The War That Came Early: West and East (21 page)

S
ometimes you got the best view of things from the air. Sergei Yaroslavsky had always thought the Soviet General Staff would have done better to get up in a plane every once in a while to look at the battlefield as if it were a chessboard. Russian chess players amazed the world. So, sometimes, did the Red Army, but not in such a happy way.

Sergei had been pleased with what he saw before. In spite of help from the
Luftwaffe
, the forces belonging to Marshal Smigly-Ridz’s reactionary clique weren’t going to be able to hang on to Wilno, or to the terrain that led towards it from the USSR. That would have brought the Soviet border right up to the edge of Lithuanian territory, and would have set another pack of semifascists to quivering in their polished boots.

The mere idea of an independent Lithuania offended Sergei. The locals had taken advantage of the Soviet Union’s weakness right after the Revolution to break away. If you thought you could get away with something like that for long, you needed to think again. Or you had needed to think again, till yesterday morning. Now, with the
Wehrmacht
marching side by
side with the damned Poles, everything was as much up in the air as he was himself.

Up in the air, Sergei looked down on … what? The neat analogy of a chessboard didn’t really suggest itself. What he saw lay somewhere between chaos and hell on earth. Pieces that had been taken—no, tanks and infantry units that had been smashed—weren’t neatly lifted from the board. They lay as they had died, some sideways, some upside down, some still sending up black, stinking smoke, ant-small human bodies motionless among the murdered machines.

Anastas Mouradian was seeing the same thing as Sergei, and liking it every bit as well. “Doesn’t look so good, does it?” the Armenian said with what struck Sergei as commendable restraint.

“Well … no.” Sergei admitted what he couldn’t very well deny. Most of the tanks wrecked or burning down there were Soviet T-26s and BT-7s. Most of the ant-small corpses lying near the tanks wore Red Army khaki.

By contrast, most of the tanks still on the move were painted dark gray. Most of the men moving forward with them—moving forward like army ants, ferocious, seemingly unstoppable—wore German
Feldgrau
. On the Nazis’ flanks, Polish troops in dark khaki also advanced: jackals fattening themselves as lions tore chunks out of beasts too big for the yapping scavengers.

Paying too much attention to the fight on the ground wouldn’t do. Sergei had feared German Bf-109s before. He’d had good reason to fear them, too. Now he had better reason: far more of them sharked through the air. They weren’t just helping the Poles any more. They were supporting their own countrymen, a job they took much more seriously. Yaroslavsky tried to look every which way at once. He wished some kindly quartermaster would have issued him eyes in the back of his head, and maybe one on top as well.

Mouradian pointed ahead, towards a clump of camouflaged tents whose long morning shadows revealed them for what they were. “That looks like a headquarters, don’t you think?” he said. “Regimental, maybe divisional.”

“Da.”
Sergei nodded. “Shall we make the Germans jump and shout?”
He smiled at the idea of Nazis in monocles and caps with upswept crowns running for cover like ordinary mortals—and maybe finding out just how mortal they were.

When he shouted an alert through the speaking tube to Ivan Kuchkov, he found that the Chimp also liked the idea. “We’ll bomb the living shit out of the fuckers,” Kuchkov shouted back. He approved of any mayhem that didn’t come down on his own head. Come to that, so did Sergei.

He flew straight toward the tent. Anastas Mouradian peered through the bombsight, giving minute course corrections with gestures. Then Mouradian also shouted to Kuchkov: “Now, Ivan!”

Down whistled the bombs. Without waiting to see what they’d done, Sergei wrestled the SB-2 around and got out of there at full throttle. The Germans wouldn’t appreciate the visit he’d just paid them, and they had ways of making their displeasure known.

The wing’s new airstrip lay well within what had been Polish territory, the better to keep pounding Wilno. Flying south against the Germans instead of west hadn’t been what his superiors planned for, but the wing could do it when the situation required.

Getting back … Sergei hadn’t worried about getting back. By all the signs, neither had anyone else on the Soviet side. That only went to show that the higher-ups didn’t know what all they should have worried about. He watched two 109s hack an SB-2 out of the sky. No chutes came from the stricken bomber as it plunged to the ground. Three dead Soviet airmen, then. He ground his teeth. If they came after him next, there were liable to be three more.

But they didn’t. They zoomed back to the south instead. The 109’s only weakness he’d been able to find was its short range. If these fighters needed to gas up again … Sergei wouldn’t complain. He knew a moment’s pity for his countrymen who hadn’t been so lucky.

When he got down, the airstrip was boiling like a pot of
shchi
forgotten over a roaring fire. Sergei hadn’t even climbed down from the bomber’s wing before a groundcrew man waved for him to get back into the cockpit. “What?” he said. “Why?”

“Because we’re getting the fuck out of here, Comrade, that’s why,” the groundcrew man said.

“Why?” Sergei asked again, still not moving.

Before the groundcrew man could answer, the outside world did it for him: shells burst only a few hundred meters from the edge of the airstrip.
“That’s
why, Comrade Pilot,” the noncom said. “The German sons of bitches’ll have the range on us any minute now. D’you
want
to get blown up?”

“They were nowhere near us when we took off,” Sergei protested. He looked at his watch, pushing back fur-lined gloves and sleeves to see the face. No, it really hadn’t been much more than an hour earlier.

“Yeah, well”—the groundcrew man shrugged—“the cocksuckers are fucking well near us now.” He sounded almost as foul as the Chimp. “And if we don’t haul ass right this minute, we’ll get to meet ’em in person, like. So quit dicking around and head for the motherland, right?”

“Right,” Sergei said dully, not knowing what else to do. He turned around—and almost bumped into Anastas Mouradian, who was right behind him. “Back in the plane, Stas. Back to Byelorussia.”

“I heard,” Mouradian said. “It’s not so good, is it?” More shells screamed in. These burst closer than the ones in the last volley had. If the SB-2 didn’t take off soon, it wouldn’t get the chance.

Sergei thought about fighting the Nazis as an untrained infantryman. He thought about trying to get back to Byelorussia on foot—or, if he was very lucky, in the back of a truck. Much too easy to think about a German tank, or maybe a Stuka swooping down from above, pumping machine-gun bullets into the back of a truck.

Off to Byelorussia it was, then, and now, too. “Not so good, no,” Sergei said. They returned to the cockpit and snapped their belts closed. Sergei had to tell Ivan Kuchkov what was going on.

“Happy motherfucking day,” Kuchkov answered. “The stupid pricks who’re supposed to be running things screwed it up royally this time, didn’t they?”

“It could be better.” Sergei left it right there. The engines, which had barely stopped, fired up again right away. That was something, anyhow—not much, but something. The SB-2 bounced down the runway and took off. It felt uncommonly agile; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone up without a full bomb load.

He had to swing back to the east and come over the airstrip again to head for Soviet territory. Shells were dropping on the dirt runway by then. Any of the planes still hiding in revetments would have a devil of a time getting away. Sergei wondered if groundcrew men would have to set them on fire to keep the Germans from grabbing them. He also wondered whether any groundcrew men were hanging around to take care of such things. Trucks kicked up tall plumes of dust as they hightailed it toward the old border.

“Well, we’re in it now,” he said to Mouradian as he checked six to make sure he had no Bf-109s on his tail.

“No. The damned Germans are in it now, and they aren’t screwing around the way they were before. That isn’t good, either, especially with Japan jumping on us too,” the Armenian replied.

“Not even slightly,” Sergei agreed. “But what can we do except fight as hard as we know how?” Anastas Mouradian had no answers for him. Sergei wished Mouradian would have, because he had no answers of his own, either.

THE HORIZON WASN’T ENTIRELY EMPTY
when Julius Lemp swung his binoculars around the horizon. But that smoke didn’t come from a freighter bound for Britain. Nor did it rise from an enemy warship. There to the north sailed the
Admiral Scheer
. The pocket battleship was cruising the North Atlantic at fourteen knots, a pace the U-30 had no trouble matching.

A swell raised the U-boat, giving Lemp a glimpse of the
Admiral Scheer’
s angular profile. She could do a lot of damage if she got the chance. If … Lemp couldn’t help wondering how many U-boats the
Kriegsmarine
could have built with all the steel and labor that went into the big armored cruiser, and how much more trouble they could have caused the British.

Well, too late for such questions now. There was the
Admiral Scheer—
and there, at the edge of visibility, was her signal lamp flashing urgent Morse. Lemp peered through the binoculars, but shook his head in frustration. “Can’t make it out,” he said, and then, to the bosun, who was up
on the conning tower with him, “Tell them we need to approach, Matti. Let’s see if they can read us.”

“Aye aye, Skipper,” Matti said, and the louvers on the sub’s signal lamp clacked as they went up and down.

Lemp called down into the U-boat for a change of course. The boat swung north. He peered toward the
Admiral Scheer
through his field glasses again. With a wry snort, he said, “They say they can’t make out what we’re sending. They want us to come closer. Tell ’em we’re doing it, for Christ’s sake.”

“Right you are,” Matti answered. The louvers clacked some more. Lemp could read Morse by ear as well as by eye. The bosun said what needed saying as quickly and economically as anyone could want. He’d spent years in freighters before joining the German navy. He knew his onions, all right.

The pocket battleship’s lamp flashed again. Word by word, Lemp read off the message: “Smoke … to … northwest. Several … ships”

“A convoy!” Matti exclaimed.

“That would be good,” Lemp said. The other possibility would be several warships. The
Admiral Scheer
might fight off or escape from several British warships, especially with a sub on her side. All the same, freighters counted for more. Freighters fed England. Warships were nothing but nuisances: the dogs that kept sea wolves from feeding off the big, fat, slow sheep.

All the ratings up on the tower swung their glasses to the northwest. Closer to enemy shores, Lemp would have reproved them. An airplane could come out of nowhere and start shooting you up or bombing you before you even knew it was there. Not out in the middle of the Atlantic, though. Nothing that flew had the range to come out here and get back to land.

Back to land … What if one of those unknown ships out there was a carrier? Lemp spoke to the ratings after all. They resumed their usual scan. He peered intently toward the northwest, first with the binoculars on a strap around his neck, then with the more powerful pillar-mounted glasses each U-boat had.

He soon spied the smoke trails himself. He muttered to himself. If they
were thick and black, he would have been sure they came from coal-fired steamers. Maybe they came from oil-burning freighters. Or maybe they poured from stacks that belonged to destroyers, cruisers, battlewagons—or a carrier.

No, probably not that last. The British would have seen the pocket battleship’s smoke by now, too. If they had a carrier out here in the middle of the ocean, its planes would already be buzzing around the
Admiral Scheer
like so many stinging wasps. One or two of them might have found time for the U-30 as well.

More signals from the
Admiral Scheer
. “Commencing … firing,” Lemp read. “Jesus Christ!” he added on his own. That answered all his questions. The
Panzerschiff
wouldn’t have opened up on freighters at long range—she would have closed to make her kills sure. Those were warships out there.

Smoke and flame belched from the pocket battleship’s six 280mm guns. Their thunder reached the U-30 several seconds later. It was still loud despite the kilometers between the pocket battleship and the submarine.

“They really mean it, don’t they?” Matti said.

“You don’t play skat with guns that size,” Lemp agreed. The bosun chuckled.

But it was no joke, and the British weren’t playing skat out there, either. Incoming shells splashed into the Atlantic several hundred meters short of the
Admiral Scheer
. They kicked up great columns of water: water dyed red, so the enemy officers would know which ship of theirs had fired them. A moment later, another salvo made green splashes. Lemp thought by the size of them that they came from cruisers rather than battleships. He thought so, yes, but he wasn’t sure.

The
Admiral Scheer
fired again. She was fighting, not running. That also made Lemp believe she wasn’t facing battleships. She wouldn’t have lasted long slugging toe-to-toe against seagoing dinosaurs more heavily armed and far better armored than she was.

Off to the northwest, Lemp spied sudden heavy black smoke. “She’s hit something!” he said, and the ratings up on the conning tower with him cheered and pumped their fists in the salt-smelling air.

But the Royal Navy hadn’t quit. More shells came down around the pocket battleship. Around … Lemp ground his teeth. They’d straddled her. That meant they had the range. Sure as hell, one round from the next English salvo slammed into the German ship. More smoke spurted. The
Panzerschiff
kept on sailing and firing, though. Even if she wasn’t armored like a battlewagon, one hit
—that
one hit, anyhow—wouldn’t knock her out of action.