David Healey - Red Sniper

Cole was running across the airstrip, his knife in one hand. The blade was still red with the Russian officer’s blood. He reached the nearest fighter plane and jabbed the blade into the tires. Then he ran to the next plane. And the next. He didn’t bother with the spotter planes. He was out of time.

Still, no one had taken any notice of what was going on at the airfield. He raced back toward their own plane and climbed in, pulling the hatch shut after him.

“Go!” he shouted.

Whitlock was flicking toggle switches and adjusting levers. “There’s no time to do any kind of flight check, so we’ll just have to pray that this crate flies,” he shouted from the cockpit. “I hope to hell this thing is fueled up. I’ll need to figure out what the fuel gauge even looks like.”

Cole said, “Just get this thing in the air. There’s no time to get fancy.”

“I wouldn’t call making sure that there’s gas in the tank being fancy,” Whitlock snapped. “It would be helpful if these goddamn instruments were in English. Or German, for that matter.”

Cole raised an eyebrow. It was the first time he had heard Harry Whitlock swear.

“I reckon that’s where Miss Inna can help us out.”

They called Inna into the cramped cockpit, and she walked Harry through the instrumentation and controls. What wasn’t labeled, Harry guessed at. The entire procedure took about two minutes, which was thirty seconds more than they had. Looking out the cockpit window, Cole saw soldiers grouped around the officer’s body. More soldiers moved toward the airfield, weapons at the ready. One tall fellow wearing a furry ushanka looked right at the plane and must have seen movement in the cockpit. He pointed.

Soldiers started running toward the airfield.

“Got to go,” Cole said.

“Keep your fingers crossed.”

Whitlock hit some switches, and the engines cranked to life. As soon as they were roaring, Whitlock taxied toward the runway. The soldiers in front of them scattered. So far, nobody was shooting at them. The Russians hadn’t figured out what was going on.

“So far, so good,” Cole said.

“You’d better go strap yourself in,” Whitlock said. “You too, Inna. Things could get bumpy.”

Cole and Inna didn’t have to be told twice. They scrambled back and buckled themselves into the uncomfortable seats. Although he couldn’t see out, the thin airplane walls made him feel like a sitting duck.

The plane gathered speed, bumping down the rough runway. The plane began to lift off.

That’s when a burst of fire stitched holes in the aluminum skin. Cole guess it was what the Russians nicknamed a Pe-pe-sha , or PPSh-41 submachine gun. Ugly and deadly. He had spotted a few on the base. The plane was too loud to hear the chatter of the gun, but the new whistle of cold air through the holes was clear enough.

Then they were airborne, climbing into the Russian sky. Cole’s ears ached and he tried to swallow to relieve the pressure, but his mouth was too dry. It took him another couple of tries before his ears popped. Whitlock climbed at a steep angle, trying to put a lot of air between the plane and the ground fire. The cargo plane was no sprinter, but it still managed to climb to ten thousand feet within half a minute.

When the plane finally leveled off, Cole unbuckled and made his way to the cockpit. The ground below was a glittering expanse of white, punctuated by hills and forests.

Cole wasn’t normally a backslapper, but he clapped Whitlock on the shoulder. He shouted in Whitlock’s ear to be heard over the engines.

“That is some damn fine flying.”

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m surprised that we managed to get off the ground.”

“You’re right, you shouldn’t tell me that. What’s our plan?”

“To put this crate down somewhere in Finland, as soon as I spot an airfield.” He tapped a gauge. “The good news is that we’ve got plenty of fuel.”

There were nervous grins all around, everybody feeling good. They were finally getting the hell out of the Soviet Union.

Their relief was short lived.

“Oh, hell,” Whitlock said, cursing for the second time in a span of ten minutes.

“What is it?”

“It looks like we’ve got company.”

Tracers from a burst of gunfire raked the sky.

“We’re sitting ducks up here,” Whitlock shouted, sounding near panic. He craned his neck to look out the windows. “What the hell should I do?”

Cole pieced it together. They had disabled the planes on the ground, but he knew that one Russian fighter had already been in the air. They had seen it flying over the area, searching for whoever had fled the firefight that had got the Russians’ attention. Someone on the ground must have radioed that plane. Now it was on their tail.

There was another burst of fire. Tracers ripped the sky again, but no bullets hit the plane.

“I don’t understand it,” Whitlock said. “They could blow us out of the sky.”

“That was like a shot across the bow. They want us to land. They probably think they’ve got themselves a planeload of spies. Capturing us alive ought to get somebody promoted.”

Cole thought about that. It was an option. They could turn around and head back to the airfield like the Russians wanted. There could be some kind of diplomatic wrangle. They might get home someday before the end of the century.

But not Inna. Not Dmitri. It would be the Gulag for them. Or a bullet.

Cole didn’t plan on spending the next few years digging holes on some Gulag work crew for another version of Barkov.

The plane rocked as it hit a pocket of turbulent air. He gripped Whitlock’s shoulder, steadying them both. “Got any ideas?” he asked.

“No. We sure as hell can’t outrun a fighter,” Whitlock said.

“Can’t you do some fancy flying?”

“In this beat up old bird? Cole, it’s like a goose trying to out-maneuver a hawk. We don’t have a prayer against that other plane. It’s a lot faster than we are, and we aren’t even armed.”

“Gotta try something.”

Whitlock did. He forced the stick down, moving the plane into a steep dive. Wind whistled at the wings, threatening to rip them off. The whole plane bucked and shook. The Russian fighter raced past overhead and swung around in an arc to come at them again. Effortlessly. It was easy enough to imagine the Russian pilot with his gunsights on them, finger on the trigger, waiting for a radio message with orders to put another shot across the bow or just let loose with a killing burst through the fuselage so that he could get home in time for borscht and vodka.

The fighter pilot fired. The flurry of rounds punched holes the size of golf balls through the skin. Inna screamed. Vaccaro had been pale before; now he was the grayish color of dishwater.

The Russian pilot had not finished them off—yet. He was just showing them that he meant business. He wanted them to land the plane. He was making it clear that they were going down—one way or another.

Cole decided that he’d had enough. He wasn’t going to wait around for them all to be shot out of the sky. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to become a prisoner. That just wasn’t his style.

He got down close to Whitlock’s ear. “Listen up, Whitlock. You hold this plane real steady. I’m gonna try something.”

He left the cockpit and made his way back to the cargo area. He reached for his rifle. Vaccaro, Inna, and Dmitri eyed him with a look that seemed to ask, What’s that crazy hillbilly up to now? It was too loud to even attempt an explanation. Each breath turned to icy vapor. The plane rocked as frigid winds buffeted the fuselage. The wind coming through the bullet holes whistled like an angry teapot.