Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (23 page)

He issued no orders for the soldiers to follow, but walked away past the line of bodies, toward the waiting train. The men tramped after him, wordless, rifles clanking in their arms and across their backs. He didn’t look down at the partisans, there was no more curiosity, death made every man the same.

Major Grimm caught up to him at the head of the company. Luis still felt the life of the defiant partisan throb in his hand, a powerful sensation, like a heartbeat. The major wanted to talk, it seemed, but Luis did not oblige. He reached into a pocket for a packet of crackers to appease his hunger.

* * * *

CHAPTER 9

July 2

0210 hours

west of Tomarovka

Even half conscious, Katya could still ride.

The three dark partisans who’d cut her from her downed U-2 had horses tied at the nearby farm of a peasant. Four mounts waited, the spare was to have been for Leonid.

She needed help climbing into the saddle. Her ribs and hips all felt clobbered, every muscle seared. The old peasant looked her over while handing a bag of food up to one of the partisans. He asked, ‘Is this the pilot you came to rescue? A woman?’ The partisan took the parcel and replied, ‘No.’

One of the men grabbed the reins to guide her horse. Katya drew the leather back into her own hands and told him, ‘Ride.’

The three partisans wheeled their mounts. The peasant continued his distasteful glare at Katya, as though he’d risked his life stashing these horses for the partisans to salvage nothing more than some fragile female. She managed one good kick in her horse’s ribs and lit out behind them into the darkness.

They rode for an hour, stopping at every sound in the night. The horses were well trained, accustomed to stealth, they did not nicker or stomp. The three men did not talk to Katya, they seemed angry with her. She did not ask questions. She was in a new slipstream, swept off in the current of unexpected events and people. She clung to the horse by instinct, for her hands and knees could barely clutch. Her mind staggered between blows: in one moment pain, in the next dead Vera left behind, in another Leonid lost or captured, then fear, then again pain.

One of the partisans was the leader of their little group. He rode in front and set the tone and pace. They stayed out of the open fields and away from every building, creeping along the gaps between tree lines. The Germans in this area kept themselves murky, only a few distant campfires were spangles on the darkness, one set of headlights on a far-off dirt road glimmered and vanished. The four riders came to a stream. The leader raised a hand for them to stop. He dismounted and waved the others from their horses. Leading his horse, he moved into the calf-deep water. Katya swung her leg across the saddle. She heard herself moan, the ground became the sky, galaxy-filled. She fainted.

* * * *

July  2

Noon

 in a field south of Borisovka

Rain dribbled on her forehead. Soft light played over her eyelids. The grass beneath her back felt soft and damp. Papa knelt beside her - was it Papa? - smelling of horse and steel, and close too was the youth of Valentin, an energy she could feel without seeing. A horse pawed, a leafy branch strayed between her shut eyes and the sky. She was home.

Katya opened her eyes. Gray light dodged through wet branches low over her face. She blinked, and that movement tripped off the pain in her joints. She groaned and turned her head.

‘So, this is a Night Witch.’

The voice tumbled from a squatting man, his elbows across his knees and his boot heels off the grass. His voice was deep, but no deeper than the eyes which were set in his sockets as if at the back of caves. They were black eyes under black brows, over hollow grim cheeks fletched with silver stubble. But he smiled and reached down a hand. Each finger was filthy with half-moons of dirt under the nails. He wore a charcoal wool suit coat and brown slacks. His shirt was forest green.

Katya took a deep breath; her ribs protested, making her wince. The squatting man shook the hand he held out. Katya took it. He pulled gently and she sat up.

‘There,’ he said. ‘All better, yes?’

‘No.’

She looked about. In addition to this stranger, thirty others sat oiling guns, eyeing the surrounding fields through the dripping leaves, or napping. An equal number of horses clustered around the trees where they were tethered.

‘Where am I?’

‘Three miles south of Borisovka. In a stand of trees. On your ass, where you’ve been for the last nine hours.’

Katya remembered stopping at the stream. Swinging her leg out of the saddle. The burst of stars.

‘I…’

‘You passed out. They brought you in across your saddle.’ The man pointed at three men standing behind him. ‘You’re a sound sleeper, Night Witch. What’s your name?’

The three came to loom over the kneeling partisan. She recognized them through the haze of her recollection; last night’s leader was an old one very like the man beside her, hardened, something vicious under the skin. The other two were younger, probably soldiers found behind enemy lines. One was thin, the other heavy. The skinny one was cold-eyed, not much more than twenty yet he looked wicked, a killer. The heavy one might have been her age, twenty-eight, with a blushed, full face like a red rising sun. This one’s manner was mercurial, with fleet eyes and a nervous, jiggling neck. Katya knew either of them, any of them gathered under these trees, would stick a dirk in her heart if they believed she was a threat to their unit.

‘Is there any water?’ she asked, holding her voice steady.

The heavy one handed down his canteen. He smiled with the gesture, then like a fish the smile darted from his lips.

She drank, then answered the kneeling man’s question. ‘Katerina Dimitriyevna Berkovna. Lieutenant, 208th Night Bomber Division.’

Katya tried to stand. The kneeling man stood and helped her. The fat one lent a hand, too. The other two held their ground and watched her struggle upright.

Once she was erect, before speaking, she made her peace with the wracking in her body. No bones were broken, but she knew beneath her flight suit she was a storm cloud of bruises.

She addressed the three partisans who’d saved her from the plane and the German patrol. ‘Thank you.’ They nodded, and the unspoken clung on their faces, a show of their dismay that it was Katya they had rescued and not the fighter pilot they’d been seeking at Tomarovka.

The deep-eyed man spoke for them. ‘I’m Colonel Plokhoi.’ This partisan called himself
Colonel Bad
. ‘You’re with a
druzhiny
of the Hurricane Brigade. Last night our cell had a radio alert that a Yak-9 was down in our region. My men went to bring the pilot back. They were about to meet him at the assigned location when you showed up to save him instead.’

‘Leonid Lumanov.’ Katya said the name so Leonid would not be known as ‘him.’ These partisans were like untamed bits of the earth itself, gloomy and weathered. She hurt a great deal standing here but not so much that she would drop her defiance and become the disappointing woman these four believed they’d lugged back. She was a pilot, like Leonid.

‘Lumanov,’ the colonel allowed her, nodding. ‘Well, when Lumanov struck his flare for you to land, the Germans saw him. As a result, you got shot down. Your pilot friend disappeared. And your navigator got killed.’

Katya winced. She wanted to say Vera’s name, too, to lay a grave marker on the cool words of this partisan. But Plokhoi was right. If she had stayed away, Leonid would be safe. Vera would be alive.

Katya fought the urge to hang her head in grief. Instead she kept her chin and her gaze firm; neither Vera nor Leonid would want her to show regret to these men. Vera had encouraged the rescue, her last words were ‘Go get him, Katya.’ And Leonid had lit the flare, preferring to be rescued by Katya and her little U-2 instead of the partisans. Yes, she was sorry for what happened, the loss and death, but for nothing more, not her own effort, not the bravery of Vera, not the faith of Leonid.

The three partisans who’d brought her back turned away now that she was awake and standing. The heavy-set one allowed a sympathetic smile before walking off. His thinner mate went to sit with some comrades, men who made no noise other than the sound of several whetstones under swirling blades, a hiss that blended with the patter of the rain.

Plokhoi jerked a thumb over his shoulder at his platoon. ‘They’ll be fine. Actually, they’ve got plenty to thank you for. We get a lot of supplies dropped to us by you Night Witches. By the way, were you in on bombing the station at Oktabrskaya last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, you’ll be glad to know your part of the mission went well. The station and the tracks were wrecked, and the German garrison was hit hard.’

What did Plokhoi mean, ‘your part of the mission’? Then she understood. Plokhoi’s
druzhiny
must have been the partisan group assigned to work with the Night Witches to stop the German tank train.

Something had gone wrong.

‘Last night,’ Plokhoi said, ‘I had seventy-two men. I sent fifty of them after the train. Today I’ve got thirty-one left. The Germans were ready for us. The train got through to the station. It’ll reach Belgorod by tonight after the rails are fixed. And I don’t have enough men to go after it again.’

Katya rammed her thoughts through the crash, back to the mission over the Oktabrskaya train station. The night fighter had been waiting. As it had been three nights before that, at the sortie above the enemy supply depot. Again, the Germans had known the Night Witches were coming, where and when; the night fighter was there, too. Her Night Bomber squadron received its targets from intelligence gathered by the partisans. And what about last night’s attempt to rescue Leonid? A German patrol had been closing in at the same time Katya and Vera and the partisans reached him. Now Plokhoi said his partisans had been anticipated last night by the tank train. Their ambush was damned before it started.

She said nothing to Plokhoi about these facts, or her sudden suspicion that there might be a traitor in their number. Plokhoi must be aware, if he himself was not the traitor. She didn’t know the man from a stranger before waking up to him five minutes ago. A cold feeling seeped down her spine, as though raindrops had dripped into her flight suit. She cast her eyes over the surviving partisans. Which one was it?

Outside the copse of trees, the day was leaden. These partisans huddled like trolls from the daytime. The steppe must be a poor landscape for guerilla fighters, not like a mountain wood or a swamp, where it would be easier to hit and disappear. These men had not many places to hide in the Kursk region, a few dispersed villages, some small forests, but the rest was flat, ranging farmland. Secrecy was their survival. Katya knew in an instant it would be hers, as well.

Plokhoi offered a cigarette. She shook her head.

‘We’ll get you out of here tonight,’ he said, looking up through the leaves, invoking darkness, the only time his cadre could move. ‘I’ll radio your Witches to come pick you up.’

‘No,’ Katya said.

She didn’t trust this Colonel Bad and his radio. More important, she didn’t know Leonid’s fate. She and Vera had come looking for him, and she hadn’t yet found him. He might have been captured, but he might still be free and close by.

And if there was a spy in this partisan cell, she had a debt to pay him. For the four dead Witches. For Vera. And maybe for Leonid.

Besides, the partisans had horses. She said to Plokhoi, ‘I’m staying.’

* * * *

July 2

1915 hours

Plokhoi assigned the three who’d rescued Katya to stay with the Witch. He would not call her by her name or rank. Katya did not insist. She let it go - after all, she thought, this was a person who’d anointed himself Colonel Bad. She wondered what kind of man he’d been before the Germans invaded. A professor, perhaps, or a gentleman bandit. The dirt on him spoke of stamina and ruthlessness, this was not a man who led from behind. He was charismatic; the others nodded when he spoke and never broke their eyes from him. Colonel Bad reminded Katya of a quieter version of her father.