by Tom Hron
“Not many people know it, but this is where World War Three will start—it won’t be in the Middle East—and Russia will be forced to use nuclear weapons to save itself. One hundred sixty million people can’t stop a billion Chicoms, not without using the bomb.”
Jake felt cold fear slither up his spine. “Jesus, where do you get this stuff?”
Simon paused. “I’ve been here before.”
Jake rolled onto his side and stared. No wonder their long walk through the Buryat Autonomous Republic, east of Lake Baikal, had gone so well. He had often wondered why Simon had acted so at home.
“What the hell were you doing here?” he asked.
“Living off the land—living off the land every damn day.”
Again, Simon had let him know not to ask any more questions. He rolled back to his stomach and glassed the Kamov 50, code-named the Werewolf by Russia, though designated the Hokum by NATO. It sat in the distance, squarish, pig-nosed, dull black, a six-barrel cannon sticking out of its snout. Missile launchers hung on each side, making it look more creatural than like a helicopter, or maybe more like a dragonfly after reaching the size of a tyrannosaurus. Two rotor systems sat on a single mast, swinging six blades in opposite directions, negating torque. An angular rudder, like an airplane, made up the principal flight surface, letting the pilot spin in circles, or roll and loop if he wanted. The Werewolf was made for all-out war, bristling with guns, missiles, and nighttime systems.
He would love to have one, too. Tanks and troops would be defenseless against the laser weaponry and smart bombs one could fire from its pods. The Werewolf was the ultimate killing machine, with its only competition being the U.S. Army’s Apache Longbow, which was arguably just as deadly.
He wondered if both came equipped with minibombs, pint-sized nuclear devises meant to take out a few hundred men at a time, leaving little fallout afterward. He sensed they did—Afghanistan had turned out to be a bitter lesson for both superpowers and their militaries wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. They would fry insurgents en masse before they would ever let them win again.
He swung his Zeiss binoculars away from the Werewolf and glassed the long rows of Antonov AN-2 biplanes tied down at the Ulan Ude Airport, near a small city by the same name on the Selenga River, a hundred miles north of the Mongolian border. Simon and he had come south to steal gasoline. Without gas, their expedition was over before it could begin. They must find more fuel for their Cubs.
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?” he asked.
Simon rolled onto his side. “Maybe a day or two at most. We’ll see someone loading fuel for an interior village. The Russians use the AN-2 like a truck, and they’ve built thousands of them. They’re used all over Europe, and you can buy one for a few thousand bucks. Some have even been sold to Alaska. Remember when we saw them fly into Anchorage?”
Jake remembered, and he’d been impressed. The AN-2 was an extraordinary single-engine airplane with a useful load of 4,000 pounds and the short field capability of only six hundred feet. Though slow at 110 knots, it could stay in the air seven hours, essential for long hauls. Better still, an owner could install seaplane floats, skis, tundra tires, spray systems, and haul external loads, making it possibly the best big bush plane of all. This aircraft could fly through rock walls it was so strong. It had been built to fly through trees, the scourge of bush pilots around the world.
People never cut wilderness runways long enough, leaving pilots having to chew their way through the forest. They had to remember tree branches were ninety-percent air and mow them down, rather than stalling their airplanes in steep climbs and crashing in spins.
He sighed and lowered his glasses. “I’m still afraid we’ll get caught.”
Simon grinned. “Trust me. After dark we’ll hide in the first derelict airframe we see being cannibalized for parts, and eventually we’ll see an AN-2 getting loaded with fuel barrels. The moment the pilot walks back to operations to take a leak, as pilots always do before takeoff, we’ll shanghai his airplane.
“And don’t worry—half of them are usually drunk by noontime. They’ll think it’s just another scheduling screw up and take the rest of the day off. It’ll be a week before someone figures out an airplane is missing. Look at all the Antonovs sitting around. Must be twenty. Who’ll ever miss one?”
It sounded too easy. But . . . Simon was right about how pilots behaved. And he could see three Antonovs with missing wings, tail feathers, and engines, so staying hidden wouldn’t be a big deal. Still, their mission seemed awfully risky. What in hell would happen if they were ever caught?
“What happens if the pilot comes back too soon? It’ll take us a few minutes to get started.”
“Quit worrying—we’ve been safe so far. Simply let me do the talking and then get ready to run.” Simon laughed, letting his gentle convulsions rattle the weeds.
Sighing again, Jake studied the airport, then its ramps and hangars, searching for problem areas. The layout looked like an airport he’d once used near Calgary, Canada, called Springbank. Even the distant mountains looked the same, shining in the sun. Mechanics were wandering around, repairing airplanes. Pilots were smoking, spitting, and preflighting their airplanes. Ramp rats were running here and there, swinging their hands high, and looking for lost paperwork and packages. It was all stuff he’d seen a million times. Besides, Simon and he had been safe since leaving Lake Baikal.
“Too damn bad we had to leave Baikal so soon,” he said. “Sasha’s rented dacha was great, but too many people were using the lake like a road, running back and forth with their motorbikes and cars, and someone would have spotted us.”
Simon stopped laughing. “Wouldn’t have been a safe place for takeoffs and landings after the ice melted, either. We did the right thing.”
“Will Sasha and Molly wait for us? We didn’t leave much of a message.”
“I think so, but we didn’t have any choice. We have to stay hidden.”
“It’s lucky I found our hideout,” said Jake. “I don’t know what we’d have done without it.”
Weeks before, they’d landed on Lake Baikal and taxied their airplanes under an outcropping, carved into the cliffy shore by millions of years of bad storms. The ambience of the lake had captivated him. Grottos and fjords had lain everywhere. Stone pine had gripped the steep parts of the mountains, and evergreens had reached inland as far as he could see. He had learned Baikal was a deity and legend to the locals, and he’d started worshiping the lake himself. Everyone believed it was the sacred sea.
But the lakefront had plunged from the heights, leaving the shorelines littered with boulders and driftwood beside the cliffs. They hadn’t found an airstrip suitable for summertime operations anywhere, which had forced them away.
They had flown back over the Barguzin Mountains just east of the lake and found the ghost town he’d seen on their way in, pinpointing it with the GPS. And what they had discovered after landing had been unbelievable. A town once holding several hundred people had been abandoned, leaving the quintessential Russian flats still ready for occupancy . . . but only if someone found a way to repair the central heating plant. Long ago, workmen had let the boilers freeze, probably for the lack of furnace oil, and they had killed the town. Who could afford to repair thousands of busted pipes, especially when Moscow couldn’t pay for the fuel to keep the town running in the first place?
Simon had explained that Siberian communities usually ran their utilities off a single powerhouse, which was great . . . until it froze. The whole town had went kaput, unable to fight back the permafrost. For the obvious reason they’d named their new home Coldfoot.
They had explored the place and found it perfect. An empty hangar sat at the airport, waiting for their Cubs, several rundown apartment buildings offered an endless choice of rooms, and all the warehouses and shops were abandoned. It would be almost impossible to catch them if someone spotted them, because they could hide in a thousand places. The town had
been ideal, since even the furniture had been left behind.
Further exploration had shown Coldfoot had once been a mining community, opening hard-rock deposits holding copper, maybe gold and silver as well. Drifts had been bulldozed into the nearest mountainsides and pieces of turquoise exposed in the trenches, signs of metallic ore. But either Moscow had forgotten to send paychecks or the site hadn’t proven worthwhile or the townspeople had sickened of the solitude and purposefully let the boiler house freeze, freeing them to leave. Something had gone terribly wrong, much to Simon’s and his delight, and it was great having a ghost town all to themselves.
They had enjoyed another advantage as well—spring had come to the far side of the mountains, away from the icy influence of Lake Baikal. The snowpack had melted off the lowlands and the trees turned green . . . though the warmer weather had forced them to land their airplanes on bare dirt with skis and skid to a stop, something bush pilots had to do from time to time. One only needed to remember to add power at the right moment and hold back the stick. Otherwise, the Cub would somersault halfway, hanging the pilot upside down in his seat belt, fuel spilling onto a red-hot exhaust, resulting in a horrible way to die. You always had to be really careful when you did tricky things with airplanes.
They had replaced the skis with the tundra tires they’d brought along, pushed both airplanes inside the hangar, and chosen separate rooms in opposite buildings, letting them keep any visitors in a crossfire . . . or they could escape out the far side. Coldfoot was the perfect hideout. All they had to do was find fuel and wait for Molly and Sasha to show up over at Lake Baikal. Their cross-country walk to Ulan Ude had started soon afterward.
He turned to Simon once again. Had he known beforehand that eastern Buryatia was mostly uninhabited, except the little native settlements they had visited?
“Had you met the Buryats before, and did you know about their history?”
“Most people have heard about the genocide of the Tibetan monks and the destruction of their monasteries by the old-time communists. The Buryats are Lamaist Buddhists too, and the Russians slaughtered their monks and burnt their datsans as well. It’s hard to believe there are any left after ninety years of coldblooded murder.
“If I’d ever picked a single lifestyle, I would’ve become a Buryat. There are no more gentle people on earth, and I envy their pastoral life.”
Jake now knew why Simon had always flicked a little vodka in different directions with his fingers, showing his respect for the mountain god called Burkan, when they’d eaten with the Buryats along the way. But his friend had answered his questions with yet another riddle, leaving his past still a mystery.
“What were the ribbons we saw hanging from the trees on our way here?” he asked. “Has that something to do with Lamaist Buddhism?”
Simon nodded. “They’re prayer flags the locals have used for centuries. Buryats are Mongolians who rode up here on their horses a thousand years ago. They use prayer wheels as well.”
When they had left Coldfoot, they’d descended into the Barguzin Valley, hiking south like two Russian woodsmen on a timber survey. Dressing the part, they’d worn ordinary trousers, shirts, and coats common to all the northern countries. They had also carried simple bedrolls, their Uzis hidden inside, on their backs. Both had cut walking sticks and used them as well, making themselves look even more authentic. And they’d looked and smelled the part after a few days of sleeping in the woods. Most important, he’d kept his mouth shut.
To make himself look mute, he’d painted his Adam’s apple with the glue they’d carried along for repairing their airplanes’ fabric, concocting a make-believe scar on his neck. His appearance had looked as if he’d been shot in the throat, letting him pretend that he was a war veteran, wounded long ago in Afghanistan. He had even practiced grunting and gurgling, completing the ruse. His only problem had been restoring the scar each morning so it looked the same.
The northern part of the valley had been idyllic, filled with the mating cackles of the Siberian capercaillie, a turkey-sized grouse, and wild flowers such as forget-me-nots and columbine. Deer, wolves, foxes, and bears, animals common to Baikal, had wandered past them and shown no fear. Their trek had been magical as they’d searched for Kurumkan, a small village on the primitive road running south to Ulan Ude, a city of 300,000. Finally, they’d found the village, pretending to be luckless travelers looking for work, almost the truth under the circumstances.
The walk south had been mostly uneventful. The road had meandered through virgin taiga, over bald mountains, called goltsy, and had followed the shore of Lake Baikal in several places, which was at last thawing. They had seen brown bears feeding on newly-hatched caddisflies, crawling through the mushy ice and swarming by the millions on the shoreline, the strangest sight he’d ever seen.
Sleeping out, they’d huddled in their blankets on the coldest nights, living like native herders. They had stopped at the Buryat villages along the way, and rarely had any motor vehicle come along. They hadn’t seen any other whites, and the loneliness of their journey had been blissful. But . . . now they faced the hardest part, stealing an airplane. He wondered if Simon had ever flown an AN-2.
“Maybe you should fly, rather than me,” he said. “You’ve probably logged flight time in the AN-2.”
“Sorry. All I know is you have to use the rudder to control the tail and you can’t see ahead on takeoff, so I hope the hell you don’t forget. We’ll look pretty stupid ground looping an Antonov on the Ulan Ude Airport, and it’ll get us in big trouble, too.” He laughed.
In fact, Jake had forgotten the AN-2 epitomized the worst of antiquated engineering. The giant taildragger would whip around when he applied power, because of engine torque and the phenomenon called P-factor. Next, he wondered where the master, magnetos, and mixture controls were located, the three M’s of flying, like the three R’s of grade school. Their position on the instrument panel was important, because he’d only have mere seconds.
“Remind me to memorize the instrument panel on the airplane we hide in so we don’t waste time. Let’s also listen to their communications and decide whether we should simply blast off or wait for the controller to clear us. And I hope they don’t send the Werewolf after us. Then we’ll really be doomed.”
Simon shook his head. “The military isn’t going to chase an AN-2 from the civilian side. They can’t afford to waste their turbine fuel on what they’ll believe is some crackpot with a pilot’s license. Remember, the people we’re watching are the old Aeroflot bunch, trying to run their own operation, except things haven’t improved much. Wait and see—no one will pay the least attention to us.”
“I sure as hell hope so. Need I remind you that we’ll be full of fuel, and we’ll turn into a big fireball the moment someone shoots at us?”
The doomsday remark silenced them, and both studied the airport with their glasses once more. Simon pulled out their scanner, found the common frequency of the field, and listened to the random chatter of the control tower. Finally, he laughed again.
“Just like good old America. Let’s call the tower, taxi out, and wait for the controller to clear us. I can key the mike and jam the frequency if something goes wrong, and then no one will know what’s going on. It will be like a Chinese fire drill with everyone trying to use the same frequency, and we’ll have plenty of time to get away.”
His worries still nagged him, despite his friend’s optimism because everything looked so simple. “What’s the punishment for people who hijack an airplane?” he asked.
“I think they shoot them,” said Simon.
Jake couldn’t help laughing too. Why worry now? They had come too far. “Wake me when it gets dark,” he said. “You can sleep tonight after we find a place to hide.”
At midnight they snuck across the airfield to where the Antonovs waited, then found an airplane stripped of most its useful parts and crawled inside. The dark interior reeked of spermy sweetness, a mix of high-octane gasoline and
motor oil, an odor both found reassuring for reasons unknown to them. Maybe it reminded them of home and that everything was the same around the world when it came to aviation. Airplanes were airplanes and all worked alike. Whatever the reason, they told each other, Lord help them if someone came for surplus parts in the morning.
Jake woke Simon at nine o’clock, told him to stand guard, then crawled forward and studied the cockpit, twelve feet off the ground. The front felt as big as a Douglas DC-3, the old airliner that was still being used in some countries. The AN-2 was almost half its size, although it was only a single-engine ship.
He sensed its power and built-in longing to fly. Some aircraft felt like that, almost human in their need to speak, and no wonder men and women loved them so much. He knew that he loved them as much as life. They were an inordinate part of his spirit, as a beautiful woman might be for other men. Then he remembered Sasha . . .
The writing on the instrument panel was in Cyrillic, yet seemed clear in its meaning, at least for the more important switches, controls, and gauges. The battery and starter toggles were just below eye level, and the throttle, fuel mixture, and propeller levers were on a pedestal between the captain and copilot seats. The magnetos, flight attitude gyros, and engine instruments, oil pressure and RPM, also lay plainly in sight.
Scrunching into the pilot’s seat, he played with the panel for a few minutes, practicing his startup. Finally, he thought that he’d have the big radial engine running in less than a minute, time enough to get away.
Leaving the cockpit, he stepped back into the cabin and peeked out a side window. Several mechanics stood in the distance, smoking cigarettes. A tug chugged past, pulling an Antonov by its tail wheel.
Simon’s whisper broke the stillness. “Come here and look at this.”
He crawled across the fuselage and knelt by a window. Two men were pulling rubber bladders off a flatbed truck, getting them ready for the AN-2 that had passed by. Next, he saw a refueler pull alongside a tank farm and begin filling itself with a hose. Was it aviation gas or turbine fuel?
