Feverishly they went to work to fell a huge pine tree which stood by the side of the road. In fact, they felled two huge trees and cut them so that when they toppled to the ground, they lay across the road and completely cut off the passage of the gas tankers.
When the trees lay comfortably across the only road in the vicinity, Mickey, Koslovitch, and the rest of the band of Cossack guerrillas darted for cover about twenty yards off the side of the road and waited.
They had not long to wait. Up the winding dirt highway rode the two tank cars carrying their load of gasoline through the Caucasian hills to the stricken tanks. Their dull green, circular, elongated steel bodies appeared and disappeared. The Russians in ambush waited until the fallen trees would halt the Nazi tankers.
As the cars reached the spot, their brakes squealed, their tires skidded along the highway and the trucks came to a full stop just in front of the obstructions.
Arming themselves with rifles, the men dropped to the ground and tried to run for cover. They knew this was an ambush and were taking no chances. Previous experience with Russian guerrillas had taught them to get under cover and get cover fast.
But these men were not fast enough. Hand grenades came hurtling at them from the pines; two struck one of the gas tanks. They blew up tearing a rent in the tank out of whose big, oval belly gasoline poured over the ground. A second later an explosion rocked the world about the ears of the Nazis as well as the Russians. Mickey thought his eardrums had split. His head sang with the concussion.
Of the escaping tanker, the drivers were blown out of their cab; the tank rolled side over side down a small gully and finished up on its top. A half-dozen well-directed hand grenades spread the tankers’ seams and blasted the tank apart and left it a raging mass of flames in the depression.
“That places those Mark III’s just where they were when they were born,” said the grinning Koslovitch, “empty and at the mercy of our dive bombers. We’ll leave it to them to finish them off.”
The men left the trucks blazing where they blew apart and returned to their horses which they had hidden in a depression in the side of the mountain. Five minutes later their horses beat a muffled tattoo in the grass as they tore up the pathless heights to their cave.
V
When the horses were put up, young Koslovitch and Mickey returned to the main cave to find an oxcart heavily loaded with ammunition and other munitions expertly hidden under a false load of hay.
Kopelnikov, the driver of the cart, called Feodor aside. Mickey joined them at the boy’s request.
“You can speak in front of the doctor,” the boy said. “What is it?”
“Three things that you should know,” began the driver. “One: A Captain Von Starheim with a party of two hundred Nazi dogs are scouring these mountains in search of you and your men. Two: They are also looking for an escaped American doctor who was their prisoner. Three: Tomorrow night—or rather, about two o’clock tomorrow in the morning, an ammunition train will pass your allotment on the Rostov-Baku Railway from the direction of Rostov. It will be headed for the German lines near Pyatigorsk.”
“It will be headed for the lines, my friend,” replied the boy, “but I promise you it will never reach them.”
The other guerrillas in the meantime were unloading the cart.
“Is this the doctor the Nazis are looking for?” asked the oxcart driver.
“I’m the doctor,” replied Mickey.
“Be careful, my friend,” warned the man. “That man Von Starheim takes no prisoners. He’s dangerous—and what is more, he is elusive.”
“Have you tried to capture him?” asked Mickey.
“We have,” replied the driver, “but he seems to know these mountains as well as we do. And he always gets away. He spent several years in the Caucasus during his younger years on various missions for industrial firms during his college vacations, I am told,” explained the oxcart driver further. “That is why he is so successful in evading us.”
“I know the man well,” said Mickey. “We were at the Breslau University together when I was a medical student there.”
“He is said to have sworn to kill you with his own hands,” added the driver.
“He will have to catch me first,” smiled Mickey.
“In the meantime,” injected Feodor, “we’ll see what we can do to dispose of him.”
“I’m joining you on your job of train blasting, am I not?” asked Mickey.
“I insist on it,” smiled Feodor. “One never knows when our own men may need medical attention in the field.”
“That satisfies me,” replied Mickey. “If you hadn’t insisted on it, I should have. If I’m going to doctor guerrillas, I may as well be one.”
* * * *
This was not the first time the oxcart driver had brought the Koslovitch gang information of Nazi troop and supply movements. A member of the Soviet counterespionage system, it was his business to know many things and to convey what he learned to the men most closely involved in their execution. That is, if any particular job of destruction is to be performed as a result of what he has learned. And usually some job of Nazi baiting and blasting followed.
The woman who had brought Koslovitch and Mickey to the cave proved to be better than even Mickey had hoped. The men under her care were doing splendidly. Three of them had been put on their feet and were back in service. Her own husband was still confined. Their little son kept him entertained when she was attending the others, or assisting Mickey with his work of making repairs on the men.
It was midnight the next night when twenty of the men headed by young Feodor Koslovitch and with him in the lead, one Mikhail Tchekov—Mickey, for short—a guerrilla doctor—rode out of the pass down the side of the mountain in the direction of the Rostov-Baku Railway to a point midway between Pyatigorsk and Batalpashinsk. The ride took them almost an hour and a half. They would not need much time to set their time bombs. About fifteen minutes would be adequate.
A dense overcast obscured the light that might otherwise have come from the Caucasian moon. As the twenty rode on, those who did speak seemed affected by the stillness that hovered about them, above them and all around them.
Even the hoof beats of their horses were muffled on the soft, grass-covered earth.
There was no need for Feodor to ride back and warn his men carrying the bombs and dynamite they would lay waste the railway; with that they should be doubly careful with their horses. There was always the danger of their tripping on a stone concealed underfoot. But a single misstep might send the twenty of them where the Nazis would like to see them; and they had a job to do first. He warned them to keep a tight rein on the horses.
They had been out an hour when Mickey asked young Feodor: “How much farther?”
“Not much,” replied the young Russian. “About another half hour when we will come to a bend in the railway. This bend cuts through a natural pass in the hills.” He turned and smiled at the impatient American. “Be patient, my friend. Are all you Americans so eager to get at the enemy?”
“We are,” Mickey assured him. “A hundred and thirty million of us. And we’re eager to get it over with and go home.”
Feodor was careful to keep to the lower hills and passes so that his approach to the railway might not be seen. He avoided the peaks. One hour and a half later, the guerrillas dismounted and tethered their horses to a cluster of maples about a half-mile from the tracks. The young guerrilla leader sent one of his men on ahead to see if the road was clear. He returned and reported in the affirmative.
* * * *
Careful not to drop one of their bombs, they hurried on to the railway tracks, separated into small groups and began working feverishly among the ties. They did not—dared not, use lights. They worked as best they could. It was not more than a matter of ten minutes when they had buried their bombs after setting them to go off in twelve minutes.
For a distance of three hundred feet, bombs were laid alternately from
one side of the tracks to the other. No train could escape destruction on a distribution of solid death such as that.
Feodor gave the signal for the men to beat a hasty retreat. They scrambled up the sides of the depression and together they ran rather than walked that half-mile that separated them from their horses and impending death.
They jumped into their saddles and whipping up the animals rode off without Feodor’s checking their number to see if they were all there. This was unusual. But with the bombs to go off in so short a time, they decided to count off in the cave.
They stampeded in the direction of the cave and were not gone out more than three or four miles when the sound of a locomotive reached them on the wind that drove across from the north.
They slowed their horses to a walk; turned about in their saddles and watched. The distant, darkened train’s black silhouette crawled through the night. The long shaft of steam which flowed behind it and trailed the long line of flat cars with its exposed cargo was the only thing visible when the fire door was thrown open and the fireman re-coaled. That was on only for a moment and was blotted out when the man had reclosed his fire door.
From where the little band stood now, they watched the slow train lumber into the pass and gradually disappear completely from view.
“Quick,” called Feodor to the others. “Dismount. Make your mounts lie down and flatten out near them yourself. When that train blows up, there won’t be a thing left standing within a radius of miles.” He looked at the luminous dial on his watch. “Hurry!” he ordered. “There is only two minutes left.”
As the men hurriedly dismounted and dropped to the ground with their mounts, Mickey counted nineteen men and nineteen horses. He turned and shouted over his horse’s flank to Feodor: “One of your men is missing.”
“Who is it?” called the boy. “Who’s missing?” His voice sounded anxious.
“I’d suggest the men here name themselves,” urged Mickey.
The men repeated their names one by one. The missing man was Pavlovitch.
Without a word, Mickey slapped his horse’s rump and the beast struggled to his feet. Mickey grabbed up his kitbag and jumping into his saddle shouted to Feodor: “I’m going back. He may be in trouble and need me.”
* * * *
Before he even realized his danger, and the certain death he was returning to to save a possibly stricken man, he kicked his horse below the girth-line and the animal darted off like a streak in the direction of the bomb planted railway to the shouts of “NO! NO! Stay here, don’t go!” from the prostrate men.
But Mickey had not heard. And if he did, he completely disregarded his danger and drove his horse on toward the pass four miles ahead.
The sound of the locomotive exhaust seemed dimmer now. Not so much with distance as the muffled effect that comes as the train passes through a tunnel or a depression between high hills.
This served to accentuate the sound of the horses’ hoofs beating echo-less on the padded grass under his feet.
The sound of the dull hoof beats; the muffled heartbeat of a laboring locomotive suddenly went out. The sky was ablaze with a blinding light; the earth fell about Mickey and his eardrums seemed to split in two as the world blasted apart.
His horse stopped with a suddenness that made him think the animal had blindly driven into a stone wall. It staggered back as though it had been struck by a giant hand. It rose on its hind legs a brief second, and tried desperately to maintain an equilibrium it no longer possessed. Its head wavered frantically from side to side. It was blown back on its two hind legs, throwing Mickey clear as both were blown up the hill they were descending a moment ago, in defiance of all natural physical laws.
Over and over they rolled as the first explosion was followed by others; many others.
Dirt and grass and the shattered bodies of German trainmen mingled with the peaks of the hills near the blast as they were blown off their centuries-old Caucasian bases. But Mickey did not see that. He felt it. He felt the earth suddenly drop away. He seemed suspended in the atmosphere. He saw the stars. Millions of them. Then he saw the overcast that was aflame with the fire on earth and he knew there could be no stars. Then came—utter darkness.
But the attack of unconsciousness was brief. The rumblings of more and smaller explosions vibrated through him as he lay on the soft earth and these had the effect on him that an alarm clock bell might have on a sleeper.
As he came to, he saw his horse struggling to rise. Someone was standing near it. He saw a hand stretch out and touch the animal in the middle of its forehead. There was a flash of fire; and the animal lay perfectly still.
* * * *
Feodor came up after seeing to it that the stricken animal would no longer suffer.
“Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.
“No,” replied Mickey pressing himself all over. “Just dazed.”
“You’re a very lucky man, Comrade,” said Feodor.
“I’d forgotten about the impending explosions,” said Mickey.
“That was because you thought more of the safety of one of our men, than of your own,” said the young guerrilla leader. “We shall remember that.” He took Mickey by the arm. “I think you will have to get up behind me. I just had to shoot your horse. His forelegs—both of them—were broken.”
Mickey lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Feodor,” he said. “Guess we have to think before we act.”
“We haven’t always time,” Feodor Koslovitch qualified for Mickey’s impetuosity. “Come,” he said with another one of his characteristic sweeps of the hand.
“Don’t you want to see what happened to Pavlovitch?” asked Mickey anxiously.
“I don’t think we need to,” Feodor reminded him. “If you were knocked off your horse and your horse’s legs broken four miles from the blast, you can imagine what must have happened to poor Pavlovitch who was a lot closer to it.”
“Yes,” said Mickey thoughtfully.
One hour later the nineteen men halted on the crest of a high hill and looked back to where the sky was still alight with the flames still consuming the ammunition train the Nazis would have no further need for.
Less than a half-hour later, the small band of Russian guerrillas trailed into the stable cave, stalled and covered their horses, and returned to their quarters in the main cave, still wondering what had happened to Pavlovitch.
The night had gone well but for that one thing. The destruction of the ammunition train would delay the Nazi timetable in the insane drive toward the Grozny oil fields.
The men lay on the beds of straw and looked up at the dirt ceiling above them. They didn’t know why but they could not sleep. Mickey had rested his daze off and was about to drop off when there was a slow, plodding noise outside the cave. This was followed by a shout from the sentry outside.
“Doktarah!” he cried in Russian, “Doktarah Tchekov! Pavlovitch comes! Pavlovitch comes!”
Mickey sat up on his bed on the floor. A candle was lit hurriedly. Other candles were lighted. Their yellow flickering lights cast weird shadow shapes on the walls of the cave as the still-awake men jumped to their feet. The light fell upon a strange pair. Pavlovitch, the guerrilla, hung to the mane of his horse which, though wounded seriously itself, had brought him safely back to the cave.
* * * *
As they stood in the doorway, a forlorn, desolate looking pair, they made a picture of utter despair and hopelessness. Mickey was the first to reach Pavlovitch’s side. The man was unconscious from loss of blood.
“Start a fire,” shouted Mickey. “I’ll need some hot water.”
Pavlovitch was removed to a long table in the rear of the cave. Mickey went to work on him. Examining him, he found the man’s body was filled with shrapnel.
Mickey gave the wounded man an injection of adrenaline, for his heart beats had slowed from loss of blood. An immediate operation was necessary; he would need help, help in addition to that he would receive from the woman. Feodor w
ould help. The lad had had first aid training.
Mickey went to work on Pavlovitch with Feodor’s and the woman’s help. He removed most of the shrapnel; all but one piece in the region of the man’s heart. He did not dare touch that just then. The operation was performed by the light of many candles.
Pavlovitch regained consciousness two hours later. Dawn was breaking into the underground haven and gently lit up the front part of the cave.
He moved as the tired Mickey turned to him.
“Hello, Pavlovitch?” said Mickey.
Pavlovitch turned his dazed eyes toward the American.
“How do you feel?” asked Mickey.
A faint smile crept over the man’s face as he recognized the guerrilla doctor. Slowly, painfully he spoke.
“Kakvahshe Zdarovyeh?” he asked weakly in Russian repeating Mickey’s question a little dully. “How are you?”
* * * *
Feodor was standing by the man’s bed.
Neither he nor Mickey had slept that night.
“What happened?” asked Feodor of Pavlovitch.
“I wouldn’t tax him too much, Feodor,” warned Mickey. “At least, not just yet.”
“We must know,” insisted Feodor seriously. “I feel extremely uncomfortable about the whole business. Pavlovitch may know something.”
“I—do,” said the man slowly. Painfully he turned his head to Feodor. “I’m—sorry—this—happened, Comrade Koslovitch,” he said. “I—ran—after you. I slipped and fell back down the hill to the tracks.” He paused for breath. After a moment’s rest, he continued: “I—tried—to walk. My—ankle—was broken. When—I—managed to crawl—to the top—of the hill—you—were gone. My horse was at the foot of the hill—on—the other side. I was just about to crawl down when the explosion came.”
Pavlovitch had to pause again.
“Take your time Pavlovitch,” said Mickey gently.
The wounded man smiled gratefully at Mickey. “I have—not time,” he said prophetically.
“Nonsense,” encouraged the American. “You’ll outlive us.”
The Military Megapack Page 40