Only a clean head shot guarantees instant death, which is vital when you’re shooting a man who’s only a trigger pull away from killing your comrade. Joseph had put two expert shots through the brain of the German with the gun.
Marc realised what had happened and took aim at the other German as he turned to run. Joseph’s third shot came in the same instant, and it wasn’t clear who hit the Luftwaffe security officer between the shoulder blades and who got him a few centimetres higher in the base of the neck.
As the second German fell he released the Doberman. Joseph hadn’t anticipated this, and forced his way through a gap in the hedge, only to find himself knocked down by a heavy dog, which promptly sank its teeth into his thigh.
Marc had the gun ready, but didn’t dare shoot when a bullet could easily pass through the animal, straight into Joseph. As Joseph fought the powerful dog and Noah pulled up his trousers, Marc forced his way through the hedge and threw his knife.
His movement was restricted by the tangle of leaves, but he managed to hit the Doberman in the back. He’d ruptured something major, because the dog spasmed and a jet of blood shot more than two metres into the air.
With the dog weakened, Joseph managed to prise its jaws off his leg. He then ripped out his own knife, slashing the animal’s throat as it made a final desperate squeal.
‘Bugger,’ Marc gasped, as he glanced about at blood and gore.
There were two dead Germans, one with brains spattered all over the tall grass. The Doberman was dead but twitching. Joseph screwed up his face in pain from the bite, while his clothes squelched from all the dog blood.
‘What now?’ Noah asked, as he walked up to Joseph. ‘You OK, pal?’
‘All because of your damned bowels,’ Joseph said, half angry, half joking.
It took another minute for Joseph to get back on his feet. Marc tried thinking through the implications of what had happened while he pulled his knife out of the dog and wiped it on the grass.
‘I say we throw the Germans and the dog in the ditch we passed a few hundred metres back,’ Marc said. ‘Then we booby trap the bodies with a grenade and move across to the other side of the base. If we hear a bang, we’ll know we’ve been rumbled.’
Noah nodded, impressed, as Joseph glanced at his watch.
‘Works for me,’ Joseph said. ‘If our timings are right, the British bombers should have the night fighters taking off and the base in a state of chaos within the next half-hour. With any luck, a routine patrol won’t be missed much before then.’
‘What if it it’s a local who discovers the body?’ Davey asked. ‘They’ll get blown up just the same.’
‘Could happen,’ Marc said. ‘But this is a restricted zone. I’m open to any better suggestions.’
Nobody had any, so they dragged the two dead Germans and the Doberman towards the ditch.
Joseph was hobbling badly and Davey strapped his leg with a bandage as Marc and Noah stood in the ditch, piling the corpses on top of each other, then setting up a trip wire so that a grenade would explode three seconds after anyone came near the bodies.
By the time they’d cleaned off as much blood as possible in a horse trough and repositioned on the opposite side of the base, they were expecting the night fighters to be scrambling to take on incoming bombers. But midnight passed and Davey grew dejected when it reached 1 a.m.
‘They didn’t give me an exact target, but I was told that tonight’s raid would be over Germany,’ he explained. ‘Any bombers that pass over now would be on a suicide mission: they’d never reach Germany and get back across the Channel before daybreak.’
‘How can they not come?’ Marc asked. ‘I thought the RAF was desperate for one of these radar sets.’
‘Any one of a million reasons,’ Davey explained. ‘Bad weather over the target in Germany. Emergency reassignment. Or maybe they got shot-to-hell on their last raid and there’s not enough of the poor buggers left to form a squadron.’
Joseph grunted with frustration. ‘Your plan said if it didn’t happen tonight, we’d dig out our parachutes, go back to the farm and try another day. But they’re going to miss that patrol we killed. There’ll be a major search through this whole area. Security will be beefed up for weeks, if not months afterwards.’
‘Not to mention possible arrests and reprisals against the locals for killing two Germans,’ Marc added.
‘So we’re screwed?’ Noah said, shaking his head with frustration.
‘I can see one option,’ Joseph said. ‘We needed the British bombing raid to create a distraction on the fighter base. But Noah and myself are demolition experts, carrying backpacks full of explosives and grenades.’
Noah smiled before taking up his young partner’s train of thought. ‘If we snuck in and wired up the base fuel tanks, would that make a big enough bang for you?’
Davey scratched his beard. ‘We’d be the only aircraft in the sky. The Germans could scramble whole squadrons of aircraft to hunt down one of us.’
‘What if we disrupt their communications too?’ Marc asked. ‘Cut the phone lines, blow the radio masts.’
‘That would certainly help,’ Davey said. ‘If I hedge hop – that’s keeping the aircraft low – we’d be below most German radar systems. It could work out, as long as I have time to get up in the air, and get ten minutes flying in before they start looking for me. Radar picks up bomber squadrons easily enough, but I saw last night how one or two Lysanders can sneak in and out of occupied France without too many difficulties. How are you set for explosives?’
‘We’ve got no detonator cord,’ Noah said. ‘But we’ve got fuses, grenades and a few sticks of plastic.’
Joseph nodded. ‘A little explosive goes a long way, if you put it in the right spot.’
‘RAF chaps die every night because of this radar,’ Davey said. ‘So if you’re willing to try making some chaos, I’ll do my damndest to get a bird off the ground.’
Davey had got off on the wrong foot with the Canadians, but the experience they’d just shared had brought them closer, and for the first time Joseph gave the RAF test pilot something approaching a look of respect.
‘We’re agreed then,’ Joseph said. ‘Noah, get the base plans out. Let’s work out who needs to do what.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Joseph studied plans, divvied up the jobs, made everyone synchronise their watches and set the kick-off time for 1:35 a.m.
The Luftwaffe base remained calm as Marc squatted beside a thick tree trunk eight metres from its perimeter. The night-fighter pilots knew there would be no raid over Germany, but would stay on alert for a couple more hours in case of attacks on French targets.
Marc’s task was taking down communications. He watched the second hand on his pocket watch. When it swept past twelve, indicating 1:31, he stood up and pulled out his knife. The base was in a remote area, but the location of a telephone junction box just beyond the security perimeter had been marked on the base map supplied by the local resistance.
After a run of less than ten metres, Marc used the knife to lever the metal cover off the junction box. He then dug it in behind the three wire connections and yanked it forward to rip them out of their sockets.
With the base telephones killed, his next task was dealing with a bank of radio antennas, which lived in a three-storey air traffic control building a few metres inside the perimeter. He switched his knife for a hand grenade and crouched down beside the fence, waiting for a distant bang that would signal the time for his next move.
Dead on 1:33 there was an explosion at the opposite side of the base. This was caused by Squadron Leader Davey triggering the booby-trapped bodies, and lobbing a couple of grenades into the surrounding trees to make sure everyone on the base knew something exciting was going on.
Joseph’s theory was that the explosions off-base would set all the armed security patrols running away from the base, and away from the lines of parked Junkers night fighters in particular.
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p; Davey claimed he could run a hundred metres in under ten and a half seconds and seemed confident that he could make it through a hole Noah and Joseph had already made in the perimeter fence before anyone got near the scene of the blast.
Marc had no way of knowing whether this had worked out as he pushed small pieces of rag into each ear, before hauling himself up the base’s wire perimeter and bravely throwing himself on to the coils of barbed wire at the top.
The plan was that a second coat and Davey’s leather flying gloves would stop him getting sliced up, and it didn’t work out too badly.
Once he was sprawled over the wire barbs, Marc swung one leg inside the perimeter and threw himself at the ground on the other side. He’d hoped to land feet first, but the barbs snagged a belt loop on his trousers and he ended up plunging head first, with only his hands and a metal helmet to save him.
A painful shockwave went from his palms to his shoulders, but he had to ignore the pain and duck because a cluster of excitable Luftwaffe men stood less than twenty metres away. Fortunately they were all studying the plume of smoke rising from the trees at the other end of the airfield.
Climbing up to the roof and destroying the radio aerials on top of the control tower would take too much time, so Joseph had instructed Marc to approach the ground floor of the control building and roll three grenades through the front door.
Marc pulled the pins as he approached, using his teeth for the third one because his hands were full. As all the action in the control tower took place at the top, Marc had hoped to find an empty stairwell behind the door. He actually got a porky German technician who didn’t appreciate having three grenades bounced towards him.
Marc shut the door and ran flat out, followed closely by the screaming technician. The narrow building didn’t collapse, but the simultaneous blast of three grenades sent a shockwave up the staircase. It blew out every window, including the huge top-floor panes that overlooked the airfield. It also sent thousands of glass and wood shards into the crowd of Germans below.
Marc couldn’t see his watch in the dark, but knew he only had seconds before the main event kicked off. He clattered into a German pilot, charging out of a wooden hut.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
The pilot was off balance, with a parachute hooked over one arm and pulling his flying goggles on with his free hand. Marc pushed on, but the pilot grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.
The German looked shocked as he recognised Marc’s commando gear, but before he got a proper hold on Marc, the teenager lashed out, catching the side of his head with a flying elbow, then plunging a knife into the pilot’s gut as he crashed against the wooden hut.
Marc ran on with the bloody knife clutched tightly. He broke out on to the open airfield tarmac, with the criss-crossed runways lined up ahead and rows of night fighters parked to his left.
Flames crackled and men who’d been sliced by flying wood and glass screamed. Marc wore black and was now far enough away from the control tower to be indistinguishable from all the panicky Germans as he ran towards the parked aircraft. He’d made less than sixty metres when the first of several explosions set by the Canadians ripped through the base’s partially-buried fuel store.
A sympathetic fuse meant that the ammunition store erupted a few seconds later. There was screaming and the whole sky lit up. Even with the rags wedged in, Marc found his ears ringing as the searing heat blistered the skin on the back of his neck.
Another hundred metres took him to Davey. As chaos unfolded, the Squadron Leader had located a JU-88 fitted with the Mark IV radar and peeled back the camouflage netting from it, but he was gesticulating wildly with the starter unit.
Marc couldn’t hear over roaring flame, crashing debris and ringing ears, but he grasped that Davey needed to adjust something in the cockpit before the engine would start running.
‘Have you seen Noah and Joseph?’ Marc shouted.
He didn’t get an answer. Instead, Marc found himself standing by the propeller with the starter trolley. To save weight, the JU-88 didn’t have the batteries and starter motors to start the engine turning. There was no certainty of being able to find a starter unit when they took the aircraft, so Davey had brought one the British had cobbled together to start the JU-88 bombers they’d captured in the Libyan Desert a few months earlier.
‘Push the button,’ Davey shouted.
Marc’s arms sagged as he stood at full reach, holding the starter motor up to a slot in the side of the engine. The blast of the propeller knocked him back as the engine caught and he stumbled clumsily as he ducked under the fuselage to start the engine on the opposite side.
There was still no sign of the Canadians as Marc started the second engine and kicked the starter blocks from under the front wheels.
‘Get in,’ Davey shouted. ‘This plane is our mission. We can’t wait for them.’
Marc looked around desperately as he put a boot on the ladder that led up to the cockpit. There was no room for his backpack inside the tiny cockpit, and he threw it off, leaving just his pistol, knife and a few grenades hooked to his belt.
‘I’ll leave the cockpit open,’ Davey said, as Marc settled into a seat directly behind the pilot. ‘Get your safety harness on.’
Marc glanced around as he settled into the cockpit. They’d been lucky nobody had noticed as they’d started the plane, but it would be hard not to as Davey throttled up and started taxiing towards the runways.
They were rolling towards the scene of the main fuel explosion. The orange light was blinding and the heat of the flames was intensified by the cockpit glass.
In the confusion, none of the Germans they passed made any attempt to stop them, and with the control tower destroyed, nobody understood what was going on.
‘Sighted, three o’clock,’ Davey shouted.
Marc didn’t hear, but the pilot put the wing flaps up and they slowed so dramatically that Marc feared they’d go nose up, like the Lysander he’d watched one night earlier. He only understood what was happening when they came to a halt and he saw Noah limping towards the plane.
With no ladder, the only way into the cockpit was to duck under the wing and pull yourself up. Noah was strong enough, but Marc had to slide out of his way and was horrified by bright red, circular wounds where most of his hair used to be.
‘Joseph’s dead,’ Noah shouted. ‘Let’s move.’
Marc tugged a leather strap to pull the cockpit shut, then settled into a tiny flip-down jump seat. As he hunted for the seat harness, Davey turned sharply and headed for the runway.
But while nobody had interfered up to now, half the base had watched a man in British commando uniform climb aboard. Fortunately the armed security patrols were nowhere near, but the same couldn’t be said for the base’s fire-fighters.
The main fuel fire was beyond the scope of these teams, and they were concentrating on smaller fires causes by flying debris. As Davey turned on to the runway and began accelerating, two powerful water jets swung into their path.
There was nothing in the flight training manual about what you’re supposed to do when you’re hurtling along a runway at full throttle and someone aims a fire hose at you, but Davey strongly suspected that the pressure of several tons of water hitting the tail would send them dangerously off course.
‘Hold on, boys!’ he shouted.
Davey swerved off the runway. His first plan was to keep up the pace and swerve back on to the tarmac, but at this speed any dramatic turns would most likely rip off the undercarriage.
The grass up ahead looked clear and flat, though it was impossible to be sure. Davey had to take a split-second choice between throttling back and giving up, or keeping on full throttle and hoping he could reach take-off speed before they hit the base’s perimeter fence, or some other unseen obstacle.
The top of Marc’s head slammed against the inside of the cockpit as the engines went at full throttle.Everyone’s eyes were stung from the acrid smoke produced b
y burning aviation fuel.
‘I’m sorry, boys,’ Davey shouted. ‘Brace yourselves; I don’t think we’ve got the speed.’
But the bumps had stopped before the last word was out of Davey’s mouth. Marc could see nothing but the flaming airbase reflected bright orange in the cockpit glass as Davey pulled back on the control stick.
There was a crashing sound, as branches thrashed against the undercarriage. The engine made several loud misfires as the plane lurched violently sideways, snagging on something heavy. Davey threw the control stick in the opposite direction, more in hope than expectation, but they broke clear of the trees.
Marc put his head against the seat back as the flames on the ground shrunk from view.
‘We’re full of fuel,’ Davey said happily, as his eyes darted around the cockpit checking the rows of illuminated gauges. ‘Oil pressure good. Controls feel OK.’
Marc looked across at Noah whose face was smeared in blood. ‘You OK?’
‘Just burns, I think,’ Noah said. ‘We were still too close when the fuel tanks went up. I got hit by shrapnel, but Joseph was closer. The fireball threw him a good thirty metres into the air. I didn’t see a body, but there’s no way he could have survived that.’
‘I’m sorry, mate,’ Marc said, as he felt Noah’s hand trembling above his own on the narrow armrest between the two seats.
‘This one was never going to be easy, was it?’ Noah said.
‘Quite a ways from home yet, chaps,’ Davey said anxiously, as he pressed his face against the cockpit glass to cut out the reflection from the illuminated dials. ‘Whatever we snagged on the way up has shredded our right tyre.’
‘Can you land on one?’ Marc asked.
‘No idea,’ Davey said. ‘Looks like I’ll be giving it a try though.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Ironically, after all Marc had been through it was the combination of a hard seat and the scabs from his thrashing by Sister Raphael that gave him most discomfort on the flight home.