Road of Bones

by James R Benn

  I stuck my hands up in the air, which seemed the only sensible thing to do.

  “Amerikanskiy,” Tatyana yelled, stepping in front of me and gesturing for the men to lower their weapons. “Ne fashist. Amerikanskiy!”

  “American,” I repeated. “Stalin. FDR. Churchill.” They lowered their guns, so I lowered my hands.

  “Tovarishch,” Tatyana said, stepping aside as if presenting me as a newly minted comrade.

  “Stalin!” I said again, figuring that was the one word no Russian would argue with.

  “Dokumenty,” the officer said, his pistol lowered but unholstered. He didn’t seem impressed with my love for Uncle Joe or my uniform. He held out his free hand, and I reached inside my jacket for the travel orders. The pistol came back up.

  “Documents,” I said, slowly. He seemed to grasp the concept and let me take out the paperwork without a shot being fired. It’s nice to meet new allies.

  He beckoned us to follow him into the nearest building. The two soldiers stayed a pace behind us just in case we got lost. The structure wasn’t more than a wood hut with a rough plank floor. A map covered one wall, and a portrait of Stalin hung on the opposite wall. A couple of tables, one with a radio, completed the décor. Through the window I could see men rolling drums of aviation fuel toward Tatyana’s aircraft. This must be the planned refueling spot. As soon as they gassed us up and Joe Stalin Junior satisfied his curiosity about my orders, we’d be on our way.

  Tatyana forked over her orders, and the lieutenant sat to read them. There wasn’t another chair at his makeshift desk, and he seemed fine with leaving us standing. He and Tatyana had the same rank. I could tell by the two stars on their shoulder boards and the light blue piping that they were both Red Air Force lieutenants. I’d noticed at Poltava that captains had four stars.

  “Leytenant,” I said, in a sharp voice that was my best imitation of Sam Harding. That got his attention. “Kapitan.” I pointed to the silver bars on my collar. Then I leaned forward and tapped the two small stars on his shoulder board and held up four fingers.

  “Kapitan Boyle,” Tatyana said, barely suppressing a grin. She shot off a few sentences in Russian and I picked up Belov’s name tossed about. That brought about a sudden change in attitude, and the Russian louie stood up and barked out orders. Tatyana mimed drinking something to let me know what was happening.

  The lieutenant offered me the chair, which I declined and offered to Tatyana. She shook her head, refusing as any junior officer should do. So, I took a load off, figuring that was the gentlemanly thing to do in this situation. Right now, she was another junior officer, not my date to the prom. The lieutenant snapped his fingers and one of the soldiers brought in a stool for their visiting Night Witch.

  Tatyana’s orders were returned to her. The lieutenant read mine carefully, probably looking for evidence that I was a fascist spy or at least some hiccup that would allow him to put me behind bars. Not that this airstrip had anything as fancy as a decent slammer. I doubt it had much of a latrine for that matter.

  He finally finished reading and returned my papers, seemingly mollified. Or fearful of offending anyone traveling under NKVD protection. Mugs of hot steaming tea were brought in, and I shared my sandwiches with Tatyana. As we ate, the radio operator was busy writing out a transmission. There was a scurry of activity, and it seemed like the lieutenant was asking the radioman to check again. As he waited, he consulted the map and called Tatyana over. Their fingers traced routes on the map, which was nothing but a jumble of Cyrillic letters to me.

  The radioman brought them a report. From their looks I could tell it confirmed whatever had come in earlier. The lieutenant spat out orders and one of his men ran outside.

  “What’s happening?” I said, before I remembered they couldn’t understand me. Not my words, anyway.

  “Jedlicze,” Tatyana said. “Ne Zolynia.” She pointed to a spot on the map. Zolynia. She shook her head. Then pointed south, to a small town. Jedlicze.

  “Why?” I asked, shrugging my shoulders and raising my eyebrows in a questioning look.

  “Fashisty,” she said, making a thrust with her hand, sweeping in from the west. “Ataka.”

  “The Germans are attacking, so we’re going to Jedlicze instead,” I said, half to myself. From what I could make out, Jedlicze was about sixty miles south of Zolynia. If Nikolin kept himself alive and they held their ground, we could be there tomorrow. It meant a delay, but it was better than flying directly into a Kraut attack.

  Tatyana went outside to check on her aircraft and I followed. Ground crew were pulling two handcarts, each with three bombs. Tatyana spoke with them as they wheeled the carts toward her aircraft, and then I understood. We weren’t avoiding the battle.

  We were going straight into it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I didn’t like this one damn bit. Being ferried like a tourist in the bright sunlight was one thing. Being taken along on a solo night bombing mission in a biplane with six tiny bombs was another thing. Another crazy thing.

  What was even crazier was not understanding what everyone was talking about. I watched as Tatyana and the lieutenant—I’d found out his name was Chernov—compared her map with the larger wall map, charting out the course to Jedlicze. They kept pointing to a river east of town, and from what I could figure, there was a German fuel dump near a bridge. Tatyana kept making sounds like the woosh of a giant exploding fireball while jabbing her finger where a road crossed the river, right at the center of a U-shaped bend in the waterway.

  I assumed the explosion was intended for the fuel dump, not our little airplane.

  Earlier, she’d pointed at me, and I got the impression she was asking Chernov if she could leave me behind. He wasn’t having it. I figured there was slim to no chance he’d saddle himself with a Yank traveling under NKVD orders. They had a bit of an argument about that, but Tatyana seemed to resign herself to taking me along.

  I worried about what the person who normally sat in my seat was supposed to do, namely navigate. After gesturing at the maps and Tatyana, she pointed to her eyes, then the map. She’d get us there.

  But that didn’t stop her from giving me an assignment. Which was when I decided I wasn’t really cut out to be a Night Witch.

  The job involved flares. She showed me one as the ground crew loaded a dozen into the navigator’s compartment. Through hand gestures and some engine-noise sound effects, she let me know that the flares had to be tossed out when she cut her motor. Once a cord was pulled, it released a small parachute and lit the fuse. The flares would float down and illuminate the area, helping her to pinpoint the target.

  “Stalin,” she said, and mimed pulling the cord and throwing the flare. “Stalin.” She did the same. I got it. Every time she yelled Uncle Joe’s name, I dropped a flare over the side.

  It was absolutely insane.

  Once we straightened that out, I pointed to the map and held up one finger.

  “Jedlicze,” I said, then held up two fingers. “Zolynia. Then we go to Zolynia. Da?”

  “Nyet,” she said, holding up three fingers. With two fingers she pointed to an empty spot on the map, east of Jedlicze, about halfway to Zolynia. We had a different stop after the attack, if we lived that long. I gave a shrug and pointed to the location, nothing but clear green on the map. What’s there?

  “Nochnye Vedmy,” she said, patting her chest, then the map. “Nachthexen.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. We’d be joining the rest of the Night Witches at an airfield that wasn’t on the map, in the dead of night. If I did manage to find Big Mike, he’d never believe the route I took to get to him.

  When I found him. It was beginning to get tough to stay optimistic.

  As soon as the sun hit the western horizon it was time for takeoff. Chernov had orders prepared for Tatyana. Maybe it was the way they did things, or maybe he was c
overing his ass since he was diverting an NKVD transport. She signed two copies and gave one back to him. It looked like a lot of Cyrillic hen scratches to me, but other than that, it seemed like any army paperwork designed to protect officers and keep file clerks busy. Tatyana grinned as she stuffed the orders into her pocket. I got the feeling she agreed.

  We got an enthusiastic wave off, even from Chernov. As we left the grass airstrip behind, I caught the glow of the setting sun going down behind the German lines. I was still kicking myself for thinking about if I found Big Mike, not when. That bad choice of words stayed with me for a while, until it was totally dark, and I had more to worry about than jinxing us with poor phrasing.

  Splashes of soft light slid beneath the wings as we passed villages and isolated houses hidden in the forested hills. This was a big country, and maybe some of those folks managed to get through the war without armies rolling up to their doorstep. From a few hundred feet up though, it looked damned empty, like a lot of poor souls hadn’t been so lucky.

  The sky was mostly cloudy, but the half moon rising gave off enough light to shimmer on a river ahead. Tatyana bore north to follow it. She turned to get my attention and shot out a hand in the direction of the river. That would take us to the target.

  She stayed low, which was probably the best protection against being spotted. Time and space seemed to stand still, the darkness blurring the distinction between land and air; the river below shining in the intermittent moonlight; and the sound of the puttering, chugging engine enveloping us in a falsely reassuring cocoon of noise.

  Then the real world intruded. Artillery fire lit up the skyline ahead. Whose it was—impossible to tell. Tracer rounds swept the sky and explosions crumped dully in the distance, leaving trees, grasses, and God knows what else burning.

  Tatyana yelled, her arm signaling downwards. The clouds parted, and the moon lit up the large bend in the river ahead. I could make out a thin line across it; a bridge bisecting the bend just like on the map.

  This was it. She lifted up the nose of the little Po-2, gaining altitude, and cut the engine.

  Silence.

  A frightening silence, as we floated and fell through the air in a fabric and wood coffin. The aircraft dropped, then steadied as Tatyana brought it around in a wide arc, riding the winds as they played on the struts and wires like thrumming guitar strings.

  The heavenly music of the Night Witches.

  “Stalin! Stalin!” Tatyana shouted, and I fumbled with the first flare, pulling the cord and getting it clear of the plane before it ignited. Then the second, which went more easily. I looked back, saw the small parachutes floating slowly, the incandescent red glow casting itself over the landscape.

  “Stalin!”

  Another flare. Tatyana banked left as shots rang out from below, random spurts of gunfire searching the sky.

  Then I saw it. Camouflage netting, unmistakable in the harsh light, casting shadows from the tall poles used to prop it up. I tapped Tatyana on the shoulder and pointed as the first flare hit the ground and sputtered out. She didn’t respond but brought the aircraft around in a tighter circle, lining herself up with the netting as the last flare floated right over it.

  The crack of rifles and the chatter of submachine guns picked up, quickly joined by a heavy machine gun, a real antiaircraft weapon that sprayed incendiary tracer rounds in wide arcs, searching for the gliding biplane.

  Tatyana yelled something that could have been the Russian version of bombs away, and the biplane lifted in the air, relieved of its ordnance. Tracer rounds passed close by, flashes of light just yards to our right.

  Red-hot rounds ripped through the lower wing, cutting through the fabric.

  Explosions rippled behind us, a series of detonations that sounded small and puny compared to the volume of fire coming up against us. Tatyana started the engine and I looked back as another machine gun sent bursts in our direction.

  Our small explosions turned huge, a massive fireball bursting high into the night sky, silencing the machine guns. Flying cans of fuel burned like rockets, cascading flame and certain death over the Germans below.

  The gunfire stopped. The sky glowed with carnage as the Po-2 puttered along, Tatyana shaking her fist in fury, repeating the same words I’d heard her say earlier. It wasn’t bombs away. It was Raisa, the name of her dead friend, her first navigator.

  Raisa, Raisa.

  She was a true Night Witch, cursing the fascists, shouting out revenge as her blood enemies burned below.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I didn’t know where the front line was, exactly, but from the flashes of artillery and small arms fire, we were damn close. Tatyana banked the aircraft, moving away from the clashes below. She flicked on a flashlight and held up a compass, probably to comfort me. It was a nice gesture, but the long ribbon of darkness we flew over was unnerving.

  Nothingness. No cozy village lights, no flash of machine guns, no water reflecting moonlight. The cloud cover thickened, making it difficult to discern the horizon. It was like being at sea in a thick fog where your disoriented senses play tricks on you.

  As bad as this was, at least it wasn’t cold. How did they manage in these open cockpits during the Russian winter?

  A throaty, purring sound arose, carried on the wind, coming from somewhere to our rear. Tatyana banked again, then returned to her course, waggling her wings as she did. I craned my neck, trying to see in the inky darkness. Squinting, I managed to catch sight of something. Another biplane, a Po-2 by the engine, sounding like a sewing machine going full tilt.

  Then another, and another. A whole flight of Night Witches, six aircraft rendezvousing with Tatyana and overtaking us as she throttled back, letting them pass. Perfect; six navigators to guide us home.

  After twenty more minutes, I spotted two fires on the ground, and I could make out the lead aircraft reducing speed and descending. The flames reminded me of landing zones the Resistance laid out for Lysander aircraft in the deserted French countryside, each fire marking one end of the runway, such as it was.

  By the time we bumped to a landing on the grassy field, the other Po-2s were lined up next to the trees that marked the boundary of the wooded hill and the open meadow, and the fires were extinguished. This wasn’t an actual airbase. There were no buildings, not even a hut, only four large trucks filled with containers of fuel. Tatyana taxied closer, cutting her engine as the ground crew stood ready to push the biplane into position.

  We climbed out of our seats, and I felt the stiffness in my bones after sitting for so long, but I was thankful for the feel of earth beneath my boots. Tatyana stretched as well, shouting out to the others and pointing at me. This time, there were no guns leveled, just a press of flyers and ground crew, all women, inspecting me and my uniform, while Tatyana explained about the Amerikanskiy she’d brought them. There was a lot of excited chatter, cut off only when one of the pilots was helped out of her aircraft, her forehead bleeding and one arm held close to her chest. Two of the ground crew ran to her and began unpacking a medical kit. The pilot looked dazed, but not too badly injured.

  Suddenly the throng parted for an officer, slightly older than the other women who all seemed to be my age or younger. I couldn’t make out the rank insignia on her shoulder boards, but I figured the smart thing to do would be to come to attention.

  “Captain Billy Boyle,” I said, my salute as crisp as the crease on Colonel Harding’s trousers.

  “Mayor Amosova,” she said, returning my salute. That sounded close enough to major for me to quickly hand over my travel orders when she snapped her fingers. She produced a flashlight and read through them, glancing up at me and to Tatyana who kept up a running commentary. When she repeated “Stalin, Stalin,” even the major laughed. Major Amosova gave my orders back and snapped out some of her own to her crews.

  I don’t know what I expected to happen next. My be
st guess involved sleep. But the Night Witches had other plans. Jerrycans of aviation fuel were unloaded from the trucks and the Po-2s were topped off. Bombs were dragged on wooden sleds to each plane and affixed to the undercarriages. They were going out again.

  Well, there was no place to sleep anyway.

  Tatyana pointed to the navigator who now didn’t have a pilot, telling me she didn’t need me along for the ride. I surprised myself by feeling a bit disappointed. She patted me on the arm and went to speak with the wounded pilot, her head swathed in bandages, who was being led to one of the trucks. Tatyana and the other flyers climbed into their cockpits, resting while the crew readied the aircraft.

  Feeling like a third wheel, I decided to pitch in and help haul the bombs from the trucks. At first all I got was a salute, but I waved it off and told the kid—she looked about eighteen—I wanted to make myself useful. Maybe she got the tone, because she shrugged, told me her name was Kira, and stood aside as a bomb was rolled to us across the truck bed. We grabbed it and set it down on the sled as gently as possible. One-hundred pounders, I figured. Two was all the sled could hold, and we hauled it back and forth while armorers attached them to racks under the wings.

  With bombs loaded and fuel tanks full, we pushed the biplanes into the field. Engines fired up and the small group of us staying behind waved as each Po-2 flew off into the night. Kira went to check on the wounded pilot, and I helped load empty fuel drums onto the trucks. The fumes clung to my clothes, filthy from the hard labor in the field.

  “Kapitan,” Kira said, offering me a canteen. I nodded my thanks and took a gulp. It was warm and metallic, but it went down my parched throat like a cold beer. I went to take another drink and noticed four of the girls sitting on the grass next to the truck with the pilot, passing around a single canteen.

  “Spasibo,” I said, thanking her as I handed it back. Evidently there wasn’t a lot of fresh water to be had. With Mayor Amosova in the air with her unit, I was the senior officer. I didn’t have any clout or responsibility, but one of the things my dad had drummed into my head was that an officer doesn’t eat, drink, or rest until his men do. He’d had an officer in the First World War who hadn’t abided by that, and it always irked him.