And rumbling. And rumbling.
His speed was going up, but so slowly, it seemed to take forever for him to approach takeoff velocity.
He pushed extra throttle and still hit only 95 mph.
The end of the runway was coming up very quickly now. The wind, the cold, maybe water in the fuel. They were all working against him.
Deep concern suddenly flooded his chest. Maybe this flying stuff ain’t so great after all—those words had come back to haunt him again. But then, again from somewhere deep in his mind, from a place that seemed to be located way in the back of his skull, a voice told him that to get into the air all he had to do was tap the brakes, raise the nose and go.
It was an old aviators’ trick that had drifted to the forefront of his brain. So Hunter tapped the brakes and the nose flared up and it was just the kick the airplane needed to jump off the ground.
The engine coughed once, then twice, but somehow it pushed enough air through the turbine to burn enough fuel to keep itself going up. Hunter let out a quick sigh of relief. He was flying—again.
He brought the jet up gently, no time to show off here. The cold air was wicked, but apparently this engine could swallow anything. Soon he crawled up the gear and pushed more gas. The beast responded better than he would have ever thought. He pulled back on the control stick and climbed.
Up over the frozen field. Up over the nearby mountains. To the layers of crystal air above. It was now close to 5 A.M. The day was already into its perpetual twilight; it wouldn’t get much brighter anywhere in Iceland today. But he knew it would grow lighter the further south he went.
He climbed some more and the absurdity of the situation began to wear away, to be replaced somewhat by that sheer delight of being airborne. Again the feeling from the back of his head told him that doing things like this—taking off in a strange airplane to fight in some unknown battle—were not that alien to him. In fact, he seemed to have vague memories of doing things much worse, more dangerous, even more foolhardy than this.
But how could that be? What kind of a person had he been that things like this didn’t bother him, didn’t phase him? He didn’t know—and oddest of all, at that moment, he didn’t feel the need to dwell on it very much.
The mission, whatever it might be, was the most important thing to concentrate on now.
As he climbed, the sky began to clear of darkness and mist.
Below him now was the very cold North Atlantic. He could see the wave caps even though he was passing up through 7500 feet. The wind was brutal up here—22 knots my ass! Hunter thought, hunkering down in the cockpit and praying for the heater to finally kick in.
When he reached Angels-10, he turned southeast and switched on the homing beacon.
This should be interesting, he thought.
A TV screen came to life on the left side of the control panel. It was so small he hadn’t even noticed it before. It displayed a very crude, yet somehow discernible picture of the sky ahead. In the middle was an amber circle. When Hunter turned up the power, this circle began pulsating. He steered a little left, and the ring stopped blinking and became whole. That was simple, he thought. Too simple maybe?
He flew for about 20 minutes, keeping the amber circle together and going where it told him.
The sun gradually grew brighter, and the clouds less dark and threatening. Soon he found himself passing through thick white cumulus clouds—huge, billowing ones—miles across and miles high.
As he passed through 15,000 feet, his body started shaking again. A moment later he began coming out of the huge cloud bank. His homing beacon was brighter than ever.
When he finally broke through he found a great surprise waiting for him. Off to his left, he saw a group of bombers. They were of some undetermined type. Long wings, long snouts, high tail wings, lots of jet engines. Yet again, on closer look, they bore a resemblance to another pair of airplanes whose memory was locked somewhere back in Hunter’s head. The nose was that of a B-24 Liberator, an airplane from his version of World War II, he supposed. The fuselage was thick, almost square, and the wings rode on top, just like the Liberator. But the wings themselves were swept back and extremely long, and the tail section was several stories high, just like another hazily familiar airplane. Long, immense, powerful. It was called…a B-52, yes, that was it! Hunter shook his head as if to clear it. These bombers were both astonishing and bizarre. They were a cross between a B-24 and a B-52, and maybe twice the size of both.
There were 36 of them, flying in three box formations. They were painted in a typical blue and white polar camouflage disbursement pattern; the tail wings bore the numbers 15/999. He’d found the 999th Bombardment Squadron.
His beacon glowed again. Now he looked above him, and saw another dozen of the big B-24/52 bombers. These were painted all black, some with ferocious nose and tail art. Then he spotted another group way off to his right. And another group below them. And another beside them. He’d come up in the middle of a formation of more than 100 bombers!
His surprise grew. When he’d left Dreamland field on his own, he’d had the vague notion that he would link up with a few scattered bombers somewhere and they would drop a couple of strings of bombs quickly and then make for home, absurd as all that was. Now looking all over the sky made for a very impressive sight, frightening even. What he was seeing in every direction was substantial power. Not enormous. But substantial.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all…
But the shine came off a little when he checked in with the Group Flight Leader and announced he was joining the package. The man actually laughed when he heard Hunter was flying out of Dreamland and representing the 2001st Fighter Group.
“Don’t tell me they finally scraped up someone to join the party?” the man asked.
Hunter explained, in shorthand radio talk, that he was a new replacement, on base less than 10 hours.
The Flight Leader replied: “OK, rook. Then just don’t get in anyone’s way.”
By this time Hunter was pulling up alongside the massive lead bomber. The thing was so big, it was like something from a nightmare. Its fuselage and wings seemed to go on forever. The disruption it was causing to the airflow all around it was enormous.
He finally drew even with it and was able to look inside the multitiered cockpit. To his astonishment, he saw half a dozen bearded unkempt faces looking back out at him.
This was a bomber crew?
The people peering out at him seemed more at home in a cave or a barroom. They had long hair and beards. They wore a patchwork of moldy uniforms. Many had their service caps on backwards or not at all. And incredibly, Hunter could see a bottle of liquor being passed among them.
Was he dreaming?
Was this really happening?
He called over to the flight leader.
“Am I correct in assuming that I am the only fighter cover today?” he asked.
“That’s the situation, rook,” came the slurred reply.
The words hit Hunter like a ton of bricks. Why he expected more fighter planes to show up, he didn’t know. Payne certainly didn’t mention any in his briefing. And as far as Hunter could tell, there were no other fighter squadrons operating out of oDrjmlendk.
But really? Just him? Just one fighter pilot left in this whole fucking crazy world to protect more than a hundred gigantic bombers? At least one of which was being flown by drunks?
“That’s the situation,” the Flight Leader’s voice crackled in his ears, as if he’d read his mind. “Welcome to the War…”
Hunter managed to get one more question off to him, though. “What exactly am I expected to do?”
“Just stay awake,” came the gruff reply. “And if you see any enemy fighters, shoot ’em down.”
The flight down took about two hours.
Though it was 900 miles to target, the big bombers were traveling at .9 Mach without even breathing hard. This was an incredible speed for planes so big and bulky. Hunt
er’s airplane itself was giant for a single-seat fighter, but his gas tanks—in the wings, in the body, and in three massive drop tanks below—gave him more than enough fuel to cruise at 550 knots. He was gaining grudging respect for the Mustang jet. It ran smoother than it looked, and its fuel consumption was surprisingly efficient—as it would have to be.
Even after two hours at near Mach speed, his tank was just passing down through three-quarters full, and he still had his reserves attached.
So, maybe in some ways, bigger was better, he thought. Still, something about the whole size thing in this strange world was very alien to him.
They first spotted land at about 0715 hours. This was the top of Scotland. Hunter’s homing screen actually popped up with animated landmarks, similar to the moving, cartoonish briefing map. The first city of any import he could see, both on the TV screen and out his cockpit window, was Glasgow, the capital of Occupied Scotland.
Once this was clearly in view, the homing beacon turned the entire group due south. They flew at 45,000 feet right down the North Channel and were soon above the Irish Sea. It looked wild and cold, but oddly, it seemed a little green too.
Once they’d passed over the Isle of Man, the homing screen began blinking again. The entire group now turned east.
A moment later, they made landfall.
They approached the target, Manchester, from the northwest. Along the way, billows of smoke could be seen rising from the city of Blackpool, apparently hit earlier that day. Bradford and Leeds were on fire as well. The smoke was so dense from these two cities, they joined together in an acrid black blanket hanging in the sky above.
The group flew right over another earlier target—a massive power generating station at Bolton-Bury. It too was burning. The smoke was so thick here in fact, that the city’s defenders had turned on dozens of searchlights. Their weakened beams stabbed up through the smoke at Hunter’s group. And Hunter did see some flak bursting way off to his right. But there was nothing of consequence being thrown up at them here. He got the distinct impression that any antiaircraft crews left below were either out of ammo, out of power, or dead.
The group gradually passed out of the smoke and continued inland. Hunter had positioned his Mustang out on the right flank of the lead aircraft. He was flying the lowest position in the entire package now.
The real clouds got thicker, just as predicted by the insta-film mission tape, and soon Hunter was flying blind once again. He snapped on the homing device and this gave him a shadow’s view of the bombing group, just enough for him to keep a proper distance away from them.
When they broke out of the clouds again two minutes later, Hunter could see the outer reaches of Manchester itself.
It too had been hit recently by bombers from the Circle. The center of the city was supposed to be the 999th’s drop point. But there was no more center of the city. No homes, no discernible streets, certainly no power plants that he could find. All that Hunter could see was a deep burning hole in the ground.
The Flight Leader gave the order for his bombers to pull into drop formation.
They were just above Manchester now, and entering the same kind of artificial night they’d encountered over Bolton-Bury, so thick were the smoke clouds from the previous bombing.
Hunter pulled close to the lead bomber again. He saw the bombardier inside the big plane give a thumbs-up sign. The lead plane’s bomb bay doors snapped open.
Then, suddenly—a very urgent voice came on the line. It was the flight leader again.
“God damn it! Hold on here…” he screamed out over the general radio call.
Hunter tilted the Mustang-5 to the left and saw an unbelievable sight coming up from the edge of the burning city. It looked at first like a gigantic flower burst, made of smoke and long towering streaks of flame. Then it transformed into a fireworks display going off with hundreds of enormous sparks rising up from it.
And suddenly Hunter’s headphones were filled with voices. They were thick with slurred words and high anxiety.
“Jessuzz, what the hell…?”
“How many are there?”
“What the fuck is happening here?”
Hunter knew the answer a few seconds later. These were enemy interceptors, hundreds of them, heading straight up towards the bomber stream.
But what were they exactly? Hunter’s long-term memory kicked in again. They looked like nothing more than tubes with short stubby wings attached. But hanging off their noses were huge cannons, and the flare of their exhaust plumes spoke of their extremely high velocity. They were Natters. German rocketplanes. Frightening in their simplicity. More than 300 were climbing up to meet them.
And they were moving so fast, if Hunter didn’t act, they would be among the bombers in seconds.
He let his instincts take over. Putting the nose of the Mustang straight down, he dove into the swarm. The next thing he knew he was turning, twisting, firing his guns, jinking this way and that. He was so close to some of the ascending Natters he could actually see the faces of the German pilots inside. He could even see their expressions. They all looked exactly the same—shocked that a single fighter was trying to protect the large bomber force, and amused by it as well.
There were so many of them, Hunter’s mind was racing at the speed of light, trying to figure out an advantage. In the end there really was only one: the Natter was a rocket plane and this meant it carried a load of highly volatile rocket fuel on board. One bullet in the wrong place and the thing became a flying fiery coffin.
Against such overwhelming odds Hunter knew he literally had to make ever bullet count. So he began shooting at the enemy aircraft in very short bursts, trying to line up two, or even three Natters at a time and sending a burst through all of them.
It was a good strategy because soon the sky all around him was exploding with the German wonder weapons. He cut through the swarm with a ruthlessness that surprised even him. He was downing two or three planes with a burst here, icing up to four and five with a burst there. Each time one exploded that meant another life snuffed out, another pilot lost to the enemy. There would be no parachutes seen in this battle.
It went on for what seemed like hours, but in reality was less than a minute. Incredibly, Hunter had downed at least 20 of the rocket planes, and driven off maybe twice that number.
But then he finally pulled up and looked back up at the bomber group. That’s when the real horror hit. Though he’d done all that was humanly possible—and then some—many Natters had still gotten through. And they were ripping into the bomber stream like jungle cats into a prey.
Hunter quickly looped around and began chasing the rocketplanes as they were rising into the bombers. The German aircraft were good for only one pass—their engines stayed lit for five minutes, tops. Where that gave them incredible speed, it also meant the German pilots had to make every shot count as well. And this they were doing. Even as Hunter was picking off the last of the climbing swarm, the thick of it continued to stream through the planes of the 999th. The bombers’ gunners were firing furiously at the rocketplanes, but they were moving so fast, their shells just couldn’t catch up to the tiny lethal aircraft.
Soon as many bombers were falling out of the sky as were Natters. Pieces of flaming wreckage were raining down all around Hunter’s airplane. He began steering madly to avoid it all. He even saw men falling, some dead, but some still alive. Hats off, beards flowing, heads and bodies bloody, they were dropping like insects into the burning city below.
What madness was this? Hunter looped again and began chasing Natters that had already made their strafing pass and were now trying to get away. He picked off half a dozen this way, adding to his already enormous count, but it was too little too late to help the 999th.
The Natters all eventually blew through, and those still in one piece simply descended back to earth, firing the retrojets with the last of their fuel and setting down anywhere it was soft and grassy. In all, the ferocious attack la
sted no more than 90 seconds.
Hunter’s stomach felt like it was made of lead. He leveled off and did a quick, terrifying count. There were just 70 bombers left. Forty-four bombers gone. Just like that. In less than two minutes. Twenty men per bomber. More than 800 killed. No parachutes, no crash landings. No survivors. Just a fiery death four miles up.
And that’s when Hunter saw some real heroism at work, fueled by alcoholic spirits as it may have been. Those bombers that remained made a wide turn, got back on course, and went over the city again, this time from the southeast. At exactly the right moment, they began dropping their ordnance loads. Now hundreds of big black iron bombs were raining down on Manchester, hitting the center of the city, which was now a growing ball of flame. The more bombs that went into the conflagration, the higher and more widespread the fire became. And now the surviving bombers, suddenly lighter as the titanic weights were gone from their bomb bays, rose up 2000, 3000, 4000 feet or more, like they were being pulled up on a string to the sun.
Then they formed up tight again, passed beyond the burning target, and as one, swung around west and made for the Irish Sea.
Hunter put the Mustang right on their tail. He was sucking on his oxygen mask now like there was no tomorrow. His uniform was bathed in sweat. He looked around the cockpit for a barf bag, his stomach gurgling, his brain screaming to make some sense of this very nonsensical situation.
He knew it would be a long ride home.
Chapter 14
HUNTER SET DOWN BACK at Dreamland Base two hours later.
He’d thrown up twice on the return journey, an event that he had no recollection of ever happening to him before.
It didn’t help that he was exhausted. Six months of sitting in jail had obviously softened him up. After the nausea, exhaustion began taking hold again. He had to resort to holding his breath for two or three minutes at a time, just so he’d gasp for about five minutes afterwards and force oxygen into his lungs and thus keep himself awake and not puking.
It was still perpetual dusk when he bounced in. He taxied through some thick snow to the 2001st’s deserted flight line. The same dog-faced kid who’d served as his maintenance crew appeared out of the snow and choked off the Mustang-5’s wheels.
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