The War That Came Early: The Big Switch (21 page)

Just a couple of weeks before, Borisov had been loudly certain this year’s fight against the Nazis in Poland would look the same as last year’s. Well, not even a colonel was right all the time. Coughing once more, Borisov said, “The situation at the front has developed not necessarily to our advantage.”

He sounded like Radio Moscow. As it had when Vladivostok fell, the radio was doing its damnedest to make things sound better than they really were. Like the other SB-2 pilots, Sergei had flown over the front. He’d done everything he could to slow down the Germans. The radio would have faced a bigger challenge had it tried to make things out to be worse than they were.

“In certain places, the Nazis and their Polish running dogs have penetrated our lines to some degree,” Borisov went on. “Our assignment
is to help whip them back to their kennels so the Red Army can resume—excuse me, can continue—its victorious offensive.”

No one laughed in his face, which proved discipline—or fear of the NKVD, assuming the two weren’t one and the same—ran deep. From the sky, you could see that the dark gray German tanks hadn’t just “penetrated” the Soviet line. They’d torn through, and were rampaging loose in the Russians’ rear. Enemy infantry moved up with them and behind them to finish off the pockets they carved out.

“Groundcrew men are fueling and bombing up our planes,” Borisov said. “We shall strike hard for the
Rodina
! We serve the Soviet Union!”

“We serve the Soviet Union!” the flyers echoed. They left the big tent in which he’d harangued them and hurried to their SB-2s. Sergei wondered whether he’d be able to land at this airstrip when he came back from the bombing run. The way the Germans were moving, it was almost in range of their guns. One more thing to worry about.

“Does he truly believe what he says?” Vladimir Federov asked in a troubled whisper.

Sergei would have whispered a question like that, too. “He does while he’s saying it, anyhow,” he answered, also quietly. “You can’t contradict the Party line.”

Off in the distance—not far enough in the distance—German artillery rumbled. It might have been distant thunder. Unfortunately, it wasn’t, not on this bright, sunny day. No thunderheads in the sky: only a few little white puffs. Federov jerked his head in the direction of the sound. “
That
contradicts the Party line.”

Sergei didn’t feel like arguing with him. “Well, we’ll dispose of the contradictions, then, won’t we?”

He climbed into the cockpit. Sergeant Kuchkov was already at his station in the bomb bay. The Chimp didn’t worry about contradictions in the Party line. He’d drop the bombs. He’d shoot at whatever tried to attack the SB-2. He’d get back to the airstrip and he’d drink and swear and try to get laid. He hadn’t come down venereal yet, but not from lack of effort.

Nothing looked bad on the preflight checks. The engines started up right away. The familiar roar and vibration filled Sergei. Groundcrew men pulled out the chocks in front of his wheels. He taxied down the
dirt runway and took off. The heavily laden SB-2 wasn’t a hot performer, but it flew, it flew.

It hadn’t flown far when antiaircraft guns opened up on it. “Are the Nazis this far east already?” Federov shouted through the din.

“No—these are our guns, dammit,” Sergei shouted back. “The stupid
muzhiks
down below see anything in the air, they think it has to belong to the Germans.”

The Germans
had
come farther east than they had on the last mission the SB-2 had flown, the day before. Fire and smoke did a good job of announcing where their panzers were—where Soviet forces were in trouble, in other words. And so did antiaircraft fire of a sort entirely different from what the Red Air Force bombers had got a few minutes before. When the Nazis started shooting, the shells burst all around the SB-2s. Every one of them seemed much too close.

One scored a direct hit on a bomber in front of Sergei. The last third of a wing parted company with the rest of the plane. Fire raced up the wing root toward the fuselage. The SB-2 lurched out of formation and tumbled downward. Sergei looked for parachutes, but didn’t see any.

“Bozhemoi!”
Behind the oxygen mask, Vladimir Federov’s face was white as milk. “They’re murdering us!”

“Well, we need to pay them back, then.” Sergei found what he was looking for: Nazi flags spread out on the ground. Both sides used their national emblems to keep from getting hit by their own aircraft. But the recognition signals could also turn into targets. Sergei pointed through the cockpit glass. “There. That’s what we want.”

“All right.” No matter how shaken Federov was, he had a job to do.
And the sooner he does it, the sooner we drop our bombs, the sooner we can get the devil out of here
, Sergei thought.

But before the bomb-aimer could line up the SB-2 on the swastika flags far below, a frantic shout dinned in Sergei’s earphones: “Messerschmitts!”

“Drop the bombs, Kuchkov!” Sergei ordered at once. “Right now!” They’d come down on somebody’s head: with luck, on some German’s. He wanted the plane as light as he could make it. He also didn’t want machine-gun bullets tearing into all those explosives. That was asking to turn into a fireball in the sky.

“Bombs away!” the Chimp yelled, sending them earthward with some choice obscenities. Then he asked, “Nazi cocksuckers jumping us?”

“Da,”
Sergei said. He still hadn’t seen any 109s. But, one after another, three SB-2s spun toward the ground, two burning, the other out of control—maybe the pilot was already dead. With the bombs gone, he had no reason to stick around any more. He had no desire to, either. He swung the bomber into as tight a turn as he could manage and gave it full throttle back toward the east.

A 109 shot across his path. He had two forward-facing machine guns in the cockpit. He squeezed off a long burst at the German plane. He didn’t hit it. He hadn’t really expected to. He did want to warn it he was alert and ready to fight. Let it go after some sleepier pilot.

It must have worked. Kuchkov, in the dorsal turret now, didn’t start shooting at anything. And no bullets came ripping up through the bomber’s now empty belly. Sergei looked wildly around the sky. Some of the other SB-2s had also escaped. One of them had a starboard engine that trailed smoke. He hoped it would keep flying till it found the airstrip.

“That was … very bad.” Federov seemed to be trying his best to stay calm, or at least to seem calm.

Sergei respected him for that. You had to do it in combat. Showing how scared you were didn’t do any good. Everybody was scared. You had to keep going anyway. If you didn’t, you only made getting yourself killed more likely.

Sergei wondered whether Stukas would have cratered the airstrip. He didn’t want to try to land on a highway or in the middle of a field of new-planted barley.

He didn’t have to, to his vast relief. He taxied into a revetment. Groundcrew men covered the SB-2 with camouflage netting. In the gloom, he reached out and set a hand on Federov’s shoulder. “We made it. One more time, we made it.”

“But how often can we keep getting away with it?” the copilot asked. “I know the plane used to be able to run away from fighters, but not any more. The idea is for us to hurt the enemy, right? Not for him to shoot us down? How many of our guys didn’t come back today?”

“Too many. Maybe some landed at other strips, but too many any way you look at it,” Sergei answered.

“One of the planes that went down was Colonel Borisov’s,” Federov said.

“The squadron commander’s? Are you sure? I didn’t see that.” Sergei wasn’t sure what to think about it, either. Borisov had too much apparatchik in him to get close to the men he led, but he was a good administrator and a brave enough pilot. He had been, anyhow.

“I’m positive,” Federov said.

“One more thing, then,” Sergei said wearily. He unhooked his flying harness. “Well, let’s go report to … whoever we report to.”

“BROAD STREET STATION!”
the conductor bawled as the train down from New York City slowed to a stop. “All out for Broad Street station! Philadelphia!”

“Oh, my God!” Peggy Druce dabbed at her eyes with a tissue she pulled from a purse. She didn’t need the fellow in the kepi yelling at her. That Gothic pile of brick, granite, and terra cotta couldn’t be anything else. It meant she was home. She wouldn’t have believed it, but it was true. More than a year and a half after she set out on what was going to be a month in Europe, here she was.

If I ever, ever set one toe outside the borders of the US of A again, somebody ought to whack me in the head with a two-by-four
, she thought. She’d almost been whacked with plenty of worse things in too many different places in Europe.

People were getting up and heading for the door. Lucky for them, too, because she would have stepped on them if they weren’t moving the way she wanted to go. A liner back to New York from London. No sign of U-boats, for which she thanked God. Not the smoothest passage, but not the choppiest, either. She was a good sailor. She didn’t lose any victuals.

Almost all the clothes she brought back she’d bought on the other side of the Atlantic. What she’d brought with her hadn’t been meant for staying away so long. That interested the hell out of the American customs inspectors. Even after she explained what had happened to her—
backing everything up with the stamps and visas in her passport—they didn’t want to listen. All they wanted to do was collect duty, and collect they did. The Nazis couldn’t have been more inflexible.

But she wouldn’t think about the goddamn Nazis now. After all, she’d crossed the Atlantic so she wouldn’t have to think about the Nazis again, or deal with their arrogance. And so she’d dealt with American arrogance at customs instead.

“Watch yo’ step, ma’am,” a colored porter said as she descended. He touched a callused finger to the shiny brim of his cap. She nodded back at him. She hadn’t seen any Negroes all the time she was in Europe. This chubby fellow was just one more reminder she was back where she belonged.

Down three wooden steps and onto the platform. Husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, parents and children were all milling around and falling into one another’s arms. They were hugging and squealing and kissing. They were …

“Herb!” Peggy let out a squeal of her own. She might have been a bobby-soxer getting all excited about the latest skinny crooner from Hoboken, not a respectable woman of middle years running toward a prosperous gent in a gray pinstriped suit and a fedora whose band and brim told the world it wasn’t quite the latest style.

“Peggy!” He squeezed the breath out of her. He wasn’t usually one for public displays, but then she didn’t usually get stuck in the middle of a world war. He smelled of aftershave and American cigarettes—good smells, familiar smells, she’d almost forgotten about in her crowded time overseas. And he smelled of himself, which was even better and even more familiar.

“Oh, Lord!” she said when they got done kissing out there in front of everyone like a couple of newlyweds. “I missed you so much!”

“Well, I’m not exactly sorry to see you back, either, sweetheart.” That sounded more like Herb. He might not have majored in understatement at Villanova, but he sure must have minored in it.

He took a pack of Pall Malls from a jacket pocket, tapped one against the palm of his left hand, and stuck it in his mouth. As he was lighting it, Peggy said, “For God’s sake give me one of those, will you? I’ve been smoking like a chimney—I mean like a steel-mill chimney—
since I got back to New York. What they use for tobacco in Europe shouldn’t happen to a dog.”

“Here you go.” He lit it for her. She smoked greedily. She hadn’t been kidding, not even a little bit. Herb let her take a few puffs. Then he said, “Come on. Let’s rescue your suitcase, and then we’ll go home.”

“You have no idea—I mean, darling, you have
no
idea—how good that sounds.” Peggy charged toward the baggage car like a panzer on the attack. Thinking of it in that particular way told her she wasn’t the same person she had been when shells started falling around Marianske Lazne.

Herb tipped a redcap to carry the suitcase out to the Packard. When they got to the station door, the man said, “Suh, this here’s as far as I’m supposed to go.”

Without missing a step, Herb handed him another fat silver half-dollar. “I didn’t hear a word you said. Did you hear anything, Peg?”

“Who, me?” she said. The porter’s grin showed a mouthful of gold teeth. He lugged the bag out to the car and waved when he trotted back toward the station.

Philadelphia traffic took getting used to. So did everything else about the city. It didn’t look shabby. People in the street weren’t nervous or fearful. Or, if they were, it was from personal, private concerns, not because they worried that dive-bombers would scream down out of the sky and blow them into ground round.

There was so much in the shops! Gasoline was so cheap, and so many cars used the roads. “You don’t know how lucky we are,” Peggy said. A cop at a street corner was directing traffic. That was all he was doing. Peggy pointed his way. “Look! He isn’t asking people for their papers.”

“They’d spit in his eye if he did,” Herb answered. “And who needs papers, anyway? Unless you’re going overseas, I mean.”

“I was mighty glad to have my American passport. Oh, Jesus, was I ever,” Peggy said. As for the rest of it, though, her husband had the straight goods. If you lived in a free country, why did you need anything that proved who you were? Wasn’t your word good enough? Peggy pointed again, almost at random. “No soldiers! No uniforms! Not one, except for the policeman.”

“Well, who needs ’em?” Herb said.

She remembered Germany, where everybody this side of ragpickers put on an outfit that let him show off who he was and what he did and why everybody else should salute him. And she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if the
Reich
had mandated rank badges so people could tell a Ragpicker First Class from a lowly Ragpicker Second.

They lived not far from the Main Line, on a street that had been lined with elms till Dutch elm disease killed them. They had more house than they needed most of the time.