Raider X

by Jon F. Merz

  The Defiant’s engine throttled up as Simpson increased his air speed and brought them back around as if they were heading back toward London. Simpson’s voice came over the headphone again. “I don’t mean to be rude. But I’m going to basically stop talking to you unless I need you. I need to communicate with the rest of the squadron. But do me a favor, would you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Test fire the machine guns, would you?”

  Test fire? Thatcher squeezed the trigger and the turret came to life as the guns fired automatically, sending a quick volley skyward. Thatcher, shifted the turret from left to right and then right to left, noting that the angle of the guns themselves was perhaps fourteen degrees aimed upward.

  “Good stuff,” said Simpson. “Now do us a favor and if we get into position and have any bogeys coming at us, shoot them down.”

  “Shoot them down? I’m no pilot, Simpson.”

  “Neither is anyone who sits back there, mate. But for the time being, you’re my gunner. And if I tell you to shoot, you’d damn well better shoot or else we’re going to be in the shit. You got that?”

  Thatcher took a breath, already feeling like he wanted to vomit. He’d started the morning staring down the barrels of a firing squad. And then he’d apparently been given a bit of a reprieve. Yet here he was now about to go into battle and he had no choice but to do it. Or else he might die.

  Seems a rather constant theme in my life right now, he thought with a frown.

  Simpson was already talking to the other pilots in his squadron. Thatcher saw other Defiants rising up to meet them as they veered east and headed for the Channel. There had to be at least thirty of the planes now and they were joined as well the likes of Spitfires and Hurricanes. That made Thatcher feel somewhat better. The Hurricanes and Spitfires would be there to help protect the Defiants from any fighter escort that the Germans had brought with them on their bombing run. Having the benefit of being able to stage from bases in occupied France meant the fighters could easily make the run across the Channel with the bombers and fight a bit before needing to return when their fuel ran low.

  The Channel itself yawned before them now and Thatcher, twisted in his seat to try to see what was happening thought the view was magnificent. But his back ached and he couldn’t keep himself oriented to the front. He tried rotating the turret and the guns swung around as he did so. Now he was facing front and felt a measure of relief.

  At least I can see what’s coming at us, he thought.

  “When we get into it,” said Simpson then, “make sure you turn those guns to the rear. The Jerrys will fly past us and you’ll be able to get a good shot at them.”

  “All right.”

  “Just don’t shoot down any of my mates in the process. You got me?”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Thatcher. “But I’ve never operated guns like this before.”

  “There’s a first for everything.”

  Thatcher’s mouth felt dry as Simpson spoke with the squadron leader. He could hear the conversation, but he didn’t think he could speak and be heard except by Simpson. That was probably for the better, he decided. The last thing Thatcher wanted was to be known at this point. He was going to have a helluva time just trying not to shoot down any friendly planes, let alone being able to take out a Nazi bomber.

  As he looked toward the east, he detected a slight rise in Simpson’s voice and the plane veered once more. The radar had pinpointed the attacking squadron of German bombers and now they were on a collision course with them and their fighter escorts.

  Simpson’s voice crackled in his ear once more. “You ready, mate?”

  “No,” said Thatcher.

  Simpson laughed. “At least you’re honest. I’ll give you points for that, at least. Just remember to breathe and keep your wits about you. Any of these fuckers get on our six, you let me know immediately or we won’t last for sure. Understood?”

  “Y-yes,” said Thatcher again feeling a need to vomit.

  “Good stuff,” said Simpson. “Because here they come.”

  Chapter 7

  They were on them in an instant, a swarm of angry hornets buzzing about the sky while the slower-moving German bombers tried to gain elevation. The Messerschmitt fighters zipped this way and that, their guns already blazing at the Defiants that had risen en masse to destroy the bombers. Thatcher marveled at their maneuverability as they twisted and dove and rose again with bullets shredding the sky as they did so. Within the first minute, they had knocked out two of the Defiants that somersaulted over and fell from the sky toward the ocean below.

  But then the Spitfires and Hurricanes joined the fight and gave the Messerschmitts a bit of a challenge. Thatcher didn’t have time to watch their dogfighting, however, because Simpson was jockeying the Defiant for position under the belly of a large German bomber. Thatcher had no idea what type it was, just that it was probably laden with high explosive incendiary bombs that it would be dropping on London or some other target within minutes if they did not stop them.

  His heart pounded in his chest and his breathing came in spurts as Simpson eased them up closer toward the belly, drawing them to within about two hundred yards.

  “Get those guns ready!”

  Thatcher spun the turret, lining the Browning machine guns up until he had the target. As soon as the belly of the bomber came within view, he opened up without Simpson prodding him. The noise of the four guns firing thundered within the plane. The four barrels smoked as lead poured out of them and Thatcher looked up at the underside of the bomber, noting that the heavy rounds were stitching across the belly of the beast in a deadly line.

  “Wings, mate, get the wings!”

  Thatcher adjusted his aim and as soon as the first of his bullets hit the wings, the smoke that poured from them was black and ominous. Thatcher got into the firing and maneuvering of the machine guns now, easing his aim and ripping rounds back and forth from the main fuselage to the wings. A burst of flame erupted from the left wing and then the entire craft slowly turned over on its right side and then banked toward the sea far below, yawning as more smoke belched from its underside.

  “That’s the stuff!”

  Thatcher felt a moment of elation. He had done it! Let Hewitt pin a medal on his chest for that bit of heroic display, he thought as pride surged in his chest.

  But it was short-lived when he spotted something directly behind them and then heard a rip of gunfire come arcing across the tail section. Most of the bullets missed but two of then struck the rear flaps.

  “There’s one on our tail!”

  Simpson didn’t respond but immediately put the Defiant into a steep dive. “Shoot back!”

  Thatcher tried his best to line the guns up as Simpson dove this way and that trying to shake the hunter behind them, but the Defiant’s guns seemed specifically designed to attack bombers, not be of help in a dogfight. Thatcher couldn’t adjust their elevation and the Messerschmitt on their tail seemed to know that. It stayed level with them rendering firing the guns nearly useless as Simpson started calling for help on his radio from any other pilots in the area.

  Out of the setting sun to the west, Thatcher saw a Spitfire break across the rear of the Messerschmitt and open up with its guns. The line of rounds screaming through the sky moved from empty air to across the canopy of the Messerschmitt and Thatcher could see them impact the pilot who almost exploded within the glass canopy into a red spray before falling forward and causing the Messerschmitt to go into a steep dive toward the sea.

  “Got him!”

  Simpson brought the Defiant back to level and put it on another bomber that had continued to lumber along. “We’ve lost a bunch of fellows,” said Simpson then.

  Thatcher looked and saw that while the Spitfires and Hurricanes were continuing to fight with the smaller German fighters, the rest of the Defiants had suffered tremendous losses. Of the thirty or so planes that had risen with them, half were gone now. And worse, the Messerschm
itts continued to dive this way and that while they danced with the British defenders, aiming to punch the Defiants out of the sky before they would need to break off and head back to occupied France because of low fuel.

  Thatcher lined up another bomber in his sights and sent volleys of rounds into it. More and more of the German bombers fell from the sky as the Defiants did their work. But there seemed to be so many of them, blotting out the sky like a giant shadow moving from Hitler’s Fortress Europe toward the city of London.

  Which was when Thatcher saw another black shape on their tail again. “Messerschmitt!”

  Even as he said it, an explosion of gunfire erupted from the German fighter and it stitched across the back of the Defiant. Instantly smoke poured from the wound and Thatcher shouted when he saw it. “He got us!”

  “I know it!”

  Simpson drove the Defiant down and then tried to regain altitude. The Defiant spun over in a barrel roll and Thatcher saw the entire world go upside down, felt his stomach lurch, and then steadied himself as Simpson brought them level again.

  “I can’t control her anymore. I’ll try to get us some altitude and put us closer to the land.”

  “What does that mean?”

  But Simpson was already yammering away into the radio that they’d been hit and were going down. Thatcher’s mind raced. Going down? Did that mean-?

  “Turn that turret to exit it,” said Simpson then. “We’re going to have to bail out.”

  Thatcher started panicking, feeling himself gasping for breath as he tried to work the turret.

  But it wouldn’t move.

  “It’s frozen!”

  “The bullets must have hit the hydraulics,” said Simpson. “Look down to your right and you’ll see a manual crank. Grab that and turn it to turn the turret. Hurry, mate, you don’t have much time!”

  Thatcher looked down and saw the crank, grabbed it, and started turning it. Or he tried to. But the crank was old and slightly rusted and didn’t seem to want to turn at all. Thatcher heaved and finally got it to start moving the turret. He was sweating now, it was hot inside the plane. He didn’t even know if Simpson was still with him or not.

  The turret finally kept moving and then Thatcher could see the exit swing around as the guns faced to the side of the plane. He risked a quick glance out and saw that the ocean below was frightfully close, a huge expanse of blue that seemed to surround them. They were nowhere as close to the land as he had hoped they might be.

  He punched out the exit door of the turret and felt a blast of cool air hit him in the face. He released his straps and then started climbing out before the thought hit him that he’d never jumped with a parachute before. He glanced down as the wind buffeted his face making it hard to see. He yanked down his goggles and found the rip cord dangling off of the weird suit that Steaks had put him into before they’d left the airfield.

  He took a final look at the turret, grabbed his traveling bag and felt the plane suddenly lurch. They weren’t high now and the nose suddenly dipped and fell straight for the sea. Simpson had vanished and Thatcher assumed that the pilot had already jumped even though he couldn’t see the man’s parachute anywhere.

  And then, he wasn’t in the plane any longer, either.

  For a moment, Thatcher had the distinct sensation of floating, almost as if he hadn’t really jumped at all. But that was because the plane had simply fallen away from him and its bulk seemed to defy the laws of physics at the rate it fell at.

  Then Thatcher felt the slipstream grab him and he started plummeting toward the sea as well.

  How high up were they? When was he supposed to yank his cord? Simpson hadn’t told him when to do it. Thatcher fell and fell, somersaulting as he did so, over and over again.

  The hell with this whole thing, he thought. He reached up for the cord and yanked on it with everything he had left.

  He heard nothing and felt nothing.

  As he somersaulted toward the water below, it occurred to Thatcher that it was probably going to hurt an awful lot when he smacked into the cold ocean.

  Chapter 8

  Just as he thought that he was dead, Thatcher heard a rush of material escaping his weird suit and then felt an abrupt jerk in his crotch that made him want to scream. He looked above him and saw that the canopy had finally opened, braking him hard as his bruised scrotum would probably be able to testify to. Now Thatcher drifted down ever closer to the sea, his fear only slightly lessened by the fact that the chute had opened and he wasn’t going to hit the sea and immediately die.

  No, he thought now, he was probably just going to drown.

  His entire field of vision was occupied by the white-capped waves below him. He still felt like he was falling far too fast, but he couldn’t seem to do anything about it. What was it Steaks had told him before they’d taken off? Twenty seconds before the weight of the chute would pull him under the waves and he’d drown. As Thatcher descended, he was already trying to figure out how to wriggle out of the strange suit contraption that held his chute, looking for some type of release catch to undo.

  Was that it? His fingers fumbled as the Channel waters suddenly seemed far too close. He started unbuckling it and then he hit the waves and immediately went under before surfacing again with a sputter of water and a cough. He hadn’t even blocked his nose before he’d gone in and now he was choking on water while he was desperate to grab a decent breath. The water was cold and he was shivering already but his fingers kept working the clasps on his suit.

  One came free and Thatcher started on the other, willing his frozen digits to work the clasps until they too came free and then he shrugged the entire suit off as the silken chute vanished beneath the waves, its strings yanking at Thatcher already like some undead corpse reaching up from a watery grave.

  One more to go and now Thatcher was being pulled under the waves. He couldn’t see anything because the salt water stung his eyes shut and he was barely able to keep from opening his mouth and letting the water rush in and finish him off. Where was the clasp? His fingers fumbled all over for it and then he finally located it.

  He was sinking deeper now. How far away would the surface be if he made it that far? Come on, fingers work! The clasp wouldn’t unbuckle. There was just one more…there! Thatcher found the pin and got it free. The suit came away in an instant and Thatcher, his lungs aching to fill with air launched himself upward hoping that he was shooting toward the surface and not even deeper in to the Channel depths.

  He broke the surface with a gasping shout and filled his lungs before he sank back slightly again. He clawed to the surface and again gulped fresh oxygen into his lungs.

  From above, the Channel water had looked reasonably peaceful, but now waves broke over his head with startling irregularity and Thatcher found himself consuming a whole lot more ocean water than he’d ever wanted to before. He turned around in all directions but could see no sign of land and he was being tossed to and fro in the drink with no real sense of current or direction.

  He steeled himself then and tried to remember where the land had been when he’d first touched down. It had been in front of him, he’d gone under and then shot to the surface so if he turned in this direction, he ought to be facing it.

  Of course, if it turned out to be the wrong direction, the chances were good he’d have to swim to France. And if he missed that, then he’d drift out into the Atlantic itself.

  Where was Simpson? Thatcher hadn’t seen any indication that the pilot had even managed to bail out with his chute. One moment he’d been in the plane and the next he was simply gone. Had he fallen? Or been shot? Thatcher didn’t know but he would have been grateful for any company right then. Being alone in the middle of the ocean as the sun was starting to set wasn’t the greatest feeling in the world. And the water was already growing colder with each passing minute.

  He took a breath and settled on a course of travel. No sense simply bobbing about in the drink waiting to die, he reasoned. He’d
been in other dicey situations in the past; this was no different even if the environment was. Thatcher steeled himself and set off. He wasn’t a strong swimmer by any means, but he knew he could stay afloat and as long as he kept moving, he would eventually reach somewhere. That as all he was concentrating on then. Just keep moving through the waves and make progress in one direction.

  He swam this way for perhaps a quarter of an hour as the waves continued to break over his head and as he did his best to minimize the amount of sea water he was swallowing. He knew the dangers of drinking the salt water but trying to keep his mouth closed was tough because the clothes he wore still weighed him down even though he had freed himself from the chute.

  Still, he reasoned that he was doing something productive. Hewitt’s schedule was going to hell, though, he thought with a brief bark of laughter. Part of him actually felt pretty good about disrupting it. The SOE man had made a point about getting Thatcher down to Poole in time to catch a transport and now that was all destroyed because of the German bomber run that had sidetracked them. And then of course, being shot down had put a permanent kink in the plans.

  Thatcher realized that if he did manage to make it to land, he had options. Hewitt would never know if Thatcher had managed to bail out. And if he knew that he had, there was no way of possibly knowing if Thatcher had landed in the water and promptly drowned. He might have never managed to free himself from the chute and been dragged down beneath the depths to his death. SOE wasn’t about to dispatch a search party to try to scour the depths for the body of a single man just so Hewitt could rest assured that his sacrificial lamb was dead. No chance. If Thatcher could make his way to land, he could literally vanish. The hell with Hewitt’s little assignment; Thatcher could make his way north, get his aunty secluded somewhere safer for her and then disappear forever knowing that she was safe from Hewitt’s nasty vengeance.

  That might work, he thought. And with that thought came a renewed energy to make it all happen. Thatcher set himself forward now, his strokes becoming stronger as he cut through the waves. He was surprised at how much progress he was making. But when a wave lifted him higher than before, he managed to get a glimpse of the land and his heart sank when he saw how far off it was.