The War That Came Early: West and East by Harry Turtledove Page B

crew scrambled out of the plane. “How did it go, Comrades?” the chief maintenance sergeant asked.
    “We put the bombs on target in Wilno,” Sergei said. “Not much antiaircraft fire. The Poles are wearing down.”
    “About time,” the sergeant said. “I don’t know why they got so excited over Wilno to begin with—or why we want it, come to that. Damn town is full of Litvaks and Jews.” He spat in the dirt.
    Before Sergei could answer that or even think about it much, Ivan Kuchkov stiffened like an animal taking a scent. He cocked his head to one side, listening intently. Then he said something worse than his usual
mat
-laced obscenities: “Messerschmitts! Heading this way!”
    Sergei started running before he heard the planes himself. So did everybody else within earshot of the Chimp. Long before the pilot got to the trenches on one side of the runway, he did hear the hateful roar of the fighters’ engines. That only made him run harder.
    He didn’t run hard enough to get to the trenches before the 109s’ machine guns and cannon started stitching down the airstrip. Dust spurted up from the hits. Rounds slammed into the metal and doped fabric covering his SB-2. He didn’t look back. He did a swan dive—if you could imagine a spastic swan—into the zigzagging trench.
    That maintenance sergeant landed in the trench beside him. “Too goddamn close,” Sergei said, panting. “I’m lucky I didn’t break my ankle jumping down here.”
    The sergeant didn’t answer. He wouldn’t, either. A bullet—or, more likely, a 20mm round—had taken off the top of his head. Blood and brains soaked into the black dirt. One second, he’d been running for cover. The next? It was over. Lots of worse ways to go. Pilots found too many of them. If you got shot down, you were liable to have a lot of time to think before you finally smashed.
    “Bozhemoi!”
Anastas Mouradian said. “Poor bugger cashed in his chips all at once, didn’t he?”
    “I was thinking the same thing,” Sergei answered as the Messerschmitts zoomed away at just above treetop height. Now he could smell the maintenance man’s blood, and the nastier smells that said his bowels and bladder had let go when he stopped one.
    “Za Stalina,”
Mouradian added somberly. About every third Red Army tank and Red Air Force bomber had
For Stalin!
painted on its side. You fought for Stalin. And you died for Stalin, too. He looked after the 109s. They were long gone now. “You see? The Nazis haven’t dried up and blown away.”
    “Well … no.” Sergei didn’t like to admit that. Oh, he knew Poles could kill him, too. But the Germans, damn them, were much too good at such things. He wondered what they’d done to his plane. It wasn’t burning, anyhow. A couple of bullets through the engines sure wouldn’t do it any good, though. Two of the tires on the landing gear were flat. That would make getting it out of the way for repairs even more fun than it would have been otherwise.
    They’d have to do it, fun or not. They couldn’t just leave the SB-2 in the middle of the runway. Not only did it clog Soviet air operations here, it sent the
Luftwaffe
an engraved invitation to come back.
    “Planes … We can fight back against planes,” Stas said, and Sergei made himself nod. It was true—to a point. The Bf-109 outdid anything the Red Air Force flew. Both biplane and blunt-nosed monoplane Polikarpov fighters were last year’s models—no, year before last’s—next to it. New machines that could meet the fearsome Messerschmitts on eventerms were supposed to be in the works. But the hot Soviet planes weren’t here yet, and the Germans had theirs now. In a low voice, Mouradian went on, “What happens if the Nazis throw their panzers at us?”
    Sergei took a deep breath, then immediately wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t just that he smelled the butcher-shop and outhouse reeks of the groundcrew man’s sudden demise. But the damp-earth smell of the trench