It had still been dark when she had dragged the parachute shrouds into the undergrowth inside the treeline, bundling them into some bushes and out of sight.
Putting distance between herself and the area of a shoot-down had been the next step, if she had followed the drills, but she was not going anywhere without the Russian girl. She found a large and elderly oak tree on the edge of the clearing and sat under one of its great boughs, out of the rain and waited for the dawn, listening to the sound of battle over the horizon.
As the sun had arisen the rain had tailed off, disappearing east with the cloud. Daylight revealed her surrounds, including the white shrouds of the bundled parachute. Being an X aircraft, an experimental testbed, it had not been necessary to install the green variety. Soggy, dead bracken that she added did not make a whole bunch of difference. If someone was looking for her from the air, they would see it.
Her survival vest contained a SAR Beacon but she had it switched off. The majority of downed aircrew who are captured have used the device early on and still within the area of the shoot-down. Svetlana had no vest or beacon so she would find her and they would both beat feet before Caroline used hers to summon a rescue.
She had no clue as to where Svetlana had landed, she had to assume they were not far apart as they had been sat with only feet separating them at the time of ejection, but walking in ever increasing circles about the clearing for two full hours had not reunited them.
The distant gunfire tailed off over a period of perhaps thirty minutes, although the odd shot sounded here and there.
The sound of metal upon metal brought her up short and she dropped to the ground, peering around a tree trunk for the source of the noise. She saw nothing at first, not until a mere twelve feet away a camouflage net was lift by a Soviet tanker in black coveralls, and behind him she glimpsed the unmistakeable track and drive wheels of an armoured fighting vehicle of some description. Shocked, she looked around and saw more of the nets and realised she had walked into a harbour area. Backing away she almost stumbled over two reposed figures behind a machine gun, quite obviously sentries but from their gaunt appearance they had fallen asleep at the switch through exhaustion. She had walked past them, into the area without even seeing them.
Having crept away, looking frequently behind she relaxed, walked around the bole of a large tree and straight into the view of three uniformed KGB soldiers with a German Shepherd dog on a long lead. From their reactions they had apparently been tracking her.
Fight or flight? She had her 9mm Beretta in a shoulder holster but against three men with assault rifles it would be a short fight indeed. She turned and ran; the men shouted and released the dog.
Limping from tree trunk to tree trunk for support, Svetlana had begun to wonder if she had in fact broken the small tailbone. The pain was almost enough to induce vomit.
She kept the sun at her back and hobbled west, gritting her teeth and refusing to stop and rest as she did not know if she could find the strength to move again.
It was after an hour that she saw something white in the undergrowth and discovered a badly camouflaged parachute, presumably Caroline’s. There was no sign of the pilot, no giveaway flash of blonde hair amongst the trees and so she continued on, heading west.
The shouts of more than one man and the bark of a dog came to her through the trees an hour later, and then a scream, a loud cry of fear that she recognised as coming from the American. Vomit arose as she hurried toward the sound, but she spat out the bile without stopping.
Caroline was face down on the forest floor, blood leaking from a scalp wound where she had been pistol whipped unconscious. A large dog, its teeth bared, stood beside her as three soldiers, KGB troops by their insignia, tugged down her G-suit down over her hips. The pilot had a boot pressed between her shoulder blades by the dog’s handler, holding her in place as his companions next undid their trousers. Quite obviously a gang rape, and probably a murder would follow if Svetlana took no action.
The dog’s handler had Caroline’s Beretta stuck in his belt and his own AKM held loosely in his right hand. The other two had laid their own weapons against a tree. The dog handler was the greatest threat and Svetlana leant against a trunk, aimed and fired the automatic taken from the field policeman weeks before. Two quick aimed shots took him in the chest and throat, and then she moved her point of aim to the right, to the KGB trooper nearest the two AKMs. It was a miscalculation on her part for as the handler crumpled his dog leapt towards her. She swung back and fired again, hitting the animal in the chest as it launched itself at her throat. The dog slammed into her, and Svetlana fell back with a cry of agony but retained a grip on the handgun. Bile filled her mouth again having jarred the injury on landing. The troopers had reached their weapons but a voice barked out a command in accented Russian, ordering them to stand down. Svetlana could not see the newcomer but with arrogance typical of the KGB one spat deliberately, contemptuously at the speaker before raising his weapon in Svetlana’s direction. A shot rang out and blood spurted from the side of his head before he could fire and he dropped, still holding the assault rifle. Turning and aiming, the third trooper then hesitated, staring down the barrel of the gun that had killed his companion. The sound of pounding feet approaching was followed by more shouting of commands by several voices at once, in Hungarian this time, but the trooper got the message, dropping his weapon and raising his hands.
“If you shoot at me, my men will kill you.” A voice said in very halting English from beyond the tree she had been leaning against. However, she retained a grip on her handgun, raising it towards the sound of the voice.
“You should be aware that the war, at least in Europe, is over.” The speaker added. “I think it would be a shame for us both to die after the fighting has finished, don’t you agree?”
A soldier knelt beside Caroline and she altered her aim, pointing at him. He looked to his right, directly at her and then at the gun before ignoring them both and tending to Caroline. Clearly a medic was not going to be putting himself in harm’s way as part of a deception. Applying the safety catch she tossed her handgun away where the unseen speaker could see it.
An older man appeared and made safe the handgun he was holding before assisting her to her feet.
The surviving KGB trooper was escorted away, past the two dead men and one equally dead dog.
“Thank you.” It was all she could think of saying at that time.
“You are most welcome, young lady.” responded Colonel Leo Lužar.
When 4 Corps had arrived and removed the spear tip from 3rd Shock Army’s advance, the Red Army had found itself in a worse position than it had a week before. The banks of the Elbe and Saale were back in NATO hands, held by fresh troops and fully equipped units, unlike before.
Their Premier was dead; the man who had designed and orchestrated the Third World War was now a bunch of irradiated atoms a mile underground with a man-made depression in the earth’s surface, a quarter miles across, as a grave marker.
A new leader had emerged, apologising via video conferencing with the President for the hours it had taken to rein in the Red Army, Navy and Air Forces.
The President sat in a darkened room, presumably to deny any possible clue as to its location. Premier Elena Torneski sat in front of a flag of the Russian Federation, which served the same purpose, and for an hour they spoke, with the President extracting various assurances from her as to a withdrawal to pre-war lines.