Black Operations- the Spec-Ops Action Pack

by Eric Meyer

  Tamara came up behind him and ran to me, we briefly embraced. I ordered the men to drag the bodies into a snowdrift, two more for our tally, then got them to climb into Hachmann’s truck. We drove away heading west, Tamara in the centre of the cab, Hachmann continued driving and I sat in the passenger seat.

  “I thought you’d gone for good,” I shouted over the noise of the engine.

  “Why would I do that, I couldn’t leave without the Robe.”

  “I checked Blomberg’s pack, I know you took it.”

  He glanced over. “Maybe I should have kept going and not come back for you.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  “If I run into trouble I’ll need your guns to get me out.”

  Tamara looked at him. “Tell him the truth.”

  Hachmann shrugged. “Yes, well, I thought about keeping going, but she refused to travel with me and without a Russian speaker I was dead. But it was only a passing thought. I did come back, didn’t I?”

  I didn’t reply. I had to get that Robe back into my possession, as long as Hachmann carried it, he was not to be trusted. We drove on through the bitter, snow-filled night without conversation, only the drone of the engine broke the chilly silence of the Russian night. It was slow going, the track was heavily potholed and the snow hid the ruts so that we kept bumping in and out of them. Because of the extreme cold, the snow was turning to ice in places and we had to drive carefully to keep the truck from skidding off the road.

  Abruptly Hachmann called across to me. “Roth, how far do you estimate we have to travel?”

  I’d been thinking about that question for the past ten minutes. “I’m not exactly sure, but I would guess at least a hundred and fifty kilometers and we’ve only an hour or so of night left. Before it’s light we’ll have to ditch the truck and continue on foot, they’ll pick us up straightaway otherwise.”

  He looked at me grimly. We both knew that our chances of surviving on foot in this bitter cold, hiding by day and travelling by night, were not good.

  I turned to Tamara. “Do you have any idea of where we are?”

  She nodded. “Yes, we are close to Vnukovo, the new airfield.”

  Hachmann laughed harshly. “It’s a pity we haven’t got a pilot, we could steal an aircraft and fly back.”

  “I’m a pilot.”

  He looked at me, Tamara too. “Are you serious, Roth? What did you fly, gliders?”

  “I flew transport aircraft in Spain for the International Brigade. I was trained by the Luftwaffe.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Of course, I recall reading something about it in your file. You fought for the communists. Now you’re fighting against them. Interesting.”

  I made no comment, of course, he would have read my file.

  “So you’re the pilot, can we do it? Would it be possible to steal an aircraft large enough for all of us and fly it back across the lines?”

  “If there is a suitable aircraft on the ground with fuel in the tanks and the Red Air force doesn’t have too many guards around to stop us, yes, it’s possible.”

  “We’ll have to try it. Tamara, where is the road for Vnukovo?”

  We continued along the road until we came to a crossroads. Tamara directed us off to the right and we found ourselves on an even narrower track, within five kilometers we were running alongside the airfield of Vnukovo. Aircraft were parked all around the field, dispersed in case of an air raid. The Luftwaffe had a formidable reputation for destroying Soviet aircraft on the ground. We stopped close to a ruined barn and climbed out of the truck. There was no sign of any military activity, there were no patrols or fixed sentry posts, but more ominously, we were running out of hours of darkness. I estimated we had less than thirty minutes before dawn began to light up the sky. I looked around the field, from aircraft to aircraft. There were several Sturmoviks, the Ilyushin IL-2 fighter-bomber, the heavily armed and armored aircraft that had created havoc amongst our infantry and panzers forces. But it was a two-seater. As were the Polikarpov U-2 biplanes, painted black they were widely used as night bombers, stealthy and silent although only capable of carrying the smallest of bomb loads. To one side of the airfield was a group of single seat fighters, useless to us. There was nothing bigger. Suddenly, we heard an alarm siren and the landing lights came on, lighting up the runway and nearby buildings, we could see troops moving around near to the control tower.

  “Do you think they’ve spotted us?” Hachmann asked.

  “No, they keep the landing lights off during the night in case of an air raid, they turn them on when an aircraft is about to land. There’ll be one coming in at any minute.”

  “”We’re wasting our time here,” Goethe said angrily. “We should be using the last of the night to get as far away from Moscow as possible.”

  “To freeze to death in the countryside, Goethe?” We were fast running out of options, without food or shelter we wouldn’t survive much longer, death was inevitable. We had to do something, and soon.

  We heard the aircraft as it came nearer, the sound of its engine loud against the silence of the countryside below. No, it was engines, two of them. A twin-engined aircraft meant something larger. A score of troops stood watching as it came in for a touch down and I recognized the type instantly. A Soviet IL-4, a medium bomber that had been developed from the DB3, an older variant. It had the capacity to carry all of us to safety, if we could steal it. We didn’t have far to go if we traveled by air. But before we even took off the odds were still stacked against us. Would there even be time to steal the aircraft before the airfield came awake and the Soviets began their working day? Would there be guards posted around the Ilyushin, would it have any petrol left in the tanks? There was only one way to find out. The IL-4 banged down on the runway, I winced as it touched down. The pilot was definitely not very experienced, perhaps he’d been in action and was tired, even wounded. Or drunk, not uncommon with Soviet pilots, I’d seen a few drinking vodka in Spain before they took off. The Ilyushin taxied around the field and came to a stop three hundred meters away from us, next to an earthwork bunker that had been erected to prevent an exploding aircraft from causing others nearby to catch fire. It was a bomber, accidents when loading the bombs were not unknown. They'd want it a long distance from their front line fighters when it was being armed. A Soviet jeep drove out to meet the aircraft and as it came to a halt a hatch dropped down underneath the cockpit, a ladder poked out and the crew emerged. They came out one by one, climbed into the jeep, and drove off. Astonishingly the aircraft was left without a guard, it seemed to have literally fallen into our laps. Perhaps. Before the jeep reached the airport buildings the landing lights went out again and the airfield was plunged into darkness.

  It was time to move. “Tie up the truck driver in the back of his vehicle, with any luck they’ll find him in the morning before he freezes to death. We’ll try for that bomber, it’s our only chance.”

  We ran across the snow-covered airfield, there was no point in any attempt at concealment, we were almost out of time. We reached the Ilyushin, the ladder was still down and the hatch open. It was very sloppy, very sloppy indeed. Thank God for Russian sloppyness. By morning the inside of the aircraft would be freezing cold, it would probably take several hours to get it operational again, useless in an emergency. Except that it wouldn’t be here in the morning. I went up first with my pistol drawn, Goethe followed, but the interior was empty. It was also incredibly cramped. There were eight of us with Bishop Romanova, I sent Blomberg to the rear gunner’s cockpit halfway along the fuselage. I had a quiet word with him about the Robe, I wasn’t at all happy about Hachmann holding on to it, despite the fact that the Gestapo officer had returned with the truck for us. The trick would be getting him to part with it. Unknowingly. I placed Hachmann in the nose to man the front gun. Tamara squeezed between Goethe, who took the navigators seat, and myself in the pilot’s seat. Vielberg took the radio operators position and Bishop Romanova had to share the bomb bay
with Wasser, Dagmar and Brenner. There were no bombs on the aircraft, which was fortunate, we’d wouldn’t have had a chance of taking off with any kind of a bomb load. As it was, we were heavily loaded but still within the load limits for take off and land. I strapped in and switched on the panel to look at the instruments, the most important question was how much petrol was in the tanks. Thankfully the fuel gages worked perfectly, there was sufficient for three hundred kilometers. It was by no means a full tank, more like a quarter full, but it was enough for us to get across the lines. The rest of the instruments didn’t work at all, I would just have to manage. It occurred to me that if the airfield was on any kind of an alert status, the instruments wouldn’t matter, we wouldn’t even get off the ground. As soon as I started the engines, we only had minutes to get the aircraft off the ground before they hit us with every weapon they could bring to bear. I found the starters for the port and starboard engines, paused for a few moments to check that everything was as ready as it could be, prayed that the Russians had all gone back to sleep, then I pressed the buttons.

  Chapter Seven

  All hell broke loose. The engines spluttered into life and straight away started to run smoothly, they were already warm after the last flight. But the lights came on and a siren sounded. The Russians had not gone back to sleep. I told Tamara to put on the headset, I wouldn’t understand anything that was being said but she would. I saw her flinch and even over the roar of the engines could hear the tinny sound of someone shouting into the headset. She gave me a worried glance.

  “They’re demanding to know who we are, I think they’re under the impression that you’re a drunken pilot taking the aircraft up for a joyride. He’s threatening to have you shot.”

  “I’ll bet he is.”

  Perhaps I could turn this to our advantage. “Listen, Tamara, I want you to try to persuade him that you’re a whore, the Colonel’s whore and he’s taking you up for a ride. Tell him to shut up, and go back to bed. Make it sound like a good joke, tell him you’ll have HIM shot.”

  Anything to gain us a few minutes before the guns started firing was worthwhile. She spoke in silky tones, pretending to be a sultry woman of the night who’d had one too many, it was a good effort, I even started to get aroused. But it was not good enough.

  “He says if you don’t shut down the engines immediately he’ll order the plane destroyed.”

  I nodded. I’d been taxiing downwind of the field and was almost in position at the end of the strip.

  “Tell him to go fuck himself then.”

  I winced as I said the words, it wasn’t fair on Tamara, but she dutifully repeated it over the microphone. Then she pulled off the headset and tossed it to one side, she was blushing red.

  “I take it he wasn’t impressed?”

  She shook her head. “Rude bastard. I don’t want to talk to him anymore.”

  “Fair enough.” I pushed the throttles forward and the Ilyushin picked up speed. Already the first of the airfield defenses had started firing and a hail of bullets flew overhead, they were probably nervous about shooting down one of their own and hoped to force the bomber to halt before there was any fatal damage. I had to estimate the ground speed without any of the instruments working. I left it until the last second and then pulled back on the control column, we soared up into the air, the aircraft shuddered as a burst of heavy machine gun fire hit the fuselage. They were no longer concerned about hitting one of their own, someone had made a decision to bring us down. The cloud base was low, only a thousand meters and I gained height as quickly as I could until we disappeared into the thick, leaden sky.

  “Goethe, go and see how they are back there, see if anyone was hit.”

  He unbuckled and squeezed past Tamara. While he was away I looked at the compass, we were heading northeast, almost directly opposite to where we needed to go. Without a navigator to work out a course, I banked the aircraft and put the heading around to due west. If we were to cross the lines in the Smolensk area, I’d need a much more accurate course, but this would take us in the right direction. The bomber handled quite well, better than I expected. The cockpit was basic and well-worn, with the look of something that had been thrown together cheaply and had been ill-maintained ever since. Perhaps it was some kind of a metaphor for the entire Soviet Union. There was an old atlas under the seat, it looked to have been written in the last century, but at least Moscow and Smolensk were still clearly marked. I made a rough guess and altered course slightly south, the rest would have to wait until we had daylight and could get a navigational fix from a landmark such as a large city or a river. Preferably both. Tamara came back, her face was grave. “It’s Brenner, he was almost cut in half by that gunfire, he’s dead, there’s blood everywhere.”

  I nodded. “The poor devil came a long way just to get hit on the way back. I guess that’s just war.”

  I pictured Brenner’s body sharing the bomb bay with Bishop Romanova, Dagmar and Wasser, they were probably soaked in blood with no way of moving away from it. But there was a more pressing priority to sort out, we were a long way from being safe, flying in enemy territory in a stolen bomber we could expect the Russians to retaliate, if they found us. I put on the headset and experimented to find the switch for the intercom system.

  “Pilot to rear gunner, Blomberg, do you read me?”

  At first, there was just the hiss of static, then some clicks, finally his voice came through.

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Good. I want you to test fire your gun, make sure you know how to use it if we need to.”

  “I’ll do that now.”

  We waited a few seconds, then there was a chatter of machine gun fire, it stopped after just a few rounds. The rear armament was a pair of 2 × 7.62 mm ShKAS machine guns.

  “It’s all working fine, I can handle it.”

  “Very well. Be ready, Blomberg, they’ll be along soon.”

  “Understood.”

  I waited for a few minutes to give him time and then tried Hachmann on the front gun.

  “Pilot to front gunner, do you read?”

  The answer came almost straight away. “All set here, Roth.”

  “Good. Try your gun.”

  A short burst from Hachmann’s gun announced that he knew how to make it fire. The front gun was a 12.7 mm Berezin UB machine gun, a heavy caliber machine gun that was popular for air to air combat, the Americans were known to favor the same .50 caliber in their own fighters, as were the British. The gun fired a very heavy round indeed, but I hoped it may not be needed on our short trip. We were traveling quite fast, I estimated we were making about 220 knots, although I had no idea of the prevailing winds. Our ground speed could have been much higher or lower. If we met a strong headwind it would slow us down substantially, but even so, we should be in the Smolensk area well inside of an hour. If the Russians allowed us to live, that was the unknown factor.

  “They’ll put up fighters to bring us down,” Goethe said.

  “I know, but as long as it’s night and we stay inside the cloud, they won’t find us.”

  “It’ll be dawn soon, you know that?”

  I nodded. “I do. But the cloud cover is very thick, we’ll be hard to spot.”

  He grunted in disbelief.

  “Max!” Tamara shouted in alarm.

  But I’d seen it too. Goethe was right to be pessimistic. Ahead of us, the cloud was thinning and the dawn was trying to break through, it was definitely lighter. Whatever the weather was over Moscow, it was clearly becoming much clearer as we traveled west. Then we flew out of the cloud into clear sky. They’d see us in the next ten or twenty minutes, then it would just be a matter of shooting us down. We had a top speed of three hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, the Russian single seat fighters were capable of five hundred kilometers per hour. All we could hope for was that they wouldn’t find us, not in time. I thought it a forlorn hope, there was nowhere to run, only west to our army at Smolensk, and nowhere to hide, all we
had was clear sky. They would look in this direction first. There was another problem, the cockpit was freezing cold, whatever heating system the aircraft was fitted with didn’t function, we weren’t particularly high, probably about two thousand meters, but it was enough to make the temperature numbingly cold, much colder than on the ground. I had to keep flexing my fingers to keep the circulation moving, I called the gunners to remind them to do the same. All we had in our favor was that the flight was to be very short. Then again, if the Russians caught us it would be shorter still. I checked my wristwatch, we’d been in the air for twenty minutes, the sky was much lighter, it was time to get a fix.

  “Pilot to front gunner, I’m going low to try and find out where we are, can you call out anything you see, any landmarks.”

  There was a silence for a few moments. Then, “What the hell am I looking for? Cossacks?”

  “You’re looking for any cities or major rivers, Hachmann. Call out if you see anything, Tamara may recognize them if you describe them.”

  He grunted in reply. I put down the nose and went down to about eight hundred meters, there was only open steppe. I pulled the column back again to gain height, there was nothing to be gained by flying so low and we would run the added risk of ground fire.

  “I can see a city ahead of us and to the north,” Hachmann said exultantly. “There are three lakes just before it.”

  “That is Vyaz'ma,” Tamara said. “It is directly on the route to Smolensk, we are more than halfway there.”

  “Fighters, coming in about three kilometers behind us!” Blomberg shouted. “Jesus Christ, there are three of them, what are we going to do?”

  “Don’t panic, Werner, just shoot the bastards. We’ve come most of the way, we’re nearly there.”

  My voice was drowned out as he started to fire.

  He’d opened up too early, but at least he managed to panic the Russian pilots who opened fire too soon as well, they delivered long, raking bursts that did no damage. They had fired far too early and were too far away for their gunfire to be effective. I watched them carefully in the mirror mounted outside the cockpit, one caught up with us overhead, the other two fighters were either side. The pilots were definitely not experienced, the Ilyushin IL-4 had a blind spot, there were no guns below the fuselage. If one or all of them had attacked beneath us they could have blown us out of the sky and we wouldn’t have even known they were there until the bullets hit. All three of them rapidly overtook our lumbering bomber and then it was Hachmann’s turn, he fired at point blank range with his 12.7mm gun. Inexperienced as he was, the Russians were so close that he couldn’t miss, the aircraft that flew overhead was hit instantly and peeled away trailing a column of dense, black smoke. I recognized them now, they were Lavochkin LaGG-3s. The fighters were armed with both machine guns and a deadly 20mm cannon that would make short work of us if it scored a hit. Both remaining fighters veered away, more cautious now that they realized we had a sting in the tail. Of course, until now they would have assumed that we were deserters or even drunks, taking the aircraft for a pleasure trip. The Russian appetite for vodka was legendary and once they had drunk huge quantities they could, and did, get up to literally anything. Now they knew different, on their next pass they’d be looking for a kill.