The Swiss Courier: A Novel (36 page)

He glanced out the windows again, worried that the Krauts would unleash a fighter in their direction. Once a Focke-Wulf 190 had him in his reflector gun sights, they had bought the farm. Maneuverability was not the Ju-52’s strong suit.

Bill was surprised that bogeys weren’t already in the air since the Gestapo was part of the welcoming party back at that farmhouse. Surely someone in charge had radioed a nearby aerodrome and sent a fighter in pursuit. Maybe the rumors that Goering’s
Luftwaffe
was a shell of itself—a paper tiger—were true. Maybe the Krauts didn’t
have
a plane to send after them since the Nazis had their hands full on two fronts—and were losing on both.

Suddenly, a crimson flash burst several hundred yards in front of the plane, followed by the thud of its report. Then another . . . and another . . . like a sea of cherry-red umbrellas popping open from a sudden spring shower. The Junkers bounced and wallowed in the turbulence for several moments as more vivid explosions erupted in their vicinity. They were in a turkey shoot, and they were the turkey!

“What’s happening?” Gabi hung on tighter as the Ju-52 shuddered from the shock waves.

Bill had experienced dozens of aerial attacks in the past. “An anti-aircraft battery is hammering us with flak!” Eerie whumping sounds carried over the engines’ droning, and shards of razor-sharp shrapnel pinged off the corrugated aluminum skin like golf-ball-sized hail striking a car roof. Bill fought to control the sudden changes of pitch and yaw.

“They must have spotted the Swiss cross in the moonlight!” Bill pushed the ship down, then steered right to avoid the next flak barrage and make their profile more difficult to detect.

Gabi braced herself in the copilot’s seat, but Joseph— standing in the cockpit doorway—fell in a heap from a sudden lurch and scrambled into a passenger seat. The ship shuddered as Bill continued to bank hard right. When he felt certain they were out of range, he leveled out the Junkers and resumed their original course heading.

Bill stared through the Plexiglas toward the barely visible southern horizon and wondered how much precious fuel the escape dive had burned up. That was the last thing they needed.

“Steady as she goes,” he said, hoping his matter-of-fact voice would quell any panic inside the cockpit. “We should be fine—”

Another round of flak popped up around the aircraft like red Christmas lights, and a couple of loud bangs jostled the Junkers. This time when Bill took evasive action, the steering felt heavy and unresponsive.

“Look—the engine,” Gabi shouted. “Fire!”

Bill couldn’t see much more than the radial cowling and windmilling prop of No. 3 engine from his left seat. He peered at his instrument panel to make some sense—and sure enough, the oil pressure on the right engine was rapidly dropping.

“Flames! We’re on fire!” Gabi cried.

Bill’s damage-control training kicked in. He immediately closed the right fuel shutoff valve and pitched the Junkers into another dive, but this time at a much steeper angle.

“Everyone hang on! This is the only way to extinguish the flames!”

The bulky transport shuddered from the strain as Bill pushed the nose down farther, pointing her to the ground floor. The Junkers accelerated to 225 kph . . . 245 . . . 265, and the G forces squashed Bill into his seat. He dared a half-second glance toward Gabi, who was frozen in her seat. He squeezed the steering wheel with a white-knuckle grip to maintain steady control, and when he reached 600 meters in altitude, he leveled out the Junkers.

Audible gasps of relief swept through the cockpit.

“Gabi, how are we doing? Is the engine fire out?”

He saw Gabi tentatively look over her shoulder. “We’re good! Fire’s out!”

Bill whispered a silent prayer of thanks—and felt like he was getting more religious by the minute. Another glance at his altimeter revealed they were down to 500 meters. He immediately initiated a steady climb since the Schwarzwald foothills were coming up, then he checked the fuel gauge again. What he saw caused bile to rise in his stomach. Now the needle was clearly hovering below the numeral 2. Any reserve had evaporated in the last five minutes, and losing an engine meant that he had to run the remaining two props with more power—and burn more fuel.

Gabi didn’t know how much more she could take.

Her stomach roiled from the plunge into the darkness, and her taut nerves put her on edge. If she survived this flight, she told herself, she would never board an aeroplane again in her life. But first, she needed to know where they stood.

She pursed her lips. “Will we reach Switzerland?”

Bill took his eyes off the instrument panel and made eye contact. “The good news is that we’re still in the air. The bad news is that we may not have enough fuel to escape Germany.”

Gabi felt her stomach spasm. “We’re that low on petrol?”

Bill drummed his thumbs on the steering column. “I didn’t want to worry you, but we left Dübendorf with a tad more than half a tank. It’s too bad that your General Guisan didn’t get us topped off, but in the confusion of getting out of there—”

Gabi took a look at the fuel gauge, which was fluttering between the 2 and 1 marks. “Is there anything we can do?”

“Not much except to stretch the fuel as far as we can.” He reached over to the pedestal and set his right hand on the fuel tank selector, which had three positions: L, Alle, and R. “I’m taking it that L means left and R means right,” he said.

“
Rechts
and
links
—yes, right and left.”

“Instead of running both tanks down, we’ll run the right tank bone dry and then switch over to the left tank when the engines start to cough. I want to make sure we use every last drop of fuel.”

“But what if we run out of fuel before the border?” Gabi stole a look at Joseph Engel, who was standing in the cockpit doorway again. She could see worry written all over his brow.

“Then we’ll glide across the Rhine.”

Gabi motioned for Joseph to come closer and relayed their getting-dire-by-the-minute fuel situation. In the faint glow of interior lighting, she saw his face turn pale.

“I know this is a blow.” She spoke in German. “There’s not much we can do. How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay.”

Gabi’s eyes met Joseph’s. “Really? I would think that you’re scared out of your wits, just like me.”

“Well . . . I must confess to a certain amount of unease.”

“I do, too, but the Lord knows exactly where we are, even up here in a black sky.”

Joseph shifted his feet as the Junkers swayed to the left. “You mentioned religion. Are you a spiritual person?”

Gabi thought how she should answer that question. “I’m a follower of Christ, if that’s what you mean. I believe that we can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m the daughter of a pastor, you know.”

“Maybe that explains a few things.”

“What do you mean?”

“After being rescued by Pastor Leo and his friends, and seeing how they’ve been protected from the Gestapo all these years, I’m realizing that God is orchestrating something, even in the midst of this madness.”

Gabi glanced over at the American pilot, who was concentrating on the instrument panel. “God is at work in our lives and deeply cares about what happens to us.” She patted Joseph’s arm. “He knows us so well . . . right down to how many hairs we have on our heads.”

Joseph folded his hands. “So what do you think is going to happen?”

“I think our friend here hasn’t been very forthcoming on our predicament. Even a novice like me knows that when the fuel gauge needle sits next to zero, we’re about to run out of fuel. I pray that we can get close enough to Switzerland for our radio to work. Maybe they’ll have some ideas if we have to land in some German cornfield. But whatever happens, I trust we’ll somehow make it to safety.”

Gabi pointed to the gathering tangerine hue outside Bill’s port window. “Look—the sun’s coming up.”

Bill glanced at his watch—5:30 a.m. The sunrise was probably fifteen minutes away, but the faintest hint of orange-pink on the horizon presented another good news/bad news situation. “If we have to ditch, I certainly prefer landing this Junkers in the daylight,” he said. “I don’t like flying in German airspace in broad daylight, however.”

He turned to Gabi. “You want to try to reach Mr. Dulles again on the radio? We should be getting close to the border.”

“I see it—the Rhine!”

Bill looked for a sliver of river . . . and found the mighty Rhine. “Great eyes, Gabi!” All the excitement in the cockpit stirred Joseph out of his passenger seat.

Bill figured they were twenty-five kilometers north of the border, heading straight for Dübendorf. “At our slower speed, all we need is ten more minutes.”

Gabi dragged the emergency radio to her side and fitted the Bakelite headphones over her ears. For the third time in the last half hour, she put the portable antenna in the window. “Maybe the third time is the—”

The Junkers’s No. 1 engine coughed and sputtered twice before resuming its normal RPM cadence. The same instant, the center engine coughed twice but continued spinning. Bill wasted no time. He immediately reached for the tank selector and switched to L—the left tank. The fuel boost energized the remaining engines, but a sinking feeling in his stomach told them that they were flying on borrowed time—no more than five or ten minutes.

“If you can raise anyone on that radio, tell them it doesn’t look like we’ll make it into Swiss airspace.” For Bill, the glass was suddenly half empty, and even though pilots were supposed to be supremely positive, he needed to square up with reality.

Gabi hadn’t given up.

“I’m giving it another try.” She flipped the switch on the emergency radio and was greeted by static. “Come on, come on.” She gave the tan box a good whack with the flattened palm of her right hand.

“Hello, Red Riding Hood?” The reassuring voice of her father carried through the headphones. Gabi’s heart leapt.

“Big Bad Wolf, is that you?” Prior to leaving Dübendorf, she and her father had exchanged code names. There was a good chance that any radio transmissions would be picked up by German ears, which she assumed was the case at this moment.

“Yes—we’ve been up all night waiting to hear about your collection of Edelweiss. Did you find the big patch?”

Mr. Dulles must have heard from the Swiss Air Force escort to the border. “We found all the Edelweiss we were looking for, and now we’re coming home.”

She could almost hear her father’s sigh of relief. “Excellent. Big Cheese is here too. I’ll pass the news to him.”

Gabi sucked in her breath. “Tell him we have a serious problem.”

“What’s that, Red Riding Hood?”

“We may not be home in time for breakfast.”

“Where are you?”

“Wait a minute.” She let off her microphone’s transmit button and asked Bill for their location.

He looked at the Army Air Force map balanced on his knees. “We’re on a direct approach to Zurich. Closest border town on the German side is . . . I hope I’m pronouncing this correctly . . . Waldshut.”

She smiled. “
Waldshoot
, as in what owls do,” she said, using the proper pronunciation on the second syllable. “Close enough.”

She thought about how she could tell her father over the radio where they were—without uttering
Waldshut
. “Remember when the twins needed a cobbler who could make special shoes for their flat feet?”

There was a moment of silence. “Yes, and I know where you mean,” her father said. “Let me speak with the Big Cheese.”

Twenty seconds later, her father’s voice interrupted the staticky transmission. “Do you still have that sheet of instructions with the chart Big Cheese gave you?”

“Yes, but wait a second while I grab it.”

Gabi reached into her khaki jacket and unfolded the sheet of paper. “Got it, Big Bad Wolf.” The single-sheet of paper contained ten lines of typed-out words that were gibberish.

“Look in the third line.”

Gabi shined a flashlight on the string of words.

perdis xxos luthdaws ermnine annca cawth nosom dendser etors dumrat impleser muhelt
. . .

“Copy down every third word, four words in total.”

Gabi peered at her list again and wrote these four words in the margin:

“Done.”

“Good. Unscramble those words and visit our mutual acquaintance there. You already know the first one.”

Gabi wrote the word
Waldshut
next to
luthdaws
and double-checked that the letters matched. They did.

“Got the first one.”

She began playing with
cawth.
With one vowel, that should be easy.
Tawch . . . hawct . . . wacht . . . watch!
The next one was even easier:
store.

Now for the last,
muhelt
. Two vowels.
Tehmul
. . . no, that won’t work. She feverishly wrote three-letter combinations to give her a running start . . .
leh, lut, meh, met, hum, hel
. . . Wait, a strike.
Hel . . . helm . . . Helmut!

“Solved, Big Bad Wolf!” They were to go to a watch store in Waldshut and ask for Helmut.

“Excellent. When you get there, ask our friend to put you in touch with Jean-Pierre or Pas—”

Accordion-driven French music blotted out the words, cutting off the transmission. “Wait! I didn’t catch all that!” Gabi slammed the side of the emergency radio, but now the chanteuse Édith Piaf was in her earphones. She gave up and committed the names Jean-Pierre and Pas to memory.

The first rays of sunlight peeked through gaps in the saber-toothed Alps, bathing the Ju-52 in a soft orange glow.

“We’ll stay up here until we run dry,” Bill told Gabi. “Keep on the lookout for a field we can land in.” The fuel gauge indicator was too depressing to look at since the needle was stuck on 0 like someone had nailed it there.