Free Beyond the Call by Lee Trimble Page B

left Tehran behind. 17
    It was an uneasy journey, and he paid less attention to the discomforts and the cold. The first part of the flight was okay, soaring up above the Caspian Sea and turning north-west for Russia. Ahead lay the Caucasus Mountains, which marched across the gap between the Caspian and the Black Seas. As the crew began the long, slow climb to pass over the mountains, it began to snow.
    Rapidly a full-scale whiteout developed. The Russian crew couldn’t navigate their way through it. They weren’t fazed, though; having surveyed what they could see of the landscape, they prepared to put the plane down on a small airfield they knew, at the little Armenian town of Armavir, near the southern skirts of the mountains. 18 As the plane approached the field, the pilot couldn’t even see where the runway was. Robert, who didn’t think it was possible to do such alanding, was beginning to learn about the techniques of flying in a Russian winter, and about the recklessness of Russian pilots. One day soon he would have to learn how to fly like this.
    The landing was tense but miraculously successful. The crew and passengers spent the night at the airfield, where the Soviet commander treated them to a supper of local dishes, including one made with fish eyes (Robert discreetly disposed of his).
    Next morning, they pushed on again. Not long after take-off, the vast range of the Caucasus Mountains loomed up ahead – a great jagged fortress of rock and snow extending from one end of the horizon to the other. The plane began climbing to pass over it. Gradually it pulled up past 12,000 feet – well above oxygen altitude, which transport planes rarely had to do. Robert watched spellbound as the spectacular barren peaks passed slowly beneath. He’d flown over the Rockies back home, but the spectacle of a great mountain range seen from the air was something you could never tire of – especially from this low altitude, where the peaks were so close you could almost have stepped out onto their snowy caps.
    Almost as soon as the plane began its long descent on the far side, it ran into a bank of cloud, dropped down through it, and came out in another snowstorm. It wasn’t as dense as the previous day’s, so the Russians flew on, heading for the Red Army Air Force base at Rostov, an industrial city sprawling across the marshes where the River Don opened into the Sea of Azov. Like most Russian cities that had been under German occupation, Rostov had seen some fierce fighting, and was in a bad state.
    At the air base, Robert got his first insight into the Russian temperament – convivial warmth at one extreme and brutal callousness at the other.
    The four Americans were treated as honored guests by their Soviet military hosts. The commanding officer loaded them with as much vodka as they could drink, with the result that the Americans were all half-steamed before they’d even got past the reception. There was a play being performed that night in the base’s theater, and the CO tookthem along as his personal guests. Robert and his compatriots were led in and found rank upon rank of Soviet personnel standing, waiting for the guests of honor to be seated (in the front row, naturally). As soon as their rears touched their seats, without a word of command, the Russians all sat down too.
    Robert enjoyed the performance, despite not understanding a word of it (it had wolves in the title, he recalled, but there were none in the play), and passed an altogether pleasant, vodka-hazed evening. The next morning, accompanied by the commanding officer and his staff, Robert, the other Americans, and the flight crew headed out to their plane. A concerned-looking sentry reported that he and his comrades had heard noises coming from the aircraft during the night, and he demanded to be allowed to inspect it. The pilot opened up the cargo compartment and peered inside. There, lurking in the shadows and