The Last Mission

by William Kennedy

  “Callaway,” I correct in Herbert’s direction.

  “Callaway. Callaway Court,” he answers instantly. He looks at my amazement and then turns to see that his friend is openmouthed that he would know an address that even the postman can’t recall. “Right behind us,” Herbert says, and then adds his insane giggle. “A group of flats behind the inn. Taken down when they turned the inn into…” He can’t find the pejorative he is seeking, so he settles for a gesture of dismissal, “this place.”

  “We’re sitting in it?” I ask, breaking into a giggle of my own.

  “No, but your car is parked in it. The inn had a bit of land out back, and then there were the backs of the flats on this side of Callaway Court. When the bastards tore down the inn to make a motel, they ripped down the old places on Callaway Court and made them into a parking lot.” Then he looks up at Arthur Lyons. “Jesus, man, you were living here at the time. It couldn’t have been more than…well, let’s see now…it was back a ways. Before Maggie Thatcher. Maybe back in the seventies. Early seventies.”

  Lyons remembers, and then laughs at himself “Sure, I remember the flats. But was that what it was called? Callaway Court?”

  Little goes into a geographical description of the alterations at Whittingbridge. The man seems to know exactly what each building used to be and, in most cases, what it was before that. He’s focused on architecture, but he’s really lecturing on the changes that have occurred in English rural life. The simplicity of the prewar countryside has an innocent beauty that reminds me of Angela Priest, and I decide right then and there that Browning’s plant had to be someone else. She was so fresh and genuine that she could never have deceived me. Then I remember, as I did countless times on the plane, that she had tried to warn me. “You don’t know me,” she said several times. “When you do, you may not want to be with me.”

  I’m the first to breakfast in the morning, but Arthur Lyons is sitting beside me before I can add enough milk and sugar to disguise the taste of the coffee. “Up early,” I suggest to him.

  “I’m way behind on my tab reconciliation,” he explains. “I used to get it done during my shift, but it seems that all my customers want to talk.”

  “Especially me. I guess I’ve been a pain in the ass.”

  “No, no, not at all. I’ve enjoyed being with you. And God knows I’m learning a lot. Next Yank who happens in is going to get a real earful.”

  “Well, if you want a really good story, join me down at police records.”

  “Oh?” His expression tells me to go on.

  “As I mentioned, Browning’s memoir implies that my friend Miss Priest was part of the insurance scheme. Seems the two of them were playing me like a piano.”

  He’d figured out that I was Angela’s Yank, and he can see how devastated I am to find out that it might all have been a sham. “I’m sure that couldn’t be true.”

  “I’m hoping it’s not, but if it is, it should be in his records.” I sign the check and slip out of my chair. “Want to join me? Could be a hell of a story for your American customers.”

  He can hear the bitterness and the anger in my tone, and I think he’s afraid that I might harm myself. “Give me a second. I’ll be right with you.”

  I recite Browning’s thoughts from memory as we drive to the police station, and then I’m morosely silent as I sign in with Andrew Barnes and locate the Mary Brock case file. Arthur sits across from me and I pass him each page as I finish. At first he just scans Browning’s reports as a gesture of camaraderie, but soon his eyes narrow and his expression scowls. He gives a grunt, or sigh, to acknowledge each step in Browning’s investigation.

  I read and reread his early notes, filed before I was involved. Surely, if Angela had been involved in the insurance scam, there would be some mention of her activities at the other air base. Then there’s the day when he introduced Angela to me, and his comment about my obvious interest in her. If he had turned her into his puppet, wouldn’t there be some acknowledgment of his plan, and a word of self-congratulations on how well it was working? But there’s nothing. The official notes have no reference to the undercover plant who appears in his memoirs.

  But maybe that’s exactly what I should be expecting. In the manuscript, Browning implied that he had struck a deal with one of the perpetrators. He had caught her, identified her scheme, and then offered her a pardon in turn for her efforts on behalf of the case. Probably that was stretching his authority. Police often ignore the crimes of their informers, but they probably don’t enter that fact in their official reports. Browning was a policeman, probably with many arrangements with informers and plants. His deal with the woman would have fallen into that category and probably would never have been mentioned in an official document.

  But then there’s the timing. Browning’s reports identified the insurance scam long before he introduced Angela to me, so she couldn’t be the woman whom he had caught collecting insurance at another base. Unless…was it possible that he knew of Mary Brock’s activities long before her body was discovered?

  I start through the summary again. It’s obvious that Browning wasn’t telling me everything he knew. When he showed me the “curious coincidence” in our base records, he hadn’t just discovered the first hint of women preying on the American flyers. He knew a great deal about the scam. But he played it as if he was suddenly suspicious and was merely trying to figure out a possible motive. In fact, he knew the motive and was looking for me to provide the links to the murderers. Was that the answer? Did he know I would be reluctant to indict my fellow Americans? Did he figure that the less I knew, the more easily I would cooperate? And wouldn’t that tie in with introducing me to an attractive woman, whose company would be all the reason I would need to run his errands?

  Arthur Lyons clears his throat. He’s been sitting with me for over an hour, and has spent the last twenty minutes watching me read and reread the reports. He’s beginning to drum his fingers.

  “I’m sorry, Arthur. I got too…involved…” I indicate the pages, and he nods his appreciation.

  “It must be difficult for you, reliving all of this.”

  On the drive back to the motel he gives me his opinion, based on his first-time reading of the police reports. He is appalled, even apologetic, that English women could have been so deceitful to the Americans who were risking their lives. “Of course there are those kinds of women. Always have been, I suppose. Creeping into a soldier’s tent, exhausting him with her charms, and then cutting off the poor bastard’s head.”

  He advises me not to put the Angela of my memories into that category. “There’s not a word in those reports to implicate her in any way. The sergeant was obviously pleased that you two hit it off, but there’s no mention of any subterfuge on his part or any indication that he ever had another conversation with her. All she did was identify a few photos.”

  I explain my theory as to why there would be no mention of his underground helper and I remind him that Angela fits the profile of the woman identified in the memoirs as a plant.

  “But she never mentioned the case to you, and never encouraged you to dig up the information that the sergeant wanted,” he says.

  “True,” I admit.

  “And she never asked you to put her name on your insurance policy, did she?”

  “No, she never did.”

  Angela had never asked me to name her a beneficiary, but then she wouldn’t have to ask. I remember quite clearly when I decided to do just that, without any prompting from her.

  Then

  We had gone into southern Germany and hit a rail yard west of Frankfurt. “A major link to the Italian front,” the briefing officer had told us. If he was right, then the German army that had taken over from the Italians had a nasty surprise coming, because we clobbered the yard.

  Our new Mustangs had given the Luftwaffe fighters more than they could handle. Both sides might claim to have won the dogfight, but the real victory was that not a single B-17 w
as lost to German fighters. We lost two in a midair collision and two to antiaircraft fire, but we had come in at only eighteen thousand feet and had put every bomb somewhere on the target. We were in a jovial mood when we reached the English coast. Then I found out that my hydraulic system was gone.

  I tried to lower the flaps as we began our approach, but the plane veered violently in response and began rolling to the left. I twisted the wheel to bring her back level, but we were still skidding into a turn. I hit the toggle to raise the flaps and the plane began to straighten. We tried it again, this time keeping a visual check on the flaps. The one on the right wing went down normally, but the left flap didn’t budge. Once again we began rolling into a turn that wouldn’t quit until I had raised the right flap.

  We pulled out of line and notified the field of the problem. Without flaps we would have to come in fast, running up close to the plane landing ahead. Procedure called for us to circle while everyone else landed, and then begin our approach run. It wouldn’t be the ideal B-17 landing, but with the plane light at the end of the mission it wouldn’t be all that hair-raising, either. So we headed north, well away from the landing pattern, and then to the west to line up with the runway. As soon as the last plane touched down, we started into our final approach run. I called to my copilot, Glenn Randlett, to lower the gear, and he pulled the handle. Suddenly we were once again skidding into a turn. Glenn pulled up the wheels while I added power, but we were still being pulled to the right.

  “Right main gear is still down, Jim,” Rusty Jorgenson called from the nose. From his navigator’s position, Rusty could see the two wheels that were supposed to drop out of the two inner engine nacelles. The right wheel was fully extended. The left wheel was down a bit, just clear of its housing. We tried dropping and raising and then dropping the wheels again. Nothing happened. We couldn’t get the right wheel to go back up or the left wheel to come down. What had started out as a victorious homecoming was now a probable disaster.

  Without the flaps, we would be landing too fast. And with one wheel down, we couldn’t come in on our belly. Landing on one wheel meant that we couldn’t use the brakes without veering sharply to the right. We didn’t have enough runway to simply roll to a stop, and even if we did, the last seconds of the roll would be horrendous. When the wings lost their lift, the left wing would settle to the ground, putting us into a spin to the left. Either way, our B-17 was going to self-destruct.

  The field had me climb, put the bomber into a dive, and then pull up abruptly, hoping that the force generated might pull down the crippled wheel. Nothing changed except our fuel gauges, which were touching close to empty.

  Colonel Mast’s voice came over the radio. “Marron, first thing I want you to do is get your crew out. Let ’em jump into the plowed field at the end of the runway. Then you’re going to try a touch-and-go to see if you can bounce the gear down.”

  Great idea, Colonel, I thought. If you happen to know someone who has ever shot a touch-and-go landing in a one-wheeled Flying Fortress. “Roger, Colonel,” I said, as if I’d done all this a hundred times before.

  I slowed as much as I dared, and then ordered the crew to check parachutes and assemble at the bomb-bay catwalk.

  “I’ll stick with you,” Glenn Randlett told me. “It will be busy enough for both of us if we try to land.”

  “Me too,” the flight engineer chimed in. “As long as that wheel is down, you’re going to have to steer with the engines.”

  I keyed the radio. “Colonel, my copilot and flight engineer want to stick around for a while. I can use the help.”

  A pause. Colonel Mast didn’t have the answer at his fingertips. “Affirmative,” he finally said, “but just for the first pass.”

  We slowed as much as we dared and came in over the plowed field to the east of the runway. We needed a minimum of five hundred feet to let the jumpers clear the plane, open their chutes, and then for their parachutes to fill. I held one thousand feet, just in case any of the crew had trouble with the ripcord. Better they should drift into someone’s backyard than hit the ground with a half-filled parachute. Then I ordered the bomb-bay doors opened. I went through the jump procedure, reminding the guys to hold the ripcord with both hands and count to three before pulling.

  “Go! Jump!” They went out through the bomb bay. I added power and turned so I could count the chutes. They were all out and drifting easily toward the field. Then we headed west to line up for our landing once again.

  I didn’t add any altitude, so the big engines were probably rattling windows up in Whittingbridge. We turned over some farms, scaring chickens to death, but none of that mattered. I needed to come down the center of the runway and hit hard. Hopefully, when I went back up, I’d have two wheels. Or the impact might collapse the right wheel. Then I’d have a hot but manageable belly landing. The danger was that when I hit I wouldn’t be able to hold the left wing up. If it touched, we’d go into a high-speed cartwheel.

  “Ease up the power on three and four,” I told Firkins. The flight engineer added to the power on the right side and lowered it on the left side. The pressure came off the rudder pedals and off the wheel. “Be ready to push one and two when we touch. If that wheel comes down we’ll need to get back into balance.”

  Then to Glenn. “We have to keep the left wing from dropping.”

  He nodded. “Don’t hit it too hard.”

  That was the problem. Hit hard enough to jar the left wheel lose, but not so hard that the plane would tip over.

  We were coming right down the center line at 160 knots, half again our landing speed, to make sure that we wouldn’t stall. The threshold shot by, and suddenly we were over the concrete strip.

  “Hang on!” The wheel hit. The plane’s left wing began to sink. Both Glenn and I were twisting our wheels to the right. The struggle ended in a draw. The bomber held level, bouncing down again on its one good wheel. We were rolling, but we were still flying. The wings were holding the left side in the air while the right side was settling down.

  “We’re going back up! Add power, but keep it balanced.”

  The three of us were overpowering one another. As power came up, our bank to the right became more effective. We started rolling in that direction, but as Firkins added power, he had to feel for additional drag from the left wheel. If it was down, he could balance the engines. It if wasn’t, he had to keep the right engines running hotter. The result was that we were flying erratically, no more than fifteen feet over the runway, gaining speed with every hundred-foot marker. We needed to be balanced before I pulled the nose up. And I had to pull it up in a hurry because we were hurtling directly toward the trees.

  “Take her up!” It was Colonel Mast on the radio. From the tower he could see that our left wheel hadn’t budged. If we lost speed, the left wing would hit.

  But still we were wobbling, Glenn and I using the wheel to keep her in balance, and Bruce adjusting the throttle handles to overcome the off-center drag. It would only take a few moments to get everything into sync, but the trees were coming up fast. We didn’t have a few more moments.

  “I need power, now!”

  Bruce pushed the throttles, trying to keep the spacing among the levers. The engines roared more furiously, but we began to crab to the left. I fought back with the rudder pedal. Then the right wing began to sink.

  “Follow it,” I screamed to Glenn. “Let it turn.” He felt the same thing I did and eased the wheel into a right bank. At the same time, I began hauling back on the yoke. The bomber began a climbing turn, out over the center of the base, crossed another runway, and got its nose above the tree line. But the more we banked, the more the plane threatened to stall.

  “Level…level it out!” We banked to the left, coming out of our turn, and brushed the treetops as we flashed over. The big bomber climbed uncertainly.

  Mast’s voice was on the radio. “No go, Marron. One is still up and other still down. You’re going to have to ditch her. How’s your f
uel?”

  All three of us looked at the gauges. “Just about empty,” I responded. “No chance of fire.”

  “Can you make the Channel?” Mast wouldn’t let us abandon a plane over the English island. He didn’t want pilotless B-17s coming down on houses. He would order us to fly out to the coast, set the autopilot with the plane aimed out to sea, and then jump. I looked at Firkins, who was already shaking his head.

  “That’s a negative, Colonel.”

  “Okay, then try that one-legged landing again. Only this time keep her down.”

  Our climbing turn was carrying us back toward the field. I held the turn, but leveled off at twelve hundred feet.

  “Glenn, open the bomb bay again. Firkins, I need these throttles balanced at glide speed. Maybe a couple of rpms more, but the lowest speed that will keep us flying.”

  The copilot stepped over the flight engineer and made his way back to the bomb bay. In a few seconds I heard the electric motors cranking open the doors, and then the rushing sound of the air. Meanwhile, the engines were settling down from the full-power roar. Firkins was adjusting the throttles with his fingertips, nursing the levers ahead and back and listening to the results.

  “Okay, Firkins, nice job. Now get down there with the lieutenant and bail out on my command.”

  “You’re gonna need me, Skip.”

  “All I have to do is shut them down. Get ready to jump.”

  “No way. There are all kinds of things that could happen.”

  “You can either get a medal or a court martial, Firkins. You’re going. That’s an order.” He was mumbling angrily when he left the flight deck. “And tell Lieutenant Randlett to hit the close button as he’s leaving.”

  I turned back over the plowed field where my landed crewmen were in the process of gathering up their parachutes.

  “Go!” I yelled over the intercom. At first I heard nothing over the engines and the roar of the wind, but then the noise died out. Glenn had hit the bomb-bay door button as he jumped. I headed west to line up for still another pass at the runway. There was no point in checking the fuel, nor any need to worry about the wheels. All I could do was try for the landing, and if I came up short, make damn sure I didn’t hit a house or a barn. I had reached the point where I had to take whatever I could get.