Angel, Archangel (43 page)

Yaks, his second was to realize the futility of the manoeuvre because of the Arado’s lack of forward-firing armament.

With only a few seconds to think through the consequences of his impending action, but knowing that to do nothing would be to invite the Yak fighter unit to intercept his bomber on the return leg west, he punched the uppermost button on the left-hand horn of his control column.
The Arado lifted a little as the 1000-lb bomb on the centreline dropped away from the aircraft.

Kruze was so low that the fusing mechanism could not compensate for his height, turning the bomb into a delayed-action device.
It skipped once on the concrete in front of the line of fighters, ploughed through the first and second aircraft, missed the third, bounced thirty feet above the ground and then exploded in an air burst over the last five fighters.

The Rhodesian turned the Arado violently away from the destruction in front of him and found himself staring directly into the red propeller spinner of Samsonov’s Yak 9D as it wobbled in to land.
Both aircraft veered sharply in opposite directions, Kruze narrowly missing a hangar, Samsonov unable to stop his wing tip catching the ground and sending the Yak into a violent cartwheel across the runway.

Putyatin watched helplessly from eight hundred metres as the German jet bomber, within the space of a few seconds, achieved the almost total destruction of his unit.
Then his attention shifted to the wild acrobatics of his wingman’s fighter as it rolled, one wing tip after another across the ground, finally disintegrating in a fireball on the edge of the airfield.

The Colonel steepened his dive towards the Arado and watched his airspeed hit 640 kph.
He uttered brief thanks that he had been allocated the new Ulutshshennyi - improved - variant of the Yak 9D, with its boosted 1875 hp engine, for otherwise he would have had no chance of catching the fascist bomber.

* * * * *

Kruze had no time in which to marvel at his lucky escape.
Somehow he had veered off course and stumbled upon Grafen.
Knowing his exact position now, he eased back on the stick, looking for the Vydra.

For a few long seconds, his airspeed dropped.

Immediately, a line of tracer rose to meet him from some unseen flak emplacement and he nosed the aircraft back down to earth, but not before he had glimpsed the last waypoint, or as good as earmarked it.

Ahead, in the distance, the twin peaks of Leek and Zalednik thrust their way skywards, towering above the other mountains in the range.
Trickling between them, though unseen to him, was the Vydra River, winding its way up the valley all the way to Branodz.

Although flak burst around him intermittently, neither the anti-aircraft fire nor the fighter activity was as bad as he thought it would be.
With mixed feelings, he realized he had been granted a reprieve from the full wrath of the Russians’ air defences because of the offensive.
Frontal Aviation would be busy supporting ground operations with Yaks turned into fighter-bombers.
Few Russian fighters would be given over to straight interception duties.
Those that had, he had wiped off the map with his bomb run over their airfield.

Kruze winced and looked down at his arm, the blood caked thick around the ripped cloth of the shirt where the metal shard had entered.

“Not bad for a cripple,” he said to himself.

Except you’re one bomb shorter than you were before.

There was nothing else for it, but to make each shot count.
The thought of missing the target now, when he had come so far, chilled him far more than the thin blast of icy slipstream that whistled through the cockpit.

With his eye on the peaks ahead and maintaining a steady altitude about a hundred feet above the trees, he leant forward and found the switch for the Lotfe.

Then he saw the shadow pass across the face of the sun off the right side of the Arado.
Putyatin hurled his Yak round in a tight turn and came in with the light behind him, having taken full advantage of the drop in the Arado’s speed to press home his attack from Kruze’s front starboard quarter.
Kruze never even saw the tracer from the Russian’s 20mm ShVAK cannon that tore through his fuselage, cutting a four-foot gash in the Arado just forward of the tail.
The controls seemed to slacken in his hands, indicating immediately that his hydraulic pressure was down.
A glance to the gauge told him that it had dropped significantly and the needle was still moving.
He peered round, expecting to see a fiery trail pouring from his fuselage, but there was none.
Suddenly, the rear tank low fuel warning light on the right side of the cockpit began flashing in red, angry pulses.
One of the shells must have punctured the cell, miraculously failing to explode on its way through the fuselage, but now giving him a serious shortfall in fuel.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the Russian fighter coming in from the rear, half a mile behind, for another pass.
With the bombs weighing him down and his controls at reduced effectiveness, there was little he could do to evade the Yak.
He climbed, pulling as hard as he could on the stick with his good arm, suddenly banking the bomber away from the stream of fire that spewed out of the Yak’s propeller hub, the bright tracer racing past his cockpit and exploding in the trees five hundred yards in front of him.

Realizing that he could still outpace the piston-engined fighter, Kruze shoved the throttles forward and watched his speed creep up to 650 kph.
He decoupled the Lotfe and peered into his periscope, watching with relief as the Yak began to slip away.
In front of him, the mountains loomed, large and impenetrable, except for the gap between the two peaks, where he would point the Arado and fly it up the valley till he hit Branodz and punched the buttons that would release his bombs.

When he looked back to his instruments, the cockpit seemed on fire, so bright and so many were the warning lights illuminated on the right side of the control panel.

His starboard engine oil-pressure was dangerously low and his exhaust gas temperature gauge told him his right-hand turbojet was about to explode.
A glance in the periscope.
The Russian was still receding, leaving him with a choice: try and outrun it to the mountains and risk having his right engine ripped off, or shut it down and wait for the 20mm to knock him out of the sky.

The starboard jet unit fire-warning temperature gauge lit up, making the decision for him.
He was a moment away from a catastrophic turbine failure.
He willed his injured arm to make haste as it crept perilously slowly towards the throttle.
At last he reached it, pulled it back and shut down the ailing engine.

He looked in the periscope and saw the Yak bound forward.

The Rhodesian reached out to his left, groaning with the stabs of pain to his arm, and hit the first of the three-position flap selector buttons and then pushed the undercarriage selector lever forward.

There was no reaction from the Arado.

Kruze’s eyes raced over his instruments.
He lunged for the flap and undercarriage emergency hydraulic selector switch and then grabbed the large standby handpump by his right knee, pulling and pushing it furiously until he saw the needle on the hydraulic gauge creep back towards its true position in the centre of the dial.

The crippled jet bomber bucked as the flaps and wheels lowered into the airstream.

Putyatin was some way behind the 234 when he saw its wheels lower and the wings waggle.
The Russian smiled.
With holes that size in his fuselage, the German was finished, his tail looking as if it would fall off if the aircraft made any kind of violent manoeuvre.
The Arado would make a glorious prize, a final testimony to his three years of fighting the fascists.
It would also give Soviet scientists a long-awaited insight into the workings of the advanced German aircraft.

Kruze saw the Yak slide in behind his tail through the periscopic gunsight.
He waited until the cross centred on its nose and he could see the form of the pilot in the cockpit, before hitting the button.
Behind him the rearward-pointing Mauser MG 151 20mm cannons fired a controlled burst, striking Putyatin’s aircraft first in the engine, then in the fuel tanks as the Yak veered sharply upwards, exposing its soft, blue underbelly.
There was a flash in the bowels of the Yak and then it plummeted earthwards, its rear fuselage lost in the surrounding fireball.

Kruze pulled the undercarriage up again and increased power gently on his good engine, keeping the aircraft lined up on the entrance to the valley.
He prayed he could slip the crippled Arado unseen through the Russian defences as far as Branodz, now less than five minutes’ flight time away.

CHAPTER NINE

Malenkoy swung his kit into the back of the jeep, jumped into the driver’s seat and set off at top speed down the forest track, away from Chrudim, the maskirovka and Archangel.
He couldn’t wait to get onto the train at Ostrava.
Only then, away from the horror of the past few days, not to mention Shlemov’s NKVD, did he feel he could sleep.

Shlemov had been quite specific.
When the NKVD had found him in his tent at Chrudim following his discharge from the hospital, his message was quite clear.
He, Malenkoy, was a hero, but an embarrassing one.
He was therefore being transferred, with immediate effect, from the front back to Moscow and the Academy.
And if he wanted to talk about his wartime experiences too openly once he was safely ensconced in the heart of the Motherland, there was always the safety of his family to consider .
.
.

The early morning sun poured through the trees, the rays glinting on the Order of Lenin that bounced on his chest every time the jeep hit another pot-hole.
Malenkoy sucked in the cool mountain air and the fragrance of the pines.
This was how he wanted to remember Czechoslovakia.

* * * * * * * *

Fleming patrolled the skies high above the vast forest that lay directly beneath the path that Kruze would have to take on his run-in to Branodz, his eyes scanning the horizon for a sign of the 234 and any inquisitive Yaks.
Kruze was already overdue.
Although he wanted to see the Rhodesian safe from the Russians’ guns, he realized that if the Arado was still airworthy, his Meteor was the last line of defence.

Flying high above the new Russian offensive, Fleming recognized that he owed his safe passage to the fact that Frontal Aviation was running too many missions in support of the Red Army to worry about a lone Meteor crossing into Soviet-designated airspace.

But the assault.
.
.
was it Konev’s or Shaposhnikov’s?

He double-checked his position.
Satisfied that he was maintaining a combat air patrol over the valley that led to Shaposhnikov’s HQ, he went back to searching the ground for a sign of Kruze.

He felt desperately alone.
He questioned what he was doing there.
He could not shoot Kruze down in cold blood.
There had to be another way.

It was nothing more than a slight movement, caught out of the corner of his eye, that made him narrow his search to the quadrant on his forward starboard beam.
At first he thought it was a Russian aircraft, limping home from a bombing sortie against German positions at the front.
But then he noticed the stark black crosses on the upper surface of the wings as it drew closer, sticking close to the contours of the land, and he knew it was the Arado heading straight for Branodz.
Although it was still some way off, he could see it was heavily battle-scarred, the great gash in the tail so big that daylight was visible through the hole.

The Arado was flying one wing down, the starboard wing tip was almost brushing the tops of the trees.
It was slow, much too slow, he thought; and then he realized why.
A thin trail of smoke snaked from the right-hand engine.
Kruze had gone for an in-flight shut-down of a Jumo.
Either that or it had been knocked out by gunfire.

He increased speed and dived the Meteor towards his quarry.

In the cockpit of the Arado, Kruze was too busy checking the instruments governing his good engine and keeping the damaged plane on a straight and level course to notice the descent of the Meteor.
He had left the Lotfe sight switched on, the height and speed of the aircraft fed into the BZA1 bombing computer.
Unless he released the two thousand-pounders soon, his aircraft would bury itself into the inhospitable hillside.

He had swept over Russian patrols and vehicles, knew that they would be trying to radio his progress to Branodz.
But he also knew that there was more than an even chance that their transmissions would be blocked by the contours of the terrain through which he now manoeuvred his crippled aircraft.
He gritted his teeth against the pain in his arm.
Nothing would stop him from putting his two bombs through Shaposhnikov’s HQ now.

The Meteor tore across the front of the 234, missing it by a few feet.
Kruze had only the most fleeting impression of a camouflaged blur shooting past his eyes before the shock waves from Fleming’s high speed pass hit him and he wrestled with the stick to keep the Arado under control.

He increased power to his good engine in a bid to put as much distance between himself and the Soviet fighter with which he thought he had just had the near miss.
Kruze could not afford to put his damaged plane into aerial combat.
By the time the fighter found him again, if its pilot could at all, he would be those few vital kilometres nearer the HQ.

Just over a minute to target.

Fleming looked back and saw the Arado staying resolutely on course.
Kruze was like an automaton, totally locked into the world of his cockpit.
His warning had gone unheeded and there had only been time for one.
The Rhodesian was almost at Branodz.
Fleming pulled the Meteor round for one final pass.

* * * * * * * *

Malenkoy almost swerved the jeep off the road when he caught sight of the aircraft coming in low across the valley towards him.
He slewed to a stop, fumbled for his field glasses, and brought them up to his face, his hands shaking.
He couldn’t see any markings, but it had to be a German.

The Russians had no aircraft like the propellerless one he had just seen and he doubted whether they had pressed any captured ones into service.

Although it was some way off, he could see from the way the aircraft yawed from side to side that the pilot was in some difficulty; he also saw the massive bombs slung under the pylons on the engine pods and knew immediately that he was heading for Branodz, little more than five kilometres from his position.

Branodz, home to Konev’s HQ, adjacent to the corral that held the missing Berezniki consignment.

Malenkoy pulled the flare pistol but from under the dashboard and pointed it over the tops of the trees.
His finger was poised over the trigger, when he saw the other aircraft hurtle over the top of the valley just behind the German.
He looked through the binoculars and saw the markings.
It was British!
He never asked himself what the RAF was doing in that sector.
It offered salvation and that was enough.
He threw the flare pistol to the floor, thankful that he wasn’t reduced to such a desperate warning.
He saw the British pilot drawing up behind the fascist, the whine of their engines growing in his ears.
Pinpoints of light flickered in the nose of the British fighter, then the rumble of the cannons rolled across the valley floor.
But the tracer missed, the four thin lines of phosphor-tipped shells whistling past the cockpit of the German.
The Arado pushed down lower, followed by the Meteor until both aircraft seemed to brush the flat ground.
The fighter fired again and Malenkoy watched, horrified, as the burst rippled past the other side of the aircraft.
It was as if the British pilot did not want to strike the bomber, as if he was trying to issue a warning .
.
.

As the two aircraft shot past his position, Malenkoy saw the bomber jink to avoid the tracer.
Then the German’s rudder seemed to flutter momentarily like a rag in the wind before it broke away completely from the tail.
The Arado dropped away behind a cluster of trees and the Meteor pulled up and away from the ground.

The Russian threw the jeep into gear and set off at top speed for the crash site, one eye on the place where he had seen the Arado go in.

* * * * * * * *

Kruze fought the Arado with every fibre of his being to prevent it from hitting the trees.
With the last of his strength, he pulled back on the stick and felt the tops of the pines scrape the aircraft, then his eyes scouted for some flat, open ground for the belly-landing.

He hit the release buttons for the two remaining bombs and they tumbled away to bury themselves deep in the ground, exploding three seconds later in an incandescent orange fireball.
The shock waves radiated outwards, catching the Arado as he brought it down to earth, the red-hot shrapnel cutting through the cockpit, puncturing his thigh, his side.

He cried out with the pain as the Perspex shattered in front of him and the hard, frozen earth tore through the cockpit, hitting his body and cutting his face.
He threw his hands up for the final conflagration that would blow him to pieces as the fuel tanks went up and then all was still.

* * * * * * * *

Fleming circled the smoking wreckage at two hundred feet.
He had watched in horror, first as Kruze’s rudder had broken away from the tail, then in awe as the Rhodesian wrestled with the controls to bring the jet into a belly-landing.
The huge explosions seemed to end it all, but it wasn’t the Arado that had gone up, merely the bombs that had dropped from their racks just before the plane went in.

Well-aimed bursts had narrowly missed the Arado, but Kruze had taken no notice of his warning shots.
The Rhodesian had tried to outmanoeuvre his attempts to shepherd him away from his bomb-run into Branodz, but it was the Arado’s frail airframe that was finally overcome.

As the dust settled over the scrubland of the Arado’s last resting place, his eyes followed the trail of broken metal and engine components until they fastened on the fuselage, which by some miracle was still in one piece.
And there had been no fire, only thick, acrid smoke swirling up into the still air.

He pulled the Meteor down for a low pass over the cockpit, afraid of what he would see inside.

The hatch fell off the top of the cabin and the smoke billowed out.
In its midst, he saw Kruze pull himself on to the top of the fuselage.
He seemed to be clutching his side.
Fleming couldn’t stop himself from crying out when he saw the Rhodesian inch himself to the ground and stagger away from the wreckage.

Through the dust and the smoke, Kruze heard the sound overhead.
He looked up and saw the Meteor, its red, white and blue roundels clearly visible, despite the swirling clouds that belched from the Arado’s cockpit.
He thought he was dreaming, but the roar of the jets as the plane swept low across the ground confirmed that he wasn’t.

The knowledge that it was the RAF that had finally prevented him from reaching his target cut through the pain.
The Meteor was coming round again.
The engines were throttled right back, the hood was open and he could see the pilot, waving, no, pointing to the trees.

The pilot was Fleming.

Kruze saw him clearly.
There was no mistake.
At first he tried to fight it, then he saw it all.
Fleming hadn’t been trying to shoot him down.
He had been warning him off, trying to steer him away from Branodz.
And then he no longer cared why it was Robert who had brought him down, or that he had failed to get to Archangel.
Fleming was up there and it all seemed to fit.
Their lives had come together and the bond had continued, unbroken, in spite of his attempts to cast himself loose from him, from Penny.
He had played with fire, basked in its glow for those few short days, and then tried to put it out.
Now the fire raged in him, burning him right down to his soul.

He fell to the ground, the pain too much to let him stand.
Fleming was circling overhead, his arm hanging from the open cockpit, buffeted by the slipstream, still indicating the way to the nearest belt of trees.
Kruze knew that he was showing him the path to escape, away from the Russian patrols that would be there within a few minutes.
But he couldn’t move any more.
He didn’t want to.
Come on, Robert, finish me off.

Fleming shouted out as Kruze seemed to fall back on the ground.
There were tears of frustration in his eyes.

Through the haze he saw the movement off to his left.
The Russian, his olive-brown uniform barely distinguishable against the ground, had broken through the trees.

* * * * * * * *

Flames had started to lick the twisted fuselage of the Arado by the time Malenkoy reached the crash site.
He spotted the pilot, slumped on the ground a few metres from the shattered cockpit, and ran over to him.
His grey Luftwaffe shirt was badly torn, there were cuts on his face, and he was moaning softly.
The flames were beginning to take a hold on the forward fuselage, creeping towards the large fuel tank just behind the pilot’s seat.
He had to get him away from there before it all went up.