Meanwhile, Karen was getting used to the tickle of the insects. They didn’t bother her as much that second night, and she fell fast asleep. She woke to the sound of wolves howling. All around her the encamped soldiers slept soundly, apparently not bothered by the haunting sound. Then, suddenly, the howling stopped. Karen stood up and listened. The night was perfectly quiet. Even the insects had stopped chirping.
She didn’t know why, exactly, but she was worried. The howling had come from the northwest, back toward Tikhvin. Leaving Petr to sleep, she released the safety on her German submachine gun and began walking down the tracks in the direction from which they’d come.
After about ten minutes, Karen stopped. She suddenly felt frightened. She was alone, in the dark. She regretted not waking Petr and asking him to come with her. She hadn’t heard the wolves this whole time, so they must have moved on. She took a deep breath and turned to head back to the train.
Then she heard something growl. It was behind her, farther down the tracks toward Tikhvin. She gripped the submachine gun in both hands and crept in the same direction she’d been marching. She saw figures in the starlight—wolves. They were stalking something on the tracks. What was it? It looked like another wolf, its form silhouetted. It was surrounded and outnumbered, but it stood its ground, snout curled back and growling. The wolves didn’t growl. They approached cautiously and began to circle the victim. They didn’t have to growl. They knew they would take it down.
But they hadn’t counted on Karen. “Get away! Shoo!” she yelled.
They didn’t. She jerked the trigger. The gunfire startled the wolves, and they bolted back into the woods. But the animal on the track seemed completely unafraid of the submachine gun. It straightened up and began loping toward her, its teeth flashing in the moonlight and its tongue lolling.
It was Duck.
Karen rushed toward the dog and embraced him in a tight hug. Duck pushed against her, and they tumbled together onto the railroad tracks. Duck pushed his wet snout into her face and began licking her. She nearly suffocated under Duck’s tongue, but she didn’t care; she just hugged him and savored the beat of his heart and the feel of his warm fur.
“Look who’s here,” Karen said.
Petr groaned and slapped at whatever it was that had woken him again. He opened his eyes to see a dog’s snout—not just any snout; it was Duck’s.
He grabbed the hound’s head and drew him into a bear hug. Duck smiled and licked Petr.
“How’d you find him?” Petr asked in wonder.
“He was following us, straight down the railroad tracks.”
Petr tugged at Duck’s fur and rubbed him behind the ears. “I heard gunshots—was that you?”
Karen nodded. “A groggy sentry came my way, but he understood—once I told him about the wolves.”
“Wolves?”
“They were after Duck.’
“Incredible,” Petr marveled.
“Sure is,” Karen said. “He’s a survivor, that one.”
Petr hesitated a moment. “I’m gonna take him back,” he confessed.
“Back where?”
“To Moscow, to his family.” Petr looked away, trying to gather his thoughts and express them coherently. “He’s fought enough. He deserves to go home.”
“We all do,” Karen agreed.
“But for him it’s different,” Petr explained. “If the army gets ahold of him again, they’ll just strap another bomb to him. He won’t survive.”
“Will you? Will anyone?” Karen gestured at the sleeping soldiers.
Petr shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe not. But at least we’ve got a chance. At least we’re allowed to fight, not just forced to commit suicide like Duck.”
But even as Petr said the words, he sensed they were untrue. He remembered their mass attack on the village, in waves. The soldiers in the front of that wave had no chance of surviving, not really. Weren’t they being forced to kill themselves, too?
He pushed the thought out of his mind. “Anyway,” he continued, “we should leave here now.”
“Now?” Karen shot back, alarmed. “Why now?”
Petr grimaced. It was painful for him to say good-bye, obviously, but his mind was made up. “They won’t let Duck on the train, and even if they did, it would only be as military property. How long do you think he’d last?”
Karen immediately realized Petr was right. She scrambled to gather her meager belongings. “I’m coming with you.”
“Really?” Petr was smiling. Obviously it was what he wanted but had been afraid to ask. “Why?”
“I told you I’d help you find his family. Now let’s go before someone stops us.”
They began moving quietly toward the perimeter of the sleeping soldiers. Karen hesitated, leaned over, and picked up a Mosin-Nagant rifle. Its owner didn’t stir in his sleep.
“What are you doing?” Petr whispered.
“It’s a long walk. We’ve gotta eat,” she replied, handing him the weapon. “Now hurry up, let’s get out of here.”
They headed off into the darkness, letting the railroad ties guide them, the first steps of a long march to Moscow.
CHAPTER 32
THE CHOIRBOY
It was already June, but you would never have known it by looking out the cockpit window. The rugged little Aleutian Islands far below were still capped with snow, and beyond them raged the cold and stormy Bering Sea.
Bobby wondered how long he’d last in those rolling waves. A matter of minutes, probably, before he numbed from hypothermia and slipped into the depths. Bailing out over water wasn’t a good strategy for survival. But neither was burning up in a cockpit. To die either by fire or by ice, Bobby realized with dread, might be the final decision of his young life.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. That was just the fear talking.
Bobby had grown up Catholic. He was a believer, in his own way. But he was also educated enough to come to his own conclusions about human evolution. He believed men to be animals, subject to all the laws of biology that entailed. And he believed in Darwin’s theory—that all animals, humans included, had evolved to embrace those characteristics that enhanced their chances of survival. Fear was one such characteristic. Fear had a purpose; fear helped the human race survive. Fear compelled men to run away from danger, and more often than not, those who gave in to that compulsion survived. That was why fear still existed, why it persisted after millions of years of evolution—a unifying characteristic of all humans.
But Bobby also believed that human intelligence had devised ways to surpass natural evolution. Men had never evolved wings, and yet here he was, flying into battle over the northernmost territories in the United States. His wings weren’t provided by God or nature, but by engineering that human minds devised.
He wasn’t running from danger, but flying toward it. He’d skipped evolution, and in return, his fear betrayed him. If fear was meant to improve Bobby’s chance of survival, fear would have prevented him from getting into his plane. It would have prevented him from joining the Army Air Forces. It would have prevented him from falling in love with Karen Hamilton in the first place.
Fear hadn’t done any of those things. Fear had come too late. And, like most things that come too late, fear had become less of a help than a hindrance. Bobby tried to change his thoughts and attitudes; he tried consciously to alter his mind-set and forget about the fear. But he found that exercise maddeningly challenging.