Our Ally, Our Enemy (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 3)

by William Peter Grasso

  “You shoot up any Krauts with it?”

  “Nah, the only ones we saw beat it.”

  McNulty was still having trouble believing what he was hearing. “How the fuck did you even fly the thing, Captain? Ain’t everything in that cockpit in Russian?”

  “Yeah, but it was pretty obvious what most of the gauges were. The switches, though…Mischenko had to make up stickers in English to go over the Russian markings. And controlling the radiator flaps took a little getting used to since I’ve never flown a plane with a liquid-cooled engine before. Aside from that, no real problems.”

  “Would you trade a jug for one?”

  “No way, Sarge. I like this big tough girl with her eight guns a whole lot better.”

  “Okay, if you say so, Captain. Hey, what about that Frog pilot? He fly with ’em, too?”

  “Nah. His C.O. won’t let him.”

  McNulty’s skeptical reply: “And yours does?”

  “I was told to foster good relations and understanding with our Russian allies, Sarge. They didn’t say how to do it. Besides, they flew escort for a lot of the bomber missions our guys did out of the Soviet Union against the Balkans. I figure I’m just returning the favor.”

  As they watched from the wing, an American jeep with Russian markings pulled up. McNulty asked, “What the hell…did we lend-lease ’em those things, too?”

  Then he noticed the jeep’s driver. It was a young woman, Junior Sergeant Sonia Alexiev, General Kozlovsky’s translator.

  “Holy shit,” McNulty said. “They got tomatoes in this outfit, too?”

  “Yeah, a lot of them,” Tommy replied. “Some of them are even pilots.”

  “You gotta be shittin’ me…”

  Sergeant Alexiev waved to Tommy, a big smile on her face.

  “Oh, man,” McNulty said, “don’t tell me you ain’t slipping it to this one, too.”

  “No, you’d have to have a death wish, Sarge. Mischenko figured out she’s not only the general’s translator, she’s his concubine, too.”

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “Concubine, Sarge. A mistress. Broke our young corporal’s heart. He’s head over heels in love with her.”

  A man emerged from the passenger’s seat. He was in full flying gear.

  McNulty asked, “And who’s this asshole?”

  “That’s my buddy Major Vukonikov. He’s the hot stick around here. Got big connections with the Commie Party back in Moscow, we’re told. He even pisses in the general’s face and gets away with it.”

  Vukonikov surveyed the massive P-47, taking a few steps one way and then the other to get the total picture. He stroked a blade of her propeller impassively, then walked to the four machine gun barrels protruding from her wing. He reached up, placing a fingertip into each of the muzzles in turn, as if measuring the caliber. The look on his face was one of decided disapproval.

  Then he glanced at the kill markings beneath the cockpit rail: two swastikas, one for each of the two aircraft he’d shot down; the far greater number of assorted smaller symbols—bombs, locomotives, tanks, cannons—for all the confirmed ground targets he’d destroyed. Vukonikov beckoned Sergeant Alexiev to join him.

  Pointing to the markings, he seemed to be asking her a question.

  Her translation to Tommy: “The major would like to know how many aircraft you’ve shot down and of what type.”

  He related the types of the two aircraft: one transport, one jet bomber.

  Tommy and McNulty could tell when she identified the first aircraft—the JU-52 transport—to Vukonikov. His face broke into a mocking grin as he shook his head dismissively.

  But that display of disrespect stopped when she related the second aircraft type—the Arado-234 jet. The major glowered at Tommy, the menacing look of a schoolyard bully. He mumbled something to Alexiev.

  She thought about it for a few moments before providing the translation. Then she said, “The major says you shouldn’t be so proud of the JU-52. It’s like a young man beating up a babushka.”

  McNulty whispered to Tommy, “Babushka…that mean what I think it means?”

  “It means old woman, Sarge.”

  “Well, fuck him and the horse he rode in on, then.”

  Tommy told Alexiev, “Ask him how many transports he’s shot down, please.”

  The reply: “Scores, the major says, maybe one hundred.”

  Tommy said, “Tell the major he’s full of shit.”

  She looked stricken. “I cannot do that, Captain.”

  “Well, then…wish him good hunting.”

  Vukonikov said something to Alexiev, apparently an order. She hurried back to the jeep. Then he stepped back, looked up at the two Americans standing on the wing, and flashing a sardonic smile, gave them a thumbs up.

  McNulty started to return the gesture, but Tommy grabbed his hand to stop him.

  “Watch it, Sarge,” he warned. “Around here, thumbs up is pretty much the same as go fuck yourself. We learned that the hard way, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re going to fly with this scumbag?” McNulty asked.

  “I’m his wingman, Sarge.”

  They were airborne fifteen minutes later, a flight of three Yak-9s and Tommy’s P-47. He’d heeded McNulty’s fears about the Russian gasoline, easing her throttle gently forward on the runway, letting her engine stabilize at slightly less than the takeoff power setting listed on the chart. Still, Eclipse accelerated briskly and leapt into the air as she always had.

  Maybe this Russian gas isn’t so bad after all. But she is a little light—no bombs, no rockets, no drop tanks, no nothing.

  The four aircraft flew in a loose echelon as they climbed over the bombed-out heart of Vienna. Tommy hadn’t had much time to survey the damage on his three previous flights over the city. When he’d arrived on board the B-26, his view was limited to what he could see through the bomber’s windshield. On his two flights in the Yak, he’d been too preoccupied with handling the unfamiliar machine to spend much time sightseeing.

  The city below was little more than a broad expanse of rubble. He’d seen damage to urban areas from the air before, flattened city blocks once teeming with multi-story structures and people that now resembled vacant lots full of crumbled masonry. In some places, there’d be buildings right alongside the devastation that seemed completely undamaged, like some statement on war’s arbitrary wrath.

  But in Vienna, the scope of the destruction seemed so much wider. Search as he might, Tommy couldn’t see an area in the city that hadn’t been ravaged. He passed over one section where, block after block, once-proud buildings had been reduced to just one wall still standing. Those walls seemed to be lined up like tombstones in a sprawling cemetery.

  It wasn’t the Russians that did this. We did it…the Fifteenth US Air Force out of Italy, with a little help from the RAF. Vienna was loaded with Kraut factories and refineries…and they got pasted pretty regularly for the past year.

  From what I’ve seen, the Russians don’t have the bomber force to inflict this kind of damage. Our guys did the work for them…and they paid a hell of a price in men and machines shot down, too, from what I’ve heard.

  But I think Ollie Hammersmith’s got it right: the Russians have been fighting and dying by the millions for four years, the first three on their own, until we eased the pressure on them a little by finally landing in France. Whatever we’ve done for them in the meantime—strategic bombing, giving them planes, guns, gasoline, and what have you, plus fighting the Krauts in North Africa and Italy—would never be enough in their eyes. The scales of death are tipped way too far in their direction.

  And they remind you of it on a regular basis.

  Since they’ve pushed the Krauts out of Mother Russia, they want to keep going and pick up all the territory in Europe they can get.

  But now that we’ve cleared the Wehrmacht out of France, the low countries, and most of Germany, in the Russians’ eyes it’s, “Thanks for the help, but you’re in our
way.”

  To hear Hammersmith talk, Churchill had it right all along: forget about a cross-channel invasion of France. Go in through the Adriatic and cut the advance of the Russian horde off at the Balkans.

  Too late for that now.

  All the Yaks had radios now. Tommy could hear them chattering over his set, for all the good it did him:

  Da, nyet, and dasvidaniya is about all the Russian I’ve mastered so far. I just play wingman, hang behind Vukonikov’s right wingtip, and follow what he does. The way he behaves in the air, though, it’s like I’m not even here.

  I think he’s pissed off I could fly the Yak without embarrassing myself, even made greasers on both landings. Not bad for a rookie, eh?

  I wonder if he’ll want to fly the jug, just to prove how slick he is and even the score?

  On second thought, McNulty would probably kill us both if that idea is even brought up.

  One thing I can tell for sure, though…he wants to shoot down a jet, and he wants it bad. He doesn’t like it one bit that I already have.

  Is jealous the right word?

  He reached out and touched the tattered photo of Sylvie he’d affixed to a corner of the instrument panel. She was sitting on a crate of aircraft parts at their old airfield in Alençon, France, smiling as she sipped a bottle of Coca-Cola. She looked like an innocent schoolgirl. Looking at that picture, no one would ever believe she’d been a fierce warrior in the French Resistance, taking German lives as easily as any soldier.

  Damn…when am I ever going to see her again?

  The formation leveled off at 8,000 feet and headed north for the Czech border. Today’s mission was to provide top cover for three squadrons of Sturmovik ground attack aircraft: big, single-engine planes that were actually slightly larger than the P-47 yet not as heavy. They were slow and cumbersome but armored like a tank, at least for the pilot and engine. The gunner in the aft cockpit—the man or woman who protected the plane from stern attacks—wasn’t blessed with much armor around him or her. According to stories J.P. Lambert had told him, the casualty rate for Sturmovik gunners was something like three times greater than the pilots’ rate. And while these flying tanks claimed ludicrously high kill numbers against German armor, the numbers of them shot down were equally enormous.

  I’m no stranger to ground attack, Tommy told himself, and I know damn well that most of the stuff you think you knocked out, you didn’t. It’ll be interesting to see if these guys are half as good as they claim to be.

  They’d been airborne for thirty-five minutes, burning gas and holes in the sky as the escorts orbited over the slower-flying Sturmoviks. There were scattered clouds above and below the escorts this day, posing no serious impediment to visibility in any direction. But that was expected to change by tomorrow.

  Suddenly the radio was alive with excited voices—Tommy understood none of the Russian—but the Sturmoviks, twenty-one in all, had broken their finger-four formations and gathered into two lines with wings abreast, one line behind the other. From high above, the planes looked as if their wingtips were touching.

  I hear the Sturmoviks usually attack in one of two ways: first, the line, which looks like what they’re doing right now. Real good for spread targets like convoys, trains, and massed troops, especially when the threat of interceptors jumping you is low. Combines a lot of firepower for maximum effect—a moving wall of lead. Personally, the reason I think they like it is with so many planes in the line, the anti-aircraft gunners on the ground may get overwhelmed…and any one plane has a smaller chance of getting hit.

  The other way is called the “wheel of death.” A bunch of Sturmoviks—as many as ten, I’m told—form what’s basically a very wide Lufberry Circle, with each ship flying a gentle, continuous turn, defending the tail of the ship in front. One at a time, a ship peels off, attacks a ground target, and then returns to the circle for the next guy’s turn.

  That’s a hell of a lot different from how we do a Lufberry. We keep the circle tight, with no more than two ships in it. Less chance of an attacker above you, flying his own gentle circle in the opposite direction, getting a head-on crack at everybody in one pass.

  Maybe the Russians think their exposed and vulnerable tail gunner gives them a better chance at surviving an attack on that big, wide circle.

  I kind of doubt it. I think I like our way better.

  Tommy could finally see what the Sturmoviks were attacking: a mixed convoy of wheeled and armored vehicles. On their first pass, two of the Sturmoviks crashed to the ground, one short of the convoy, one well beyond it. Both wrecks burned furiously.

  Can’t tell exactly how much anti-aircraft fire the Krauts are putting up, but based on the score so far, it looks pretty damn effective.

  I sure hope they don’t start shooting any of it up at us.

  The two lines of Sturmoviks—minus the two ships already knocked down—wheeled around for another pass at the convoy.

  They’re going to give the Krauts another try. Same formation, same direction of attack.

  Good luck, Ivan. You’re going to need it. That convoy doesn’t look like it suffered too much so far. And it isn’t any surprise you’re coming.

  With the escorts still orbiting at 8,000 feet above the Sturmoviks, Tommy turned his attention to how he and the Yaks were deployed. They were in a fairly wide Lufberry themselves, with Tommy behind Vukonikov’s white Yak. In his previous two missions with the Soviets, the preferred method for a four-plane flight to engage enemy aircraft was in line abreast, just like the Sturmoviks were doing. Sometimes that line sagged into a vee, an echelon, or even a bow as the flight attempted to match the leader’s speed. Vukonikov’s favored position as leader was second from right, with his wingman on his right wingtip. Tommy thought he’d figured out why:

  They didn’t have radios, so they had little coordination once they were in the air. They had to be close to each other to see hand signals. So they either flew all together in that line or they broke off into single combat, maybe with the protection of a wingman, maybe without.

  Now that they all seem to have radios, maybe they’ll see there are better ways to coordinate their attacks…

  But it doesn’t look like they’re doing it yet.

  Colonel Marchand leaned back in his chair, smiling across the desk at Sylvie. He couldn’t conceal how proud of her he was at this moment. He stood, walked around the desk to her chair, and kissed her on the top of her head.

  “Excellent job, young lady,” he told her. “We’re all quite impressed with that haul of Boche scientists.”

  She returned a slight smile and said nothing, waiting for the but she felt sure was coming next.

  There’s always a but.

  “I am curious about one thing, though,” the colonel said. “The reports are full of the name Isabelle Truffaut as the French official responsible for taking them into custody.”

  “Is there some problem with that, oncle?” she asked.

  “A minor one, my dear. There is no Isabelle Truffaut employed at this headquarters. General Tassigny is very curious why you identified yourself with that name.”

  “It is my proper maiden name, oncle.”

  “Of course, of course. But why did you use it instead of Sylvie Bergerac, your proper married name? It’s the name by which everyone here knows you and the one officially on the roster.”

  She never expected to have to explain herself, especially not to her uncle, a man with a thorough knowledge of her history with La Résistance.

  But this is a military headquarters, she reminded herself. One must expect a certain level of obtuseness.

  “I had good reasons,” she explained. “While I was fairly sure the scientists were not SS or Gestapo—or even regular military—I couldn’t be sure. But I am sure that if the Germans know me as maquis under any name, it would be Sylvie Bergerac. I couldn’t rule out the possibility I would be dealing with the SS at some point.”

  His tone flippant, Marchand said, “Deal wit
h them…as in kill and wound them like you did?”

  “Don’t make jokes, oncle. What I mean is that I’ve been in the custody of the Boche before—only escaping by luck—and I don’t plan on repeating that mistake. The more anonymity, the better. And as far as dealing with them goes, that was all an unfortunate necessity.”

  “Well, you’ll be glad to know the scientists praised you to the sky for saving their lives.”

  Sylvie laughed. “I should be grateful for that, I suppose. Otherwise, with the luck I’ve had lately, I would’ve probably been charged with murder.”

  “You’re being melodramatic, Sylvie.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. But as to saving the scientists’ lives, I think they would’ve survived just fine, one way or the other. Their politics seem—how should I say?—adaptable? I’m sure they could’ve even found a way to make themselves useful to the Russians they are so afraid of.”

  “Meaning their allegiance blows in the wind?”

  “Exactly,” she replied. “So now that we have them, what’s going to become of the technical information they provided?”

  “That’s up to the Americans, I’m afraid,” Marchand replied.

  “Isn’t everything these days, oncle?”

  He nodded his agreement and then picked up some papers from his desk. “I have some more good news for you, as well, Sylvie. That little matter of your arrest warrant back in France—it’s been quashed.”

  “And all I had to do to make that happen was find a bunch of actual Boche physicists instead of some deserted rocket factory?”

  “It didn’t hurt, my dear. Don’t forget what I told you—this headquarters has no idea who Isabelle Truffaut is, and that’s the name on your arrest warrant. Nobody on the general staff would be too concerned about rescinding a warrant for someone they don’t know. That’s why the matter dragged on so long, I suspect.”

  He was surprised how subdued she seemed despite all the good news. “Is there something on your mind?” he asked.