“So should you.”
“Yeah.”
“The mission or Ric?”
“What?” Jack frowned.
“That’s keeping you out here. Because he’s probably sleeping it off by now.”
“You’re not a fortune teller, are you?” He was only half joking. It was another impossible option—and made as much sense as time travel.
Mel giggled. There was no doubt about it. It was a giggle. No other word for it.
“What’s the joke?”
“Did anyone tell you that you’re kind of paranoid?”
“And you weren’t spanked enough as a child.” Jack realized he was grinning, possibly like an idiot. Thank goodness it was dark. “I’ll walk you back to your quarters.”
“Yes, sir!” She didn’t salute that he could see, but it was implicit in her tone.
She turned and walked beside him, but her essence giggled all the way. He could feel it. He wanted to spank her. He wanted to kiss her. He was careful not to touch her. Outside her quarters, she stopped.
“Thank you for the safe passage, sir.” Her voice was provocatively demure.
He pushed back another spanking urge and then almost choked on it when she placed a hand on his chest, stood up on her toes and brushed her lips across his cheek, leaving a streak of warm on his chilled skin. He wanted to grab her and hold on. He didn’t.
“Good night, Jack.”
“Good night, Mel.”
He didn’t wait for her light to come on this time. He already had some to take away with him.
Chapter Ten
December 20, 1942
It was officially morning, though dawn was still hovering below the horizon. The darkness was deep, but not as unrelenting as the cold, because dark would be pushed out by light—which is why it was called daylight bombing. Inside the veil of pre-dawn darkness, the base was alive with activity in preparation for the mission. Mel lay in her unfriendly bed, listening to distant discordant sounds as planes were readied for the upcoming mission. Out there somewhere, bombs were being armed and then trundled towards bomb bays. Some of them would have to-the-point messages to Hitler scrawled on the sides before loading. Soon the pilots and co-pilots would be shaken awake for breakfast prior to the briefing. Maybe they were already awake?
Mel lay there for a while, hoping sleep would win out over cold reality and the knot of fear in her stomach, but no such luck. She tensed before flipping back the blankets. Her flesh tried to shrink away from the cold and failed. There was no escape. She scrambled into her shoes and then scampered down the hall to a loo that wasn’t as primitive as it could have been, but wasn’t as great as she would have liked. The shower was lukewarm and so, after more miserable scampering, this time to the mess, was her breakfast.
Her stomach didn’t want food, but she made herself eat a slice of toast. It helped to settle her stomach, as did the inevitable tea. She went easy on the liquids, though. Bathroom facilities were nonexistent in the air—for girls. Men, curse their sorry hides, could go anywhere they could point. Everyone around her was still sleepy and quiet. They didn’t know that the mission would be a go. Too many times this month, they’d sat in their planes for hours before standing down. Why should they worry about something that might not happen?
She fingered the roll of film from her camera, tucked snugly into a pocket. In the last time line, she’d given it to Jack, but Jack had been in on everything. It felt wrong to carry it with her to France. She looked around and spotted Norm. He saw her and waved, waiting for her to join him.
“I was wondering if I could store my film in your foot locker. I don’t have anything that locks.” Mel knew it would be sent to Gran when Norm was reported missing. It would be safe there and Norm was happy to help her out. When he opened the lid, Mel was swept back to her childhood and Gran, who’d showed her the contents many times as she helped her granddaughter get to know her grandfather. Maybe someday she’d see her photographs in that album and remember this time spent with honest-to-goodness heroes—and her grandfather. Maybe.
If anything could give her the incentive to get on that plane, it was standing by that locker looking at Gran’s face smiling at her out of the frame of the photograph above Norm’s cot. She couldn’t fail. She just couldn’t.
“Thanks, Norm.”
The briefing had started just before 0445 hours. Mel would have liked to have been one of those who had to attend, even though she knew the drill as well as they did. It would have been interesting to see it live, though.
In her mind’s eye, she saw them grouped in the crowded hut, getting their target: Romilly-Sur-Seine, an air depot outside Paris that they’d tried to get to on the seventeenth. Next, the group intelligence officer would brief them on any intelligence they’d managed to collect. This would be followed by a weather report, which would be followed by the formation lineup. This was chalked on a blackboard. Who would be high, who would be low, and who got the lucky and more protected center. The lights would go down and using an epidiascope, they’d study a reflection of the aerial maps of their primary and backup targets on the wall.
While the briefing continued inside, outside, trucks and jeeps collected, waiting to transport the men to their planes. To escape the tension coiling in her gut, Mel slipped outside where the pre-flight growl of the engines was louder. The ground under her feet rumbled because of it and the passage of large trucks. No one appeared to notice her as they went about their appointed tasks. She was a spectator, not a participant.
The process wasn’t as smooth as it would become, but it was still amazing to see. These boys, because they were still boys, all knew their jobs and did them pretty well. She felt awed and privileged to see them—even as she wished she were anywhere but here, heading anywhere but where she was heading. One of the songs from last night started to play in her head. I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places….
Would she see Jack like that? Jack had said that no one really knew how time paradoxes worked, which was why they were called paradoxes. She wished she’d gotten a picture with just her and Jack, though, to remember him by. She saw him emerge from the briefing hut and her heart clutched. He deserved to be remembered.
The men joked and talked as they filtered out of the briefing in Jack’s wake. Was it because they didn’t yet know how bad it was going to be? Or just the natural resilience of youth? As if they had a sixth sense for it, the rest of the crew appeared and the groups began piling onto and into anything that moved. It was a long walk to the dispersal areas, Mel knew, having done it a couple of times now. And if she felt any inclination to walk, she had only to remind herself that she’d get plenty of exercise in France.
They didn’t have to jockey for transport, though. Because of Mel, Jack’s crew had a semi-reserved truck to take them out to The Time Machine. There was room in the truck for more than their crew and it didn’t take long for the leftover space to fill up. With the sky barely beginning to lighten in the east, she felt almost invisible as she waited for the truck to move out. The winter sun was slow to appear. It had good reason. What fun was it to light up a world at war?
Mel wished she’d looked at her watch when she had the chance. They were due to leave around ten. The lucky ones would return a bit before three this afternoon. Suddenly the bleak base seemed very dear and almost beautiful. She didn’t want to leave it. Actually, she wanted to cling to it and cry like a baby. This stiff upper lip stuff wasn’t all that great—though in her current situation, she wasn’t sure anyone would hear her whimper or cry uncle.
Crammed against Jack on one side and Norm on the other, with a crewman huddled on the floor between her feet, and the roar of the truck all around her, Mel could barely hear herself think. With a jerk they were in motion. Either the huge tires were square or the road was rougher than it looked. Maybe it was a good thing to be packed in so tightly as they bounced slowly in what she assumed was a forward direction. The faces around her were still indistinct
in the murky light, which was probably a good thing, since she knew which of them would die today…or later.
She was intensely aware of Jack pressed hard against her side. She’d tried sorting through what he’d said and not said last night, but she still wasn’t sure what he suspected and what he didn’t. Nothing added up to a good reason to take him into her confidence, which left her still isolated and still alone. And actually a bit grumpy about it. She’d never been great in the morning and this wasn’t a great morning.
The truck stopped with an extended lurch that snapped her neck one direction, then another. Everyone scrambled out into the gathering dawn. Jack jumped out ahead of her before turning to help her down. This marked her as different, and a pool of silence formed getting wider and deeper as she followed Jack and his crew to where The Time Machine waited.
In that silence, Mel joined the crew in donning the heavy flying clothes that were supposed to help them cope with the extreme cold but didn’t. She’d cheated a bit and felt guilty about it, but not enough to take off the thermal underwear and Thinsulate socks she’d smuggled into the past with her. It wasn’t like they helped her with the fear generated chill, she pointed out to the guilt, and it mostly subsided. Over her electrically heated flying suit, she added her parachute and life vest. She was tempted to bag the life vest, since she knew they weren’t facing a ditching in the Channel, but it would have looked odd. She collected her portable oxygen tank and found herself a spot out of the wind whipping across the dispersal area.
Why is it that the wind always seemed to blow at airports, she wondered, mostly to keep from thinking about what came next. The crew was unusually silent as they formed a circle around Jack for their briefing and pep talk.
All of them were young and, with their faces pinched with the cold, looked it, but not one of them looked nervous. Even Ric just looked bored as Jack outlined their objectives and went over ditching procedures once more.
“And guys,” Jack finished up, “please keep the chat down over the intercom. Let’s keep our focus, get this done and get home, because—”
“Bramwell’s got a date,” everyone, but Ric chanted.
Ric grinned. “Well, yeah.”
Mel had to admit to minor respect for Ric. He looked cool and unconcerned. Was it bravery or just cluelessness? If things went as badly as they were supposed to, she was going to find out.
She huddled inside her flight clothes as the wind tugged at her from every direction, trying to find any opening it could burrow into. On the positive side, it did sweep away the acrid scent of sweat and fuel that hung around the assembly point.
The pep talk over, everyone did a token dispersal for a last pee. Mel found a spot to do her business in the thinning darkness off to the side, hoping no one saw her pale moon rising. She didn’t enjoy it much with the wind stinging past her bare tush—and it made it harder to pee. Her sphincters clearly didn’t know when something was for their own good.
As she walked back to the Fort, she was struck again by its sheer size. Their sortie today would be relatively small. In the next few years, thousands of these monsters would fly over Europe before the war would end. As Churchill had pointed out at the end of the Battle of Britain, this wasn’t the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning, but it was the start of something amazing…and tragic.
Jack, Ric, Ram and, the navigator, Hal Larsen, climbed in through a front hatch. She’d read that some pilots preferred the rear hatch to the nose cone. They didn’t like navigating the claustrophobic tunnel that led to the upper flight deck, but Jack wasn’t one of them. Each man reached up, swung his feet up and in, then arched the rest of their body inside. Larsen, the last man in that way, handed up their gear and clambered inside.
Mel followed the rest of the crew to the rear hatch. The Fort might look enormous, it might even be enormous on the outside, but the inside was cramped and hostile to the human body. No one had thought to insulate it for high-altitude flying. After the waist guns were readied and the windows opened, the temperature inside the plane quickly dropped as low as fifty below zero. They were all outfitted with electrically heated suits, but they didn’t always work. Frostbite was a big problem, almost as big a problem as bullet holes—though getting frozen was still better than getting shot out of the air.
Lours Kennedy turned right and crawled down the narrow rear end of the Fort and over the rear wheel well to his position as tail gunner, dragging his gear with him. It was a lousy position and somewhat isolated from the rest of the crew. Sometimes the tail gunners would pass out from a lack of oxygen if the oxygen lines clogged or froze up, and would die before anyone realized it. And if that weren’t bad enough, there was also the problem of being in the Fort’s tush, a favorite target of fighter pilots, second only to the nose cone.
No adult person stood upright in a Fort except the top gunner, and that wasn’t a blessing, since it involved shooting and being shot at—and no sitting. That was Bennie Heavener’s position, just across the bomb bay. The waist gunners, Harry and Roy, had to stand half-bent, with the freezing wind blowing in, to fire their weapons. But even they agreed ball turret gunner, Fitz’s position was the worst, hands down, no argument.
Statistically, it had proved to be the worst, too. The small spinning space didn’t allow for a parachute, and Fitz spent the flight with his knees up by his ears. If the plane got in trouble, he had to get out of the hatch and don his parachute. It was tough to do one of those things when a plane was spinning earthward, let alone both of them. Centrifugal force was a bear. The ball was also exposed, hanging down from the belly of the Fort like, well—Mel figured it hadn’t got its name just because it was round.
No matter where they were headed, they all had to crouch or crawl to get there. Mel chose a hybrid of both as she followed Norm to the radio room, positioned rear side of the bomb bay. Compared to everyone else, it wasn’t a bad spot, if one didn’t think too much about how easy it was for bullets to penetrate the sides. Norm had a chair and even a smaller gun he could fire when needed. There was a small, uncomfortable chair across from him where Mel planted her tush. She could fit her legs in between it and wall—just, but how could a guy manage it? Had any one of the designers of this craft had one thought for the real men who had to use it? Had any normal sized person sat in any of the positions before it went into mass production?
The two waist gunners started preparing their guns, and Mel, if she looked across the bomb bay, could see Ben working on his gun, too. He was also the flight engineer. It was his job to make sure the plane stayed in the air long enough to drop their bombs and make it home. From his top position, he had the best view of anyone, including the pilots. He could see forward and aft and often directed fire during battle.
In the radio room, Norm donned his head phones and began alternately listening and chatting, as Jack and Ric, up in the cockpit, went through their pre-flight routines. Ram and Hal Larsen would be setting up for business in their plastic bubble in the nose cone of the Fort. They had a great view, but it wasn’t exactly a bennie either, since that view sometimes included diving FW’s. The Ram had been lobbying for a nose gun of some sort. He didn’t like being a sitting duck up there with no way to fight back. Mel could have told him that cheek guns were coming, but it wouldn’t help Ram or Hal. For this mission, The Time Machine had been assigned to the much more dangerous outside edge of the combat square and the outside edge of the total formation, where the covering fire wasn’t as good.
Jack was right about the smell inside the Fort. It was almost as stinky as cigarettes. The acrid aroma of fresh sweat mingled with that of old sweat, the old gun powder, new fuel and cold metal. It wouldn’t be warm inside the plane until summer, so Mel found her spot to plug in her suit and connect to the intercom. Then she checked her oxygen flow. Both seemed to be in working order. She also had portable oxygen, in case she had to move around. That was pretty much all she needed to do before takeoff. She fidgeted restlessly. The
tiny seat wasn’t comfortable, but it was better than most of the other positions. She wouldn’t have minded sitting in as co-pilot, but she hadn’t told anyone she could. And even if she had, well, something hot would probably have to freeze over twice before anyone let her fly a plane.
The fuel had been topped off and now, one by one, the engines started, creating a slowly building vibration in every part of the plane. Her body remembered this part and started sending protests to her brain. Mel rubbed her temples and wished she were in a galaxy far, far away. She should have gone straight to bed last night, instead of chatting with Jack. It’s not like she’d been sleeping all that well since she arrived in the past. Tiredness tugged at the edges of her mind, stealing concentration and starting the tendrils of a headache inside her head, not helped by sitting on a vibrating metal stool. This was a bad time to be off her game. Assuming it was possible to be on her game in this place and time.
She recognized what she was feeling. It was a regular feature in her gigs, the moment just before stubborn kicked in, when morose ruled. It was a hazy, miserable place. All she could think about was getting out, getting away. This was the place where she wanted to cry uncle. It was a real bummer that she didn’t have the option. She was much better at overcoming adversity when she had a choice. That’s when stubborn kicked started. What if it couldn’t or wouldn’t this time? What if she stayed in this…this…daze of misery and yes, self pity? What chance the mission then? Mel kept waiting for her mental whining to hit rock bottom, but before it did, the engine rotations increased, increasing the misery factor. Mel cranked her neck to a position where she could see out the window as the big Fort turned off the dispersal hard stands and onto the taxi way that circled the main runway. She felt a touch on her shoulder and turned around. Norm was looking at her with a frown of worry pulling his somewhat shaggy brows together.
Out of Time Page 13
