Elena slapped her plump rump to attract the bomb-aimer’s attention. She turned and smiled. After Captain Rurik had taken up with Elena and had dispensed with her ‘special services’, the two had been enemies for a while. Now they were friends. She stuck out her long pink tongue and grinned. The gesture had a secret meaning between the two of them, which would have infuriated Captain Rurik, who was insanely jealous always, if she had known about it.
Elena gestured downwards and made the gesture of pressing a bomb-release button with her gloved hand.
The bomb-aimer nodded and picked up the toggle with its button that would release the four 250-pound bombs attached to the seaplane’s wings and waited, with Elena staring through the open hatch to the cockpit, waiting for her lover’s signal.
Down below Smith watched as the dark shadows of the seaplanes dragged themselves over the sea like monstrous black hawks. They were getting pretty close now. He guessed they were spreading out to attack the scattered convoy ships from abeam where they presented the largest target. But the seaplanes were big, clumsy and slow. It would be difficult for them to manoeuvre and a quick glance thrown over his shoulder told him the leading smacks were within reach of the harbour. Perhaps the Poles had archies – he meant anti-aircraft guns – protecting the port installations so that they could get in under cover.
For the time being he’d tackle the planes, hoping that the Swordfish’s superior speed would just keep them out of danger. Now behind him Ginger, an unholy grin on his narrow Irish face, pressed the trigger of his twin Lewis guns. Tracer rushed towards the seaplane to the left of the attack formation. It started to curve, getting faster by the instant. For his part, Billy Bennett on the quick-firer was tackling the centre one of the three planes, pumping shot after shot into the sky, peppering the sky in front of it with brown puffballs of smoke. Smith said an urgent prayer that his shells would strike home – knock the beast out of the sky. In vain. The plane came sailing on.
There was a sudden shrill whistle. ‘It’s raining steel!’ Dickie shouted above the whine of a falling bomb. ‘Hold on to your hats, chaps!’ With a twist of his shoulders, he swung the Swordfish in a great watery curve that drenched them and had them grabbing frantically for a hand-hold. Next instant a 250-pound bomb exploded in the sea only yards away, throwing up another great burst of water that slapped down on the little craft with an audible thud. Shrapnel whizzed everywhere. Ginger yelled. He slumped forwards over his guns, blood spurting from a deep wound in his right shoulder.
Chris didn’t hesitate. She scrambled onto the monkey island, ignoring Smith’s shouted warning and, heaving Ginger to one side, grabbed hold of the machine guns. Next moment she was loosing off a furious burst.
Smith shook his head in a mixture of anger and wonder and then concentrated on fighting the seaplanes. In a minute the nearest plane would drop another bomb. There it was! That shrill dramatic whistle.
Dickie swung the wheel round furiously. The Swordfish heeled. Its wireless mast almost touched the water. Loose gear slithered the length of the deck. Next instant the bomb exploded in another mad whirling fountain of wild white water. Shrapnel peppered the length of the Swordfish. A piece as big as a shovel blade slammed into the ship’s little dinghy. It smashed the planks as if they were made of matchwood.
‘Got one… got one, sir!’ Bennett sang out excitedly.
Smith swung round. One of the seaplanes was trailing black smoke across the grey sky, its engine coughing and spluttering, as the pilot tried desperately to keep the crippled seaplane airborne. To no avail. The seaplane hit the water, both engines now not working, and wallowed there impotently, little tongues of flame creeping the length of the grey fuselage.
But Smith could not waste time on the crippled plane. The other two were still flying and they were curving slowly to make another attack. ‘Here they come again, Dickie,’ he yelled a warning as a wounded Ginger weakly held up another pan of ammunition for Chris to fix on the Lewis gun.
Dickie, his face lathered with sweat despite the cold, grinned at him and bellowed, ‘Don’t worry, old bean! Your Uncle Dickie’ll see ’em off, never fear!’
Now he reduced speed, eyes narrowed and wary, the grin vanished, as he tried to estimate what the two planes would do. They were well spread to the front and rear of the little convoy, of which one smack had already almost reached the narrow entrance to the port. Would they go for that one and attempt to block the entrance with the sunken ship? Or would they go for tailend Charley, the slowest of the fishing boats, which was lagging well behind the rest? Whichever one was attacked, he’d speed to its assistance.
Suddenly the seaplane which had already attacked them swooped on the fishing smack closest to port. Dickie pushed the throttles forwards. The Swordfish surged forwards in a great arc. Its nose rose steeply.
Twin curves of sparkling white water rose high into the air, at times obscuring his vision. Now Chris and Billy Bennett took up the challenge, as the slow seaplane came lower and lower, its pilot deliberately lowering his speed so that he could bomb with more accuracy. Even as he raced to the aid of the first boat, Dickie couldn’t but admire the unknown pilot’s audacity. He intended to sink the Pole even if it cost his own neck.
* * *
Captain Rurik held up her hand, trying with the other to keep the plane steady as it was rocked back and forth by the gunfire from below. Further down the fuselage, crouching next to the prostrate bomb-aimer, Elena watched anxiously for the signal. ‘We’re almost on top of her, comrade,’ the bomb-aimer yelled, hand on the bombing button.
Rurik dropped her hand in the same instant that the bottom of the fuselage was ripped by a burst of tracer from the Swordfish’s Lewis guns. As if by magic, holes appeared everywhere in the fabric. The bomb-aimer screamed shrilly. In the same instant that she pressed the button, she let her head drop to the shattered glass, a dark red stain spreading rapidly across the back of her overalls.
Captain Rurik pulled back the throttle, her head craned to one side to watch the progress of the 250-pound bomb. The deadly black egg hurtled downwards. Below the Polish skipper hurried for the shelter of the harbour, thick black smoke pouring furiously from the big stack. Rurik cursed. The bomb had struck the water, some ten metres from the fishing smack. She had missed, dammit!
For a moment the Polish vessel disappeared beneath a whirling furious mushroom of water. Then to Captain Rurik’s delight, she saw that she hadn’t really missed after all. The blast had shattered the fishing smack’s funnel. Now the stack lay over the side of the vessel, belching forth smoke into the water while her stern was sunk nearly parallel with the surface of the sea.
She pulled at the stick, telling herself that would settle the Polack’s hash for them. The others would have trouble getting by the crippled smack into the harbour. They’d have to crowd there until a tug came and towed the crippled vessel out of the way, making them an ideal target. Rurik dismissed the fishing smacks for a moment. Now she intended to finish off the Englishman. They had one more bomb left and that was intended for him.
But that wasn’t to be. Just as the seaplane came level with the racing Swordfish, Elena crawled back along the fuselage, her face ashen, her hands sticky and red with blood. ‘The bomb-aimer,’ she bellowed in short hectic gasps.
Rurik flashed a glance at her hands. ‘Hurt?’
‘Dead – and the bombing pane is all shattered. Can’t see a thing out of it. I think the bombing apparatus might be damaged too.’
Rurik’s face flushed an angry crimson. ‘Can’t anything go damn right!’ she exclaimed violently. ‘Boshe moi… what shit!’ The plane shook violently, as another of Bennett’s quick-fire shells exploded in an angry burst of bright red nearby. ‘All right, we’ll break off action. But they’ll not get away… oh, no my fine Englishman. We’re not finished with you yet.’ Angrily she yanked at the stick. The plane sailed upwards, gaining height rapidly, as down below Chris and Bennett ceased firing, relief written all over their t
ense faces.
‘Cor stone the crows!’ Bennett yelled happily, and raising his right hand wiped the dripping sweat from his brow under the puckered red mark the helmet made on his head. ‘We’ve seen them off!’
‘By jingo, you have!’ Dickie agreed jubilantly and reduced speed immediately, as Chris slumped next to the wounded Ginger on the monkey island.
But their relief was not long-lasting. Six more black dots had appeared on the horizon as the plane which had attacked them flew off eastwards and Smith told himself he didn’t need a crystal ball to guess who they were – a fresh wave of attackers!
Four
‘Mutinous rabble… worse than the damned Kulaks… What haven’t we of the Soviets done for them and now look how they behave? Shoot the lot of them… Liquidation, mass liquidation, that’s the only way to behave towards a rebellious mob…’ Patiently Aronson let Trotsky rave on, his skinny face flushed, his beard waggling every time he raised his head, just like an orator, to emphasise an important point. Outside fresh troops were marching towards Kronstadt and from the direction of Fort Red there came the regular boom of 75mm guns firing at the rebellious sailors and their allies the dockworkers. At four o’clock that morning the sailors under their new ‘Tribunal’, as they called it, had gone over to open revolt, firing back at the soldiers sent to place Kronstadt under military law. Now nearly two hundred thousand people were armed and ready to spread the new revolution through European Russia.
‘Sabotashniki… provocatori…’ Trotsky raged, little bits of spittle spluttering from his lips and clinging to his goatee beard. ‘They will sabotage my campaign on Poland. Why, we are less than fifty versts from Warsaw itself and now these swine shoot and stab us in the back…’ He spluttered and gasped and finally lapsed into speechlessness – something unusual for him – his skinny little chest heaving with the effort of all that talking.
Aronson took the opportunity the party boss’s speechlessness gave him. Quietly he said, ‘My comrade colleagues in the Cheka inform me, comrade, that the sailors have secretly sent representatives to Moscow and our other great cities. These representatives have been ordered to contact other counter-revolutionaries and encourage them to raise the black flag of revolution in their cities.’
‘Shoot them… shoot them out of hand!’ Trotsky waved his feeble white hand, eyes flashing behind the pince-nez. ‘I won’t tolerate the existence of these swine a moment longer!’
Aronson waited till the second outburst was over before saying, as quietly as before, ‘I don’t think it will be as easy as that, comrade.’
‘What do you mean?’
Aronson hesitated.
‘Well come on, man,’ Trotsky blurted out, ‘let me have it.’
‘Well, comrade, there is a great deal of sympathy for these rebels, as you call them. Let us be frank. People are dissatisfied. They want food, warmth and goods. They feel these sailors and the others represent them in expressing a legitimate grievance.’
‘Boshe moi!’ Trotsky exploded. ‘We are fighting a war in Poland. What do we care if they go a little hungry – they’re not doing the fighting.’
‘Neither are you, comrade,’ a cynical little voice at the back of Aronson’s head said.
Trotsky clenched his fist and said, ‘Don’t they realise, it is “everything for the front”!’ It was a new slogan that he had created a couple of days before to inspire the civilians to make even further sacrifices.
‘Everything for the front, comrade,’ Aronson echoed dutifully, and then said, ‘I think we must handle the situation over at Kronstadt rather delicately, especially in the case of the sailors holding Fort Red.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, comrade,’ Aronson said carefully, using his voice as a tool to calm the excitable Trotsky, ‘in many people’s eyes the sailors of Kronstadt are the heroes of the Revolution—’
‘Ungrateful swine, that’s what they are,’ Trotsky snorted. ‘We give them their freedom from the Imperialists and this is how they reward us.’
‘Exactly, exactly, comrade,’ Aronson agreed with him hastily. ‘But nevertheless, these stupid people do regard the sailors of Kronstadt as the men who brought about the October Revolution. So I feel we must not be seen to be punishing them too severely. Nor must we allow this revolt, if I may call it that, to last too long.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘A protracted siege of Fort Red for instance.’
‘But the Fort is virtually impregnable. It will take several days of artillery bombardment to soften the place up before our infantry can even think of storming it.’
‘I think, comrade, there may be a way of avoiding storming it,’ Aronson said quietly.
Trotsky looked hard at him, as if he suspected Aronson had something up his sleeve – which he had – and didn’t like the idea. For he, Trotsky, was the genius from whom all ideas came. It was up to lesser mortals to carry them out. ‘Go on,’ he said, a note of menace in his voice.
‘We bomb them,’ Aronson said simply.
‘Bomb them!’ Trotsky exploded. ‘Are you meschugge – mad – man? There is not a bombing plane within five hundred versts of Leningrad. They are all at the front in Poland.’
‘Not quite, comrade,’ Aronson said gently.
‘What?’
‘There are the Red Amazons.’
‘But they are dealing with the Polacks and those English Imperialists.’
‘Were,’ Aronson corrected. ‘As soon as the trouble erupted in Kronstadt, I signalled the tender to have them recalled. They are on the way back now. We shall have them refuelled and rearmed. With luck they can carry out their first mission some time this afternoon. The business at Kronstadt must be nipped in the bud. The sailors in Fort Red have no defences against aircraft. I hope a couple of bombing sorties should suffice to make them surrender without too great a loss of life.’ He paused, a little breathless. He was not used to saying so much; he left the speechmaking to politicos like Trotsky.
Trotsky looked at him, as if he were seeing Aronson for the first time. There was a heavy silence punctuated only by the snap-and-crack of a small arms battle over in Kronstadt. Finally Trotsky said icily, ‘You have taken a great deal upon yourself, Comrade Aronson, even for a secret service chief. Why didn’t you refer to me, eh?’
‘Because you are a fool who can’t make correct decisions,’ Aronson said to himself. Aloud he said, ‘Because, comrade, I knew you were fully occupied with the Polish campaign and because an immediate decision had to be taken and I did have control of the Red Amazons.’
‘I see,’ Trotsky said carefully. ‘So you have ordered that decadent woman and her perverts back? Undoubtedly it will give them the greatest of pleasures to bomb the male pigs in Fort Red. But what do you propose to do about those Polacks in Upper Silesia? With those arms they might well defeat the Fritzes and that will be bad for our campaign in Poland.’
Aronson allowed himself a careful, little smile. ‘I have already undertaken something in that area, comrade.’
‘What?’
‘I have contacted the Germans.’
‘The Fritzes?’ Trotsky exclaimed, taken completely by surprise. ‘Did you say you had contacted the Fritzes?’
Aronson nodded, careful not to show any sign of triumph at the surprise he had achieved. With the great and so-called great, it was always wise to remain meek and unassuming. They didn’t fear you then. ‘I hope that this meets with your approval, comrade?’ he said in the most humble fashion he could muster. ‘You see, comrade, the Fritzes knew, of course, that the arms were on their way to Poland. They did not, however, know for what purpose and where they were to be landed.’
Trotsky nodded his understanding.
‘Now they do,’ Aronson said simply.
Trotsky’s weak mouth dropped stupidly. ‘You mean,’ he stuttered, ‘that you have given this information to the Fritzes… but how?’
Aronson shrugged slightly. ‘It is my business, comrade,
to have contacts everywhere. There is a certain Kapitanleutnant von Horn—’
‘Who?’
‘A German intelligence officer, comrade, against whom I worked rather actively in the last imperialist struggle,’ Aronson smiled softly, as if at some fond memory. ‘Since then I have kept in touch with him – in an informal manner naturally. It is wise to know what our potential enemies, or perhaps potential friends are doing,’ again he shrugged softly.
‘Our comrades in Germany will start the next revolution soon,’ Trotsky trotted out the usual Party dogma. ‘After all, Comrade Lenin always thought the revolt of the workers would start in that country.’
Aronson waited till he was finished, then said baldly, ‘As they say among the peasants, one hand washes the other. I have done him a favour. Perhaps in due course, the German, von Horn, will do me one.’
Trotsky looked a little pleased. ‘Horoscho,’ he said rising to his feet. ‘So be it. Let those female perverts tackle the Fort and the Fritzes deal with the Polacks.’ He grabbed for his worker’s cap. ‘I have made my decision. All power to the people, comrade!’
‘All power to the people, comrade!’ Aronson repeated as Trotsky went out, followed by his surly Latvian bodyguards, their weapons at the ready.
For a while Aronson hunched there at his desk brooding, the small-arms fire outside unheard. He had done his best. He hoped he had acted correctly. By now von der Goltz would know the position of the Poles with their stolen weapons. Undoubtedly the Fritz general would act promptly; he was a resourceful man. But would he be able to stop the Poles in time? They were a cunning, devious lot, the Polacks. He should know. The head of his own service, the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinski, was a Pole, though he never admitted it.
Aronson bit his lip, his handsome face worried. If the Poles and the English got those weapons to their fellows fighting the Fritzes in Upper Silesia, they’d beat them. Then the fat would be in the fire. The Poles would renew their efforts to defend their capital, Warsaw, and he had the unpleasant feeling that they would stop Tukachevksy4’s march on that capital. That would be that.
The Baltic Run Page 18