The Berlin Escape

by Warren Court

  “Ahh, come on, Albert.” Aubrey moved in closer and put an arm around his shoulder. She pulled the gun out of her jacket and stuck it into his stomach.

  “Aubrey...” He winced.

  She stuffed it right up under his diaphragm. That got his attention.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “The fighters—where are they?”

  “This is an outrage.”

  “I don’t want to have to blow you in half, but I will, Albert. I know you have a wife and child at home. You want to make it home to them today, don’t you? I certainly want you to make it home today.”

  Hewitt shielded her from view as best he could. She noticed that he now had his pistol out as well, but held it inside his coat.

  “The fighters are this way,” Albert said.

  “Let’s go, nice and slow. No sudden movements, no alarms raised.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Big smile, please.”

  The German pilot led them to the last hangar in a row of eight. They walked past bombers and light aircraft, gliders even; all the hangars had Luftwaffe personnel in them, mechanics mostly. Aubrey hoped the last hangar had what she wanted, or they would be out of options.

  It did: sitting on the tarmac in front of the hangar was a beautiful Bf 109. Its camouflage paint looked brand new, and the glass of the cockpit canopy reflected the sunlight. Aubrey checked her watch. It was four o’clock; there were only a few hours of daylight left.

  “Is it fuelled up?” she asked Albert.

  “I would suspect so,” he said. “They are doing night trials this evening; right now, they’re just waiting for the sun to go down. You don’t intend to have me fly you out of here, do you? This is a one-seater.”

  “No, we’ll just take it off your hands.”

  “You’re going to steal it?”

  “That’s the plan. Hewitt, climb aboard and get behind the seat.”

  “What if there isn’t enough room?”

  “Suck it in.”

  Hewitt put his gun away and awkwardly climbed up the small, protruding two-step ladder attached to the side of the aircraft. When he was at the open canopy, he looked around. Then he pushed and shoved his way inside the cockpit.

  “Now, I’m going up. I suspect you’re going to run and start yelling. I’m going to keep my gun on you until we get that thing going, and then you can go sound the alarm.”

  “They won’t let you get away with this.”

  “They won’t have a choice.”

  She climbed the ladder. Hewitt’s head was just visible through the back of the canopy, and he had his gun out, pointed down at the German flyer. Aubrey got into the cockpit, took a quick glance at the complex controls and found the starter. She turned on the fuel pump and heard a hydraulic whine. She pumped the flaps, set the magnetos and the pitch on the propellor. There was no time for a pre-flight check, but she was confident this plane would have been gone over by the best mechanics on the base.

  Albert was backing up slowly, getting ready to turn and run. When the prop started spinning, that was his cue. Aubrey could have shot him in the back; the sound of the engine probably would have masked it. But she had been telling the truth about the German having a wife and baby at home. She remembered the pictures he’d shown her when they were in Warsaw together.

  The propellor caught. Albert disappeared around the side of the large hangar, waving his arms.

  “Damn it, the chocks,” Aubrey said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I forgot to kick out the wheel chocks. We’re not going anywhere just yet.”

  She squeezed out of the cockpit, jumped to the ground, removed the wooden blocks wedged up against the two tires and threw them across the tarmac. Armed men came running around the corner where Albert had disappeared. They were taking their rifles from their shoulders, taking aim, their faces wearing looks of incredulous disbelief. They had apparently not believed their frantic comrade.

  Aubrey dashed back up into the cockpit as the first shot rang out. She pushed the throttle and the plane jerked forward. A smile spread across Aubrey’s face; this was a real thoroughbred, a greyhound, one fast cat.

  Their speed across the tarmac increased quickly: twenty kilometres an hour, thirty, forty. She made a hard turn onto the main runway and pushed the throttle to the hilt. The plane responded instantly, and they were soon over one hundred kilometres an hour, roaring down the tarmac. She could feel the lift building under the wings.

  “This thing can’t wait to take off,” she said to no one. Hewitt couldn’t hear her unless she yelled. She pulled the canopy closed. Other soldiers, alerted by the firing or the unscheduled takeoff, were running to the tarmac. Some had weapons, but there was nothing they could do. The plane was going too fast to hit.

  She pulled the stick back and the Bf 109 rose gracefully into the air. She found the wheel retractor. She’d never used one before, but gave it a try and heard the whine of the motors as the wheels of the thoroughbred tucked up under. Then the light went green.

  The ride smoothed out after that. Moments later, Aubrey realized they were headed in the wrong direction, deeper into Germany.

  “I don’t think we can make Poland,” she yelled back at Hewitt. He leaned forward as much as he could.

  “Why not?”

  “They’re going to get their aircraft up, try and stop us. If we flew north, to Denmark or even Norway, that might throw them off.”

  “Can we make it?”

  She checked the tanks. They were indeed full.

  “Yes. What little information I did get on this plane from the exhibition was her range. We could fly all the way to France, but I think that would be pushing it, don’t you? They would suspect that as well.”

  “I agree—try for Denmark.”

  Aubrey had no map, no heading, no radio operator, no homing beacon. All she had was an understanding of where she was starting and in what general direction freedom lay. She pointed the nose of the German fighter plane north.

  For the next while, Aubrey had her hands full, learning the ins and outs of her new aircraft; she even nursed a humorous illusion that she would be allowed to keep it. She could certainly win air races in this beauty. The 109 was magnificently designed, and not just in terms of the flow of its fuselage and the seemingly effortless grace with which the wings rode through the air; the cockpit was laid out perfectly. It was designed to allow the pilot to maximize the abilities of the aircraft and focus on one thing: destroying the enemy.

  There was a black cap on the top of the stick. She flipped it up. Underneath was a red button. She grinned; she’d never been in a fighter plane before, but it could be only one thing. She rested her thumb on it and then squeezed down gently.

  The machine guns kicked into action, and the vibration rocketed through the entire plane. Bright green tracers zipped out of the front of the plane, through the propellor. There was a synchronization mechanism that prevented the blades of the prop from being shot off.

  Aubrey let out a gleeful laugh.

  “Aubrey!” Hewitt shouted at her.

  “Sorry—just wanted to see what that felt like. Did it scare you?”

  “No,” he said defensively.

  “How about this, then?” Aubrey pulled back on the stick and pushed it over to the side. The plane rose and did a quick barrel roll. “How about that?” she called back to him.

  “Unless you want my breakfast spilled all over this cockpit, I suggest you refrain from doing that again.”

  She laughed again. “Very well. I promise you a smooth ride from now on.”

  “Plus, don’t we need to conserve fuel?”

  “Quite right,” she said.

  Aubrey fiddled with the controls—fuel flow, propellor pitch and acceleration settings—to get the plane at the perfect flying attitude. They were at three thousand feet right now, and already they were experiencing the chill. Neither of them was wearing a flight suit. When they rea
ched the Balkan Sea, the expanse of water between northern Germany and the Scandinavian countries, they would get even colder. They would just have to endure.

  The green pastures and rolling hills soon gave way to low, sweeping plains of hay fields and marshes as they approached the coast. The hum of the engine was hypnotizing. Aubrey was used to this sensation. She’d been on long flights before, knew how the hours ticked by slowly as the roll of the ground or water below lulled you into a dreamlike state.

  Her reverie was shattered abruptly when the fighter planes sent to catch them opened fire. The lead plane came from behind, its machine guns firing a long, steady burst. Aubrey was ripped from complacency by the sound of bullets hitting her 109. She instinctively jerked the stick to the left and put the stolen fighter into a sharp turn. The stream of tracers shot past her. The pursuing aircraft then roared by, its nose pointed downwards, followed by another one. They were Heinkels, her old friends from that scary night not so long ago. They had come down on her from a higher altitude, and now they put their strut-mounted biplanes into a turn to try and come up on her tail.

  It wasn’t going to be like last time, though. Aubrey now had a far superior aircraft, and she was armed. She rubbed her thumb over the black Bakelite cap that prevented her from firing her guns, then flicked it open and rested her thumb on the red button.

  Aubrey weaved and ducked, putting the 109 through its paces. There was a bank of cloud a thousand feet lower, and she dove for the cover. She needed time to think. Hewitt was silent, but she felt his hands gripping the corners of the small pilot seat from behind.

  “Aubrey…” he said urgently a few moments later, through gritted teeth.

  “Shut up. Let me think,” she snapped.

  The cloud enveloped them, and the canopy was suddenly awash in streams of water. She pulled back on the stick and cranked it over to the right in a slow, steady turn. A dark shape went past, a hundred feet off her wing, diving down. Then another one. Her pursuers had followed her into the low clouds. Aubrey pulled back on the stick some more to gain altitude. The engine started to strain and their speed decreased. She had come to Germany to find out the stall factor of Germany’s newest fighter, among other things; now, it seemed, she was going to learn it firsthand.

  Then they were out of the cloud, back into the fading daylight. It was already approaching dusk; the sun’s setting rays filled the windscreen, blinding her. She quickly glanced around: there were no fighters, but more might be coming. She had to deal with these two, then get the hell out of there.

  She didn’t have to wait long: the two warplanes had guessed her manoeuvre, broken through the bottom of the cloud bank, seen that she was not there and then raced upwards to find her. She saw them emerge through the top of the clouds and turned to attack. She pointed the 109’s nose at a spot in front of the lead Heinkel. It had a slower rate of climb, less manoeuverability. She was diving, increasing speed.

  “Aubrey,” Hewitt said again, an uncertain plea in his voice. He was looking over her shoulder, and although his view was restricted, he could see the enemy plane filling the windscreen in front of them.

  “Aubrey, what are you doing?” Hewitt said, his voice cracking.

  “Hold on,” she said.

  The lead plane was rising to her. It opened fire. The green tongues of tracer reached out for her, wavering, searching. Then they stopped. Perhaps the pilot had overheated his guns? Aubrey waited, closed the distance. At one hundred yards, she fired just as the plane coming at her reengaged its guns. She was quicker, more accurate. The rounds from her twin machine guns tore into the centre fuselage of the Heinkel. Sections of the cowling around its engine flew off, and there were flashes of mini-explosions as the rounds tore through the guts of the aircraft. Aubrey jammed the stick hard right and plunged down, past the dying plane, just as an explosion tore it to pieces.

  She’d just killed a man, she realized. Perhaps a family man like Albert. But she had no time to grieve now, no time to ask for forgiveness. There was one more plane, and it would want to kill her now, more than ever.

  She rocketed the stick back to the other side and then back again, over and over, swirling it around, until finally she put the plane back into level flight and a wide, sweeping turn.

  “Do you see him?” Aubrey asked, her voice cracking with the strain, just like her passenger’s had.

  “Wait,” Hewitt said. “There, at your ten o’clock. He’s coming at us.”

  Aubrey saw him, turned in to meet him, but the other plane had position. He was better than the first pilot. He waited to get as close as possible before unleashing a torrent of phosphorous-backed lead on them.

  Aubrey tried to shake him, turning this way and that. She was losing altitude. The throttle was pushed all the way forward; the mighty inverted engine in her sleek craft was screaming. Hewitt was shouting something; she had no time to take it in. The green fingers of death reached out, swaying to and fro, searching for the penetrable skin of the 109.

  Aubrey pulled back on the stick, felt the blood rush out of her brain. By golly, this airplane was something else. Their speed slacked off as they rocketed straight up. Then she nudged the nose of the plane over into a loop.

  There he was, her enemy: behind her, climbing as well, no longer firing long blasts at her. Perhaps he was running low on ammo. She felt Hewitt straining behind her, trying to keep himself jammed into the rear of the plane and not mashed against the now inverted framed canopy. There was no belt back there for him. Again, she dove, trying to get the angle on her prey. The 109 was faster than her enemy’s craft, but the man behind the stick of that deadly bird had more combat experience.

  Aubrey dove for the deck. The low hills and sparsely wooded planes rushed up at them. She could feel Hewitt slam into the back of her seat as they reached top speed. The stick was heavy. She had to use all her strength to get out of the dive. There they were again, the tracers: short bursts now. She wondered how many rounds of her own she had left.

  Swooping in between the low hills, she saw the last of the rugged German countryside fall away. In the distance was a blue blanket of open water. Aubrey jerked hard right, driving back into Germany, then hard left. This time she kept the turn going, seeking her target. There he was: five hundred yards in front of her, in his own turn. Aubrey strained, mentally willing her plane to turn faster. The plane responded, and she knew she had him. She had reversed the situation and was now behind the enemy.

  “Shoot him!” Hewitt screamed.

  “No, not until I’m close.” Aubrey closed the distance. The plane in front of her, as if sensing her approach, started a weaving dance of its own, but that only served to slack off its speed.

  Aubrey’s aircraft, superior in performance in every way, closed in for the kill. She was learning: she and the plane were now one. When she was a hundred feet behind the Heinkel 51, she opened up. Short bursts, just enough to let some tracer show the path of her fire. She saw it start to impact the target. Little bits of stressed aluminum skin flaked off and spun in the air, catching the fading sun.

  Aubrey knew she had him. One final burst and she saw smoke billowing from the engine. Another burst and the plane exploded into a million pieces before her. Aubrey had no time to whoop, scream, yell or cry. She pulled back hard on the stick to avoid the flaming ball of wreckage she had just created, rolled over slightly and watched it fall back to earth, where it impacted in a farmer’s field. She executed a quick S-turn to see if there were any other fighters out there. Thankfully there were none. She put the plane back on course. Hewitt reached over the seat and gabbed her shoulder. He didn’t say anything, just squeezed, and then sank back into his makeshift seat. She had come through her baptism of fire and proven herself worthy.

  She put the 109 into a slow, steady climb back up to three thousand feet. She would baby her dear airplane from here on in. A quick glance at the dials showed the heat of the engine was coming down. But, alarmingly, so was the level of fuel in the twin
tanks. They were now below the halfway mark. There was nothing to do except hope it was enough to get to land, free land.

  Germany dropped away, replaced by white-capped waves on blue steel–coloured water. The sun cast red streaks on the cumulus clouds to the west.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Aubrey finally said.

  “Don’t say that. We must,” Hewitt said.

  “Look at the fuel. Maybe they nicked one of the tanks.”

  It was down to a quarter now, confirming her suspicions that the enemy fighters had in fact punctured at least one of them. So they’d made their kill after all, just a delayed one. Those two enemy pilots, brave as they were, would never know they had succeeded.