Crucified (2 page)

GERMANY, 1944

Whatever this secret mission, it must be something big.

Assassinate Adolf Hitler?

Is that it? wondered the pilot.

Is that why his orders—marked "For your eyes only"—commanded him to break away from the bomber stream and fly this solitary mission to an isolated village, to drop a bomb load on what appeared to be—from the target photo with his orders—a rural country estate?

 Is it Hitler's hideaway?

A new weapon?

And why the secrecy?

If Flight Lieutenant Fletch "Wrath" Hannah died tonight, he'd like to know what he'd died for.

Through the cockpit window, the pilot watched the bomber stream—eight hundred Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Mosquitoes miles to the north—rain death by moonlight on Berlin. Tons of high explosives boiled like bubbles in a cauldron, blasting buildings to bits. The diamond white glare of the firebombs darkened to deep red once the flames took hold. It looked as though every factory, every house was burning. Berlin glowed like a huge hearth full of flickering embers. And even here—

Boom! Boom!
—driven by the wind, Wrath felt shock waves buffet his plane.

The pit of hell, he thought.

As the city belched fire and smoke, the hatred shot skyward in searchlights and flak. Sweeping back and forth in a slow frenzy, the blue beams were master lights that caught a wing or a tail so the slave beams could scale the ladders to "cone" the lit-up planes. Synchronized to the lights, anti-aircraft guns tore the sky apart, spewing tracers like sparks from a grinding wheel.

Dazzling bursts and ragged smoke clustered near the planes, until the flak was so thick the pilots could almost land on it.

Ninety-nine
whoomfs
could miss, but that hardly mattered if the hundredth ripped off a wing or riddled a crew with shrapnel.

There was only one way to counteract flak.

Our Father who art in heaven, thought Wrath dryly.

Each plane flew straight and level for the last leg of its run so the bomb-aimer could plant his crosshairs on the target.

Wrath winced as one Lane blew up in midair, the fuel tanks falling to the ground as balls of fire. A Halifax spun to earth in ever-tightening turns, twisting faster and faster until it disintegrated from centrifugal force. Engines flaming, controls shot away, crippled bombers were going down in every kind of distress. Exit hatches popped open so crews could bail out, their parachutes blossoming in the gunsights of Hun fighters.

There but for the grace of God, thought Wrath.

A moonlight monster gazed back at him from the glass.

There was nothing human about his face. The seven crewmen wore the combat gear of RAF raiders. The pilot's head was sheathed in a leather flying helmet. Goggles protected his eyes from shrapnel. Headphone flaps covered both ears. Clamped over his nose, mouth, and chin, his oxygen mask dangled a tube like an elephant's trunk. Inside was a microphone he could use to communicate with his crew.

The TR9 intercom system was standard in British bombers. Each crew member connected to it by plugging in an electrical lead from the mike in his oxygen mask. The deep-throated engines made a lot of noise, so often the men were reduced to handing notes around or blinking the colored lights of the signal system. Rely on that in combat, though, and you wouldn't last long.

"Intercom check," Wrath announced as the glow of Berlin aflame retreated into the distance and the
Ace of Clubs
flew deeper into the lonely sky ahead.

"Rear gunner to pilot. What's up, Skipper? The war's back there. I see it behind us."

"Pilot to rear gunner. I don't know, Ack-Ack. Orders are to leave the stream and bomb a hinterland village."

"Their's not to reason why . . ."

 Wrath didn't respond with "Their's but to do and die," to finish the quote from "The Charge of the Light Brigade." He didn't want to jinx them.

When someone switched on his mike, everybody knew it. The rest could hear the new arrival's breathing over the engines' roar.

If he didn't talk, Wrath would ask who was on the mike. Because the system didn't identify the men's combat positions—all you heard was yakking on a common line—they had agreed to begin each exchange by saying who was speaking to whom.

"Pilot to mid-upper."

"Roger, Skipper?"

It was strange to hear a voice from the dorsal turret that wasn't De Count's. Monty Christie—thus De Count of Monty Christie—had been with the crew since training. Now branded with the cruel letters LMF—for "lack of moral fiber"—he'd been replaced by Trent Jones for this op.

"Interrupter gear up to snuff, Jonesy?"

"Aye, Skipper."

"You sound distorted."

"It's
cold
up here. Hope moisture from my breath isn't freezing in the mike."

Hours ago, as they'd approached the enemy coast, Wrath had given both gunners permission to test-fire their weapons over the sea. Deafening bangs and the smell of cordite had soon filled the fuselage. As arse-end Charlie of the
Ace,
Ack-Ack had the most dangerous position. Flying in the rear turret was like being dragged through the air backwards in a goldfish bowl. The average life expectancy of a tail gunner under attack was thirty seconds. That's because Nazi night fighters preferred to zoom in from astern and below. Without the rear gunner, the plane was a sitting duck.

 "There's a balls-up, Skipper," Jonesy had reported. His turret sat halfway back on the dorsal spine of the plane. "The interrupter gear is giving me grief. I worry something broke during the test fire. The rear gunner should know. He's in my gunsights."

"Ack-Ack?"

"Here, Skipper."

"Get forward and help the mid-upper."

"Roger. Rear gunner going off intercom."

The plane's turrets were minor marvels of mechanical engineering. Each one was mounted on a pair of concentric rings.

The inner ring, driven by a self-contained, electro-hydraulic power unit, swiveled around for high-speed tracking of Nazi night fighters. The interrupter gear kept the turret guns from firing when they aimed back at the
Ace.

Wrath waited on tenterhooks.

He couldn't abort the mission.

It was dreadfully cold in the tail of the Halifax. Every bit of exposed skin was prone to frostbite. Because there was no heating, the gunners wore electric suits. Wrath could imagine Ack-Ack unhooking his main oxygen supply and intercom plug from his mask before attaching a portable oxygen bottle that resembled a small fire extinguisher. Climbing out of the rear turret, he would crawl up the murky fuselage in his heavy suit, then try to help fix whatever was wrong with the mid-upper's interrupter gear.

Those gunners were the bomber's only protection against attack. It unnerved Wrath to have either turret vacant. From the moment the
Ace
entered Nazi airspace until—hopefully—it landed safely back at base in Yorkshire, the gunners would be isolated in the plane's tail end, glued to hard seats for the dura-tion of the run.

Tick-tock . . .

 Time passed with agonizing slowness.

Then Wrath heard the familiar
puff-puff
in his earphones of a crewman checking his mike before speaking.

"Rear gunner to pilot. Problem solved, Skipper. Found the gremlin in the works."

"Pilot to Jonesy and Ack-Ack. We're counting on you.

Don't want anything failing if the Huns attack."

"Aye," said the voice foreign to the crew.

"I'll stake my life on it," added Ack-Ack.

Wrath hoped
that
didn't jinx them either.

Now it was more than two hours later and the
Ace
was nearing its target.

"Pilot to both gunners. Keep your eyes peeled." Confident the two were swinging their turrets from side to side, constantly scanning the sky for night fighters, Wrath banked the plane like a teeter-totter so they could check blind spots under the wings for Huns moving into attack positions.

That took care of the rear three-quarters of the bomber—everything aft of the cockpit and the nose compartment.

"Pilot to engineer."

"Engineer okay, Skipper."

It was Hugh "Ox" Oxley's job to monitor the mechanical systems during flight—eye the instrument panel, maintain oil temperatures and pressures, cross-feed the petrol tanks when necessary. His station was the jump seat next to the pilot. At present, the flight engineer was checking the master fuel cocks.

"Pilot to wireless operator."

"Wireless operator strength nine, Skip."

The radioman. Earl "Sweaty" Swetman, shared the compartment below the cockpit with the navigator. They'd met an unexpected north wind, so he'd spent most of the flight receiving new meteorological info from HQ to help the navigator adjust wind speeds and directions. Now, for the final leg of the bombing run, he left his radio set to drop bundles of "window"—thin strips of metal foil that confused German radar images—down the flare chute.

"Pilot to navigator."

"Navigator loud and clear," replied Mick "Balls" Balsdon.

His role was to guide the
Ace
to the target area, at which point the bomb-aimer would assume control for the final run to the actual target. With blackout curtains pulled tight around him, Balls worked with his compass and radar to guide them over the landscape. Unlike his counterparts in the planes pounding Berlin, he didn't have markers to follow or a helpful master bomber circling overhead. He was on his own with just the moonlight as an angel.

"Where are we, Balls?"

"ETA on target is five minutes, Skipper."

Jerks and rumbles shook the plane as the bomb doors opened with grim determination. Until now, they'd flown a gently weaving course to counter defenses. From here on, Wrath would trim the
Ace
straight and level.

"Pilot to bomb-aimer."

"They're in my sights, Skipper."

"It's all yours, Nelson."

"Left. Steady. Right a bit. Hold it there," the bomb-aimer said, correcting their flight path.

Down in the nose compartment, Russ Trafalgar—Nelson to his chums—hunched over his bombsight, zeroing in on the country estate that Bomber Command wished blown to hell and gone.

"Bombs going!" he announced, pressing the release button with his gloved thumb.

 Relieved of its heavy cargo, the Halifax bomber seemed to rear up in the sky. As the rain of ruin fell on the ground below from fourteen thousand feet, the bomb-aimer snapped the photographic proof of their successful mission. Without it, the operation wouldn't count toward the thirty-ops total that would see them "screened" out of active duty. Every op completed was a flight out of danger.

Beneath the thundering noise of the four-engine bomber, the target area burst into flames. The scene of savage destruction took on a garish beauty; the rural estate was a patchwork of black smoke and livid red bonfires. As the bomb doors rumbled shut so the
Ace
could bank for home, streaks suddenly slashed through the darkness and the fuselage shuddered under a withering hail of close-range cannon fire. Staccato shock waves shook the back of Wrath's seat like the strokes of a jackhammer.

"Fighter! Fighter! Corkscrew starboard, Skipper!"

Nothing got hearts racing faster in the bomber than the sound of uncontrolled panic in someone's voice. Ack-Ack's warning was accompanied by a stuttering torrent of noise as German shells tore into the tail section. Out of nowhere, the Junkers Ju 88 appeared, closing in fast with its nose guns blazing. They weren't flashing "
Willkommen
" in Morse code.

Instinctively, Wrath thrust the control column forward, twisting the ailerons to put the plane into a violent dive. In the second it took to stand the
Ace
on its wing, the night fighter raked the bomber again at point-blank range. The plane shivered and rattled as it absorbed the punishment from that six-gun barrage, and the heavy vibration of a long burst fired from its own mid-upper turret shook the instrument panel in front of Wrath to a blur.

So steep was the dive to starboard that parachute packs, navigation instruments, and other loose gear flew about as if weightless. Wrath's legs felt light and the harness straps pressed hard into his shoulders. The Nazi night fighter overshot the cockpit, and Wrath saw the black crosses under its wings.

The howls of the Junkers' engines jarred his teeth.

The freefall ended abruptly as Wrath wrenched the bomber up into a sharp climb. The standard tactic used to shake off a prowl-ing fighter was called a corkscrew. Diving, climbing, turning, weaving, and using plenty of throttle, the pilot would constantly change the bomber's direction, speed, and altitude to hamper the gunsights of the Ju 88. Now, as the
Ace
cleaved the sky with its berserk twisting, the exertion left Wrath drenched in sweat.

"The bugger's at ten o'clock high, Skipper. Here he comes again!" warned Nelson.

From the corner of his eye, Wrath glimpsed the thin silhouette of the two-engine fighter against the moon. The blackness of the outline masked the swastika on its tail. Jutting from its nosecone was an array of chessboard-shaped antennae that fed airborne radars designed for hunting and killing the warriors of the night sent by Bomber Command.

Warriors like these seven.

Hosing streams of tracers before it like incandescent fastballs, the Ju 88 came at them full throttle. His heart in overdrive, Wrath felt as if the cannons were spitting in his face, with each shot aimed between his eyes. But in fact, the fighter again poured all it had into their arse end.

"Get him, gunners!" urged Ox.

But their weapons were of limited value against a night fighter at the best of times. And now, for some reason, neither turret opened up with a spray. Were both gunners dead? The rear gunner was certainly in the fighter's line of fire. Had the interrupter gear failed the mid-upper at the worst moment?

 "Hang on!" Wrath yelled as the incoming Junkers gave the
Ace
a working-over, its machine guns chewing chunks out of tail fins, rudders, and elevators. Once more, he tried to corkscrew into a steep dive, but the control stick went sloppy in his hands, wagging loosely without response from the ailerons. When he pushed the rudders, the plane refused to yaw. Unable to bank or turn, the skipper wondered if the cables had snapped.