by James R Benn
“You don’t have to worry, you’ll be safe on the ground,” I said as we clambered into the jeep, Max hanging on in the back and clutching my gear. As it turned out, Sidorov was an enthusiastic driver himself, and I quickly forgot about German fighters as he took a corner like a getaway driver at a bank heist.
Engines began to roar in the distance, the full-throated sound of snarling Wright Cyclone supercharged engines rising in intensity as we drew closer to the main runway. Sidorov pulled over as the first B-17 rumbled slowly down the runway, its massive wingspan lit by running lights as it passed by, prop wash blasting us with swirls of chill morning air. As a sliver of dawn cracking the eastern horizon, more Forts moved into position. The lead aircraft lifted off, wheels up. Then another, and another, engines howling as each took off, the squadron circling, gaining altitude, individual planes jockeying for position in the faint light.
The last of the Fortresses rose and joined the armada, engine noises merging into one terrible and mighty sound as the full squadron circled the airfield, beginning its journey to the Romanian oil fields, and then safely home to airbases in Italy. Most of them, anyway.
Not all of them, certainly.
We sat in the jeep for a moment, listening to the fading sound, the thundering engines disappearing in a steady drone, until finally, the air was silent. The passage of men and machines left behind a deathly quiet, leaving me in awe of the parade that had filled the air, proclaiming its wrath and fury while carrying steel and flesh into battle hundreds of miles distant.
Sidorov drove on in silence. Even Max was left without words, his eyes on the empty sky and its dawning reddish hue.
Runway Three was quiet in comparison. At the first hangar, a dull yellow light spilled out feebly onto the runway as ground crew pushed out a small biplane. The only other illumination came from General Belov’s jeep, with Maiya at the wheel and the general firing up another of his American smokes.
“You’re sure it was Runway Three?” I asked Max as Sidorov braked just in time to avoid Belov’s jeep. Our own headlights illuminated the biplane as the crew rolled it out. An open cockpit two-seater.
“Yes, boss. Major Drozdov tell me. Runway tri. General is here, yes?”
“Yeah, but where’s Drozdov?” I asked as I swung my legs out of the jeep and saluted in Belov’s direction. He waved his Chesterfield at me and leaned in to whisper to Maiya.
“Major Drozdov was called away,” Maiya said, stepping out of the jeep. “The general wishes you luck on your journey. He wanted to see you off personally. It is a great honor.”
“Please thank the general, but I’d be more honored to see my aircraft. Is there any problem?” I asked.
“No. No problem,” Maiya said. “This is your aircraft. Lieutenant Chechneva will fly you to your destination. Zolynia airbase, as Major Drozdov agreed.”
“In that contraption? Where’s the major? There’s obviously been a mistake,” I said, looking to Belov. He avoided my eyes. I glanced at Max, who stifled a grin.
“No, Billy,” Sidorov said. “There is no mistake, I am afraid.”
“Exactly,” Maiya said. “No mistake. Here comes Comrade Lieutenant Chechneva. She is an excellent pilot, Captain. You need not fear.”
“She? I’m being flown hundreds of miles to the front in a crop duster by a dame? You gotta be kidding,” I said. The lady lieutenant saluted Belov, who had risen from the jeep to greet her.
“You should show respect, Captain Boyle,” Maiya said, her voice low and angry. “The lieutenant is a member of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment. Very famous in Russia. She has flown many missions.”
“I did not know the Night Witches were based here,” Sidorov said.
“Who?” Now I was really confused.
“The Germans called them the Night Witches,” Maiya said. “They attack at night, cutting their engines and gliding in to drop their bombs at low altitude. It is very dangerous. And daring.”
“I am sorry, Maiya,” I said, hearing the awe in her voice. This pilot and her regiment were heroes to her, that much was clear. “I was not expecting such a—basic aircraft.”
“Lieutenant Chechneva arrived here last week on a courier run,” Maiya said, answering Sidorov’s question and ignoring my apology. “Her aircraft needed repairs, which were completed yesterday. She must return to Zolynia today, and Major Drozdov arranged for her to take Captain Boyle. Why send another aircraft when one is already available?”
It seemed pointless to debate that logic. Maiya introduced me to Lieutenant Tatyana Chechneva, who regarded me with the same sense of healthy suspicion as I had for her. She was on the short side, with a pile of curly hair, dark, lively eyes, and a row of medals glinting on her tunic.
“Lieutenant Chechneva will tell you about the aircraft and her mission as she conducts her check,” Maiya said. I got the feeling that was a suggestion from Maiya and perhaps General Belov, since Tatyana barely concealed a roll of her eyeballs. But like a good solider, she carried on as she went through the preflight routine, with Maiya translating.
The biplane was a Polikarpov Po-2, and oddly enough it had been used as a crop duster before the war. It flew low and slow, cutting its engine as Maiya had said, producing an eerie whistling sound as the wind hit the wings’ bracing wires. German prisoners had reported it sounded like a broomstick waved through the air, and had given the regiment the nickname Night Witches.
Nachthexen.
Their attacks weren’t meant primarily to inflict heavy material damage. The bomb load was too small for that. The idea was to use the attacks to inflict psychological damage, denying the Germans sleep and a chance to rest from the stress of combat on the Russian front. It worked particularly well when they could strike a fuel dump or ammunition supply, lighting up the sky with evidence that they could hit anywhere without warning.
Tatyana explained that while there were many pilots and ground crew who were women, the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment was the only all-female unit in the Red Air Force. Administrative staff, mechanics, cooks, pilots, navigators, all were women. I didn’t need Maiya to translate the obvious pride evident in Tatyana’s voice.
“Please tell her I am honored to fly with her,” I said. “But isn’t the second seat for a navigator?”
“Yes, but flying in daylight over friendly territory does not require navigation,” Maiya said. “The lieutenant has flown the route before. She says you should enjoy the scenery, and she will get you to Zolynia safely.”
That didn’t sound so terrible, so I left Tatyana alone to finish up. I stepped back to get a good look, now that the morning light was filtering in. The tail had a large red star outlined in yellow. Same on the side of the fuselage. The entire plane was painted in green and brown camouflage. It wasn’t pretty, but it did look sturdy. By the pilot’s seat, a name was painted in Russian letters, along with a vine of yellow flowers. I asked Maiya what that meant.
“Raisa. Her first navigator,” she said. “The fascists killed Raisa, so Tatyana named her Po-2 after her. The flowers are a common decoration with the girls. They try to remain as feminine as they can, even as they fly many sorties each night, and live in poor conditions close to the front.”
“Have you met them? The Night Witches?”
“No, only Tatyana. But they are my heroes. I wish I could join them. I learned to fly before the war at my Komsomol flying club. I have asked for a transfer, but General Belov says he requires me here. It is a disappointment, but I must stay where I am needed,” she said, with little conviction.
“You know, as the Americans and British draw closer to Germany from the west, and the Soviets from the east, there will be a need for translators in frontline units. Do you know if the 46th has any English-speaking personnel?”
“No, Captain Boyle, I do not. That is an excellent idea. Thank you. And good luck,” Maiya said as a smile spread
across her face and she headed for Belov.
“Be careful, Billy,” Sidorov said, sidling up to me and making sure Max and Maiya were out of earshot. “They are separating us and sending you off on a long, slow trip. This plane flies at one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, maximum. Zolynia is some nine hundred kilometers from here. You will have to land and refuel on the way, and you will reach your destination late in the day. It may take you a day to locate a translator and find Nikolin. Then there is the matter of the return trip.”
“That’s after I get to Kozova and search for Big Mike,” I said. “Yeah, I wish I had a faster way to get there, but at least I’m going.”
“I hope you return, my friend,” Sidorov said, extending his hand. He wasn’t much as friends go. Disgraced NKVD operative, murderer, and the kind of guy who would do anything to avoid another trip down the road of bones. But here I was, deep inside the Soviet Union, with no one else I could trust in sight. So I shook.
“I will. Watch your back,” I said. “And Kaz will be surprised to see you. Not happily, I’m sure, so take it easy with him.”
“We are now on the same side, do not worry,” he said. “I need his help, you understand?”
I did. Solving the case was Sidorov’s ticket to freedom. Not that there was a whole lot of freedom to be had under Stalin’s rule, but at least he’d be free not to have his bones buried in some Siberian roadbed.
“Here, boss,” Max said, handing me the sack of food and my helmet. “See you soon, yes?”
“Damn right, Max,” I said, stuffing the sandwiches and apple in my pockets. “Did you know about this?”
“Sure, I know. But better not to say. You only worry, right? And you have to go, no choice. Not in Red Army, not in your army,” Max said, looking serious for the first time since we met. I nodded my agreement as one of the ground crew snatched my helmet away and thrust a leather flying helmet and goggles at my chest.
“No good,” Max translated, pointing at my helmet. “Too heavy. Wear this.”
“Okay. What about parachutes?” I said. The ground crew guy laughed as Max translated.
“No parashyut,” Max said. “You fly too low. No use. And too heavy.”
Great.
I climbed into the rear seat and pulled on the leather helmet and goggles as Tatyana fired up the engine. I still hoped they were playing a joke on the gullible Yankee imperialist, and someone would come trotting out with parachutes for us, and we’d all laugh.
Nope. Instead, they all waved, led by General Belov himself, a guy I’d never seen smile before this morning. Did the fact that I was flying in an old biplane nearly a thousand kilometers to the front lines have anything to do with that?
Tatyana said something through the interphone and waved her hand in the air. She sounded cheery, so I laughed as I buckled my straps and grasped the edge of the fuselage. She opened up the throttle and I was rewarded with the vision of caps flying, including Belov’s, as she turned onto the runway and began taxiing at high speed.
The ground flew away below us. The rising sun cast long shadows across the grass runway as Tatyana pulled up the nose and gained altitude. She made a slow turn and the entire airbase displayed itself sprawled across the Ukrainian steppe. The grasslands went in every direction, a sea of sunbaked brown and green. Tatyana turned and smiled. I couldn’t help doing the same. Up here, with the wind whipping my face and a clear morning sky ahead, I felt unaccountably peaceful. Happy to be alive.
We couldn’t have been more than a few hundred feet high when she leveled out, following the course of a river and heading northwest. I’d seen a lot of the USSR flying in, but then I was pretty much concentrating on not getting killed. And from five miles up the world looked a whole lot different than from five hundred feet. Here, I could see the land, the dried-up riverbeds, the wreck of machinery strewn over blackened ground. A village of about half a dozen dwellings, not one of them habitable, their charred ruins a monument to the scorched earth policy practiced by both sides. This land had been liberated from the Nazis, but there wasn’t much life left in it.
I began to feel less peaceful.
I tried to focus on my next steps. One thing at a time. First, find Nikolin and someone to translate. I hoped Drozdov’s orders carried enough weight to make that happen. NKVD directive or not, the closer you got to the front lines, the less interested people were in going out of their way for visiting officers, especially those from another country.
If Nikolin was bivouacked at the airbase, then it shouldn’t be too hard to find him, as long as I could say Leytenant Vanya Nikolin and be understood. It would have been a helluva lot easier to have Kaz along for the ride, but that wasn’t in the cards. There wasn’t room, for one thing, and Bull had been right when he mentioned Kaz’s recovery. He was in good shape now, had been since the day after his surgery. But it was a long trip traveling by air via Cairo and Tehran, and even Charles Atlas could use a rest after that circuit.
So Nikolin. Then ask the local NKVD officer to try and get word on Big Mike and the rest of the crew. Assuming he was the cooperative type, I’d ask for transport to Kozova so I could begin the search for Big Mike. With a driver who knew the area, and a translator, of course.
Simple.
That was as far ahead as I could think, for this excursion, anyway. It would end with me finding Big Mike and the other guys. We’d head back to Poltava and celebrate. Kaz, Big Mike, and I would be together again, and we’d figure this case out. Find the killer, head back home.
Hey, when you have no idea what’s going to happen, you might as well imagine the best.
Tatyana banked left and then evened out. Ahead of us a wide river cut through the grassland. As we drew closer, she pointed to the river.
“Reka,” she said via the interphone. “Reka Dnepr.”
“Da, da,” I said, recognizing the words. The Dnieper River. I’d heard of it, one of the major rivers in this huge country. I’d seen it recently in the atlas we’d found in Lieutenant Ivan Kopelev’s room. It flowed south, emptying into the Black Sea near Odessa.
How valuable was a used atlas on a Soviet airbase? Someone had swiped it from the jeep, and that still bothered me. Was it just petty theft, or had there been something important about that book? When I got back, I’d pay a visit to the government bookstore in Poltava where Kopelev bought the book. Kaz would enjoy a visit to a bookshop, even a Soviet-style one.
I had too many damn questions and too few answers. I needed Kaz and his brain power to work on this. I could only hope he wouldn’t be too outraged at meeting Sidorov after all these months. Not only had the guy tried to railroad him, there was also the matter of the Katyn Forest Massacre. The Russians had executed thousands of Polish officers after they’d captured them in 1939, back when the Nazis and the Soviets worked together to dismember Poland. The mass graves had been discovered when the Germans took Russian territory around Katyn. The Germans made big news of it, always happy to find another government with the blood of innocents on its hands. Stalin, of course, blamed the Germans. But letters and documents found on the bodies revealed the officers had been killed during the period the Russians held them.
They were murdered by the NKVD, which would make for a poor working relationship between Kaz and Sidorov, even though he was now ex-NKVD. It was a distinction likely to matter little to Kaz, Sidorov’s tenure on the road of bones notwithstanding.
But maybe Kaz’s distrust would be a good thing. Sidorov might be pulling the wool over my eyes. I’d begun to trust him, although he’d done little to earn it other than being good company in a tough situation. Understanding, too. He’d been on my side when it came to my plan to search for Big Mike. Had he really been upset when he found out he wasn’t slated to make this trip? Maybe not. Maybe he’d engineered things, so I’d be away while he worked at what he’d tried to accomplish back in London. Pinning an innocent man f
or a murder.
We crossed the river, flying close to a pontoon bridge loaded down with trucks and troops. Tatyana waggled her wings and I could see men waving at us. Did they know she was a Night Witch? If they did, none of them seemed to have a problem with lady pilots in combat.
It shouldn’t have sounded so strange to me, either. After all, Diana Seaton was with the SOE, and the kind of combat they engaged in, behind enemy lines, was just as dangerous as flying low and slow with no parachute.
I tried to focus on the case, wondering what Kopelev and Morris had stumbled into to get themselves killed. But thoughts of Diana kept creeping into my mind, distracting me from any notions of means, motive, and opportunity. All I could envision was Diana, recovering at Seaton Manor, safe and well-cared for. I prayed that she’d have the sense to stay put for once and not volunteer for another assignment as soon as she could walk ten paces unaided.
The good Lord might listen to my prayers, but Diana was less likely to.
It was an hour later when Tatyana banked slightly and leveled off in a slow descent. Dead ahead was a clear patch of green and a row of small buildings. As we approached the grass runway, I spotted the burned-out hulk of a fighter plane and several blackened bomb craters that hadn’t yet been filled in. I guess we were getting close to the front.
I saw camouflage netting and a few aircraft hidden underneath. As we touched down and bounced on the soft earth, ground crew came running out to meet us. Tatyana taxied, bringing the Po-2 closer to the buildings. She cut the engine and we both pulled off our googles and helmets and climbed down.
Most of the men were ground crew. Unarmed mechanics, who stopped in their tracks as they took in my uniform. Shouts rose up from their ranks and two soldiers burst from the building behind them, rifles aimed straight at my chest. An officer followed, pushing the soldiers aside as he held his pistol on me. They looked confused and scared, shouting something I couldn’t understand while they kept their quivering fingers on their triggers.
