Sunlight leapt at him like a waterfall, before the blue sky surrounded him. The altimeter read eighteen thousand feet. The peaks, jutting through the gently undulating swell of the mountain cumulus fell away behind. He levelled off and began to scour the horizon for a sign of the Arado.
He was alone.
As the panic returned, the vision of the tiny gap between the cloudbase and the valley floor leapt into his mind. That was where the Rhodesian had gone, hugging the ground to avoid enemy — Allied — fighters, as per his instructions in the countless briefings that had preceded the mission. Kruze had never even seen his Meteor.
He had lost him.
He reached down to the radio and swivelled the dial through all the frequencies.
“Guardian Angel is over. Kruze, if you can hear me, return to base, turn back to Stabitz. It’s over, finished.”
There was only the hiss of static and the echo of his own voice ringing in his ears.
And Kruze was below him, somewhere, between the carpet of thick mountain vapour and the earth, hurtling towards the target. When he pulled out of the mountains there would only be another hundred and twenty miles on the second leg, until the final run-in…
The second leg.
A two stage flight plan to Branodz. One massive course deviation to keep him away from Allied fighter patrols. Kruze flying two sides of the triangle from Oberammergau to Branodz. His own carefully negotiated flight plan for the Rhodesian seemed to dance before his eyes on the windshield in front of him. Despite the Arado’s overall speed advantage, there was a chance, just a chance, that he could intercept him over the target, if he flew direct, with no course change, just a straight path across German lines, their own and into Russian airspace.
It was the only option left.
He swung the aircraft round to the north, away from the mountains and the clouds, on a vector that would take him directly to Branodz. He would pick up the landmarks after crossing the River Isar, wide and conspicuous, as it meandered leisurely across the alluvial plain to the northeast of Munich.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Careful, careful,” Shlemov growled, as he watched the NCOs and enlisted men of the VKhV Military Chemical Forces grapple clumsily with the crates that Shaposhnikov had stored in the corral beside the HQ in Branodz. “You idiots should know better than anyone what’s in there,” he shouted in the general direction of the nearest work party.
Of course there was no actual danger of the shell cases splitting in the event they were to drop one of the boxes. The bastards were doing it deliberately, though, to try and scare him. Ever since they found out that he had put Major Ryakhov, their leader, on a truck that would take him to Ostrava and thence to Moscow…
It probably wasn’t his fault, Shlemov admitted to himself. It was obvious that Shaposhnikov had duped him into transporting the hydrogen cyanide to the front, but he could not be allowed to run around the Motherland in possession of the knowledge of what had happened in that place. He was satisfied the rest of the VkhV troops did not know of Ryakhov’s arrangement with Shaposhnikov. They could carry on believing the excuse he himself had given them. There had been an emergency, the fascists had deployed chemicals, but had backed down when they discovered Soviet weapons of equal ferocity had been rushed to the front.
The distant rumble of artillery, their guns, reminded him how close Shaposhnikov had come to pulling it off. Once Marshal Konev learnt of Archangel, possibly reacting against the news that he would have been the first killed by the conspirators, he decided to put the offensive into effect right away, with Stalin’s blessing.
The unrelenting tom-tom beat of the massive artillery barrage had been going on now for over two hours, more or less since they had begun loading up the trucks. Final victory against the fascists, Konev had assured him, was now at hand. Looking at the frantic activity around him, despatch riders entering and leaving the HQ every few seconds, troops swarming around the place like soldier ants and hearing the clank of armour rolling up the valley below towards the front lines, personally, he didn’t doubt the Marshal’s words.
Shlemov wanted to get home, to Moscow, but Beria’s unquestionable instructions had come through during the night. Oversee the shipment of the hydrogen cyanide, first on the trucks, then into the rail wagons at Ostrava, and finally get them, safe and sound back to Berezniki, a total journey of almost two thousand kilometres. It had not put him in a good mood.
Especially working with these idiots. They were damned lucky not to be joining Ryakhov.
He looked back at the corral and groaned. It was still almost full. Only four trucks had been loaded, another sixteen to go. It would take all day at this rate.
He turned, swearing under his breath, and barged his way past two despatch riders into the warmth of the HQ to try to find some acorn coffee to drive the sleep from his aching limbs.
Kruze held the aircraft as steady as he could between the cloud base and the valley floor, weaving his way around bluffs and points that rushed to meet him with frightening speed and regularity.
He smiled, scarcely able to believe it. He had stolen the Ar 234 Blitz, the “lightning” bomber, from its lair. Despite those idiots in the Meteors, the double treachery of Herries, and the vicissitudes of the aircraft itself. He had done it for
Penny and for Fleming. The rest he would do in the name of something less tangible.
The aircraft was aptly named. It felt like riding shotgun on the front of a high-speed locomotive. A few feet of fragile instruments and Plexiglass separated him from 400 mph of slipstream. This was all. The water vapour that hung heavily in the valley streaked in long rivulets from the glazed nose of the bomber across the Plexiglass over his head. He took his eyes momentarily off his limited horizon and looked through the canopy above him. Fifty feet away wisps of grey, angry cloud flashed past, each reaching down to the aircraft, malevolently, as if they were storm-lashed branches desperately trying to unseat him from his wild, galloping stallion.
Shaposhnikov was less than half an hour away. Just under thirty minutes more of unbending concentration. That was all it would take.
He fumbled for the coat that hid the charts that would get him to the tiny valley which cupped the town of Branodz between its rocky walls.
And then his mind replayed the last minutes of his time at Oberammergau and the terrible moment when he had looked over his shoulder and seen Herries holding up his coat, triumph in his eyes. The traitor, in death, had taken something from him which might cost him the mission. The charts. How could he have been so stupid to have discarded the coat? Yet, in the heat of the moment, it had been a hindrance, something to dispose of; that the charts were sewn into the lining had never crossed his mind.
Could he do without them? He had to.
He looked at the compass. The valley was taking him roughly in the direction he wanted, but soon he would be out of the mountains and then he would need landmarks, man-made and geological features noted carefully in the briefing room at Stabitz, but now suddenly elusive. The first leg, a vector of oh-seven-oh degrees for eighty miles, then the way-point. What was it? The castle, a big Bavarian affair by a lake, Fleming had said. Schloss Ubersee. But it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack unless he found the River Inn first.
Then his eyes fell on the map case, tucked away to his left on the cockpit wall. He pulled at the charts, careful not to take his gaze off the rapidly rolling scenery in front of him for more than a few seconds at a time. On a large-scale map, he quickly found Munich, then Oberammergau.