Final Mission: Zion - A World War 2 Thriller

by Chuck Driskell

  Willi’s body skidded to a stop at the edge of the runway, knocked there by the enormous power of the .45 ACP bullet. With Willi no longer a threat, Neil’s mind lurched to witnesses. Had anyone heard anything? One gunshot could be written off as a car backfire. Two shots, especially in such close succession, would most likely get the attention of a nearby person blessed with any measure of street smarts and awareness. Willi had said no one was here at this time of night. Hopefully he’d been correct.

  Neil struggled to stand, using the wing’s strut to pull himself up as the sharp pains cut through his ribs like rusty blades. He reached across his body, probing as far as he could reach with his left hand, feeling the oily slickness of his own blood until he found the small entry hole. He moved his hand back toward the front of his body, feeling around under his arm until he found the exit wound. It was much larger than the entry wound, punctuated by shards of rib protruding outward. Despite his pain, Neil rummaged around in the airplane before unstrapping his suitcase and retrieving a brand new undershirt. Leaving the suitcase in the airplane, Neil balled the undershirt tightly, using his right arm to press downward on the wound.

  Feeling somewhat lightheaded, Neil scanned the nearby area and saw nothing other than a simple hangar several hundred feet away. There were no cars, no houses, no lights. Even if no one had heard the gunshots, Neil didn’t like his chances of walking away. Sooner or later, someone would discover the body of Willi the German. Once they did, finding Neil—especially since he was weakened by his injury—would be a cinch.

  Neil stared at the De Havilland Hornet Moth for a few seconds. Then, in a move motivated more from desperation than brass balls, he lifted himself to the lower wing before situating himself in the left seat.

  ~~~

  Moments earlier, a man stirred nearby.

  South of the airstrip was a rolling field, marked by scattered hay rolls and bounded by a gently murmuring brook. Beyond the stream sat a cottage, built solidly from brook stone and ancient wood. In the sunlight, it appeared neat and orderly, like something from a Bavarian postcard. At five in the morning, it looked especially cozy and inviting. A stranger standing outside in the moonlight would see wisps of smoke emanating from the chimney. They might even catch a whiff of the strong coffee being brewed and the sugared ham searing in the iron skillet. The home’s owner, Thomas Lundren, was fervent when it came to tidiness as well as timeliness.

  After lowering the heat of the wood stove under the thick slice of ham, Thomas sprinkled the ham’s topside with a dash of salt. He glanced at his watch before tucking it back into his wool shirt, then walked outside, across the well-kept yard to the small barn. There he retrieved the morning’s quantity of hay and oats before pumping the trough full of clean, cold well water. Finished, he glanced at his watch again, greeted his horse and two goats with vigorous petting, and hurried back through the yard to turn the ham. Arriving inside just in time, he used a fork to turn the heavy slice, closing off the stove’s heat passage and marking the time once again.

  There was a bark of screeching tires from across the field. Thomas looked up.

  From experience, he knew an airplane had just landed. Thomas poured a cup of coffee—strong and black—sipping it as the ham sizzled and occasionally popped in the still hot iron skillet. After another minute, he removed the ham, poured off the excess grease, and placed two pieces of split bread into the skillet, warming them and allowing them to soak up the remaining flavor. Satisfied, Thomas sat at the small table with his breakfast, murmured his Lutheran prayer, and began to eat with gusto. That’s when he heard the second distinctive sound, a pop.

  Thomas frowned. He raised his head and peered out the window in the direction of the Flughafen. Used primarily by recreational pilots, the local Luftwaffe reserve unit occasionally utilized the airport for exercises. At nearly seventy years old, Thomas’ senses were still keen. Prepared to write the sound off as a backfire, he began to chew his ham again.

  And that’s when he heard the second sound, another pop, but this one throatier.

  Thomas Lundren knew a gunshot when he heard one.

  Or two.

  Hunters? It’s possible, but doubtful. Thomas knew every hunter nearby and none of them would dare hunt grouse near the airfield. When there were so many good fields down by the flats of the Auerbach Stream, what would be the point of hunting up by the airfield?

  Someone could have shot at a deer, but a person rarely gets two shots, Thomas reasoned.

  And Thomas heard two distinct sounds. Meaning, two firearms, neither of which sounded like a rifle.

  He swallowed his piece of ham and unconsciously sipped his coffee. With a small nod, he stood and retrieved his Gewehr 88, an old, accurate rifle created through an amalgam of concepts and parts from the Mauser and Mannlicher corporations for the German Army back in 1888. After donning his field jacket, Thomas checked the right pocket to make sure his bullets were there; they were—7.92 millimeter, cold and hard, clinking together as he touched them. He pulled on his cap and stepped outside, listening, his eyes staring in the direction of the Flughafen as he buttoned the toasty field jacket.

  The air was thick with the distant droning of an engine. Other than the occasional chirp of crickets, the only other sound he could hear was the occasional dinging of the bell that hung outside the barn.

  Thomas was a thirty-year veteran of the Middle Franconia Polizei. After his military service ended in 1894, he joined the police force, eventually rising to the highest position in the district. Now retired and a widower, he lived a simple and modest life on his small pension, taking great pleasure in caring for his animals and flowers, tending to them like the children he and his wife never had. Once a week, as was his habit, Thomas went into the city to run errands and to see his old friends, most of them retired police. Every Thursday they met for coffee. Thomas was the quietest of the group, listening far more than he spoke. He would typically leave the gathering and walk to the theater for the matinee, sitting alone to watch whatever feature might be showing. Then, after the movie, he would visit the market, purchasing his needed items before returning to his small house, repeating the process week in and week out.

  This was his routine. Thomas prayed he could maintain it until his death. And he knew his death wasn’t all that far away.

  A moderate man, Thomas detested Adolf Hitler and his fanatical regime. But to say so aloud could make an old man disappear, and Thomas was wise enough to stick to his routine, and to keep such opinions to himself. He knew that the entire Nazi reign would end badly. A man needn’t live seventy years, Thomas thought, to know a fanatic when he saw one.

  Regardless, Thomas was certain the goodness of man would somehow prevail—though he probably wouldn’t live to see Germany return to democracy.

  After his forced retirement, Thomas and his wife Greta had moved here, settling in for what they thought would be a quiet final chapter of their lives. Unfortunately, Greta passed away after a short illness when they’d only been here for a year. Since then, Thomas had been alone.

  Very alone.

  Thomas was not a party member, thereby putting him at odds with the current leadership. Despite pressure, Thomas had never acquiesced to the party. Had he done so, he’d have been able to work again, despite his advanced age. But, no matter how lonely or miserable he was, Thomas couldn’t set aside his morals. Rather, he kept his mouth shut and never spoke a cross word to anyone about the Nazis.

  A wise strategy.

  But deep in his heart, more than politico or retiree or moralist, Thomas was still a policeman. He would always be a policeman. And when he heard the two pops and the idling engine this early in the new dawn, his sixth sense knew that something unpleasant had occurred across his brook and over the Landkreise-owned meadow.

  After chambering one of the bullets into the bolt-action rifle, Thomas set out in a determined walk across the stones of the brook, and then across the rolling field. His pace was deliberate and he showed
no fear. The lawman sense inside of the man calmed him.

  It excited him, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE PAIN IN NEIL’S SIDE was unlike anything he had ever before experienced. It felt as if he were squeezing a fiery orange lump of coal into his tender flesh—every small movement was disrupted by lightning bolts of electric agony. Taking enormous breaths, he remembered Willi’s actions back in England. The stick had to be pulled back when revving the aircraft, so the tail wouldn’t rise due to the propeller’s slipstream. After noting that, Neil moved both feet back and forth on the rudder pedals, clearly understanding what they were for. His actions during the Great War had occasionally taken him up in airplanes, and even though the pilot sat behind him then, with no means of communication, Neil had always studied in fascination the movement of the stick and rudder as the pilot danced his tango with the swirling atmosphere.

  Knowing he would bleed to death if he didn’t act quickly, Neil chose not to waste time. A quick glance at the fuel gauge told him the tank was below its last quarter. That was okay. He didn’t need to go too far, just far enough to gain adequate separation from the dead thief lying mere feet from this aircraft.

  Upon landing, Willi had spun the aircraft back in the proper direction, so all Neil needed to do, or so he thought, was to accelerate and take off. He grasped the throttle, pushing it in before widening his eyes due to the great roar from the engine. Riding as a passenger and piloting an airplane are two very different sensations, even though one sees and hears all the same things. The rush from the prop seems louder, every vibration more obvious.

  A bullet hole in one’s side adds even more manic anxiety to an already tense situation.

  As the aircraft gained speed, Neil pushed the stick to the right as the airplane tried to veer left. This, while natural to someone who drives an automobile, was incorrect, though he didn’t yet know it. His actions caused the wing to dip and, as the torque and other forces created by the Gipsy-1 engine overwhelmed the small aircraft, the wing scraped the rough pavement.

  The De Havilland spun a full circle, executing an ugly ground loop.

  And the inertia of the spin, along with the jarring of the aircraft, made Neil yell out in pain.

  When the energy of the amateurish maneuver was gone, the De Havilland was facing twenty degrees from where Neil had started. The right wheel was off the runway and, after sputtering several times, the engine resumed its idle.

  Mercifully.

  ~~~

  After he had passed over the brook and five hundred meters of field, Thomas heard the engine revving. The clear sound allowed him to focus his keen eyes on the horizon and, when he did, aided by the cold light of the partial moon, he could see the outline of an airplane beginning to move. Thomas stood there, coughing like he had recently begun to do when winded, and watched as the aircraft began to accelerate. After fifty meters, he could see something was wrong as the aircraft turned sharply, one of its wings dipping and the unlit lights on the wingtip sending a hail of sparks into the night’s blackness. The airplane spun like a top, shuddering to a stop with the engine still running.

  Thomas stopped coughing and shook his head in bewilderment before quickening his pace.

  ~~~

  After the wave of pain-induced nausea passed over him, Neil thought about the physics of what had just occurred. The airplane had felt like an unbroken colt under his unqualified control. When he had applied power, the airplane naturally wanted to pull to the left. Neil thought perhaps it had something to do with the rotation of the propeller. But as he peered out the window in the scant light, he could see what he already knew; the stick controlled the rectangular devices on the trailing edge of the wings. But those devices needed wind and lift to work. The only significant wind on this night was provided by the propeller, and the propeller’s wind was rushing down the fuselage. Working it out in his mind, Neil looked into the blackness where his feet were, moving the pedals to and fro. He allowed himself a pained smile.

  Let’s do it again.

  ~~~

  Thomas arrived at the runway and scrutinized the aircraft, still idling a hundred meters away. It was sitting askew, headed diagonally in relation to the runway, and the right side of the aircraft was slightly lower since the right wheel was in the grass. The retired policeman’s eyes turned to the shed at the end of the runway: no lights, no movement. And just as he was turning back to the airplane, which was getting louder as the engine once again revved higher, Thomas noticed the dim outline of something on the edge of the runway. It appeared to be...

  A body!

  Mein Gott!

  He hurried in that direction, confirming the shape was indeed a person—a man, lying in an odd position with one hand twisted unnaturally under his back. Thomas squinted to see a pool of shiny liquid coming from underneath the body. When he stepped closer, he sensed that there was nothing that could be done for this man. Thomas held his hand over the man’s chest, just beside the wound, feeling nothing. He repeated this at the area of the carotid pulse. There was no heartbeat.

  Murder!

  Thomas stood and spun around, lifting the old rifle to the ready. He hurried up the left side of the runway, the hard walnut stock cinched into his shoulder. Keeping his keen eyes on the cabin of the small airplane, he watched as the aircraft rocked back and forth as the pilot tried to coax the right tire over the lip of the runway.

  Just as Thomas reached an angle where he could make out the faint image of the pilot, the airplane lurched onto the runway as the two men joined eyes. Thomas could see the pilot’s face, ashen with panic. He noticed the man’s dark hair, parted on one side, and could tell by the hunched way he was sitting that the man was tall.

  But more than fear, the old lawman saw something else in those two seconds—he saw pain. Real pain.

  There were two gunshots.

  Perhaps the pilot, too, had been shot.

  As the aircraft skittered across the runway, fishtailing right and left, Thomas knelt on one knee and aimed the old Gewehr 88 squarely at the back of the tail, at the center mass of the airplane. He took a deep breath, coughing once before holding his breath as he steadied his aim…

  ~~~

  Seconds earlier, Neil pushed the throttle all the way to the stop. He knew that once the aircraft moved he would need to use the pedals, and not the stick, to turn right and straighten his direction on the runway. Then, unlike last time, he would have to fight the pulling of the aircraft, and would have to be gentle as he did so.

  “Instinct!” his mind screamed. “Don’t over-think!”

  Neil remembered what Willi had told him back in England. “Airplanes want to fly. All they need is enough speed.”

  Just as the airplane lurched over the edge of the runway, movement to his left caught Neil’s eye. As he straightened the aircraft, an older man appeared, his features only somewhat visible in the moonlight. He had a hawk’s eyes and, despite his obvious age, stood tall and erect like a noble and capable man.

  Neil was certain the man had heard the shots and seen Willi’s body. But more concerning to Neil was the long rifle the man held at the ready.

  As the aircraft approached the other side of the runway, Neil pulled the throttle and applied right rudder to straighten. After swerving several times, he got the feel for the pull of the aircraft and kept it as straight as he could while it wanted to turn left. Again he depressed the throttle all the way, accelerating. Surprising him, when the tail popped up, the airplane suddenly tried to turn right, making the craft teeter several times until Neil tediously applied the proper inputs with his feet. Once again, he was headed somewhat straight and, since the tail was up, he could finally see the remaining length of the runway.

  His right tire drifted to the edge again, but now he could see where he needed to be, and with the growing speed, less input was needed to point the aircraft in the proper direction.

  With the moon in the top of the windshield, Neil felt the slight lift a
s the airplane began to ride the cushion of air rushing over and under the wings, and that’s when he heard a crack and saw glass fly in the cockpit. A gauge, squarely in the center of the control panel, and just to Neil’s right, had shattered. The shattering glass made a small cut on the top of Neil’s right hand. He ignored it, focusing instead on keeping the moon in the exact same place as he saw the threshold of the trees flash by underneath him.

  When the aircraft was several hundred feet in the air, Neil looked backward to his suitcase and the back of the aircraft, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. He gently moved the pedals back and forth, doing the same with the stick. Everything seemed to be working properly and he was beginning to get a feel for the aircraft. There was a lever beside his seat that controlled the flaps. Willi had explained their purpose in England. Neil lifted the lever, releasing the trigger underneath as he lowered the lever to the floor. The airplane lost lift, making Neil feel like it would careen to the ground. But he watched the airspeed indicator, seeing it increase. The flaps had been holding him back. He eased back on the throttle slightly as the De Havilland began to ascend rapidly, light on fuel and human cargo.

  Neil rotated his eyes to the shattered gauge, unable to discern what it had been used for. The old man’s bullet had missed Neil by a foot. That thought faded quickly as Neil’s adrenaline plummeted, probably due to the throbbing pain in his side. The place Willi’s bullet had entered, on the right middle of his back, hurt, but nothing like the exit wound at his ribs. Neil felt like vomiting. He slid the small window aperture open to ventilate the cockpit with the cool morning air.

  He knew by the floating compass that he was heading west, somewhere north of Austria. Gently, Neil turned the stick left until the waning moon was on the right side of his aircraft. He located the altitude gauge, not knowing if it was set for ground level—which had to be higher here—or what would have been almost sea level back in London. No matter. He spun the tick mark to set his current altitude, and throttled back until it began to dip. Then he throttled up, repeating the process until he found a sufficient power setting that would hold this altitude. This was an incorrect way to trim the aircraft. Neil didn’t know that, but it actually worked, albeit in a crude fashion.