Defiant Heart (36 page)

“Old enough to fly,” Livvy said, “old enough to…”

“We know,” Shim and Victoria said, in unison.

Livvy giggled again.

Shim turned to Livvy. “Livvy, darling,” he said, “would you care to dance?”

Livvy nodded enthusiastically, and the two of them slid out of the booth and headed in the direction of the dance floor.

A waiter walked by, and Victoria caught his eye with a raised hand. She pointed to Jon’s glass and made a circular motion. The waiter nodded and continued on.

“So,” she said, returning her attention to Jon, “exactly how old are you, luv?”

Jon found her accent enchanting.

“Seventeen.”

She nodded, still looking at him. She had pretty lips. They were painted red. Jon wanted to reach a hand out and touch them, but he knew it would be wrong, so he didn’t.

Finally, she shrugged. “So, I’m a couple of years older than you are. I don’t think that’s a tragedy, do you?”

Jon shook his head. It didn’t seem like a tragedy to him.

The waiter returned carrying four glasses of beer. He set them on the table and left before Jon could retrieve the money in his pocket.

“Your friend said he’s got everything covered,” Victoria said, picking up one of the glasses. “Bottoms up,” and she lifted the glass to her red lips. Jon followed suit and took a drink. He was definitely getting the hang of the beer.

“Would you like to dance?” Victoria asked.

Jon looked out at the crowd on the dance floor. The band was playing a peppy tune, and there was quite a bit of twirling and leg kicking going on. Jon was suddenly very embarrassed.

“Let me guess,” Victoria said, “you don’t know how to dance, right?”

After a moment, Jon nodded. “I’m sorry.”

She smiled. “That’s ok. We’ll wait for a slow song.”

When she smiled, Jon noticed, dimples appeared on both of her cheeks. Jon thought they were adorable.

Shim and Livvy returned, and Livvy took a long pull on her beer. Shim asked, “How’s it going?”

“Excellent,” Jon said.

Shim leaned forward and looked in Jon’s eyes. “Yep,” he said after a moment. Apparently satisfied, he sat back and put an arm around Livvy.

The band began to play Glenn Miller’s
Moonlight Serenade
. Victoria put a hand on Jon’s arm, stood and pulled. “They’re playing our song,” she said with a smile. He allowed himself to be half dragged out of the booth, then he followed her onto the dance floor.

She turned to face him, took his right hand and placed it on her hip. Then she gripped his left hand and held it up near her right shoulder. She began to sway with the music, and, after a beat, Jon did likewise. She moved closer to him and lay her head on his shoulder. Jon wasn’t sure whether it was her perfume, the music, or simply her proximity, but he felt a little dizzy. He didn’t mind the feeling.

After a moment, he felt her lips on his neck, just above his collar. She kissed him there, and it felt wonderful. He closed his eyes. She slowly moved her lips up his neck until she’d reached his ear lobe, which she began to tickle with her tongue. Jon had an immediate physical reaction, which Victoria seemed to notice. She pushed herself against him harder, and her tongue slid into his ear.

She pulled it away after a second and murmured, “Follow me.” Then she stepped back. Still holding his hand, she led him through the crowd. He followed willingly, walking as casually as he could given his excited condition.

They came to a door. She pushed it open, and they stepped into a dimly lit stairwell. There was another couple just inside the door, locked in a passionate embrace. She led him past them and up the first flight of stairs. On the landing was yet another couple, similarly ensconced. At the second floor, she turned and asked, quietly, “Do you have the key, luv?”

Jon wasn’t sure what she meant. Then it dawned on him. After they’d checked in, Shim had given the room key to Jon and asked him to hold on to it. He fished in his pocket. located it and pulled it out.

Victoria held Jon’s hand with the key up to the light, then said, “One more floor.”

They ascended to the third floor and exited the stairwell. Jon found that they were in the hallway where he and Shim had been earlier. Victoria led him the short way down the hall to their room. She took the key from Jon, put it in the lock and opened the door. Then she stepped inside and pulled Jon in after her.

Before the door had even closed, Victoria had pressed her face to Jon’s. Jon felt her tongue slip between his lips, probing. It was an incredible sensation. He met her tongue with his, and she pressed her body up against him. She lifted one of her hands and ran it through the hair on the back of his head. The other she slid across his shoulders and down his back. He wrapped his arms around her and reveled in the intense thrill that engulfed him.

After a moment, however, something began to intrude on his pleasure. It started deep in the recesses of his mind. He tried to push it away, but it was extraordinarily insistent. It began to distract him. Not now, a part of him said. Whatever it was, however, stood its ground.

Victoria pulled back and looked at him. There was a wild intensity in her eyes. “Don’t stop now, lover, you’re doing great.”

He looked back at her, but he was confused. Her eyes searched his. He blinked a couple of times. Her brow furrowed.

And then he knew.

His arms went slack. He realized with a stunning clarity that he couldn’t do this. Not because he didn’t want to. He most certainly did. But the undeniable reality was that he didn’t want to do it with Victoria.

She realized it too. Her shoulders seemed to slump, and some of the fire left her eyes. She stepped back slightly, though she did not let go of him.

“There’s a girl, isn’t there?” she asked softly.

Jon said nothing, but he nodded slightly.

She looked away for a moment. “Brilliant.” She took a deep breath and looked back at him. She pulled her arms around from behind him and put both hands up to Jon’s cheeks. “Whoever she is, she’s very lucky.”

#

Shim didn’t heap any grief on him when Jon and Victoria returned to the table a few minutes after they’d left, Victoria giving Shim a slight shake of her head. They ordered more rounds of beer. Jon danced with Victoria and Livvy and even tried some of the crazy steps they taught him. He suspected that he probably looked a little foolish, but he didn’t care, and no one else seemed to mind.

Shim and Livvy excused themselves and left Jon and Victoria alone for about half an hour. Victoria told Jon a little bit about herself. He learned she was from Essex and was studying art at the Norwich School of Design. Victoria pressed Jon for details about his life, but he was reticent to provide any. What she really wanted was the story about the girl whom she was sure waited for Jon at home. Unable to bring himself to tell the truth, Jon instead said nothing and let her believe whatever she chose.

The next morning, when they returned to Hut 51, Jon was pleasantly surprised to find a letter from Ben sitting on his bunk. He checked the postmark and saw that it had been mailed in early December. Oh well, he thought, it only took about seven weeks to get to him. He’d have to tell Ben he’d discovered yet another aspect of the army way.

He opened the envelope and took out two pages. He propped up his pillow and settled onto the bunk. The first line got his attention.

“Dear Jon,” Ben began, “I hope you’re sitting down, because I have some incredible news for you.”

Jon contemplated his reposed figure and smiled.

“I’m sitting at my kitchen table, and there’s someone here with me who has something very important to tell you. I know you will be as excited and happy as I am. I won’t steal the thunder. Just know that I am thinking of you. Fondly, Ben.”

That struck Jon as odd. Ben was usually much more voluble, but he’d cut this letter short. Curious, he reversed the two sheets and saw immediately that the second page was in a different handwriting. His eyes slid to the bottom of the page, and his breath caught.

It read, “With all my love, Mary.”

Heart pounding, he turned his attention to the top of the letter.

“My dear Jon,” she had written, “I am so sorry not to have tried to reach you sooner. When I awoke at the hospital, I had no memory of anything that had happened to me over the past year. The doctors said that it was unusual, but not unheard of. Several weeks ago, I suddenly regained my memory of you, but I couldn’t remember anything about how we met or the things that we did. All I knew was that I loved you dearly.

“This morning, thank God, everything came back in a rush. I haven’t yet put it all together, but I am embarrassed to say that I think my father had a lot to do with keeping me in the dark.

“Oh, Jon,” she continued, “I am so distressed to think that you might believe I don’t want to have anything more to do with you. That is so wrong, it makes me angry. I love you. I want desperately to be with you. Know that you have all my heart.”

Jon closed his eyes and said a brief prayer of thanks.

“Ben and I are going to see Mr. Anderson to get some advice about how to deal with Vernon and Jeff. If they think they are going to get away with what they did, they have another think coming. You saved me, Jon. Thank you. I’m going to fix everything.

“Please tell me that I’m not too late. I would die if that was the case. I will be waiting for news from you. Be safe and come home to me.”

Jon closed his eyes again and held the letter to his heart. He breathed deeply. Then, with a sudden start, he realized that Mary had written this letter seven weeks ago. For seven weeks, Mary had been waiting for a reply from him! With shaking hands, he retrieved his tablet and pen, and he began to write.

15

“Bandits, twelve o’clock high.” The call carried with it a jolt of adrenalin, and Jon’s heart started beating faster. It was followed immediately by several others. “Bandits, six o’clock high. Bandits, eight o’clock level. Two coming in at five o’clock level.”

Jon squinted and peered through his sights. There. He fired a sustained volley. A twin engined German fighter flashed by, its cannon spitting deadly shells. All of the guns on the Deuces Wild were firing.

“Navigator to pilot. We’re at the I.P. Prepare to execute turn on my mark. Three, two, one. Mark.” The bomber banked slightly. They were in lead position. The others in the formation would follow.

The crew of the Deuces Wild were on Jon’s eighth mission, and, from the moment he’d learned what the target would be, he’d known it would be deadly. They were bombing the Focke Wulf factory in Bremen, where many of the German fighters they’d faced on previous missions had been constructed. He knew the Germans wouldn’t take kindly to it. The danger was even greater for Jon and his crewmates because today they were in the lead plane, a favorite target of the German fighters.

Gooch’s voice came over the interphone. “Jesus, look at the number of fighters out there. It’s like a swarm of bees.”

The Germans had been trying different tactics lately. Sometimes they would feign an attack from one quarter, only to charge in from a different direction, shielded by either the sun or the contrails of the bombers themselves. When they massed like they were doing now, it was a bad sign.

At the moment, the formation was on the final run into the target and would soon be within the range of anti-aircraft fire from below, so Jon knew it was unlikely the fighters would try any more attacks until they were through with the bomb run. For that reason, it came as a shock when he heard Reyes exclaim, “Shit. Two o’clock high. Three bandits.” As he was saying it, the wings of the Deuces Wild rocked and the all too familiar sound of shells striking the bomber reverberated through the fuselage. The fighters delivering the deadly fire passed without crossing into Jon’s field of vision, but most of the other guns roared. It struck Jon belatedly that the twin .50’s from the top turret had not been among them.

There was a sudden bang, and Jon looked back in time to see flames shoot out of the number three engine.

An obviously stressed Roth called out, “Pilot to top turret, report.”

There was no response.

Jon looked with concern out the starboard window and saw that Roth had feathered the damaged engine. There were no more flames that he could see, which was a good sign. Still, they’d lost the engine.

Roth’s voice came again across the interphone. “Pilot to navigator. Jonas, check on Reyes.”

Bursts of flak appeared outside the windows. The plane started bucking.

After a moment, Jon heard Kovalesky. “Reyes is hit. At least two wounds, one in the chest, one in the hip. He’s in shock.”

Several seconds passed. Then Roth came on again. “Do what you can.”

“Roger that,” said Kovalesky.

“Pilot to bombardier. You have the controls.”

There was a crunching sound as a shell burst close by, and the plane jumped a few feet, lurching forward. Then it settled back to level flight.

“Bombardier to pilot. Roger. Target in sight. Stand by.”

Jon listened to the explosions around him. Spent pieces of flak clanked off the sides of the fuselage. The seconds crawled by. Finally, the voice of Ambrose came over the interphone again. “Bombs away.”

As soon as the words had been uttered, there was a huge explosion near the front of the plane, and it was as if the Deuces Wild had hit a wall. Jon was thrown forward, and he slammed into the bulkhead that separated his radio compartment from the bomb bay, falling in a heap to the floor.

He shook his head, trying to clear it. Kovalesky came over the interphone. There was a strain in his voice that Jon had never heard before. “Murphy’s dead,” Kovalesky said. “The skipper’s hurt bad. Oh, God, I think the whole front of the plane’s gone.”

Jon was already on his feet with his hand on the lever that opened the door to the bomb bay when Gooch came over the interphone, giving voice to the very thing that had so galvanized Jon. “Who’s flying the plane?” It was the last thing Jon heard before pulling the jack that connected his headset to the interphone.