Then he sang the praises of Stakhanovite shock workers shattering production norms in places like Magnitogorsk and Irkutsk. Boris believed at least some of that. Places like those were so far from anywhere, even B-29s would have a hard time hitting them.
But what had happened to the Tu-4s that set out from here? Had they carried ordinary bombs instead of the ones with atoms in them? Or had they flown west with the intent to avenge but gone down before they were able to?
He knew how possible that was. The B-29 had been a world-beating heavy bomber at the end of the Great Patriotic War. The ones that made emergency landings in Siberia so impressed the USSR, Stalin ordered Tupolev to make an exact copy within two years…or else. And Tupolev did-he’d already had one taste of the gulag, and didn’t fancy another-and thus the Tu-4 was born.
The Tu-4 was every bit as marvelous as the B-29 had been and still was. The problem was, that soon proved not marvelous enough. Neither bomber had been designed to escape radar-guided, sometimes radar-carrying, night fighters or radar-guided antiaircraft guns. Neither bomber had the speed or the ceiling to get away from jets, and neither had a prayer of shooting them down.
Both were, if you wanted to get right down to it, obsolete. Both kept flying anyhow. They were the best tools their countries had for delivering atom bombs across thousands of kilometers of sea and land. If best didn’t always mean good enough, well, in that case you went out and sent some more. Sooner or later, some would get through.
When sooner looked more like turning into never than later, Gribkov gathered his courage in both hands and called on Brigadier Yulian Olminsky, the air-base commandant. The visit took all the courage he had. He knew his own side could shoot him down far more easily than an American F-80 or F-86. The USSR didn’t need radar to track him. The rodina already had him in its sights.
While he wanted to talk to Olminsky, the brigadier didn’t want to talk to him. Boris cooled his heels for an afternoon while Olminsky dealt with a swarm of other people. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t give up. He went back early the next morning. This was how the game was played.
He sat there smoking, not looking bored, not twiddling his thumbs, for another hour and a half. At last, Olminsky stuck his head out of his office and rolled his eyes. “All right, Gribkov, I suppose I can give you five minutes.”
“I serve the Soviet Union, sir!” Boris bounced to his feet.
He stood in front of the table that did duty for the brigadier’s desk. He was not invited to sit. Olminsky wasn’t round-faced, blunt-featured, and double-chinned like so many Soviet general officers. He looked more like a Scandinavian literature professor. He was tall and thin and craggy, and wore wire-framed spectacles.
Looks, of course, had nothing to do with anything. “Go ahead and spill it.”
“Comrade General, I am a good pilot. I proudly wear the order of Hero of the Soviet Union.” Boris tapped the ribbon and star on his tunic. He’d won the medal for bombing Seattle. (So had Tsederbaum. He tried not to think about that.) “All I want to do is go on serving the Soviet Union as I was trained. Please, sir, let my crew and me fly against her enemies.”
Olminsky steepled his fingers. They were long and skinny, too. “If it were up to me, I would do that. For the moment, I can’t. You are not judged reliable enough to be trusted with the country’s ultimate weapons.”
“By whom, sir? Point me at the son of a bitch and I’ll punch him in the snoot!”
He got a small smile from the brigadier, but only a small one. “I’m afraid that isn’t practical for you, considering the arm-of-service color of the men involved.”
Olminsky meant the MGB; he couldn’t very well mean anything else. “What am I supposed to do, then, sir?” Gribkov asked.
“Just wait. You’re in what the Catholics call limbo. It may not be heaven, but it isn’t hell, either.” Yulian Olminsky paused. “Sooner or later, one door or the other will open. Believe me, if it’s hell, you’ll wish you were back in limbo. Now go away.” Not even bothering to salute, Boris went away.
–
Ihor Shevchenko had his Kalashnikov. He had as many banana-shaped magazines full of the special cartridges it fired as he could carry. All things considered, he wished he were still toting his old PPD.
He’d picked up another wound. He was getting a collection of them from the wars he’d been through. This one was of the extraordinarily stupid kind. He’d sat down on a pile of freshly dug dirt that had come out of the side of a trench when Red Army men widened it. Unbeknownst to all of them-and especially to Ihor-a broken bottle lurked in that dirt, business end up.
When he sat down, it bit him right in the ass. Naturally, he sprang up swearing and clapping his hands to the wounded part. Just as naturally, the rest of the soldiers in the squad laughed themselves silly. That was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
Even Ihor thought it was funny-till he saw that his left hand wasn’t just red but dripping with blood. “Fuck me!” he said. “That got me bad!” He showed off the gory evidence.
Some of his mates turned sympathetic. Others kept giggling. “I bet it gave you a brain concussion,” one would-be wit said.
Lieutenant Smushkevich came around a kink in the trench. “What’s going on, guys?” he asked.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I got hurt.” Ihor showed off his red hand and his bloody trousers while explaining how he’d got them.
“That’s dumb, all right, but you’re sure as hell bleeding there,” the company commander said. “Drop your pants so I can see what you did to yourself.” Feeling more foolish than ever, Ihor obeyed. Smushkevich whistled softly. “Bozhemoi! You did tear yourself up.” He turned to a nearby soldier. “Karsavin!”
“Sir!” Dmitri Karsavin said.
“Slap your wound bandage on his butt and take him back to an aid station,” the lieutenant said. “He’ll need stitches for sure, and probably a tetanus shot and whatever pills they give you to keep a wound from going bad.”
“I’ll do it, Comrade Lieutenant,” Karsavin said. After he put on the bandage, Ihor pulled up his pants again. He was glad to have someone help him back behind the line. Moving started to hurt like a bastard.
The aid station had that butcher-shop smell that made your stomach want to turn over. A harried-looking doctor gave Karsavin a receipt for Ihor. Then he took a look at the wound. “What happened? Shell fragment?”
“Glass fragment. I parked my ass on a busted bottle.”
“Well, you fucked yourself up pretty good. Let’s get the stitches into you first off.” He had some novocaine, so that wasn’t too bad. Then he went off to get the tetanus antitoxin. When he came back, he was fuming. “We’re out, dammit. You’ve got to have a dose. Sit on something filthy like that and you’re lockjaw waiting to happen. That’s a filthy way to go.”
“What will you do with me, Comrade Physician?”
“Send you back to the second-level aid station. They’ll have it, and with luck some sulfa or penicillin so you don’t fester.” He yelled for an orderly: “Hey, Borya!” When the man appeared, the doctor went on, “Stick this clown in the jeep and take him to the field hospital in Horstel. Here, give them this so they know what to do with him.”
“I’ll take care of it, sir.” The orderly stuck the note in his pocket. He eyed Ihor. “Can you walk?”
“As far as the jeep, yeah.” Ihor did. It was a captured American one, with a red star painted over what had been a white one on the hood. He sat with a right-hand list. Horstel was another town that had seen hard fighting. Red Cross flags were draped on the roof of the building that did hospital duty. Maybe they’d keep fighter-bombers away, maybe not. It was worth a try.