Sky Knights (10 page)

When she turned, Doctor Engel was checking the head wound on his guard, lips thin as his fingers gently probed at it.

"I'll see to them in a moment. You have to be off, right away," Doctor Engel said, leaning down to pick up Tanya.

Dounia and Ira searched both the guards and found keys. Doctor Engel opened the back door of the jeep and started arranging Tanya inside.

"This isn't a jeep, it's a bucket," Dounia said.

"Yes, it is a
Kübelwagen
," said Doctor Engel with a small smile. "Or, a direct translation––bucket car."

"Will it drive over this kind of terrain?" Ira asked, her brow pinching up.

"Yes, it is a very good terrain vehicle," Doctor Engel assured them. "Your main concern should be getting past the lines without being shot."

"Good," Dounia said, testing the various keys they'd found until she found the right one to start the jeep up. "Good luck, doctor. And thank you."

"It's been an honour," Doctor Engel said, and waved them off.

The way forth was clear, with no tents or other obstructions in their way. The Germans had set up their camp so that their vehicle bay had a clear exit. It was a very efficient set-up, and one that worked in their advantage.

Dounia drove forward without the headlights turned on and made for the front lines, hands gripping the  steering wheel in a death grip. This was it. They either got out, or they wouldn't.

"
Halten Sie!"

There were more guards, and they were stepping out onto the road in front of the jeep, hands held in front of them to signal the jeep to stop.

"What do I do?" Dounia hissed.

"Just run them over," Meow suggested.

"I can't just run them over!" Dounia protested, wavering between pressing her foot on the gas pedal and slowing down.

The guards already looked suspicious, marching forward imperiously. However, they didn't draw their guns, so they still weren't alarmed by Ira and Dounia's actions. Dounia was trying to figure out how to get them to move, so she didn't have to run them over. They started coming around to the driver's side of the jeep, no doubt to check her identification.

"They're out of the way now," Meow pointed out.

Dounia slammed her foot down on the gas pedal just as the guard drew level with her window. Ira yelped from where she was holding onto Tanya in the back seat, and Meow levelled an unimpressed look at her from his seat.

The guards yelled behind them, and Dounia pressed down harder, the rough terrain jolting their vehicle up and down. Dounia wished the ride was less wild, but there was no way to avoid bumps and dips in the terrain with her headlights off.

They hadn't gone that far when behind them, the camp stirred into an abrupt uproar.

"I take it they've noticed the knocked out guards," Ira yelled from the back seat.

"Undoubtedly," Dounia said. "I hope Doctor Engel will be okay."

All at once, they were drenched with light from behind as one of the big spotlights used to highlight planes in the sky was instead turned on their bucket jeep.

"I hope
we'll
be okay!" Meow yowled.

Dounia knew how to avoid spotlights.

"Hold on tight!" she warned.

And she threw the vehicle into a wild zigzag pattern just as a shell landed close by and exploded, making Dounia's ears ring. They'd brought out a Panzer.

*~*~*

Dounia kept up the wildly wavering driving pattern as shells went off one after another behind them, striking far too close for Ira's comfort. She held on tight around Tanya's shoulders and tried to keep them both from being tossed around. Even strapped in, Ira worried Tanya's injuries would be jostled too much.

"The tank's going way slower than we are, at least," Meow said smugly. "Not made for our rough, Russian terrain."

"Neither was this jeep," Dounia pointed out tersely. "Also the range on that gun is––"

Another round of shells started exploding near them, but they'd driven out of range of the spotlight, so the tank could only guess their position.

The jeep jarred again, snapping Ira's teeth together. Her arm renewed its vicious throbbing, and Ira could only hope the morphine lasted a little while longer, or Tanya would be in terrible pain.

"Twelve hundred meters," Dounia continued. "We can be far ahead of them and they can still hit us."

"They can't see us," Meow argued.

"I can hardly see a thing either," Dounia said. "At least, not far enough ahead that it would do any good."

"Be thankful you have my eyes," Meow said primly, and then yowled as an abrupt turn threatened to throw him right out of the vehicle.

The tank was not giving up in spite of the fact they couldn't see the jeep very well. It was nowhere near as fast as their jeep on rough terrain, but Dounia was forced to zigzag an awful lot, and the range of the tank's guns made it a dangerous game of pursuit.

A moment later, the spattering sound of a machine gun firing tore through the night.

Meow jumped into the back seat alongside Ira and peered out over the back of the jeep. The machine gun fired another burst, but there were no telltale pings of bullets on metal, so Ira could only assume they hadn't been hit.

"They're not even aiming," Meow reported. "Just firing all over the place in the hopes that they might hit us by accident."

The next burst went off, sending high-pitched tinging noises into the air as the tank finally found their mark, if barely. The tough tires of the jeep weren't affected, and none of the rounds had penetrated far enough into the vehicle to do any real damage.

The machine gun fire was immediately followed by another round of shells, and Dounia cursed as she dragged the vehicle back into a zigzag.

The tank operator changed tactics, and stopped trying to hit them directly. He fired past them, opening up craters in front of them. Dounia wove between them as best she could, but the new attack mode slowed them considerably.

The only good thing about that was that Tanya was no longer being thrown around the back seat like a doll.

"How far is it to our front lines?" Dounia asked.

"It can't be that far," Ira said, trying to remember the maps she'd seen in the days before their disastrous mission. "The lines are pretty close together, no more than ten kilometers."

The panzer fired another burst of machine gun rounds at them, and Ira ducked down in her seat and hoped the jeep would be able to withstand the barrage.

"We should have stolen a tank," Dounia muttered.

"Can you drive a tank, dear one?" Ira asked wryly.

"I'm sure I could have figured it out, ye of little faith."

Yet another round of shelling broke off their argument, and just as Ira thought that she was getting used to getting shot at and gaining confidence in Dounia's ability to avoid them, a crater opened up right in front of them. Dounia yelped and jerked the wheel, but it was no good. Without any advance warning to dodge, there was no way to avoid this one. The brakes slammed on too late, and with a sudden dip and a vicious jerk, they were nose-first in the crater.

"Can you get us out?" Ira asked urgently.

Dounia didn't waste any time in her assessment; she tried to drive out again, but the back wheels spun uselessly. The vehicle was hung up on the edge of the crater.

"No, we're stuck," Dounia said rapidly. "No time to dig it out, we have to get out."

"But we need it!" Ira exclaimed. "We'll never make it back on foot while being pursued by a tank."

"If we stay here, the tank will shell us where we are, stuck in this hole," Dounia said. "Come on."

She ran around to the back and lifted Tanya out of the jeep, carrying her limp form across her shoulders in a way that couldn't be comfortable. Ira followed, leaping out of the jeep as easily as she did their little plane. Meow jumped out, and although he shook his paws at the wetness, he took off into the night, calling back instructions.

"More left, the ground is less rough here," Meow said.

They ran as quickly as they could, Meow circling back around to run alongside her. He warned her about anything that might trip her in the dark, and Ira ran blindly, trusting that Meow wouldn't lead her astray.

Behind them, the tank came upon their vehicle and stopped. While it paused to deliberate on its next course of action, Dounia and Ira continued to escape further into the night.

"Will they follow us?" Ira panted, not daring to complain about the stitch in her side when Dounia was carrying Tanya over her shoulders.

"I don't know," Dounia gasped back. "I don't think I can run much further."

The tank opened fire on the jeep for several seconds and then stopped. Then, someone opened the turret and examined the jeep with an ordinary flashlight. Obviously, they weren't there, and the soldier yelled back down into the tank that there was nothing.

And then the tank swivelled and began firing in a sweeping motion, trying to hit them anyway.

"Into that crater!" Meow screeched, scampering into a nearby dip in the ground.

Ira followed him, sliding in feet-first as quickly as she could. Dounia jumped in after her, pulling Tanya's head down. The Panzer strafed the area with machine gun fire for several minutes in bursts. Ira held her breath, as if keeping absolutely still would keep them safe.

"Do you think they'll give up?" Meow whispered.

Without warning, another explosion rocked the earth beneath them, but this one had sounded slightly different, at least to Ira's ears.

"That was one of ours!" Dounia exclaimed, and looked out over the top of the crater.

Ira looked as well, more carefully. "Do you want to get your head shot off?"

The Panzer had a large hole in the front that was smoking, and another anti-tank round whistled through the air, plunging deep into the armour of the enemy tank. The turret at the top opened, and two men spilled out, coughing violently.

"Oh no!" Ira hissed. "Why won't they all just stop coming after us?"

"I can't set them on fire from this far away," Dounia said unhappily.

Ira hoped that at this point, the Germans would just give up and turn around, especially since they were close enough to their lines that an anti-tank gun was in use. But to her horror, they actually started coming in their direction.

"Dounia, your pistol," she said urgently. "Quick!"

"I'm out of ammo."

Ira fumbled in her jacket, tearing the German uniform off one shoulder to try and get at the gun nestled against her side. It was on the wrong side, and her broken arm was in the way. They were too close. Any moment they would notice three girls and one cat right underneath their noses.

Ira was so panicked, she forgot that the Soviet lines were right behind them.

Two shots rang out, two shots that neither Ira nor Dounia had fired. Boths dropped, and the closest one tumbled forward into the crater next to them. Dounia flinched back from the body, dragging Tanya with her.

"You're not Germans," a voice said at the lip of the crater, and Ira had to look up and back.

Standing behind and above her was a woman carrying a pistol and a medic bag. Ira frowned and blinked at her.

"No, we're aviators," Dounia said. "And this is my sister. She's a radio officer."

"What are you doing
here
?" the nurse asked, crouching by the side of the hole. "You're a long way from the 4
th
Air Army, dear."

"Long story," Ira said with a sigh. "Can you help us? Tanya is badly burned, and I have a broken arm. Not to mention we're all just very tired."

"Aren't we all," the nurse said, but slid down into the crater to help Dounia carry Tanya out.

It turned out, the nurse was checking for wounded stragglers, and the front lines were actually further back than they'd thought.

"It's just your luck that one of the wounded soldiers I was tending is a gunner," the nurse said with a smile. "The gun itself is too broken to move anywhere, but it still fires. He'd resigned himself to leaving it there, but then a tank came along. I've never seen anyone so happy to be of use."

There was a small group of them with various injuries, and the nurse helped Dounia heft Tanya up and led the way back to their lines.

Ira couldn't believe they'd made it.

They weren't back yet, but they were in friendly territory once more. Relief swept over her in an  overwhelming wave, and the tight feeling she'd had roiling in her gut and across her shoulder blades had lifted.

She picked up Meow with one arm, and he gave a plaintive mew as he tried to shake the mud off of his wet fur. She hadn't been able to see earlier, but their mad dash through the broken up terrain had soaked him right down to the skin. He wasn't the only one. She and Dounia were covered in mud from diving into the crater and even the nurse was mud encrusted up to the knee.

They slogged their way back to the front lines, but everyone was mostly in good spirit. Some of the infantrymen started singing a marching song as they went, and just as the sun started to rise over the mountains in the east, the front lines came in sight.

Everything was chaos as soon as everyone found out who they were, and how they'd managed to get back to Soviet territory all on their own.

Tanya was immediately carted off by several nurses, and Ira was forced to stay in the medical tent while her arm was looked at again. Dounia was torn between staying with Ira and going to find out if Tanya would be okay.

"Go, dear heart," she said, smiling. "Tanya needs you, and Meow will stay with me."

Ira distracted herself by cleaning the majority of the dirt off Meow's fur with a rag while she waited for a doctor to come look at her.

"This was set by a doctor," the doctor commented, and looked at Ira questioningly.

Ira smiled and didn't say anything.

Her arm would be fine, and when it healed in the next several weeks, there shouldn't be any complications. Whoever had set her arm––and the doctor gave her a significant look as he said this––had done an excellent job.

Ira had been thinking in between hiding, running and getting shot at, and the idea had finally coalesced  into something concrete.