through the bulletproof glass of the windscreen to the waiting groundcrew men. They waved back and spun first one prop, then the other. Smoke and flames burst from the exhausts as the engines bellowed to life. Mouradian eyed the jumping needles on the instrument panel. Fuel, oil pressure, hydraulics … Again, everything seemed inside the normal range.
He waved to the groundcrew men once more. They pulled the chocks away from the Pe-2’s wheels. Mouradian eased up on the brake and gave the plane more throttle. It bounced down the dirt runway west of Smolensk. The runway was barely long enough to let a fully loaded bomber take off. Stas pulled back hard on the yoke. The Pe-2’s nose came up. If anything went wrong now, he’d be dead, and the bombs would make sure there was nothing left of him to bury.
But nothing went wrong. The Pe-2 climbed into the air. The ground fell away below it. The SB-2, the plane this machine replaced, had been a typical piece of Soviet engineering: homely but functional, at least till it went obsolete. Comrade Petlyakov’s bomber, by contrast, was slim and elegant. It had started life as a two-engined fighter, and still wasn’t helpless against Nazi 109s.
Mouradian took his place in the V of planes winging west to pound the Hitlerites’ positions somewhere east of Minsk. The Germans had fallen back a good deal since England and France started up the war in the West again. They didn’t have enough men or machines to do everything the
Führer
wanted.
A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?
Some foreign poet had said that. Stas couldn’t remember who. Hitler’s reach had exceeded his grasp, and a lot of Germans were going to hell on account of it.
Now I have to make sure they don’t send me to the Devil to keep them company
, Mouradian thought. If you flew long enough, your number was bound to come up. He hadn’t flown long enough yet, the proof of which was that he was still flying.
If I make it through the war, I won’t go any higher than the top floor of a three-story building
.
He felt faintly embarrassed thinking about the Devil or making a wheedling bargain with God. There wasn’t supposed to be room for either in a New Soviet Man’s philosophy. But plenty of others acted the same way. When things went wrong, you’d hear Russians screaming about the Devil’s uncle over the radio. Their fathers would have let out the same curses in the last war, and their great-great-great-grandfathers while fighting Napoleon.
Antiaircraft fire came up at the Pe-2s. Stas did some cussing of his own: they hadn’t crossed the front yet, so that was their own side shooting at them. It happened about every other mission. Maybe the Pe-2 looked
too
slick—the dumb bastards down on the ground figured it had to be German. Or maybe that had nothing to do with anything. Red Army men had fired on Stas in an SB-2, too. Too many soldiers thought any airplanes flying over them had to be dangerous.
“Approaching the target!” The squadron commander’s voice blared in Stas’ earphones, and in Mogamedov’s as well. “Prepare for the bomb run.”
“Acknowledged,” Mouradian answered. Mogamedov slid down to the glassed-in bottom of the nose to man the bombsight.
There it was, all right: a big supply dump by a railroad spur, with trucks and wagons hauling munitions up to the troops who banged heads with their Soviet counterparts. Mouradian pushed the yoke forward,and the bomber’s nose went down. He used the dive brakes to control and steepen his descent. The Pe-2 couldn’t stand on its nose like a Stuka, but it was a far better all-around aircraft.
“Bombs away, Fetya!” Mogamedov yelled.
“Bombs away!” Mechnikov echoed. “The whores are fucking gone!” And they were. Mouradian heard them tumble out of their racks and felt the plane, suddenly a tonne lighter, get friskier under his hands.
He needed all the friskiness he could find, too. Bf-109s tore into the
He waved to the groundcrew men once more. They pulled the chocks away from the Pe-2’s wheels. Mouradian eased up on the brake and gave the plane more throttle. It bounced down the dirt runway west of Smolensk. The runway was barely long enough to let a fully loaded bomber take off. Stas pulled back hard on the yoke. The Pe-2’s nose came up. If anything went wrong now, he’d be dead, and the bombs would make sure there was nothing left of him to bury.
But nothing went wrong. The Pe-2 climbed into the air. The ground fell away below it. The SB-2, the plane this machine replaced, had been a typical piece of Soviet engineering: homely but functional, at least till it went obsolete. Comrade Petlyakov’s bomber, by contrast, was slim and elegant. It had started life as a two-engined fighter, and still wasn’t helpless against Nazi 109s.
Mouradian took his place in the V of planes winging west to pound the Hitlerites’ positions somewhere east of Minsk. The Germans had fallen back a good deal since England and France started up the war in the West again. They didn’t have enough men or machines to do everything the
Führer
wanted.
A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?
Some foreign poet had said that. Stas couldn’t remember who. Hitler’s reach had exceeded his grasp, and a lot of Germans were going to hell on account of it.
Now I have to make sure they don’t send me to the Devil to keep them company
, Mouradian thought. If you flew long enough, your number was bound to come up. He hadn’t flown long enough yet, the proof of which was that he was still flying.
If I make it through the war, I won’t go any higher than the top floor of a three-story building
.
He felt faintly embarrassed thinking about the Devil or making a wheedling bargain with God. There wasn’t supposed to be room for either in a New Soviet Man’s philosophy. But plenty of others acted the same way. When things went wrong, you’d hear Russians screaming about the Devil’s uncle over the radio. Their fathers would have let out the same curses in the last war, and their great-great-great-grandfathers while fighting Napoleon.
Antiaircraft fire came up at the Pe-2s. Stas did some cussing of his own: they hadn’t crossed the front yet, so that was their own side shooting at them. It happened about every other mission. Maybe the Pe-2 looked
too
slick—the dumb bastards down on the ground figured it had to be German. Or maybe that had nothing to do with anything. Red Army men had fired on Stas in an SB-2, too. Too many soldiers thought any airplanes flying over them had to be dangerous.
“Approaching the target!” The squadron commander’s voice blared in Stas’ earphones, and in Mogamedov’s as well. “Prepare for the bomb run.”
“Acknowledged,” Mouradian answered. Mogamedov slid down to the glassed-in bottom of the nose to man the bombsight.
There it was, all right: a big supply dump by a railroad spur, with trucks and wagons hauling munitions up to the troops who banged heads with their Soviet counterparts. Mouradian pushed the yoke forward,and the bomber’s nose went down. He used the dive brakes to control and steepen his descent. The Pe-2 couldn’t stand on its nose like a Stuka, but it was a far better all-around aircraft.
“Bombs away, Fetya!” Mogamedov yelled.
“Bombs away!” Mechnikov echoed. “The whores are fucking gone!” And they were. Mouradian heard them tumble out of their racks and felt the plane, suddenly a tonne lighter, get friskier under his hands.
He needed all the friskiness he could find, too. Bf-109s tore into the
Similar Books
