He rolled out of his bunk and sought composure in the early morning light. He looked out the window to see his morning bugler. Large, sad cow eyes stared right at him. And rather than purging the memory of Sophie, those eyes brought the dream back with even greater vividness.
Sophie ’s gaze, those caring, penetrating eyes, had forced unimaginable words to gush from his mouth. He ’d tried to defend his involvement in Guernica’s bombing, even though the memory of it haunted him. His words had poured forth, and even now in wakefulness he struggled against the nightmare ’s bonds of ugly truth. Yet the rumbling of engines starting around the base as they were serviced by the ground crews forced him to think only of the present. He forced the dream out of his mind, wiped sweat from his brow, and considered only today and his duty to his country.
With a flick of her tail, the cow lowered her head to the lush grass in the field adjacent to the barracks.
At least some creatures were at peace in this world.
He was due to take off in an hour, and he ’d heard that enemy activity had picked up drastically after the Republicans received more Polikarpov fighters from Russia. Those little planes were fast, maneuverable, and heavily armed.
Ritter wasn’t keen on meeting these new aircraft with only his obsolete, fixed-gear biplane fighter as a weapon. His He.51 was inferior, and the Russian pilots knew it. Ritter’s advantage lay in his skill and experience as a seasoned combat pilot. He ’d heard that all trained Russian pilots had returned to Russia as instructors, taking their combat skills with them, which meant he could anticipate sending the new, inexperienced enemy pilots to their last reward.
Ritter shook out his flying suit to evict any tiny tenants from their hideaway. Flying into combat with ants in one ’s pants was not the best way to start the day. Thirty minutes later, after a quick breakfast and stroll across the airfield, he found his crew chief in the plane ’s cockpit.
The grizzled sergeant nodded at Ritter as he approached, and Ritter knew he was running up the engine to make sure all twenty-four plugs fired and the propeller would change smoothly from low to high pitch. Ritter watched as the man checked both magnetos and pulled the mixture off until the engine stopped from lack of fuel. He then shut it down, climbed out, and saluted.
“Good news. The plane is ready and safe to fly.” The sergeant then relayed Ritter’s ammunition count.
“No squawks?” Ritter ran his hand down the body, noting that minor bullet holes from the last mission had been patched.
“Not a one,” the sergeant answered. “This BMW engine will get you home without a hitch—provided the pilot doesn’t get lost.”
The man laughed, but Ritter didn’t join him. Instead he eyed the Spanish pilot who approached, striding up to the sergeant’s side wearing the Nationalist Air Force ’s dark blue cap with bright green piping and tassel. Ritter could tell from their nods of acknowledgment that the two men knew each other. Yet the Spanish man’s gait slowed as he noted Ritter’s uniform.
Despite the man’s own gold rank stars below a winged badge, the Spanish pilot’s eyes widened at Ritter’s presence, and Ritter almost felt as if he could read the man’s mind.
A real Legionarie. A member of Jagdgruppe 88 Fighter group . . .
Ritter crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his chin slightly, taking pride in his own spotless breeches, riding boots, and leather flight jacket. Yet the truth was he wore the three silver stars of the Oberleutnant ranking with minimal pride. The uniform adopted was designed to allow the Germans to pass unnoticed. The color chosen matched the traditional olive-or khaki-brown of Spanish army uniforms. He knew only his light hair and black beret with the death’s-head badge gave anyone reason for a second glance.
New pilots arrived daily—both German and Spanish. And since most tours rarely lasted more than six months, Ritter wondered when he ’d leave. Not that he had anyone calling him home.
“They say you are one of best,” the man said in halting German. “You are hero for outsmarting the enemy and living among them.”
Ritter shrugged. “Not hard to do—outsmart them, that is.”
“Do you mind if he watches your takeoff?” the crew chief asked.
“Why would I mind?”
A grin filled the Spanish pilot’s face.
Ritter climbed into the cockpit, adjusted his leather helmet, and made sure his goggles were clear of dirt and oil. When he was strapped in to his satisfaction, he motioned his crew chief to pull the chocks so he could start his taxi to the dirt runway’s takeoff end, forty meters away. As the plane approached the departure point, he checked the wind sock and saw it was limp.
He advanced the throttle a bit, put in some down elevator to raise the tail skid from the ground, hit the left brake, and spun the plane around on its main gear. When he had the nose lined up, he reduced power, and the tail settled to the ground. His was the first flight of the day, and he literally had the sky to himself— except for the circling hawks, that is. He knew to keep his eye out for them in the rapidly heating air.
Ritter advanced the throttle slowly and, as the plane gathered speed, he fed the down elevator to raise the tail to gain speed and improve his visibility over the cowling. Like most planes, the Heinkel had no tail wheel.
The needle in the airspeed indicator came alive and rapidly climbed. As he felt the plane lighten, he eased in some up elevator, and the Heinkel broke ground. When he cleared the tree line, he started a gentle climbing turn to the south, heading for his target. When he reached his cruising altitude, he reduced power, increased the prop’s pitch for more speed, and tweaked his mixture for better fuel economy.
His assignment was to strafe the new railhead and put the switching yards out of action. He only had a few light bombs and knew the best way was to strafe railroad cars and buildings, then drop his light ordnance in the largest complex of train rails he could find. If he were lucky, the rail cars would catch fire and burn the ties and the buildings. The fire might even spread to other locations.
If he were really lucky, he might even hit an incoming train.
This train ride reminded Sophie of another. Only this time, instead of travelers attempting to get into Spain, the passengers were refugees eager to get out of Guernica—desperate to escape the destruction, though it seemed no place in Spain was safe.
Sophie followed Michael through the overcrowded passenger cars. Everywhere she looked, scared and injured men, women, and children sat on the hard, wooden benches, packed together like sardines and clinging to their meager possessions.
Michael slid his camera from its case and snapped some photos. His motions were familiar, yet foreign. And even though she took in his face and the movement of his hands as he worked his camera, she had a hard time believing it was really him.
She turned from Michael back to the people. They looked tired, hungry, scared. Still, they had not forgotten their common courtesies, and some scooted over to make a spot for Sophie on one bench.
Sophie sat next to an old woman who held a small puppy. The dog whimpered, but the woman paid it no mind. Sophie looked into the puppy’s sad face and felt the same. Alone. Scared. Confused. She only wished she could whimper. She was tired of being strong and trying to hold everything in.
With no room to sit, Michael knelt before her. He returned his camera to his case and took her hand in his. “I’m so sorry, mimo. What can I say? It was a foolish plan, to lie in such a way. My hope was to get you out of the country, then to find you again.”
Again Sophie bit her lip and forced herself not to mention Maria or the child. Walt had done a fine enough job explaining the motives for Michael’s actions, but Sophie wanted to know his heart.
“I don’t know what to say. And you’re right; I would never have left if you had . . . lived. As it was, José and I didn’t quite succeed when we tried to escape Spain.” She glanced around at those sitting closest to them, eyeing the foreigners with curiosity, wondering if spies also sat among them he
re. “But we’ll have time to talk . . . later.”
Sophie looked more closely at his face, noticing for the first time that Michael looked thinner. She noted dark circles under his eyes and concern in his gaze. Concern for her, perhaps. Or maybe just concern that he ’d been caught.
The train lurched, and she glanced out the window. Outside of town, the villages appeared untouched. An ancient church, a flour mill, a bridge. It looked like her first view of the Spanish countryside. Only the refugees and carts clogging the road were different, troubling.
Among the traffic on the narrow road was a truck similar to the one that carried Deion and Philip away from Guernica. With everything in her, Sophie wished to turn her head and take a second look to see if they were in the cab. Yet she didn’t dare. Until she discovered the information Walt needed—the information that would help the Spanish people—Sophie had to forget.
After gazing at the road himself, studying the refugees they passed, Michael squeezed her hand and looked up into Sophie ’s eyes. “How did you do it? How did you find me?”
“It was easy. Once I saw the photos in the newspaper, I knew you must be alive. But to actually find you . . .” She shrugged. “I only had to look where the most intense fighting was. I knew you’d be there.”
His features softened, and he offered her a slight smile. It both pleased and frightened Sophie how easily she lied.
“Got any smokes?” the man next to Michael asked in Spanish.
Michael shook his head. Sophie looked at the man’s soot-colored face, realizing how quiet everyone else had been, most likely curious about their English conversation. Now was not the time to ask more questions, to draw more attention. But she did have one thing she wanted to say.
“And to think I was going to promise you my heart forever. No matter what happened, my promise would have remained. I would have given everything for you, Michael. ”
“And now?” he asked.
Sophie looked out the window, away from Michael’s intense gaze. “And now I don’t know.” She answered honestly, realizing that anything but the truth would blow her cover for sure.
The tiny Heinkel was not a very efficient bomber, but it performed its ground support duties well enough. Ritter had over an hour of straight and level flying before he located the strike zone, so he moved his body into a comfortable position and tried to relax.
Suddenly, disturbed air rocked the plane. He glanced to his right but saw nothing. He racked the ailerons over. Sure enough, his top wing had been hiding another plane. He looked closer and saw a young, boyish-looking blond pilot almost flying formation with him. It wasn’t his wingman, but a Russian pilot in a Polikarpov I16—one of the open-cockpit versions.
The Russian pilot slowed his milk-bottle-shaped fighter and offered Ritter a smile and a salute. It was obviously a cocky goodbye gesture. Ritter immediately slewed his fighter sideways and pulled the engine power to idle. The much sleeker Russian Republican plane shot ahead of him. Ritter kicked the rudder pedal and went to full power, causing the 750 hp V12 engine to surge his biplane directly in back of the Rata—an appropriate nickname for the rodent-like airplane.
Ritter placed the Russian plane in his gunsight, framed for a perfect kill shot. But for some reason, his fingers lost the power to engage the machine guns and send the boy pilot to his death. Ritter’s heart pounded. He tried again, but his trigger finger wouldn’t obey the nerve signals from his brain. He hesitated and forced his finger to fire, but now he had no target.
The Rata’s pilot had pulled up into a loop and was already almost on Ritter’s tail. Ritter cursed. His slow biplane fighter was simply no match for the retractable-geared monoplane that had been copied from the famous Gee-Bee racers. More than anything, he wished he flew a Bf.109B, a new plane Germany had sent to test. Unfortunately, too many flaws had been discovered, and they’d been sent back for modification.
Ritter glanced behind him and realized the plane was gone. He thought the Rata had headed for home until the distinct noise of machine guns erupted, and the sound of bullets riddling his left landing gear brought a rush of nausea. From his view in the cockpit, he watched as the wheel fairing flew off and the tire twisted off the rim. Ritter knew the Russian wanted to play. With a turn of his wheel, he obliged.
He rolled his Heinkel sideways with aileron and rudder; then he pushed full left rudder, holding the plane vertical. This gave the Rata pilot a very small target.
As expected, the much faster Rata shot by above him, preparing for his next run on the biplane. When the Heinkel had leveled off, Ritter dumped his load of 250pound bombs. He didn’t want a stray bullet hitting them and blowing him and his airplane to pieces. He counted them to make sure both had been ejected, and then continued his dive.
Ritter wiped his brow, then spotted the Ebro River below him. It wound its way between tight canyon walls back to his home base. With his heart pounding, he firewalled the BMW engine and entered a dive, hoping the biplane held together. He glanced around, looking for the Russian again and ignoring the climbing airspeed indicator that slipped past the red-line.
Finally he passed under high cloud cover and glanced up just in time to see the Rata heading down directly at him. He knew he only had one attempt to make it between the protecting walls of the canyon. If he failed, the Russian pilot would paint another kill symbol on the side of his airplane.
The Rata still wasn’t in range as Ritter banked the He.51 between the walls of the canyon. His shredded tire flopped in the slipstream. Then the whole aircraft vibrated as the tire flapped against the landing gear fairing.
Ritter dropped below the ridge-line and literally skimmed the fast-flowing water. Suddenly, a tall tree came into view. He hauled back on the elevator, barely missing the reaching branches. As he slewed his biplane around a curve, his heart stopped. A pair of transmission lines stretched across the canyon. If he climbed above them, he would give the trailing Rata the target he needed to send a burst into his crippled airplane. If he dove for the deck, he ’d have to clear the water by two meters and go under the wires by about ten. If he miscalculated, it was all over, yet he had to take the low route.
Ritter slowed the plane to gain more reaction time and lowered the nose toward the rushing water, trees, and bushes along its side. He gripped the control stick and stared at the high-tension wires. They reminded him of a spiderweb stretched in anticipation of an incoming fly.
Ritter lowered the nose again until the damaged tire flapped just above the rocks. With a zing, the wires whisked over his top wing, and he knew he had made it.
The good news, when he reemerged from the canyon, was that he had the sky to himself. It appeared the pilot had decided against taking his fast-moving fighter down into the canyon. Instead, the Russian was probably headed back to his Republican base to tell his buddies how he had saluted his last victim and then forced him into the wall of a canyon. Who would ever check, or even care?
Yet Ritter was not home free. He still had to get his plane back on the ground with the shot-up tire. He doubted the landing gear’s leg-would hold. His mind’s eye replayed the last time he ’d seen a landing gear buckle under a plane. In an instant the plane had folded, then flipped onto its back. The pilot had been crushed before he knew what happened.
He slowed his Heinkel down to a little over stall speed and literally crawled through the sky back to what had become his home. This base was more of an airfield than an air base—no runways, just a mowed farm field that was rough, even for a plane with an intact landing gear. It still retained a washboard effect from years of growing crops in furrows. Seeing the air base in the distance, Ritter took a deep breath.
He gradually descended to an approaching altitude so he could make a circuit over his field. As he hoped, his crew chief, who waited for his return, noted the damaged gear. Ritter watched as he motioned to others, alerting them to a possible crash landing.
A plan started forming in his exhausted mind. His plane had a large
tail skid and no tail wheel. So, he guessed, if he could place the one good wheel into a furrow and let the tail down into the soft ridge, the plane would slow rapidly and the tail might remain down. He knew of hidden furrows along the edge of the field that hadn’t been flattened by the airport crew. It was worth a try.
He circled the field while slowing the plane. He made one very low-speed pass over his intended touchdown area to make sure there were no rocks or other obstacles that he could not see from higher up. When he decided now was the time, he lined up with the furrows on the south side of the field, pushed his prop into low pitch so he could have all the power available if he needed to go around, then eased the mixture control to full rich for the same reason.
With one eye on the airspeed indicator, he slowed the plane down to just above stalling speed and held it straight with the rudder, occasionally kicking rudder so he could see around the engine, which blocked his view straight ahead. His approach looked okay, so he tightened his seat belt, shut off the fuel, turned the master switch to off, and concentrated on getting the plane slowed. He hoped when it touched down there would be little speed to bleed off.
The plane had lowered to three meters when it started to shudder, causing a quiver to move through his limbs, a sure sign that a stall was fast approaching. He lowered the nose a bit and applied right aileron to keep the good wheel on the ground and the broken one in the air. When he heard and felt the tire rolling in the dirt, he applied full right aileron, which dropped the right wing even more, raising the damaged left tire away from the ground. He kept the plane going straight with the rudder. When the wings stopped lifting, he pulled the control stick back, slamming the tail skid into the soft dirt. The left gear leg broke off, but the tail skid dug in and slowed the plane almost to a stop. Then, as if moving in slow motion, the nose fell gently into the dirt and the plane came to an abrupt stop. Ritter let out a slow breath.
Shadow of Treason Page 8
