The hostile aircraft—Tommy reckoned they were Sturmovik ground attack ships, heavily armed but slow and vulnerable—were far below and coming fast out of the north. He counted eight.
Recalling the days he’d flown with the Russians just a few months ago, in the war’s closing moments, he knew how they’d attack:
They’ll hit a flank of Sean’s column in a line formation, starting at the head.
Two jugs could fly across the top of them from end to end, getting a shot at every one of them without being in their rear gunners’ fields of fire.
We’ll need top cover, too. The P-51s—wherever the hell they are—probably won’t get here in time. We’ll have to watch our own asses…
But there are only three of us. If two of us attack the Sturmoviks, that just leaves one for top cover…
And if he gets jumped while he’s all alone, he’s dead. Just like Bobby Lescault.
So all three of us will make a run on the Sturmoviks. We’ll take our chances they’ve got escorts somewhere. At least we’ll all be together if they do…
And maybe I won’t lose another guy.
Tommy checked his watch and then his fuel gauge. They had twelve minutes—maybe a few seconds less—at full throttle before they’d have to head home.
He briefed his two pilots how they’d attack the Russian planes. Then Butternut Flight rolled out of their racetrack holding pattern, swinging wide above the Sturmoviks as the Russian ships passed beneath. They were still five miles from Baker Team’s column.
He called for help from the P-51s. Their reply: “Four minutes out.”
Shit…this will be over long before then.
Butternut Flight shadowed the Sturmoviks from behind, S-turning so as not to overtake the slower ships while staying clear of their rear guns. It was no secret to the Russians that the jugs were trailing them.
But my gut tells me they’re not going to run away.
Baker Team had heeded Tommy’s words. The vehicles were pulled off the road, seeking the cover of trees or defilade wherever it was available. Forty of those vehicles—more than half the column—were tanks whose turret-mounted, 50-caliber machine guns were ready to take on the Russian aircraft. They’d never engaged Sturmoviks before, but they’d been briefed not to waste bullets against the aircraft’s heavily armored engine and cockpit. Go for the wings and the tail, their instructors advised. Those sections use a lot of wood in their construction and won’t take much punishment.
Their flight path left no doubt now: the Sturmoviks would attack from the west.
That makes it easy, Tommy told himself. Less maneuvering for us. All they’ve got to do is turn right in front of us…
Definitely looks like an “imminent threat” to me. Let’s start those gun cameras rolling. I want every second of this on film.
I may need the proof.
The Russians began their attack run, the eight ships executing simultaneous diving left turns that reoriented their trail formation into a line formation at just 200 feet above the ground. That would put a maximum curtain of fire along the broadest swath of Baker Team’s column, even if they were in the cover of trees. Mere wood would provide only limited protection from the Sturmoviks’ powerful cannon shells.
Timing of the intercept would be everything, and Tommy’s timing was perfect. His three ships, attacking obliquely from eight o’clock in echelon left, flew across the Russian line while it was still a thousand yards from Baker Team. Each jug targeted three or four of the eight-ship formation before the line flew out of her gunsight reticle. Staggered as they were, the lead ship—Tommy’s ship—riddled the four Sturmoviks on the left; the second jug shot up the middle four; the third peppered the three on the right. The targeting overlap gave three of the Russian ships a double dose of .50-caliber punishment.
Two of the Russian planes fell to the ground immediately, exploding in brilliant fireballs. Of the six that continued to the target, two were barely controllable, pitching and rolling with such violence that aiming guns was impossible. After passing over Baker Team, one of these crashed after a wingtip caught a treetop, spinning her like a pinwheel which finally came to rest in pieces on the forest floor. The other flew on for a few miles, struggling for control and altitude before her wounded pilot lost consciousness and she dove to her own fiery death.
Of the four Sturmoviks that were able to shoot up the American column, one was dismantled in flight by Baker Team’s .50 calibers, shedding half a wing and most of its tail. The plunge through tall trees dismantled her some more; the charred remains of what lay on the ground was barely recognizable as an aircraft.
The three still in the air turned north toward Prague at full throttle, satisfied they’d dealt whatever punishment they could to the Americans. Of the six persons on board those ships, two rear gunners—one a woman—were dead.
Butternut Flight reversed direction to give chase. They were unscathed from the attack on the Sturmoviks. Tommy took special comfort in something else, too:
As near as I can tell, our own guys didn’t even shoot at us. I guess they still know the difference between friend and foe. Maybe the brass shouldn’t be worried so much about scraping these old, faded invasion stripes off our ships. They still seem to be keeping us safe from “friendly fire” shoot-downs.
They’d closed half the distance to the Sturmoviks when they saw the Yaks high above.
“I count six,” Tommy said. “Anybody got something different?”
“Looks like a hundred to me,” Tony Jansen in the number two ship replied.
“Nah, it’s six,” Jack Parrish, flying number four, said. “That’s two for each of us.”
Tommy checked his fuel; it was only a minute and twenty seconds since the last time he’d done it.
Okay…about ten and a half minutes of playtime fuel left. Everybody’s still got plenty of ammo, too. Too bad we’re so damn low.
He told his flight, “On my count, break left…”
Craning his neck to look up and behind, he watched the Yaks peeling into dives that would put them on the jugs’ tails.
Let them get about halfway down the chute…yeah, right there.
“Three, two, one, BREAK.”
With too much inertia to match the jugs’ abrupt turn, the Yaks overshot their quarry badly.
To make it worse for the Russians, the jugs nimbly reversed direction and were now on their tails. They were too low to go anywhere but left, right, or up.
They chose up.
Stupid move, Tommy told himself. We could take a couple of them real easy…but forget it. We shouldn’t be chasing them all over the sky, anyway…not while we’re supposed to be keeping watch over my brother and his boys.
“Break it off, guys,” he told Jansen and Parrish. “Let’s get back to watching out for our ground-pounders.”
“What if they follow us?” Jansen asked.
“That’ll be a different story entirely,” Tommy replied. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
The P-51s were on the radio now, reporting one minute out.
“Outstanding,” Tommy told the P-51 leader. “We might have some Yaks you can play with. Come on down and help yourselves.”
Chapter Fifteen
Satisfied they’d cleared the Russians from the area between Pisek and the Vltava, Baker Team’s leaders set up combat outposts along the river and headed into Pisek to coordinate with Colonel Abrams. Both Sean and Captain Carpenter were surprised that the colonel wasn’t requesting any of Baker Team’s troops in the town itself.
“The Reds have more men here,” Abrams told them over the radio, “but we’ve got the muscle.”
Still, Carpenter took a dim view. “That means the Russians haven’t left,” he said. “I figured they’d be long gone by now.”
Sean didn’t like the sound of it, either, but he trusted Colonel Abrams implicitly. He told Carpenter, “All I know, Captain, is if Colonel Abe says it’s under control, I believe him.”
“I don’t get that at all,” Carpenter said. “Don’t any of these joes know that their buddies were fighting each other today?”
Sean replied, “One thing about the Russians, Captain…their communications stink. One hand doesn’t ever seem to know what the other’s doing. These Ivans probably have no idea what happened down the road. They just want GI cigarettes.”
“And the GIs want some of that vodka,” Carpenter added.
Once they’d heard Colonel Abrams’ explanation, the situation in Pisek made sense to them in its own strange way. He told them, “What am I supposed to do, have a house-to-house bloodbath in this pretty little town where all these civilians think the war is over? These Russians want to stay? Fine. As long as they keep quiet and stay out of my way, I’ll let them. Nobody’s declared war yet, regardless of the dust-ups we’ve had. But I’m not feeding them…not so much as a scrap of bread. We’ll have enough problems making sure the civilians around here have enough to eat.”
As the colonel led them to the big map on the wall, Sean took one look and understood what would happen next. “You want us to blockade the Prague highway, right, sir?”
A grinning Abrams replied, “You’re absolutely right. I want Baker Team to blockade that road and prevent the Russians from sending supplies to their troops here in Pisek.”
“And if they want to fight about it,” Sean added, “we’ll do it outside of town.”
“Exactly,” Abrams replied as he settled into a chair. “But I’m guessing they’ll up and quit Pisek once they’ve missed a meal or three. Now I’ve got a couple of questions about your trip here. How bad were you hit by the Red Air Force?”
“We took four men wounded, sir,” Carpenter said. “None killed. The wounded were evacuated back to Klatovy. The medics said they’re all going to make it.”
Abrams sounded relieved to hear that. Then he asked Carpenter, “Vehicle damages?”
“Two deuce-and-a-halfs destroyed, three Zippos took damage but they’re roadworthy and can still fight. We took as good as we got, though, sir. Between our guns and the jugs covering for us, I saw four Red planes go down. There may have even been more.”
“How many attacked you?”
“At least six, sir,” Sean replied. “Couldn’t get an accurate count with the shit flying and all. But I can confirm the ones I saw were definitely Sturmoviks.”
“Sturmoviks…ain’t that swell?” Abrams replied, not thrilled with the news. But he had another question: “That roadblock you ran into…the anti-tank guns. They ran away when the jugs showed up?”
“Affirmative, sir.”
“That’s good to know,” Abrams said. “But what the hell happened with Major Vreeland?”
“Lieutenant Waldner can fill you in with eyewitness details, sir,” Sean replied. “But between you, me, and the lamppost, the major panicked and started a gunfight with a handful of Russians who were no threat at all. We coulda just captured the whole bunch of them, according to the lieutenant, instead of putting our guys in jeopardy.”
“Send Waldner to me first chance you get,” Abrams said. “I’ll need to hear his story firsthand and in detail.”
Then Sean asked, “Sir, permission to speak freely?”
“Shoot, Sergeant.”
“Sir, are we gonna be fighting these people for real? Or is this just some little chess match between Washington and Moscow, with us as the pawns? If we’re gonna start burying GIs again, with or without a declared war, we gotta know what the hell we’re dying for.”
Sean could see the empathy in the colonel’s eyes. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Abrams was wrestling with exactly the same question.
But he also wasn’t surprised by Abrams’ answer: “Sergeant Moon…Sean…I may have a little more tin on my shoulders, but I’m a soldier just like you. And a soldier does what he’s ordered to do, without question. Do I make myself clear?”
“As a bell, sir.”
“Outstanding,” Abrams replied, “but let’s talk tactics for a minute. Do you two see anything we should be doing differently?”
Both Sean and Carpenter raised a hand.
“You first, Sergeant Moon,” Abrams said.
“Since we’re so light on artillery and all, sir, we’re going to be leaning real heavy on air support,” Sean replied. “We’ll need to work with the flyboys like we used to, with one of their pilots riding as an ASO with us. I ran across tank crews today who had no earthly idea how to call for air support and guide them to a target. Having an ASO again would fix that little problem real quick.”
“Point taken, Sergeant,” Abrams replied. “I’ll run it up the ladder immediately.” Turning to Carpenter, he asked, “Captain, what’s on your mind?”
Carpenter replied, “Sir, those Krauts we’re stuck with…they’ve been nothing but pains in our asses from day one. There’s not a man in this outfit who trusts them, including me.”
“Or me, neither, sir,” Sean added.
Carpenter continued, “So what are we supposed to do with them, sir? General Patton tells us they’re our allies now, but it sure feels like they’re still POWs…and we’re wasting a lot of manpower guarding them.”
Abrams sat pensively for a moment. Then he asked, “You do realize that if things get crazy with the Russians, I will have no choice but to arm those Germans, right?”
Sean said, “Ain’t things kinda crazy already, sir?”
“It could get a hell of a lot worse, Sergeant. You know that as well as I do.”
Abrams paused, considering his next words. Then he said, “Bring the Germans into Pisek. The Czech leaders will have a conniption, considering how Fourth Armored spent most of May and June rounding up the German civilians who’d settled in this part of the country and shipping them back to Germany. But I think I can get away with using them as unarmed service troops. Maybe if the Czechs see them working to undo the damage the Third Reich did, I can pull it off.”
Then Abrams added, “But it’s going to be a tough sell. A real tough sell.”
Tommy was finishing his supper when he heard the news: tonight’s movie was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a fairly new Hollywood release that had been shipped to the GIs in Germany. “Sounds like they sent a little bit of home just for you, boss,” Tony Jansen told him. “And it’s got real American tomatoes in it, too…Dorothy McGuire, for Pete’s sake!”
But Tommy never got to see the film. He and the other flight leaders of the 301st had been summoned, instead, to a briefing with staff officers from 9th Air Force HQ. His first thought when he saw the parade of brass headed to the briefing room: Don’t tell me we’re moving again. That would make it three times in a week. We haven’t even unpacked our stuff from this latest move to Regensburg. Hell, we haven’t even found half our stuff yet.
The week of moves from Bremen, back to Frankfurt, and now to Regensburg—one corner of Germany to another—had a silver lining, though: it had apparently gotten him in close proximity to his brother. If the 301st was flying support for his unit, as they had done today, Sean wasn’t far beyond the Czech border.
Maybe I’ll actually get to see him soon.
But there was a downside to the moving, too. Leaving Frankfurt had lessened his chances of seeing Sylvie again…
If she’d actually been in Frankfurt. But she’s not there at the moment, that’s for damn sure.
What worried him most: Nobody will tell me where she is.
The briefer was a bird colonel Tommy had never seen or heard of before. He began with this: “Gentlemen, it’s my sad duty to inform you that the Soviets have issued a shoot down order to their pilots and anti-aircraft units. That means any Allied aircraft over their zone of
occupation can expect to be attacked by one or the other.”
The flight leaders exchanged bewildered looks. Then Tommy spoke up: “Begging your pardon, sir, but that’s not exactly news. I don’t think there’s a man in this room whose flight hasn’t tangled with Russians in the past week.”
“Yeah, but they’ve said it in writing now, Captain,” the colonel replied. “And there’s one more catch—transport aircraft in the Berlin air corridors are exempt from the order.”
Tommy tried not to smirk as he thought: Gee, that’s real big of the Russians, ain’t it?
Another pilot asked, “Why would the Russians be so generous as to leave the transports alone, sir? What’s their game?”
“I’m glad you referred to it as a game, Lieutenant, because that’s exactly what it is—a typical Russian game. They want to sound real tough but always want to have a trump card up their sleeve…and, at the same time, leave themselves an escape hatch. They can say one thing and mean another entirely.”
Yeah, I remember, Tommy told himself. With the Russians, no can mean yes, and yes can mean jackshit.
Then he asked the colonel, “Sir, are we sure the Russians are going to know a transport when they see one? I mean, the RAF flies a lot of converted bombers as transports. We do it, too, with those B-24 cargo planes they call LB-30s. Half the time, we can’t even tell the difference unless we’re right on top of them. I doubt your average Russian pilot, or some peasant from Poltava manning an anti-aircraft gun, will be able to tell the difference.”
“All I can tell you right now, Captain Moon, is that HQ is aware of those issues. And they’re not this squadron’s problem, anyway. You’re here to support Third Army in Czechoslovakia. You won’t be going anywhere near Berlin.”
Yeah, sure, Tommy thought. Until they tell us to pack our bags again tomorrow.
There was a knock on the briefing room door. “See what they want,” the colonel told one of his staff. The door was opened a crack and a message passed through. It was handed to the colonel, who read it with a scowl on his face.
This Fog of Peace (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 4) Page 15