Road of Bones

by James R Benn

  The Messerschmitts had scored some hits, based on the smoldering wreckage of two aircraft and a collapsed hangar. Men were already at work filling in bomb craters as Teddy entered the Operations center to report on his successful mission. Six replacements delivered to the front, as ordered, the fact that one arrived minus his skull not worth a mention. No reason to create tedious paperwork.

  We found Kapitan Kolesnikov in the mess hall, goggles and leather flying helmet on the table, his hands wrapped around a mug of steaming tea. Lines from his goggles still showed beneath his eyes and across his forehead. He ran one hand through his thick blond hair and leaned back in his chair, speaking in a strained voice, emotion stuck in his throat.

  “His wingman was shot down, behind the German lines,” Teddy told me. “He shot down two Messers, but it was a bad trade.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, sliding into a seat across from Kolesnikov. He nodded grimly. No translation needed.

  “He has good news for you,” Teddy said, after another exchange. “A group of Americans are at a Military Medical Directorate hospital in Kozova. Some are slightly injured, but it seems the local NKVD security troops do not know what to do with them, so they are kept under guard at the hospital. There are twelve, maybe fifteen, according to what he hears. Perhaps your friend is among them.”

  “That’s great news,” I said, tempering the excitement in my voice. It didn’t feel right to rejoice while Kolesnikov was mourning his own friend. “I need to find a way to get there. Is there a convoy going east, or a train?” Kolesnikov and Teddy whispered for a while, glancing around the room for any obvious snoops.

  “You must get there faster than that,” Teddy said, whispering even though no one could understand. “We know the ways of the NKVD. The Americans are kept under guard in a hospital so they can be released and speak well of their treatment by their Soviet allies. Also so that if they are declared a threat as foreigners, they can be easily eliminated.”

  “How do I get there?” I said. “Fast.”

  “There is a medical transport flight leaving shortly,” Teddy said. “I am to go along to assist, and there is room for you. We have four patients who are being transferred to the Directorate hospital. I will attempt to get you on the transport to the hospital from the airfield, but that is all I can do. The kapitan orders me to return immediately with the aircraft.”

  “That’s fine, Teddy. I appreciate the help. Are you sure you won’t get into trouble?”

  “Not if I come back here. The Military Medical Directorate is a very correct facility. Very political, many high-ranking officers. I prefer being close to the front. But not too close, mind you. Kapitan Kolesnikov also offers to radio your base at Poltava, in case you wish assistance from the Americans or Russians there.”

  “No, I think I will decline his offer,” I said, nodding to Kolesnikov. “They may think I’m already dead. It may be easier to let them think so a while longer.”

  Kolesnikov and Teddy had a laugh over that one.

  “Now you are thinking like a Russian!” Teddy said. “There is an old saying. ‘Close to the Tsar, close to death.’”

  It made perfect sense, God help me.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I was exhausted. As they loaded patients into the Lend-Lease C-47 transport, I found a spot in the back and curled up on a couple of scratchy wool blankets. The plane took off, and even though the twin engines droned loudly, and the fuselage vibrated in the high winds, I fell into a deep sleep. I dreamed of home, my mother’s kitchen, then somehow Big Mike was there, but then he was gone, and I was alone.

  Sort of like now, I thought, as the plane touched down, rolling to a halt on the side of the runway where two ambulances and a truck were waiting. I felt more tired than when I’d closed my eyes, but I roused myself as medics clambered aboard.

  “Show them all your orders,” Teddy said as the last patient was carried off in a stretcher. “Everything. It will impress them, or perhaps frighten them. Even better.”

  We approached an officer standing by the truck, overseeing the men loading the ambulances. Teddy saluted and launched into a long speech, gesturing for me to show my orders. I gave the guy everything, even Kolesnikov’s statement about my medal. He actually read through everything, handed them back, and spoke to Teddy. They exchanged a few more words and Teddy ended with another salute as the guy clambered into his truck. Officers love salutes, and you couldn’t go wrong piling it on in any army.

  “You are to go with the Comrade Doctor. I told him you were a very important American who has come to take charge of your countrymen and deliver them to Poltava,” Teddy said. “He seems agreeable.”

  “Thanks, Teddy. I wish I could repay you,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Please repay me by saying something harsh and insulting. I don’t want anyone to see me consorting with a Westerner. It could be dangerous for my health,” Teddy said. “But before you do, I will tell you I asked if he could spare any morphia for our hospital. He said no, his own supplies are low.”

  I did as Teddy asked. I gave him my gruffest voice, telling him to get back to his bedpans and to stay safe, in a tone that announced to all who could hear what a jerk this capitalist American was and how lucky Fedor Popov was to be rid of him.

  The ride to the Military Medical Directorate—which sounded much more sinister than Military Hospital or some version of the same—was uneventful. The Comrade Doctor was quiet, stealing an occasional glance at his very important American passenger. The streets of Kozova were subdued, nothing but military traffic on the roads and civilians on the sidewalks, skirting piles of bricks and timber still clogging the roadways. But there was a sense of normalcy this far from the front. People went about their business calmly, their clothes threadbare but neat and presentable. After battles flowing over their city and years of Nazi occupation, this had to be heaven. Soviet heaven, anyway.

  The hospital was a large three-story building, miraculously intact. The small convoy went around the back and through an archway, where more medical staff waited to unload their new patients. My comrade doctor driver signaled me to follow him. He issued a few sharp orders to his men, turned on his heel, and took me inside.

  The place smelled like carbolic soap and all the other hospital odors you’d associate with bodily fluids and bad food. Wards were filled with patients, the badly wounded who required treatment at a major rear area facility. There were a lot of them, walls of flaking paint looming over rows of beds where men lay, bandaged in every conceivable manner.

  At the end of a corridor, two guards stood in front of double doors. Their rifles had long bayonets fixed, and they looked ready to add to the patient population at any moment. They came to attention, opened the doors, and a rush of excited babble burst out from the room as we entered.

  It was English. American English.

  “When are we gettin’ outta here?”

  “You can’t keep us cooped up in here, you got no right!”

  “Ain’t we supposed to be allies, dammit?”

  A crowd of Yanks stood facing three Russians. One wore the distinctive blue cap of the NKVD. Another had the same medical insignia as my escort, and the third was an air force officer and the most unfortunate of the lot. He was speaking English, and everyone’s fury was directed at him. Including the other two Russians, who scowled in his direction as he tried to calm the Yanks down.

  “Please, we are awaiting instructions from Moscow,” he said, his hands up as if in surrender.

  “I’ve got your instructions right here,” I said, in my most authoritative voice.

  “Jesus, Billy, is that you?” It was Big Mike’s voice, booming up from behind the scrum of airmen.

  “Big Mike!” I yelled, pushing through the Russians with no thought of military courtesies. Or common sense. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “I’
m right here,” he said, and as the crowd stood aside, I found him stretched out on a bed, one leg up on a pillow.

  “You okay?” I said, taking his outstretched hand and pumping it like a politician at a county fair.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “Twisted my ankle when I landed, that’s all. What’s happening? You springing us?”

  Other guys chimed in with the same question. I counted ten of them standing and four others in beds. I recognized a couple of guys from the Sweet Lorraine, the B-17 Big Mike flew in on.

  “I understand you have orders, Kapitan Boyle?” The Russian air force officer said. “I would be pleased if you could take these men off our hands. Without authorization, I cannot release them.”

  “Here,” I said, handing over a wad of crumpled paperwork. “Do you know General Belov? He ordered me personally to find these men and escort them to Poltava for repatriation.”

  “I know who the general is,” he said, flipping through the orders and glancing at my medal. “This instructs the NKVD to assist you. Very helpful.”

  “You’ll let them go?” I asked, moderating my tone. He wasn’t giving me a hard time and I didn’t want to antagonize him. I wanted to be the solution to his problem.

  “Please understand, this is a delicate matter,” he said, pulling me away from the others and speaking in low tones. “The Military Medical Directorate needs these beds. None of your injured men require the level of treatment given here. As a fellow flyer, I wish to help them rejoin the fight against the fascists. But the security troops are always worried about Westerners traveling within our rear areas. And we have received no guidance from Moscow. None.”

  “I understand, sir. You are in a difficult position. Are my orders good enough to get them out of here? That would help everybody, it seems.”

  “Perhaps. I will speak with my comrades,” he said, and they went off into a huddle.

  I waited by Big Mike’s bed as the Russians talked things over. The American aircrew were a problem waiting to be solved, and the way things went in the USSR, it might be solved either with violence or vodka. It looked to me like the NKVD guy wasn’t too happy, which meant the other two officers were pitching a solution that kept us upright and the guards’ bayonets sparkling clean.

  “What’s been happening?” Big Mike asked. “And how did you know where to find us?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “I’ve been away from Poltava for the last couple of days, looking for a witness, which was mainly a way to get out and look for you. Kaz should have gotten in yesterday, so pretty soon we’ll be together again.”

  “You hope,” Big Mike said. “These Russkies are paranoid about foreigners. They took us prisoner at gunpoint, like we were saboteurs. Hell, you could see the smoke where Sweet Lorraine went down from where we landed.”

  “We saw five ’chutes. I didn’t know if you were one of them,” I said.

  “Yeah. They had me manning a waist gun after one of the guys was hit. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made it out. One of the guys broke his neck when he landed, so there’s four of us left.”

  “I didn’t know if you were one of them,” I said again, kneeling by the side of his bed. “One of the five who got out.” There was a catch in my voice which I hoped no one heard.

  “I’m sorry, Billy,” he whispered, laying a hand on my shoulder. “That had to be tough to watch.”

  “It was, for everybody in that squadron. Those guys all knew someone on the Sweet Lorraine.”

  “I don’t know how they do it,” Big Mike said. “Thirty missions? I’d rather walk home than get into one of those things again. And I’m fine, really, other than going stir-crazy in this joint.”

  “Maybe they’ll send us back via Tehran, the way Kaz came in,” I said, eyeing the Russian confab. Voices were raised, and the NKVD fellow was doing a lot of pointing at the other two. Which meant it was two against one. Good news, unless the third was threatening to shoot the other two.

  “I knew you’d find us,” Big Mike said, giving my arm a shake to get my attention. “I knew it.”

  “You’re hard to miss,” I said, giving his beefy arm a punch. I stood before I hugged the poor guy and embarrassed him in front of his flyboy pals. The three surviving crewmen from the Sweet Lorraine came by to shake my hand and kibitz with Big Mike as we waited. The resentment they’d displayed toward Big Mike back in England had disappeared, replaced by the camaraderie of survival.

  As the talk swirled around me, I felt dizzy and tired. Unaccountably weary, like an old man. I sat on a cot and watched Big Mike laugh and carry on with the other guys. The Russians continued to talk, their argumentative tones easing, the tenor more appropriate to an agreement fraught with difficulty, but not impossibility.

  I looked back to Big Mike. He’d gotten up, using a crutch to stagger around, and moved closer to the knot of Russians, the flyers sensing, hoping, for good news. I should have felt relief, but grief and loss weighed me down. I’d almost lost Diana recently, and now she was safe. Same with Kaz. And now, here was Big Mike, alive and well, when I’d feared him dead.

  It was too much. Too much good luck. Which meant bad luck was just around the corner. I should have been happy, but it wasn’t in the cards. Instead, I rose and put on a false smile, burying the thought of Big Mike, or any of the others I loved, dead and gone.

  “Kapitan, we have a plan,” the air force officer said as he approached me, the two other Russians in tow. He took a deep breath and began by counting off on his fingers. “One, the Military Medical Directorate requires this ward to treat those badly wounded in the fight against the fascist invaders and demands the immediate removal of foreigners. Two, the Soviet Air Force agrees to provide immediate transport to Poltava so that these men may return to the fight against the Hitlerites. Three, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs will provide security as we remove this group and transport them directly to the airfield, in complete secrecy. Truck flaps will be tied down, and no one may look outside as we drive. This is for their own safety, of course.” He gave a nod to the other two men, telling them he’d delivered the message they’d agreed upon.

  “Of course, thank you very much,” I said. “Everyone gets something, no one can be blamed.”

  “Yes. The hospital gets its beds, General Belov gets these men, the security people keep foreigners under cover, and the fascists are bombed. Very good all-around. We leave immediately, Kapitan.”

  No one argued with the man. We gathered up the walking wounded, and I counted off fourteen men under the watchful eye of the NKVD guards. We were warned not to speak to anyone and to obey all orders. Anyone not complying would be labeled a provocateur and kept for questioning, which quickly quieted down the crowd.

  We marched through the corridors and out the rear door, Big Mike limping along with his crutch. Two trucks and two jeeps were idling, with more NKVD guards to oversee the transfer. I went into one truck with Big Mike and the wounded men, while the rest got into the other. The truck flaps were tied down and we sat in darkness as the convoy lurched forward, guards following us in the jeeps.

  “Think this is on the up and up?” Big Mike whispered, even though the Russians couldn’t hear. The slightest thought of being left behind was enough to mute our conversation.

  “I do. Not that we have a lot of choices. But this way, everyone can report they did their duty,” I said. “And none of them will talk it up too much, in case some bigwig takes exception.”

  “I guess the Russkies ain’t so different,” Big Mike said.

  I kept my reservations to myself, until I heard the sound of aircraft engines. When the truck finally stopped, and the flaps were untied, a beautiful sight awaited us. A C-47 with a big red star painted on the tail.

  Guards hustled us to the rear door, shouting in Russian. It wasn’t the fondest of farewells, but that was mutual. It was probably best no one u
nderstood each other. I tried to help Big Mike up the steps, but he shook me off and hopped his way up. Once we were settled, he bombarded me with questions about the investigation.

  “How about I fill you and Kaz in at the same time?” I said. “Except there’s one thing I should warn you about. Remember Kiril Sidorov from London?”

  “Not likely to forget that bastard,” Big Mike said. “He tried to railroad Kaz. Didn’t you say he was probably dead?”

  “He’s been resurrected. I’ve learned that Stalin has miraculous powers.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Cheers erupted as we came in for a landing and guys spotted a row of P-51 fighters lined up at the end of the runway. The C-47 rolled to a stop next to a hangar with the American flag flying atop it, and that brought about another round of cheers.

  “Feels like home already,” Big Mike said, watching as American and Russian personnel came out to greet the aircraft. “There’s Kaz.”

  I looked out the window. Kaz was walking with General Dawson, their heads close together as they talked. Sidorov and Major Black trailed them, their eyes on the aircraft. Kaz and Sidorov stood apart from each other. Happenstance, or bad blood?

  “Kaz don’t look too happy with that Russian bastard,” Big Mike said. “Can’t blame him. Sidorov had it in for all Poles, not just Kaz. Can’t say I look forward to working with him myself.”

  “Remember General Eisenhower, Big Mike. Allied unity.”

  “Yeah, but he means unity with the Brits. At least we have something in common with them,” Big Mike said. I couldn’t agree more, but I held my tongue. I needed to make this partnership work, hard feelings and all.

  I followed Big Mike as he hobbled down the steps and took a few giant steps with his crutch, nearly bowling Kaz over and burying him in a bear hug. Belov and Drozdov pulled up in a jeep, and quite a crowd began to gather.