Let someone else sweat out the tough mission today, Mouradian thought. I’ve had my share of those and then some. If he could help defeat the Hitlerites by flying a milk run for a change, he’d gladly do that.
The squadron commander whacked the map with the pointer. “We’ll make our approach from the southeast and escape in the same direction,” he said. “Word is that the Nazis have emplaced some new batteries north of the yards.”
Some Party member or Jew had probably risked his life to bring that word to the Soviet authorities. Or maybe it was some Russian peasant whose sister had been raped by a squad of Germans. Hitler’s men hadn’t gone out of their way to endear themselves to the population on the land they’d seized. Just the opposite, in fact. The frightening thing was how many Soviet citizens collaborated with them anyhow. What that said about the glorious wisdom of General Secretary Stalin …
What that said about the glorious wisdom of General Secretary Stalin was not for the likes of Anastas Mouradian to judge. All he had to do was bomb the stuffing out of Bobruisk and try to get back in one piece so he could go bomb some other Fascist-held town tomorrow or the day after.
Sergeant Mechnikov, who would actually yank the levers that let the bombs fall from the plane, had had his own briefing-or maybe, like a lot of sergeants, he knew things without needing to be told. “Bobruisk,” he announced when Stas and Isa Mogamedov met him by the Pe-2.
“That’s right,” Stas said.
“Beats the snot out of Minsk,” the bombardier declared. He’d been plucked off a kolkhoz for the military and stuck in the fuselage of a bomber because he had the muscles to do the job. He didn’t care what he said. He came right out with what Stas only thought. Maybe he’d end up in a camp on account of that. Or maybe he was NKVD, and trying to pull something unpatriotic out of the officers he flew with. You never could tell in the USSR. No wonder so many people didn’t see the Hitlerites as worse than what they already knew.…
He won’t pull that out of me, Stas thought as armorers trundled bombs across the frozen airstrip toward the Pe-2 on four-wheeled carts. Having such thoughts to begin with was dangerous. Letting anyone else know you had them was suicidal.
Stas ran through the mechanical checks on the Pe-2 with his usual care. Young Lieutenant Mogamedov had leaned toward sloppiness on such details till he found Stas wouldn’t stand for it. More often than not polite as a cat, Stas didn’t go around saying things like you stupid, thumb-fingered Azeri. Mogamedov, to his credit, didn’t want Stas even thinking things like that.
So many things in war you couldn’t control. If something you could watch out for upped and bit you because you got careless … You’d curse yourself as you hit the silk-if you got the chance to hit the silk.
It all looked good today. The Pe-2 picked up speed as it jounced along the strip. It climbed into the air when Mouradian pulled back on the stick. He spiraled up into the sky and found his place in the formation. The other bombers’ guns would help cover his machine. He would do the same for his comrades. It might even help, a little.
A few scattered tracers rose up at them as they crossed the fighting front. German? Soviet? Both? Both was the best bet. The slim, graceful Pe-2s looked more like Luftwaffe aircraft than most in the Red Air Force’s inventory. Red Army men commonly tried to shoot down anything they had doubts about. None of the flak troubled the squadron.
“Do you think the Fascists will let their air defenses farther west know we’re on the way?” Mogamedov asked.
“Of course they will,” Mouradian answered. In the Soviet Union, such attention to detail was anything but guaranteed. The Germans made most of their mistakes by being too precise, too complicated-and, fairly often, by taking it for granted that their foes would show the same kind of automatic competence they did themselves.
Lieutenant Colonel Tomashevsky led the squadron by a zigzag path, dodging in and out of clouds whenever he could. Stas approved of not making life easy for anyone trying to track them. Somebody would be, sure as the devil’s auntie.
A railroad line, straight as a stretched string across snow-dappled ground, guided them to Bobruisk over the last few kilometers. Something in the town was burning, obscuring the railroad yards. No, Stas realized: more likely, the Fritzes had got word the bombers were on the way and had sent up smoke screens to make things hard on them. Hitler’s minions were much too good at that.
Their flak was heavy and accurate, too. The 88s that tank crews hated so much could also fling destruction kilometers into the sky. Tracer rounds and black bursts with fiery hearts told the gunners where to send their following volleys. Stas was into his bombing run, and had to fly straight for the yards. The Pe-2 bucked in the air from near misses like a horse ridden for the first time.
The plane just ahead of him in the formation took a hit that tore off half its right wing. Burning terribly, it tumbled toward the ground. Stas hoped the crew could bail out. He had to fly his own machine, and couldn’t look down to see. Sometimes distraction was a blessing: not a Marxist-Leninist thought, but a true one.
“Drop the bombs!” Mogamedov shouted into the voice tube. Away they went. Mouradian swung the Pe-2 around, hard, and jammed down the throttles as he streaked away to the southeast. Another bomber fell out of formation with one engine smoking badly and the prop feathered.
The wounded plane lasted no longer than a lame elk would have among wolves. Messerschmitts tore into it. Down it went, and the German fighters roared after its brethren. But the Pe-2 did have a good turn of speed. The Germans caught only one. Stas thanked the God in Whom he officially didn’t believe that it wasn’t his.
Chapter 17
Carlos Federico Weinberg stared gravely at his father. “Papa,” he said. “Yes, I’m your papa,” Chaim agreed. He thought the toddler’s voice held a note of doubt. Maybe he was too sensitive, and imagining things. Then again, maybe he wasn’t. The only times he got to see the kid were when he came into Madrid on leave.
He supposed he ought to be glad La Martellita let him see Carlos Federico at all. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to have a baby, or to stay married to him one second longer than she needed to give Junior a last name.
Seeing the kid also meant seeing the mother. La Martellita looked tired. Well, anybody bringing up a child by herself had a right to look tired. Chaim knew he looked tired, too. Soldiering was one of the few things on God’s green (at the moment, hereabouts, God’s brown) earth that could make a man as tired as a woman with a baby.
Tired or not, La Martellita also looked gorgeous. Chaim didn’t, never had, and never would. He eyed Carlos Federico again, this time with a new perspective. “He’s lucky,” he remarked to La Martellita.
“How’s that?” she asked.
“He looks like you,” Chaim said. “When he grows up, the girls will all fall at his feet. He won’t be a tough, homely scoundrel like his old man.”
“If you think you can sweet-talk your way back into bed with me, forget it,” La Martellita said. Chaim hadn’t really thought so, even if he had had certain hopes along those lines. She went on, “By the time he grows up, we will enjoy full social equality in the Republic. Looks won’t matter as much as they do in bourgeois society.”
“Puede ser,” Chaim replied. But why did he say maybe to La Martellita instead of bullshit, which is what he would have told anyone else? Why? Because she was beautiful, that was why.
People who looked good had things greased for them. Chaim guessed they always would, come the revolution or not. People like him always had to jump and scramble to get anywhere. A lot of the time, people like La Martellita and Mike Carroll (who would be getting back to the front soon-the docs had done a better job on his leg than Chaim had dreamt they could) didn’t even need to reach out and grab. Things fell into their laps whether they reached or not.