Bombs Away Read Online Free PDF Page B

we’ll show them as much.” He looked out at the bomber crews. “If anyone has qualms of conscience, he may withdraw now. No black marks will go into his service record if he does, I promise.”
    That was bullshit. Everyone knew it, promise or no. The Air Force would neither forgive nor forget a withdrawal now. Several flyers left anyhow, including a pilot and a copilot. Bill Staley sat where he was. The Red Chinese were killing too many of his countrymen. Whatever he could do to stop them, he would. He didn’t care what kind of weapon he used. It wasn’t as if they were fussy about such things.
    By Harrison’s scowl, he hadn’t expected anyone to walk out. “All right,” he said. “The rest of us will go on. We are going to interdict the Chinese and the Russians at a much deeper level than they’re looking for. Once that’s done, we’ll finish cleaning up the Korean peninsula.” He looked out at them again. “Any questions, gentlemen?”
    “What happens if Stalin starts using atomic bombs, too, sir?” a major asked.
    “He’ll be sorry,” Harrison replied. The flyers bayed laughter. He went on, “Anything else?” No one spoke. He nodded. “We’ll get ready, then.”
    —
    Boris Gribkov eased the Tu-4’s yoke forward. The heavy bomber’s nose came down, just a little.
Easy does it,
the pilot thought as he gave the plane a hair less throttle. You couldn’t fly this thing with your dick, the way you could—the way you were supposed to—in a fighter. Well, you
could
do that, but you’d splatter the plane, and yourself, all over the countryside if you tried.
    The Americans said there were bold pilots and old pilots, but no old bold pilots. Gribkov had no use for the Americans. He wouldn’t have been landing his Tu-4 here at Provideniya if he’d liked them. Like them or not, what they said there was true.
    And, like them or not, they built some goddamn impressive airplanes. Behind his oxygen mask, Boris’ lips skinned back from his teeth in a mirthless grin. He knew exactly how impressive some American planes were. For all practical purposes, he was flying one.
    During the USA’s war against Japan, several damaged B-29s made emergency landings near Vladivostok. Till the very end, the USSR and Japan stayed neutral; Stalin had plenty on his plate fighting the Nazis. He interned the crews (after a while, he quietly gave them back to the Americans) and kept the bombers.
    Russia had nothing like them, which was putting it mildly. Russian World War II heavy bombers were leftovers from the early 1930s, slow and lumbering and useless in modern combat. Stalin ordered exact copies of the B-29. He ordered them and, because his word was law in the Soviet Union, the Tupolev design bureau gave them to him in less than two years.
    This machine had Russian engines. It had Russian cannons instead of American heavy machine guns. Everything else came straight from the Superfortress. Gribkov had heard that more than a few Russian engineers, used to the metric system, had driven themselves squirrely learning to work with inches and feet and pounds and ounces.
    Lights marked the edge of the snowy runway outside the little town on the edge of the Bering Sea. Gribkov couldn’t see the frozen sea. Provideniya sat less than a hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. Winter daylight was brief at best. The sun had set long before, even if it was only late afternoon.
    “Cleared to land, Plane Four,” the ground-control chief said.
    “Message received. Thank you,” Gribkov answered. No one mentioned what kind of plane he was flying. Alaska lay just over the horizon. You had to figure the Americans were listening to everything they could pick up. The less they knew, the better for the Soviet Union.
    He glanced over to his copilot. Vladimir Zorin nodded back. “All fine here, Comrade Captain,” he said, gesturing to his side of the complicated instrument panel.
    “Good.” Boris lowered the landing gear. The