On Wings of Silence, page 2
Light blinded Raisa as they, too, were caught in the web of sweeping lights. Bullets from below punched through the thin canvas of their aircraft. Raisa pulled back hard on the stick to climb before maneuvering to sideslip out of the searchlight’s stare. After the intensity of the light, the darkness beyond was black as tar. But the plane wasn’t handling as it should. Tracer fire exploded behind them.
“Oksana?” Raisa’s hands gripped the stick and pulled for all she was worth.
“Oh, God,” Oksana cried. Panic raised her voice.
Raisa tried to look back at her. “Are you hit?”
“Oh, God.”
The plane shuddered around them. “Forget God, are you hit?” Raisa yelled.
“No. I can see the sky between my feet, Raisa!”
“I’m having a hard time turning.”
“Left ailerons.” Oksana shouted. “Gone. Wing is full of holes.”
Raisa twisted to see the remains of the wiring flailing off the wing tip.
“Drop our load, we have to get out of here,” she screamed through the din of explosions around them. They continued to climb. At the release of their bombs, the plane leapt higher into the night.
Pushing the engine to its limits, the battle soon raged behind them. They’d made it through, but there was no time to celebrate. They were still in trouble. With the ailerons disabled, and the wings ready to tear apart, turning the plane would mean making calculated banks and turns to maneuver them back around. The ceiling was dropping rapidly as well as the temperature. The beginnings of the promised storm had arrived early. Fat flakes of snow soon filled the air as Raisa was forced to lower their altitude. If she could just get them turned around and back to base.
How far off course had she taken them? Raisa tried to make out any landmarks below.
“Oksana, where are we?”
“I don’t know how far south we’ve moved. Nothing looks familiar. I can patch the ailerons if I can reach them. I’ll slide out along the lower wing—” She unlatched her harness.
Raisa fought the plane into another wide turn. “No. Dammit. We need to descend. She’s starting to ice. It will be warmer below.”
“Maybe find a place to land. Make repairs there?” Oksana advised.
“I wish to hell I could see.” Raisa pushed the stick forward to drop the nose of the plane. Ice continued to build on the leading edge of the wings. They were losing lift.
“I’ll drop a flare.” Oksana pulled the pin on the parachuted flare and tossed it out. When it blazed ten seconds later, it showed only tree tops before burning out into the black below.
Darkness was quick to surrounded them. After the brightness of the flare, it took a moment for Raisa’s sight to adjust. “Wait.” She pointed to a lightning she could see in the landscape. “I can just make out the edge of the trees. There. Is there a house?”
“Looks like a barn. Or half a barn. Not much left. Field beyond. Can you make the field?”
At the rate the wings were building ice, it was doubtful. There was no time. They were losing speed quickly. No speed, no lift. Without lift, Raisa couldn’t even hope to glide the plane in, but it was their only hope.
“Hang on. I’m putting her down.”
But they were dropping too fast. With the ice buildup on the wings, Raisa couldn’t maintain their speed.
“Not going to make the field. Hold on!”
The world seemed to slow to a crawl as the aircraft’s wheels clipped the top of the trees. Its branches snatching them from the air and ripping at their wings.
Into the swirl of the storm the sounds of the plane crashing and tearing around them were horrific, but it was the silence following Raisa into her darkness that would forever haunt her.
CHAPTER 2
The concussion of the explosion threw Calvin Elliott to the ground. Tiger tanks continued to advance and blow gaping holes in anything in front of them. Debris rained down to cover him and the man doing his best to die in the frozen mud nearby. Scrambling, Calvin crawled closer to the wounded man and yanked the proper dressing and sulfur powder from his field kit.
“Litter!” he screamed over the din of machine gun fire.
The man before him clawed at a gaping wound in his leg. His cries, inhuman. Calvin pulled the man’s dog tags and wiped at his glasses to read. His name was Paul Turner. He was a private. AB Positive. Catholic.
“I got you, soldier. You’re okay,” Calvin repeated the requisite lie. How many times had he said those words and never meant them? If Private Paul Turner didn’t bleed out, at minimum the man would lose what was left of his leg. Calvin applied a tourniquet to the man’s upper thigh and secured the dressing to the mangled flesh. He was so sick of sending home soldiers with shattered remains of limbs, features, minds, lives. Blood soaked through Calvin’s clothes. The smell of it mixed with the earthy smell of the muddy trenches.
At the pounding of the next explosion of the German 88’s, two corpsmen dove with their stretcher next to them. “Lost a bucket load of blood. Get him out fast,” Calvin ordered.
The young corpsman before him scribbled on the patient’s emergency tag and tied it on the now silent, still soldier. Calvin checked the man’s neck for a pulse as he was transferred to the litter.
“He’s thready. Go!”
Moving among the others, Calvin sorted living from dead—or soon-to-be dead. Who could he help? Who was far too wounded to survive? He made his way from one to the other playing some macabre lottery game of who could be saved, who could not.
Time lost all meaning. Names, faces blurred into a sea of blood, torn bodies, destruction. Soldiers’ identities were reduced to their wounds and a few words stamped on a steel tag. Injuries were arranged by severity. It was one of the few times in this life where being worse made you first.
“Elliott!”
Calvin finished applying a sling to a broken arm and helped the man to his feet before handing him off. “Xray. Likely fractured ulna and radius.”
He turned to find Shep, Captain Steve Shepherd, his commander, head surgeon, all-around pain in the ass, and best friend. This was Shep’s second war. There was nothing he hadn’t seen. Nothing rattled him. When Calvin had arrived fresh from the farm fields of Iowa, Shep had been the one to take him under his wing. Calvin’s first days, he’d spent more time throwing up than he’d spent in the operating room. After hurling his guts into the bushes, Shep would suddenly appear by his side.
“Some of these guys are just babies. How the hell did they get here?”
“If they can see lightning, hear thunder, and chew milk, they’re fit enough to fight,” he joked. “It ain’t fair that any of us are here. But, son, this be the best medical training you’ll ever get.”
“If I’m planning on working in an ER in Chicago, maybe. How many machine gun wounds you think I’m gonna treat in my Pop’s practice back in Iowa?”
“None, here’s hopin’, but it will make anything else look like you’re putting a Band-Aid on a blister.”
“Elliott!” Shep called again. “We’re out. Replacements arrived. Ordered to accompany this lot back to the hospital. I’ll go in the jeep. Got two of the worst with me. Find a seat in the ambulance. Let’s get out of here.”
Calvin nodded and gave a last look around. Part of him wanted to stay and keep working, help who he could help. The other part of him wanted to run as fast as he could away from the suffering heaped about him.
“We’ll take it from here, Lieutenant.” One of the replacements seemed to read his mind. “Best get out while you can. Likely the last transfer tonight. Weather’s moving in.”
The ambulance was full to bursting. Standing room only. Or was that lying room only? Patients were stacked four high. Behind him, another was being told he’d have to wait.
“No. There’s a spot here.” Calvin helped settle the man in his seat.
“But, Lieutenant.”
“No buts,” he argued. “Go.” He ordered the driver.
As the ambulance pulled away, Shep’s jeep practically ran over Calvin’s foot before screeching to a stop. “Your ears flap over? You were supposed to be on that transport.” Shep stabbed a finger at the retreating van.
“Don’t worry. I’m right behind you,” Calvin insisted. Those words so casually said always caused a twist to his gut. He shook the memory away. “Ten minutes tops.”
“How?”
“I’ll figure it out.” Calvin pointed to a mud-coated motorcycle. “Don R’s bike. Problem solved.”
Shep frowned beneath the edge of his helmet. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this, at all.”
“Captain...” Shep’s orderly looked from the patient to them both.
“No time to argue with you,” Shep growled as he crawled over the back of his seat to tend to the dying man.
The jeep pulled away. “I know a shortcut. I bet I beat you back,” Calvin called after them.
“Just make sure you get there in one piece,” Shep yelled. “If you get yourself killed, I’ll save your sorry hide just so I can kill you again.”
“Yes, sir.” Calvin saluted the back of the speeding jeep.
Less than five minutes later, Calvin kicked the motorcycle into life and headed away from the advanced aid station bunker of logs and dirt and back to the hotel the army had secured as a field hospital in Oberaudenhain. It would seem like a damn palace compared to this place.
Shifting with his foot, he raced ahead. It would be dark soon, and snow was already falling. These back roads on a good day were treacherous. They were narrow and winding and full of pot holes you could lose a cow in. Having to travel in blackout conditions made it worse, But Calvin had witnessed what could happen on the main roads. Moving north three weeks past, a vehicle behind them had been blown off the road they had just passed over when it hit a landmine.
A single squinty headlight barely reached into the dark. Calvin swept snow off his goggles and pulled his scarf higher to protect his face from frostbite. Wasn’t it spring? Fat, wet snowflakes fell steadily now. His turn should be up here on the right. A warm meal would be great after a week of C&K rations. As he did, too often, especially around this time of the day, he wondered what his mother was making for dinner. It used to drive her mad when he asked her the simple question...every day.
“You’ll eat whatever I cook and be thankful, Calvin Everest Elliott,” she would scold. “Your father is off delivering the Cooper’s twins. I’m making them a casserole. I haven’t had time to worry about filling those two hollow legs of yours.”
When he got home, he’d stuff more than his hollow legs with her roast rosemary chicken and beans fresh from the garden. Biscuits a mile high. Mom made the best biscuits. Slathered in fresh butter. And gravy. Lord, he missed her gravy. His stomach growled at the memory as he sped down the snow-covered road.
Miles later, the temperature continued to drop, and Calvin was frozen and not lost. I’m not lost, I’m not lost... his mind repeated the mantra. How had he missed his turn? Maybe he should turn around and head back the way he came or keep going and see if he could find a sign or something he recognized.
He could hear his mother again. “You’re stubborn just like your father. Last spring we drove around for three hours trying to find your cousin’s house. Three hours. Stubborn ox wouldn’t admit he was lost. ‘I know how we got here, and I know where we came from, I’m not lost.’ We were lost! Cousin Hilda still has not forgiven me for missing her birthday dinner.”
“But I got you there, didn’t I?” his father argued.
“Three hours late.” his mother shot back.
“Hilda is a horrible cook. You should be thanking me.”
Calvin wiped at his goggles again. Worry crept up his spine. “Sorry, Pop... I gotta admit it this time. I’m goddammed lost.”
He kept pushing through the night. With the storm swirling around him, he couldn’t even distinguish which direction he was going anymore. He could be pulling into Hitler’s driveway and not know it. The road made a sharp bend which had him traveling through an abandoned town. He prayed it was abandoned. Remains of buildings stared out at him with shattered windows and crumbling walls. Calvin needed to slow down to make his way through the surrounding rubble. Still, he found no markings or signs in the snow to tell him where he was.
His heart pounded in his ears as worry replaced hunger and gnawed at his belly. The town was soon behind him. Small empty houses peppered his route as he raced down the slippery roads. An old dilapidated barn still stood by its shell of a farmhouse; its owners long gone. Had they simply left? Been killed? Captured?
Calvin couldn’t help but think of his hometown of Guttenberg. He’d passed farms just like that one back there every day. His mother’s people, German immigrants, had formed the town over a hundred years ago, just for its rich farmland. He couldn’t imagine war ever touching his town like this. He wondered if the farmer a mile back had imagined such a fate.
A flash of gunfire pierced the night from his left. The bite of a bullet tore through his arm and seemed to launch the bike from beneath him. It happened so fast Calvin couldn’t process. All he knew was he was riding one moment, bleeding in a ditch the next. The jolt forced the air from his lungs. He was losing consciousness. Had he hit his head? His blood steamed as it stained the snow. Were they coming through the dark to finish killing him?
Oh, God... “Sorry, Pop... I’m goddammed lost for good this time,” he moaned.
Calvin strained to hear past the ringing in his ears. He didn’t dare move. His arm burned. In the dark, he tried to assess the damage. Bastard had to have been aiming for the red cross on his arm. Bullet passed clear through his bicep. He could feel where it had entered and exited. A better shot would have shattered the bone at least... or killed him. Blood pumped past his probing fingers. He may be dead yet if he couldn’t stanch the flow.
Several yards above him the motorcycle’s engine hissed in the snow. The slivered headlight was buried in the snow at the side of the road. Calvin began to crawl out of the ditch in its direction, then stopped. He smelled fuel. Rolling back down, he flattened his body into the snow seconds before the machine’s gas tank burst into flames. Fire lit the scene around him. Calvin braced himself against the side of the ditch.
One handed, with shaking fingers slick with blood, he managed to unbuckle one of his field kits. It felt as if it took hours for him to pull free one of the waxed dressing boxes and open it. Using his teeth, he held one end of the tie and pulled it as tight as he was able.
Above him, the bike still burned. With any hope, whoever shot him would assume he was part of those flames, as well. Keeping close to the ground, Calvin crawled out of the ditch and away from the road. Getting to his feet he rushed toward the trees. Twice his knees threatened to abandon him.
The snow was coming fast now. His tracks would soon be gone. If he could just make it back to the farmhouse he’d passed. Get out of the weather. Tend to his arm proper. Lie low ‘til morning. The dressing he’d applied had begun to slip. Blood ran hot into his glove.
Shock made his thoughts race. “Lie low ‘til mornin.’” he mumbled. Even in the cold, sweat dampened his temples. Where the hell was the damn barn? He should have reached it by now, shouldn’t he? Calvin stopped and looked behind him. Had he somehow turned himself in the wrong direction? No, he was sure it was this way. Couldn’t be much further.
“I was wrong back there, Pop... Spoke too soon. Ma’s right.” He stumbled and fell. Cradling his arm, he fought to get back on his feet and keep moving. “About the stubborn part. You and me, Pop. Like mules.” Before long, Calvin could make out a dark shape through the snow. “You and me...Know where we’ve been. Know how we got here... never lost.” He panted and pointed through the snow. “See, there Pop. never lost.”
CHAPTER 3
Cold kisses of snow fell on Raisa’s cheek. Where was she? Raising her head, the world began to spin. She tugged her hand from her glove with her teeth and ran it over her eyes. Her face was wet. Reality dragged her back into consciousness.
They were down. Crashed. Tangled in the trees. The cockpit sat tipped at an odd angle.
“Oksana?” Raisa’s head pounded as she pushed to look behind her. “Oksana, are you okay?”
Silence greeted her.
“Can you hear me?” Oksana?”
Fumbling with the release, Raisa unclasped her harness and needed to hang on to the side of the cockpit to keep from tumbling out.
“Oksana?” Finally able to turn, she still couldn’t see anything in the dark. Dammit, where was her flashlight? “Answer me, Oksana.”
By feel, Raisa oriented herself. The flashlight should be clipped under the left side of her seat. She pulled off her other heavy glove with her teeth and felt around.
“Please...,” she sobbed as her fingers curled around the cold metal. Pulling it free, it took two hands to push the switch. The sweep of light illuminated the wreckage around her. Both right wings had been sheared off. The engine and prop sat steaming at a crumpled angle to the left. The lower left wing had been shredded but remained attached to the upper by one strut.
Afraid of what she might see behind her, Raisa swung the light toward Oksana. The rear cockpit was empty. The uncomfortable harness hung vacant. “Oksana?”
Frantic, Raisa searched the area. The flashlight’s beam found nothing but undistinguishable pieces of their PO-2. Raisa pulled herself out and away from what remained of the plane and began searching. Pure icy terror rushed through her. She wiped at her face. What she thought was cold sweat showed red in the light. She was bleeding. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but finding Oksana. Had she jumped? Been thrown? “Dammit, where are you?”
Raisa shoved aside torn branches and what remained of the upper right wing when she saw her. Oksana’s body laying crumpled in the snow.
Relief ricocheted off fear as she fell to her knees dropping the flashlight into the snow. Her hands shook as she reached out to roll her friend's body over. Red stained the snow beneath her leg. Was she dead?
