Cole used his left hand to grab the Russian's wrist, preventing the gun from leaving the holster. With his right hand, he drew his hunting knife and plunged the blade into the Russian's throat. He hit him as hard as he had ever hit anything ever before. The blade was sharpened on both sides at the tip so that it speared through the gristle and muscle. Cole put all his weight behind it, and the blade stopped only when the tip struck the vertebrae in the back of the Russian's neck. It was a horrible sensation, and Cole felt sickened as he wrenched the knife free.
The Russian wanted to shout, but couldn't. His voice box was destroyed. He sank to his knees, his hands at his throat, making wet gargling noises, dying.
"Go!" Cole shouted.
They dropped their tires and boxes, and ran the rest of the way to the airfield. In the confusion, none of the Soviet troops had noticed the attack on the officer. Not yet, anyhow. Cole figured they had a minute or two at most to catch a plane.
At that moment, Cole realized he hadn't thought something through, which was the fact that they would need a plane large enough to carry them all. There wasn't much to choose from. Cole saw a couple of smaller reconnaissance planes that appeared to be two-seaters, and three sleek fighters.
"This one!" Whitlock had anticipated the same problem, and was pointing at the largest plane on the airfield.
None of the other planes was big enough for them all, except for this airplane, which appeared to be some sort of cargo hauler. It probably flew in medical supplies, mail, and the commandant's weekly vodka ration.
On closer inspection of the plane, Cole’s heart sank.
The plane looked flimsy, like it had been made out of old beer cans hammered flat and riveted together by the guy who’d been drinking the beer. Some of the finer work might have been done when the guy was hung over on Monday morning.
"I've never seen a plane that looked like it already crashed before it took off," Vaccaro said. "You sure about this?"
"It's this or back to the Gulag," Cole said. "Whitlock, you reckon you can fly this crate?"
“I can fly it,” he said. “The question is, will it fly?” He ran to pull away the wheel chocks.
Cole cast a quick glance toward where the officer’s body lay, leaking a pool of blood into the trampled snow. They didn’t have long. “You all had best get in.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right back.”
The others piled into the plane. When a cargo plane like this was on the ground, sitting on the third wheel in the tail, the floor was sharply sloped. Whitlock climbed toward the cockpit and the others scrambled to the rough seats that pulled down from the sides. The only windows were in the cockpit. The bare interior was cold and dark, and smelled heavily of oil and gasoline, with an underlying funk of spoiled potatoes.
It did indeed feel like being inside a beer can, with aluminum walls exactly that thin. A burst from a machine gun would cut the metal skin and everyone inside to shreds. The cargo plane didn't have any sort of guns itself. Totally defenseless.
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.