Raptor Aces

  “Beats me.” He shrugs. “Just get it where it needs to go.”

  I have no time for even a rudimentary weight and balance calculation. The soldiers need this ammo, and if it costs my life to get it to them, so be it. Never have I felt myself to be such an expendable commodity, like a sausage wrapper.

  I rumble down the bumpy grass strip, building up speed for take off. My plane is overweight and unbalanced, which adversely affects ground handling. My once docile machine becomes a potential death trap requiring every milligram of my attention. One miscalculation can put me into a vicious ground loop.

  And once I get in the air – if I get in the air – will the imbalance force me into a deadly stall / spin accident? All thoughts of the train depot horror flee my mind, replaced by total concentration on my task. The engine roars with extreme effort as I build up speed.

  A line of trees draws closer, soon I’ll have to lift off or face a collision with them.

  “Come on, girl!” I shout. “Let’s get out of here!”

  I bring the stick back; we chug into the air. The trees draw closer, but I dare not increase my angle of attack lest I go into a stall. Steady ... steady ... brass it out.

  I am over the trees!

  Control pressure is heavy, and I adjust trim to reduce the strain. Suddenly, my aircraft noses up, and the stall warning begins to screech. I lower the nose, the plane starts going into a dive. I pull back on the stick and the stall warning howls again. We are on the verge of a lethal pilot induced oscillation. Panic seizes my brain.

  Concentrate! Feel the aircraft!

  Push the stick forward, then back slightly – we are nosing down again. Pull the stick back, then forward slightly – we are climbing, though not as steeply as before. Repeat the maneuvers – again, again. Adjust trim.

  Finally we smooth out into straight and level flight. A gigantic vise of tension releases its grip on me. I mutter the time-honored pilot’s dictum:

  “Piece of cake.”

  Climb gently to 1,200 meters and focus on navigation. Give my pounding heart a chance to slow down.

  The airfield is still in sight, so it is easy to orient myself. The geography below is not difficult to read – the same gentle hills and forest we’d seen from the train. Creeks and railroad tracks make for good reference points. Battle scars are evident here and there, but the landscape is generally intact.

  I begin to relax a little. Maybe I’ll survive this mission after all. Something like my old joy of flying returns. I am at one with the sky again, melded with my aircraft into a single being. I have the air to myself, no sign anywhere of friend or foe to distract me.

  Some low cumulus lies directly in my flight path. I consider flying over or around it but reject the idea. A detour would consume precious time and fuel, and I am reasonably confident that I can handle the whiteout conditions. Besides, I doubt if Bel would shrink from this challenge. And if he can do it, so can I.

  I review my zero-visibility flight training: Trust the instruments and avoid the temptation to overcorrect the controls. Ignore any false cues from my non-visual senses.

  Delicate wisps reach out for me like strands of cotton candy. Behind them looms a solid wall of cloud. I thrill at its approach. For the first time since the blood bath at the train station, my face breaks into a smile. I enter the cloud, and all is cool dampness tingling my skin.

  The white backdrop enters my mind, and I summon an image of Gyn’s face upon it. Again I see her deep brown eyes gazing into mine and the little dimples that appear in her cheeks when she smiles. My own private cinema in the sky!

  What would it be like to wake up beside her some morning, I wonder? Just lie there watching her sleep, following her gentle respiration. She senses my eyes upon her and snuggles close. I wrap an arm around her and our breathing harmonizes its rhythm. I slip a hand under her nightgown, her breast is soft, yet firm ...

  The wonderful fantasy keeps me from obsessing about my flight attitude in the zero visibility. Overloaded as I am, any abrupt maneuvers could have fatal results.

  But the plane is trimmed for straight and level flight, so don’t hinder it. Periodic scans of the instruments to make sure that all is well, an easy hand on the stick, gentle feet on the rudder pedals. Just let it flow. Minutes of near contentment drift past.

  Then, unbidden, Ket’s face appears before me. She wears a frenzied, almost savage expression, and her blond hair is disheveled. Her breath blows hot on my face. I feel her hand grinding my crotch and her teeth biting my lip. My eyes widen. It all seems so real! Ket is taking things farther now; she is loosening my belt –

  Suddenly, brutally, I exit into searing blue sky, and my daydreams flee back into the clouds. Unease grips my heart now, for below me sprawls absolute destruction.

  Conflict of unimaginable ferocity has once raged beneath my wings. The whole area is charred and barren. Massive shell craters disfigure the ground. Everything is brown and dead, not a speck of greenery survives – at least none that I can see from my altitude. The ruin spreads out in a rough circle and must be eight or nine kilometers across.

  The entire place seems wrong, even in the midst of a battle front. I immediately dub it the Zone of Destruction or ZOD for short. Yes, ZOD, the opposite of GOD – the very face of war. Its frozen spirit reaches up for me.

  Its appearance is so unexpected and so horrific that it seems to be not of this world, as if the overwhelming violence it endured has blasted it into an alternate reality. The impression is enhanced by a blurry patch on its edge, just before the more normal landscape resumes.

  I shake my head and look again. The blurry patch is still there, like a smudge of motion in a photograph. What is it? A more important question – does it exist at all, or am I simply losing my mind?

  But to hell with such questions! I have a job to do. Men are waiting for me, scanning the air for my little plane, wondering if their ammo will hold out until I get there. I focus my attention on my task and push all other considerations out of mind.

  Still, I experience a powerful sense of relief when I exit ZOD, as if I’ve returned from the grave.

  27. Missions Accomplished

  At last the landing field comes into sight, identifiable by a large national flag spread on the ground and by men frantically waving their arms at me. I circle the area, reducing my altitude gradually, then I go into a gentle final approach.

  This landing is going to be tricky. Under more normal conditions I’d lower the flaps, but I dare not steepen my flight path. Just come in long and low – the field looks big enough. Thank heaven there is only a light wind.

  My concentration is so intense that, at first, I do not notice the hot bullets flashing past. The slobes are shooting at me!

  I look desperately around. The fire is coming from a patch of forest off to starboard. Well, nothing for it now – just keep to my flight path and hope for the best. Sweat is poring off me, dripping under my goggles into my eyes. My hands are ice cold. The ground reaches up for me. Soon I’ll be rolling upon it or flipped over into a pile of wreckage …

  Touchdown!

  I taxi to a halt and switch off. Without the engine racket in my ears, the pop of gunfire is quite distinct. I jump from the cockpit and fling myself onto the ground, discarding my machinegun bullet shawl. I begin crawling away from my plane as fast as possible.

  The shooting stops, but I remain where I am, face down, hands over my head. I feel an odd sense of guilt for abandoning Y-47.

  “It’s all right now,” somebody says.

  I look up to see an Army captain towering above me. He offers a hand.

  “Ah, they’re sending us the young ones now,” he says when I’ve regained my feet.

  “Yes, sir,” I say. “Youth League air squadron commander Dytran reporting, sir.”

  “Forget the ‘sir’ routine,” the captain says. “We’re glad to see you, boy.”

  Troopers are unloading Y-47 and hurrying off with the cargo. They
look gaunt and hard-bitten, as if they have not bathed nor eaten properly in a long time. Their eyes burn with a feverish glow.

  “Tell them to send us more ammo – a lot more,” the captain says. “Partisans have stopped the supply trucks from getting through.”

  “Yes, s ... , Captain.”

  “Better yet, I’ll tell them myself,” the captain says. “Fly me back with you.”

  “Uh, I don’t know if I have enough fuel left to carry a passenger,” I say.

  “No problem there,” the captain says, “we salvaged some fuel from the last plane.”

  He gestures toward a wrecked aircraft at the far end of the field. It is a high-winged machine, better suited to rough field work than my low wing monoplane.

  “He didn’t make it, unfortunately,” the captain said.

  From among the trees, where bullets had been fired at me earlier, a merry little jingle in our language now blares from a loudspeaker:

  Ain’t it hard to be the master race

  when Piotra’s standing on your face?

  Hey boys, slip and slide!

  Dig them graves and jump inside!

  “They’re at it again,” the captain says. “You’d think they’d come up with a new song already.”

  We are quickly refueled and airborne, but not until after I’ve taken a stiff drink of brandy, at the captain’s insistence, so as to “calm my nerves.”

  And they do need calming. The strain of this first day of combat operations is grinding me down. Even so, the uneventful flight back perks me up a little – until we reach ZOD. The blurry patch is still there, but it seems to be shifting now, as if it is being reflected by a constantly moving mirror. My unease returns.

  “What’s that over there?” I ask the captain over the intercom. “That blurry section along the edge.”

  “It’s all crap!” the captain replies.

  ***

  The moment I roll to a stop at home base, the captain jumps out and runs to HQ. His arguments must be persuasive, for I make my next ammo delivery to his unit. Fortunately, they’ve secured the landing field and my arrival is free from enemy fire and propaganda songs.

  Then I make a third ammunition drop, to a different unit. By this time I am flying on autopilot – the one in my brain. I scarcely know what I am doing any longer but merely function on instinct.

  The sector of my mind that is not totally numb understands the value of the rigorous training we’d undergone the previous weeks. I give Pansy silent thanks. You have to be part robot to endure the routine.

  I do not know where the other Raptor Aces are sent, or what their missions are. I am outside the chain of command. Officers from the ‘real’ Air Force issue the orders without consulting me. On one flight over ZOD, however, I pass Beltran going the opposite direction. We waggle our wings at each other by way of greeting.

  The sun is going down when I complete my last mission. I experience an abrupt shift from functional awareness to near total collapse the moment I climb out of the cockpit.

  “Rough day, lad?” the crew chief asks.

  I nod, too exhausted to say anything.

  The crew chief pats Y-47’s fuselage as if he is stroking the flank of a thoroughbred horse.

  “She’s a good one,” he says. “I’ll take over now.”

  I stumble to our barracks where I take a hot shower, an unheard-of luxury for the troops in the field, but one that we pilots can enjoy – if we survive the day’s missions. When I get to the bunk room, it is already lights out. Inert lumps occupy the cots, except for the one next to mine where Beltran is reading by the dim illumination of a table lamp.

  He looks up from his book as I tumble into bed, face first.

  “How’d it go today, Bel?” I inquire from the depths of my pillow.

  “Didn’t you attend a debriefing?” he asks.

  “Was I supposed to?”

  “Yes,” Bel says, “you’re the squadron commander.”

  I roll over on my back and stretch; bones crack in my spine.

  “That doesn’t matter,” I say, “the officers order me around just like the rest of you.”

  Bel looks directly at me; his face is calm and matter-of-fact in the low light. He doesn’t look tired at all, damn him.

  “It matters to me,” he says.

  “I don’t believe it!” I say, too loud. Some of the lumps shift position on their cots. “What do you want me to do, blow my foot off so you can be the ‘official’ squadron leader?”

  A not altogether pleasant grin comes over Bel’s face.

  “That would be a start,” he says.

  “So I missed the debriefing,” I say. “What are they going to do, shoot me? That’s sounds pretty good about now.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Bel says. “It doesn’t go with your charming personality.”

  He closes his book, and a thoughtful expression comes over his face.

  “You know ... I’ve been thinking,” he says. “It must be fate at work. The gods have decreed that I should always be your subordinate.”

  “Right. So who’s the drama king now?”

  Bel chuckles, then he turns serious.

  “Orpad bought it today,” he says.

  I jerk up onto my elbows.

  “What!?”

  “He crashed on take off,” Bel says, “his first mission, too.”

  The dreadful news breaks through the shell of my fatigue like a battering ram. Bezmir, and now Orpad – two of my old squadron mates, killed on the same day! Lads I had almost considered to be brothers at one time, until they betrayed me.

  I flop down onto my back. Maybe I can mourn for them later, when I’ve had some rest.

  “Did he suffer much?” I say.

  “He was dead when they pulled him from the cockpit,” Bel says. “It was a stall-spin accident.”

  “Oh ... God. I nearly spun out myself today.”

  “Join the club,” Bel says.

  “How about the others?”

  “Albers took some ground fire, but he’s all right,” Bel says.

  So, since the morning we’d been reduced by half. Quite a day’s work for the enemy.

  Part of me is dying from exhaustion, but another part is too wired up to sleep. I know how Bekar must have felt under the influence of two powerful and contradictory drugs.

  “Tell me,” I say, “did you notice anything strange about that blasted area we flew over?”

  “It’s lovely,” Bel says. “I’ll build a vacation home there after the war. Land ought to be cheap.”

  “I’m serious, did you see anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know ... a blurry spot or something.”

  “Seeing things again, Ghostie?” Bel sneers.

  “All right, fine.”

  I turn away, giving my blanket an annoyed rustle.

  “Why don’t you shut off that damn light already?” I say.

  “Is that an order, Commander?”

  “Whatever.”

  Actually, I prefer having the light on. Because when Bel switches it off a minute later, I can feel the warm blood starting to pool around me again. I summon up the presence of the Magleiter to ward off the nightmares.

  28. Downward Slope

  The weeks grind past into autumn, and our schedule never slackens, except for the occasional day when it rains too hard for us to fly. We are the jacks of all trades.

  We do ammo drops and courier runs, with recon flights and mail deliveries thrown in. We often transport wounded men on our return to base. We even fly some artillery spotting missions, Beltran’s favorite assignment for which he always volunteers. I’ve flown a few artillery spotting missions myself and was never so scared in my life with the ground fire popping all about, praying that the next round didn’t blow me away.

  I won’t admit this terror to Bel, though.

  After our bloody initiation, we suffer no further deaths. A few of us sustain injuries from ground
fire or rough landings, but nothing serious. Katella receives a minor shrapnel wound in his right shoulder.

  “At least I’m balanced now,” he jokes, referencing the earlier injury to his left shoulder.

  Around us, the front crackles and sparks. Fierce combat flares up in our sector for a day or two, then dies down. Artillery pieces duel, then fall silent. Enemy fighter aircraft appear to joust with our fighters before vanishing as quickly as they came.

  Piotra is keeping us on edge but has not launched any major operations; and we lack the strength to go on the offensive ourselves. Our troops are dug in and have all they can handle with the enemy army before them and the partisans behind.

  Elsewhere along the vast front, the situation is grim. The offensive everyone expected to hit our southern sector hasn’t come; instead, the enemy struck north again, pushing our forces back to within 140 kilometers of the old frontier. They use their advanced positions to launch bomber strikes against our Homeland.

  No amount of propaganda can disguise the fact that we are losing the war. The once solid front is now distorted. The southern sector is dangerously exposed on two sides. We should be retreating to more defensible positions, but orders have come through to “stand fast.”

  The destruction brought to our cities screams loud and clear about the growing catastrophe. I thank God that our home is in the western area of our country, out of bomber range. Gyn, too, is safe – for now.

  And what of Ket? She is a moving target. There is no telling where her next assignment will lead. In my mind, she has taken on an air of invulnerability; nothing bad can happen to such an extraordinary person. But I’d thought that about Stilikan, too.

  There is much perplexity on our side. By all logic, the slobes should have attempted to recover the cities and rich farmlands of the south rather than the relatively barren steppe of the north. And amid this bafflement runs a sigh of relief that the Death Angel is spreading its wings over those other poor devils and not us.

  Myself, I never blame anyone for being smart, and the enemy strategy seems very intelligent to me. Why expend precious resources against strong opposition when they can make up ground elsewhere at relatively low cost? And the air raids against our country must bring joy to every slobe heart – and despair to our own.

  Anxiety infests our ranks. No one speaks of glorious victory any longer. Nobody boasts of achieving our “place in the sun.” Faith in the Magleiter remains strong, however – an almost mystical belief that, somehow, he will get us out of this mess.