Page 105 of Striking the Balance (Worldwar 4)

She buzzed along steadily, not wanting to gain much altitude.

As long as she was on the Lizard side of the line, she might be shot down as an enemy. Ironic that she’d have to make it to German-held territory to feel safe.

Safe wasn’t all she hoped she’d feel. By the coordinates, she was returning to the same landing strip she’d used before. With luck, Heinrich Jager would be there waiting for her.

Off to the right, muzzle flashes blazed in the darkness. Something hit the side of the fuselage, once, with a sound like a stone clattering off a tin roof. Ludmila gave theStorch more throttle, getting out of there as fast as she could.

That complicated her navigation. If she was going faster, she needed to fly for less time. How much less? She worked the answer out in her head, decided she didn’t like it, and worked it out again. By the time she discovered where she’d gone wrong the first time, a glance at her watch warned her it was time to start looking around for the landing strip.

She hoped she wouldn’t have to do a search spiral. The Germans were liable to start shooting at her if she buzzed around for too long, and the spiral might take her back over Lizard-held territory if it got too big.

There! As usual, the lanterns marking the landing strip were small and dim, but she spotted them. Lowering the enormous flaps on theStorch killed airspeed almost as if she were stepping on the brakes on the highway. The light plane jounced to a stop well within the area the lanterns marked off.

Ludmila flipped up the cockpit door. She climbed out onto the wing, then jumped down to the ground. Men came trotting up toward theStorch. In the darkness, she couldn’t be sure if any of them was Jager.

They recognized her before she could make out who they were. “There-you see, Gunther?” one of them said. “Itis the lady pilot.” He gave the word the feminine ending, as Jager sometimes did, as she had so often heard Georg Schultz do (she wondered what might have happened to Schultz and Tatiana, but only for a moment: as far as she was concerned, they deserved each other).

“Ja,you were right, Johannes,” another German answered. “Only goes to show nobody can be wrongall the time.” A couple of snorts floated out of the night.

Gunther, Johannes-“You are the men from Colonel Jager’s panzer, not so?” Ludmila called quietly. “Is he-is he here, too?” No point pretending she didn’t care; they couldn’t help knowing about her and Jager.

The panzer crewmen stopped in their tracks, almost as if they’d run into an invisible wall. “No, he’s not here,” one of them-Gunther, she thought-answered. He spoke hardly above a whisper, as if he didn’t want his words to go beyond the span of theStorch’s wings.

Ice ran down Ludmila’s back. “Tell me!” she said. “Is he hurt? Is he dead? Did it happen before the cease-fire started? Tell me!”

“He’s not dead-yet,” Gunther said, even more softly than before. “He’s not even hurt-yet. And no, it didn’t happen in the fighting with the Lizards. It happened three days ago, as a matter of fact.”

“Whathappened?” Ludmila demanded.

Maddeningly, Gunther fell silent. After a moment when Ludmila felt like yanking out her pistol and extorting answers at gunpoint. If need be, the crewman named Johannes said, “Miss, the SS arrested him.”

“Bozhemoi,”Ludmila whispered. “Why? What could he have done? Was it on account of me?”

“Damned if we know,” Johannes said. “This weedy little SS pigdog came up, pointed a gun at him, and marched him away. Stinking blackshirt bastard-who does he think he is, arresting the best commander we’ve ever had?”

His crewmen muttered profane agreement. It would have been loud profane agreement, except they were all veterans, and wary of letting anyone outside their circle know their thoughts.

One of them said, “Come on, boys, we’re supposed to be loading ammo into this miserable little plane.”

“It has to be because of me,” Ludmila said. She’d always worried the NKVD would descend on her because of Jager; now, instead, his nation’s security forces had seized him on account of her. That struck her as frightful and dreadfully unfair. “Is there any way to get him free?”

“From the SS?” said the crewman who’d just urged getting the 7.92mm rounds aboard theStorch. He sounded incredulous; evidently the Nazis invested their watchdogs with the same fearsome, almost supernatural powers the Russian people attributed to the NKVD.

But the tankman called Gunther said, “Christ crucified, why not? You think Skorzeny would sit around on his can and let anything happen to Colonel Jager, no matter who’d grabbed him? My left nut he would! He’s an SS man, yes, but he’s a real soldier, too, not just a damned traffic cop in a black shirt. Shit. If we can’t break the colonel out, we don’t deserve to be panzer troopers. Come on!” He was aflame with the idea.

That cautious crewman spoke up again: “All right, what if we do break him out? Where does he go after that?”

No one answered him for a couple of seconds. Then Johannes let out a noise that would have been a guffaw if he hadn’t put a silencer on it. He pointed to the FieselerStorch. “We’ll break him out, we’ll stick him on the plane, and the lady pilot can fly him the hell out of here. If the SS has its hooks in him, he won’t want to stick around anyhow, that’s for damn sure.”

The other panzer crewmen crowded around him, pumping his hand and pounding him on the back. So did Ludmila. Then she said, “Can you do this without danger to yourselves?”

“Just watch us,” Johannes said. He started away from theStorch, calling, “The pilot’s got engine troubles. We’re going to get a mechanic.” And off they went, tramping through the night with sudden purpose in their stride.

Ludmila, left by herself, thought about loading some of the German ammunition into theStorch herself. In the end, she decided not to. She might want every gram of power the light plane had, and extra weight aboard would take some away.

A cricket chirped, somewhere out in the darkness. Waiting stretched. Her hand went to the butt of the Tokarev she wore on her hip. If shooting broke out, she’d run toward it. But, except for insects, the night stayed silent.

One of theWehrmacht men who marked out the landing strip with lanterns called to her:“Alles gut, Fraulein?”

“Ja,”she answered.“Alles gut.” How much of a liar was she?

Booted feet trotting on dirt, coming closer fast… Ludmila stiffened. All she could see, out there in the grass-scented night, were moving shapes. She couldn’t even tell how many till they got close. One, two, three, four… five!

“Ludmila?” Was it? It was! Jager’s voice.

“Da!”she answered, forgetting her German.

Something glittered. One of the panzer men with Jager plunged a knife into the dirt again and again-to clean it, maybe-before he set it back in the sheath on his belt. When he spoke, he proved to have Gunther’s voice: “Get the colonel out of here, lady pilot We didn’t leave any eyes to see who we were”-his hand caressed the hilt of the knife again, just for a moment-“and everybody here is part of the regiment. Nobody’ll rat on us-we did what needed doing, that’s all.”

“You’re every one of you crazy, that’s all,” Jager said, warm affection in his voice. His crewman crowded round him, pressing his hand, hugging him, wishing him well. That would have told Ludmila everything she needed to know about him as an officer, but she’d already formed her own conclusions there.

She pointed to the dim shapes of the ammunition crates. “You’ll have to get rid of those,” she reminded the tankmen. “They were supposed to come with me.”

“We’ll take care of it, lady pilot,” Gunther promised. “We’ll take care of everything. Don’t you worry about it. We may be criminals,ja, but by Jesus we’re not half-assed criminals.” The other tankers rumbled low-voiced agreement.

Ludmila was willing to believe German efficiency extended to crime. She tapped Jager on the shoulder to separate him from his comrades, then pointed to the open door of the FieselerStorch. “Get

---