1637 The Polish Maelstrom Read online

  “I’ll be back!” she yelped. Then, raced for the staircase. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that Alex was following her.

  “Stay here!” she shouted. “You can’t do anything!”

  As she started down the stairs, a residue of irritation combined with her natural sense of humor. “You’re a cavalryman, remember? There ain’t no horse that can reach the sky!”

  * * *

  Once on the ground and out of the castle, she hopped on the motorcycle that she’d used to get her and her husband there.

  Off she went. Happily for them, most of Linz’s inhabitants were either soldiers at their posts or civilians taking shelter indoors. Anyone still on the street when Julie raced by would have felt like wheat before a scythe.

  * * *

  At the airfield, she found what she had expected. Medics had Dustin Acton on a stretcher and were loading him into a wagon. He looked to be unconscious.

  Ent was sitting on the ground, propped against the hangar. A medic was attending to him also. His arm, it looked like.

  He was conscious, though. When he saw Julie, he gave her a little nod.

  “Is that gun still working?” she demanded.

  He stared at her for a moment, as if his mind was trying to process the question. Then, his teeth clenched with pain, nodded again.

  Julie looked around, a bit wildly. By now, there were dozens of people on the airfield.

  “Is there anybody here—Laura!” She’d just spotted Laura Goss in the crowd.

  Julie pointed at the Vasa, which had come to rest about twenty yards from the hangar. “Can you fly that thing?”

  “Huh?”

  “Dammit, do you know how to fly a Vasa?”

  Goss stared at the plane for a moment. Then, shrugged. “How hard can it be?”

  That was a question Julie wasn’t going to go anywhere near. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me! You’re the pilot; I’m the gunner. How hard is that?”

  For two seconds, Goss still looked confused and uncertain. Then, suddenly, she grinned.

  Chapter 39

  Linz airfield

  Linz, provisional capital of Austria-Hungary

  To Julie’s displeasure (and to some degree, embarrassment) their takeoff was delayed by the ground crew. The problem was one that a shooter like Julie should have foreseen: What happens to the spent shells of a machine gun fired in an enclosed space?

  Brass cartridges were still far too valuable to just toss them aside without a care. But given the haste with which Hal Smith and his people had had to design and build the Vasa, they’d cut a lot of corners along the way. One of those corners was as simple as possible. The spent cartridges expelled by the machine gun and shunted downward wound up in a metal bin—what amounted to a large, oblong tin can. (Except it was cheap iron, not tin.)

  A fair number of the shells missed the can and wound up on the floor of gunner’s cockpit. The seat was designed so that none of the shells came to rest against the gunner’s feet, but other than that it was catch-as-catch-can.

  Cartridges that have just been fired are hot. And when enough of them pile up in a small enclosed space like a cockpit, the cockpit gets hot. Not hot enough to kill the gunner outright, no—not even close. But certainly hot enough to make them uncomfortable.

  Part of the reason Hal Smith had decided that crude design was good enough was itself simple. The plane could only carry a small amount of ammunition. Not “small” by deer hunter standards, of course, but certainly small by warplane values. This was not a B-17 Flying Fortress whose multiple machine guns could blast away on a mission that lasted for hours.

  Given that they’d encountered their mishap very quickly, Acton and Martin returned to the airfield before Ent had used up more than a quarter of the ammunition on board. But since they had to clear out the spent cartridges anyway, the ground crew also saw to it that the machine gun was fully loaded again.

  Following the philosophy let the pros do it, Julie and Laura waited by the plane while the ground crew did their work. Julie was a little amused to see that they filled up the fuel tanks as well. Looked at from one angle, that was pointless, since the Vasa would run out of ammunition long before it ran out of fuel. But Julie approved nonetheless. A ground crew that rigidly followed procedure was not a ground crew likely to screw up, either.

  The wait had another benefit, which that it gave Julie and Laura time to talk over their plans and the tactics they would use. They would not have to improvise once they were in the air.

  Julie was even more amused when she saw the method used to retrieve the spent cartridges. She’d noticed when the plane had first arrived that there was a small hatch in the bottom of the fuselage, just before the nose. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time, or what it was there for. Fish swim. Dogs bark. Airplanes have hatches. But now she saw its purpose.

  The hatch was opened by the member of the ground crew who’d gone into the gunner’s cockpit. Another member of the crew then slid a metal tub on a wheeled platform under the open hatch. A moment later, a small torrent of spent cartridges came out of the plane. Clearly, the ground crewman had emptied the container holding the spent shells.

  Then—this was the amusing part—the crewman outside gave what looked like a large paintbrush to a hand sticking out through the hatch. A few seconds later, little piles of shells started coming out. A skill was being applied to aviation that had first been developed by so-called cave men. A cave woman, more likely.

  Next to her, Laura laughed. “Will you look at that? It’s like the French say: ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.’”

  “What does it mean?”

  “The more things change, the more it’s the same thing. I learned it from a French guy.”

  Julie eyed her sideways. “And just where did you meet a Frenchman in West Virginia?”

  “Where d’you think? A party at West Virginia University in Morgantown. He was an exchange student. I thought his accent was cute. He was even cuter.”

  “I thought you went to a community college.”

  “Yes, I did. A year and half at Pierpont Community and Technical College in Fairmont. But for parties I always went up to Morgantown. Way better parties. You could usually get free booze, too, if you were a girl.”

  Julie pursed her lips. “I think I’m sorry I asked.”

  Laura grinned. “Look at this way. Would you rather be flown into a dogfight by a virgin or a party girl?”

  Ottoman siege lines southeast of Linz

  About three miles from the confluence of the Danube and Traun rivers

  “Press the attack,” Murad commanded, lowering his eyeglass. “I don’t know why the kâfir craft has been gone so long, but it can’t be good for them. And there’s only one of them, anyway.”

  He’d paused the attack after the Mohacs went down, and was now regretting that he’d done so. Still, it might not cost him anything. He had far more aircraft than the Austrians and their allies did and if the worst the enemy could do was destroy one of his airships every half hour, he could afford such casualties.

  “Press the attack,” he repeated. Then, spent a minute or so just enjoying the breeze atop the observation platform. So far, it had been a pleasant spring.

  A mile above the confluence of the Danube and the Traun

  “They’re definitely coming, Julie,” said Laura. Her voice was piped into the lower cockpit by a simple tube. As long as the two of them spoke loudly, they could hear each other. Of course, that would stop being true when the machine gun opened up.

  “I can see them.” The view from her cockpit was better than Julie had thought it would be, looking at it from the outside. The fact that the enemy fleet had resumed its advance on Linz was obvious, even with sunglasses on.

  That same visibility would pose a danger—could pose, at least—once they started engaging the enemy. But Julie and Laura had no intention of repeating Acton’s mistake.
Julie thought she was probably the best rifle markswoman—marksman too—in the whole world. But there were sure to be others who were very good, eighty-five percent to her ninety-five percent, and a shot fired by Mr. Eighty-Five Percent could kill you just as dead as any she could fire.

  “Climbing,” Laura announced.

  Ottoman siege lines southeast of Linz

  About three miles from the confluence of the Danube and Traun rivers

  It didn’t take long for Murad to understand what the kâfirs were doing. They were now far enough above his own ships that they couldn’t be fired upon. Leaving aside the impossible ranges involved, the gunners aboard his fleet couldn’t even see the enemy airplane because of the great envelopes overhanging their gondolas.

  Nor did he have any difficulty understanding why the enemy had made no attempt to attack his ships yet. So far, they were just flying above the Ottoman lines. Within a minute, they would have passed across the fourth and last line.

  At which point, they would turn around and come at his ships from the rear, with the sun in his gunners’ eyes instead of theirs—which was probably irrelevant anyway. The design of the Ottoman ships had the gondolas very far forward. An aircraft attacking from above and behind would soon be shielded by the envelope.

  What remained to be seen was the effectiveness of the kâfir gun. It was quite possible, using a small cannon, that a lucky shot would have spectacular results while most of the shots missed entirely or did little damage. That was often true even with the largest cannons.

  A mile above the confluence of the Danube and the Traun

  “Coming around,” Laura announced.

  “How’s it flying?” asked Julie.

  “Thing’s a tub. At worst, it’s like wrestling a pig. At best, it’s like wrestling a piglet. But what really ticks me off is how goddam slow it is. I feel like getting out and pushing.”

  Julie smiled, but didn’t say anything. From her standpoint, the slower the better, so long as the plane didn’t stall. Even firing automatic rifles, it would be a lot easier to hit a target—even a big target like an airship envelope—going eighty miles an hour than a hundred and fifty.

  “Coming up on the first one,” Laura said.

  Observation platform atop the royal castle

  Linz, provisional capital of Austria-Hungary

  When the word arrived, Melissa Mailey got the Austrian queen she now spent half her days with to get them onto the observation platform on the royal castle. Gustav Adolf was already there when they arrived.

  Melissa was certainly not on a first-name basis with the Emperor of the USE, King of Sweden etc. etc. etc., but she’d had enough dealings with him to address him directly.

  “Your Majesty, the rumor is that our aircraft”—she scanned the sky, looking for it—“I mean the one that went up to fight the Ottomans, is being flown by two women.”

  “Flown by one woman, actually. The other woman—that would be the baroness Julie—is aboard to operate the weapon.” He frowned. “If you came to complain that I put two women at risk, I did no such thing. The two of them chose to do this entirely on their own. Technically speaking, the pilot is guilty of insubordination and the gunner—she’s a civilian—is grossly stretching the provisions of her contract.”

  He smiled, then. “Not that I think anyone is likely to press charges, given the circumstances.”

  Melissa smiled as well. “I assure you I didn’t come to complain. I came so I’d have the best view to watch two women kick some royal ass.”

  It occurred to her that might be an unfortunate turn of phrase, spoken in the presence of emperor and a queen. “Of the sultan variety, I mean.”

  A mile above the confluence of the Danube and the Traun

  Julie started firing. It took a few seconds for her to get a feel for the peculiar weapon, since it was like no gun she’d ever fired before. But no more than a few. She was very familiar with many firearms, after all.

  But a few seconds was long enough, even with as slow an aircraft as the Vasa, for them to pass over the airship before Julie could do any significant damage. She might not have done any damage at all, although she’d swear some of the rounds she’d fired had hit the envelope.

  “Damn!”

  “Take it easy,” said Laura. “We’re almost at the next line.”

  * * *

  Eight of her rounds had indeed struck the envelope, but they came in too squarely. They punched deeply enough into the airbags that the incendiary rounds were wasted in an almost purely hydrogen mixture. The “trick,” as it were, of shooting down airships with incendiary rounds was to rip the envelopes open so that you brought enough oxygen into the mix.

  Ottoman siege lines southeast of Linz

  About three miles from the confluence of the Danube and Traun rivers

  “Nothing,” Murad murmured. “Nothing at all.”

  The kâfir craft was now coming up on the rear of the Sapienza.

  A mile above the confluence of the Danube and the Traun

  Julie had figured out what she’d done wrong. This time she fired far enough ahead that the bullets ripped gashes in the envelope and the gas bags beneath. She was using the rounds to mix the gases as well as ignite them.

  Then it occurred to her she’d overlooked something.

  “Laura, pull—!”

  The gas plume ignited—just as the Vasa flew into it.

  The airship started to burn.

  Ottoman siege lines southeast of Linz

  About three miles from the confluence of the Danube and Traun rivers

  “That’s not a cannon!” Murad exclaimed. He turned and glared at the small cluster of artificers standing in a corner of the platform. “You told me they would use a small cannon!”

  A mile above the confluence of the Danube and the Traun

  Fortunately, the Vasa had flown fast enough that it suffered no damage beyond scorching parts of the fuselage—but only enough to discolor it, not to set it aflame.

  “I guess that’s what they call baptism by fire,” said Laura. “Thank you for sharing, Julie. But how about next time we just share a bottle instead of a fucking inferno?”

  “Sorry. Next one, stay off to the side a little.” The machine gun couldn’t be shifted as far to either side as it could be up and down, but she had at least a fifteen-degree angle available.

  “Will do. But I don’t have time for this line—”

  That was obvious. They were already passing over it. There was only the front line of airships ahead of them.

  “—so we’ll go for the next.”

  * * *

  Moshe Mizrahi was relieved to see the enemy warplane passing over his line without firing. As the commanding ship in the line, positioned on the left, the Chaldiran wouldn’t have been the kâfir’s target anyway. Passing near the center of the line it would have struck either the Sokhoista or the Raydaniya.

  He looked back—and down. By now, it was obvious the Sapienza was doomed. The flames had spread rapidly across the envelope. The airship still had some buoyancy, but it would lose almost all of it within another half a minute.

  He saw a crewman climb over the gondola’s railing, and hesitate for a few seconds. Then a blast of flame scorched him and he made his decision. No death could be as bad as a burning one. He relinquished his hold on the rail. He was perhaps three thousand feet above the ground. At the speed he was falling, he would die in less than twenty seconds.

  Moshe looked away. Then, looked to see where the enemy plane was headed.

  It was about to attack the Preveza, Abraham Zarfati’s ship. Moshe and Abraham had never gotten along very well, for reasons Moshe himself had never understood. Zarfati was just hostile to him. Not ferociously so, just…unpleasant.

  But it probably didn’t matter any longer. Moshe wished the man well.

  It wasn’t long before he knew his wishes would not be granted.

  * * *

  Coming in alongside the enemy airship as well as ab
ove it made Julie’s task more difficult. But by now she had a good feel for the machine gun.

  She opened fire and within seconds she knew she’d slain a monster. By the time they passed over Linz, the giant creature was headed for a fiery death somewhere on the east bank of the Traun, at a guess.

  She looked down and gauged her ammunition.

  “Another run?” asked Laura.

  It was tempting, but…

  “No, better not. This gun uses up ammunition like nobody’s business—and we can’t carry all that much to begin with.”

  “All right. Homeward bound it is. We done good, girlfriend.”

  * * *

  Not long after Julie made her decision, Abraham Zarfati made his own.

  He would not burn. Not that, whatever else. By now, at least half of the giant envelope was engulfed in flames. The Preveza was doomed, and himself with it.

  Do not think. Just do.

  He went over the rail.

  He did not pray for himself, as he fell. What would be the point? Whatever he had done, it was done. Whatever he had failed to do was done also. God would make His decision.

  He did not pray for his family, because there were too many of them. His had been a good life, that way. A wife—still healthy—four children, three boys and a girl. A grandson and two granddaughters now, too.

  There was not enough time.

  He managed to shape his fall in such a way that he was looking up at the sky. Let that glory be his final sight.

  He would pray for his sultan. Murad IV was a good sultan. Hard, but fair. If he demanded loyalty, he gave it also. So long as the sultan lived, he would see to it that Abraham Zarfati’s family was cared for.

  He could not remember the best prayer to use for this. He was a devout man, but had never been a studious one.

  So he began reciting one he thought would suit this time and this place, and could only hope that God would think so as well.