Authors: T Davis Bunn
Berlin Encounter
| Berlin Encounter |
| Rendezvous with Destiny [4] |
| T Davis Bunn |
They must escape Stalin's notorious blockade or face certain death on charges of espionage!
Colonel Jake Burnes had never imagined himself a spy. But the acclaim he won for rescuing a French Resistance hero and bringing a traitor to justice lead to a more clandestine assignment. Now he must venture into the sector of Germany held by the Red Army and secure the safe passage of two rocket scientists to the West. NATO intelligence assures him that the very future of Europe is at stake.
But Jake is unaware that Russian spies have infiltrated this elite group, jeopardizing his mission and life. As Stalin's stranglehold around the city of Berlin tightens into a notorious blockade, Jake's newlywed wife Sally learns of the danger and rushes to warn him. Will she reach him in time?
Espionage on the highest level the compelling sequel to Sahara Crosswind!
A native North Carolinian who now lives abroad, T. Davis Bunn was recognized internationally as a consultant, lecturer, and speaker in the area of international finance and received invitations to address symposiums, conferences, and management meetings. His professional interests took a decided turn nearly eighteen years ago. Although he continued his career in international finance, he became a "closet" novelist. For nine years, he wrote with discipline and drive, never to have anything published. When one of his novels came to the attention of Bethany House Publishers, his status as an unpublished novelist changed. His first book, The Presence, was published in 1990 and quickly became a bestseller.
A prolific writer, he now has over twenty books in publication, including three with Janette Oke, a wonderful children's picture book called Princess Bella and the Red Velvet Hat, the heartwarming gift book The Quilt, and his latest, The Dream Voyagers, originally published under the pen name Thomas Locke.
"The novels I've had published by Bethany House are the direction I hope my future writing will take--captivating stories of intrigue, drama and faith, with compelling characters in an enjoyable contemporary fictional setting," says Bunn. "The emotional bonding that occurs with the reader in good fiction often gives the Christian message more direct meaning in the reader's life."
Prior to his work in international finance, Davis completed studies in psychology and economics at Wake Forest University. Fluent in three languages, he has traveled extensively in more than forty countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Davis has also avocationally become a serious student of comparative religion, learning from Jewish rabbis, Buddhist monks, Muslim imams, Catholic priests, and Baptist ministers. Drawing on these experiences, Davis fills his books with colorful dialogue and richly textured settings.
Rendezvous With Destiny
Book Four
Berlin Encounter
T. Davis Bunn
© 1995 by T. Davis Bunn
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-7093-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
This story is entirely a creation of the author’s imagination. No parallel between any persons, living or dead, is intended.
Cover illustration by Joe Nordstrom
This book is dedicated to
Patricia Bunn
and
E. Lee Bunn
with love
And to
Jeff and Lisa Jarema
With love and heartfelt
best wishes for a
joyful life together
The lead plane rocked its wings once, twice, but no voice cut through the radio static. There was too much risk of being overheard to speak unless there was an emergency. And if there was an emergency, they were all goners anyway.
The big Halifax bomber then lifted its wings toward the moonless night sky, and the pilot of Jake Burnes’s glider jammed back the release catch. There was a loud
thunk
as the cable jolted from its hook, and a shudder ran through the glider as they caught the tow plane’s parting downdraft. Then the bomber disappeared into the night sky, and the loudest noises were the glider’s creaking frame and the wind.
Their glider was an enormous British Horsa, designed to transport either a full squad of heavily armed troops or a small tank. Jake glanced behind him, saw that the two trucks and their unmarked bundles were riding steady. Behind the load, all was empty shadows and rushing wind. He turned back to the glider’s narrow windows, squinted out, saw nothing but gathering rain droplets. They were flying through clouds.
The glider jerked violently. Jake gripped his seat with white-knuckle panic. The plane seesawed, the wooden frame groaning with protest. But nothing gave.
Jake glanced at the pilot seated next to him. The man remained utterly unconcerned. But Jake took little comfort in the pilot’s calm. He had already learned that glider pilots had their nerves surgically removed during training.
“Ten minutes,” the man said, his voice a casual high-class British drawl. “Best strap in.”
They escaped from the clouds, but the droplets only grew larger. This was what the powers that be had wanted, a rainy night with low-lying clouds. That way, though the tow plane’s mighty engines would be heard, spotting would be impossible. Their exact landing point was relatively unimportant because no one would be there to meet them. All they needed was a flat and isolated field.
Jake squinted through the rain-blurred windscreen, tried hard not to let his fear take over. How the pilot was supposed to find a landing field in these conditions had never been fully explained.
The Horsa transport glider had been used in various World War II battles, including the D-Day invasion. That had been Jake’s first thought when he heard how his mission was to begin, and the knowledge had stifled his protests a little. His younger brother, his last living relative, had died in the assault on Omaha Beach, and even that minimal connection left Jake feeling a little closer to the family he still sorely missed. The glider was canvas-covered wood with only the most rudimentary of controls, built as cheaply as possible. Which made perfect sense. Transport gliders were seldom used more than once.
Jake grimaced as another rain-swept gust buffeted their glider. He wished he had protested after all.
“Here we are,” the pilot shouted over the wind. “Just the ticket.”
Jake leaned forward and searched as hard as he could, saw only faint patches of shadows. “Shouldn’t we check closer down and make sure?”
“Nonsense,” the pilot retorted loudly, and nosed the giant glider downward. “That field is level as a cricket pitch. Couldn’t ask for a more delightful spot.”
Jake saw that further argument was useless. He gripped an overhead guide wire with one hand and his seat with the other, braced his feet, and sent a frantic prayer lofting upward.
An endless moment of rushing wind and drumming rain and jerking, jouncing downward flight, then shadows coalesced into tight squares that looked far too small to ever catch and safely hold a plane like theirs. Down farther, leveling and pulling back and nosing up and slowing more, and Jake had a sudden notion that he might actually live through this after all.
Then a tree appeared out of nowhere, reached out great shadow-limbs, and neatly tore off one wing.
The glider hit the ground almost level, then the remaining wing dug into the earth and wrenched off with the sound of screaming timber and ripping canvas. The plane went into a gentle sideways skid, held upright by the weight of its cargo. The Horsa dug a deep furrow in the boggy soil, as forward progress was gradually braked by whipping through a field of ripening wheat.
Then they stopped.
Jake looked over at the pilot, took his first full-sized breath since the nose had pointed downward, and laughed.
The pilot, a jaunty ace with sunburned cheeks and a sidewise grin, replied, “I think that went rather well.”
Jake unclenched his death’s grip. “At least we’re alive.”
“Precisely.” The pilot snapped his belt, stood, stretched his back, said, “I suppose we’d best be moving along, then.”
“Right behind you.”
Even though it was early June, the rain that sluiced through the two great gaping holes in the fuselage was bitterly cold. Jake kept his flight jacket zipped up tight to his collar as he set his shoulder alongside the pilot’s and strained to open the loading door. But their landing had knocked the portal off its hinges and jammed it tight. Jake heaved with all his might and strained until he felt he was about to blow a gasket, but the door did not budge.
Finally the pilot leaned back and took a gasping breath. “Rather a bother, that.”
“What about—” Jake stopped, tensed, and listened. For a moment, all he heard was the sound of rain drumming on taut canvas. Then there it was again. Voices shouting from a distance.
The pilot hissed, “Is that German?”
“Can’t tell.” He strained, listened further, said, “Maybe. Maybe not. Could be Russian.”
“Then it is time, as they say, to scarper.” The pilot leaped for the rear truck. “Only one shot here,” he said. “If your motor doesn’t catch, you come in with me. I’ll do likewise.”
Jake nodded, climbing aboard the front truck. Just what he liked in a jam, to find his back watched by a man who knew how to think on his feet. He found the starter button, pumped the gas pedal, turned, and when the pilot gave him a thumbs up, he fired the engine.
The motor whirred, grumbled, and roared to life.
Even above the pair of racing engines, Jake could hear voices rising to shouts of alarm. He gave no time to thought, however. No time. He raced his engine once more, unsure what the pilot had in mind, but at this point ready for anything.
The pilot revved his motor to full bore, then jammed his truck into reverse and rammed it straight through the back of the plane.
Without a moment for caution, Jake followed suit.
There was a rending, scraping shriek, then a moment of sailing through air, then a squishy thud. Tires spun, engine roared, wheels found purchase and propelled the vehicle in a tight circle. In reverse. At a pace far too fast for driving through a field of wheat at two o’clock in the morning.
Jake braked, shouted at the gears when he could not find first, looked up in time to see the second great truck come barreling out of the night headed straight for his door. The pilot managed to spin his vehicle out of range at the very last moment, sent a cheery “Beg your pardon” across the distance, and disappeared into the field.
Jake revved his engine and followed suit.
Only to find himself plowing straight through a squad of soldiers.
He would have been hard put to say who was more startled, he at the sight of these armed men appearing out of nowhere, or they at the vision of a roaring truck parting the wheat and barreling down on them without lights. Rifles were tossed to the heavens as soldiers dived in every conceivable direction. Jake jammed the pedal to the floor and kept right on going.
The field gave way to a rutted road which he found and lost and found again, in the meantime dismantling the corner of what, given the squawks of protest his passage caused, he could only assume was a chicken coop. He did not stop to investigate.
It was only when he was a good hour down the road that Jake finally decided it was time to put on his lights, slow down, and try to find out exactly where he was.