The late-morning sunrise caught him already in the air. Drops of blood seemed to form on the frosty canopy-glass in that strange light. Above them coasted the high wraiths of cirrus clouds. The false horizon moved with the plane. He glanced at the ASI-155 knots-and the outside temperature gauge: its thin needle stood at 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Altitude 800 feet-low enough to let the Reds count the rivets in the airborne leviathan’s belly. The unique throaty song of the B-17’s thrashing Wright engines was heavy in his bones and he was acutely conscious of the tons of sudden death that squatted like a brood embryo in the airplane’s abdomen.
Rostov’s bomber floated free a few yards beyond his port wingtip and fifty feet behind him. When they got closer to the target Rostov would pull ahead: they had rehearsed it and timed it until it was engraved into habit. Felix would hang back at cruising speed while Ilya Rostov boosted to combat power and put a distance of exactly three and one-half miles between the two B-17s. Rostov would attack, putting his first stick of bombs on the track a quarter of a mile ahead of the train. He would then fly straight over the train and make his turn behind it. The train would have its brakes on by then, trying to stop short of the destroyed roadbed. The debris of the first explosions had ample time to settle down-a little better than seventy seconds-before Felix’s bomber would pass over that point and attack the cars on either end of the one with a hospital cross painted on its roof. Felix’s one-hundred-pound armor-piercing bombs were filled with incendiary and high explosive charges; they would be dropped in sticks of twenty-a full ton at a shot. They were fused for a time delay of six seconds-sufficient to allow the bomber to pass beyond the danger zone; otherwise at deck level the B-17 would be hit by its own bomb blast. There were eight tons of bombs aboard: enough for four passes at the train.
Over the water of Lake Ladoga he pressed the intercommike button. “Test-fire your guns.”
In the machine-gun positions-spine, dorsal and belly turrets; nose and tail-the gunners exerted hand and foot pressures to swing their turrets around. The motors set up a grind ing like electric hand drills. The guns cleared their throats with short bursts and tracers arced toward the water.
“Report.”
“Nose gunner-all in order, Highness.”
“Waist one. All in order…”
Beneath the thrumming plane the broad cleats of tank treads had crushed the snow. They droned over a lambchop-shaped lake. Ulyanov had the chart in his lap. “On course, on time. Eight minutes to I.P.”
Felix waggled his wings in signal to Ilya Rostov and throttled back while Rostov’s bomber moved ahead, shooting away at full power. The earth was white and endless, the forests covered with snow. The sun struck Felix’s left shoulder. “We’re going to do it.” He turned and stared at Ulyanov. “Do you know that?”
“Yes sir,” Ulyanov said quietly. “We are.”
“Pilot to bombardier. Seven minutes to I.P.”
“Acknowledge, Highness. Ready to open bomb-bay doors.”
“Good bombing weather,” Ulyanov observed. He looked out at the sky. Felix glanced to his left through the perspex-and froze in every muscle.
Then he stabbed the intercom button. “Bandits. Coming out of the sun. Gunners…”
The sky was full of them. Against the sun it was hard to count them but there seemed to be dozens-possibly as many as a hundred of them-peeling off in streams and diving: specks that grew rapidly into the distinctive stubby shapes of Red Air Force I-16 fighters.
“Maybe they’re not after us.” Ulyanov said.
Felix had the microphone open; he did not take his eyes off the diving squadrons. “Bomber Six-Four to pursuit leader-Bomber Six-Four to pursuit leader… My recognition code is Red-Green-Blue, do you copy? Recognition code Red-Green-Blue. Over.”
But there was no reply and now out ahead of him the first wave of them was diving against Ilya Rostov. Ahead of Rostov he could see the snow-cleared rails amid the trees. Rostov’s guns opened up abruptly: tracers arced upward from eight of his fifty-calibers and the plane began to dodge.
Then they were coming in at Felix with guns chugging. “Pilot to blister guns-open fire. Prepare for evasive action.”
He flung the yoke hard over and sideslid to the left; the only option was to lose the rest of his altitude and sit on the deck so that they couldn’t dive straight at him without crashing.
Not more than twenty feet above the trees he zigzagged the heavy bomber in little jerks across the snowscape and the seat shuddered from the pounding recoil of the bomber’s own guns; the cockpit filled with the stink of burnt cordite and he had a kaleidoscopic impression of the Red fighters wheeling about the bomber. He yanked the big plane to starboard, almost snagging a wingtip in the treetops.
The fighters were shooting from maximum range because they had to pull out of their power dives before the ground came up at them. He said, “Navigate us, in God’s name!”
But Ulyanov was staring straight ahead and his face went white. “They’ve got Ilya.”
It was as if Rostov had flown into a wall. The tail of the huge airplane whipped into the air and there was a burst of blinding flame when it hit the trees and he saw dark bits wheeling through the air.
Felix broke left; rammed all throttles to climb power but kept his elevator surfaces level: he closed his cowl flaps and the bomber went into its screaming acceleration. The burst of speed took the pursuit by surprise and left the fighters behind-their tracers fell into the forest-and then he was flying into the black ball of smoke from Rostov’s crash and the heat bounced Felix’s craft as if it were a toy kite. His stomach hit his throat and he almost lost his vision and when he came out of it he was in a roiling confusion of crisscrossing Red fighters and juddering impacts-impressions too rapid to be registered. The airframe staggered and pulled to the right and he had to use muscle to correct the drag; a pair of Red planes collided in midair almost dead ahead of him with no flame, no explosion, merely an odd entanglement of metal that dropped out of the sky like a safe. Ulyanov said with utter dispassion, “We’ve lost a chunk of the wing. Leading edge.”
“There’s the train,” Felix said. “I see the train.”
It was coming up the grade at the end of the plateau of forests-from here it seemed motionless but the mane of smoke from the locomotive’s stack bent straight back over the cars. “Bombardier-one minute to I.P. We’re going to finish it. It’s moving directly toward us at twenty-five.”
He saw them coming at him from the port side-three of them in a vee-and he jerked the plane toward them and it threw them off; they swept overhead but there was another one coming dead-level at him across the treetops and he heard the guns chattering behind him-the dorsal gunner’s voice: “Look at that! I got him-I got him!” And the I-16 plunged into the trees in a black burst of smoke.
He had the altitude of the jump from Rostov’s explosion; he used it to take violent action-a feint to the right, a sudden dive to the left with the four Cyclone engines shrieking at full power. He had gone rock-steady. “There will be no evasive action once we turn onto the bomb run. Brace yourselves-and God bless you all…”
“Bombardier to pilot. PBI centered.”
“Bombardier-eight seconds.”
“Ready Highness-”
“They’re not going to stop us. Not now…” He jammed the mike button. “Two seconds-one-it’s your airplane…”
And then there was nothing he could do but sit in the juddering pool of his terror. Fifty feet above the roadbed the B-17 roared straight down the railway and for a moment he had the utter fright of knowing that the smokestack of the engine was going to smash right into the nose of the plane. Then they were over it, past it, running down the back of the train with the jerk and slam that meant the bay doors were open. It was as if he could drop down through the greenhouse and land safely on his feet on the catwalk of the train.