Striking the Balance

“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 in,” she said. “Take the rear seat, the one with the machine gun.”

“We’d better not have to use it,” he answered, hooking a foot in the stirrup at the bottom of the fuselage that let him climb up onto the wing and into the cockpit. Ludmila followed. She pulled down the door and dogged it shut. Her finger stabbed at the self-starter. The motor caught. She watched the soldiers scatter, glad she hadn’t had to ask one to spin the prop for her.

“Have you got your belt on?” she asked Jager. When he said yes, she let theStorch scoot forward across the field: the acceleration might have shoved her passenger out of his seat if he hadn’t been strapped in place.