Another moment, and he caught the unmistakeable sound of human voices nearby. Using the wall to bolster his tired body and steady the aim of the rifle, he dropped to one knee and sighted along the top of the weapon, keeping both eyes open and seeking out any likely target as the voices drew closer. A large tree stood not far beyond the eastern end of the church building, and a pair of SS troopers on point duty were moving slowly past it, heading in his direction through the grey half-light with weapons at the ready. Thorne waited, setting the fire selector on the Kalashnikov to semi-automatic and closing one eye as he aimed carefully. They were no more than sixty metres away, but he wanted to be sure of where he was aiming in such poor visibility conditions.
He let loose with two quick, aimed shots apiece that dropped both men instantly and left them crying out in agony, surrounded by the graves and ancient headstones as the gunfire immediately brought the rest of their squad running. A few shots came his way that randomly whined off the wall some distance away, none of them close enough to cause him any concern for the moment. Two more men fell in similar fashion before the rest of the patrol hit the ground and took cover. He kept the men at bay for a few more minutes, but Thorne knew his luck wasn’t going to hold much longer. More infantry would arrive and would try to flank his position — not difficult considering he was completely alone — and there were also tanks nearby that wouldn’t be bothered in the slightest by fire from his assault rifle.
He lifted the Kalashnikov and sent one final, short burst of automatic fire back over the top of the stone all before setting off at a run across the road, heading directly into the grassy field in the hope that darkness might conceal his retreat. Thorne heard the revving of diesels then as he ran on, and there were at least two or three different engines he could pick out. Perhaps two hundred metres or so west of Church Road, a pair of low trees stood in the middle of a grassed access track that curved right around from the A20 to The Ridgeway, on the northern side of the field. The pasture had been hit several times during the earlier shelling from assault guns and mobile artillery, and one had landed right between the trees, leaving them defoliated, blackened and smouldering at opposite sides of a large crater. Thorne took cover inside, crouching at the rim with rifle ready as he surveyed what was going on behind him.
There was little detail he could make out against the dark background of trees and church buildings, but the faint, slitted driving lights of three armoured vehicles were visible all the same, the faint light from the moon on the horizon coating their grey silhouettes in an almost ghostly sheen. One main battle tank, a light tank, and what appeared to be an assault gun rumbled out of the trees on either side of the church, not damaging the structure of the building itself but giving no thought to the graves and headstones around the parish grounds as they crushed them beneath their heavy, steel treads. Each smashed through the stone wall in turn, before coming to a halt in the middle of the Church Road, each positioned roughly fifty metres apart with the Weisel light tank in the centre. As the roaring of their diesels subsided, Thorne suddenly heard more engines to either side of him, and only then did he realise the tanks’ approach had masked the sound of a pair of Puma armoured cars that had moved up along either side of the field in a flanking manoeuvre, and were now making their way slowly through the pastures toward him from behind his position.
“You in the field…!” Spoken through a loudhailer of some description, the voice reached him from the direction of the armoured car approaching from the south. “Throw down your weapons and show yourself. You will not be harmed if you surrender now.”
He’d been caught easily in the end, and Thorne knew in that moment there was no longer any hope of escape. No doubt the German he’d spoken to and insulted earlier via radio had been an intelligence officer, and they’d been able to determine his approximate position through RDF. It was clear they’d recognised he was an important target and wanted to take him alive: they’d not shown the same level of care in their pursuit of the other retreating soldiers earlier.
Placing the rifle on the ground at his feet once more, he drew his pistol from the holster at his belt. The Heckler & Koch automatic, identical to those issued to US Special Forces in Realtime, was a powerful weapon firing a heavy .45 calibre bullet. He had no idea whether he’d actually have the courage to pull the trigger, but Thorne knew there was no way he could allow himself to be captured. He rolled over and lay back against the inside wall of the crater, cocking the pistol before slowly raising the muzzle to his temple.
It was only as he paused for a few seconds with hands shaking, the muzzle at his forehead as his finger curled around the trigger, that the unmistakable, deafening and utterly wonderful sound of a fighter jet streaking past through the clouds overhead drew him back from committing that last, final act of defiance. Quickly engaging the safety, he holstered the pistol once more and desperately fumbled for the controls of his belt radio.
“Phoenix Leader to Harbinger…! Phoenix Leader to Harbinger…!” The desperation in his voice was crystal clear as Thorne finally managed to get the radio tuned to the F-35’s direct cockpit frequency. “This is Max Thorne… you’ve just overflown my position, heading south… I’m surrounded by enemy forces and in urgent need of assistance… please respond… over…” The few seconds’ pause that followed seemed excruciating, but the speaker/mike at his shoulder finally burst into life.
“Harbinger calling Phoenix-Leader… Harbinger calling Phoenix-Leader… reading you loud and clear, Old Chap…” Alec Trumbull’s voice was possibly the sweetest thing Max Thorne had ever heard at that moment. “Executing a hard turn and returning to your position… visibility is nil at my altitude, but I have thermal systems operating… what is your situation… please mark your position if you’re able…”
“My ‘situation’ is surrounded by fucking Krauts, Harbinger…!” He snarled back testily, holding the mike button in one hand as he searched about the pockets of his combat jacket with the other. “Position is inside a crater, two hundred yards west of Smeeth and about one-fifty north of the A20… just look for the bloody circle of German tanks in a bloody field, and I’ll be the silly bastard stuck in a fuckin’ hole in the middle…!” He finally found what he was searching for, and drew a small signal flare from an inside pocket. “Setting flare now… colour will be red… I’ll be directly to the east — repeat east — of its position, so whatever you’re about to do, try to avoid shooting my arse off in the process!” Igniting it, he instantly hauled back with his right hand and hurled the hissing ball of red/orange fire as far away as he possibly could before immediately diving back inside the crater, well aware of what reaction he was likely to get from the Germans approaching on all sides.
Tracer indeed converged on the flare’s position from several of the armoured vehicles’ coaxial machine guns, but as the long streaks of pink and yellow sizzled past above him, Thorne realised their aim was slightly ‘off’. None of the firing was actually hitting the ground, and was instead streaking away into the distance, ricocheting from the ground 800 metres away at the far end of the fields and bouncing high into the air before disappearing from sight. It didn’t take a fool to recognise they were using the fire to keep his head down, and he could tell from the flickering glow of headlights on either side that both of the armoured cars were now much closer.
“Overhead now, Phoenix-Leader,” Trumbull advised over the radio a moment later. The sound of the jet’s engine was barely audible, and still sounded as if it were off somewhere to the south, but Thorne knew that meant the F-35E was travelling quite fast as it passed by above him. “Suggest you cover your ears, Old Chap… Fox-Two! Fox-Two…!”
“‘Fox-Two’…?” Thorne was barely able to mutter in confusion as he did exactly that, clapping both palms securely against the sides of his head. ‘Fox-Two’ was the standard NATO brevity codeword for release of a heat-seeking air-to-air missile, and he could only assume from the little training Trumbull had received on the simul
ators, that he’d tried to advise of something else and chosen the wrong term.
He was proven wrong a second or two later as something small, bright and incredibly fast streaked downward out of the clouds at the head of a smoky exhaust trail and slammed into the turret of the southern P-7A. It vanished in an explosion of flame and smoke that lit up the darkness for miles around as debris rained down all about and coated Thorne with earth. All that was left of the armoured car and its crew as the smoke cleared was now a shattered, burning hulk as a black cloud rolled high into the sky above it.
Inside the cockpit of the Lightning, Alec had watched on his main display screen as his electro-optical targeting systems had easily picked out the P-7A Puma on the ground far below, thermal imaging cutting through the cloud cover as if it didn’t exist and clearly showing the substantial heat surrounding each of the armoured vehicles’ powerful engines. He’d located the cluster of tanks the moment he’d banked back to the north, levelling out at around three thousand metres as the low growling tone that rose in his headset indicated the infrared tracking sensors slaved to his air-to-air missiles had detected a target.
As he lowered the port wing slightly and looked out that side of the cockpit, his helmet-mounted sight instantly ‘enclosed’ each of the invisible enemy vehicles below in a small green box, the one surrounding the nearest of the Pumas — the southernmost armoured car — also overlapped by a bright red diamond that clearly indicated Trumbull had a ‘lock-on’. The fact that he personally couldn’t see a thing was largely irrelevant: all that mattered was that his thermal systems were ‘seeing’ things perfectly.
He cycled through each of the targets once in turn, reassuring himself that his systems were working correctly before settling on his first target and releasing one of the AIM-9X missiles inside his weapons bays. A second later, he’d switched to the next target and fired the second Sidewinder, immediately switching to a third target and turning onto an intercept course.
Thorne was about to uncover his ears after that first explosion as he caught sight of the second missile in his peripheral vision and decided against removing his hands. The second Sidewinder hurtled down out of the sky trailing a similar line of grey smoke, and hammered into the Puma approaching from the north a second or two later, the shockwave not quite so powerful where he lay, as the vehicle was not so close.
“Tally ho!” Trumbull’s call rose from Thorne’s speaker/mike, and the sky lit up to the east as a hailstorm of red tracer poured down onto the Church Road from the dark clouds above. With all three remaining armoured vehicles positioned evenly along the lane, it hadn’t been particularly difficult for the squadron leader to line up on the P-9B Nashorn assault gun and open up with the 25mm rotary cannon beneath his belly. Loaded with a combination of high explosive and armour-piercing rounds, the torrent of fire from the four-barrelled GAU-22/A was more than sufficient to punch through the thinner top armour of the Panther and Nashorn, and tear the thin steel skin of the Weisel light tank to pieces. All three vehicles exploded instantly into flames, the heavy tank ‘brewing up’ dramatically as its hatches burst open and fire spewed meters into the air, while at least a dozen infantry standing in the vicinity were also killed instantly. The Lightning appeared a moment later as it levelled out of a shallow dive at high speed, executing a precise victory roll before howling skyward once more and disappearing into the low clouds again trailing the deafening roar of its engine.
“Landing on the A20, Phoenix-Leader,” Trumbull advised over the radio. “Covering fire would be greatly appreciated.”
Thorne didn’t need any further urging, and immediately burst from the crater with rifle in hand, running due south toward the Hythe Road at full speed. At the time he’d left the future in late 2010, the record for the world’s fastest 200 metre sprint stood at 19.19 seconds, held by Jamaican runner Usain Bolt. Fully loaded and carrying the Kalashnikov, Thorne managed to cover a similar distance between that crater and the A20 in perhaps twice that amount of time, although he’d have been the first to admit he was almost at the point of collapse and fearing a heart attack as he reached the road. All the same, he forced his body to remain active and took up a position near where the track through the field joined the Hythe Road, holding the rifle to his shoulder and crouching by a low line of bushes along the roadside as he prepared to fire on any potential threat.
The F-35E reappeared thirty seconds later, this time coming down low over the A20 in a westerly direction with lights came on as its landing gear lowered beneath the fuselage. With lift fan and thrust vectoring in operation, the aircraft was able to carry out a steady descent that wasn’t completely vertical but was nevertheless far slower than would’ve been possible in a conventional landing. It touched down a few dozen metres beyond his position, the cockpit canopy already rising as the wheels struck the hard asphalt. This time it was Thorne’s turn to protect Trumbull as a small squad of troopers charged toward them up the A20 from the east, appearing suddenly out of the smoke and fire still rising from the direction of Smeeth and firing their rifles wildly. They were no better than dark silhouettes against the glowing background, but that was more than enough for him to pick them out as targets, and a few well-aimed shots from the rifle in semi-auto mode was more than enough to drop all four men in turn. No further threats appeared, and after five more seconds or so, Thorne finally dropped the rifle and turned back toward the Lightning, somehow finding enough remaining energy to run once more as that same rope ladder he’d thrown to Alec so many weeks before appeared over the side of the cockpit.
The jet was rolling again before he could even strap himself properly into his seat, his stomach lurching badly with the sudden acceleration as Trumbull slammed the throttle hard forward and the F-35E launched itself skyward once more. By the time he’d snugged the rear cockpit’s flight helmet over his head and could hear Trumbull over the intercom, the Lightning has reached the relative safety of the thick, low-lying cloud cover and was turning back to the north. Trumbull continued to climb until they finally broke through the other side and were flying in clear skies once more, the moon and stars shining brightly as he checked his air search radar and made sure they kept well away from any Luftwaffe night fighters.
“You nutter…!” Thorne crowed in joyous disbelief, chest heaving and adrenalin coursing through his system as he unloaded and safed his pistol before returning it to its holster. “You dyed-in-the-wool, crazy-as-a-shithouse-rat, absolute and complete fucking legend of a nutter…!”
“You’re completely welcome, Max,” Trumbull replied, smile beaming beneath his oxygen mask in recognition that an outburst of that nature from Max Thorne was high praise indeed.
“‘Tally ho’…!” Thorne continued, unabated “He yells out ‘tally ho’ like he’s out on a fuckin’ fox hunt and toasts a load of Kraut armour to save the bloody day!”
“Perhaps you’d prefer I’d said ‘Okay kid, let’s blow this thing so we can all go home…’…?” There was a very pregnant pause, after which Thorne burst into outright laughter, Trumbull eventually joining the man in his own, more subdued fashion. The squadron leader’s own adrenaline levels and spirits were also high, and Thorne’s manic mood was quite infectious.
“Oh, this bloke’s good…” the Australian observed out loud for Trumbull’s benefit. “Officer and a gentleman, shit-hot pilot and smartarse!” He shook his head slowly, unable to wipe the smile from his face. “I knew I was gonna be sorry I let you watch Star Wars!”
“There’s a ‘disturbance’ in the force…!”
“Don’t make me hurt you!” Thorne continued to laugh, reaching forward in his seat and tapping his friend lightly on the back of his flight helmet before another thought occurred to him. “Would I be correct in assuming this little jaunt wasn’t authorised by everyone’s favourite RN commander?”
“It became necessary to turn the radio off in the end, Max,” Trumbull explained, trying to sound a little disapproving but also unable to stop smirking.
“It really is a shame about the language to which that good lady sometimes feels the need to resort…”
“Oh, I’d really keep out of her way when we get back, if I were you, matey!” Thorne almost giggled, knowing exactly how annoyed Eileen would be as a commanding officer that Trumbull had disobeyed her, even if it mightn’t last long in the face his successful rescue. “If she gets hold of you, there’ll be a ‘disturbance’ in the force all right: the disturbance of her foot being forced right up your arse!” A few silent moments followed as Thorne caught some more of his breath, and the mood began to grow calm and more sombre.
“It’s that bad down there?” Alec finally asked as the Lightning flew on high above the solid cloud cover, the last final glow of the preceding day barely visible now against the western horizon beneath the dark, star filled sky.
“Yeah,” Thorne replied in the end, his mood sobering as he considered the question. “Yeah, it’s bad, Alec… less than twenty-four hours, and its already gone to shit.” He shook his head in frustration and disappointment. “They’re fighting hard, and giving the Krauts a few bloody noses here and there, but there aren’t enough with the experience to stand against battle-hardened shock troops and armour, backed up by shitloads of air support and artillery. Has there been any news from the other fronts?”
“The last reports we had before I left were that we’d smashed the beachhead in Hampshire, mostly thanks to the new equipment,” Trumbull offered, receiving a grunt of approval from his passenger, “but the landings in Sussex have been as successful as they’ve been in Kent. If they can reinforce and re-equip overnight, they’re hoping to hit the flanks of the Sussex beachhead in the morning with the Fiftieth and the Twenty-first Tank, coming over from Hampshire, but with the lines falling so quickly in the South-East, they may be called back to dig in around London itself.”
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