Dragons Of Englor

Chapter 15

The edge of a fog bank lay across the airfield, creeping in from the sea only five miles away. It made the darkness even deeper, dimming the runway lights to faint and fuzzy yellow glowworms somewhere far off in an unguessable distance.

Blade rolled down the window of the truck cab and peered out into the darkness. From the map and what he'd seen before the fog closed in, Blade could reconstruct everything within two miles of where the truck was parked.

In front of the truck lay the concrete strip of the runway, stretching half a mile off to the left and a mile to the right. On the far side of the runway was a parking strip. On it stood a dozen light bombers of the Sixth Maritime Patrol Squadron of the Rodzmanian Air Force. One of those bombers would take Rilla and Blade home across the Nord Sea to Englor.

Of course they would need some help. Blade looked past Piedar Goron at the wheel of the truck and off to the left, to see if that help could be in sight yet. There was nothing to see except the dim lights of the airfield's hangars and control tower. Blade looked at his watch and realized that it was still a good ten minutes before the pilot was due.

«Thank God, Josip is in a maritime squadron,» said Goron. «Otherwise we would not be able to do our work tonight. The regular bomber squadrons do not fly in this kind of weather. There are not many Rodzmanians in the maritime squadrons, either, and most of those are truly faithful to the Red Flames.» Goron's face twisted, as if he wanted to spit at that thought.

The pilot that Blade knew only as Josip came from an old and distinguished Rodzmanian family. In this respect he was unlike most Rodzmanians who had been permitted to join the armed forces under Red Flame rule. Most of them were «the people from nowhere,» as Goron put it. They were fervently loyal, and any of them would gladly shoot Blade, Rilla, Goron, and Josip without thinking twice.

Josip was different. He came from among those Rodzmanians who normally held themselves rigidly aloof from the Red Flames. So when he wanted to serve them, they welcomed him with open arms. At thirty he was a lieutenant colonel in the Rodzmanian Air Force, with power and privileges superior to nearly all Rodzmanians and a good many Russlanders as well.

He'd paid a price for this, of course. Not all the Russlanders trusted or accepted him, and his own people despised him. His family not only never spoke to him, they never spoke of him. Even by the standards of the underground, his life was a lonely and grim one. Blade was glad Josip would be flying them out to Englor, to enter a life of exile but also of freedom-freedom to work openly against Russland, more freedom than any Rodzmanian could hope to know until the Red Flames were driven out.

Blade turned to look into the back of the truck where Rilla sat cross-legged on a pile of toolboxes and empty ammunition crates. She wore the same clothes she'd worn away from the resort, and over them a winter flying jacket so bulky that it almost concealed even her spectacular figure. She was pale and silent, obviously very much on edge but just as obviously doing a heroic job of concealing it. Blade was tempted to try giving her some reassurance, but decided against it. She was proud enough to resent it.

Blade also didn't want to try filling her with an assurance he didn't feel himself. Perhaps it was just the darkness and the fog, but his intuition told him that this affair was not going to run smoothly right to the end. He wanted very badly to believe that by dawn they would be drinking strong tea and eating eggs and bacon in Englor. He couldn't quite manage it.

The minutes crept by and the fog thickened. The world outside seemed as if it had always been dark and silent and always would be. Then Goron stiffened, and his indrawn breath hissed between his teeth. Blade saw it too. A faint blue white glow was growing in the fog far away to the left. Slowly it turned into a pair of headlights, and behind the headlights appeared the hood and windshield of a staff car.

Blade turned to signal Rilla to lie down on the floor, but she was already doing it. Her breath was coming fast and hard, as if she'd been running. Blade opened the door on his side and climbed out. Goron did the same. Blade unzipped his jacket and unsnapped the shoulder holster that held the little automatic. It had no silencer, but the cartridges were specially stepped-down, useless at twenty feet but deadly at five, and practically noiseless.

The staff car came on fast. For a moment Blade wondered if Josip was going to be able to stop it in the right place. Then the brakes squeaked faintly and the car pulled to a stop, skidding slightly on the wet concrete. The man called Josip opened the right-hand front door and climbed out, his face showing polite surprise.

«What's the trouble?» he said briskly.

That was the signal for action. Blade put both hands on the right front fender, vaulted clear over the hood, and landed on the far side of the car. With one hand he jerked open the driver's door and with the other he drew the automatic and fired two rounds squarely into the driver's face. The stepped-down cartridges made only faint popping noises. The driver made no noise at all as he slid out of the seat and landed on his back on the runway.

At the same moment, one of Josip's crewmen opened the rear door on the far side and tried to scramble out. He was just straightening up when Goron closed in, caught the man by the hair with one hand, and with the other drove a knife up under his chin.

The other crewman got out of the car before Blade could move against him, but no farther. Blade wheeled on one foot and drove the other into the man's groin. He doubled up. Before he could fall Blade grabbed him by the collar of his flying suit, jerked him forward, and chopped the other hand down across the back of the man's neck with lethal force.

Three men down, no noise anyone could have heard more than ten feet away, no radio calls, and no visible damage to the staff car. A good job, carried out from start to finish in less than thirty seconds.

Blade picked up the body of the second crewman and carried it to the truck. Goron did the same with the body of his victim. Josip pushed the driver in on top of the other two bodies, then climbed in himself.

Goron started the truck off again, following Josip's directions. The pilot's face was as gray as the fog outside and wet with either fog or sweat or both. «I've drawn Six Nine Six,» he said quietly. «Rules for bad-weather operations call for a maximum fuel load. We have plenty to take us to Englor, even at low altitude, and no one suspects anything.»

The truck pulled to a stop by one wing of the patrol bomber. Josip slid out of the back, Blade and Rilla followed him, and Goron climbed out of the driver's seat to join the others. Blade held a machine pistol taken from one of the dead crewmen and three hand grenades dangled from his belt.

The patrol bomber loomed above them, looking lean and rakish even in the darkness and the fog. An aluminum ladder was propped against the left wing. Josip went over to the ladder and began to climb.

«I must radio in that I am at the plane,» he said.

«Can't you wait until we've started the engines?» said Blade. «Then we can move fast if we have to.»

Josip shook his head. «Then they would be suspicious. I am sorry, but there is no other way. When I have made the call, I will open the belly hatch for you and the woman.»

«I'll climb up on top,» said Blade. «I think one of us had better keep watch, until you've started the engines and Piedar is out of sight.»

Goron turned so that he could reach out with one hand to Blade and with the other to Rilla. «I would like to see you people take off, of course, but-«

«You realize that it's time you were on your way,» Blade finished for him.

Goron laughed. «Yes, I suppose so. I suppose I should not even have come this far, but I could not do otherwise. Not after that many-times damned order from Englor.»

Blade said nothing, for there was nothing to say about that order that he hadn't already said several times. He would cheerfully strangle whoever gave it with his bare hands, but that would have to wait until he was back in Englor.

Blade scrambled up the ladder, feeling it creak under his weight, and climbed onto the wing. The dull gray aluminum was slick underfoot, and he moved carefully as he made his way toward the fuselage.

Blade reached the fuselage and looked forward. Josip was already in the cockpit, head bent over the controls. The whirr of a starter floated up to Blade's ears, and the truck with Piedar Goron at the wheel jerked into motion.

Blade raised one hand in a silent salute to the underground leader. He would have given a good part of his own chances at a safe return to Englor to get Goron safely out of here.

It happened so fast that if Blade's own intuition hadn't already made him partly alert, even his own swift and skilled reactions might not have been enough. A sudden crack overhead, like the blast of a shotgun, and the fog and the wet concrete and the aluminum of the plane seemed to glow as a flare burst high above the runway. Even in the fog it blazed so fiercely that for a moment Blade did not see the headlights racing toward him down the runway. He could only hear the swelling roar of engines, but that was enough to finish alerting him. By the time he could see clearly again, he knew where to look for the enemy.

There were three vehicles racing toward him. In the lead was a small jeep with three men in civilian clothes in it. Behind the jeep was a large canvas-topped truck. In the rear was an armored car, the commander standing up in the turret and the driver visible in the front hatch.

Blade's arm curved and his hand closed on one of the grenades. In a single flowing motion he jerked the pin, swung his arm far back, and snapped it forward. The grenade arched through the fog. As the flare died it struck the runway only a few feet ahead of the jeep. At the exact moment the jeep passed above it, the grenade exploded.

The blast lifted the jeep completely clear of the ground and in the same moment ignited the gas tank in a searing flash of yellow white flame. The sound of screaming men and crumpling metal as the jeep fell back to the ground were lost in the roar of the flames.

With a desperate twist of the wheel, the driver of the truck avoided ramming the flaming wreckage of the jeep. As the truck swerved, one tire must have passed over some sharp fragment of metal. There was another shotgun sound as the tire blew and a squeal of rubber as the truck went into a wild skid. It swung left, the driver fighting desperately for control, as the men in the back started leaping for safety. Three came out, two going down and not rising, a third staggering to his feet with his rifle still in his hands. Blade started to pull the pin from another grenade, then suddenly realized where the truck was going to end up. Instead, he leaped down from the plane's fuselage onto the wing, no longer worrying about slipping on the wet metal.

He was still fighting for balance on the wing when the skidding truck crashed into the plane. The truck tore off the nose landing gear and the nose smashed down onto the truck's cab. Blade lost his footing and nearly skidded right off the trailing edge of the wing. For a moment he had the feeling that the plane was going to flip right over like a playing card and land with him underneath.

Blade flung himself on his belly toward the leading edge of the wing, raising his machine pistol as he did. This was the kind of close fighting where it was deadly. A single burst emptied the magazine and cut down four Russland soldiers as they struggled out of the truck.

Blade threw his second grenade, aiming for a tear in the canvas top of the truck. His throw was good. Fragments of metal, canvas, human bodies, and weapons showered down all around. The truck's gas tank spewed flame. Blade took advantage of the moment's confusion to swim himself over the edge of the wing. He hung by his hands for a moment, then dropped to the concrete.

As he put a new magazine in the machine pistol, the cockpit canopy opened and Josip scrambled out onto the fuselage. His face was set and grim, and he carried a pistol in his right hand. At that moment Blade saw that the armored car was stopped out on the runway and the machine gun in the turret was swinging toward the plane. Josip straightened up, Blade yelled a warning, and the machine gun gave a quick, angry rattle. Josip's uniform turned dark from chest down to groin and his face set even harder. He reeled, fired two shots from his pistol, and toppled off the plane.

As Josip struck the concrete, Rilla ran out from where she'd been waiting under the plane. Blade shouted to her, «Get down!» and practically dragged her to the concrete with him. He shifted the machine pistol to a two-handed grip and sighted in on the armored car's commander in his turret.

Then the turret began to swing again and Blade saw something move in toward the armored car from the edge of the parking area. It was Piedar Goron in his truck, turning his back on the safety he might have found in the forest to come back and try to salvage a mission gone spectacularly wrong. The machine gun went off, and at the same time Goron fired out his window. He had a poor angle and a moving platform, but his submachine gun didn't need precise aiming. A long burst filled the air around the armored car with bullets. The commander crumpled in his hatch and the turret stopped turning as his body jammed it. Goron's truck screeched to a stop, and Blade leaped to his feet. He dashed out into the open, avoiding bodies and nearly slipping on concrete now slippery with blood and leaking fuel from the plane. He ran up to the driver's hatch of the armored car and put a burst from his machine pistol into the chest of the man inside.

As Blade reached in to pull the driver out of the car, Goron came stumbling up. He limped, one arm dangled uselessly, there was blood in the corner of his mouth and a long ugly bullet graze along one cheek. He was obviously hurt, probably badly.

Rilla ran out to join them as Blade pulled the dead commander out of the turret. The paleness of her face was now broken by several large smudges of grease or soot, and her hands shook slightly. But she was enough in control of herself to help Goron into the car. Blade finished with the commander, took the man's pistol and gloves, and climbed into the car. He gave a desperate mental prayer for it to start and nearly shouted out loud in relief and delight as the engine rumbled into life. Then he swung the car around to pass close to the plane.

Goron bit back a gasp of pain and stared at Blade. «Why-this?»

«Confuse our trail a bit,» said Blade. Without stopping he took one hand off the wheel to pick up his last grenade. He pulled the pin with his teeth, then heaved the grenade out the window and up onto the wing of the plane. As it exploded, he slammed one size twelve shoe down on the gas pedal. The armored car swerved wildly, started to skid, straightened out, and roared away down the runway as the patrol bomber erupted in flames behind it.

Blade shifted gears and shouted to Rilla, «Keep a lookout behind!» He shifted gears again, and the hammering roar of the diesel under the hood grew louder. In the rearview mirror Blade could see the flames mounting higher and higher and spreading farther and farther as burning fuel flowed out across the runway. The Russlanders would undoubtedly want to come after them, but they'd also be worried about putting out the flames before they spread to other planes, reopening the runway, and-

Blade stared. Through the fog, high above the trees at the far end of the runway, he could see a set of lights, red and green and white, rapidly growing larger. Somehow the airfield hadn't suspended flight operations. Now a plane was coming in to land on the runway, possibly right on top of them.

The armored car shook as the burning plane's bomb load went off with a tremendous crash, sending the flames higher and scattering great chunks of metal in all directions. Blade pushed the-gas pedal all the way to the floor and the car shot forward in a cloud of smoke and spray from the wet runway. Goron let out a gasp of pain as he was thrown back into his seat. Rilla was silent, biting her lip until Blade could see drops of blood on it.

Somewhere far behind them a machine gun opened up. Where it was shooting from and what it was shooting at, Blade didn't know or care, as long as it was out of range. Perhaps the gunners in their fright and confusion might shoot down the incoming plane before the control tower could guide it clear!

The machine gunners somehow managed to hold their fire in time. The incoming plane, a twin-engined transport, sailed in only yards above the armored car. It touched down smoothly five hundred feet behind the car, and also five hundred feet short of where wreckage and flames completely blocked the runway. Blade heard the shrill whine of turboprops thrown into reverse and a desperate squealing of tires as the pilot saw what lay ahead and frantically tried to stop his plane.

Blade saw the transport plane roll swiftly and with a deadly inevitability straight into the flames. He saw it shudder and slue wildly as tires blew. Miraculously, it did not flip over or break apart. It was still intact as it lurched to a stop squarely in the middle of the flames. There was a long moment when Blade saw doors flying open and small dark figures frantically leaping out. Then plane and leaping figures all vanished in a great swelling globe of flame as the fuel tanks went up. The rearview mirror showed more flaming fragments whirling through the air, to skip along the runway or slash into parked bombers. More flames roared up as two of the bombers caught fire.

Blade heard Rilla gasp and Goron put all his remaining strength into a feeble cheer. Then the end of the runway appeared ahead, sweeping rapidly toward them. Blade eased off on the gas. The car slowed slightly as it ran off the concrete and rumbled onto the grass beyond the end of the runway.

A hundred yards away the perimeter fence of the airbase took shape out of the fog. Blade saw barbed wire, a wooden gate with a tower flanking it, uniformed figures running frantically, the flash of rifles. He heard the tang-ting-tonnnng of bullets on the armor and a crack as the radio antennas were shot off. He heard no blasts of tires going flat or booms of fuel tanks igniting. He grinned savagely, aimed the car straight for the wooden gate, and jammed the accelerator to the floor again.

The massive forged double bumper and inch-thick frontal armor of the car drove through the wooden gate like an ax through an orange crate. Wood splintered and flew, wire parted with sharp twangs, the thick glass of the windshield cracked clean across but did not shatter inward. Churned-up gravel thundered against the car's belly as Blade turned it onto the access road; more bullets rattled on the side and rear armor.

Then they were away into the darkness and the fog, moving so fast that in a minute even the roaring flames on the airfield faded into the night. They raced on alone, the booming roar of the diesel making it impossible to talk and almost impossible to think. They roared on, with the night all around them, for all they could tell the only human beings left alive in all the world.

Eventually they came to a patch of woods at the bottom of a hill. At the top of the hill Blade could make out a sign and a short stretch of what looked like a paved highway. He pulled off the gravel road into the shelter of the trees and stopped the car.

Goron let out a long sigh, wincing with the pain it caused him. Then he spoke, his voice strained and low, with an ugly bubbling sound deep in his throat as he breathed.

«You should leave the car here. It will be harder for them to find you if you go on foot. I can stay here and fight them when they find the car.»

Blade shook his head. «We'll do a damned sight better in the car. If I remember correctly, that road up there is National Highway 32. If we take it north for about sixty miles, we'll be in good territory for stealing a boat and heading offshore.»

«A boat?» asked Rilla.

Blade controlled his reluctance to give out unnecessary information and nodded. «Yes. There's an uninhabited island off the coast that's regularly visited by Imperial submarines. If we can reach it and hold out for about ten days, I expect we will be picked up without any more trouble.

«If we go on foot, it will be three days before we can reach the fishing villages. If we stay with the car, we can be well out to sea before the fog lifts tomorrow morning. Also, there's Piedar. I don't see how he can travel on foot in his condition.»

Goron stared at Blade. «But I do not-«

«We're not going to abandon you here, and stop trying to talk us into it. Is there any underground cell anywhere along Highway 32 where we could leave you?»

Reluctantly, Goron nodded.

«Good,» said Blade. «Rilla, help him into the back and-you know first aid, I hope?»

«Yes.»

«There's a kit in my pack. Make him as comfortable as possible and try to keep him warm. Then keep a lookout behind, though I think it will be a while before we're pursued. They were certainly expecting us at the airfield. But we've left a bit of a shambles behind us. I don't think they were expecting that. By the time they've counted what's left of the bodies and figured out who did what to whom, we can be well on our way.»

«What about the guards at the gate?»

«They may be able to make a good guess which way we went,» Blade admitted. «But-Rilla, you know how the Red Flames' forces work. You think they'll be coming after us without orders?»

Rilla managed a shaky smile, her first in hours. «No. I think you are right.» She rose to her knees and reached around between the seats for Goron. «Come, friend Piedar. Come back here and try to sleep. I think this has gone on longer for you than for us.»

Goron tried to speak but could only nod as he tried to lift himself out of the seat. He was halfway out of the seat when he gave a great choking cry, spraying blood from his nose and mouth all over the windshield, the dashboard, and Blade. Then he gave a fainter choke, more blood trickled from his mouth, and he fell back into the seat.

Blade lifted one limp arm and felt for the pulse. He felt it continue strongly for a few more seconds, then slowly fade away to nothing. He let go of the dead man's hand and wiped the blood off his own face. Then without a word he started the engine again, put the car into gear, and headed up the hill.