A Distant Melody (35 page)

Usually the fighters avoided their own flak, but this bunch pressed through it. Stupid, but strategic. On the bomb run, the B-17s spread out in a long trail and lost the clustering of machine guns they had in formation.

Was Allie praying for him? Did he even deserve her prayers after the tale he told her? She didn’t know he’d lied, but God knew.

The Fw 190 rolled past the rookie, and
Flossie
vibrated from her own guns. Smoke poured out of the rookie’s number two engine, then orange flames.

“Come on, put it out, put it out,” Walt said.

The rookie lost altitude, slipped back, and as Walt coasted past, flames engulfed the left wing. “They’re bailing out,” Harry said from the left waist. “I count three chutes. Four, five.”

“There goes another Fort,” Mario said in a flat voice. “Direct flak hit, took off the tail. Too far off, can’t see chutes.”

Walt shook his head. That made four B-17s the 306th had lost so far, and they hadn’t even reached the target.

“Watch it, Bayou Boy,” Abe said. Down in the nose, Abe would be hunkered over the Norden bombsight, while Louis operated the nose gun just to the right over his head—something he’d never done before.

The interphone picked up Louis’s swearing. “Unless you want those surgeon’s hands filled with Nazi lead, I’d—”

“Come on, boys,” Walt said. “Interphone discipline.”

A Flying Fortress from the 91st spun far below, with three fighters all over her, and Walt forced himself to take a deep breath. He’d never seen such a savage attack.

“Bombs away,” Abe called.

Flossie
rose as five 1,000-pound general purpose bombs dropped to German soil 25,000 feet below.

“Let’s go home, folks.” Walt turned off the autopilot and pulled
Flossie
back into formation at the Rally Point. The low squadron of the 91st looked almost obliterated, and the 306th had an awful lot of holes.

Flak burst closer, closer.
Flossie
shuddered harder with each burst. Walt patted the wheel. “Come on, girl, don’t be scared.”

Another burst. Black as Satan’s heart, red flames straight from the pit he lived in. The blast slammed Walt back in his seat. Shrapnel rained on the cockpit window. Cracker screamed. J.P. screamed. Walt heard himself scream too.

38

Allie rolled over in bed, and her hand landed on the damp spot on her sheet where she’d cried herself to sleep. She blinked in the darkness. No sliver of light peeked around the blackout curtains.

The prompting was familiar and unmistakable. The Lord wanted her to pray.

Did Emily pray for Walt? Did God prompt her to pray for him? Could she possibly love him as much as Allie did?

She groaned. Now was not the time for grief or jealousy or resentment. Now was the time to obey the Lord’s call. She tucked her hand under her pillow and prayed.

Even if Walt didn’t want her friendship, he still needed her prayers.

Walt gasped. The cockpit windows were cracked and scratched, but intact. He glanced down the nose in front of him. Shards of Plexiglas. All that was left.

“Abe! Louis!” He spun around. “J.P.—”

“I’m going.” J.P. stepped off the turret platform, grabbed a portable oxygen bottle, and dropped into the crawlway between the pilots’ seats that led to the nose. Frigid wind blustered through the nose and up the crawlway.

Louis hated to wear his parachute. What if—no, Walt wouldn’t even let himself think it.

Flossie
lost airspeed. Walt pushed the throttles forward to stay in formation. The controls and engines were undamaged, but the shattered nose caused drag.

“They’re here.” J.P.’s voice crackled on the interphone. “Alive, but wounded. Must have gotten blown back by the explosion, blacked out.”

“Thank you, Lord,” Walt said.

“We’ve got to get them out of this wind,” J.P. said.

“Hear that, Pete?” Walt asked. Pete was large, strong, and a medic to boot.

“On my way.”

Walt and Cracker exchanged a look—relief that their friends were alive, worry that they wouldn’t be alive when they reached Thurleigh, and fear that they’d never get back.

“Fighters forming up. Four o’clock high, coming round for a pass,” Harry said from the waist, where he now had two guns to manage.

They had no forward protection at all. Not only had they lost their nose gun, but their top turret gunner was occupied.

“J.P., get up here,” Walt said.

J.P. scrambled up the passageway, reconnected to the oxygen system, and entered his turret. “Here they come. Three bogies. Twelve o’clock high.”

Walt stood his ground. Bomber Command frowned on evasive maneuvers, which broke up the formation and subjected everyone to danger.

One, two Fw 190s let loose on
Flossie
. Bullets pierced the right wing between engines three and four. J.P., Harry, and Al returned fire.

Harry whooped. “Got him!”

Walt jiggled the controls—still responsive. Fuel gauges holding steady. Good thing those bullets hadn’t hit the control cables or fuel tanks.

The third fighter dived in, its single propeller a shimmering disc. Tracer bullets flashed in an arc toward
Flossie
.

“Get him.” Walt eyed the enemy as if his hands were on a gun instead of the control wheel.

Black puff. The fighter exploded in a flurry of noise and metal and flame, nabbed by his own flak. Walt cheered.

Then a chunk of wing soared toward
Flossie
, clipped the number three engine. The prop ripped off, cartwheeled, and struck the right cockpit window. Walt whipped his head away, flung up his hand, felt sharp bites in his right cheek above his oxygen mask.

Cracker cried out. Walt snapped back to see Cracker clawing his face, his eyes.

“Cracker! Cracker, you okay?”

“Can’t see! Can’t see!”

“Pete, we need you up here.” Walt huffed in frustration. Cracker needed help, and he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t leave the controls.

Pete came up from the nose with a yellow oxygen bottle slung across his back. “Cracker, calm down. You’ll make it worse. Let me look.” He straddled the crawlway and grabbed Cracker’s hands in his fists.

Cracker screamed.

“J.P., hold him down. Let me get the glass out, get him some morphine.”

Walt had to shut down engine three. On the center console he turned off the mixture control for number three, flipped off the ignition switch, shut the cowl flaps, and closed the throttle. All the while he braced himself against Cracker’s cries, Pete bumping into him, and the tinkle of bloody glass flung to the floor.

“You’re gonna live, Cracker,” Pete said. “You’re gonna live, okay?”

“I can’t see! How can I fly if I can’t see?”

Pete glanced down at Walt and shook his head.

Walt looked around. Forts falling, fighters swarming, flak exploding. One engine down and a gaping hole in the nose. With three officers out of action, Walt was on his own.

Allie gazed down—down through a blue sky. A patchwork spread below her with tiny toy buildings, so much like the ride in the biplane. However, this time she didn’t feel peace and exhilaration, only dread gripping her heart.

Little clouds floated about her, black clouds, and birds, a flock of birds, diving at her, spinning, spitting birds with cruel faces.

Flossie
lagged behind the group. Couldn’t be helped. Couldn’t keep up.

The Luftwaffe had left to harass another squadron, but they’d be back when they saw stragglers. Walt glanced at the fuel and oil gauges. Once J.P. was done with first aid duties, he could transfer fuel out of engine three. If everything held, they’d make it back.

Pete had taken Cracker back to the waist section, and J.P. had joined Bill in the nose. Grunts and shuffles rose from the passageway. Bill emerged with his arms hooked under Abe’s shoulders.

“Abe’s the worse off,” Bill said. The bombardier lay unconscious against Bill’s chest with cuts to his forehead and bloody shredded flight gear.

“Get him to the waist. Afraid you’ll be crowded back there.”

Bill plunged backward with Abe’s limp body. J.P. came out next and grabbed Abe’s feet. Bill and J.P. huffed their way through the narrow door. In a few minutes, they returned for the injured navigator. Louis had fewer wounds. He groaned as Bill bumped him over the metal floor.

That groan was the best sound Walt had heard in hours. “Hey, Fontaine, no sleeping on the job. Wake up and help me out here.”

J.P. climbed out of the passageway and looked Walt in the eye for the first time in months. “Even if he comes to, he can’t help. Two broken arms, Pete said.”

Flossie
was a big plane to land with all this damage. Walt locked his gaze on his flight engineer. He’d let the kid down, but this was no time for resentment. “It’s you and me if we want to get out of this alive.”

J.P.’s face twitched, but he nodded, and then he and Bill lugged Louis back to the waist section, now an infirmary.

“We’ve got a visitor,” Mario said. “Seven o’clock high, coming forward.”

The Fw 190 circled at a distance. He’d come in high and head-on where
Flossie
had no manned guns. Walt could make evasive maneuvers since he was alone, but while
Flossie
was sleek, she wasn’t built for a dogfight.

“J.P.? Could use you up here.”

“He’s coming, Preach,” Bill said.

The German climbed for the attack. Walt felt like a sheriff in a Western who meets the villain in a showdown, reaches for his gun, and finds his holster empty.

“Father in heaven, help me.” The fighter swooped down, and Walt put the B-17 into a climbing roll to the left.

Bullets sprayed toward
Flossie
, clattered around in the nose compartment, blasted into the cockpit, shrieked past Walt, pounded into the bulkhead. Walt’s right arm snapped back—searing pain.

“Take that,” Mario said. “Got his rudder. He’ll leave us alone now.”

“Good,” Walt whispered, breath shallow, eyes fixed on three holes in the window in front of him. Missed him by inches. He turned, his motions slowed as if in a vat of syrup. Three holes punctured the bulkhead, right behind J.P.’s position.

J.P. came through the door.

“Good thing,” Walt said, his voice thin and foggy. “Good thing you weren’t here. You’d be dead.”

J.P. didn’t look for proof. He stared at the floor.

A red pool spread and froze on the olive drab floor. Walt laughed, a strange sound, from another room, another person. “Hydraulic fluid. Remember Al on our first mission? Not blood, hydraulic fluid.”

“Novak. Your arm.”

Walt looked to his right arm, to dripping red smears on his hand, his forearm, his elbow.

J.P. pulled on his headset, his brown eyes wide. “Pete! Novak’s hit!”

Walt clutched his arm. Pain wrenched through his arm, his body. A long, low moan convulsed its way out.

39

Allie woke with a start. What a terrifying dream. How could she have fallen asleep when she was supposed to be praying? Faint light illuminated the edges of the blackout curtains.