Crucified (18 page)

"Ack-Ack, can you hear me?" Sweaty repeated several times into his mike.

No reply.

"Go!" Wrath ordered. "I'll be on your heels!"

The wireless operator disconnected his oxygen tube and pulled his intercom plug. Releasing the straps of his seat belt, he jumped up. It was so dark back in the fuselage that all Sweaty could see with his final glance was the outline of the mid-upper gunner descending from the dorsal turret, and he saw that only because moonlight stabbed down from the Perspex bubble.

Wind whined into the fuselage through bullet holes, and metal plates shrieked like banshees from sprung rivets. Suddenly, Sweaty imagined the gunner beating him to the hatch and clogging it because he was too fat in his Taylorsuit to shove out.

That's when panic hit him.

Fire! Sweaty thought.

There were lots of ways to die on a bombing run. If the flak didn't get you, the night fighters could. If the fighters didn't get you, your own side could drop a bomb from above. Or you could succumb to extreme cold, oxygen starvation, battle fatigue, or mechanical failure. But of all the horrors that plagued an airman's mind, none was quite as terrifying as the nightmare of being trapped with fire inside your plane.

Driven by the worry that he was going down in a flying petrol can, the radioman clawed his way to the front of the
Ace.

There, he found a parachute and clipped it on. Tearing off his helmet so he wouldn't break his neck, Sweaty jumped out through the floor hatch into the rush of the slipstream.

Now he was tumbling head over heels. There was the plane; there was the ground; there was the plane again. The cold at this altitude was bone-cracking. Freefalling through the sky, the plunging airman counted slowly to ten, then pulled the D-ring hard to deploy his chute. The harness straps over his shoulders and around his legs jerked, and the "escape boot" developed by MI9 flew off his left foot. Above him, the silk canopy spread out like a mushroom cap. He grabbed the shroud lines and hung on for dear life, afraid he might not have hooked the parachute pack on right. Lose it and he would fall to earth like Icarus.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire?

Sweaty swiveled his head about, looking for danger in the moonlit sky. Beneath him floated three white chutes. Balls, Ox, and Nelson? Had to be. Those three had already jumped by the time Sweaty abandoned the plane. But where was the fourth chute to prove that Ack-Ack had escaped by the rear hatch?

Nowhere that Sweaty could see. Above him billowed two more canopies. Jonesy and Wrath? Logically. And off to his right, going down without its crew, was the
Ace of Clubs.

Oh no! thought Sweaty.

Not the goon in the moon.

As the wind from the north scattered the chutes across the sky, the Junkers 88 circled the six shot-down airmen like a shark in bloody water. If it banked and came at them with nose guns spitting, they'd be torn to tatters before they hit the ground.

Come on.

Get it over.

If that's what you plan to do.

But the Ju 88 seemed content to let the ground have them, as if that served its purpose
better
than death.

Why? Sweaty wondered.

Chivalry?

When the trees came up to meet him, he locked his knees together, fearful that a branch might literally rip his balls off.

Crack!

Swishhhh . . .

Into the trees .. .

"Cripes!" howled Swetman.

The pain was so acute that he was sure he'd broken his l
eg.

Forced to shuck his chute in the trees and monkey down from their branches, he struggled with a leg that was numb from hip to foot. Sweating from the exertion it took to reach the ground, Sweaty wiped the back of one gauntlet across his face. Only now could he pause for a moment to collect his thoughts. Up there, as he was facing death, his survival instinct had kicked in.

Currently, however, all he needed was a cigarette.

So he lit one.

His first thought was about tomorrow night's date. Once a month, the air station bused in local women for a Saturday night dance. A pretty brunette had caught his eye, so he'd asked her out to see a movie this week. Now it appeared that he wouldn't be able to meet her in town as agreed, and he hoped she wasn't going to think that he'd stood her up.

Damn!

He knew he should gather up his parachute and poke it under a bush. However, he could barely stand—let alone climb—so he had no alternative but to leave it up in the trees.

He might as well have been waving a white flag of surrender.

Stubbing out the cigarette, Sweaty turned his mind to escape and evasion.

For every five airmen killed in action, one got forced down over enemy territory. Nearly ten thousand would end up in the twenty-odd prisoner-of-war camps scattered across Germany and Poland. Some—no more than a thousand—would evade capture, thanks to the escape gadgets of MI9.

MI9.

British Military Intelligence Section 9.

Sweaty struggled out of his Mae West and flying suit.

Beneath, he wore a blue-gray waist jacket and trousers, with his sergeant's stripes on the right sleeve and the word "Canada" on the shoulders. Attached to the left collar fastener was a whistle to attract his mates.

Should he blow it?

No, he decided.

The Brits and the Huns had been at it again since 1939, two years longer than the Yanks. Sweaty knew his mates would be in for a rougher time with the Gestapo, and he didn't want to draw them here with that chute flapping overhead.

No, he'd wait for one of them to whistle.

And if no one did?

Then he was down to MI9's gadgets.

Stuffed in his pocket was an escape box cleverly disguised as a water bottle. Removing the false side of the container, he withdrew an escape map; Horlicks tablets, chocolate, chewing gum, barley sugar, and a tube of condensed milk; water-purifying tablets and Benzedrine—"wakey-wakey" pills—to combat tiredness; and matches, a needle and thread, and fishing twine.

The stopper unscrewed to reveal a tiny watch and compass.

Sewn into Sweaty's jacket lining were packets of real foreign currency—Dutch guilders, German marks, French and Belgian francs—and a waterproof map detailing the best escape routes and frontier crossings in Europe. And he had "pimpernel" pictures, in case he made contact with the Resistance.

Those were the mundane gadgets.

The others were sneakier.

Regretfully, Sweaty wished he'd taken evasion more seriously.

Group Captain John Whitley had put together his own escape kit, which he carried in a haversack clipped to his parachute harness.

In the sack was a civilian tie, the jacket of a lounge suit, and a peaked cap. He'd wear the trousers of the suit under his uniform pants, and a blue check shirt with collar attached beneath his battledress. In his pockets were a razor, a tube of brushless shaving cream, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and his nail file. Needless to say, Whitley was the butt of jokes among aircrews. But when he was shot down over Europe in 1943, his personal kit had helped him escape through France and Spain.

He who laughs last, laughs best.

If he was going to escape on foot, Sweaty had to be able to walk. Not only had he sprained his ankle—if he was lucky—but he'd lost his sock along with his escape boot. The remaining boot was a lace-up walking shoe with a sheepskin-lined upper section. Concealed in the lining was a knife that Sweaty could use to hack the flying boot down to civilian footwear.

That would be less conspicuous, if only he had the pair.

Bad luck.

Unless he found another shoe, he was going nowhere. So Sweaty dragged his bum leg through the thicket of trees to the edge of a farmer's field. It was after midnight and the farmhouse was dark, but he could see it silhouetted by moonlight.

Limping across the fallow earth, he knocked on the door and waited for the snick of a lock.

The woman who opened the door gasped in shock, and her hands flew to her mouth.

"Karl?" she murmured, breaking into tears.

Shock became dread when she realized that she'd mistaken the black outline for someone else. Her hands dropped to clutch her bathrobe over her nightgown.

"American," Sweaty said, raising his palms to prove he had no gun. He figured he was better off identifying himself as an American. Then, to show her why he'd knocked on her door in the dead of night, the downed airman pointed to his crippling bare foot.

The woman stepped aside, inviting Sweaty in, and as he struggled across the threshold, she supported him by the elbow on his injured side. A short hall led to a dark living room, where dying embers burnished the hearth. She sat him down in an overstuffed chair and handed him a photograph from the mantel.

The picture was of a young German in a Luftwaffe uniform.

"Karl?" asked the airman.

The woman nodded. She was a heavyset farmer with a devastated face. Sweaty wondered if her son was dead, missing in action, or a POW in Britain.

"Earl," said the American, tapping his chest.

"Elke," the German replied, pointing to her heart.

A sniffle made the airman turn toward a staircase off the hall, and through the spindles of the banister, he could just make out a little girl with a rag doll locked in her arm.

"Heidi," said the woman.

A Heidi she certainly was, blonde braids and all. She was probably the blondest child Sweaty had ever seen, as she rubbed a sleepy eye with her fist and approached the edge of the room. The threadbare doll looked like a hand-me-down.

Before each bombing run, RAF crews were given sandwiches and flasks of coffee for the return flight, together with slabs of chocolate and barley-sugar sweets. Heidi no doubt knew chocolate, but had she tasted the traditional English hard candy made by melting and cooling sugar cane?

"Heidi," Sweaty said, flashing the girl a smile and holding out the sweets from his return meal. To confirm they were safe, he popped one into his mouth.

Hesitantly, the child drew nearer. Tentatively, she plucked a candy from his palm and put it in her mouth. Sweaty winked as he pretended to feed another to her doll, and the girl rewarded him with a playful grin.

The airman filled her hands with the sweets.

Convinced the stranger meant them no harm, the woman fetched a basin of warm water to bathe his injured foot. As she sponged him clean and shod him with a pair of boots, did she hope an English mother on the far side of the Channel would treat her son with similar compassion?

Finished, she gave him a walking stick and a meal to go of cheese, sausage, and bread. Then, ushering him to the door, she saw him off and wished him luck in German.

Outside, the moon beamed down on the silver landscape.

Awed by the serenity of his surroundings, Sweaty felt pangs of guilt over the destruction wrought by the
Ace of Clubs
tonight.

But then—could it be?—he heard an RAF whistle. Leaning heavily on the cane, the wireless operator hobbled as fast as he could along the rutted road toward the shrill call. Which mate, he wondered, would it be? The answer came when a shadow emerged from the roadside woods, followed by two black specters with Luger pistols in their fists.

The whistleblower wore a Gestapo uniform.

"For you, the war is over," he said in a thick German accent.

And that, Sweaty told Wyatt and Liz all these years later, is how I ended up in a Stalag Luft camp.

"What are pimpernel pictures?" asked Liz, bringing the conversation back to the MI9 gadgets.

"Passport-size photos," Sweaty replied. Placing a metal box on the table, he opened the lid and withdrew a strip of head-shots snapped from different angles, using various lighting effects.

"Who's that handsome fellow?"

"Me," he said.

"You were a hunk, Sweaty."

The old warrior winked. "I still am, baby. See how they made me look gaunt and undernourished in this one? That was in case our plane went down over Holland. The lighting in that one makes me look ruddy-faced and well fed. That was in case the Ace went down over France. Pimpernel pictures were a must for all operations. They could be used to produce forged identity papers if we made contact with the Resistance.
The Scarlet
Pimpernel.
Have you read the book? He's a mysterious English lord who helps French aristocrats escape to Britain so they won't lose their heads to the guillotine during the Revolution."

Sweaty quoted: "'They seek him here, they seek him there. / Those Frenchmen seek him everywhere. / Is he in Heaven?—Is he in hell? / That damned annoying Pimpernel.'"

"I thought it was 'That damned
elusive
Pimpernel'?" said Liz.

"That's the movie version. It fits better, actually. The Scarlet Pimpernel is a master of disguise, and pimpernel pictures were supposed to help us evade capture."

"What else have you got in there?" she asked, pointing to the open box.

The old man passed her a tunic button.

"Unscrew it," he said.

Liz gave the button a hard twist.

"It won't budge."