Armageddon (87 page)

Tempelhof Airways slowed the bloc to 140 mph, brought them to 2000 feet. As Scott turned over the Tempelhof Range Beacon, the other bloc, which had flown in down the Northern corridor from Fassberg, had landed at Tegel and were already unloaded and in taxi position to take off.

Scott turned left over the Tempelhof Range. At Wedding Beacon over the French Sector he made his downwind leg to 1500 feet.

“Tempelhof to Big Easy One, use caution. Cross winds fifteen knots gusting to twenty-five knots, west to east. Braking action poor.”

Nick grunted. There was always a kicker to landing in Germany.

“Blowers.”

“Low.”

“Auto pilot”

“Off.”

Flaps were set to 10 degrees.

“Booster pumps.”

“High.”

“Landing gear.”

The wheels groaned out of their prison, thumped down, locked.

“Flaps.”

Scott set them full down. The bird lowered, chopped at the sudden bursts of wind shooting up from the ruins. The blitz of high-intensity lights in the St. Thomas graveyard led them to the runway. Scott’s angle of descent dropped the ship below the level of the four- and five-story apartment houses on both sides of the cemetery.

A Russian spy in an apartment checked off his Skymaster as number 104 to land since midnight. This figure would be checked out against figures received at the Air Safety Center.

A hundred little parachutes billowed from the back door. Cold, numb children ran from rubble piles as the candy bars floated into the cemetery.

The Skymaster was put down deftly two feet after the beginning of the runway in the dead center, giving the full length to nurse it down the slippery steel planking. A
FOLLOW ME
jeep picked Scott up, led him to the west aprons.

Six seconds after Scott cut engines, a ten-ton trailer was backed to the door of his craft. The first German laborer, bone-thin and ragged, went to the pilot’s cabin. Scott gave him a pack of cigarettes and told him to split it among the crew. Most of the pilots did the same.

Tie-down webs were freed. A human chain emptied the ten tons of cargo in sixteen minutes. Nick lost the toss and waited for the mobile canteen to buy coffee and sandwiches.

He watched the swarm of activity, never failing to marvel at the place. Once Tempelhof had been a parade ground for Prussian pomp. In the early days of aviation it had been made into an airfield with stands for barnstorming shows.

Hitler built an enormous edifice to house Goering’s Air Ministry. Great steel canopies were high enough to shelter a plane while being loaded and unloaded along the crescent-shaped building.

The building itself, one of the largest in the world, ran from seven floors below the ground to seven above it. The Russians had flooded these subterranean basements, where fighter-plane assembly plants were safe from Allied bombers. Yet, with all of this massiveness, there was the irony that room was planned for but one undersized runway.

Stan found the Red Cross girl and gave her the package for the Operation Santa Claus collection while Scott ran down a buddy who promised to deliver Hilde’s package to Ernestine Falkenstein.

A mobile Operations and Weather truck gave them plane-side briefings on the return flight. Good luck ... so far, the low in the North Sea had not developed into a front.

The VIP’s were impressed;
Time
and
Life
were impressed.

Women laborers swept the coal dust off the apron and sacked it. Some days they swept up three or four tons.

A short ceremony had been staged for the journalists with their crew being presented with gifts from the Metal Workers’ Union.

A number of the planes were partly loaded with light bulbs in crates bearing the crest of the Berlin Bear and the defiant inscription:

MANUFACTURED IN BLOCKADED BERLIN
.

In thirty-two minutes after touching down at Tempelhof they were going through takeoff procedures again. New blocs were en route, on the way back, or being formed up. The immense Traffic Control Center atop the I. G. Farben Building in Frankfurt mapped this endless parade.

Scott’s heart was in his mouth as he cleared Berlin. In an hour and twenty minutes he would call Hilde and she would give him an answer.

Chapter Thirty-three

“H
ILDE, YOU’VE BEEN CRYING,”
Judy Loveless said, coming into the kitchen.

“I used to cry a lot. I haven’t in a long time.”

Judy closed the door behind her. “Scott? Your family?”

“Scott. Could I have your advice?”

“I don’t think I should interfere, Hilde.”

“Please.”

“Okay.”

Hilde dried her eyes and poured Mrs. Loveless a cup of coffee from the always ready pot, then she sat opposite.

“Scott is going on leave. He has asked me to go with him. Till now there has been nothing between us, I assure you. But he is how he is and he will not change. Somehow ... I can’t find the words to send him away.”

“What do you want from him? A playmate? A dancing partner? Do you think it’s fair to keep him hanging around?”

“Then what you say is, I must submit.”

“What I say is you are so much on the defensive you’re not giving yourself a chance to discover your own feelings.”

“I don’t love him.”

“Hilde ... look at me. Have you ever been in love?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe Scott Davidson has either. Eventually you must expose yourself to the risk of finding love.”

“If I could believe I could have something like you and Colonel Loveless have ...”

“We didn’t pick it off of a tree, Hilde, or find it parked at our front door one day. Being in love is troublesome and it brings pain ... and it also means being able to give of yourself.”

Hilde bowed her head and swallowed hard.

“You’re a big girl, Hilde. If you want love, you’re going to build it on tears, room by room.”

A contribution to the perfection of the Airlift was for the craft to radio ahead to its home base and give in code information on whether his ship needed maintenance or carried cargo.

Those planes needing minor repairs or carrying cargo from Berlin reported it ahead; the information was relayed to the various centers to have everything in readiness as the plane touched down.

Scott’s plane was Number One. It would go to Hardstand Number One. A loading master had the chart of the plane and had a trailer loaded with cargo, Trailer Number One.

When each plane cut engines in the matching hardstand number the matching trailer pulled up to continue the cycle flawlessly. The mobile planeside briefings brought in the latest weather data and flight-plan changes.

Number Seventeen reported an oil leak, was pulled out of the bloc, and a new craft took the number.

The control centers charted each bit of loading and maintenance information, engine hours, cargoes, air-traffic bloc times, and fed the data back to the control center at Headquarters in Wiesbaden.

Turn-around time for the bloc was to be forty-nine minutes. Scott grabbed a ride to his office with the Production Control jeep.

He asked the operator for the Loveless number.

“Colonel Loveless residence.”

“Hi ... it’s me.”

“Hi, me.”

Scott heaved a sigh.
“Ja oder nein?”

“Ja.”

“You ... you mean it?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, I got to run. I’ll call you soon as I get back from Berlin. We take off in the morning.”

“I’ll wait to hear from you.”

Scott returned to Big Easy One beaming. He clapped his hands together to beat off the cold. Nick handed him the trip sheet. He pinched Nick’s cheek. “You’re a nice Greek boy, Nick Papas, a nice, nice boy.”

“What’s it? What’s it?”

“Tell Lieutenant Kitchek he’s a nice Polish boy and to check out this nice bird.”

“The way you’re flying you might reach Berlin ahead of the bloc.”

Nick grumbled off. He knew what had happened. Scott was going on leave tomorrow. Ten will get you fifty, Hilde was going with him. It was going to be like Cindy all over again. He wanted Hilde to have held out. The bastard always won.

“Before you get too happy,” Stan said, “that low in the North Sea has deepened. Berlin is full of weather. It’s a cinch we’ll have to land by GCA.”

“Good,” Scott beamed, “I need the practice.”

Stan looked to Nick as if to say ... is he crazy?

“Fly this bird,” Scott said when they passed Fulda.

He needed to think. He stretched in a makeshift bunk. The long-eluded victory was almost his. Scott chastised himself for not confronting her with this decision earlier. What the hell, the longer the wait, the sweeter the victory!

He decided to play it smooth and wait until she gave all the signs. He had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Hilde. And dammit, she never meant to let him go all the while!

Thirty-five minutes past Fulda, Nick shook him from his reverie. He returned to his seat.

“How’s the weather?”

“Ceiling in Berlin is five hundred feet, visibility a half mile.”

Scott grunted. It was getting close to minimums. The altimeter showed the plane losing altitude. Scott glanced out of the left window and saw the thin white line forming over the black boots, a sight that always quickened the pulse of a pilot.

“Watch the ice, Stan,” he said, easing the yoke back to bring the plane to proper altitude.

While wetting down the props and concentrating on the instruments, they had no way of knowing a fuel line in the engine was breaking from metal fatigue and would drip raw gas onto the hot cylinders.

“Tempelhof Airways, this is Big Easy One forty minutes east of Fulda at six thousand feet. Center-line check.”

“Big Easy One, this is Tempelhof Airways. We have you under radar control. You are on center line. Report at each thousand-foot level. You are cleared to descend to four thousand.”

“Roger.”

The fuel line ripped open.

“Big Easy One this is Tempelhof. Ceiling three hundred feet, visibility one half mile. Winds fifteen knots from the northwest, braking action poor. Turn over to Jigsaw at forty-five.”

Jigsaw! The code name for ground-controlled approach. A chain reaction of tension was set off down the entire bloc.

They were all flying blind. Teams of specialists in the electronic shacks on the side of the runways would soon guide their flight by ethereal voices.

As turbulence shook Big Easy One the hot exhaust ignited the trailing fuel.

“Christ!”

A streak of fire poured from the number-three engine down the side of the plane the instant the fire-warning light came alive.

“Oh shit,” Nick said.

Scott reached over Stan, pulled the fire wall shut-off valve, and looked at his watch to let thirty agonizing seconds pass.

“This is Big Easy One. Emergency. Engine on fire.”

Scott pulled the CO
₂
extinguisher handle discharging white foam to battle the flaming engine, set down the landing gears to ventilate the wheel housing. The fire smothered to stillness.

Scott’s trained hand closed the cowl flaps and retarded the throttle on the smoking engine. He nodded to Stan, who pushed the feathering button and snapped off the booster pump. The giant prop slowly turned right-angled to the air flow and came to a halt

“Tank.”

“Off.”

Scott flipped the ignition switch. Stan looked out of the window.

“I think we’ve got it.”

Scott looked over his shoulder at Nick. The unlit cigar had been chewed in half. He flipped a book of matches back. “Go on, light it.”

“All heart, you’re all heart.”

“This is Big Easy One calling Tempelhof Airways. Fire under control, number-three engine feathered.”

The bloc behind Scott held rigid discipline. A struggle was now on to bring in the wounded bird.

“This is Tempelhof calling Big Easy One. Contact Jigsaw on Charlie Channel.”

Stan switched to the emergency channel and established contact with GCA.

“This is Jigsaw. What are your intentions?”

With the immediate emergency under control Scott wanted to try for Gatow or Tegel, where the landing would be easier than the steep glide over the cemetery.

“This is Big Easy One calling Jigsaw. Can you give me permission to land at Gatow or Tegel?”

“Stand by.”

Gatow had an emergency. A plane had blown a tire and the runway was out of use. Tegel had fallen below minimums and was shut down.

“Big Easy One this is Jigsaw. Cannot comply with your request. Both fields out of operation. Can you turn around and go back to the zone, over?”

Stan and Nick kept quiet. The few seconds to decision did not allow the luxury of discussion or prolonged procrastination. Scott did not know for certain what had caused the fire and therefore not certain it would not erupt again. There was nothing left to fight it with. He had ten tons of cargo on three engines and an icing condition.

“Let’s get this mother down,” he said to his crew over the intercom. They nodded in agreement.

“This is Big Easy One calling Jigsaw. We want to make an immediate landing at Tempelhof.”

Stan and Nick were already going through the emergency procedures, leaving Scott free to concentrate on the instruments. Nick looked outside. Nothing could be seen.

They listened as Tempelhof Radar diverted the rest of the bloc into the Center corridor and back to Rhein/Main.

“This is Jigsaw calling Big Easy One. We have you positive. What is your altitude?”

“This is Big Easy One. We are at fifteen hundred.”

“Maintain that altitude until further advised.”

Nick and Stan worked down the prelanding check list.

“This is Jigsaw,” an airman named Ed Becker said, wondering why he had come to Germany, why he was sitting before this luminous green scope being thrust into the role of the Lord. Turn left Heading 337.”

“Left Heading 337,” Stan repeated after Scott’s execution.

Fire wagons, ambulances, crash trucks tensed in readiness as the fog began to fall close to the ground.

“This is Jigsaw,” Ed Becker said. “You will land on left runway two seven. Wind fifteen knots northwest, cross winds from right, altimeter three zero zero three.”