The Balkan Assignment (25 page)

Ten minutes later I picked up the beacon, strong and clear. Klaus estimated that we were some thirty minutes from the airfield; obviously they did not have as much faith as Klaus did in my navigational abilities. We were at ten thousand feet when I began to lose altitude for the landing approach. I went down gingerly. Although the moon apparently provided enough light to show the whole of this amazingly wide and deep valley, I preferred not to be surprised by an odd ridge or pinnacle.

I was able to make a straight on approach to the airfield. A narrow line of oil-drum fires stretched along hard-packed gravel scraped out by British Army engineers during the war to service and refuel cargo planes flying the air routes to India. Then it must have been a busy, active place; now it was just a collection of falling-down huts and hangars that had been beaten by ,the severe winters and the spring rains into amorphous masses of gray concrete and wood that in the darkness were barely reminiscent of their former shapes.

I taxied off the runway, following Klaus's instructions, and headed for a collection of small aircraft standing near one of the tumble-down hangars. Behind us, men were running to extinguish the beacon fires in the oil drums. The old DC-3 banged and bumped its way across the broken tarmac, and I had to watch carefully to avoid some of the larger pot holes that could have snapped an undercarriage. Klaus pointed out a spot in which to swing the DC-3 around, and when I had brought us to a halt ordered me to stay in the cockpit and went into the back of the aircraft. I shut down both engines and waited, watching through the windshield. Klaus came around the side of the plane, shook hands with one of the men who had hurried toward us from one of the large hangars. They turned and trotted off in that direction. I shrugged and dug in my pocket for a cigarette. I found one but no matches. Muttering, I climbed out of the seat I had not vacated for six hours, stretched and went into the back. Mikhail was lying across one of the four rows of seats

that formed the small passenger cabin immediately behind the cockpit. On the other side of the aisle sat one of his guards, a swarthy Egyptian who appeared to be half asleep, dead cigarette dangling from his lips. But he wasn't. As I came out of the cockpit, his eyes opened and he stared at me from under thin eyebrows. His hand rested casually on the stock of the M-1 carbine that half lay, half leaned against his seat. In back of Mikhail sat the second guard; this one a tall, painfully thin, European, probably German from his blond hair and square features. He, too, was particularly alert and watched me from the moment I stepped out of the cockpit. Obviously, they had their orders. Mikhail, the great guerrilla leader has met his match in these two, I thought. And Mikhail seemed to think so as well. As I came up to him and stopped, digging into my pocket for another cigarette, he hooked a thumb at the one in back and muttered sarcastically, "If you talk to me, that will only give them an excuse to beat me with the guns. They are such brave men."

I grinned down at him, but he only turned his head to stare out at the dark mountains.

"How about a cigarette?" I tossed the package to him. Before it could land in his lap, the German dove over the seat and snatched it out of thin air. The Egyptian half rose and jammed the muzzle of the carbine into my kidney, hard. I gasped with the pain but managed to keep from crying out. I noticed that Mikhail had swung back around to watch what was developing, ,tensing himself to jump in.

Ignoring the German, I turned around slowly and bent down and gathered up a handful of the Egyptian's jacket, pushing the rifle aside at the same time; counting, without really thinking of what I was doing, on the fact that he would not shoot me, thereby leaving them stranded. I slammed his head back against the window with the heel of my hand, hard and then banged it again. I dropped him senseless, and swung around to start on the German when Klaus's sharp voice sliced through the cabin. Mikhail, half out of his seat, slid back down again, his face pale with anger.

"Stop! What are you doing?" Klaus stepped into the cabin a small pistol in his hand. The Egyptian groaned and - raised his hands to his

aching head; the German glared angrily at me, stepped out into the aisle after Klaus had passed and said something rapidly in German.

Klaus turned to me. "Is this true, Chris, that you attacked him?"

"Damned right," I snapped. "He slugged me in the back with his carbine. I just beat the devil out of him for that little stunt and I would have taken on your other buddy here if you hadn't come along."

Klaus turned and shouted something at both guards in German. Fritz looked properly abashed but Ahmed glared at me and stroked the stock of the carbine. I laughed at him, turned my back and followed Klaus into the cabin.

Once inside, Klaus latched the door and went for me in proper fashion. Never have I been so thoroughly tongue-lashed in all my life and by the time he finished, I was grinning with admiration. Seeing that he calmed down and after a moment, began to chuckle. Tensions eased quickly.

Through the cockpit window, I could see the two-man ground crew begin trundling barrels of high octane aviation fuel from a store in the crumbling hangar. With only hand pumps, it was going to be an all-night task. Apparently Klaus knew that, because he settled down and began to talk, a mixture of reminiscences of the war, some of the flights we had made together, plans for the new air-freight line, etc. After a while, when he showed no signs of unwinding, I began to wish that he would get the hell out of the cockpit for a few minutes, so that I could check the radar vector light to see if Ley was still around. If he had lost us, he was going to have a hell of a time trying to find us again in the mountains. I was sure that he had seen us turn and head up the narrow plateau and would figure that we were looking for a landing place. I only hoped that his map showed the abandoned airfield.

Klaus talked on for almost a half hour without saying anything of consequence. He refused flatly to tell me where we were going, only that Calcutta was our next stop and that we would be flying in under a proper flight plan that would be filed for us from Peshawar.

"Why Peshawar, why Calcutta?" I demanded. "For crying out loud Klaus, what harm could it possibly do ..."

Klaus just shook his head, "I am sorry, Chris. I will not tell you where we are going. Many things can happen

before we arrive. I can only say that before this time to-morrow night, we will be in Calcutta. We will stay overnight, and as soon as we are airborne again I will tell you."

"Another phoney flight plan?" I asked.

"What do you mean?'

"I mean that if we are going farther east across Burma or Malaysia, we will have to declare a real flight plan. And if we cross either by night, we will have to stick to a very strict routing . . ."

"Ah that, yes," Klaus waved a hand. "There is no need for you to worry about that, It is all taken care of. We have done this before, many times. Chris, my friend, my friend. You worry too much." Klaus's face wreathed itself in his winning grin and he clapped me on the shoulder and left.

Since he wouldn't talk, I figured there was no sense in sitting alone in the dark brooding. When I pressed the dome over the radar vector light, it stayed dark. I hadn't expected anything else, but it did not make me feel any better. I got up and stretched, laid out Pete'

s sleeping bag against the door and exhausted by almost twenty hours of straight flying, I fell asleep quickly.

Morning came with a foul taste, hard sunlight slanting through the windshield and a roar that passed rapidly and dopplered away into a diminishing snarl. Not really aware of where I was or what I was doing, I struggled out of the sleeping bag in time to see a brightly painted, twinengined aircraft slant up from the runway and climb into the reddish-blue sky to the south.

The old airfield, through the fuzzy haze of sleep, looked more deserted than it had a right to be. I bumbled around until I found my clothes and grimacing at their sweaty feel, pulled them on and kicked the sleeping bag out of the way. The interior of the aircraft was as deserted as the airfield appeared. Outside the wind was sharp and strong. It blew up the narrow valley for God knew how many miles and with it came the scent of ice and water and fresh vegetation. Snow lay on the ground in white shaded patches crusted with ice crystals. My eyes followed the line of hills up the mountain flanks until I lost my balance. The crests towered a good ten to twelve thousand feet above the narrow plateau. The sheer flanks of the mountain range were sheathed in ice, snow caps groping down level with the plateau. A blinding blanket; the snow so white that you could not look at it even for seconds without tears flooding your eyes. Long valleys and rifts were traced out in black, sharp-edged shadows, all impenetrable. Vast sprays of brown-andgold rock stretched up toward the lilac sky, lining the summits with jagged giant's teeth to gnaw the sky. The view was similar to the east and again to the west. Only south, down the long valley was the sky relatively barren of mountain ranges. If this was only a sub-chain to a sub-chain, the Brahui to the Hindu Kush to the Himalayas, then I wondered what in the name of God the Himalayas could be like. I couldn't conceive of anything more unworldly than the mountains around me.

And the stillness. Not even the sound of an insect disturbed the intense quiet. Occasionally the wind would whisper lightly along the dusty, snow-patched ground; the only sign of life in all the apparent universe a hawk, or perhaps an eagle, wheeling above. I heard the crunch of footsteps behind me on the hard gravel and shivered involuntarily.

"You are cold, come back inside. We cannot have our chief pilot catching cold. You should not be out here without a jacket."

Klaus's voice was friendly and firm. I turned as he took my arm and guided me back to the DC-3. He was right; it was cold . . . colder than I had expected and now that I had seen the tremendous snow-wrapped mountain barrier, I knew why. In my astonishment at the towering peaks, I had taken absolutely no notice of anything else. The air was so crystal clear and the mountains standing in such bold relief that the mind could encompass nothing but the panorama.

I followed him, feeling somewhat like a senile old man who had wandered away from a rest home.

Breakfast was cooked by the German guard who with the slightly-the-worse-for-wear Egyptian came along with Mikhail a few minutes later. Passable bacon and eggs were baked in the pressurized Dutch oven in the galley and lots of black coffee, and I was ready to live for another day . . . although I would have sold my soul for a hot shower and a change of clothes.

An hour later we were airborne, lifting quickly off the

gravel runway and into the fine air of the plateau. I circled for altitude until we reached twenty thousand feet and turned southeast. Shortly, the rugged peaks of the Sulaiman Range were passing beneath the wings and giving way to the foothills of the PakistaniIndian border. Klaus had been right, someone had filed a flight plan for us because as we crossed no interceptors from either side climbed to look us over. We crossed the broad reaches of the Indus River well north of the city of Sukhar. From the green, steppelike expanse of grassland in Pakistan, the land along the border turned swiftly into the dull browns and reds of the Thar Desert and by the time I picked up the Agra beacon it had begun to rise into the folded and worn Aravalli Range.

The flight across India was uneventful and beacons ticked off one after another; Agra, Kanpur, Allahabad and VOR/Calcutta Dum Dum. And finally Barrackpore Airport on the southeastern side of the city. Even the landing was routine right down to the tower sign-off with a friendly, "Welcome to Calcutta". We came in under Ground Controlled Approach down to fifteen hundred feet due to a combination of rain and fog rolling in thickly from the Damodar River. As the DC-3 touched down, the rain picked up the landing light reflections in the gathering dusk and broke them into mazes of light. On the parallel runway, a long, sleek TU-204 turboprop was beginning its take-off run in the wash of an Air France 747. Waiting patiently was a Pam Am Super DC-8, and behind it, lost in the darkness, were the outlines of four other aircraft, all unidentifiable, but all belonging to some major world-spanning airline. I felt a little out of place in our dinky, World War II, surplus DC-3.

Following Ground Control's instructions, I made the proper turn-off, crossed the west runway and headed for the service area. At the hangar, we were met by an efficient ground crew who had us refueled and checked out in less than twenty minutes. We taxied over to the parking area and I shut down for the night. I figured that we would at least be staying at the airport hotel and I was looking forward to a hot shower, clean clothes, and a good night's sleep in a decent bed. But Klaus put the kabosh on that.

"One more night. Surely you can stand one more night?" After he left, I got up and dug the .38 out from beneath the seat, checked the chamber, wrapped it in a sweater and

tucked it down in my duffel bag. I didn't know how much good it would do me, but this way I felt I at least had a chance.

I dropped down into the pilot's seat, lit a cigarette and stared through the windshield. It didn't make any sense that I could see to drag Mikhail along, as dangerous as they considered him. And I knew that it was not weakness that prevented Klaus from kicking him out at twelve thousand feet. They were planning something and I wished I knew what the devil it was. I did not for one minute believe that nonsense about taking the fall for the two of us with the Yugoslavian police . . . we were going the wrong way.

It was still raining at dawn. I was sitting in the pilot's seat drinking the first cup of coffee of the day and wondering whether or not I was awake. Parked next to us was an old, beat-up C-130 that must have started combat duty with the first day of the Vietnamese war and had gone on from there to Laos and Cambodia before being retired from service. There was nothing remarkable about this weary old airplane; however, the man standing under one wing talking to an airport official was. He was wearing a light, poncho-type raincoat and hood. The' hood was pushed back far enough on his head to clearly show the strong, European features of Herr Frederick Ley.