Winter Warriors s-1
Page 42
Meanwhile, there were other interesting things to amuse them until their train set off on its run to Rome. Like the couple who were having an increasingly-heated altercation in the booth opposite the bar. McCarty didn’t know what had started it, but it looked like the woman was telling the man with her that he was being dumped. He didn’t like it. Then, as she got up to leave, he grabbed her arm and dragged her back, none too gently. She yelled something at him. McCarty imagined it was along the lines of ‘get your hands off me’ and jabbed at his hand with something silver. A nail file? The man yelped and pulled his arm back. Then the woman made another effort to break away, this time succeeding and stalked away across the floor.
That’s when it got serious. The man grabbed a beer bottle from the table, smashed off the end and went after the woman. She saw, screamed and tried to run. Achillea and McCarty both moved forward to stop him but the Railway police were faster. One tripped the man up; the other stared beating him across the kidneys with his baton. Once the man was subdued, they dragged him away. McCarty and the senior officer exchanged nods, the situation was under control. Or he thought it was because that’s when he heard Achillea’s quiet “Henry, where’s Igrat?”
He looked around, Igrat had vanished. He realized that the fight had been a diversion and that he and Achillea had fallen for it. With a brief “Achillea, follow me.” He headed for the exit and the area outside. It was deserted except for a police officer standing in the car park
“Officer, has a car left this car park in the last few minutes? One with a black-haired woman and at least two men?”
The policeman looked at Achillea and decided a straight answer was the best policy. “Certainly, madam. A black taxi. With the woman and two men as you describe.”
McCarty cursed. “The young lady is a member of my business staff. I have reason to believe she may have been abducted by those men. They could be in France by now.”
“No Sir. The border is closed, from both sides. If your friend is in the taxi, she is still in Geneva.” The police officer hesitated. Then he realized there was more going on here than met the eye. “I have the taxi number if that will help.”
“Thank you officer.” Achillea was at her most charming which tended to be slightly frightening. “Henry, we better get in touch with Loki and trace this. Otherwise, one of us is going to have to get in touch with Washington and tell the Seer that Igrat’s in the hands of the Gestapo and we haven’t done anything about it.”
McCarty thought about that and winced. Stuyvesant very rarely lost his temper. When he did, the results tended to be spectacular. “Too right. Get on the phone to Branwen, now.” He turned back to the policeman. “Officer, I need to speak with my bank, the Bank de Commerce et Industrie, right away. There may be a ransom demand and I must make the necessary arrangements.”
The police officer had a discrete but immediate reaction to the name of the bank. All banks had a very close relationship with the Swiss Government, to the point where it hard to say where one ended and the other began. The Bank de Commerce et Industrie was something quite special. They had influence even the other banks lacked. If this American banked with them, he was a man of much importance.
B-29A Carolina Sings 11th Bombardment Group, Second Air Division, Approaching Helsinki.
Power eased Carolina Sings down to the prescribed attack altitude, 2,000 feet. Power thought this was insane. The whole purpose of the B-29 was that it could bomb from high altitude, 25,000 — 30,000 feet where flak was almost ineffective and fighters were straggling. Only, the high-altitude raids had failed. They couldn’t hit the targets accurately enough. So, tonight, the B-29s were coming in low, fast and in darkness. It would either work or be a catastrophe and Powers was betting on the latter. That’s why he was in the lead bomber. If he was sending the men under his command to a massacre, he would lead them in himself.
Around him, the formation of B-29s was splitting into three sections; one aimed at each primary target area. Powers had taken Lansisatama himself. It was the most hazardous of the three. The others were on the outside of the city; the bombers could hit them and turn away. To get to Lansisatama, they would have to fly over the whole city and take flak all the way. Then do the same getting out. Night fighters didn’t worry Power too much, the Finns had few of them and there were more than sixty F-65 Tigercats guarding the bomber formations. It was the flak batteries that were the problem. The Huns had too much low-level flak for this to work. That had been considered; hence the sixty F-61 Black Widows, assigned to shooting up the flak batteries when they opened fire. Of course that meant they would have to unmask themselves by opening fire first — and those opening shots could be the end of a B-29.
“Pilot, come around four degrees to port. We’re starting the run now.” The bombardier almost cuddled himself with joy. Power had a well-deserved reputation as a martinet. Some described him as a sadistic fascist; his enemies were far less forgiving. But on a bomb run, the bombardier commanded the aircraft, not the pilot. That made it a heaven-sent opportunity for a junior officer to give Power orders. The Eagle radar showed the city ahead very clearly. That was another reason why Helsinki was being bombed tonight. It’s weird geography and coastal location gave vivid contrasts between land and sea on the bombing radar. It made picking out the targets easy. Two of them anyway. The Ilmala targets were inland and the bombers would have a harder job picking them up on radar.
The bombers had cruised out at around 15,000 feet. An easy, steady cruise that allowed the escorting fighters to formate around them. The normal pattern would have been for the formation to climb to around 25,000 feet for its bomb run. There had been a time when the B-29s had tried to bomb from above 30,000 feet, but the effort had been a failure. Unexpected winds and atmospheric effects tossed the bombs miles from their target. That problem was not easy to overcome although Power was aware that great efforts were being made to solve it. So the raids had been steadily dropping in altitude. This one was merely the last stage in the process. The formation had stayed at 15,000 feet when it crossed the Finnish border, then dived to its present level.
Major James Kaelin, the lead bombardier for the 11th Bombardment Group checked the radar display again and then looked through the Norden bombsight. He could see the long wharves of the Lansisatama clearly on radar but the optical bombsight was made useless by the overcast. Still, a radar release was better than nothing. He watched as the cross hairs on the radar picture approached the end of the port wharves. Kaelin punched the bomb release. The four 2,000 pound bombs under the wings released first; the shower of the incendiaries from the bomb bay afterwards. If they dropped right, they would saturate an area 1,500 feet long by 300 feet wide. With the bomb load gone, his attention focus evaporated. He suddenly was aware of the B-29 bouncing in the flak thrown up by the city.
“Bombardier to commander. The bombs are away. How goes things up there?”
“We’ve lost Fifi Trixibelle. Flak got her. She just blew up in mid-air. Others are swell. On our way home. Navigator, gunners, do your jobs and stop worrying about the rest of the formation.”
Up in the cockpit, Power turned Carolina Sings back for home. Straight home; no need for a deceptive routing. The Germans had been fooled. Their light flak had been silent, they’d been expecting a high-altitude raid and the gunners had been assigned to the 88s and 127s. They weren’t so effective against targets this low. The heavy guns had had problems tracking the low-flying targets and most of the fire had hit the tail end of the formations. Fifi Trixibelle had been unlucky. Power thought she had probably caught a 127mm in the belly just as she started to release her bombs. He didn’t know how many bombers had gone down, at least six was his guess, perhaps eight. However many it was, he seriously hoped the brass wouldn’t believe they could try this trick again. The Germans could be fooled once, never twice. Behind him, the city of Helsinki was starting to burn.
Residence of the Kantokari Family, Kaartinkaupunki, Helsinki, Finland
There was a great silver beast in the sky. It seemed to be skimming over the rooftops and filled the whole window with its glow. Kristianna recognized it immediately from the German newsreels that were shown in the cinema when she went there with her boyfriend. It was a B-29, a ‘Grosse Viermotoren’ as the Germans called it. Only they were supposed to operate high up. This one was so low it seemed like it would crash into the street at any moment. There was a red ripple under its nose that sent red flashes streaking into the darkness. There were others as well; dozens of them. The great B-29 was trapped in searchlights; perhaps six or more coning in on it. The light made its silver fuselage and wings glow. Then, one of the searchlights abruptly went out. She realized the orange flashes were the gunners on the bomber trying to shoot out the lights. Then, another aircraft swept out of the darkness, a dark gray one with twin tails. Its nose and fuselage lighting up with gun-flashes and fire swept from under its wings. She heard the thunder of rockets as they devastated the searchlight battery.
Kristianna would have looked longer but her father dragged her away, swearing at her for her foolhardiness. His words were partially drowned out by four great crashes that made their whole house shudder. Suddenly, getting to the bomb shelter was very urgent. They barely settled in to their shelter. At first they were cowed by the explosions that seemed to never end. Then they were terrified by the smell of burning, faint at first but growing steadily stronger. Then their stay was ended by a hammering on the front door of their house.
“Air Raid Police. Open up and evacuate. The city is burning.”
“Where, where is the fire?” Kristianna’s father had opened the door and was asked questions of the harassed-looking men
“Shut up. Get your family out of here and don’t argue.” The answer was curt and reinforced by a hand dropping to a pistol holster.
Antti Kantokari gathered his wife and three children and led them into the street. Out here the burning smell was so strong it was choking and the night was bright enough to read by. Kantokari glanced to the east, where the bomber had come from. There he could see the glow of the fires already spreading across the roof-line.
“Go west Antti; go west.” It was a local policeman, one who was trying to be more helpful and comforting to the people who he worked with every day. “The Americans dropped incendiaries and the Skatudden is burning. The fires are spreading this way. If you don’t get away from them soon, you never will. Stay in the wide roads, in the middle. The snow and slush will stop the fires from getting to you. Now go, quickly. And be careful. The American aircraft are still overhead.”
All around them, people were scurrying from their homes, some empty-handed; some carrying pots and pans or their household treasures. Some had bags of food. One was even carrying a flowering plant in an ornamental pot. All around them, bright little flakes were beginning to drop, strange fireflies in the cold of the night. Kristianna reached out for one. She yelped as it burned her hand.
“Embers from the fire.” Her father sounded genuinely frightened. “The fires are spreading fast. The police are right; we must run for our lives.”
“But our things.” His wife wailed, thinking of the home she had carefully built over the years.
“Are already gone. We have only our lives. If we stay we will lose those as well.”
Already, the crowd was beginning to run for the west. Now, the reason why those who abandoned everything would live while those who paused to try and recover their treasured possessions or encumbered themselves with their goods would die became obvious. As the crowd moved, a strange filtering mechanism started to work. Those who could move fastest and had least to carry moved to the front. Those who hesitated or had their arms full fell to the rear. And the fires were closing in all the time.
Overhead, a late-arriving B-29 swept past, heading for its target. Normally such a straggler would be easy prey for the antiaircraft guns but the Black Widows were watching and waiting. Streams of tracer arched up from the ground. Before they could contact the bomber, two Black Widows dived in on the source. They hosed it with gunfire, then released four objects that wobbled as they fell on the gun battery. Kristianna saw great orange balls rising into the sky and the anti-aircraft fire ceased as suddenly as it had started.
“Jellygas.” Kristianna’s father muttered, “They are dropping jellygas on the city.” His stomach squirmed with fear at the ugly orange balls and what he knew they represented. And all the time the embers descending on them were getting thicker and hotter.
There was another thunder from behind them. At first Kristianna thought it was another bomber releasing its load, but it was a house collapsing. Helsinki was made of stone and stone doesn’t burn but the wood and the paint and the fabric inside stone buildings do. The bombs had blown windows in. That let the fire inside to gut the houses. Deprived of support, the stone shells were collapsing. She risked a glance behind and realized that the house that had just collapsed was in the street she had lived in. Her own home would follow, as surely as if it were already ablaze. If that was not already the case.
Nobody said anything. She and her family broke into a run, pushing anybody who got in their way to one side. They had to head west, as fast as they could. Ahead of them was the Mannerheiminte, a wide street that would act as a firebreak. Helsinki was lucky. The snow of the great storm turned the streets into rivers. They would stop the fires wouldn’t they? Only when the family saw the Mannerheiminte, it was already crowded with people, running south.
“Go back, go back! The Ilmala is burning. The fires are coming.”
Above the yelling of the crowds, Kristianna could see the glow of fires to the north as well as the east. There was no choice and Antti Kantokari knew it. He grabbed his daughter’s hand and the five of them plunged into the stream of people fleeing the fires started by the air raid. Already, the street was littered with discarded possessions as people threw away everything in the desperate urge to flee faster, to run further. Already, the old and the young started to collapse as the run for safety exhausted them. Over the sound of the fires, the cries of the crowd, yelling, weeping and sobbing, hammered at the ears. Over on the left, the great San Nicolas cathedral was already a mass of flames. That told Kantokari the truth. The Mannerheiminte lead east. It was taking the crowds on it back into the mouths of the fires. In running down it, people were simply heading back to their deaths. He grabbed his wife and daughter’s arms and angled his family across the road. They took the first westward-leading street he could find.
“They told us to stay on the wide streets.” His wife was sobbing with exhaustion.
“Not the ones that lead east. The fires are north and east. We must go south and west.” He looked around, this street was quieter. Perhaps all the people had already run to the west. “Come, we must go.”
Head of them was a small park with people already crowded into it for shelter. Kantokari lead his family into it in the hope it would give at least a temporary respite. The snowy slush made sitting down impossible but at least they weren’t running. Overhead, the Black Widows were prowling; goading the anti-aircraft funs into opening fire. One passed directly over the little park. For a moment Kantokari thought it was going to drop its jellygas onto the crowded spot of green but it ignored them and vanished again into the darkness.
“Father,
look.” Kristianna’s voice was quiet. She pointed at the buildings to the west. They were highlighted by an evil glow of red. There were fires to the west as well. They were spreading towards the park that had seemed such a refuge.
Kantokari cursed to himself but thought quickly. There were only two ways out of this park that did not lead north or east, and one of them led back to the Mannerheiminte. The other was diagonally across the square. They did not have time to waste. “Come, we must move.”
“I cannot.” His wife was crying. “We must wait.”
“If we do we die. The fires are coming from the west as well. As soon as people realize it, they will try and escape and there is only one narrow street out of here. If we wait, we will not get to it in time.”
They set off. They moved as fast as they could towards the one street that promised a hope of safety. By the time they got there, the danger had become obvious. People were converging on it, driven by the reflections of fire in the windows and the steadily-increasing rain of embers. There was a crowd of people, fighting to get on to the one road out. Antti Kantokari waded into them, kicking and punching. He threw others out of his way, dragging his wife and daughter with him. His two young sons tried to help him through. It was primeval survival. Everybody was fighting to escape from the death-trap that had so recently been a place of refuge. Antti Kantokari broke through, dragging his daughter with him. He turned to reach for his wife and sons but they were swept away and beaten down by others, equally desperate to escape the fires. He tried to get back to them. The sheer force of the torrent of people forcing through the narrow gap gave the crowd irresistible momentum. It drove him and his daughter down the street.