by L. Todd Wood
Motherland
Copyright © 2016 L Todd Wood.
All rights reserved worldwide.
Published by IceBox Publishing at Smashwords.
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To the IDF girl in uniform I met on the bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and her grenade launcher.
“Our fatal troika dashes on in her headlong flight perhaps to destruction and in all Russia for long past men have stretched out imploring hands and called a halt to its furious reckless course.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
Deuteronomy 32:35
Prologue
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
(Robert Service, "The Cremation of Sam McGee")
Captain Richards was tired and cold when he arrived at the squadron. It was a dark, winter night, and the moon reflected off the frozen ground as he shut off the jeep’s engine and doused the headlights. It was the type of cold you could only experience in the Yukon, the type of cold that when married to the desolate wilderness seemed not only to chill a man but frighten him with loneliness. He sat for a moment in the warm air, pondering what the temperature was outside. I wish I was in my bed… In a few seconds, with no heater running inside the vehicle, the cold air attacked feverishly through the hardtop. Time to get out?
He was issued the vehicle a few days before—one of the perks of becoming a flight commander. The army was giving him more responsibility. He took it and asked for more. He had been in the Alaskan territory half a year now, although it seemed like much longer than that. Europe was far away in his memory. He was not sure if that was a good or bad thing.
Finally making up his mind, he exited the vehicle, pulling the parka hood over his head. Still, the wind allowed the cold to seep into his bones as he walked the short distance to the entrance of the wooden, military World War II structure that housed the fighter squadron, the same type of building he had seen at many other army posts around the world. The white stuff on the ground crunched under his mukluks. At least the snow had stopped a few hours before. The door slammed as he closed it behind him, and he allowed himself a few seconds to savor the warmth inside. The chill radiated off his army-issued parka but slowly faded away.
Earlier in the night, he had been in a deep, dead man's’ sleep when the phone started ringing. Still drained from the previous day’s brutal mission, he deserved the day off. But he could not say no to a full-bird colonel; even the famous Captain Richards, the war hero, could not do that. So he had dragged himself out of bed and put on a pot of coffee in the small kitchen provided in the Post Officers’ Quarters.
He was not complaining, you understand. After a year fighting the Luftwaffe with the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom, he appreciated the small comforts the army could give him. His own kitchen was definitely a perk, but he felt guilty about it. The faces of his long-dead friends at the hands of the Third Reich were still fresh in his mind. He hoped with time they would fade as well like the cold on his parka. The faces haunted him.
The squadron duty officer on the phone said it was urgent. Hell, things were always urgent in this war. Hurry up and wait was the soldier’s mantra. Richards couldn’t imagine what was so urgent that he had to be woken after flying for over fourteen hours back to Elmendorf Field in Alaska outside of Anchorage. But he was here, doing his duty. He always did his duty. The cold and the lack of sleep seemed inconsequential when compared to his comrades-in-arms still fighting on the Continent. No, Captain Richards wouldn’t be complaining, not tonight. He would simply do what was asked of him. That’s what soldiers do.
Warmed temporarily, Richards strolled purposefully through the hallway to the operations center, the boards in the floor creaking as he stepped on them. Maps of the local terrain adorned the walls along with pictures of wrecked aircraft. There were hundreds of wrecks in Alaska. Usually the hulks were left to rot in the tundra, which was dotted with these rusted remnants of flying machines, their stories long lost to the world. Richards could imagine the scene a hundred years from now, when some young pilot would fly over the carcass of a B-24 and wonder about the story behind it.
Soon he was facing the duty officer, a green second lieutenant who was lucky enough to get assigned here after being commissioned, rather than sent to the front in Europe or to some island, fighting the Japanese. He handed Richards a folded piece of paper. “Here are your orders,” said the lieutenant. “The colonel says this mission is very sensitive and of the highest priority. This aircraft needs to get to Provideniya as soon as possible.”
“That’s it?” asked Richards. “Just another milk run to Provideniya? That’s why the colonel got me up in the middle of the fucking night after a long mission yesterday? I guess he forgot about crew rest,” Richards snarled sarcastically.
“No, I didn’t forget,” said a gruff voice behind him. “But this is war, and all the rules go out the window. Don’t you know that, Captain?”
Richards turned. Shit, he thought to himself. “Good morning, sir! My apologies.” Richards managed a crisp salute despite his fatigue. It was returned promptly.
“It’s not a good morning, it’s the middle of the fucking night,” said the colonel. “And yes, it’s urgent. This satchel has to be in Provideniya by close of business today. TODAY! You understand? Not tomorrow but fucking today!” He handed Richards a brown, leather, official-looking satchel. The briefcase was locked with a padlock containing a rotating dial key. “It’s not me giving the orders on this one. This comes from way above my pay grade. It came from Washington. So yes, I gather it’s rather important, but I have no idea why. Just get it there today so they get off my ass about this one, okay Captain?”
Richards took the satchel and slung it over his shoulder. He unfolded the flight orders and scanned them quickly. “Looks straightforward enough, sir. I’ll get this done and be back in no time.”
“Thank you, Captain. That is all. I know I can count on you. That’s why I woke you up.” Richards saluted again. The colonel again returned the salute, smiled as he turned, and left the operations room.
The lieutenant spoke again. “Weather is waiting for you at the tower. I got them up for you as well. Yes, it looks like this should be a milk run. Only some cloud cover to deal with, sir,”
“Thanks, LT. Have a good night, whatever is left of it. I’ll report in once I’m on my way.” Richards left the room and walked back towards the entrance to the squadron and the cold. The wind bit him in the face as he made his way back to the jeep. At least the heater is warmed up, he thought to himself as he turned on the engine. He drove the short distance to the flight line and the aircraft parked not far away.
Elmendorf Field sat on the edge of Cook Inlet, the natural port that fed the Alaskan territory. It was an effectively protected harbor, and the town of Anchorage sat behind the inlet, snuggled up against the Chugach Mountains rising above it. The mountains were covered in snow. However, in a few months when spring broke, the snow line would move higher up the slope, leaving
only the peaks covered in white. In the summer, the reverse happened. As winter approached, the snow would slowly move down the mountainside day by day. The locals called this phenomenon termination dust, heralding the approaching winter.
The aircraft were lined up along the runway, over twenty-five of them; a few of them had their shark-painted snouts snarling at the cold. Most of them, however, were devoid of more than just the basic markings, as if they were meant for someone other than the Army Air Corp, and they were. The Russians would of course repaint them when they were delivered.
The maintenance chief met him at the tail number that was selected. “She’s fueled and ready to go, Captain,” he stated nonchalantly as he arrived. The man completed this task hundreds of times a week. It was nothing special.
“Thanks, Frank. I appreciate you getting up in the middle of the night as well. Seems to be something about this run that’s very important to someone.”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard. They wanted this plane ready to go and quick. I did my part. Now it’s your turn, Captain. Have a good flight. I guess you’ll be taking the DC-3 back again from Nome. Fly safe.”
Richards returned the sergeant’s salute and climbed into the cockpit, situated himself, started the engine, and taxied out to the runway. The massive rotary engine growled loudly at the night. It was comforting to him somehow. It seemed to him he was the only thing moving in the dead of winter. After receiving clearance for takeoff from the lone man in the tower, he gunned the throttle and shot down the runway.
A half hour later, he was approaching the Alaskan mountain range and Rainy Pass to the West. The tundra flew by beneath him, and he allowed himself some enjoyment flying two hundred feet off the ground as the dawn broke behind him and illuminated the world ahead. The caribou darted and jinked below him, attempting to get away from the strange, terrifying noise. A smile of peace crept across his face. To tell the absolute truth, he had fallen in love with Alaska. The vast wilderness, the wildlife, the freedom, they all captivated him. He was home. He could feel it.
The mountains surrounded Anchorage like a bowl and protected the small town from the more severe weather Alaska had to offer in the interior of the territory. Rainy Pass was a natural opening that wound through the peaks and provided a way to navigate through the chain without crossing over the top of the twelve-thousand-foot mountain range. Over the millennia, the river had cut somewhat of a canyon through the mountains.
Richards had stowed the satchel in the small, rear cargo compartment of the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. The United States had been providing fighter and other types of aircraft to the Soviet Union for over a year now to fight the Nazi war machine, which had invaded Russia and threatened Moscow, although now the Soviets had begun to push them back. It was important to keep the pressure on the Nazis from both east and west.
The Lend-lease program had been very effective, enabling America to delay her entry into the conflict. The effort primarily aided the United Kingdom, but the Soviet Union benefited as well. American manufacturing provided over twenty percent of Soviet aircraft used on the Eastern Front. Ships, trucks, tanks, and other heavy equipment were all provided in massive quantities. At the end of the war, the material was supposed to be destroyed under American supervision, but only a small percentage was actually disposed of in this manner. Much of the equipment the Soviets would use for decades after Hitler was no longer among the living.
Richard’s squadron’s purpose, in addition to providing an air defense capability for the Alaskan territory, was to ferry these aircraft to Russia via the Bering Strait. Provideniya was the small village and military installation on the eastern coast of Siberia, where he landed the planes to deliver to the Russian Air Force.
The lieutenant was right, the weather was not bad. The only issue was a cloud layer at eight thousand feet. He would have to navigate beneath the cloud cover through the pass, as he didn’t have oxygen available on this flight, and it was filed as a VFR, or visual flight rules, hop.
He enjoyed flying under the clouds through the mountains. It was like driving a Formula One through the narrow streets of some European city. Rainy Pass was the only one he had not flown since his arrival in Alaska. He had been offered and had accepted an initial orientation flight through each of the other passes,, a daylight trial run with an instructor in a two-seater. However, Richards was a very experienced pilot and he was not worried. Just a milk run, he thought to himself.
He entered the throughway with plenty of space above him before the cloud cover thickened and created a dark ceiling, which he had no desire to penetrate. The clouds were ominous. The weather was actually slowly becoming worse than the boys at the field had forecast. There was ice in those clouds, ice that could seriously degrade the aerodynamics of his aircraft. Ice was dangerous in Alaska. If you allowed enough of the stuff to accumulate on the wings of your plane, you stopped flying. That was not a good thing to say the least. It was as simple as that. If you could avoid it, you did. I’m not going near it, Richards thought.
He focused again on making his way through the pass. Initially, the canyon was wide, and the walls on either side seemed far away and harmless. However, as he approached the halfway point through the mountain chain, the pass started to narrow and the cloud ceiling began to drop, providing him less room for error.
“Not such a milk run after all,” Richards mumbled to no one as he twisted and turned through the tangled canyon. He had slowed the fighter plane to just above stall speed to give him more maneuverability to negotiate the now very small passageway through the ominous mountains on either side of him. Sweat dripped down his forehead, stinging his eyes. The turns were becoming quicker and more dangerous; they required his utmost attention and skill.
I wish I’d had that orientation flight.
The visibility was dropping. The clouds above him were now emitting a thin veil of mist, which froze to his windshield. He continued to twist and turn and slowed the fighter even more, as much as he dared. The stall warning horn was buzzing in his ear. He wondered how much more time he had before he exited the mountain range on the other side and could relax on his way to Russia.
Where’s that damn map? he thought to himself. His eyes quickly searched the cockpit, and he caught a glimpse of a sheet of paper on the floor under his left foot. The map had fallen down from where he had placed it on the left control panel. His aggressive flight maneuvers through the pass had seen to that. Richards took a chance and leaned down briefly to get the map, taking his eyes off the passage in front of him.
It was a mistake that cost him his life.
When he looked back up, his squadron commander’s words came back to him with frightening clarity. “You’ve got to watch Rainy Pass; there is a twist halfway through that has killed many a skilled pilot. It’s an S turn that is deadly if you’re not careful.”
The snow was falling hard now and the cloud cover was dropping fast.
As he glimpsed through the ice-covered windshield of the plane, Richard’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the mountain passageway turn ninety degrees to the right and completely block his path. The adrenaline coursed through his veins as he jammed the stick to the rear, cut the throttle, and slammed the control to the right to slow the aircraft in hopes of executing a wingover maneuver back down into the pass to the right. He forced the stick against his thigh so hard he broke several blood vessels in the process as the chemicals in his body created superhuman strength in the face of death. The Warhawk pitched up, and then the right wing dipped and she sank back down into the canyon. Out of the corner of his eye, he actually saw several carcasses of other aircraft lying in waste on the hillside that had made the same mistake. It was literally a graveyard of plane crashes.
He smiled as he thought he had made it and briefly imagined drinking vodka with the natives that evening at the local watering hole in Provideniya. However, as he banked harder to the right to fall faster back down into the pass, his right wingtip caught the mountain
side and violently cartwheeled the aircraft down onto the boulder-strewn, granite slope. Mercifully, Richard’s head impacted the left side of the cockpit with such force, he immediately lost consciousness.
The Warhawk made several flips before coming to rest in a small creek bed about two thousand feet above the floor of the pass meandering below.
In a few minutes, the snow covered any trace of tail number USSR-9328.
Chapter One
May 5, 1996
Rainy Pass
Alaskan Mountain Range
75 Miles West of Anchorage, Alaska
Captain Connor Murray tried to make out the herd of caribou bobbing and weaving a thousand feet beneath him through the chin bubble in the cockpit at his feet, the noise of the aircraft frightening them into desperate action. There were hundreds of the huge animals tromping over the lush, green tundra floor of the Alaskan wilderness. The calves tried to keep up with their mothers. The racks of the males stood out among the herd. The craggy, snow-covered peaks of the Alaskan mountain range rose on each side of him as he guided the HH-3E Jolly Green Giant through the pass on the way back to Elmendorf AFB, located on the outskirts of Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage. The aircraft and crew were returning from ferrying supplies out to a forward operating, fighter alert base on the outskirts of the western coast, where the F-15s intercepted Russian bombers routinely trolling along the outskirts of the Alaskan Air Defense Zone, probing American air defenses.
“Lots of calves out here today, they must have just been born,” said Airman Thomas, the PJ, or pararescueman, on board as he leaned over the open ramp at the rear of the aircraft. The only thing holding him inside the cabin was a webbed gunner’s belt chained to the floor and fastened around his waist. “Too bad we don’t have a sling and a water bucket today to have some fun. I’d love to try and drop a load of cold lake water on one of those big bucks!”
