Right.
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
“What about you?” Burke shouted. “How are you going to get off the ship before she goes down?”
Wilson eyeballed the MPPGD one last time and then leaned in close so he wouldn’t have to shout over the sound of the wind.
“We’re not,” he told him. “Captain’s decided we’ll ride it out and hope for the best, see if anything’s salvageable once we’re on the ground.”
At Burke’s look of disbelief, Wilson said, “Don’t worry. She’s a hardy gal. We should make it down all right. If you ever make it to Liverpool after the war, look me up. I owe you a beer after that cock-up earlier today.”
If the Victorious was in so much danger that Burke and his men were being forced to abandon ship, it didn’t seem likely the captain would be able to get her on the ground intact. Still, Burke agreed he’d do so and shook the man’s hand. There really wasn’t anything else to say.
Good-byes over, he faced forward, took a deep breath, and then calmly stepped off into space.
Chapter Twenty-five
FREE FALL
Burke fell.
He dropped away from the Victorious with his heart in his throat, suddenly terrified that Graves’s device wouldn’t work and he would end up crashing down to earth, a modern-day Icarus with wings of brass and iron replacing those of feathers and wax.
The wind howled in his ears and it was hard to breathe, both because of the thinness of the air and the fact that it seemed like a living thing, cramming itself up his nostrils and down his throat, filling the space whether he wanted it to or not.
After a few seconds, the sensation of falling diminished, replaced instead by the sensation of being buoyed up by the very air through which he sped. It was an oddly curious sensation, one that was heightened by the thick cloud cover that he was descending through.
Unable to see much of anything but the air a few feet in front of him, he focused instead on the small squares of glasslike material sewn into the arms of his jacket. Nothing was happening. They looked the same as they had the moment he’d jumped out of the airship.
Then, little by little, the squares began to glow deep down in their centers, as they sucked the electrical charge out of the air as it whistled over his body. Burke stretched his arms out ahead of him, trying to expose as many of the squares to the passage of the wind as possible, praying that all Graves’s calculations had been correct.
If they were not, and the charging device failed as a result, it was going to be a long way down.
As the squares collected power, brilliant blue sparks of electrical current began to jump between them. The glow grew brighter, the sparks moved faster, and just when he began to worry about having all that electrical current dancing around so close to his skin, the activation light in the center of his harness sprang to life. He didn’t hesitate, just smashed the button with his right hand and braced himself for the wings to open.
Nothing happened.
You have got to be shitting me.
Telling himself not to panic, a decidedly uneasy task when he felt like he was falling through the air with all the artfulness of a brick, he looked down at the round switch and saw that it was still glowing bright blue. Apparently, he hadn’t dissipated the charge with his failed attempt to activate the wings, so he tried again. This time he held the button down, praying it just needed more time to send the necessary signal.
With a snap loud enough to be heard over the wind rushing in his face, the layers of metal jutting out from the pack on his back extended, spreading open like an oriental fan. It caught the air currents with nary an effort, and Burke went from falling through the sky like a dropped stone to swooping over the countryside with grace, riding the wind the way a surfer rides the crest of a wave.
He did as Graves instructed, pulling down on one side of the harness. That caused the wing to dip slightly, which in turn put him into a long, gentle spiral that was designed to carry him the rest of the way to the ground without mishap. He made a couple of turns, and then suddenly the earth spread out before him like a giant patchwork quilt as the cloud cover broke for a moment, letting him catch a glimpse of his destination far below.
That view was all it took. In that moment all of Burke’s fear evaporated and in its place rose such a feeling of wonder and amazement the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since he was a young boy. Aircraft hadn’t even been invented when he was a boy and now here he was, gliding through the air with the greatest of ease, a mechanical angel adrift in the heavens.
He was flying! Really flying!
He laughed aloud at the wonder of it all.
Unfortunately, his joy didn’t last long.
The Victorious hove into view several hundred yards away, her bow pointed earthward as she plunged past on what could only be her final flight. Burke could see that the airship’s tail section was ablaze, the fire eating away at her glistening skin and revealing the blackened steel of her frame, and he was amazed that she hadn’t already exploded. Even in her current condition she was fighting to stay aloft, but that one look was all it took for Burke to know that this was a battle she would not, could not, win. The pride of the British air fleet was going down and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
While the sight of the dying airship was certainly enough to dampen one’s spirits, it was the glimpse of the enemy aircraft following in the Victorious’s wake, the black crosses standing out sharply against the red paint of its wings, that was even more sobering. Unarmed as they were, Burke and his men would be sitting ducks if the pilot chose to come after them. He had no idea if the enemy had witnessed their evacuation of the airship, but he couldn’t afford not to take the possibility into account and was therefore forced to act as if they had been spotted.
They had to get down while they still had the chance!
Burke pointed the nose of the glider earthward and increased the angle of attack between the edge of the glider’s wing and the air passing over it, tightening the circumference of the circle he was following while increasing his rate of descent. He kept his eyes peeled for the enemy aircraft, expecting it to come charging out of the clouds at any minute, machine guns firing, and he didn’t take his eyes off the horizon around him until he drew so close to the earth that he had no choice but to pay attention to the landing ahead of him.
As he drew closer, he began to make out the details of the terrain below and was not encouraged by what he saw. The rolling green grassland he’d been hoping for was nowhere in sight; in its place was the war-torn, crater-filled wasteland. He could see old trench lines and fortifications strewn willy-nilly across the area, and in more than one place the seemingly endless spring rains had flooded a section until it looked like a small lake. He steered for the flattest section he could see and hoped for the best.
He couldn’t do anything else.
The ground was coming up quickly now, and he mentally reviewed the landing sequence Graves had taught them, knowing he had only one chance to get it right. So far they’d been lucky but that could all change in an instant, and a broken ankle would be just the kind of thing that would send their carefully made plans into the shitter and compromise the mission overall.
Closer . . . closer . . .
He shifted his weight and brought his legs up in front of him, flaring the nose of the glider upward and using the wing on his back as a primitive braking device, praying he wouldn’t overdo it and end up flipping over.
Closer . . .
He hit the ground with both feet churning and kept running forward, not wanting the weight of the glider to come down on top of him, especially at the speed he was moving. For a second the glider stayed horizontal to the ground, then gravity took over and began to pull it the final few feet earthward. By that point Burke was ready for it, however, and he tipped the wings on their side and let it slide across the earth until it hit a rock and brought him up short, panting from the exertion.
Once he had, he unbuckled the straps, slipped out of the jacket, and stepped away from the MPPGD. He looked skyward and was relieved to see the other gliders on their way down; he hadn’t realized how concerned he’d been about being trapped behind enemy lines alone until he saw them descending toward him. He could also see, higher above the gliders, the twin parachutes that held his supply cache.
So far, so good.
Burke watched the first two men in his squad come in for a landing—neither of them would have won any points for style but they ended up on the ground uninjured—and then he turned his attention back to the MPPGD.
They couldn’t afford to leave the devices where they might be discovered by the enemy, so the decision had been made to bury them at the landing site. Burke pressed a trigger on the rear of the device and watched in satisfaction as the wing folded back in on itself, reducing its size by at least half. After that it was simply a matter of pulling out his entrenching tool and getting to work.
When he was finished with his efforts, he moved on to help the next nearest member of his team. In this fashion they quickly completed the work, until they were all gathered together around the professor’s glider.
That’s when Jones asked the question of the day.
“Where the hell is Strauss?”
Chapter Twenty-six
BEHIND THE LINES
According to Sergeant Moore, Strauss had exited the airship as planned and had correctly deployed his MPPGD. He entered a cloud bank shortly after that, however, at which point Charlie lost sight of him. In the effort to get the gliders under cover before they could be spotted from the air by enemy aircraft, no one had noticed he wasn’t with them.
Burke suspected that Strauss had come down too quickly, perhaps even crashing into a bomb crater or an old trench line, and been knocked unconscious, so he sent the men out looking for him. It was in the midst of the search that they discovered another piece of bad news.
Burke was walking along the edge of a series of bomb craters when he heard his name being called. Hopeful that some sign of Strauss had been found, he jogged ahead to where he found Private Williams and Corporal Jones standing atop a small ridgeline. They were looking at something on the other side, and from the expressions on their faces it wasn’t good news.
“Did you find him? Did you find Strauss?” Burke asked as he climbed to meet them.
“Nope,” Jones answered in his usual laconic style, “found our supplies. You’re not going to like it, though.”
When Burke got his first glance at what lay on the other side of the ridge, he knew Jones was right.
He stared down into an enormous crater and estimated it to be at least a hundred feet across and a good twenty feet deep, though it was hard to pinpoint the latter because it was three-quarters of the way filled with brackish water the color of rust. To make matters worse, there was a thick, oily-looking film covering much of the water’s surface, the detritus of too many gas attacks in too short a period. The stuff was clearly toxic, for the edges of the makeshift “lake” were littered with the carcasses of rats, birds, and other small animals.
Their supply crates had come down smack-dab in the middle of it all. Or, at least, he thought they had. Right now all he could see were the two parachutes, bobbing gently in the contaminated water.
“Shit!” Burke swore, once he’d taken a good look.
He couldn’t think of any way to recover the crates. Not with the materials they had on hand, at least. Even if they were able to figure something out, the supplies they needed would no doubt be ruined by the time they managed to get the crates to shore. The crates weren’t waterproof, and from the look of things, the water they’d fallen into was toxic in more ways than one.
It was a setback, and a big one, too. Losing Strauss, their linguist, was bad, yes, but losing those crates was damn near catastrophic, for they held almost all the food and water, never mind the vast majority of ammunition.
He sent Williams to round up the rest of the men and figure out just how much food and water each man was carrying. In the meantime, Burke sat down with the map and tried to figure out exactly where they were. Based on the relative speed and position of the Victorious when they had abandoned ship, he estimated that they were about ten miles from where they were supposed to be after disembarking from the airship. That meant that the farmhouse where they were meeting the French partisans was at least twelve, maybe as many as fourteen miles from their current position.
Originally, the plan was for them to land, make their way cross-country to the farmhouse, and lay low until the partisans arrived sometime that evening. Burke would have preferred arriving under the cover of darkness, but he understood why they hadn’t; even the bravest of men would have quaked at the idea of paragliding down from the Victorious in complete darkness.
The plan had clearly gone to hell in a handbasket. There was no way they were going to make it to the farmhouse by nightfall, not with a hump of that distance in front of them. Best they could do was get there as quickly as possible and hope the French were still there waiting when they arrived. If they were, the team could resupply and not worry about the gear they had lost.
If they weren’t . . . well, he’d worry about that when the time came.
By the time he’d finished planning their route, the rest of the men had assembled around him at the bottom of the ridge. He explained the situation, and they did a quick inventory of supplies. The corned beef and hardtack the men carried in their personal kits would get them through the next two days, as would the water they carried in their two canteens.
Weapons and ammunition were a mixed bag. Each man had several full clips for his rifle, with Burke and Moore carrying three drums apiece for the Tommy guns. Burke also had the Firestarter and its sixteen rounds of ammo. Jones had been carrying the mortar tube strapped to his pack, but Compton had only been carrying four of its projectiles. The rest were no doubt at the bottom of the lake. Burke wasn’t happy. If they ran into trouble, something that was all but guaranteed given how far behind enemy lines they were, they had enough ammunition to fight back for only a few minutes, at best.
Hopefully, they would be able to resupply once they hooked up with the partisans.
With no sign of Strauss and no way of recovering their supplies from the middle of the lake, Burke made the decision to get the team under way. Staying in one place for too long wasn’t a tactically intelligent move, especially if that fighter pilot witnessed them bailing out of the Victorious.
He took one final glance at the map and got the squad moving.
The terrain proved difficult to negotiate. The landscape was littered with old trenches and bomb craters, both big and small. The misshapen contours of the ground made travel slow and difficult; Burke half expected one of them to tumble into an unseen ditch and wind up with a broken ankle or leg. They’d been hiking cross-country for almost an hour when Manning gave a short exclamation of surprise and hustled over to the edge of a shallow crater. Jutting out of it were the remains of Strauss’s glider.
Manning was carefully examining the ground at the edge of the crater when Burke and the rest of the squad approached. The big game hunter held up his hand, signaling that they should hold back, and they stopped a few feet away.
From where he stood Burke could see that the glider looked more or less intact. It had a long tear in one of the wings, but that was all. It wasn’t enough to cause the glider to crash, even if it happened in midflight, which Burke didn’t believe it had. It was much more likely to have resulted from a poorly executed landing than anything else.
Manning seemed to think so, too. “The area right around the wreckage is a bit of a mess, but we’ve got one clear set of tracks leading off in this direction. Standard army-issue boot print, so it must be Strauss.”
Or, what was left of it, rather.
The pack had been shredded, its contents strewn over the space of a half-dozen feet. While the rest of the men were passing it back and forth among them, examining the long narrow tears through the tough material, Manning called Burke a few yards farther down the trail and pointed out several sets of new tracks that had converged on Strauss’s.
“Looks like at least four, maybe as many as six,” Manning said quietly.
“Human?” Burke asked.
The other man shook his head. “I don’t think so. At least not after seeing the condition of that pack.”
It wasn’t what Burke wanted to hear, and it certainly wasn’t good news for their missing private. Strauss had a chance against a squad of human soldiers, maybe even a lone shambler or two, but a pack of shamblers was more than a man of his experience could be expected to handle.
Burke got the squad under way once more, moving faster this time, hoping they might catch up to their errant squad mate before it was too late.
Only a few minutes up the trail, however, the late morning quiet was split by a scream of pain. It hung in the air for a moment and then died, too quick for any of them to get a fix on its location.
“Did you hear that?” Williams asked, his voice trembling with tension as he glanced around, trying to pinpoint where the scream had come from.
Burke had, but he’d been no more successful than any of the others in pinpointing the location. He turned in a slow circle, listening carefully, waiting to see if it would come again.
When it did, it was followed by a shouted plea for help.
By the Blood of Heroes Page 18
