Flying the Storm (11 page)

Fred, you useless
bastard
.

Vika had never seen an aircraft so huge. Its hold yawned widely like some gigantic mouth beneath the cockpit, which looked stupidly small compared to the rest of the aircraft. It just looked
wrong
. How could something that huge fly?

I
t kept growing as they walked along the row of aircraft towards it.

She was grateful there were no chains this time. There were armed guards, though, escorting them across the plaza. More than there were with the Azeri slavers.
It seemed her new owner’s crew was as large as the aircraft. Russian, some of them, from the way they talked. Those men terrified her to the bone, but she knew that they wouldn’t touch her. Not unless her owner told them to.

The pale man with the silver shoulders had outbid almost everybody for the Armenians.
Only a few were bought by other bidders; for a brothel, and maybe one for the Arabs? She couldn’t remember. It was all a terrifying blur, though at the time it had passed so slowly as she waited for her turn to come.

The other two Ashtarak girls were amongst those the pale man bought, and they walked behind Vika now, staring at the massive aircraft just like she was.
None of them had spoken since before the auction. There was nothing to say. She wondered if they felt the same dread as she did as they watched the cargo ramp open to swallow them up. Beyond it, she knew, there would be no chance of coming back. No chance of ever going home.

Instinctively her hand went to her linen bodice.
She could feel the hard lump of the blade sitting hidden beneath her breast. That was her one hope: that and Dadash with his green-nosed aircraft. Without it, she was lost. She was teetering on the brink, leaning as if to fall. Only her own action could save her, could pull her back. But she needed an opening. They had to slip up, somehow.

Soon they were in the hold, its dark metal walls
all around them. Her pace faltered only a little, but it was enough that Naira noticed. Naira, who knew Vika so well. Vika felt a soft pressure on the small of her back. It was Naira’s hand, gently urging her on.

Vika reached behind her and grasped the hand tightly.
Naira’s grip was firm and steady.
Keep going
, it told her.
You must keep going
. She drew some courage from it, and once more picked up the pace.

The Russians led them deeper into the aircraft, beyond the cargo hold. Somehow it was even bigger on the inside, like a church, and they walked for further than she thought the aircraft could possibly let them. Finally, when the narrowing of the corridor suggested they were reaching the tail, the girls were taken up a ladder to another deck. They were put in a cabin just off the upper corridor, and the door was closed behind them. Through the little window in the door, she could see the single guard that had been placed to watch them. He stood facing away from the door, a pistol in his hand.

Vika turned to the cabin then.
A long, cushioned couch ran around the walls. Hesitantly, the women sat down. Vika sat too, but her heart was racing. She knew that she had to act soon. Who could tell how long she had before the pale man decided to leave Baku?

She sat with her elbows on her thighs, her hands clasped in front of her.
The women around her looked exhausted. They had all been through an ordeal, but she doubted any of their hearts was beating as fast as hers.

She took
a deep breath to clear her head. She had to have a plan. Looking around herself, she knew she’d never be able to get them all out, but she had to try. It wouldn’t be right not to. She remembered something her father told her, once when she was young.
If you have the means, you must help those who cannot help themselves
. It was the right thing to do. It was the human thing to do.

Without even realising what she was doing, she had crossed the cabin to the
door and knocked gently on it. Her hand reached under her bodice and drew out the tiny blade, unwrapping it from the cloth. She clenched it carefully in her fist, hidden.

The guard’s face appeared at the window, annoyed.

“
Chto
?” he demanded.

Vika looked at him.
He was a plain-looking man, but not ugly. His beard was the colour of sand, and his eyes were grey. They were confused, those eyes, but as they took Vika in, she saw the desire beneath. Carefully choosing her expression, she bit her lip.

The door opened. “
Chto
?” he said again, quieter this time. Vika noticed the pistol in his hand, held by his waist. He looked around her into the cabin briefly, before he returned to her eyes. She held his gaze for a moment, and then quickly pressed herself against him. Her lips found his. She kissed him hard, her tongue lightly brushing his lips until she felt them respond, moving with hers. His beard tickled her face. With her free hand, she grasped his crotch and felt something stir there.

Lips still locked, she backed him into the wall of the corridor. He didn’t resist. One of his hands clasped the small of her bac
k, sliding down to her buttocks. The hand with the pistol fumbled clumsily at her side. His mouth was warm, alive, repaying her advances eagerly.

He is yours
, she thought.
How easy
.

And then she stabbed him in the throat.

The little blade cut deep. She sawed it round from the side of his neck, twisting it free with a jerk. Hot blood hissed from the ragged gash, covering her hands and spraying the front of her gown. Her other hand had grasped the wrist that held the pistol. He made no sound, his mouth gaping, opening and closing like a fish pulled from the river. She felt his arm working, trying to bring the pistol to bear. She held it firmly down and away from herself, pushing him back against the wall with her body. He was weakening, she could feel, and she found she could hold his arm easily. His legs were buckling and he began to slide down the wall, his grey eyes not leaving hers. He still made no sound, his vocal cords cut off from his lungs. Then, as his eyes fluttered closed and his body finally collapsed to the floor, she felt his arm spasm.

The pistol barked and jumped, the shot ringing and echoing in the tight metal corridor. Through half-deafened ears she heard a girl squeal with fright in the
cabin behind her. The bullet had punched through the floor of the corridor.

That was it. The guards were
coming. She dropped the blade.

She sprang away from the dying guard, easily stripping the pistol from his limp fingers.
Her heart thumped, but not with nerves. She felt so powerful, so alive! The man had died so easily, once she made him hers.

She turned to the cabin
then, seeing the terrified huddle of women.

“I am going,”
she said. The others just stared at her and the blood on her hands. “Come quick!”

It was Naira who spoke.
“No Vika,” she said, holding an arm around the others. “One will make it, six will not.”

She stared at them
, uncomprehending.

“Go now, Vika!” ordered Naira
, her arm around the others.

Vika backed out of the room.
She heard voices shouting now, coming from along the corridor, still out of sight. With a last look at the other women, she ran for the ladder.

There were n
o voices in the bottom corridor, but the echoing thump of running feet reverberated through the whole aircraft. She looked around herself for a way out. There was nothing obvious. All the old signs were written in Chinese: warnings and instructions. She took a few cautious steps along the corridor. There, low down by the walkway, was a levered hatch. She put the pistol down and wrenched the handle as hard as she could, but her blood-slick hands slipped.

The footsteps were getting closer, almost right overhead.
She wiped her hands on her gown and tried the handle again.

It gave
way, and the hatch fell outwards, revealing the tarmac of the air dock below. Carefully, she lowered herself through it and dropped the two metres to the surface.

She landed in a crouch, the pistol raised
like her father had shown her. There was nobody in sight. She looked down at the flimsy little plimsolls on her feet. They weren’t running shoes, but they would have to do.

Without wast
ing another second, she ran.

Four engines and a green nose
.

She ran as fast as her stupid little plimsolls could take her, the guard’s pistol in her hand. The
dead
guard. Even though she’d watched him die, it still felt strange to imagine that he was dead – that she’d killed him. It wasn’t upsetting… just unfamiliar.

Near the dock facilities
.

The little additional scrap of information came back to her just as she spotted the single-store
y flat-roofed building in a clearing amidst the aircraft, loose-booted airmen trudging from its showers with towels across shoulders. One turned his head towards her and said something to his friends. Now they were all looking at the running girl in the white gown with the gun in her hand. Naturally, they moved off quickly.

Standing, panting, near the entrance to the building, she looked around for the aircraft.
Her heart was beating like a drum against her ribs, and her pulse only quickened when she couldn’t see it. No green noses and no four-engine aircraft. Despair crept up her spine.

She cast
about; running a few paces along the row, just in case she’d missed it.

And there it was.
Green nose, four engines. Half-hidden behind another craft. Dadash was sitting on the ramp, looking away from her.

Then she was running again, towards him.

“Dadash!” she cried. The balding man turned to look then. His kindly face lit up when he saw her, and then fell when he saw the blood.

“Are you hurt?” he asked as she reached the foot of the ramp.

“What?” Vika looked down at her gown then. It was spattered and stained with crimson. “Oh, no I’m fine. This isn’t me.”

“Good. Come! We have to go.”
Dadash, while turning to climb the ramp, stopped. He squinted over Vika’s shoulder, looking back along the row of aircraft.

“What?” Vika asked.
She didn’t turn round.

Then she heard it.
Russian voices, shouting. She spun on her heels. Maybe a hundred metres away was a trio of Russians with a security enforcer. She didn’t know much Russian, but she did hear one word.

“Thief!”

The security man raised his gun. There was a deafening crack and Vika ducked, her arms shielding her head. They’d missed. She wasn’t hurt.

She turned then to run, almost tripping over Dadash’s fallen form.

From his feet to his nose he was fine. From his nose upwards was nothing. The top half of his head was gone. Awful, pink bits of it littered the tarmac and the foot of the cargo ramp.

The pistol fell forgotten from her fingers as she dropped to his side,
gripping his shirt.

“Dadash!” she screamed.
“
Dadash!
”

“Fourteen silver,” said Fredrick, “and I’m doing you a favour.”

The merchant turned and spat in the dust behind the stand. “Twenty,” he repeated stubbornly.

“Pah,” dismissed Fredrick, turning to leave. He knew the game. He took a step away, careful not to move too slowly.

“Ok, eighteen,” conceded the merchant. Eighteen still wasn’t fourteen, but it was in the right direction. Fredrick came back to the stall.

“Fifteen,” he said. He had to give some ground. At this stage, every little concession he made would seem disproportionately generous to the seller.

The man lifted his strange little hat and scratched the bald patch it had concealed. He sighed. “Seventeen is as low as I can go.”

“All right,” said Fredrick.
From thirty down to seventeen. His grandmother would be proud. “Deal.”

The merchant couldn’t help but grimace as Fredrick handed over the paltry little pile of coins. Reluctantly he wrapped the little rug in paper and passed it to Fredrick.

“Thank you,” said Fredrick, taking it under his shoulder and turning back out into the aisle between the stalls.

He’d enjoyed that. It was much more pleasant than flogging their cargo to the Armenians had been.
Those people were tight. They were so convincingly uninterested you’d have been forgiven for thinking they didn’t even want the thing they were haggling for. The only sure way to know they were attracted at all was the fact they’d come all the way out to the landing pad to look. Even then they’d taken their time about it.

Anyway, his mother would like the rug he’d bought her. Or maybe she’d hate it. Something about
its pattern appealed to Fredrick, though.

Either way, it didn’t matter; she’d just be so pleased that he’d thought of her.
Anything to keep in her favour.

He had brothers and sisters, but Fredrick knew he was the favourite. He was the one who’d always wanted to be a pilot. He’d stuck to her like glue as a kid, doing what she did, saying what she said. He was quite happy to admit that he still drew a lot of satisfaction from his parents’ pride in him. It could have been an addiction. Probably some doctor
somewhere would have a name for it. He didn’t care.

He looked over the stalls, just passing the time. Standing right in the middle of the flux of people, he couldn’t help but be distracted by the seemingly endless stream of strikingly beautiful women passing by.
Dark hair, dark eyes. Something about that drew Fredrick in. Opposites attracted, he supposed. He decided he was beginning to like the East.

Something about the Russian language conveyed urgency very well. It was unmistakeable, cutting through the jumble of other languages like a jagged blade. Fredrick cast about for the source of the shouting.

Two pale white men in the sea of darker faces. Whoever they were, they were in a hurry; shouldering people out of their way as they rushed along the aisle. They were heading in the direction of the air docks.

He
’d bought the present and he’d filled his hip-flask. He’d done what he came to do. Out of plain curiosity, he started following them.

They took a pretty straight route through the heart of the crowds towards the rows of aircraft, leaving the last of the stalls behind. It was hot on the concrete plaza, and despite its size the place was so crowded it felt claustrophobic. If Fredrick hadn’t been partial to the heat, he might have been uncomfortable.

The warm odour of tens of thousands of sweating bodies didn’t drown out the smell of spice stalls and perfumeries; instead it mixed with them to create a heady scent that made the air seem thick. Combined with the heat and the closely pressed bodies it felt like he was pushing his way through a viscous liquid, like axle grease or syrup.

The smells faded slowly as Fredrick followed the Russians out of the crowds and towards the rows of aircraft. Gradually they were replaced by the sharp tang of ‘nol and oily machinery. Smells Fredrick knew. Smells he was comfortable with.

The Russians cut between a pair of light freighters and took a sharp right on the taxi aisle between the rows. They were almost at a full run, and Fredrick followed as quickly as he could without making it obvious he was following. They didn’t look back, thankfully.

They turned left suddenly, cutting across another row of aircraft to run down another taxi aisle. Fredrick could feel his forehead dampen with sweat as he jogged along, and was beginning to wonder if this would be worth the effort at the end. What was he even following them for, really? It was none of his business. It could even be dangerous.

Well, that was it then. Danger drew him in; it always had. He doubted he’d have been much good as a pilot if it didn’t. Curiosity made him run faster.

One more turn, and the rows of aircraft ended suddenly in a wide open square. In the middle of that square sat a huge aircraft;
somehow Fredrick hadn’t seen it on the way down. He knew what it was – there weren’t many models he didn’t know, military or otherwise. It was a Tianlong-class Heavy Lander. The heaviest VTOL craft the Asians ever built. The shape of it was raw power and strength. This was the type of aircraft to carry main battle tanks into combat. Just by its nose was its name, sprayed white in capitalised Cyrillic.

Sokol
.

Fredrick stopped, agape. He’d seen images of Tianlongs before, of course, scrolling through aircraft identification charts and specs, and he’d known the size of it. But that hadn’t prepared him for how
colossal it really was. With a little smile of wonder, he wished he had a camera. His parents would have loved to see this.

Tearing his eyes from the aircraft for a moment he saw that the Russians had stopped running, halfway across the tarmac to the
Sokol
. More people were coming from a different taxi aisle: white men, some with guns. Two of them were pulling a struggling woman, clad in a white gown dyed red in patches, towards the
Sokol
.

Fredrick’s hands coiled into fists as he realised that it
was blood, not dye, on her gown. It didn’t matter what she was guilty of, men should not handle women like that. As a pilot and as a Wingwearer, he was honour bound to do something. He had no way of knowing what the circumstances were, but everything about this screamed injustice.

But still he stood, planted to the spot, watching as the men dragged the woman in the white gown towards the Tianlong. The pair Fredrick had been following fell in with the others. Above the harsh voices of the men cut the woman’s voice; there was no fear there, no pleading, just raw anger.
Fury.

And then, for a moment, she wrenched against her captors and twisted to look across the tarmac, right at Fredrick. The green of her eyes was clear even from so far away, and her glossy brown hair shone in the sunlight. She was achingly beautiful. Her gaze locked onto him, and though she said nothing her eyes spoke to him.

Who are you, to stand there and do nothing?

He couldn’t look away until they had dragged her all the way into the
Sokol
, out of sight.

Then he ran.

Aiden and Tovmas had been sitting in the
Iolaire
’s cockpit. They peered around the door as Fredrick ran across the cargo hold to the cockpit door.

“The hell have you been?” demanded Aiden.

Fredrick frowned. “I went to the market.” He showed Aiden the forgotten rug he’d been carrying under his arm.

“You went to the…” Aiden stopped himself, clearly angry. Fredrick could see the cords of his arms tighten.

Fredrick didn’t wait for him to say anything else. He told them about the Russians, about the Tianlong, about the girl in the bloody dress. He didn’t mention her eyes. That memory was his alone.

“A white gown, you said,” spoke Tovmas, holding a hand out. “The slaves at the auction house wore white gowns.”

Aiden nodded his agreement.

“You think she was a slave?” Fredrick asked. It would certainly make sense. It would explain why nobody stopped them from handling her like that.

“It sounds like it. A runaway, maybe,” said Tovmas. He stood up. “And Russians. The auctioneer said Russians bought the Armenian girls.” His brow was furrowed in either worry or thought, Fredrick couldn’t tell.

“There could be more than one group of Russians here,” said Aiden. “More slave auctions too.”

Tovmas nodded, but distantly. “Was she… did she look Armenian?”

Fredrick shrugged.
“Brown hair, tanned skin. I honestly couldn’t say.” He hesitated for a moment. He had to tell them. Anything could help. “Green eyes. I saw bright, green eyes.”

Tovmas turned to him then. He moved as if to say something, but stopped. He turned and went down into the cargo hold to where some of his men sat. Fredrick saw him beckon Nardos and an older man over, where he talked to them quietly. Nardos and the other man nodded, replying quietly to Tovmas’ questions.

Fredrick knew then that they were planning an assault. As quick as that, the decision had been made.

“I saw at least a dozen men,” Fredrick
warned. “That aircraft could be hiding a hundred more.”

“We have s
ixteen men, including you, Aiden,” said Tovmas, finally. “Will you come?”

Aiden considered it for a moment. “Yeah, I’ll come,” he said. Fredrick eyed his friend suspiciously.

Are you trying to make a point
?

Aiden stared back at Fredrick belligerently. Though he tried, Fredrick couldn’t read him.

“Are you counting me?” asked Fredrick. He had to be involved. Honour demanded it. Those green eyes demanded it.

Aiden spoke for them, shaking his head. “Fred, we need you to get the
Iolaire
ready to go. There’ll be a shitstorm following us back up that ramp. We’ll need to leave quickly.”

Fredrick didn’t like this. His friend was going to go and risk his life without him. He could see that Aiden was still angry about Fredrick leaving the
Iolaire
. He hoped that wasn’t what was driving him out there.

“We’ll need a distraction,” Nardos said. “I don’t want to get into a fight with those enforcers if it can be avoided.”

Tovmas looked past his men at a bag sitting innocuously at the side of the hold. Fredrick followed his gaze. The bag was slightly open, and the green-painted plastic of a rocket tube poked from it. A leftover from Kakavaberd.

“I have just the thing,” said Tovmas.

“That auction house could do with a hole in it, don’t you think?” said Aiden, a smirk showing at the corner of his mouth.

Tovmas pointed at the three men of the Kakavaberd rocket team, and gave them orders in Armenian. They nodded far too eagerly, grabbed the bag, and left the hold at a fast walk.

“They will be our distraction,” said Tovmas. “They will fire in twenty minutes, and fall back towards the docks in the confusion. There will be a stampede, I have no doubt, but the security will have its eyes on the other side of the market. Hopefully some aircraft will try to run for it, which will give us some cover from the air defences. Everybody load up!”

The hold filled with the sounds of weapons being loaded and cocked. Militiamen pushed rounds into magazines and stuffed their pockets with handfuls of the bullets Tovmas had bought earlier at the market. Pre-battle cigarettes were lit. Bottles of liquid courage were
swigged and passed around. Men muttered and laughed nervously, with pats on backs and manly jokes. For the second time that day, they were going into battle.

Fredrick watched it all from the top of the cockpit steps.
Soon everyone was ready.

“Ok, let’s go.” Tovmas clapped his hands.

The men filed down the ramp in three groups, separated by a minute or so each, weapons concealed as much as was possible. Tovmas led one, Nardos led the second, and Aiden and Tovmas’ old friend were the last to leave. Aiden lingered for a moment at the top of the ramp. He nodded at Fredrick, his face set, and left.

Fredrick nodded back, but Aiden was already gone.

Wings cover you, friend.