The Homecoming (5 page)

“Seems like we’re in the clear, Cap. For a little while, anyway.” It was Hatcher, back in the tail section.

“I can see the fighters ripping through the formation, though, to the north of us,” said Adams. He manned the top gun turret and had an unobstructed view.

“So guys,” Shawn said, “nobody got hurt since we pulled away? No serious damage?”

One by one, the rest of the crewmen checked in. Not a single injury to report.

“It’s a lot brighter back here,” said Manzini. “Got several new rows of holes above my head, about six inches apart.”

“You guys did great back there,” said Shawn.

“You think they’re gone for good, Captain?” said O’Reilly.

“No way to know. Most of the fighters will stay with the bombers till they run low on fuel. A lot more targets up there. What we gotta worry about are the ones heading back to refuel. That last bunch that attacked us will radio their buddies about us. Somebody’s gonna want to make us their last kill for the day. I’m going to change course every few minutes to throw ’em off, zigzag till we get closer to the sea. We’re below ten thousand, guys, you can come off oxygen.”

“How low we gonna fly, Captain?”

“Gotta get below a hundred feet to avoid the radar,” said Shawn.

From this point, survival depended on not being seen. He was taking them far off course, to a place on the map Shawn had never been. As best he could tell, it was an area of mostly small fishing villages, very close to the sea. He had read the people of Holland hated their Nazi occupiers. If they ran into anyone, he prayed they’d be sympathetic.

“Okay, guys, we should be seeing the sea in about twenty minutes. I’m hoping to put us down in a farm or a field nearby, but I’ve got no idea how shot up our landing gear is. We need to prepare for a crash landing. Start throwing anything out the window that could either explode or fly around and smack someone when we touch down. And O’Reilly?”

“Sir?”

“You got the map in front of you?”

“I been tracking where you’re taking us since we broke away.”

“Good man. Where do you put us right now?”

“Right about where you said. We should be seeing that sea north of Amsterdam in about nineteen minutes. The Zuider Zee, they used to call it.”

“Keep me on course then. Flying this low, I gotta stay focused. Say, Rick and Nick. We only got a few more minutes till I give the order to brace for the landing. Nick, do what you can to make sure Hank’s leg is ready to travel. We need to be able to move pretty fast once we hit the ground.”

“You don’t mean ‘hit the ground,’ right, Cap?”

“Figure of speech, Nick.” Shawn laughed. He looked down for just a second at the picture of Elizabeth and Patrick.

Please, Lord, keep us invisible a little while longer. Please let
me get home to them
.

The memory of seeing Elizabeth and Patrick’s picture jarred Shawn out of storytelling mode to the present. He looked around the living room, first at his father, then Mrs. Fortini, then Miss Townsend, and finally Patrick, who had fallen asleep leaning on Miss Townsend’s shoulder.

Gone were the popcorn smiles.

Shawn hoped he hadn’t gone too far. He’d purposely held back the scenes of death and dying, the bodies falling from the sky in flames, the terror that gripped every one of those final minutes in battle.

“I’m sorry, folks. This is too much. Maybe I should stop.”

“Are you kidding?” Miss Townsend said in a loud whisper. “This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s better than any of the newsreels down at the theater,” said Mrs. Fortini. “I can’t believe what you went through over there, Shawn. And I’m over here making Christmas cookies.”

The look on his father’s face was hard to interpret. “Shawn, I had no idea” was all he said.

“Do you want to call it a night?”

“I don’t,” said his father, “unless it’s bothering you to talk about it.”

“You can’t stop now, Shawn,” said Mrs. Fortini.

“I’d really love to hear how you made it all the way back,” Katherine said. “If you’re okay sharing it. Should I wake up Patrick?”

“No, let him sleep. It’s probably a good thing. This last part gets even more intense. Someday when he’s older I may tell him the rest.”

Eight

Three weeks earlier
Somewhere in North Holland

Mama’s Kitchen
had made it safely across the Zuider Zee and was now over land once more. They had flown over a few German patrol boats but were flying too fast to attract enemy fire. It was late in the afternoon, the sky wintry and overcast. As Shawn expected, the German fighter that had taken out the ball turret gun, ending Bosco’s life, had also destroyed the landing gear on one side. He’d just ordered everyone, except MacReady, his co-pilot, into the radio room to prepare for a crash landing.

Since there were no German airbases nearby, there were no radar concerns. Shawn pulled up on the stick to gain a few hundred feet in altitude, hoping to find a decent spot to land. “Very close now, guys,” he said. “I see water up ahead, should be the North Sea. I’ll give the word when I start my descent.”

Most of Holland actually dipped below sea level, the water held back by a network of levees and dikes. But not around here. Shawn was glad to see the familiar patchwork quilt of farmland and pastures. Everything looked flat and level. He could just make out the details of local farmhouses and outbuildings.

“I’m not seeing any people,” Shawn said to MacReady. “How about you?”

“Not a soul,” MacReady said. “I’m glad.”

“Me too.”

Out the left window, a large dark area caught Shawn’s eye. It ran along the coast for several miles. “You see that, Jim? I’m no expert on shorelines, but that looks like sand dunes to me.” The area was heavily shrubbed.

“That’s odd,” said MacReady. “The dunes back home hug the shoreline. Look how far inland they go, couple of miles at that one spot.”

Shawn pointed up ahead. “See there, running along the inside edge of the dunes. Looks like a village.” It gave Shawn an idea. “If we could bring her down on the beach, between the sea and these dunes, we might be able to hide the plane from prying eyes, at least for a day or two.”

“I follow you,” said MacReady. “Beach looks wide enough from here.”

Hiding the plane had been one of Shawn’s great concerns. It was not like you could throw a bunch of branches over a four-engine bomber lying in a pasture. He banked the plane until it ran parallel with the shore. He’d have to do this on the first pass; circling would attract too much attention. “Okay, guys, this is it. I’m putting her down on the beach.”

“The beach?” someone asked. “How’s the tide?”

“I don’t think Hatcher can swim,” someone else added. “Don’t worry, Hatch. I’ll save you.”

“Shut up,” said Hatcher.

“The tide’s nice and low,” Shawn said. “It’s plenty wide and flat up ahead. Nobody’s gonna do any swimming.”

After lowering the flaps and easing up on the throttle, he glanced out the side window. Just off the shoreline, north of where the sand dunes began, he noticed a small cottage. Along a dirt road in front, an old man and a young boy rode a horse-drawn cart. “See that?” Shawn asked MacReady.

The old man stopped as
Mama’s Kitchen
passed by. He looked up, and both of them waved.

They had finally been seen. But the two men were Dutch, Shawn reminded himself, and they had waved. Shawn couldn’t wave back, but he realized just then that God had answered his prayers. He hadn’t seen a single German the whole way in. He had picked this general area on the map, but it seemed God had sovereignly directed him to the one spot along the Dutch coast hidden by miles of sand dunes. It was the first time since they’d left the formation that Shawn began to believe they might actually make it. He shifted his attention ahead, eased up on the throttle some more, and lifted the nose of the plane to slow it down. He kept resisting the urge to lower his landing gear.

“Below a hundred feet, guys. Gonna try to keep her in the air till the last minute. Soon as we stop, I want everyone out. I’ve burned off most of the fuel, but I don’t want to take any chances of an explosion.” No one answered.

The plane continued its steady descent. They were flying at their slowest possible speed, but the lower they got, the faster it seemed they flew, waves flashing by to the right, dunes to the left. “Steady, steady . . .” Shawn muttered. Both he and MacReady looked at each other at the same moment, the moment they would normally feel the wheels touching down. Very strange to still be in the air. “Hold on, guys.”

BOOM!

The plane bounced. They were airborne again, a precious few feet off the ground.

Then BOOM again.

This time she stayed down, the bottom scraping along the beach, a roaring sound filling the cockpit. Both men were thrown forward; their bodies slammed into the controls as the sand instantly cut the speed in half. Shawn heard screams and loud bangs behind him. He looked over his right shoulder, about to call out to his men, but the plane started sliding to the right. He looked up just as it began to swerve toward the water. He and MacReady jammed their feet into the rudder pedals, trying to shift her back to the left. It didn’t work.

“We’re going in,” said MacReady.

Shawn looked over at him; the bottom half of his face was covered in blood pouring down from his nose. Shawn was about to say something, but the plane jerked even harder to the right. He gripped the controls. Huge plumes of water rose up as the right wing made contact with the water. The plane went into a spin as the front end slowed and the rear end came around. Shawn feared it was just about to flip over. More screams from the back.

Then suddenly another jolt, and they stopped.

And all was silent.

A moment later, the sound of small waves broke on the fuselage.

“Okay, everybody out,” Shawn screamed into the intercom. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he yelled toward the back. MacReady was already making his way out.

“You guys need help?” Shawn asked. “Anyone hurt?”

“Little banged up, but we’re okay,” said O’Reilly.

“Don’t forget your weapons,” Shawn said. “And your big coats. Everybody get across the beach, meet up at the first set of dunes.” Shawn followed MacReady out of the plane, dropping down into three feet of water. It instantly began seeping into his boots, cold as ice. Three of the men were already running across the beach. He looked toward the rear and saw Manzini and O’Reilly all but carrying Hank Anderson through the surf, his legs dragging uselessly behind him. “You guys need a hand?”

“We’re okay, Cap,” said Manzini. “Freezing my butt off over here.” Besides the freezing water, an icy wind blew offshore. It seemed as cold here as thirty thousand feet up.

“I always hated the beach,” said Anderson. “Now I really hate it.”

In a few minutes they were all sitting around the base of a large dune, soaked from the waist down, pistols out and ready. MacReady had his head back, trying to stop his nosebleed. “Anyone get the first aid kit on the way out?” Shawn asked.

Silence and blank stares. No, they hadn’t. “Hatcher, head back and get it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Shawn’s eyes followed Hatcher toward the plane. It looked so odd just now, the back end of the plane sticking up out of the water, the nose pointing down like a head bowed in surrender. He noticed a large crease just before the waist gunner’s window. Another fifty yards and
Mama’s Kitchen
would have cracked in half. She had served them well. It saddened him to think of leaving her here, drowning in the surf.

“Captain, what’s the plan?”

Shawn turned toward the voice. The men were crouched close together, shivering in the cold. He imagined the sun—if he could see it through the hazy gray sky—was close to setting. “Guys, I think we should move a few dunes inland, get out of this wind. Start gathering wood for a fire, but don’t start it till it gets dark. We can’t take a chance of the smoke giving our position away.”

“Sounds like you’re going somewhere,” said Hatcher, arriving back with the medical kit.

“I’m going back to where the dunes began,” Shawn said. “Lieutenant MacReady and I saw an old man with a young boy as we came in. He might be willing to help us. Hatch, do what you can to clean up Lieutenant MacReady’s face.”

“It’s just a nosebleed,” MacReady said. “Smacked it on that first bounce.”

“Still,” Shawn said, “you’ve got blood all over your face. Anyone else need any help?”

“I could use a few aspirin,” said Bill Davis. “My head is killing me.”

“We’ve got some in there, right, Hatch?”

“A whole bottle.”

“Seriously, anybody need aspirin, don’t be shy. That was some serious banging around on the way in.”

“You’re telling me,” Davis said. “Not one of your better landings, Cap.”

Shawn laughed; so did several of the others.

“But seriously, you did an incredible job, sir, bringing us in like that,” said Adams. “I thought we were goners.”

“That why you screamed like a woman?” Manzini asked. Everyone laughed, except Adams.

“I did not.”

“I’m sorry, but you did. I had my eyes closed, thought I was back in the Bronx with my kid sister.”

“Okay, guys, let’s get going,” Shawn said, standing up. “Our light is about gone.”

“Hey, Captain, look,” said Hatcher.

Everyone turned and looked down the beach where Hatcher pointed. Shawn heard guns clicking all around. Walking from the same direction they had just landed were two figures, one slightly larger than the other, staying close to the line of dunes.

“Hold on, guys,” Shawn said. “They’re not in uniform, and I don’t see any guns.”

“I think it’s that old man and the boy we saw coming in,” said MacReady.

“I think you’re right,” said Shawn. “Nick, you come with me. The rest of you stay here.”

Shawn started to walk toward them, Manzini right behind him. In a few moments, he could see it was the old man and the boy. They both waved again as they saw Shawn and Manzini coming. Shawn waved back. A few more moments, they could see each other’s faces. The boy wasn’t so young; a teenager, maybe fourteen or fifteen. And the old man wasn’t so old, though his hair was mostly gray. He had the face of a man aged by long years of sun and harsh weather. Both wore dark wool overcoats that had seen better days.