The Ultimate Escape

by Tom Clancy

  As Churchill spoke, the Net Force Explorers scanned a map of Europe. Most of the continent had fallen to the might of the German Army. The escaping British soldiers would have been captured or killed by the Germans if they had spent even another day in France. As it was, only the valiant efforts of the Royal Air Force had kept the German Luftwaffe from bombing or strafing the rescue operation into a disastrous end. Over two hundred thousand British soldiers and over a hundred thousand Allied soldiers had been saved, and only two thousand men lost in the process.

  It was one of the turning points of the war. Had the rescue at Dunkirk failed, Germany would almost certainly have been victorious in World War II. As it was, France surrendered to Germany on June 16th of 1940.

  The images jumped again as the Net Force Explorers found themselves in a meeting of the British high command; then another jump took them among the German troops massing on the French coast, where assault boats were poised for an invasion of England. At last they were in the air once more, in the cockpit of a German bomber, as the Luftwaffe made daily attacks on British military installations from bases in France. The Battle of Britain had begun.

  As they rode virtual Nazi bombers across the English Channel and over British soil, the Net Force Explorers heard a translation of Hermann Goring’s speech to the German people, promising that his Luftwaffe would conquer the British people from the air.

  Then the scene shifted again, and the Net Force Explorers watched as British pilots took off in Spitfires and Hurricane fighters. From the virtual skies, swarms of German fighters and bombers rained death on England. The nation’s only line of defense against the Nazi aggressors was the outnumbered and outgunned pilots of the Royal Air Force.

  The Net Force Explorers found themselves at another Nazi rally, where they again heard Hermann Goring, this time wearing a sky-blue uniform festooned with medals, promise that no British bombs would fall on Berlin. Then they jumped into the cockpit of a British bomber on a daring nighttime raid on the German capital, the one that dropped the first bombs on Berlin.

  Finally, the Net Force Explorers were in a meeting of the German high command, where Hitler himself ordered the bombing of London in retaliation for the attack on Berlin. The TeacherNet program concluded with waves of German fighters and bombers filling the morning sky as they headed for London.

  After the rapid-fire program ended, the class broke for lunch and a chance to absorb what they’d learned. As the Net Force Explorers were sitting around the cafeteria, Andy Moore appeared, his face pale.

  “I just read the roster for this afternoon,” he said.

  “And?” David Gray asked.

  “We’re going up against Dieter Rosengarten and the young Berliners again.”

  Everyone stopped eating and turned to Andy.

  “Are you sure?” Matt Hunter asked. Andy nodded.

  “The roster says that we’re joining with a group of Brits from a school in London’s East End, and going up against Dieter and Masahara Ito and the Japanese.”

  “The Japanese, too,” Megan said, then moaned.

  David looked at her. “What do you care?” he asked. “I bet those Japanese students are afraid of you. You’re our team’s kamikazeV

  Everyone laughed at that.

  “These guys are only human,” Matt said finally. “We can hold our own against them. We have to.”

  When they met back at class again that afternoon, the Net Force Explorers were sent into a veeyar simulation of a Royal Air Force base outside London in the spring of 1940, where the British students were waiting to greet them.

  When they entered veeyar, the Net Force Explorers found themselves standing in front of an old English cottage in a rural part of Britain. A flagpole with the familiar “Union Jack” flapping in the breeze towered over the small stone structure.

  A wide farmer’s field had been cleared and paved over, and in the distance there were lines of large, conical dun-colored tents where the men slept. Several hangars, a barn, and other rickety wooden structures housed single-engine propeller aircraft with the distinctive “bull’s-eye” British tri-color markings on their wings and fuselage.

  Several primitive tank trucks were scattered around the air field, holding fuel— petrol, as the British called it—for the airplanes. A bunch of airmen were pushing the planes out of the buildings, fueling them, and loading long belts of ammunition into the wing guns. They also performed other routine maintenance chores.

  In the far distance, past a copse of tall trees, Matt could see a line of four delicate electronic towers. They were the radar stations, which would alert the British when the Germans were coming. Matt recalled what he’d learned in class that morning.

  The British had invented radar in the late 1930’s, and that technological achievement had probably saved them, and the world, from Nazi domination in the middle of the last century.

  While young men in the prime of their lives threw their aircraft against the Germans in the skies, middle-aged British men, and young women of the RAF, monitored the primitive radar screens on the ground, searching for Heinkel He-Ill bombers and Junkers Ju-87 Stukas. And their Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter escorts.

  In the end, it was the radar, as much as the courage of the British airmen, that saved England from conquest. It was a reminder of just how important technological superiority really was in the modern world.

  Matt scanned the peaceful scene before him. It was a bright, sunny spring morning and the air was fresh with the smell of new life. Hardly the setting for total war, Matt thought.

  Mark Gridley tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the cottage. Matt turned. Then he heard it too.

  Singing.

  Matt smiled at his wingman. “Let’s go see who’s having all the fun,” he said. The rest of the Net Force Explorers followed.

  When Matt pushed open the cottage door, a wave of sound almost blasted him backward. The Brits were singing an old World War II song called “Lily Marlane.” As Matt strained to make out the words, he concluded that the song was about a woman waiting under a streetlight for the man of her dreams to come along … or something like that.

  Suddenly, the Brits noticed the newcomers, and the singing died away. One of the British students rose and approached the Net Force Explorers. He had a severe haircut and an earring in one ear. There was a tattoo above his eye, a stylized picture of a lion roaring.

  He was not what Matt was expecting.

  The tattooed youth approached, and stuck out his hand to Matt.

  “Pinky Brighton,” he said by way of introduction. “You must be Matt ‘unter, of Net Force.”

  Matt nodded, straining to understand the youth, whose Cockney accent was very thick, and who tended to drop the “H” off words beginning with that letter.

  “I’m Matt Hunter,” he said, shaking the youth’s hand.

  Pinky smiled brightly. “This ‘ere’s me wingman, Sadjit,” Pinky said, putting his arm over the shoulder of a small youth of Indian descent.

  “Come on in an’ join the jollies,” Pinky Brighton said, pointing to his mates.

  The Net Force Explorers, grinning, mingled with the British youths. There was food on the table, a breakfast of tea and scones.

  Matt thought about his father at that moment. Remember, son, his father would always say. You can eat in veeyar, but it doesn 7 stick* It was his way of reminding Matt that virtual reality was not reality.

  The simulated ready room was very realistic, however. There were posters on the wall, many of them displaying the “V for Victory” sign that was used to inspire the British in those dark days when they faced the Nazis alone.

  There was another poster of a pretty woman named Vera Lynne. A British poster girl, Matt assumed.

  “Just follow our lead, mate,” Pinky Brighton said cheerily. “It’s payback time for those Krauts.” The other Brits loudly agreed with their leader, and they began to brag about what they were going to do to the Germans.

  For a mom
ent, Matt thought that these young British students were still fighting the Second World War in their minds. But as he listened to the drift of the conversation, he realized that the “payback” the Brits were referring to concerned last year’s World Cup soccer match, where the British team was defeated by Germany.

  Matt looked around, watching the Net Force Explorers interact with the Brits. Andy Moore was having fun. He really connected with these self-styled “soccer hooligans.” Megan was speaking with a delicate young woman with an aristocratic bearing. She sat away from the rest of her team, enjoying their antics but seldom joining in.

  Matt, meanwhile, was being bombarded by chatter from Pinky Brighton, who asked questions but seldom gave Matt the opportunity to answer.

  “Feeling out of place a bit, eh?” Pinky asked during one typical exchange. Before Matt could reply, the Brit went on. “We’ll just think of you Yanks as well-behaved Aussies!” he said.

  “Or rambunctious Canadians,” one of the other British youths said. Pinky nodded.

  “You speak our language, mate,” Pinky said. “That makes you one o’ us.”

  Suddenly, the low moan of a siren began to wail, increasing in intensity as it went on and on.

  “SCRAMBLE!” Pinky Brighton yelled, racing out of the cottage with the rest of the Brits in tow. Matt and the Net Force Explorers followed them, and together they all ran across the field, toward a line of waiting fighters—their engines already idling, filling the air with the smell of burning oil.

  Matt hopped into the cockpit of his designated Spitfire, and an airman helped him strap in and don his canvas oxygei mask. He turned and saw Mark Gridley sitting in the aircraft to his right. He gave his wingman a thumbs-up.

  Minutes later, the mock-RAF squadron took to the skies.

  As they reached their patrol area, the combined squadrons looked around. Far below, the white chalk cliffs of Dover gleamed in the sun as the waves of the English Channel crashed against them. The sky was blue, the clouds drifting gently across it were puffy and white, and the Channel’s waters were clear and sparkling.

  “There they are,” Pinky Brighton said over the radio.

  Matt peered through the cockpit, straining to see the enemy. Suddenly, there they were, a swarm of twin-engine Heinkel He-Ill bombers spread across the sky in tight formation.

  As the Spitfires approached the enemy, Matt could make out more details. The German bombers were unique-looking airplanes. They had a long, rounded fuselage with a conical glass nose. The entire glass-walled front end of the aircraft served as the cockpit. There was a top gunner and a belly gunner on the bottom of the Heinkel’s fuselage, to ward off attacks from those directions. The wings on the bombers were broad and rounded at the tips, and Matt could see the black crosses on the wings, and the swastika painted on their tails.

  “In we go,” Pinky said, suddenly not so jovial. “Watch for enemy fighters.”

  “Roger,” Matt said. “Okay, guys,” he said to his team. “Keep your eyes open.”

  “And good luck and good ‘unting to us all.” Pinky veered off after a target.

  “I’m going for the bomber on the right,” Matt said.

  But Mark Gridley’s reply was frantic.

  “Watch your six!” Matt’s wingman said, warning him that an enemy plane was coming up on his tail.

  “We’ve got German fighters diving at us,” David Gray said grimly. “Stay frosty!”

  David barely finished his warning as bullets streamed out of the sky. One or two shells struck Matt’s wing, and he jinked out of the way as a sky-blue single-engine Messerschmitt flashed past his cockpit.

  “I’m on him,” Mark said calmly. “You stick to the bomb-ers.

  Before Matt could reply, a Heinkel loomed ahead of him. Matt lined up his Spitfire on the bomber’s tail and depressed the trigger. Though he was sure he hit the German plane, there was no visible damage as his Spitfire raced past the much slower German bomber.

  “I’m hit!” Matt heard Megan O’Malley cry. He twisted in his seat, searching for his fellow Net Force Explorer. Then he saw her Spitfire spinning into the Channel, smoke and flames trailing behind. One of the Messerschmitt fighters had managed to hit her fuel tank.

  “Good luck, Net Force Explorers,” Megan said calmly as her aircraft spun out of control and struck the water with a huge splash.

  Megan was gone.

  Matt flipped his plane over and turned back toward the bombers, which were the real target of this exercise.

  Seconds later, the Spitfires tore through the bombers, scattering the German formation on the first pass.

  Pinky Brighton scored a kill almost immediately. His wing guns chattered and a Heinkel’s right engine exploded, its propeller spinning down into the Channel. The bomber followed, plunging out of the blue sky in a long, grotesquely graceful vertical arc.

  Matt selected a target, with Mark Gridley tight on his wing. Matt lined up behind a fleeing German bomber. He was surprised when tracers ripped past his wing. He’d forgotten about the rear gunner in the glass bubble on top of the Heinkel’s fuselage.

  Diving below the German gunner’s bullets, Matt clutched the stick with a white-knuckled fist; then he depressed the trigger. His wing-mounted machine guns shook the whole Spitfire as the lead shells streaked toward their target. Bullets danced along the Heinkel’s left wing. Matt tapped the joystick to the right, moving the stream of lead emerging from his guns.

  His next burst ravaged the Heinkel’s fuselage, and the plane broke up. To Matt’s shock and surprise, a German—one of the virtual constructs, he hoped—tried to bail out. He was struck by some debris from his own stricken plane, and his body dropped limply through the clouds.

  The parachute never deployed.

  Again, Matt recalled something he’d learned in the TeacherNet that morning. “The British boys had to shoot the German boys down at a ratio of two to one just to maintain parity.” He stole a glance at the earth below, and discovered that they were flying over British soil again.

  He hadn’t even noticed when they’d made landfall.

  Matt saw several of the Brits engaging the German fighters, and Pinky Brighton’s plane was drilling holes into a Messer-schmitt, which plunged, burning, out of the sky. This time the pilot managed to bail out, and his parachute drifted lazily down toward a farmer’s plowed field far below.

  Matt could also hear the radio chatter from David Gray and Andy Moore. From the sound of things, they were holding their own, and maybe doing even better than that.

  “Got him!” David said. Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw a Messerschmitt explode in midair. Its orange fireball lit up the sky.

  Andy, glued to David’s wing, opened up too. He dispatched another German fighter in less than three seconds.

  It appeared that the Net Force Explorers were doing a lot better in the area of air combat, and Matt felt a rush of pride.

  Suddenly, Mark Gridley slid up to Matt’s right wing once again. Matt turned and gave his wingman another thumbs-up.

  “How did you do, Squirt?” Matt asked.

  “Call me Squirt no more,” Mark said triumphantly. “I downed a German bomber, and my first Messerschmitt.”

  “Good shooting,” Matt said.

  “I’m beginning to like it,” Mark said. “In fact, I could do this all day!”

  “Good,” Matt said, his eyes narrowing. “Then you’ll be happy to know that we have more company coming our way.”

  Mark peered through his cockpit in time to see a line of five Messerschmitt Me-109’s streaking out of the sun and right for them at top speed.

  As Dr. Lanier congratulated the Net Force Explorers on their best performance in the flight simulators yet, the team looked as if they had lost the war.

  Their expressions were grim as Dr. Lanier read them their tally. But if the professor noticed their strange reaction, he said nothing, which was a relief for Matt. He couldn’t explain to his teacher what was wrong anyway.

  T
here was no doubt that the Net Force Explorers had done well. Matt, Mark, and David had survived the simulation to the very end. Andy would have survived too if it wasn’t for his obsession with Dieter Rosengarten.

  Andy had spotted the German’s fighter near the end of the competition and, ignoring David Gray’s warning, he went after “Baron von Dieter.”

  And was promptly shot down.

  But even that blow to Andy’s fragile ego paled when Matt, Mark, and David snapped back to real-time with the bad news. They had seen no sign of Julio Cortez, or his familiar orange fighter plane. The three of them had flown in circles over Great Britain, scanning the skies in search of their friend, until the simulation ended and they were thrust back to reality.

  It appeared that Julio was gone, almost as if he had never been there at all.

  plorers had been acting on his claims as if they were already proven for days. And in a way, they had been—would Cor-teguay have dummied up that news broadcast if Julio and his family were free and happy? But the Net Force Explorers had acted on his mere word that Julio was in trouble, long before they’d even seen that doctored broadcast.

  The Net Force Explorers trust me. They took my word that something was wrong, and acted on it, he realized. They may question what I say at first, we may argue a bit, but in the final analysis, my friends trust me.

  With that realization, Matt felt better. And the important thing now was not to give up. Matt knew he would think of something, and if he didn’t, then one of the other Net Force Explorers would.

  He trusted them too.

  Though Matt felt better, the rest of the team was feeling pretty bad. Their mood had not improved by the time they hooked up to their computers that evening and met at the virtual Net Force Explorers’ Lounge. The room they were in this time was a huge space filled with every gadget, gizmo, and gimmick that the student programmers in the Net Force Explorers could think of, from walls that changed form and color with each passing second to shimmering fountains whose waters wove in and among the seats without ever seeming to touch their occupants or interfere with what anybody wanted to watch.