Defiant Heart (44 page)

The four of them raced through the gap between the buildings, and they emerged on the other side in the open. The plane they had targeted was about fifty yards away.

Jon yelled, “Shim, pull the stop on the right wheel. I’ll get the left. Tommie, get us out of here.”

As they reached the plane, Shim bent and yanked away the angled piece of wood that served as a stop for the right wheel. Then he followed Tommie and Abernathy, who had already ducked and passed under the fuselage. Jon sprinted around the nose of the plane and the left propeller, reached down, gripped the rope attached to the left stop and jerked it away. Both engines coughed and roared to life simultaneously, and the plane was already rolling when Jon jumped up on the wing. He put his hands on the metal supports to either side of the cockpit opening, hoisted himself up, and dropped in on top of Abernathy, who grunted. He twisted back and pulled up the side panel of the canopy, then reached above him and pulled down the top section, sealing the cockpit.

As they rolled across the grass, Jon looked over and saw men spilling out of the buildings from which the flight and ground crews had emerged the previous night. In the light of one of the doorways was a uniformed officer. The man reached down to his side, unsnapped a holster at his hip, and lifted up a handgun. Jon saw a muzzle flash, and the gun jumped in the officer’s hand. The man brought the gun level again, and Jon saw another flash. This time, there was the sound of a bullet striking metal somewhere on the plane. With a third flash, a hole opened in one of the Perspex panels on the right side of the canopy, with another appearing opposite it high on the left side.

Then, fortunately, they were on the runway, and, even though he’d not yet lined the plane up, Tommie had already thrown the throttles to their stops. The plane rapidly picked up speed, bouncing along the uneven surface. The instant the bouncing stopped, Tommie retracted the landing gear, and the plane jumped forward. Jon looked back and could see that two of the other fighters had their engines running and were moving. Only one of them, however, was near the runway.

Tommie leveled out just above the trees and turned to a due westerly heading.

“We got company,” Shim called out. Jon looked back, and, in the moonlight, he could see another Bf 110 rising up above the tree tops and turning to their heading.

Abernathy shifted uncomfortably. Then he drew a hand up from beneath him and looked at what he’d retrieved. “I knew I’d sat on something.”

It was a cloth cap with a set of headphones sewn into it. A throat mike dangled from one side. Jon took it from him. “Perfect.”

He slipped the cap on and immediately heard excited voices speaking in German. It took Jon only a second to realize it was the pilot in the plane behind him speaking to someone on the ground. “I’m gaining on him,” the pilot said. Jon looked and saw that he was right. Must be the weight of the two extra bodies, Jon thought.

“Do I have permission to fire?” the German pilot asked.

There was a pause. Then the ground controller came back on. “Permission granted.”

“Tommie,” Jon said, “take evasive action now.”

Tommie banked left. Behind them, what appeared to be headlights on the nose of the pursuing plane blinked as the German fired his cannon. Tracers reached out toward them, but the German had been thrown off by Tommie’s sudden maneuver, and the deadly fire sailed off to their right.

They leveled out. The German was firing again, but they abruptly dipped, and Jon came up out of his seat. Tracers flew harmlessly overhead.

Jon looked forward and saw they’d come to a large valley. Tommie had dropped down heading for the valley floor.

Suddenly, there was a new sound. Shim had begun firing the rear mounted machine gun. Over the radio, Jon heard the German pilot swear. Then the pilot reported to the ground controller that the stolen plane was returning fire. After a moment, the controller instructed the German to stay on their tail and report their position. He announced that fighters from a Dutch base were being scrambled to intercept.

“Tommie, we’ve got to lose this guy. He’s leading others to us.”

Tommie just nodded. He’d turned up the valley, which was narrowing. With quick movements, he guided the plane along the path of the river that flowed in a serpentine pattern no more than a hundred feet below them.

The German behind them had dropped back slightly, and, in the face of the fire Shim was delivering, he seemed to have decided that, rather than shoot them down, he’d be content simply to follow. Jon could hear the reports he was delivering to the ground controller. They were now apparently heading up a valley known as the Madeleine. Jon could see the sides were closing in and becoming steeper. The abrupt banking Tommie had been doing in order to avoid the fire from the German was now necessary just to stay within the course of the valley.

They came roaring around a sharp bend and, with a sickening flood of realization, Jon knew they’d made a huge mistake. Looming ahead of them was a bridge spanning what had now become a narrow gorge. They were too close to pull up and over the span. And, unfortunately, the distance between the vertical supports for the bridge was far too narrow to accommodate the wingspan of the fighter. There was also insufficient clearance from the ground to the underside of the bridge to allow them to turn sideways and slip through.

Tommie dropped the right wing and without hesitation headed for the gap between the two center support towers at a diagonal. It was, Jon saw, a brave but futile gesture. There was no chance they could make it through. It was the equivalent of trying to toss a thread through the eye of a needle from across the room. Bracing for the final impact, Jon watched with morbid fascination as they plunged into the gap.

There was a teeth rattling screech to their left as the tip of the wing scraped along either the underside of the bridge or the side of the left support tower. Or, Jon realized, probably both. Inconceivably, though, they were through, and Tommie was pulling them up out of the valley.

Jon jerked his head around to see what the German would do. He likewise tried to squeeze through the narrow gap. However, his wing clipped the support tower and sheared off, sending his aircraft into a cartwheel. It exploded on contact with the valley floor, and brilliant flames snaked along the bottom of the narrow gorge.

“Tommie,” Jon said, “turn north.”

Tommie immediately banked the plane hard to the right and pulled back on the stick. Jon felt himself pushed downward by the additional g-forces. Then they were level again, skimming above fields of wheat shimmering in the moonlight.

“Stay on this heading for two minutes. Then turn west again.”

Tommie nodded.

Through his radio headset, Jon heard the ground controller trying to reach the pilot of the plane that had been chasing them. After a minute, he heard a new voice checking in with the ground controller. From the exchange, Jon could tell it was a pilot in another plane, likely one of the fighters that had been dispatched from the base in Holland. The new pilot reported that there were flames lining the bottom of the valley floor and no sign of any aircraft.

“It looks like they tried to go under the railroad bridge and didn’t make it,” said the German pilot.

“One or both aircraft?” asked the ground controller.

There was silence for several seconds. Then the pilot came back on. “Impossible to tell. But I don’t see how anyone could have flown through that opening.”

The ground controller acknowledged the information, then vectored the pilot to a new location to stand by.

Tommie banked the plane again, this time not quite so violently, and they were now heading due west. They could see no other aircraft. Tommie kept the course steady for several minutes. The terrain below them gradually flattened out. They flew directly over a few small towns and, at one point, passed through a cloud of steam rising from a locomotive crossing their path and pulling a long line of box cars. Suddenly, they were out over water.

Jon rotated the dial on the radio, setting it to the emergency frequency used by returning allied planes, or, at least what he hoped was still a current emergency frequency. Their big problem now was going to be convincing the Brits that they weren’t what they obviously appeared to be: A German fighter bomber approaching England to attack British targets. All allied aircraft emitted signals known as IFF, or Identification Friend or Foe. Any plane approaching the British coastline and failing to emit such a signal would be assumed to be hostile and, if its pilot couldn’t make a convincing case to the contrary, would be shot down. It would be a tragic irony, Jon reflected, if, after all they’d been through, they were taken down by friendly fire.

Jon keyed the microphone. “To any allied radio operator receiving this signal. This is Sergeant Jonathon Meyer, United States Army Air Force. I am in a stolen Messerschmitt Bf 110 on a heading of 270 degrees, flying at an altitude of three hundred feet over the North Sea. We are not hostile. Repeat, we are not hostile. Please acknowledge.”

There was no response.

After a minute, Jon repeated the message, and, again, the radio was silent.

Jon adjusted the frequency, and tried again. Over a period of twenty minutes, Jon tried his message on several frequencies. The atmosphere in the cockpit was becoming tense.

Jon set the radio to a new frequency and delivered the message. Almost immediately, a man’s voice with a British accent said, “Stand by.”

“Got something,” Jon said.

A long moment passed. Then the voice came back on the radio. “Increase your altitude to one thousand feet and lower your landing gear.”

“Roger,” Jon replied. “Tommie, take us up to a thousand feet and lower the landing gear.”

Tommie immediately pulled back on the stick and eased the aircraft up to a thousand feet. He leveled off, reached forward and toggled the landing gear. There was a whirring sound as the wheels came down, and the plane’s speed dropped with the new drag.

“We are now at a thousand feet,” Jon said into the radio. “Our landing gear has been extended. We are still on a heading of 270 degrees. However, I am not sure of our position.”

“Don’t worry, Sergeant,” the voice came back, with a much friendlier inflection. “We know where you are. Check your six o’clock.”

Jon looked back and, after a couple of seconds, a British Mosquito fighter bomber slowly rose into view, approximately fifty yards behind them.

“Hot damn,” Shim said. Then he added, “I hope that guy doesn’t get trigger happy.” He raised both hands up next to his head, palms facing the Mosquito, and waved them. After a moment, the British pilot raised a hand and waved.

The British ground controller came back on the radio. “Turn to a heading of two eight zero.” Jon relayed the instructions, and Tommie altered their course.

Over the next twenty minutes, they received a series of instructions, adjusting their course and altitude. Finally, the ground controller came on and said, “Well, Sergeant, you’re on final approach to the main runway at Queen’s End.” Jon could see in the distance a series of lights in a straight line, the first few red, the rest white. Tommie allowed the left wing to dip slightly and they slid a bit to the left, where they were perfectly lined up.

Jon keyed the microphone one last time. “Runway in sight. Thank you for all your assistance.”

“My pleasure.”

Tommie eased the Messerschmitt down, and, as they passed over the end of the runway, he allowed the plane to flare. The two main wheels and the small rear wheel made smooth contact with the runway at the same moment. A perfect three-point landing.

“Show off,” Jon said.

Tommie glanced back. He had a big grin on his face.

At the end of the runway, a jeep appeared, and a ground crewman signaled for them to follow. Tommie taxied behind the jeep, and it led them across another runway and down a short taxiway to an apron sitting in front of a hangar. Tommie set the brakes and shut down the engines.

There was a moment of silence. Then, from below him, Abernathy said, “Jon, you know you’re not that light.” Smiling, Jon reached for the latch to open the canopy.

Tommie said, “Yeah, let’s get out of here. This place is starting to smell like manure.”

“You had to bring it up,” Shim said, “didn’t you?” And they all four laughed.

As they climbed down from the cockpit, another jeep materialized out of the darkness. A man hopped out of the passenger seat and walked briskly over to them. As he got closer, Jon could see it was the same officer he’d met after landing the Deuces Wild.

“I had to see this with my own eyes,” the man said. He peered at Jon, then nodded. “When they told me the name, I said it couldn’t be. I should have known better.”

Jon smiled. “This time, sir, I didn’t fly the plane.”

The officer laughed. “Well, all right, then,” he said, and he put a hand out. “Congratulations gentlemen.” As he shook their hands, he said, “This is a story I’m dying to hear. And something tells me you boys are probably hungry. Let me give you a ride to the mess.”

As they accompanied the officer to the jeep, the man put his hand on Jon’s shoulder. “You know, sergeant, I have only a finite amount of room here at my base. You’re not planning on bringing me back any more airplanes, are you?”

“No sir,” Jon said, with sincerity. “I’m happy to report that I’m all finished. I have only one more very important thing to do before I go home.”

18

“Mary,” General Kimbrough asked, “don’t you think you’ve done enough for today?”

It was late on Thursday afternoon, and Mary had just offered to transcribe the general’s notes from the meeting he’d concluded a few minutes earlier. It was her first day back at work.

After Mary had been given the news about Jon on Monday, Penny had taken her back to the Staunton. General Kimbrough had arranged for Penny to be excused from her work, and Penny had been with Mary constantly for the next three days. Mary had been grateful for Penny’s presence. Still, it had been an awful time.

On Thursday morning, Mary had awakened with the realization that she had to get control over her life. She knew she couldn’t spend the rest of it crying. It wouldn’t bring Jon back. And it was something Jon wouldn’t want her to do. What she needed, she knew, was a routine, something to make her feel part of the world again. When she’d arrived at work that morning, General Kimbrough had been surprised, but pleased, to see her taking steps to get beyond the grief. He’d given her a little work to do, but she knew he was holding back.