Winter Warriors s-1

by Stuart Slade

  Kristianna realized how desperately late their escape had been. Already, the buildings down one side of the street were burning. Flames tried to reach over to the fresh fuel on the other side. She saw people who got in the way of the hungry reach of the fires just burst into flames themselves. They fell to the ground in miniature copies of the great fireballs made by the jellygas. She knew nothing, except the need to run, to get away from the fires, to escape. What if the fires were in the south as well? Her mind held a map of the city, the Americans had started these terrible blazes to the north, east and west of the city. They blocked off every way out, trapping everybody in the great fires. The road she was on led south, towards the great church of Saint John. Beyond that was the Kaivopuisto park. Surely that would be safe?

  The road split. One part led west back towards the dockyard. Kristianna avoided it. She looked for her father as she did so. He had gone; swept away in the crowds or caught by the fire. Saint John’s Church was already burning. The sight dissuaded many from taking that road but Kristianna ignored the fire and took the southern path. She skirted the inferno and headed away from the great fire to the north. She was exhausted. Her legs felt dead but they continued driving her south, past the fires that closed in from the Helsinkihafen on the east and the Aker Shipyard to the west. They carried her south, through the narrowing bottleneck between the three great fires that were gutting Helsinki and into the Kaivopuisto Park. Her legs only stopped when they took her all the way to the sea. There she collapsed. She lay on the beach as the waves washed over her. The long run had left her unable to move as she watched the fires converge on the city center.

  Later, much later, she managed to half-drag, half-walk, half-crawl her way over to Harrakka Island, just a few hundred feet offshore. There with the rest of the refugees who had made it, she was safe. In her heart, she knew the truth. She was the only one of her family who had survived.

  1st Platoon, Ski Group, 78th Siberian Infantry Division, near Letnerechenskiy, Kola Peninsula, Russia

  “Bratischka, the army calls for the assistance of our gallant comrades in the partisans!” Lieutenant Stanislav Knyaginichev looked around at the men and women who had answered his call. His words had been carried on the winds, to the units hidden in the villages and in the forests. The men and women had recovered their carefully-hidden weapons and come to aid the Army in its moment of need. Knyaz looked at them with pride. To do so took more courage than could easily be measured. The Army would fight its battle and be gone. The partisans would still be here when the fighting was over and the Hitlerites came to take their revenge. When the people had bravery such as this, the Rodina was safe. Embattled, hungry, besieged but safe. In his look at the Partisans around him, he had noted something else. They were better-armed than his men were. Every Partisan carried a German banana-rifle and were supplied with large numbers of grenades. Even those who had rocket launchers, either the German Panzerfaust or the Russian RPG-1 copy, still had a rifle and grenades as well. That was the measure of these men and women. Every banana rifle they carried meant a Germans soldier lying dead in the night.

  “And how may the Partisans assist the Army, Tovarish Lieutenant?” The speaker was the leader of the largest of the partisan bands. It was rumored he had a brigade of no less than fifty men and women answering to him.

  “There is a great gun on the railway; a gun that belongs to the American Navy. The fascists want to capture that gun very badly but it has escaped them. Every trap the Hitlerites have laid, the gun has escaped. American sailors, Russian engineers, my own Ski-troops; all of us are fighting together to get the gun to safety so that it can once again fire on the fascist beasts.”

  “Why do they not give the gun to us? We could use some artillery!” There was a murmur of agreement that swept around the meeting.

  Knyaz grinned. “Bratischka, this is a forty centimeter gun!”

  The partisan leader lifted his hands up, about 20 centimeters apart at first and then spread them apart so they were about the diameter of the railway gun. There was a few muffled cheers and some gasps of admiration. This was certainly a great gun. A Tsar of guns thought some of the older men. They were careful to keep the description to themselves.

  “It needs much preparation and special railway tracks to fire. When it does, it hurls a shell fifty kilometers and the shell makes the very ground turn to jelly under it. Truly, bratischka, this is a great gun and of much value. The Americans have fought hard and sent many aircraft to help it escape. Now it is we who must make a great effort. The Hitlerites have set an ambush just short of the river bridge. The survivors of a mechanized battalion, about a reinforced company in strength. With artillery and anti-tank guns. They have torn up the railway tracks so the train must stop. The engineers cannot repair the tracks until the fascists are killed.

  “Bratischka, I will be honest with you. The men on the train have done well but they are sailors and railway engineers. Even so, they have beaten the fascists like a drum, inflicting great loss on them. But they are sailors and railway engineers, not real soldiers. This task is beyond them. My men are the only real infantry on the train and there are but twenty of us left. Can I count on you to join us, to kill the fascists and show the American sailors what the partisans can do?”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then the leader of the largest of the groups stepped forward and hugged Knyaz in a bear-like embrace. “Tovarish Lieutenant, we will be there at your side. Now, how are we to go about this task?”

  Knyaz got out his map. “The train is coming along the line here. It will stop behind the ridge where it is safe and as many men as can be spared will come forward to a position on that ridge, facing the fascists. We will move in on the fascist’s flanks and rear while they are watching the ridge and attack them. Then we can drive….”

  “My apologies Tovarish Lieutenant. I have news we all should hear. The Americans have just bombed the lair of the Finnish Hitlerites. They have set the whole city on fire. The radio in Petrograd says they can see the glow of the fires from streets of Petrograd itself. The fascists are calling fire brigades from all over southern Finland to try and stop the fires spreading further but they struggle in vain. The fires have created a great wind storm and nothing can stop the spread of the flames.”

  The meeting erupted in cheers. Knyaz felt his back being pounded by the Partisans. The Americans weren’t around to get the praise, but he was with them and that was near enough.

  “Yes, Tovarish Lieutenant, we must indeed help the Americans save their gun. The whole city on fire? Good, that is very good.”

  A Room, Somewhere in Geneva

  “You might at least have given me a cushion to sit on.” Igrat’s voice was indignant. Half her mind was in a screaming panic but she had locked that part away. Instead she concentrated on the task in hand. That was buying time so Henry and Achillea could catch up with her.

  She was sitting in an old-fashioned wooden chair. Her wrists had been tied to the rails at the back, her ankles to the chair legs. It was a good, old-fashioned interrogation set-up that had her facing a desk with several lamps on it. The brilliant bulbs had been angled so they shone right in her eyes. She could see very little of the rest of the room; just the vague shadows of two men. One of them had a very heavy German accent. The other never spoke at all. He had opened her blouse and was pawing her, like a schoolboy, roughly and crudely. Igrat had noticed his hands had been shaking when he had unfastened the buttons. She looked at his shadow and put as much sympathy into her voice as she could. “You don’t have much experience with women do you?”

  Silent-One whinnied with outrage. His fist came out of the darkness, hitting her in the face. She ran her tongue around her mouth noting the salty taste of blood.

  “Where did you get the papers from? Talk to us.” It was German-Voice speaking.

  “You want me to talk to you? Fine.” Igrat looked at the shadow of Silent-One. “You hit like a girl. OK? And by the look of your pants, you have
to pee like one as well.”

  The fist that hit her that time meant business. Igrat’s vision exploded into brilliant flashes and pinwheels. When they cleared, her sight was distorted and she could feel the eye on that side swelling shut. German-Voice was speaking again. “Tell us what we ask or by the time we finish with your face, your own mother will not recognize you.”

  “She wouldn’t recognize me anyway, she dumped me in the trash outside a brothel as soon as I was born.” That, Igrat reflected, was quite true enough but I doubt it is what these two idiots wanted to hear. The panic started to rise again. She squashed it down ruthlessly

  She was right. Her reward was another flurry of blows, some full-force punches, other slaps. She could sense the bleeding in her mouth was much worse and she let the stained saliva trickle from the corner of her lips. She was tempted to spit it at the men but resisted. The time for defiance like that would come later, when her chances of survival had gone.

  German-voice was screaming at her. “What is in the briefcase?”

  “My sandwiches. The food on the train is terrible so I got a packed lunch.”

  “You want more beating?” There was urgency and lust in the voice. He looking for excuses to hurt her. That scared Igrat more than the beating.

  “Well, look if you don’t believe me.” Igrat was genuinely irritated in addition to putting on an act for the men’s benefit. She was telling the truth and the idiots wouldn’t believe her.

  “And the case is booby trapped and we all get blown up, right?”

  That was when Igrat’s mind snapped at the way the phrase was constructed. The same way fish snap at bait. She’d thought that German accent was too heavy to be real. Well, hello, fellow American.

  “With me in the room as well? Don’t be a bigger fool than you can help.” German-voice hesitated for a second and opened up the case. Inside were three packages, wrapped up in paper. The faint odor of salami and cheese was more than noticeable.

  “So where are the papers and where did you get them from?”

  “I don’t know and the sandwiches came from the deli on the Rue Henri Fazy. My boss likes Limburger but no way am I carrying that. He’ll have to make do with Helvetia.”

  The reply got her another serious of blows. She felt the crunch of her nose breaking and fill with blood. She snorted, trying to breathe through the sudden rush that threatened to suffocate her. “Now look what you’ve done. That blouse is silk, I’ll never get the bloodstains out of it. You know how many coupons a new one will cost me?” None at all. thought Igrat. If I can’t wheedle some parachute silk out of somebody, I’m losing my touch.

  There was another enraged whinny; this time from both men. There was a rattle from the desk that forced Igrat to fight the blind panic back into its corner again. “Last chance.” German-Voice was really beginning to lose it. “Where do you get the information from?”

  “What information?” Igrat gasped as the doubled-up length of tow-chain hit her across the chest. Suddenly her breathing was painful. Rib fractured at least. She coughed and some blood splattered out. The chain hit her again; the pain was on both sides of her chest. She was expecting another blow from the chain but instead something hard and heavy hit her over the kidneys. The pain was excruciating. Her efforts to scream through the broken ribs doubled and redoubled her agony. Her vision started to gray out. Igrat began to believe she was dying.

  That was when the door exploded. Igrat had seen Achillea kick doors down before but never from this side. The door just fragmented, only wooden splinters were left to hang in the lock and hinges. Normally Achillea would have landed on her left leg and dropped straight into her fighting crouch but this time she hit the floor rolling. The reason was simple, Henry McCarty was following her, moving terrifyingly fast for an old man. His right hand was blurring. Three shots, a tiny, almost undetectable pause, and three more.

  By the time Igrat could register what was happening, both German-Voice and Silent-One were down. Behind Henry, a figure switched on the lights. Achillea was already up and moving over to the desk, flipping off the lamps as she passed. The semi-darkness was a blessed relief. Igrat still found the effort to keep breathing unbearably painful.

  “Henry, call for an ambulance. Emergency ward, right away. This isn’t good.”

  “They’re already on their way, Branwen called them as soon as she’d followed the car to this place. Thank the gods that Loki kept her as a back-stop watch. And told her there would be bodies around tonight if things went sour.”

  Achillea nodded, Loki had turned up trumps. His foresight had probably saved Igrat’s life. Then, she turned to Igrat. “Iggie, can you hear me? Good. You’re a mess but you know that don’t you? Nothing fatal though and the Boss will get your nose fixed. Where else did they hit you?”

  “Shest, with a shain.” Igrat’s voice was blurring.

  “Stay with me Iggie. You’re not in any danger unless you let go.” Achillea ran her fingers down the sides of Igrat’s chest. “Right, at least two ribs fractured probably on both sides and your tits are bruised. Tell Mike, you’ll have to go on top for the next few months.”

  Igrat chuckled and erupted into a burst of coughing. “He won’t like that. Very strictly brought-up Catholic he is.” She lost control of her voice at the end. That, more than anything else showed how badly she was hurt.

  “Well, he’s going to have to make an exception or take Holy Orders. Keep coughing, I know it hurts but it will clear liquid out of your lungs and save you a bout of pneumonia.”

  “Achillea, look who we have here.” McCarty was speaking, he’d finished looking at the bodies. “Our old friend from Casablanca.”

  Achillea looked down at the body of Frank Barnes. Two holes in his chest so close they touched; one between the eyes. The other man’s wounds were identical. Six shots, no misses. From a moving man at moving targets in the darkness. There was nobody better with guns than Henry McCarty. She looked again at Barnes and spat on his body.

  “You should have left him alive Henry. He wanted a lesson in knife fighting. I’d have given him a long one.” The wreckage of the door to the room swung open as a group of men with a gurney hurried in.

  “Please, sirs, you have a wounded person here?” It was a Swiss ambulance team.

  “Over here.” Igrat’s voice was weak but steady. Quietly, Achillea was proud of her. She’d seen professional street-fighters making a worse fuss over lesser wounds. The ambulance men went quickly to work, getting Igrat on to the gurney and out of the door. As they left, three policemen, one in plain clothes, the other two in uniform came in. None of them saw Branwen quietly slip out to join Igrat.

  “Mister Smith. Have we an explanation for this?” The implication that the detective didn’t like foreigners shooting each other on his patch was quite clear.

  “These two men abducted one of my associates, holding her for ransom. With the assistance of your department we traced their taxi to this building. We were working our way up here when we heard screaming. We couldn’t wait for your men; my associate’s life was in danger. One of the men, that one, was beating her with a chain. That chain.” Henry pointed at the blood-stained links on the floor. “He would have killed her, already she was badly injured.”

  The detective picked up the chain and looked at it, thinking hard. He didn’t like the gunplay and foreigners causing trouble but he also had a teenage daughter. The sight of the blood-stained chain decided him. “I think a man who would do such things to a woman is no loss. Very well, this is just for the young woman they brutalized. This one time only, I will write this up as self-defense against two hardened criminals.”

  Waiting Room, Geneva Hospital Emergency Ward, Geneva

  “Mr. Smith?” The doctor was looking around the waiting room.

  “Doctor?”

  “Ah Mister …. Smith. I’m pleased to tell you your associate is resting comfortably and is in no danger. We’ve reset her nose and splinted it but she will need some further
attention to straighten it when she is stronger. You have good surgeons in America for such things I believe? Her face is badly bruised. There is also a possibility one of her eyes might be damaged. Her ribs are fractured; two of them on one side, one on the other, but we have taped these up and this is easing her discomfort. She also received at least two very heavy blows to the kidneys. There is blood in her urine but they are functioning. She is a strong woman. She will recover unless something unexpected happens.”

  “Can she travel?”

  The doctor was indignant. “Of course not. Did you not listen? She was treated with sadistic cruelty and received serious injuries. She must not travel; not for a week, perhaps ten days. Then only with great care. But she will be as well-treated here as in any of your American hospitals.”

  “I have no doubt of that, Sir. And thank you for all your efforts.” McCarty turned to Achillea. “Looks like she’ll have to stay while we go ahead.”

  “Excuse me. Mister Smith?” The speaker was a man so tall he had to bend down to leave the elevator. “Hartzleff, from the German Embassy. The Cultural Department.” There was an awkward silence. Everybody knew that the Cultural Department of the German Embassy meant Gestapo or Abwehr or both. “Perhaps we could speak privately?”

  The two men drifted over to a deserted corner. Once there, Hartzleff resumed. “I have heard what has befallen your associate Mister Smith. I do not know who was responsible, but you have my word it was none of our work.” McCarty did his best to look skeptical. “Mister Smith, if that it’s your name which I doubt, I know you are a smuggler and a black marketeer. You bring women’s stockings and other luxuries over from America and sell them in France and Germany for an enormous profit which is banked here because your IRS would catch you if you took it back with you.