Yet another thing you couldn’t say. Mouradian could say “Acknowledged,” so he did. He also called into the speaking tube: “Lower the bomb-bay doors, Fedya. We’re almost there.”
“I’m doing it,” the bombardier answered. And Mechnikov did. The wind howled in a new way as it whipped around inside the bomb bay.
Flak started coming up from the guns in and around Wilno. The fire was fierce and accurate. Whether those were Poles or Germans down there, they knew their business.
Stas tipped the Pe-2 into a shallow dive all the same. “A little to the left, Comrade Pilot,” Mogamedov said. “We’re coming up on the train station.”
“A little to the left.” Stas adjusted their course.
“Let them go, Fedya!” the Azeri called to the bombardier. The explosives fell free. The bomb-bay doors closed. Stas yanked the Pe-2 around in a tight turn and scooted for home.
Just in time. Messerschmitts tore into the Red Air Force bombers. One dove past Mouradian’s plane and was gone before he could open up on it. He did see that it was marked with Poland’s two-by-two red-and-white checkerboard rather than the German swastika. So the Poles weren’t flying junk any more, then. Hitler’d sold them fighters worth having.
The machine gun in the dorsal turret chattered furiously. Fyodor Mechnikov saw something worth shooting at, or thought he did. Better to blast away at something that wasn’t there than to let a Fritz-or even a Pole-shoot you from behind.
Two planes trailing smoke and fire spun toward the ground: a Pe-2 and a smaller 109. Mouradian gunned his machine till all the performance gauges cranked well into the red. The groundcrew men could fix the engines later. Or they could if he bought himself a later for the mechanics to fix them in.
He wondered if he should try to get higher. If he did, he and his crewmates would have a chance to bail out in case a 109 shot up the plane. But climbing would cost him speed, and speed was what would get him out of here. A Pe-2 was just about as fast as a Messerschmitt, and had far more range. Going flat out would bring him back to the airstrip with less gas in the tanks than he’d expected, but that was the least of his worries now.
Another bomber from the squadron went down. What made a fighter pilot go after one plane but not another? The size of the red stars on its wings? The way the sunlight shone off the cockpit or the turret and drew his notice? Being in the right place to dive on the Pe-2? Or nothing more than dumb luck? Stas had no answers. He’d never had any answers to questions like those. All he knew was, he was still around to ask them.
Ten minutes put ninety kilometers or so between him and the Polish 109s waspishly defending Wilno. One more check showed only a few scattered Pe-2s close enough to see. When he eased back on the throttles, the engines seemed to sigh in relief. The pointers on the dials fell back to safe levels.
“Another one down,” Mogamedov said, and then, “A few more like that and we don’t come home from one.”
“Afraid you’re right,” Stas said. “But it’s not as if we haven’t known that for a while, is it?”
“No.” After a beat, Mogamedov added, “No wonder so many Russian pilots drink like fish, is it?”
“Mm, maybe not,” Stas said. “But do they drink because they’re pilots and they know they’re going to catch one, or just because they’re Russians? Some of the Russians in the groundcrew pour it down every bit as hard, and they never get off the ground.”
“And some of the pilots would drink like that if they didn’t fly,” Mogamedov allowed. “Not all of them would, though, or I don’t think so.”
“It could be. I may do some drinking myself today once we get down,” Mouradian said.
“Some drinking? Most people do some drinking. Drinking till you can’t see any more-that’s different,” Mogamedov said.
He hardly ever did even some drinking. But, as you didn’t say some things, so you didn’t ask some questions. If he admitted he was a believing Muslim, he would be giving Stas a hold on him. If he denied it, he might be lying. The two of them were all right in the cockpit, and in the officers’ tent. For an Armenian and an Azeri, that would do, and more than do.
Hans-Ulrich Rudel stood to stiff attention in front of the folding table that served Colonel Steinbrenner as a desk. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said, saluting. “What do you need?”
“To ask you a question,” the squadron CO said. “Whatever you tell me, I promise it won’t be held against you.”
Whenever somebody told you something like that, he didn’t mean it. Even a preacher’s son like Hans-Ulrich got that. “One of those questions, is it?” he said with a wry grin.
Steinbrenner, though, wasn’t grinning. “Yes, I’m afraid it is,” he answered, and his voice sounded as somber as if he were officiating at a graveside service.
“Well, then, you’d better ask me, hadn’t you?” Rudel said. Any trace of amusement vanished from his voice, too.
“All right. Here goes.” But the colonel paused to light a cigarette and drag deep before he continued, “If you were ordered to bomb a German city in a state of rebellion against the Führer and the Grossdeutsches Reich, would you do it? Could you do it?”
No wonder he hesitated! That wasn’t what anybody would call a small question. Hans-Ulrich knew what the proper military answer was. Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst! Anything else was less than his duty, less than his oath to Adolf Hitler. All the same … No, it wasn’t a small question. He tried to come back with a question of his own: “Is that what you are commanding me to do, sir?” You were-just barely-permitted to make sure you clearly understood your orders.
But all Steinbrenner said, in a voice like stone, was, “Answer what I asked you, please.”
“Bomb German civilians?”
“German civilians revolting against the government of the Grossdeutsches Reich.”
“Sir, I-” Rudel came to an unhappy stop. Fighting Germany’s enemies was an honor, a privilege. Telling him who Germany’s enemies were was the Führer’s job. But if the Führer told him the German Volk were Germany’s enemies … Had he been a pinball machine, his eyes would have read TILT. “Sir, I just don’t know,” he finished after that stop.
“Thank you,” the squadron CO said. “You’re dismissed.”
“Sir?” Too much was happening too fast.
“Dismissed.” Steinbrenner cut off the syllables as if with a scissors. In case two-syllable words had suddenly got too hard for Rudel, he chose some shorter ones: “Get the fuck out of here.”
Hans-Ulrich left. Not to put too fine a point on it, Hans-Ulrich fled. Mere combat didn’t faze him-he had its measure. If you lived, you lived. If you died, you died. You did your best to live. But the unknown terrified even the bravest.
A lot of men would have gone to the officers’ tent and got smashed. If you couldn’t think straight, you didn’t need to worry about what you couldn’t-or didn’t want to-understand. But drowning his sorrows had never been Rudel’s style. Obeying orders no matter how he felt about them had never been a problem before. Now, all of a sudden, it was.
The trouble was, the airstrip didn’t have many places where someone could go to be by himself. The first one he thought of was the revetment that sheltered his Stuka. But when he got there he found Albert Dieselhorst fiddling with the trim tabs on the plane’s tail.
“Morning, sir. What’s cooking?” Dieselhorst took a longer look and found a different question: “Good God! Who stepped on your tail?”
“Colonel Steinbrenner did,” Rudel answered.
“Why?” the radioman and rear gunner demanded. “You haven’t even screwed any Mischlings I know of since we got to Belgium. You’re a good boy … uh, sir.”
“Danke schön,” Hans-Ulrich said in a distinctly hollow voice. “No, I wasn’t naughty-not that way, anyhow.”