Bunny reached down and flipped the magneto on the port engine, adjusted the fuel mixture, and pressed the starter. She'd been leaking oil all along. There might not be any left in the oil tank bay. But there might be enough left in the engineâjust enough to turn her over. Just enough to keep her going. Just enough to get them to the clouds.
He felt cannon shells slam into the plane and heard the sound of metal being wrenched apart. The Hudson shuddered under the impact of the shells as they punched holes in
N-for-Nancy
's body. But his eyes were on the port engine. He adjusted the throttle and switched the starter again.
He saw the propeller turn slightly, stop, and turn. The engine was kicking over. It turned again and suddenly blasted to life with a growl and a cloud of black smoke. He eased the throttles up and felt
N-for-Nancy
respond.
“Port's on,” he said and he heard the crew cheer.
“That's lovely news,” Peter said calmly. “Now would you kindly get us the hell out of here?”
Bunny pushed the yoke well forward and the Hudson dropped like a brick, gathering speed as she approached the clouds. The German fighters realized what the Hudson had planned and dove on her viciously, tearing into her with cannon and machine-gun fire. Bits of metal and fabric skin flew off the planeâflesh from a wounded animal fleeing for its life.
N-for-Nancy
's crew fired back, but they could only annoy the fighters who rushed in, fired, twisted out of range, and spun around for another attack.
Bunny smelled smoke, the ozone-spiked stench of an electrical fire. He glanced at the port engine and was relieved to see its propeller biting happily into the air. He felt a sudden jolt and a cry from one of the men.
“The bastards got an oxygen canister,” Prentice said, and Bunny heard the loud hiss of a fire extinguisher. “That's got it.”
There it was: the storm.
“Here we go, chaps!” Bunny shouted. The Hudson smashed into a huge wall of black clouds. They were thrown up and down and twisted back and forth as lightning flashed through the darkness. The storm greedily accepted the Hudson as a sacrifice: sheets of rain pummeling the aircraft, ice crystals clattering against the skin like bullets. But not enemy bullets.
“Everyone to their positions,” Bunny ordered. “For God's sake strap yourselves in.” He looked down and saw the temperature gauge needle on the port engine climbing steadily. She was out of oil and in a few minutes the engine would seize. He cut back the throttle, turned off the fuel, and feathered the propeller.
“Bunny,” Johnny said. “With your permission I'm going to get screechers tonight.”
Bunny suddenly realized that his entire body ached. He relaxed and lowered the seat. “I took you for a shandy man,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Whiskey, Bunny, and lots of it. None of that watery filth for me.”
“You know, fellows . . .” Peter said, trying to find what was left of his navigator's instrument panel in the mess that had once been his station. “Oh, look, here's the bloody compass all shot to pieces.” He threw it on the floor and continued to straighten things up. “We haven't any reason to celebrate.”
Bunny looked down at the starboard nose compartment entry tunnel that led to the bomb-aimer/ navigator's position. “Any day that I am not killed is a day for celebration, Bomb-aimer/Navigator.”
“That's telling him, Bunny,” Johnny said.
“Oh, I agree wholeheartedly, Pilot/Sergeant,” Peter said. “But you're forgetting the obvious.”
“Yes, I know. We're not home yet.”
“I have all the confidence in the world that you will get us home. It's the other thing that bothers me.”
“Now you have my interest, Bomb-aimer/Navigator,” Bunny said.
This time Peter's voice was subdued. “We didn't complete the mission, Bunny. Those heartless bastards will send us back out here.”
No one said anything and there was no reason to. Bunny knew that Peter was right. They would have to come back. He unzipped his flight suit and searched for the small plush rabbit safely nestled next to his heart. He squeezed it three times and closed the flight suit. He wondered how many times his talisman would return him to base. How much time that he had left.
Chapter 3
Coastal Command Photograph Analysis,
outside London, 11 July 1941
Â
Lieutenant (j.g.) Jordan Cole, United States Naval Reserve, Office of Naval Intelligence, straightened awkwardly and rubbed the stiffness out of the small of his back. He shook his head in disgust at the notion of his only injury in this war coming as a result of hanging over light tables, his eye pressed to a stereoscopic eyepiece, looking for enemy ships hidden in black-and-white photographs. Not even for his own navy either, but for the Royal Navy. He was dispatched as an observer to the Royal Navy, his orders had read, as a part of an exchange program between the two services. That was a lie.
He was dispatched to the Royal Navy, his commander at Norfolk had told him, because: “You wear the uniform of a naval officer but you aren't a naval officer. You're a dilettante, Cole. You may be a college professor outside of the navy, but you're a waste of time in. You're going to England, my fine young friend, as a special observer, and you're going to do whatever the Limeys want you to do. Maybe you'll grow up over there.”
His commanding officer had said other things: comments about the navy not having to settle for officers just because there was a war on, even if it wasn't their war. Things like that.
Strangely, Cole liked the navy. He liked the regulation and stability, and for some reason he felt protected within the structure of the navy. He didn't always fit and he sometimes said too much or even just enough at the wrong time. “If you would just learn to keep your goddamned mouth shut!” someone had told him. It couldn't have been Ruth. He hadn't heard from her in months.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed them gently. He figured out the routine. Take a break, get a cup of tea, swing your arms about, and then get back to the photographs. Bend over the table, adjust the glass, and begin searching. If he found something that looked interesting he circled it with a red grease pencil so that Sublieutenant Richard Moore could look over it. Dickie Mooreâall arms and legs with a mass of blond hair that defied control. A good man.
“Active Service,” Moore had informed Cole. “What you Americans call Regular Navy, although I must confess that there is nothing very regular about me. Most irregular, in fact. Thank God my family is filthy rich and my father is rather keen on the navy.”
“Here we are, sir,” Petty Officer Markley said, bringing a bound folder into the photograph analysis room. “Bit of a mess down there, sir. Those blokes aren't as organized as they should be. Time at sea would cure that right off.” He set the thick folder on the table with a thump. “Raised a lovely protest, sir. I was forced to employ my rating and flex my muscles a bit. If you know what I mean, sir.”
“That should have done it,” Cole said, smiling at the hulking man with the ludicrously large, red moustache that sat perfectly straight on a square face. Markley moved carefully through the strata of the Royal Navy, as any good petty officer should after years in the service. He was here only because a shipboard accident ended his career at sea and forced him to take an assignment in the quiet confines of Photo Analysis Operations. It took him a while to become used to Cole's relaxed manner of doing things. “I don't get excited,” Cole had once told the wary Markley, who eyed the young American with suspicion, “until there is blood on the deck.” Now they wereâwithin reason and the restrictions of officer and noncommissioned officer, and cautiously on Markley's sideâfriends.
“Indeed it did, sir. Indeed it did. So here they are, After Action Reports.”
“Just the Kattegat. Leka Island.”
Markley straightened as if called to attention. “Not entirely, sir. The place was in a right mess, as I reported, sir. I took it upon myself to hurry the blokes along and in the confusion they gave me everything they had. Sir.”
“I didn't need everything, Markley. Just those flights pertaining to Leka Island.”
“Exactly my words to thoseâ”
“That means that I'm going to have to have someone help me go through this mess.”
“Sublieutenant Moore is just the man to assist youâ”
“Markley,” Cole said. “He isn't here. He won't be back for a couple of weeks, if we're lucky. Take a look around, Markley. You'll find you, ten thousand photographs, that folder, and me. I want the After Action Reports for reconnaissance flights over Leka Island, and as I always say, call it done when Markley is on it.”
“Yes, sir,” Petty Officer Markley said, rubbing his mustache in disgust. “Begging your pardon, sir, but I haven't a bit of experience manning these photographs, sir.”
“You're in luck, Markley. In the U.S. Navy we call this OJT.”
“Sir?”
“On-the-job training. Let's get cracking.”
“Sir,” Markley said, recognizing his defeat. He pulled bundles of papers out of the folder. “If you don't mind me saying so, sir, you American chaps are a colorful lot.”
“Practically red, white, and blue, through and through.” Cole opened a drawer from under the light table and produced a fifth of whiskey. “Petty Officer,” he said, and tossed it to Markley. “This might help.”
Markley acknowledged the gesture with a tip of the bottle and: “To your health, sir.”
Cole had the photographs of Leka Island and a one-hundred-square-mile area around it carefully arranged on the table. Some of the photographs were clear, some obscured by haze, and some angled so that the images were distorted. It was detective work, interpreting photographs. Cole laughed to himself and shook his head. No, it was scholarshipâsome sort of ironic punishment for a failed associate professor of history. Instead of facts and figures, instead of primary and secondary documents, he studied photographs taken thousands of feet above islands, ships, roads, canals, mountains, and railroads. From all of that, with the loyal Dickie Moore at his side and the square-rigged Petty Officer Markley manning the slide projector, he briefed his superiors. He was off to war armed with a pointer, clad in chain-mail armor of reports and memorandums, and mounted on a podium in the darkness of a smoke-filled room cut neatly in half by a shaft of light thrown by the projector. And his audience: relaxed potentates of high command and senior officers who might have once been charged with ambition when they were younger but had since exchanged that attribute for comfort.
The rewards for Cole's service, however, had been considerable. The other day he had gotten a clap on the back from Commander Harry Hamilton, Royal Navy Intelligence Operations, Coastal Command, and his immediate superior.
“Excellent job,” Hamilton had said. “Damn fine analysis.” That was when the slap on the back came. “Learning a bit, are we?” Hamilton had continued, hardly waiting for an answer. “Brilliant idea, this exchange. Americans observing how we do things. The only way to gain experience. Good thing, too. We'll all be in it soon enough. Together again against the Hun, as it were.” Then Hamilton had decided to address the delicate issue of Cole's temperament. “See here, Cole, you came with a bit of baggage, if you know what I mean. Must have been some bad blood back home, but let bygones be bygones, I always say. Carry on with the same spirit you've shown us and things will look up for you.”
Cole straightened several of the photographs and planted his hands on the table, peering at the images. His eyes traveled over the black-and-white landscape, almost willing them to assume three-dimensional form, for valleys to sink, mountains to rise, seas to run in some sort of lazy motion under the watchful gaze of drifting clouds. He watched as details emerged from backgrounds to become things. Other times they buried themselves in shadows offering only questions. Is that a bridge? Are there two destroyers in that fiord?
“What is so important about Leka Island?” Cole asked the photographs.
“How's that, sir?” Markley said, papers in hand.
Cole straightened. “Find anything yet? About Leka?”
“Yes, sir,” Markley said, handing a report to Cole. “
N-for-Nancy
. Coastal Command Hudson that went out several days ago, sir.”
Cole took the report and quickly scanned it. He found the section marked
Enemy Defenses
. He read it carefully. He sensed Markley standing by expectantly. “Come here,” he said to the petty officer. Markley followed him around the table to a light board covered with photographs, mounted on the wall.
“Hit the switch,” Cole ordered, motioning to a wall mount. Markley did and the board flickered to life, the photographs glowing from the soft aura of the light behind them. “All of these are photographs of Leka Island,” he said, “which is really a collection of islands. This large island”âhe pointed to a photographâ“and this grouping of islands.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take that glass”âhe pointed to a stereoscope on the tableâ“and look over these photographs.”
“Yes, sir,” Markley said hesitantly. Cole knew that Markley was old-sailor enough to be wary of an officer trying to entrap him. Even if he were only a Yank. Cole smiled to himselfâthey had the same kind of petty officers in the United States Navy.
After several minutes Markley turned to Cole.
“Well?” Cole said.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I'm not entirely certainâ”
“Just tell me what you see.”
Markley took a deep breath. “Well, sir. Nothing. Some little squares and a thread or two, but if there is anything there, it's well hidden.”
“Those are buildings. The squares. The threads are roads. But you're right. There is nothing else on Leka Island or around Leka Island worth a damn.”
“Yes, sir,” Markley said, relaxing.
“If that's the case, Petty Officer Percival Markley, former gunner's mate of the watch aboard His Majesty's Ship
Nelson
, why do the Germans care so much about it?”
“Sir?” Markley said.
“
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made two flights over Leka Island. These photographs are the result of the first mission. I got a call from one of the base officers wanting to know if anything turned up because, as he put it, âOur chaps had a most unfortunate go of it.' I told him that we didn't find a thing but to be sure, could he schedule another mission? He did and this After Action Report is from the second mission. No photographs will be forthcoming because the plane had to jettison the cameras. Along with just about everything else.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yeah,” Cole said. He reached around Markley and turned off the light. “Percival,” he said to the petty officer, “there's not a goddamned thing on those islands except some old fishermen's shacks and a couple of dirt roads, but when a reconnaissance plane shows up all hell breaks loose. They don't want us to see something. Whatever is there and however it is skillfully camouflaged, the Krauts are afraid that we'll figure it out. They don't want us anywhere near Leka Island. Why do they care so much for a bunch of rocks in the middle of nowhere?”
“That's a question for a better brain than mine, I'm afraid, sir.”
“Yeah,” Cole said, thinking. “Mine, too, except . . .”
“Yes, sir?”
“I sure hate to give up on something when I smell a rat. And I smell a very large German rat. Get me?”
“No, sir, I'm afraid that I don't.”
“We've found the hornets but not the nest.”
“I see what you're getting at, sir. Things don't add up. Still, begging your pardon, maybe we ought to shift from port to starboard.”
“Go on.”
Markley tapped his index finger against his chin as he studied the photograph. “What isn't there, sir? Barracks, antiaircraft batteries, gun emplacements. Everything that the Coastal Command chaps claim is making their life miserable.”
“No,” Cole said. “I saw three emplacements along a ridge.”
“Yes, sir. Three emplacements. But those chaps are talking about a dozen or more guns. I know guns, sir. As good as any seaman afloat. I didn't see them, sir. Big or small, Iâ”
“I'll be a ringtailed bobcat,” Cole said. “I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Where the hell are the other guns?”
“Not your fault, sir,” Markley said, without emotion. “We all make mistakes, now and again.”
“I'll keep that in mind, Markley,” Cole said. “But why bother? Why defend this island in the middle of nowhere at all? There's more here than meets the eye. They've got to go back over Leka, Markley.”
“I'm afraid that you're going to make some Coastal Command blokes very unhappy, sir.”
“It can't be helped. The answer is down there somewhere. I'm going to find it.”
“If you don't mind, sir. It's customary at times such as this to toast brave men. The Coastal Command chaps, I mean, sir.”