Crucified (7 page)

"Burn, witch! Burn!" cursed the crusader.

That curse, however, must have riled the Devil, for by the time his flashlight beam lit up the next exhibit, a vivid recreation of the Spanish Inquisition, the Legionary had once again lost control of himself. Satan was in the driver's seat, and the young priest was along for the ride.

A large crucifix was mounted high on a dungeon wall, and beneath it sat the cardinal inquisitor at a table. Flanked by candlesticks, he faced each broken heretic who was dragged over to confess. On one edge of the table, a scribe recorded what was said with a quill pen. Gibbers and screams punctuated their work as monks in the center of the dungeon cracked other transgressors. They cranked thumbscrews that squashed the ends of fingers. They held a writhing man's feet to the fire. The rack, the wheel, and the knee-splitter were being used. Arrayed on a bench along the wall were other devices, and that's where the possessed priest found what he required.

But that had been several hours ago, back in the city of York. Now, he was out in the countryside, at the top of a path wending down to a cottage. Strangely, a Christian cross guarded the way through the woods, and it burned his hand as he touched it, just as the ring of the Secret Cardinal had seared his lips.

The night was overcast, and the rural thicket was black.

A window at the foot of the path was the beacon guiding him. Fallen leaves crackled under his feet like flames. He could hear the gurgle of a stream near the cottage. Careful not to be seen, he peeked in through the window, and there sat Sergeant Balsdon with his wartime archive.

Did those papers hold the key to the Judas relics?

Or was the key in the old man's mind?

Either way, the Legionary would get the answer.

He moved toward the door, carrying the Inquisition's means in his hand.

Could a chair be more aptly named than this?

The ultimate witch prickle.

1944

"There's a war on tonight," Wrath announced the morning of that fateful run. "Got bad news, chaps. De Count went LMF."

"LMF!"

"Jesus Christ!"

"What's the gen, Skipper?"

Gen—-pronounced "jen"—was general information. It came in two forms: pukka gen, the real McCoy, as the Yanks would say, and duff gen, faulty word, which was spread by duff gen merchants.

"He went to the wing commander and said he'd had enough.

The wingco told De Count to pull himself together. You volunteer in, but you can't volunteer out. De Count told the wingco to go to hell. He'll be sent to Uxbridge under arrest. He'll carry the 'lack of moral fiber' brand for the rest of his life."

"De Count a coward?" Nelson shook his head.

"I saw it coming," said the Ox. "He threw up after every op.

He wept in his sleep."

"Will they jail him, Skipper?"

Wrath nodded. "A hundred and eighty days would be my bet."

"Who's the spare?" said Ack-Ack.

"A Welshman called Trent Jones. We'll take him up on the air test and check him out."

+ + +

Twelve was said to be the point you had to reach. Survive twelve ops and the odds got better that you'd survive all thirty, for that meant the crew functioned well together. The men of the
Ace
were far beyond twelve and could see the finish line. Each had a role to perform if all were to survive, and the role of both gunners was to protect the bomber from night fighters.

A new gunner skewed the odds.

He was odd man out.

Trent Jones was a sullen tailor with little meat on his bones.

When new flight crews arrived in the mess, the old hands would bet on how long each man would last. The ones who enjoyed life, like Sweaty, were more likely to make it. But loners like Jones—blokes who sat off by themselves penning letters home—were destined to get the chop, the smart money said.

The Welshman's wife had left him and skipped with their child to Australia. Then he'd lost his original crew in a takeoff "prang" over the North Sea, when a pair of bombers laboring for height crashed into each other and plunged into the drink.

He was the only one to escape. That was like a mark of Cain to other airmen.

By the time they completed the air test, the field was a bee-hive of action. Tankers drove around filling giant bombers with thousands of gallons of petrol. Trucks dropped off oxygen cylinders, and tractors towed ordnance trolleys to bomb-up the planes. Ack-Ack gave Jones a thumbs-up on how he handled the turrets and the guns. The other men left the gunners behind to polish the windows of their combat stations, and to strip and clean their guns as armorers fed long belts of ammunition into the rear of the plane.

Balsdon knew something big was up when they gathered later that afternoon outside the briefing room. The hut was surrounded by service police, and the men couldn't get in without showing ID and having Wrath vouch for them. Once inside, the men received a warning: "Tonight's mission is
top
secret.
If word leaks out, the source of that leak will be summarily executed."

That grabbed their attention.

The crewmen sat on long wooden benches facing a large map of Europe that was shrouded from view by a blackout curtain. All rose to their feet when the cologne-soaked station and squadron commanders entered.

"Gentlemen, the target for tonight is Berlin."

With those crisp words, they drew back the drapes to reveal the map on which the men's flight path was marked with red tape. Known flak and searchlight batteries were emblazoned along the route.

After the briefing, the pilots obtained their maps from the station map stores. All but Wrath. He was taken aside by the wingco for a hush-hush chat, and Balsdon saw the skipper get handed a for-your-eyes-only map. While the rest of the crew hurried off to collect their chutes and Mae West vests, Wrath—by now a flight lieutenant—ushered his navigator away for a cigarette.

With no one around, the two stood smoking behind the hut.

"What's up, Skipper?"

"I don't know, Balls. It's so deep cover, they won't say. But we're not going to Berlin with the stream."

"We're flying diversion? To throw off the Huns?"

 Wrath shook his head. "That's what's strange. We're to break away from the others over Germany and make a solo bombing run on a town I've never heard of. The wingco says I can only tell
you.
Eight hundred bombers are striking Berlin to smokescreen our solitary mission."

+ + +

They tried to give him parachute number 20812, but there was no way Balsdon would take it. Adding the digits together gave the number 13. He should have seen that as an omen.

The locker room was thick with stress. Despite the casual air of the Ace's crew, superstitions, talismans, and rituals still ruled the day. Ox got dressed in the
exact
same order for every trip. If he made a mistake, he stripped down and began again.

Collars were banned because they could shrink and strangle you in the water, so Nelson tied on a stocking from his latest conquest, having asked the dame to save its partner for his return. Ack-Ack flew with a silver cigarette case over his heart, in case a shard of shrapnel hit its mark. Wrath took a rabbit's foot
and
a St. Christopher's medal. The foot would keep him from getting shot down, he believed, and the medal would get him home to his family if he did.

Sweaty, of course, had the fun ritual. As he fastened his parachute harness, he pulled the crotch straps tight and let out the falsetto squeal of a Vatican castrato. Loosening them, he dropped his voice to a deep bass for a joke.

That day, it was a knock-knock joke.

"Knock-knock," said Sweaty.

"Who's there?" he answered himself.

"Gestapo.

"Gestapo who?

"Ve vill ask ze questions!"

The crew laughed
too
loudly, another sign of strain.

And another omen?

Wearing several layers of clothing—the gunners in their electro-thermal Taylorsuits were the chubbiest of all—the men walked stiffly from the locker room. They were taken to their plane on a rickety old bus, its headlamps covered with card-board so the light was directed down to the ground, where it couldn't be seen from overhead. The bombers were dispersed around the perimeter of the airfield, as a precaution against enemy attack. Their ground crew was waiting.

For Balsdon, the few moments that Wrath spent checking the plane before they boarded were the most tense. So acute was the cumulative strain from all his previous missions that the muscles of his abdomen cinched his stomach back to his spine.

His crewmates were gripped by the same turmoil. They chain-smoked cigarettes and couldn't stand still. A few pissed on the tail wheel for luck. To keep their minds occupied while Wrath signed a form for the ground crew corporal, they busied themselves with their personal contributions to Hitler's downfall: bricks and bottles they would toss out over Germany.

Supposedly, the bottles made screaming noises as they fell, scaring the hell into the Huns below.

"Wizard, Chiefy," Wrath said, handing back the form. "I hope you scrawled appropriate messages to Hitler on the bombs."

"Aye," said the Scotsman, smirking.

They boarded the bomber through a door behind one wing.

Inside, the fuselage smelled of gasoline mixed with cordite. The pilot, navigator, flight engineer, wireless operator, and bomb-aimer stooped their way up to the nose, while the gunners took their places in the turrets above the door and in the rear.

 Outside, the ground crew hauled the battery starter into position under the port wing.

"Contact!"

The engines coughed, sputtered, and roared to life. Wrath did an intercom check to all positions. The wheel chocks were pulled away, and the pilot opened the throttles. The hulking bomber trundled and swayed onto the perimeter track, then taxied to the threshold of the runway. There, they waited for a green light to flash on the control van. Soon, they were lumbering faster and faster along the bumpy strip, holding the nose down to build up speed, until the skipper eased back the control column and the engine roar changed.

The Halifax left the runway at a little more than a hundred miles an hour and clawed its way into the night.

The
Ace of Clubs
was outward bound ...

It wouldn't be coming back.

Tonight, sixty-odd years later, darkness cloaked the Yorkshire cottage where the crippled veteran was spending his old age.

Confined to a wheelchair, Balsdon sat at a large oak table beneath rough-hewn ceiling beams and rearranged his massive Bomber Command archive. He'd spent his lifetime collecting every bit of information he could find about why the
Ace of
Clubs
went down. The discovery of the long-lost bomber offered hope the mystery would be solved before he died, as did today's telephone call from Liz Hannah—Wrath's granddaughter—telling him that Wyatt Rook had the hook through his cheek.

"Can he come up and see you?"

"When?" asked Balsdon.

"Tonight or tomorrow. Depending on his promo tour and when he can catch a train."

"I'll be waiting."

Balsdon rolled back from the table with a yellowing photo in his hand. The 1944 shot of the
Ace of Clubs'
crew was snapped after the test flight that fateful day. The seven airmen stood under the plane's bomb bay.

The navigator flipped the photo and squinted at its back.

There, he had recorded the names, nicknames, and combat positions of the doomed fliers:

F/Lt. Fletch "Wrath" Hannah - Pilot

Sgt. Mick "Balls" Balsdon - Navigator

Sgt. Hugh "Ox" Oxley - Flight engineer

Sgt. Russ "Nelson" Trafalgar - Bomb-aimer

Sgt. Earl "Sweaty" Swetman - Wireless operator

Sgt. Dick "Ack-Ack" DuBoulay - Rear gunner

Sgt. Trent "Jonesy" Jones - Mid-upper gunner

The old man's arthritic finger touched one of the names.

"Were you the traitor?" he asked.

The rhetorical question was interrupted by knocking on his door.

Rook? he wondered.