Текст книги "The Romanov Succession"
Автор книги: Brian Garfield
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
3
Vlasov’s last signal came late Saturday night.
KOLLIN X WEATHER CLEARING X PROJECTION FOR EIGHTH IS CLEAR X SCHEDULE AFFIRMED FOR EIGHTH X WILL NOT SEND AGAIN UNLESS CHANGE IN SCHEDULE X GOOD HUNTING X KOLLIN X CARNEGIE
It was strange to see them in these surroundings. They belonged against the luxurious backgrounds of villas, gaming rooms, lofty tapestried chambers, works of art of millennia. In the stark Suomi flying-officers’ dayroom they were uncomfortable strangers. They had endured twenty years’ exile and months of recent tension but now the time that you measured in minutes was attacking their composure. General Savinov had drunk himself to the point of glazed paralysis. Anatol and Oleg occupied opposite corners of the room and at intervals their white-hot glances locked across it. Old Prince Michael had gone very vague and loquacious: most of what he said made no sense to Alex in the snatches he overheard. Baron Yuri Ivanov sat bolt upright on a wooden chair with his straight-armed hands perched on his knees, staring at nothing. Leon sat with his cane hooked over the arm of his chair and a glass of vodka which by now had gone warm with neglect; he was talking in earnest low tones to Prince Felix who kept shoving a lock of hair back from his forehead. And Irina said in a voice calculated to reach no farther than Alex’s ears, “Do you think any of them will make it through the next twenty-four hours?” Then she made an impatient gesture. “I mustn’t laugh at them-it’s so unkind.”
“They wouldn’t notice.”
“Are you rattled too?”
“I suppose I am. I keep craving a thick American steak with all the trimmings.” But abruptly and unaccountably he had an image of Carol Ann’s melancholy frown in a flyspecked El Paso cafe; and he said, “Or maybe a big plate of chili and beans.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said. When this was over he would write to her. Just a polite note: how are things? – the sort of thing that couldn’t do her harm if her husband happened to see it. It was something he owed her: acknowledgment that she hadn’t been forgotten. She’d seen him through the worst of it, the months he’d thought he wasn’t going to see Irina again. Suddenly he brought her into the semicircle of his arm and gripped her shoulder.
“It’s all right,” she said, very gentle. “Do you want to come to bed?”
“In a little while.”
In the beginning the challenge had stirred him and made his juices run; he had formulated the plan in quick broad strokes with brilliant speed and then he had filled in the fine touches with careful foresight; he’d been confident he’d got the composition right, drawn every line and every dot where it had to be. Wherever there had been a conflict between methods or means he’d chosen the alternative that had the best odds of success. It was a plan worthy of the masters but now he began to believe in all the things that could go wrong and he knew he had to shake that off. It was the delay that did it. They’d keyed themselves up for a specific hour; it had been put back seventy-two hours and that was more than enough time to ruin the edge.
Buckner and Cosgrove entered the room: an odd pair-the gaunt one-armed brigadier, professionally reserved; the blunt cheerful American with his foolish facade of amiable buffoonery. They’d hit it off without any of the competitive rivalry he’d half expected to see.
Irina said, “Our two referees seem to be fast friends. Last night I caught them talking with feverish excitement about murder mysteries. Can you believe that? They’re both fanatical admirers of Dashiell Hammett. It’s incredible. They’re like two small boys who’ve just met and discovered they’ve got the same passion for backgammon and toy airplanes.”
Felix came toward them arching an eyebrow. “You two look disgustingly cozy and domestic together. Under the circumstances it’s hardly sporting.”
Alex smiled a little. “You’re nervous.”
“It’s probably a good thing. When I didn’t begin to get nervous the day before a race I knew I wasn’t going to win.”
“Keep it under control,” Alex said. “You’ve got nearly thirty-six hours before you take off.”
“You’ve got only twenty-four. How do you feel?”
Alex shook his head. “That’s a military secret.”
“You’re scared half to death like the rest of us.”
“Of course he is,” Irina murmured.
Alex dropped his voice. “I don’t like losing that third bomber. It doesn’t leave you much margin for error.”
“We’ll manage,” Felix said. “We’d manage with one if we had to.” His teeth flashed. “It’s only one train, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be cocky,” Irina said.
“Still trying to change my character, aren’t you.”
“Felix, I adore your character.”
Felix drifted away and Irina said in her soft way, “Did you know he was up half the night composing letters to the families of the men who died in that bomber crash-Vinsky and the others?”
“No-”
“Compassion is a quality Russia’s not used to in her leaders. Felix will be something new to all of them. I wonder how they’ll take to him.”
“I wonder how he’ll take to them,” Alex answered. “I hope he doesn’t get bored with it.”
“He’ll find ways to make it interesting. Trust him.”
“I do,” he said. “In the beginning I wasn’t sure they’d made the right decision. There was no way to see what he was like under the bravado. He might have been a smaller man you know-he might have let it go to his head. It’s the small ones who turn greedy and arrogant when you put power in their hands.”
“Like Vassily.”
“Yes…”
“Do you still dream about him?”
“No. Not since that night we talked about it.”
“Sometimes the answer’s that simple-talking it out. It gets the poison out of your system so that it can’t stay and fester.”
The room was a sea in which animate islands floated, each of them absorbed in its own storms and troubles. He turned and a trick of acoustics carried to his ears a soft exchange between Anatol and Baron Ivanov; Anatol was saying, “… unprecedented to say the very least. We are not a society that is accustomed to having its opposing views aired in public forums.”
“It will be an interesting experiment,” the little Baron answered, “to find out whether men of our persuasion can live and work in the same halls with men like Oleg. I am rather eager to see what comes of it.”
Anatol grumbled a reply. Irina was laughing very softly in her throat. “I’ve made a fine discovery,” she whispered. “My awesome brilliant father is in fact an old grouch.”
He was able to laugh and the ability pleased him more than the amusement itself. He began to steer her toward the door but they’d only crossed half the room when Oleg intercepted them. “A word with you?” Oleg gave Irina his brusque nod of apology. “Only for a moment.”
Oleg took him away into the corner and spoke as conspiratorially as a pimp in a third-class hotel. “The moment of truth is upon us.”
Alex had to fight down the impulse to laugh.
Oleg kneaded the pipe in his fingers; the veins stood out along the backs of his blunt square hands. “It has been torture for me these past weeks-not knowing whether I had done the right thing. You have kept faith with Vlasov. I owe you my apologies and my deepest thanks. His safety was my responsibility-it would have been my fault, my guilt if he had been exposed.”
“I didn’t do it for you.” He was harsh because he didn’t want Oleg misplacing his loyalty.
“I realize that, Alex. Quite fully. Nevertheless I must apologize again for my lack of faith in your discretion and your talent. Indeed I might say your genius. I’m quite prepared now to believe that neither Vassily Devenko nor any other man alive could have brought us this far, let alone made success possible. The debt we all owe you is incalculable.”
“We’d better wait and see how it turns out before we start parceling out the glory, Oleg.”
“I have no more doubts of our success. None at all.”
He wondered what it was that had brought the always skeptical Oleg around to such an extreme position of faith. Perhaps it was the panic of these last hours: needing an anchor Oleg had pounced on Belief and was clinging to it with the grip of hysteria.
Alex said, “In any case we’ll know soon enough, won’t we,” and managed to break away.
He reached Irina at the door; Felix was there, sparkling. “Just one thing before I let you both go.” He hesitated and his glance whipped from Alex’s face to Irina’s and back. Then with a sudden shy tip of his head: “Alex, I’d very much like to be your best man.”
Over the top of Felix’s head his eyes met Irina’s; they had gone very wide and he thought she wasn’t breathing. She gave him no helpful signals. In the end he gripped Felix’s shoulder.
“Done.”
The bedroom was tiny, spartan, stark: a flying officer’s cell, the place where a knight hung his armor and broadsword between jousts. Bare wooden walls and a single shelf nailed along one wall; a steel-frame cot with a green wool blanket; a row of wooden pegs for hanging clothes; a single lamp suspended from the ceiling with a conical metal shade.
“It’s a little narrow,” she said, “but we’ll ignore the crowd. Alex darling-if we’re really to go into the tiresome business of marriage there’s one thing you must promise me.”
“I’ll promise you the stars and the moon. With parsley.”
“Promise me that we’ll always share the same bedroom and sleep in the same bed.” She was watching him with genuine anxiety: poise had deserted her.
He faced her across the length of the little cubicle; very gravely he said to her, “I promise that.”
Only then did she stir. She took a slow step forward and then another and then she came into his arms, ravenously greedy.
When they slept finally they were pressed together on the narrow mattress like two spoons. But at some hour of the morning he came awake and was startled by the vividness of the image: every line and hair of Vassily Devenko’s high contemptuous face.
4
Apart from the others she stood on the runway hugging her breasts; her long hair blew across her face. The soldiers were drawn up in formations beside their transports, bulky in their Red Army winter uniforms, heavily laden with combat field packs and parachutes. There were no lights; the guns snapped fitfully on the distant border. The sky had cleared during the day but it was still bitter cold. The moonlight was enough to see by; from inside the airplanes came the faint glow of the red lights inside their cabin spaces.
Prince Felix and his air crews stood off to one side at attention, in formation; and Leon’s group had a semblance of military order to it when Alex came across the tarmac to say his good-byes. She was too far away to hear the words they spoke. The soldiers began to climb into the airplanes. She saw Oleg reach out and grasp Alex in a bear hug-a ritual the Baron hardly ever practiced-and then her father shook Alex’s hand. General Savinov gravely drew himself to attention with a faint click of his heels; he lifted his thick right arm in a salute which Alex answered in kind. Then Alex returned to Prince Leon and the old man’s hand, a withered claw, sketched the Orthodox cross against Alex’s forehead and coat. Then Leon drew Alex to him and kissed him on both cheeks. The old Prince was visibly weeping when Alex turned away.
Alex said his good-byes to Cosgrove and the Americans and then walked to the pilots’ formation and spoke briefly to Prince Felix. She saw the flash of Felix’s grin once. The two men exchanged salutes and bear hugs and then Alex was coming toward her.
She was numb. He touched her under the chin with his forefinger, lifting her face. She heard the cough and wheeze of the aircraft engines starting up; beyond Alex’s shoulder she saw old Sergei waiting by the open airplane door in his combat uniform, beaming with incandescent eagerness.
Alex lifted his hands to her shoulders. He said, “I love you,” very quietly so that she hardly heard him against the racket of the airplane engines and then he was striding away from her and she wasn’t sure whether he had kissed her or not. She realized her arms were still folded. She watched the planes swing out onto the field and roll down to the far end of it. A single light came on at the opposite end of the runway to mark their way. She stood without moving anything except her head and eyes while the airplanes gathered speed down the runway and launched themselves upward into the night.
They were running without lights and she lost them very quickly in the sky. Then the drumming of the engines faded and she turned away.
Felix took her arm and guided her inside.
5
Sunrise: a dreary winter gloom and beneath them the birch and fir forests that lay between Leningrad and Moscow, the snow-buried marshes along the Volkhov. They flew at two thousand feet, not hurrying, the aircraft painted with Red Army markings-indistinguishable from dozens of American aircraft supplied to Moscow by Lend-Lease.
Alex moved through the crowded fuselage talking to his men. Most of them sat with their gloved hands wrapped around cups of coffee. They were nervous and trying to hide it but they were uplifted by eagerness.
Off to starboard he could see a great deal of smoke hanging low. Moscow; whether from combat or furnaces he couldn’t tell. The forests ran underneath at a steady clip, here and there a dacha with snow on its roof and an unplowed driveway. There wasn’t much movement on the roads except for the occasional battalion of soldiers on the march. Most of the main roads had been plowed.
The amber light came on and Alex stood up near the rear cargo door. “Hook up.”
They reached up and snapped the ripcord hooks to the twin taut wires that ran the length of the fuselage on either side at shoulder height. “Jump order,” Alex said and the twenty-four men stood up in two columns, turning to face the doorway. Alex nodded to Sergei and the old sergeant spun the wheel valve of the welded cargo door. There was a hiss and then a rush of air; it took both of them to get it open and then the wind was a howling racket in the plane. Alex braced at the door watching the signal light over his shoulder; he caught the brilliance of Sergei’s stare and he nodded gently.
The amber light went out; the green flashed. Solov tapped Alex’s shoulder and he jumped.
He was falling at 125 miles an hour and the wind buffeted his ears with a tremendous noise. The pilot chute popped open above him and he braced for the big jerk when the main chute came out. The harness slammed him around for a bit and then he was floating down toward the drop zone, hanging from the chute, thinking about those live high-tension wires forty yards beyond the drop zone: land in those and you could fry. But there wasn’t much wind; the chute was easy to steer by hauling down on this shroud line or that and he hit the DZ dead center, pitching over on his shoulder in the compacted snow. The rest of them were pouring down in a steady stream as if they’d been spilled carefully out of a pitcher; the precision of it was a pleasure to watch.
He had the chute gathered into a bundle before the last man touched down. They gathered without talk-it was a forest clearing eighty yards in diameter with an unoccupied summer dacha somewhere out of sight in the woods to the north. The routine had been drilled into them and they didn’t need spoken orders. When the silk had been folded they carried their parachutes into the woods and left them there weighted down with broken branches and stones; they inspected their combat equipment and moved out along the dacha’s, driveway, marching out to the main road in neat military formation-a Red Army infantry platoon moving under orders.
The cold was characteristically and uniquely Russian: it cut through any kind of clothing and attacked bone-deep.
They came out to the road and executed a column-right maneuver. It was a fourteen-mile march from here to the track; they’d had to drop that far away to avoid being seen in the air by any of the sentry positions in the area. The road had been cleared within the past twenty-four hours and there were only thin patches of snow that had drifted across the gravel surface; it made for easy walking and they would be ahead of time at the objective but that was fine. They had six hours to get there; they would make it in half that.
Two miles along the road Solov took his eight men down a fork to the left and Alex gave the remainder of the company a five-minute breather until Solov’s unit was out of sight. Then he led Sergei and his fifteen-man commando due west along the high road.
After an hour they halted for another ten-minute breather. There was no hurry now and he didn’t want the men half exhausted; they’d had to go without most of a night’s sleep in any case. They sat down at the side of the road and in the silence that ensued they could hear the plop of snow falling off the trees in the deep forest that lined both sides of the road; and when Alex listened with more care he heard the very distant pound of artillery-a big-gun duel talking place somewhere many miles to the southwest, perhaps on the far side of Moscow. It brought back all the old campaigns at once and the knowledge he’d learned in the field-how to listen to the guns, how to tell which were outgoing and which incoming, how to anticipate how close a seventy-five would come.
Then there was another sound: much nearer, and Alex lifted his men to their feet with a quick upswipe of his arm.
The squadron of Cossack cavalry came swinging along the snowy road, riders bundled in fur, rifles across their saddlebows; the horses steamed and the hoofs thudded with a quick rhythm. Alex’s men formed up along the verge with the dry-cold snow squeaking under their boots.
Ice particles clung in the squat Cossack leader’s beard. He lifted his right hand and halted his squadron. His men looked on, wearing the intransigent grim faces of blooded veterans. The leader’s eyes puckered up with weariness or with suspicion-it was hard to tell which. “Seventh Army,” he growled, “which way?”
Alex shook his head; he didn’t know. “But that way’s the front.”
“I can hear the guns-I know where the front is.” The Cossack grunted and turned a dubious face toward the west. “What are you people doing here? You look fit for battle.”
The Cossack was a very stupid man with nothing but his military pride: the way to handle him was to stare him down and bark at him.
“Obey your orders, Cossack, and I’ll obey mine. Move your men along.”
The Cossack brooded upon him and then swept his arm up and forward and led his bloodthirsty troop away. Clots of snow kicked into the air struck the earth explosively.
Alex spoke to Sergei and the commando moved on.
The line was double-tracked; it ran up toward the crest along a steady gradient in a hundred-meter-wide cut between the trees. This was all forest country and they hadn’t mowed the right-of-way since before the beginning of the war: saplings had begun to dot the cut, sprouting twigs through the snow; and there were mounded lumps of snow that had to be weedy bushes.
He had memorized the contour map in long weeks of study but the habit of thoroughness made him unfold it and confirm his bearings. There was no one within earshot or sight-most likely there was no one within miles of this place-but their discipline was ingrained and he gave all his orders with hand signals. No one spoke. Sergei made a tour of their positions-at the edge of the trees on both sides of the cut-but there were only four men on the opposite side and they were not to act unless anyone tried to escape the train on that side.
When Sergei returned across the tracks he came slowly and swept his footprints with a clustered branch; he settled down beside Alex, his face very ruddy and his eyes agleam.
Alex peeled back a fur-lined cuff to check the time; he looked both ways along the silent empty rails and then there was nothing to do but wait for Stalin’s train.
6
Felix’s casualness had been deliberate and studied at takeoff. He knew an emptiness in the pit of his stomach, a taste like brass on his tongue, a dry feeling of heat on the surface of his cheeks that had nothing to do with the coldness of the air in the cockpit. He had to blink away dryness from his eyes. All his life he had gone through the same ritual each time he rolled down the flight line, gathering air pressure under the cambered wings; at the moment of takeoff, no matter how many thousands of times he had completed this lift from the ground, he knew fear.
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.
All around him the I-16s were snarling and wheeling: jabbing at him with their guns; dodging like mosquitoes. Something stitched a line of half-inch holes through the ceiling of the cockpit and the bullets lanced forward at an angle, breaking the windscreens outward: slivers of glass spun about the cockpit and one of them cut the back of his right hand. He was cool enough to make a rough count of the planes he could see in the air and he had to estimate their number at more than thirty; it was a miracle he was still in the air and it was a miracle that was needed: he needed it and history needed it… The lurch of the airframe pasted him down into the seat and he saw the nose writhe wildly into the sky and for a moment he thought they’d been shot to pieces but then he realized what it was: two tons of bombs had left the airplane and the sudden loss of weight had thrown them upward fifty feet in the air.
“ Bombs away!”
He hauled everything to climb power and angled his flaps and sent the big plane into a narrow skidding turn that might easily wrench the wings off but it was worth the risk, anything was. “I’m making a three-sixty.”
“ What?”
“I said a three-sixty. We’re making the bomb run again– we’ve got to be sure. ”
He was far enough into the turn to be able to see out when the delay-fused bombs went off and he was close enough to it to be rocked by the explosion, deafened by the earsplitting thunders of it.
He saw it crystal clear when the roofs lifted right off both cars. He saw the red-painted cross on the roof between them before they disintegrated into hurtling missiles of shattered armor-plate. He saw the two carriages go up with a force of violence that lifted half the train off the rails by its couplings and sent the forward locomotive spinning across the snow as if it were on skates. In the midst of the boiling smoke there was nothing left of the troop cars-nothing bigger than a matchstick; nothing at all; and he yanked the controls far over to the right and bellowed at the top of his voice:
