunner had separate sliding cockpit canopies. Maybe that wasn’t such a terrific design feature. If one of them got stuck…
They didn’t, not this time. And neither Hans-Ulrich nor Dieselhorst mashed himself to strawberry jam by hitting the tail as he scrambled free of his enclosure. Nothing left to do but fall, yank the ripcord, and hope. Later, Rudel realized he should have done some praying while all that was going on. He consoled himself by remembering he was just a trifle busy at the time.
Whump! When the chute filled with air, it felt as if a mule kicked him right in the chops. His vision grayed out for a moment. Then color and motion came back to the world.
He floated downward. Off to his left, Sergeant Dieselhorst waved to him from under another silk canopy. Hans-Ulrich waved back. He yanked on the lines to spill wind from one side of the canopy and steer himself away from the Red-infested woods. He also anxiously looked around for that Rata. Russian fighter pilots had the charming habit of machine-gunning helpless parachuting German flyers. It wasn’t sporting, but they didn’t care. To his relief, the Rata was nowhere in sight.
Russian soldiers on the ground did fire at him and Dieselhorst. A bullet thumped through the taut silk above him. If the hole turned into a tear… He’d regret that all the way down, but not afterwards. He didn’t worry about a bullet thumping through him till he’d almost reached the ground. He wondered why the devil not. Stupidity came to mind.
As the ground rushed up below him, he had to worry about his landing. He’d sprained an ankle-only luck he hadn’t broken it-the last time he came down in a chute. He didn’t want to be out of action for weeks now. He bent at the knees and at the waist, as training suggested. Another Russian bullet cracked past him, too close for comfort. Training never talked about distractions like that.
Thud! He made it. Not a pretty landing, but the moving parts all seemed to work. He cut himself free of the parachute, then grabbed for his Luger-soldiers were loping toward him. But his hand fell back: they wore Feldgrau, and helmets of a familiar shape.
Now-did they realize he was a countryman? “Good job!” one of them yelled, waving. Hans-Ulrich grinned and waved back-they did. He looked around. Albert Dieselhorst was free of his chute and on his feet, too. They’d be flying again as soon as they got a new bus.
Chapter 18
Stas Mouradian’s latest airstrip lay not far in front of Smolensk. The Germans and their allies kept coming forward, despite everything the Red Army and Air Force could do to stop them. If Smolensk fell… Stas wasn’t a member of Stavka, the Soviet General Staff, but he could see how bad that would be. Smolensk was the great bastion on the road to Moscow.
If Moscow fell, the game would be up. He could see that, too. Maybe Stalin would find refuge somewhere beyond the Urals. Having traveled the width of the USSR, Stas knew how vast the country was. But could you keep fighting with your capital gone? Would anyone follow your orders if you tried?
But that was a worry for another day, probably a worry for another year. The red flag with the gold hammer and sickle still flew over Smolensk. The swastika was still hundreds of kilometers from Moscow. That Stas could wonder what would happen if the capital fell said things weren’t going the way Soviet authorities wished they would.
It wasn’t that serious yet. Maybe it wouldn’t get that serious. But if Stalin hadn’t been greedy, if he hadn’t decided he could take Wilno away from Poland on the cheap, the war between the USSR and the Reich might well have stayed a war in name only. Till Smigly-Ridz asked Hitler for help, the Soviets and the Nazis couldn’t get at each other without violating some buffer state’s neutrality. That would have been more dangerous than it was worth.