“Are you all right?” His mouth shaped words she hadn’t a hope of hearing off the intercom.
There were a lot of things she would have told him, if she could have shared them at a volume less than shouting. I’m not all right. I’m scared to my toenails. I want my Gran. But as she looked into his steady gaze, she felt her lips curving into something that might have been a smile. Her head nodded. And stubborn started to stir in her gut. Her shoulders hadn’t drooped. The chair wouldn’t let her droop, but she felt stiffening flow into her spine again.
She managed to bend her hand into a sort of thumbs up. When his gaze left her, she said for her ears only, “Hoo yah.”
She almost laughed. Who knew that not leaping out of a plane would be the hard thing? Perspective really was everything.
“Ma’am?” It was Jack’s voice over the intercom. “You can come forward and look out the top turret if you’d like.”
“Cool.” It was a relief to get off the vibrating stool, though standing on the vibrating floor wasn’t a whole lot better, not with the plane in lumbering motion. She unplugged herself from the intercom, leaving her oxygen tank behind. They wouldn’t start the serious climb until they reached the coast.
Through the hatch to the cockpit, Mel could see the narrow ramp across the bomb bay. The monster bombs filled the space on either side of the extremely narrow metal walkway. Dang, it was narrow. Had she mentioned it was narrow? It mattered because below were the bomb bay doors. If she slipped and fell, they wouldn’t catch her. They were designed to open if anything over one hundred pounds hit them, in case a bomb shook loose during flight. She was definitely more than that, though she declined to do the mental math to figure just how far more. She might be a glutton for punishment, but she didn’t have to veer over into masochism.
It was unnerving to contemplate that ramp with the plane randomly bouncing along the runway. She took a deep breath and stepped into a spot between the massive five hundred-pound bombs. On one someone had scrawled an obscene message for Hitler. If all went as planned, he’d get it.
Bennie was waiting for her with a big grin creasing his freckled face, his legs braced against the unwieldy movements of the plane. The plane hit a bump, throwing her against him and the grin widened. Mel righted herself, but didn’t hurry. No reason to be stingy.
Behind him she could see Jack and Ric at the controls, the nose of the Fort stretching out ahead of them. Through the windscreen, she caught a glimpse of a few other B-17s in the Group. They were sending up seventeen planes today, but two would fall out of the formation before they joined up with the other groups from other bases. Mel eased into Bennie’s position and straightened up into the cramped space, grabbing the gun for leverage. Ben plugged her into the intercom, so she could listen.
She turned around, catching her breath at the sight of the first planes beginning their takeoff from the main runway. On the ground, the Fort was a clumsy beast, ungainly and hard to maneuver, but they achieved a sort of grace as the air seemed to catch them in its embrace and help them rise.
The whine of the engines got louder as they began their turn. The Fort began to pick up speed. The bouncing and vibration got worse. She tried to look forward and look back, tried to see it all. The Fort’s rear wheels lifted off first, then pulled the nose of the plane up. The plane seemed to hesitate, grabbed hold of the currents, and rose slowly into the air. The checkerboard English countryside fell away behind them, its colors dimmed—but not erased—by the winter season. Thirty seconds behind them, the next Fort took off, following them into the wild blue yonder. It was almost exactly ten-fifteen.
Looking past the tail, the base looked smaller and smaller. Already it felt colder inside the plane, and they weren’t anywhere near battle altitude. Was that really her hands wrapped about the gun handles? Surely it couldn’t be her feet braced against this shuddering ascension? She leaned forward until her head touched the cold metal of Ben’s machine gun. The enormity of what she needed to do compressed her lungs, it dragged her whole body, her whole soul down. She’d messed things up, even if technically she hadn’t actually messed anything yet. Oh, those time paradoxes.
“Hoo yah,” she said it again, silently, defiantly, but inside her head it sounded a lot like “uncle.” With a sigh, she crouched down, unplugged, mouthed a silent thank you to Ben, and traded places with him. To her left, she could see Jack at the controls, Ric next to him, taking them on the last flight of The Time Machine. For her, there was only one direction she could go, only one way to go to get out of this. At the moment, going forward meant going back to the radio room. She climbed back down to the bomb bay ramp. Her feet on it, she stopped for one last look back at the cockpit, but the plane hit an air pocket, lifting her feet briefly off the ramp. When she landed, she couldn’t get back into the radio room and her hard cold stool fast enough. Those romantic looks back played a lot better on the screen than in real life.
The Fort banked, rising slowly but steadily, the engines pulling the plane through the thinning air. Gravity didn’t like losing. Mel could feel it fighting to hang on. She recognized it. It was how she felt about Jack.
Dawn had made its appearance a couple of hours ago, but it wasn’t a dazzling entrance. The winter light was cool and thin, as if aware it was a limited engagement. England was spread out below them, stamped into quaint, irregular patterns. Wisps of clouds flowed past the window like strands of furtive cotton. It was cold and getting colder. She was really glad for the SEAL underwear, though she felt obliged to feel guilty about it.
She’d heard that the flights were periods of boredom broken by sheer terror. They were in the boring part and would be until they were feet dry over France. She twisted around until she was semi-comfortable again and closed her eyes, trying to relax. In a few hours she would be on the ground in hostile territory. It would be wise to rest while she had the chance.
Chapter Eleven
English Channel
Mel jerked awake, startled by the sound of gunfire. For a moment, she thought she was back with the SEALs, and then she saw Norm. His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear him. Had she gone deaf? He pointed to her suit and then held up his intercom cord. Right. She’d forgotten to plug in after her trip across the bomb bay. Not deaf yet, though the Fort’s engines were making serious inroads in that direction. She corrected the omission and found herself in the 1940’s equivalent of the chat room. The waist gunners fired again, sending silver tracers to dance along the surface of the water.
“They’re test firing the guns,” Norm said. “We’re over the Channel.”
“Feet wet,” Mel said, wondering why she felt surprised. She knew they were heading this way, but, dang…feet wet over the English Channel. Occupied France dead…straight ahead.
“Feet what?” someone asked.
The various voices sounded different over the intercom and Mel hadn’t had time to sort them out.
“It’s just an expression for leaving land and being over water.” She needed to think before she spoke. And maybe count to ten. Or one hundred. “You know, feet wet and then…feet dry when you’re over land again.”
Silence as ten men processed this.
“Is there one for feet dry with flak?” someone finally said. Mel thought it might be Ben. He was quick on the humor.
“Feet…fried?” Mel proffered. This earned her what sounded like a universal laugh.
“Well, it won’t be long for that, so check your oxygen. We’re going up.”
Mel put her mask on and inhaled. So far it was still working. The rest of the crew checked in, giving her a chance to put voices with names.
Even though they were still over the channel and had Spitfires escorting them, she could feel the tension inside the plane beginning to build as they approached the French coast. It was, she discovered, catching. Her stomach tightened and she was glad there was only toast and tea in there. Anything else would have been packing attitude—or worse, unpacking itself. There were so many ways to be embar
rassed in this decade. The Greatest Generation should all be in therapy instead of Florida.
She peered out the window. The sky above them was a clean, clear, insipid blue. Ahead, pale gold stabbed at the horizon, peeking through the fitful cloud cover screening the coast from view. It was an oddly hopeful sight, in the circumstances.
“Holy freaking cow.” She forgot she could be heard through the intercom.
There was sort of a collective chuckle in varying degrees of deep. She peeked over her shoulder at Norm. He was fiddling with his dials, a bit of a grin curling up his mouth. Her grandfather. How she wanted to tell him who she was. A pity he wouldn’t believe her. She was living it and she didn’t believe it.
She looked back toward England, noting the white contrails from the engines being painted across the sky behind them. They were an amazing sight, but dangerous. Might as well hang up a here we are sign for the Luftwaffe. Mel pressed her nose against the window, trying to see below them, but her exhale fogged it over. She drew a smiley face with her finger, feeling like a bored child instead of an intrepid adventurer.
She felt the Fort continuing its battle with gravity as it clawed toward combat altitude. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel the coast grow closer and closer. It was like being slowly lowered into ice as the temperature dropped. The cloud cover intensified, too, now giving her just the occasional glimpse of the green and brown and gray.
“Almost feet dry,” she said, as much to herself as the crew. Just a guess, but an educated one, that this was the part where the sheer terror phase began. Outside, the Spitfires bird dogging them, waggled their wings for good luck, then peeled off and headed back to England. Mel knew a plane couldn’t look relieved, but—
Through the hatch opening, she could see Roy Smith and Harry Morrison scanning the sky through the waist gunner openings. The wind howled through those windows, swirling around her feet and lifting dirt off the floor in eddies. Norm fiddled with his dials and suddenly Mel heard French music.
“Feet fry coming up,” Ram said, his voice punctuated by a muffled explosion. Ahead telltale puffs of white marked the flak line as the first of the Forts crossed the coastline. The puffs looked harmless, but they weren’t. The shells were propelled to a pre-set altitude where they exploded, sending metal splinters in all directions. The shrapnel were essentially needles, with the Forts playing the role of pin cushions. There was no way to defend against flak. They went in and hoped they came out the other side—where the Focke-Wulf’s waited for their shot—literally—at the incoming bombers.
There was no question about when they made feet fry. From hearing the flak explode, now she felt it and heard it. The concussions turned the air currents into rough seas to cross. The Fort lurched and bounced across shock waves. Mel flew up. And then came down—onto the floor with a bone rattling thump. Well, she had a new hobby, courtesy of this mission: collecting bruises.
The noise was freaking unbelievable. It was not only all around, it felt like it was inside her. She scrambled back into her seat, this time managing to hang on. It didn’t stop her bouncing, or the wrenching effect on her shoulders, but at least it kept flight to a bare minimum. At first all the explosions were below them, but then the batteries got their altitude. That was not a good thing. In what seemed like slow motion, a flak shell rose off their left side, rising to a height just above the Fort. Mel just had time to duck and brace for it. First there was the bang. This was followed almost immediately by multiple thumps against the side of the Fort. It rocked violently, almost tearing her fingers free of their grip.
“We’ve been hit!” Harry shouted.
Mel lifted her head up from the protective kissing-my-tush-good-by position and peered out the window. Immediately she wished she hadn’t. There was a freaking huge hole in the wing. That mother was at least a foot across, the sides of it bent out like the petals of a metal flower. She knew that was nothing to the sturdy fortress, but it was still disturbing, particularly when she was looking at it through another hole in the skin—at about the height her head had been. Norm. He’d been seriously injured on their way to the target. With rising dread she turned—
His hand clasped an arm welling deep red blood. While distinctly disturbing, it didn’t look life threatening. She grabbed the first aid kit. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“Who’s hurt?” Jack asked sharply.
“Norm.” She spoke tersely as she rummaged through the kit until she found some disinfectant and bandages. She thought about offering the standard, this might hurt, but there wasn’t any might about it. She opened and poured. As it stung into the wound, she got a glimpse of the extent of it.
“It’s just a graze.” She heard surprise in her voice and hoped no one else had. Jack hadn’t mentioned an early wound in the briefing, she thought uneasily. She bandaged it decently, thanks to her stint on search and rescue, while her thoughts sped out in crazy tangents. Things were pretty crazy now, and Jack’s memories were sixty years old but he hadn’t mentioned the hole in the wing either…
“I’m hit!” Another scared voice on the intercom. It was Kennedy in the Fort’s tush.
Norm started to get up, but Mel stopped him with a sharp shake of her head. “You’re needed here. I’m just excess baggage. Let me go.” Norm looked dubious, but Mel ignored him, quickly repacking the kit. At least it was something useful to do. Cringing might feel useful, but it wasn’t.
“Go where?” Jack asked sharply. Mel ignored him.
She switched to her portable oxygen and unplugged from the intercom. The silence was, well, deafening, but she missed the connection to the crew. Once she was sure the oxygen was working—by not passing out—she headed for the rear, grabbing whatever she could find to keep from being tossed on her tush. It didn’t always work. More bruises for the collection. Finally she gave walking up as a bad job and started crawling. It wasn’t great for the knees, but her tush was happier.
Outside the hatch door, the ball turret spun slowly. Fitz had the best, or possibly worst, seat in the house for this show. He could look down and see the flak coming up at them. At least he seemed to be all right. She edged past, a sudden lurch almost throwing her onto the top of it. She managed to halt mid-fling and reach the other side, only to face another obstacle.
It was the narrow, icy part of the fuselage where the waist gunners waited tensely, bent awkwardly over their guns. Here there was no protection at all from noise or from the wind—or flying shrapnel for that matter. The only way to get past them was by crawling, so she did, alternately dragging and shoving her oxygen and the first aid kit. They’d be out of the flak screen soon. She wanted to be out of the tail before then. She’d have felt silly if it all weren’t so freaking serious. Still on her hands and knees, she made her way along the narrow trough that ran down the floor toward the wheel well. Each explosion would lift her off the floor and then drop her down again. Gravity didn’t like losing its grip for more than a second or two. It was lucky her knees were numb with cold. She could see Kennedy on the other side of the wheel well, but couldn’t tell how badly he was injured.
The rumble of the engines crawled up the floor through her body. It was reassuring, though not comfortable. The rear wheel was folded up in to the well, stolidly in her way. There was clearance, but not a lot. She worked her way half around and half over it, both helped and hindered in this by the bouncing and rocking. As she passed over the top, she looked straight down to the ground twenty thousand feet below.
“Holy freaking crap.”
She tumbled onto the other side, helped by another lurch, landing at Kennedy’s feet. He was holding his upper leg as blood flowed over his hands and dripped onto the floor. There was enough of it splashed around to make the tail section suitable for inclusion in a freaking horror movie. But it wasn’t pumping out between his fingers. That was a good sign. It hadn’t hit an artery. At least she didn’t think so.
Working as fast as her shaking hands would let her, she dug throu
gh the kit again. Over Kennedy’s shoulder, she was looking right down his gun sight. It was a bit unnerving. Wrap, wrap. Boom. Boom. Tape, tape. Her life flashing before her eyes several times. Repent for some of it, okay a lot of it. Pray, pray. Make promises. Make lots of promises. Even some she could keep.
With a final lurch, the Fort cleared the flak screen. As if it had been waiting for this moment, she saw an FW burst out of the clouds, high and to the right. It appeared to be diving right at her.
* * * * *
Jack didn’t have time to worry about what Mel was doing. It took all he had to keep the plane semi-level and in the formation as they were buffeted by the exploding flak. It was black and thick enough to walk across, with some of the tracers coming up red, purple and green. He felt like a duck in a carnival shooting gallery as shrapnel pelted the plane. There were reports of holes and hits from almost every crew member. Something struck the window in front of Ric, cracking out from the point of impact until it ran into the frame. A shell rose up right in front of them. For three long heart beats, he stared at it before it fell out of his view again. Amazingly, it didn’t explode. It felt like forever, but it was only about six very long minutes that flak buffeted the plane, and then they were through it—flying right into the waiting guns of the FW’s. Queued up like school girls, they dove at the formation, peeling off in separate directions. Two picked them out for special attention, raking bullets down each side.
His were ears full of crew chatter and the sound of their guns firing back. Someone yelled he’d got one, but Jack couldn’t tell who. He tried to ask about Mel, but the noise level was insane. No one was misusing the system, so he couldn’t complain.
Out of the chatter he heard Ben yell, “Kennedy, you got one coming right at you!”
It sounded like Kennedy cursed, but Jack wasn’t sure.
“What’s happening back there?” he yelled. He couldn’t spare a glance at Ric. “Check on it, will you, Ric?” Check on her, he didn’t say, but that’s what he meant, though he wondered why he bothered. Right now, it didn’t seem possible any of them could survive.
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