Oster’s face burned with embarrassment. His speech had been ridiculous. These men didn’t care about manifest destiny. All they cared about was their own safety. “Keep that up and you’ll make an easy target for a partisan sniper,” Oster warned.
Krause stopped whistling at once, his face pale.
Oster turned to the rest of his squad. “Make no mistake. We may be behind our own lines, but this is still enemy territory.” Oster noted that his words were finally having the desired effect. The men were gripping their weapons now, nervously eyeing the trees. Oster smiled inwardly, knowing it was the perfect time to instill some discipline. “Krause, take point.”
Krause hesitated but didn’t dare question the Unteroffizier. He cocked the bolt on his rifle, grasped it in both hands, and stepped forward through the slush, trying to make as little noise as possible.
The rest of the squad followed behind, Pfeiffer and his heavy machine gun dead center where he would be less vulnerable to ambush. Oster took up the rear. Despite their attempt at stealth, the soldiers’ boots crunched loudly through the crusty snow with every step.
A startled flock of birds chittered overhead, their beating wings drowning out the soldiers’ steps. Oster realized that those birds hadn’t come from the neighboring trees—they hadn’t been surprised by his squad patrolling. Something else had startled them. Oster mentally traced the trajectory of their flight back to its origin and pointed.
“There! Quickly!” He broke into a run, and his squad followed close behind.
CHAPTER 20
THE CELLIST
Karen had heard the whistling and was trying to move away from whoever had made the sound. She suspected it was the German soldiers from the trucks, trying to find Duck. But when she startled a flock of birds, she froze in terror. The birds would give her away, and if she was right about the German soldiers, they would soon find her.
So she ran.
But that only made her an easier target. The sound of her coat flapping and her feet crunching thundered in the quiet forest. And she heard other feet crunching, the sounds coming up on her fast. She changed direction to throw off her pursuers, only to come around a bush only yards from a German soldier. She turned again into the forest, but the weakness resulting from months of hunger was beginning to affect her. She was tiring. She willed her legs to keep pumping, but there was no strength left in them. They collapsed under her, and she tumbled forward into the snow. Her arms still worked, so she began to crawl, dragging herself forward on her elbows. It was pointless. Moments after she collapsed, rough hands grabbed her coat and lifted her. Her spine jarred as they slammed her against a tree trunk. Her head swam. A German soldier pressed his forearm against her throat, preventing her from breathing, and said something to her in German she couldn’t understand. She shook her head.
“Who are you?” he asked in Russian.
She tried to answer, but she could only wheeze through the pressure on her throat.
He released his forearm and repeated, “Who are you?”
“Inna… my name is Inna.”
The soldier pulled her to him, spun her around, and quickly tied her wrists behind her back. Then he pushed her forward. Another soldier grumbled something in German, but her captor barked back, and the talking stopped. He pushed her onward, but again her legs collapsed. So the soldier lifted her and simply heaved her onto his shoulder.
As her mind raced, Karen realized this was the first time she’d seen a real German. Her muscles tensed in terror at that, and she could barely breathe as she bounced along, hanging off the German’s shoulder.
CHAPTER 21
THE CHOIRBOY
As Bobby flew, he kept expecting an ocean of sand below him. That was what he’d seen as a kid in those old Rudolph Valentino movies: giant dunes rising like waves over an endless sea of bleached white sand. But those films had been made on Southern California beaches, not here in North Africa. The real McCoy was more rock than beach, jutting up in toothy lines to create a broken landscape that looked like a nightmare to traverse. Steep hills shot up haphazardly, spreading in all directions, spotted with ugly brown bushes. No wonder the Valentino movies hadn’t been filmed here; it was hardly a landscape for making Hollywood dreams.
Bobby had been stationed at a secret US airbase in Eritrea for a little over a week. It was now April 1942. When they arrived, the pilots in Bobby’s squadron had been disappointed. The airbase was a dump. Tents and shacks guarded a gravel runway surrounded by hand-painted signs that warned of unexploded mines. Bomb craters were being used as pre-dug latrines that were simply bulldozed over when they got too disgusting.
The air base had once belonged to the Italians, which was the reason for the bomb damage and the mines. Once the British Royal Air Force drove the Italians out, they handed the base over to the Americans. At the time, the United States had not yet entered the war, and the British wanted a top-secret yet neutral ally who could repair British aircraft without the fear of being attacked by the Germans. Now America was in the war, and it wasn’t just repairing aircraft; it was supplying them—to England and the Soviet Union as well.
This was why Bobby had volunteered for the assignment. If he could help Russia, maybe in some way he’d also be helping Karen. So he and his new squadron had been shipped out on an oil tanker, their disassembled P-39 Airacobras packed in crates and disguised as tractor parts, bound for the oil fields of North Africa and the Middle East. In Eritrea a civilian crew assembled the fighter planes while Bobby and his squadron mates acclimated to the heat and the dust. Their job was flying the reassembled P-39s from Eritrea to Tehran, where the American pilots were to hand them over to Russia for use against the German invaders.
They had lifted off four hours earlier. North Africa was behind them. They passed over the Red Sea and dropped their disposable fuel tanks. Now they flew a straight shot through Saudi Arabia and into Iran. It was all a secret provision of the Lend-Lease Act, the first voyage through what officials in Washington hoped would be a safe and successful supply corridor.
Other, less expensive, equipment was traveling over a slightly different route. Hundreds of Studebaker trucks had been unloaded at Abadan in the Persian Gulf, and from there they drove in long convoys to Tehran, where they would be handed over to the Soviets, who would drive the trucks another fifteen hundred miles through Azerbaijan and Georgia all the way to Russia.
The line of trucks was coming into Bobby’s view now, just over the distant horizon. That meant they were about to cross the border into Iran.
“They don’t look too happy.” It was Jack’s voice on the radio. He’d decided to volunteer, too, hoping the mission might lead to combat.
Bobby glanced down. The squadron was flying over the road to Tehran, and Studebakers congested the route as far as the eye could see. A Bedouin caravan waited on the side of the road, black-robed nomads holding on to their camels and shaking their fists at the stalled trucks.
“Don’t they know there’s a war going on?” Bobby joked.
“Sure they do,” responded Jack. “And I’ll bet half of them are hoping the Germans will win.” It would have been more funny if it hadn’t been true. The British had taken control of Iran by force, exiling their leader—whom the locals called their Shah—replacing him with his unpopular son. Understandably, many of the natives were upset.
“You think the girls wear turbans, too?” It was Wally, the Texan. Wally had recently confessed his true reason for joining the army. He’d gotten kicked off the Texas A&M football team for getting caught in a dormitory at Texas State College for Women. He’d joined the army before he could be kicked out of college, too.