The plane lurched hard to port once more, the left wing dropping almost ninety degrees. Without a sound Hans vanished.
‘Oh no!’ whispered Stef.
And all of a sudden he saw it, little more than a black dot appearing, then disappearing amidst the rolling clouds. He quickly raised his binoculars and studied the portion of sky in which he had last seen the plane.
‘Dammit!’ he whispered to himself. ‘Where’s it gone?’
‘Delaware!’ Truman called out. ‘You see anything yet?’
‘Uh . . . I thought I saw something, sir.’
And then the clouds broke. Through his binoculars Captain Eugene Delaware caught sight of the flying fortress, as the plane bore down on Manhattan Island. By the look of it, the plane was already over the Hudson and now on its way northwards, running parallel with Broad-way and up to Times Square.
‘Oh, yeah! There it is, sir! It’s coming right towards us now!’
Truman looked up at the men in the room with him. ‘My God, they’ve made it all the way over, then,’ he uttered, the conceit of measured calm he had managed to maintain throughout the day finally beginning to show the first signs of slipping away from him.
The young battery captain’s voice came over the speaker once more. ‘Mr President, something’s happening! ’
Wallace found his legs beginning to tremble uncontrollably. Once more he shot a glance up at Dr Frewer, the only other person in the room whom he felt he could draw comfort from. Frewer met his eyes, but this time he didn’t offer a reassuring shake of the head or a knowing smile; the tension was played out across his face as well.
Oh-my-God, this is it. Even Oppenheimer’s man is having doubts.
Truman put his hand over the phone and his gaze travelled around the room. ‘And now, gentlemen, we’re going to know, one way or the other.’
‘The plane is turning now, sir! She’s . . . yeah, she’s banking pretty steeply, sir. I’d say it looks like they’re in trouble,’ Delaware continued. ‘She’s heading due west now! It’s a steep turn, sir!’
Max stared into the chasm. The ground below was rotating slowly now, but he could see it gradually increasing in speed.
It’s going into a spin.
He pulled himself up, holstering the pistol, and clambered through the bulkhead up into the cockpit. Pieter was slumped over the pilot’s flight stick. There was blood under his jaw and down his neck; he was either unconscious or dead by the look of him. He must have been caught by one of the Walther’s bullets during the struggle. It looked like he’d received a wound to his throat.
Max saw that Pieter had managed to pull out his own sidearm. He must have been getting ready to come back and settle the issue when the bullet had caught him.
So, for this mission, for your beloved Führer, you would have shot me too?
He shook his head sadly. Both Pieter and Hans had been the better soldiers, prepared to do anything to see the job done, too damned stupid to question whether it should be.
He pulled Pieter’s body back and grabbed hold of the flight stick, pulling against the lazy downward spiral that the bomber had settled into. The altimeter displayed an altitude of only 2000 feet, and that was slipping away steadily. He pulled back and to the right and within a few seconds the B-17 had straightened out and levelled. With the plane on an even keel, he momentarily released the pilot’s flight stick, settled into the co-pilot’s seat and grabbed the flight stick there.
Below them now he could see the central island of New York, Manhattan, its tall structures clustered together like giant chess pieces on an enormous metropolitan chess board.
Max had flown over Berlin several times, but the size and scale of the city he saw now below him was a poignant demonstration of the sheer might and muscle of America. While Speer had dreamed of a gigantic trophy structure in the heart of Germany, over here it looked like they’d been routinely building them for decades.
And we thought a single bomb would make them surrender.
Even if the bomb worked as it was hoped, and destroyed only this city, he wondered if a country capable of such impressive scale could be beaten so easily. America was a giant, a leviathan, a Goliath of economic muscle and might. Perhaps back in 1942, when the German empire stretched from the Atlantic to the Urals, the Baltic to the Black Sea, before things had ground to a halt outside Stalingrad, perhaps back then Germany had stood only shoulder high to them; a vain midget standing on tiptoes.
He pulled the B-17 to the right and the Atlantic swung into view once more. Below, he could see the large pale green statue of the crowned lady holding aloft a torch. For a few seconds he struggled to recall its name, and then it came to him: Liberty. He watched as the statue passed beyond sight of the cockpit canopy and the buildings of New York slid away beneath him.
The fuel gauge showed empty. It had done so for some time now, he guessed. Pieter had been flying on the margin of safety, the extra fuel capacity the tanks could hold over and above the dial reading. But that too must be all but exhausted. One of the engines had begun to stutter, the last one on the starboard wing that was still functioning. That left two engines on the port side still going strong. He decided to reduce the throttle on them to even things out a little. The plane was still going to pull gently to the right, and he would need to constantly correct the plane’s course to keep it going in a straight line . . .
A straight line where?
The plane had to be ditched, far enough out that it would be deep, but not so far they had no hope of making it ashore.
He heard movement beside him and turned to see Stef leaning over Pieter’s seat. ‘Is he dead too?’ he asked with a weak voice.
‘I think so.’
‘What happened, Max?’ he asked groggily.
For a moment he toyed with feeding the lad some untruth, that the mission had been recalled, or that Hans and Pieter had decided to surrender the bomb to the Americans, but he decided Stef was clever enough to sense he was being lied to.
‘The mission is to be aborted.’
Stef seemed unsurprised, as if he’d expected all along this sort of outcome, or perhaps he was too far gone and light-headed to muster a response of shock. ‘Right,’ he said listlessly.
‘We’re going to ditch the plane out at sea and then make our way ashore, understand Stef?’
The lad nodded, swaying unsteadily.
Max looked down at his wounded leg and saw that the wound had been leaking again. Badly. He knew Stef wouldn’t last long in the water.
‘Why . . . why is it being aborted, Max?’ he asked hazily.
He wondered whether he should try and tell Stef about the letter, but that had been sucked out during the struggle, or economise on the story, simplify it in a way a foggy head could understand. He decided neither would do. A simple lie was the best thing he could come up with for now.
‘Because, lad . . . the Americans have surrendered,’ he said, raising a smile. ‘It’s all over.’
Stefan grinned like a drunkard. ‘We did it? We won?’
‘Yeah, Stef, we won. But we’ve still got a job to do.’
‘What?’
‘The bomb has to be lost at sea, you understand? We wouldn’t want the Americans to get hold of it now. So sit tight, lad, we’re taking her out east as far as she’ll go.’
‘Okay, Max, let’s complete the mission,’ Stef nodded, his words slurring.
Captain Delaware watched as the bomber straightened out and headed in an easterly direction, passing once more over the Hudson River and, as its form dwindled to no more than a speck appearing and disappearing between the rolling grey clouds, he pulled the binoculars away from his eyes.
‘Damnedest thing . . . it’s heading away again, sir.’
There was a long pause before the President replied. Even above the cacophony of rush-hour New York, he could sense the obvious relief in the President’s voice. ‘Which way, Captain, where’s it headed?’
‘It’s due east, si
r. The plane is back over Brooklyn, sir. If it keeps on that course, sir, it will be heading out to sea again.’
The captain could hear other noises over the phone, a chorus of voices in the background. Truman’s voice came on again. ‘Good work, Captain. Keep your eyes peeled, though, son. If there’s any further sign of that plane you pipe up, understand?’
‘Yessir!’ replied Delaware.
‘Let’s keep this line open,’ added Truman, ‘but for now, this call will be kept on hold. Thank you for your help this evening, Captain.’
There was a click followed by a steady tone and Eugene Delaware pulled the phone away from his ear and turned to his gunnery sergeant.
‘Well, that was just about the weirdest fucking five minutes of my life.’
Chapter 58
Ditched
5.27 p.m., EST, several miles off the coast of Rhode Island
The empty fuel tank gave them only five more minutes before the last engine stuttered and died. They were gliding now.
‘Stef . . . go and strap yourself in, it’s going to be a hard landing.’
Stef pulled himself up slowly, groaning with the effort, and staggered back through the bomb bay towards the navigation compartment. He slumped down in his chair and, with the last of his strength, pulled the harness around him and buckled it.
Max checked their altitude, it was dropping past 1000 feet and falling quickly, they were going to hit the sea hard. It would be critical that the nose of the plane should need to be pulled up at the last possible moment; too soon and they would lose the forward momentum and stall, the bomber would drop the rest of the way like a stone; too late and the nose could catch a wave and the plane would flip. If he could land her smoothly and she stayed in one piece, they’d have a minute, maybe two, before the bomber was flooded and sank. Two minutes was time enough to release themselves, inflate their life-vests, possibly even retrieve and inflate the life-raft. Max knew how important the raft was for both of them. They’d die of exposure in less than an hour if they couldn’t get themselves out of the water.
Four hundred feet.
Below, the sea looked calmer than he thought it would be. He could see the faint feathery crests of white horses punctuating the rippled grey of the sea. It looked like a light chop only.
The rate of descent was increasing. The bomber was gliding, now there was nothing but the rush of air under her shuddering wings to keep them from tumbling down. Max fought an almost overpowering urge to pull up, away from the swiftly ascending sea; without engine power, that would be the death of them.
Save the pull back for the last moment before she touches down. She’ll splash heavily; she’ll skid along the surface. And then it’s just a swim for shore.
He wondered how far they had flown out from New York. He had lost track of how long they had been flying away . . . ten minutes, twenty, thirty? He had fought with the plane’s desire to pull to the right. Both engines on the port wing had been dutifully running until they’d started to misfire and eventually failed minutes ago. Max had been pulling against the starboard lean, steering the bomber reluctantly north-east to counteract it. He hoped he had not overdone it, and the plane had been heading more east than north. According to the map, the coastline above New York curved round to the right as New York State gave way to Connecticut and then Rhode Island. He hoped the fluctuating course he’d attempted to hold had not drawn him too close to that coastline. It would be the cruellest irony if, despite his best efforts to seek the deep water of the Atlantic, he found himself splashing down on some shallow shelf.
He had no idea how far out from the shore they were.
Three hundred feet.
Pieter’s lifeless head lolled forward as the plane’s nose continued to drop and their angle of descent steepened. Max felt a stab of guilt and anger towards the body in the seat beside him. They had flown together for nearly five years, survived some of the worst times of the war together, and in the end the bond he thought had existed between them had counted for nothing. When it came to the crunch for Pieter, their partnership played second fiddle to his sense of duty.
He had proven himself to be a better soldier than Max in the end. Unthinking, unquestioning.
Two hundred feet.
The evening light was beginning to fade below the low cloud ceiling above. To the west, the sun poked out beneath it and picked out the suds at the top of each shallow swell as a glittering amber highlight. For some crazy reason the water looked warm.
One hundred . . .
Max readied himself for the splash-down, tightening his harness. He shouted back over his shoulder, ‘Stef! Brace yourself!’ The sea suddenly seemed to accelerate towards them as the last few dozen feet slipped from beneath the plane.
Now . . .
He pulled back on the yoke in a last-second attempt to prevent the nose of the plane catching a swell that would turn it over. The flaps on both wings and the tail fins swung upwards, and the nose of the plane lifted only slightly.
The light of day vanished instantly as all of the windows in the cockpit were shrouded by churning water and the nose of the plane buried itself beneath the sea. Max felt as if the plane had hit a wall - he was thrown hard against the harness, his head snapped forward, and he banged his forehead against the yoke.
The darkness was only momentary, and light returned to the cockpit once more as the seawater swiftly drained away.
For a few short seconds it was silent except for the sound of the sea slapping against the bomber’s fuselage.
Max felt a warm stream of liquid rolling down his forehead. He put his hand to it and felt a gash above his right eye, just below the hairline. He wiped the slow trickle of blood away before it got in his eye.
The plane’s floating.
He fumbled frantically to undo his harness; aware that the valuable time she would give them both as she filled with water would disappear quickly.
He heard the sound of water cascading inside from below. It was coming in through the shattered plexiglas canopy of the bombardier’s compartment directly underneath him. He climbed out of the pilot’s seat shakily and made his way through the bomb bay, sparing a glance at the bomb.
Goodbye, you piece of shit; may you rot at the bottom of the ocean.
He felt an irrational loathing towards the little beer-keg-shaped device, and a grim sense of satisfaction that it was destined for an eternal, dark grave.
He entered the navigator’s compartment. Stef was struggling to undo his harness, his hand slipped and flapped around the buckle like a drunkard hunting desperately for his zipper down a back street.
‘Here, let me help you,’ said Max, leaning over and releasing the strap. Stef remained seated, close to losing consciousness.
There was a storage locker above the navigation desk in which the emergency kit was supposed to be stored, according to the flight manual. He pulled it open and the raft rolled out into his hands, a tightly packed cylinder of rubber. As he spread it out on the floor it was immediately obvious the thing was going to be no good to them. One side of the raft had been shredded. He looked up at the locker to see a shaft of light beaming in from the outside. Another of the fragments of debris that had peppered the side of the plane during the last dogfight had cruelly found the compartment.
‘Shit,’ he muttered.
Water rolled across the floor of the navigation compartment, just an inch deep, followed quickly by more coming from the waist section. A small wave lapped inside through the bulkhead along the floor. It was ankle-deep. By the look of it they were going down tail first.
‘Stef! We’ve got to get out now!’
The young lad stirred, his heavy-lidded eyes opened quickly, roused by the icy cold water that had found his feet.
‘Oh God, no!’ he whispered.
‘Stef, we’ve got life-vests, we’ll be all right, but we need to leave now.’
We’ll be all right? No, we won’t. Stef sure as hell won’t.
St
ef looked up at Max, as if he’d heard his thoughts, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Max . . . I can’t swim, my leg . . .’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘No! I don’t want to drown . . . that’s the worst way -’
‘I won’t let you drown, Stef.’
Stef shook his head. ‘I’ll drown . . . I don’t want to go that way.’ His eyes focused on Max’s pistol. ‘Please?’
Max looked down and understood what the young lad was asking of him. Stef was right. There was no way he would make it ashore. He would die of hypothermia if he didn’t drown first.
The water had quickly risen to just below his knees, and he could feel the ice-cold water starting to get a grip on him.
‘Please, Max?’ whispered Stef, already his lips were turning blue and a puff of evaporation escaped from his mouth. ‘Don’t let me drown.’
A memory of a conversation they had all had months ago flashed through Max’s mind. The four of them huddled around a paraffin heater in some hastily assembled camp, back when KG-301 was still a functional squadron, sombrely discussing ways they might die. They had all agreed that burning to death had to be the worst way to go. Stef had confessed to a terrible fear of drowning.
‘Okay, lad . . . okay.’
He reached down for the gun and pulled it out of its holster, his hand trembling almost uncontrollably from the cold.
‘Please, Max . . . please hurry, just do it.’
He reached out with one hand and rested it on the top of Stef’s head and patted his ginger hair.
‘I’m sorry. Stef . . . I couldn’t land the plane ashore, I couldn’t let them have it.’
‘I kn-know,’ the boy said, his lips trembling. ‘It’s all right, Max. That w-was the mission.’
The water was thigh-deep now, but for Stef still seated, it was around his stomach, and rising swiftly up his chest. ‘P-please . . .’ he muttered, shaking uncontrollably.
Max slid his hand around the back of the boy’s head and embraced him with a rough and clumsy hold.