A Thousand Suns (32 page)

Chapter 48

Mission Time: 6 Hours, 24 Minutes Elapsed

180 miles across the Atlantic

Schröder pulled up steeply and rolled to his left as the three bandits rose up to meet them. He found himself laughing aloud. This was good, old-style dogfighting. One on one, the sort of duelling he had excelled in during the early days of the war.

He quickly scanned the sky to grab a snapshot of the entire skirmish, momentarily placing all nine other aircraft taking part in this particular exchange.

‘Pull these buggers after us down and to the left, and we’ll lead them close to Max’s lads,’ he said, struggling to keep his voice calm and measured.

‘Yes sir,’ both other fighter pilots replied.

The three Me-109s rolled over and dived down towards the left, one tidily behind the other like the carriages of a train. They raced past the three Spitfires still rising to meet them and all six planes fired speculative bursts in the hope of scoring some early damage. Several hundred bullets whistled angrily through the air between the two formations of advancing planes.

None of them hit anything.

Schröder’s guns clattered uselessly as the last of his ammo belts fed through.

I’m out
.

He realised all he could do for now was play bait for the Spitfires and lure them in as close as he dared towards the bomber’s guns. As Schröder and his men descended to a position several hundred yards behind and to the left of the B-17, the Spitfires mirrored their arc of descent and followed their route around and down. Within a few fleeting seconds they would be lined up behind the Me-109s and in a perfect position to start shredding pieces off them.

Meanwhile, the other three British fighter planes were ascending towards the bomber from the right. Schröder hoped that Max’s boys could see them approaching and had at least one gun trained on them as they came in.

Behind them, Schröder could sense the Spitfires falling into a comfortable tailing position, closing the gap swiftly. Any second now he expected them to commence fire, but not yet. From their tidy manoeuvring he suspected these pilots were experienced. They would want to pull in a little closer before firing to guarantee a more effective opening salvo and avoid wasting rounds. A sensible ploy, but not without its downside, as Schröder had learned from experience. Many a time an enemy plane had escaped him, scrambling out from beneath the lethal gaze of his crosshair because he’d waited a second too long to get a better, cleaner, closer shot.

He hoped those Spitfires behind them were making the same mistake, holding off one or two seconds too long to get a guaranteed kill with the first volley.

Time to move
.

‘On my command . . . Günter, Will, break right and left, I’ll lead the first of them in,’ he called out.

‘Break!’ he shouted a second later.

Both flanking Me-109s rolled in opposite directions and dived, and two of the Spitfires followed in hot pursuit leaving one doggedly following Schröder as he veered to the right and subtly closed the gap, drawing it closer to the B-17. The unfortunate British fighter pilot was about to find out for himself what sort of damage the tail-gun of a Flying Fortress can deal out.

The bomber grew in size as Schröder led his pursuer in towards the rear of the plane. Just as he’d begun to suspect the tail-gunner was sleeping on the job, the duel barrels suddenly opened up, firing twin streaks of tracers into the empty space between Schröder and the British fighter. The bullets sped past in front of the Spitfire and drifted quickly back as the tail-gunner adjusted his lead. Half a dozen bullets found their mark along the right-hand side of the fighter’s fuselage and almost immediately a thin whisper of leaking oil trailed out from the Spitfire. The British pilot seemed unperturbed and calmly held position for a few seconds more before firing a burst of gunfire that clipped the tail of Schröder’s Messerschmitt.

Schröder pulled up sharply, hoping the Spitfire would follow suit and expose her underbelly to the bomber’s left-hand waist-gun, but instead the British pilot seemed already to have learned the error of his ways and pulled warily away from the bomber.

At the same time, the other three Spitfires that had split away to specifically target the bomber rose one after the other and raked the underside of the Flying Fortress as they climbed effortlessly past her. The belly of the bomber shed a small shower of fragments that twisted and spun away below her.

As the three fighter planes streamed up past him to his right, less than fifty yards away, Max fleetingly caught sight of one of the British pilots, twisting round in his seat to look back at the bomber as they climbed up into the sky and prepared to come around for another pass.

For some reason they both nodded courteously at each other.

Pieter spun the bombardier’s gun upwards and fired a largely ineffective volley at the last of the three planes, his aim insufficiently in advance of his target, the bullets flew harmlessly behind it. Max heard Pieter cursing angrily over the comm.

‘Pieter! . . . shut up!’ he found himself shouting.

‘Sorry,’ he answered sheepishly.

Schröder still had that stubborn bastard on his tail. He was good. The Spitfire was proving bloody hard to shake off. Once again he quickly scanned the sky, attempting to grab another updated snapshot of their little skirmish.

He could see one of the Me-109s trailing a thick pall of black smoke and descending in a shallow dive away from the party and down towards the sea in an easterly direction. Schröder couldn’t tell if it was Will or Günter. Whoever it was, he presumably was heading back to France in the futile hope that the plane would get him all the way back to land.

One of the Spitfires was also spouting smoke, with the other 109 in hot pursuit. As he watched, the Spitfire was caught by a further well-aimed burst that carved through the starboard wing like a saw through dry wood. A short trail of tumbling debris was left in the plane’s wake. Suddenly, the wing ripped off and the plane instantly rolled over and commenced a slow spiralling dive towards the sea.

One of ours and one of theirs
.

They needed to do better than that. Schröder pulled his plane up and once more led the obstinate British pilot behind him towards the rear of the bomber again, hoping that whichever one of Max’s lads was manning that position could work his magic once again and land a dozen more shots on target.

The three Spitfires that had successfully raked the underside of the bomber had so far been untroubled by either the Me-109s or any fire from the bomber. They turned around in a graceful arc above the B-17 and were now approaching from the front, head on, in a steep predatory dive.

Max looked up in horror as he realised they were lining up to make the cockpit their next target.

‘Pieter! Three of them coming fast, twelve-high!’

He imagined what three Spitfires in a tightly formed train, each firing about five seconds worth of .303 millimetre rounds one after the other into the small, enclosed space of the cockpit, would do to him and the plane.

‘Pieter! Do you see them!’ he called again, this time his voice breaking nervously.

Max could do little but watch their rapid approach. He could pull the bomber into a climb, push her into a dive or roll the plane left or right, but he knew the plane was so slow to manoeuvre that there would be no way they’d avoid the incoming fighters. All he’d be doing would be putting his gunners off balance.

‘I see ’em Max, I see ’em!’

Pieter swung his gun up and carefully lined the gun sight with the first of the three planes.
Ten yards for every two hundred range
.

He pulled his aim down slightly, anticipating the continued path of the leading Spitfire. ‘Come on, you little bastards,’ he muttered to himself.

The plane in the lead was holding his shot until the very last moment, two hundred feet away and still Max waited with a face screwed up with anticipation for the first high-calibre round to strike home and begin the process of shredding him and the front of the plane to pieces.

Suddenly, he saw the muzzle flash of the fighters’ six guns blazing and tracer lines began to lance down through the air just short of the bombardier’s compartment in front of the plane.

At the same instant from the compartment below, Max heard Pieter open fire.

Both Pieter and the pilot appeared to have overdone their target-lead, but in the few seconds that were left before the bomber’s cockpit resembled nothing more than the chewed-up knuckle of a dog’s bone, Pieter was going to have to pull his aim up and hit the Spitfire first.

‘For fuck’s sake, draw in the lead!’ Max shouted with desperate frustration as the fighter found the nose of the plane and dozens of rounds punctured holes through the metal plate above the bombardier’s compartment and below the cockpit.

He winced as loose shards of debris rattled around in the compartment below him with bullet-like velocity. Pieter surely had to have been hit by some of that, a bullet or shrapnel. But he could hear the gun still firing. Max watched as the tracer lines from Pieter’s gun rose up from below and found their target.

The duel MG-81s, firing a steady line of tracers, shattered the cockpit glass of the leading Spitfire and the fighter plane ceased its firing immediately, speeding down, missing the nose of the bomber by mere feet. Pieter continued firing towards the same point in space, knowing that the second and third fighters were lined up directly behind where the first one had been. The two other Spitfires cautiously avoided the solid line of fire coming up towards them and broke in different directions, roaring past the cockpit on either side, their attacking dive foiled this time.

Max heard Pieter hooting with pleasure. ‘Got ya’, you stupid bastards!’

The idiot sounded okay.

He felt a rush of relief and, with a gasp, released a breath that only seconds earlier he’d been convinced would be his last. ‘Saved my skin, Pieter . . . are
you
okay?’

‘Apart from nearly shitting myself, I’m fine.’

You and me both
.

Schröder pulled past the port side, the tip of his wing yards from that of the bomber’s, rising upwards in a steep sixty-degree climb, the same damned Spitfire pursuing with single-minded, dogged determination. It fired again; this time the bullets thudded into the underside of his fuselage, one tearing through the flimsy metal plating into his cockpit, where it fractured against the solid metal frame on the underside of his seat, sending a spray of heated shards and sparks up at him past his legs.

He felt a white-hot pain shoot up his right arm as the leather of his flying jacket exploded and a fine spray of crimson appeared on the inside of his canopy.

‘Shit! Bitch!’ he screamed out in pain.

As the Spitfire rushed hungrily in pursuit of Schröder, sensing the kill was only a volley or two away, it passed carelessly close to the port waist-gun.

Stef jerked back in surprise as it roared upwards, only twenty feet away and he panic-squeezed the trigger, his aiming, at best, erratic. The MG-81 pumped forty-plus rounds at close range into the exposed belly of the British fighter plane. One of the rounds punctured one of the Spitfire’s wing tanks and the plane instantly exploded, punching the bomber in the ribs with a powerful shockwave and a fleeting moment later showering the waist section with fragments of shrapnel and burning gasoline.

‘Fucking hell! What was that?’ shouted Hans over the comm.

‘Anyone know what that was?’ asked Max.

‘I think Stef just bagged one. Stef, was that yours?’

There was no answer.

Schröder rolled his plane over, belly up, and pulled back on the yoke so that the plane began a long, graceful arc downwards. He looked ‘up’ to see the bomber below against the dark blue background of the Atlantic. A mushroom cloud of oily smoke was being left behind it, and beneath the cloud he saw hundreds of tiny fragments each tumbling and fluttering to the sea on its own spiralling path.

There was no sign of the Spitfire any more.

He noticed a fire burning along the bomber’s spine and guessed that the Spitfire had exploded and sprayed burning fuel onto the bomber’s back. It looked worse than it was. The fuel would burn out in a few seconds.

He hoped whoever it was who’d saved his life hadn’t been caught by the blast. It seemed unlikely, though; he could see what looked like hundreds of pebbledash spots along her waist section. Whoever had fired the port waist-gun had probably been shredded by the wall of shrapnel.

He turned his attention to the score sheet . . .

Three of theirs, one of ours. Much better
.

Once more his eyes quickly searched the sky around him. He watched as the other Me-109 hung tightly to the tail of a Spitfire that was already in trouble, a white stream of unignited fuel behind it. It fired several short bursts. None found their target, but that seemed academic, the plane was desperately scrambling to find a way out of the skirmish.

‘Who is that? Will? Let him go and form up with me behind the bomber.’

The radio crackled and a moment later the pilot replied. ‘It’s me, sir, Günter.’

‘Günter? Well done, man. It’s just us now. Let’s tighten our position around the bomber.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Chapter 49

Mission Time: 6 Hours, 28 Minutes Elapsed

200 miles across the Atlantic

There was still no reply from Stef.

‘Stef! Are you all right?’ Max called once more. Over the interphone he could hear only laboured breathing and the grunting of effort as both Pieter and Hans worked their guns.

Not Stef, please
.

‘You want me to go back and take a look?’ asked Pieter over the comm.

‘No, not yet, not until we’re done here.’

Max himself wanted to go back and see what had happened to the young lad, but until this exchange was over, he needed every pair of hands busy, holding something useful.

‘They’ve had enough! They’re pissing off!’ Hans barked loudly.

‘You sure? Pieter, can you see?’ Max sought confirmation.

‘Yup, two of them, plus one limping. They’re heading back east.’

‘Right, in that case, Pieter, go and see what’s happened to Stef.’

Pieter climbed up the metal rungs leading from the bombardier’s compartment and hastily made his way through the bomb bay and through the navigation compartment. He stopped in the bulkhead leading into the waist section and studied the damage.

It had been perforated with hundreds of ragged holes. Several small fires were burning on the wood-panelled floor, fuel that had made its way inside from the exploding Spitfire. Stef was sitting on the floor, both hands clasped tightly around one of his legs, holding it desperately. His trouser leg was black and wet with blood. Considering the mess there, the lad looked like he’d got away lightly.

‘I think I’m hurt pretty badly,’ he said.

‘Stef. Let me take a look at that.’

Pieter squatted beside him, ripped the ragged material of his trousers open and moved it out of the way to inspect the wounded leg. There was a triangle of still smoking metal, the size of a packet of cigarettes, lodged into his leg just above the knee. It had clearly severed an artery and Stef had done the best he could with the tight grip of his hands to slow down the blood loss. All the same, the wound was pumping muted jets of blood past his tightly clasped fingers.

‘Not too bad, boy,’ said Pieter, doing his best to sound in charge and calm. ‘We’ll need to get a tourniquet on that,’ he added, looking around for something to use. He ripped off the rest of Stef’s trouser leg and from that tore a strip long enough to tie around his leg above the knee. He secured it around and tied it up. ‘We need something we can use to wind it tighter. Something long and thin.’

‘Like your pecker?’ Stef grunted painfully.

Pieter smiled and knuckled the lad’s head. ‘At least it’s long.’

He found a socket wrench in a toolbox beneath the port waist-gun. He inserted the wrench between Stef’s leg and the tourniquet.

‘Now this is going to hurt a lot, sorry.’ He twisted it round once and the tourniquet tightened with a creak. Stef let out a scream of agony that he quickly bit down on, turning it into little more than a stifled whimper.

Pieter winced sympathetically. ‘It’s okay, you can let it out if it hurts.’

Stef shook his head stubbornly, his mouth clamped tightly like a vice, refusing to let out anything more than a grunt.

Pieter patted him roughly on the shoulder. ‘So . . . no more of that “Baby Bear” shit, then. I promise.’

The boy smiled. That was about as much praise as he would get from the bastard. But it was more than enough.

‘You’re not going to pass out, are you?’

Stef shook his head, ‘I’m okay,’ he hissed painfully.

‘You hold that tight for me, right? I’m going to let Max know what’s going on back here.’

Stef leaned back against the bulkhead and held the wrench in both hands as Pieter stamped out a couple of the small fires which were still burning on the wooden floor and then made his way forward to update Max.

‘We’re both fine. Günter didn’t take a single scratch, and my plane, amazingly, appears to still be in one piece,’ said Schröder, holding the yoke with his right hand, his left clamped tightly over the gash in his right forearm. ‘Will didn’t make it, though.’

‘I know, I saw him go down,’ Max replied.

Even if he had managed to bail safely, out at sea, there was little hope for him. If he didn’t get pulled under by the parachute and drown immediately after he splashed down, he was unlikely to be picked up by any ship.

‘A good thing the three of you made it off the airstrip. They would have had us.’

‘Then the refuel was worth it,’ Schröder offered.

‘I’ve got to check the damage and get a navigational plotting, and I think one of my crew’s hurt. Let me deal with these things and then I’ll tell you how we’re doing for range.’

‘Of course, speak with you soon.’

Schröder checked his fuel gauge. He had lost too much in the last few minutes to be accounted for by the manoeuvres he’d pulled during that skirmish. He must have taken a hit on the fuel tank and was losing it quickly.

‘Günter, am I leaving a trail?’

The reply was prompt. ‘Yes, sir. Looks like fuel.’

He cursed under his breath. That was that, then, he wouldn’t be making it back to France. Günter might be able to make it back, though.

‘What’s
your
fuel reading?’

‘Good, I have about a fifth capacity left, sir.’

They were roughly 235 miles out from the French coast and he had a fifth of his fuel left to burn. He could make it back if he turned around right now.

‘Günter?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘You need to head home now. Fly low, you should make it back to France.’

The young pilot failed to respond.

‘Did you hear me? You need to turn around.’

‘What about you, sir?’

‘I’ll be fine for another half an hour, then I’ll need to be heading back too.’

There was a pause; the young pilot was foolishly going to object. ‘Günter, that’s a bloody order, now piss off back to France.’

‘Yes, sir . . . Good luck, sir.’

‘And you . . . now go!’

Schröder could tell by the tone in Günter’s voice that the young man had guessed he was in trouble. He watched as the young pilot pulled his plane around in a roll that arced one-eighty degrees, taking him back east. Günter waggled his wings once in the distance.

Schröder looked back down at his fuel gauge again, the pointer was wobbling unsteadily and indicating that he was virtually empty, with only the unreliable promise of another half an hour’s flying time, at best.

Max kneeled beside Stef and inspected the wound.

‘We’re going to need to tie this wrench in place so the tourniquet doesn’t unwind if you lose consciousness. Pieter, go find something we can tie this up with.’

‘What?’

‘Anything! Just look around.’

Max turned back to Stef. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘The tourniquet’s painful, sir, really hurts,’ he said between gritted teeth.

‘Well, it’s got to stay tight, Stef. There’s a severed artery in there, which we’ve got to keep the pressure on for the next thirteen hours. I’m going to tie up this wrench to the side of your leg so this thing doesn’t unwind, and you’re going to need to sit as still as you can until this thing is done and we can get you to a doctor, all right?’

The young lad nodded.

‘We need you to get us there. While you can still focus I need you to navigate. Think you can do that?’

He nodded once more.

‘Hans?’

The big man stepped forward. ‘Yeah?’

‘You’ll need to get Stef’s things; the map, his navigation tools, and bring them all here.’

Max looked around the waist section. The wind whipped noisily in through the gun portholes and numerous punctures along the metal fuselage. ‘And see if you can find something to put over him to keep him warm.’

‘Yeah,’ he said again and stooped through the bulkhead leading to the navigation compartment.

‘What’s the damage, sir? Are we going to make it?’ asked Stef.

‘We’re doing fine, don’t you worry about the plane, they built these things to take far worse than we’ve taken today.’

One engine had been hit and begun to splutter and Max had turned it off, fearing the engine might cause the fuel feeding it to ignite. They could make their way across on three. Apart from that, they had fared well, all things considered. The landing gear was damaged, possibly even ripped off completely. None of these things would prevent them completing the mission. Max’s only worry now was whether they had the fuel to get them there.

That’s
all
that mattered now, fuel . . . everything else was secondary.

Pieter returned with an open parachute bail. ‘I found it in the bombardier’s compartment. It’s useless, cut to ribbons.’

‘That’ll do,’ said Max, taking it from him and hastily ripping a long strip from the silky fabric. He held the wrench against Stef’s thigh.

‘Is that still tight?’

Stef nodded, gritting his teeth. Max wound the parachute fabric firmly around his leg and the wrench, binding them tightly together.

‘This should hold up if you don’t move around. If you start leaking, for God’s sake give me a shout and we’ll tighten this thing up again.’ He patted him on the cheek. ‘We need you with us, right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Max’s eyebrows knitted in a mock frown. ‘Call me “sir” one more time and I’ll undo it and let you bleed to death.’

Stef grinned. ‘Yes, Max.’

‘When Hans has brought you your things, I need you to give me your best guess on our position now. Think you can do that?’

Stef gave Max a thumbs-up. His leather glove was black with drying blood.

‘Good lad,’ Max replied and then made his way forward, squeezing past Hans in the navigation booth. ‘Keep your eye on him, Hans, he’s lost a lot of blood,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘You think he’s going to make it?’

‘I don’t know. If he doesn’t lose any more, he might. Just keep an eye on his leg. The blood’s drying up now. If it looks wet again, then he needs to be tightened up some more.’

Max passed through the bulkhead into the bomb compartment, and stopped for a moment to look down at the small bomb, still resting snugly in its cradle. It appeared untouched by their skirmishes.

You’d better do what you’re supposed to do, you little shit
.

He made his way into the cockpit, plugged into the comm. and disengaged the autopilot. He noticed that they had lost one of the Me-109s.

‘Schröder? You still there?’

‘Yes, Max. Günter had to turn back, his fuel was running low.’

‘How are
you
doing? Surely you’ll need to head back soon?’

‘No . . . it looks like I’ll be staying alongside you for the duration.’

Both of them knew what that meant for Schröder.

‘How long have you got?’ Max asked.

‘Just under a half an hour’s worth, I would guess. Maybe less.’

‘You don’t think it’s worth a go turning round and trying for land?’

‘If I fly slow and low?’

‘There’s a chance for you, isn’t there?’

‘No. I think I’d be swimming the last bit, and to be honest with you, Max, I’m not a big fan of swimming.’

‘I understand. Anyway, we’re still within range of their P51s . . . you might yet need to save our skins one more time.’

‘While I’ve fuel, I’ll do my best.’

Ten minutes passed with merciful peace as Max watched Schröder’s Messerschmitt hovering to their left, less than a hundred feet away, abreast with the bomber’s cockpit. He watched the man checking his instrumentation, occasionally looking up at the sky, around, keeping an eye out for any pursuing planes. Time and fuel ticked away too quickly and presently Max heard the engine of Schröder’s Messerschmitt cough and misfire.

Schröder looked across at him, and he heard the pilot’s voice. ‘I’m all out now. The engine’s beginning to skip.’

Pieter looked across at the fighter pilot. His distaste for the man had been replaced with a muted, begrudging respect at some point over the last twelve hours.

‘Poor bastard,’ he muttered to Max.

‘With your permission I’m going to take her up,’ said Schröder.

Max knew what the fighter pilot was up to. ‘Of course. You do what you have to, Schröder.’

‘Thank you. Well, it’s been an honour, gentlemen. I should think you’re now clear of any trouble from this side, good luck with the rest of it.’

‘Thank you. It was our honour too.’

Schröder nodded and waved at them and pulled his plane up and away into a steep climb.

‘What’s he planning to do?’

‘He’s going to throw her into a dive. The impact will give him a quick finish, I think that’s what he’s after.’

They watched him climb above them to 10,000 feet and level out. He held that position for a few seconds and then waggled the wings a couple of times before dropping the nose into a steep dive. The Me-109 plummeted through the sky half a mile away, and twenty seconds later it plunged into the sea. They watched a small, pale plume of water rise and fall, and a circle of foam fade away, leaving no trace of the airplane behind.

Pieter shook his head.

‘Better than bailing out here. Freeze or drown, they’re not great options.’

Max watched as a dark plume of oil began to stain the water where Schröder had hit. It blossomed on the calm ocean like a dark rose. He hoped it had been the quick finish the pilot was after.

‘Just us now, Pieter.’

‘Yes,’ he replied. His response was muted. ‘I suppose we’re all that’s left of the Luftwaffe - the last operational plane.’

‘Probably.’

He checked his watch and their airspeed. They had about twelve hours’ flying time to New York ahead of them. They were clear of any fighter threat now, and Pieter deserved a chance to spend some time doing something. It was time to hand over to him, and, in any case, he was suddenly aware of how tired he felt.

‘You can take her for a few hours,’ he said to Pieter. ‘I’m going to try and get some rest, if that’s possible.’

‘You do that, you look like crap,’ said Pieter. ‘We’re going to make it now, aren’t we, Max?’

‘I think we are. There’s nothing left they can throw in our way now.’