Blue Skies Tomorrow (28 page)

An explosion at two o’clock high, shuddering, earsplitting. A black belch of smoke. A tongue of red flame. Shrapnel pummeled the plane, rocks on a tin roof.

Ray cringed down. Shrapnel dinged off his flak helmet, his arm.

He wheeled around and gasped. Fist-sized holes perforated the right side and roof of the cockpit, baring fangs of aluminum and Plexiglas.

Donatelli slumped in his seat, his hand clutched to the right side of his neck. Then his hand fell limp to his lap. His red hand. His red lap.

“Donatelli!” Ray cried against the heaviness of knowing his copilot would never speak again.

Ray gripped the wheel, scanned the gauges. He still had four engines. “Damage report. Bombardier? Navigator?”

No response.

The interphone. He’d lost the interphone.

Ray put the Fort into a left-hand turn. He had to follow the rest of the division and lead his group home. “Shreve,” he yelled to the flight engineer behind him. “Interphone’s out. Go down to the nose, tell the navigator to come up here a minute.”

He glanced out the side windows to keep an eye on the formation, since he could no longer get reports from his crewmen in the back.

“Shreve.” Ray flung his right arm behind him to get the gunner’s attention—and hit air.

Shreve lay crumpled over the platform for his turret.

“Oh no.” Ray’s stomach lurched at the rusty smell of blood. The flak burst took off the Plexiglas dome for the top turret—and most of Shreve’s head.

He whipped back to the wheel, light-headed, but he had to keep his wits. The rest of his crew and his group depended on him. “Lord, help me.”

Ray blew out a breath and loosened his grip on the wheel. The controls and engines were in fine shape. All he had to do was follow the division home.

But flak buffeted the plane and Ray’s heart.

His eyes stung, and the acrid smell of hot metal hit his nose. White smoke seeped from seams in the right side of the control panel.

A chill raced up Ray’s spine. The fire extinguisher hung out of reach on the bulkhead behind the copilot’s seat.

After he leveled off from the turn, he flipped on the autopilot switches and adjusted the rudder, aileron, and elevator centering knobs. “Pilot to crew. Can you hear me? I need help in the cockpit. Now.”

Ray unplugged the interphone cord and oxygen, and scrambled behind the copilot’s seat.

After he hooked up a portable oxygen bottle, he grabbed the fire extinguisher. Yellow flames licked out of the control panel. With shaking hands, he raised the horn of the extinguisher, aimed it at the fire, turned the handle, and pumped the plunger. Powdery white carbon tetrachloride coated the control panel.

Ray stopped. The flames came back, higher now, creeping to the middle of the panel.

Crying out in frustration, he emptied the extinguisher into the flames.

“What’s going on up here?” Lieutenant Casey, the navigator, stuck his head up the passageway. “The inter—oh my—” He dropped his jaw and half a dozen curse words.

“Get me another fire extinguisher. Now, Casey. Go!”

Something exploded behind the control panel, warped it, and the flames spread.

Casey ducked and swore. “The oxygen.”

Ray coughed. The phosgene gas from the fire extinguisher was poisonous. He’d have to open the windows, but that would feed the fire. And the flames reached toward the wheel and distorted his view out the windshield.

As when Helen’s house burned down, he was struck with the impenetrable translucence of fire—and how a life could change in an instant.

He turned to Casey. “Bail out! Go to the nose, get Rogers, and get out of here. I’ll go to the back, get the others.”

Ray reached down beside the pilot’s seat to ring the bailout bell. One long ring to signal stand by for bailing, then three short rings to bail out now. But he couldn’t rely on the bell. He’d tell the men in person.

The heat built, but Ray had work to do. After he turned off the autopilot, he strained through the heat to put the plane into a shallow dive away from the formation. He tossed aside the portable oxygen, fumbled in his left thigh pocket for the connecting tube on the bailout oxygen bottle, and attached it to the adaptor on his mask. Then he threw the “flimsies,” the mimeographed flight plans, into the fire.

A sick feeling writhed in his stomach as he left Donatelli and Shreve behind. He forged through the bomb bay, gripping the supports for the bomb racks. His seat-pack parachute flapped at the back of his knees.

Today he’d have to use it.

Dread clamped a fist around his heart, but he kept moving.

“Bail out,” he told the radio operator at his desk. “Fire in the cockpit. Get out of here.”

“But—but—”

“Now.” Ray pulled the release tabs on the shoulders of Fitzgerald’s flak vest, then remembered to take off his own. “Where’s your chute?”

Fitzgerald pulled his chest parachute from under his desk.

Ray pressed through the door to the waist section. “Bail—”

Noise jammed his ears. The floor kicked out from underneath him. He tumbled to the bulkhead, to the wall, banged his shoulder, his back, his head.

He grabbed something—control cables. His legs swung loose and slammed the wall.

Where the tail should have been—nothing but open sky.

“Dear Lord in heaven.” Ray grasped the cables with all his might. An antiaircraft shell must have taken off the tail.

Ascalon
plunged toward the earth, and Ray stared at the cables in his fists, pulling him down with his plane.

The only way to live was to let go.

Antioch

Helen rolled over in bed and snuggled the chenille bedspread over her ear, but she knew she wouldn’t go back to sleep. How could she with the tension in the Carlisle household as taut as her leg muscles when the polio struck?

On Saturday, she’d taken Jay-Jay to a matinee of Roy Rogers in
Red River Valley
, then stayed at Betty’s house until Jay-Jay’s bedtime. After church, she accepted the Llewellyns’ dinner invitation and then spent the afternoon calling on anyone she could think of. But suppertime forced her home, where Mr. Carlisle grumbled about overcooked vegetables in the soup and the profusion of hillbilly music on the radio. Even the Allied progress in the Philippines and the closure of the Bulge failed to cheer him.

Something would happen soon.

Helen sat up in bed, clicked on the lamp, and pulled her Bible from the nightstand. Only at the Lord’s feet could she calm her nerves. Ray was so good for her, not just his wise words but his advice to take her concerns to God.

The day before, Pastor Novak preached about the Day of the Lord. The war caused many to fear the end of the world, but Pastor Novak reminded them fear didn’t come from God.

The ribbon in Helen’s Bible still lay in Obadiah, so that’s where she read, until she reached verse 4: “Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.”

Helen shivered and set aside her Bible. Maybe she’d go straight to prayer. She prayed for Ray among the stars and for Jay-Jay among the wolves. She prayed for Carver and the other men in prison, and for Esther, as alone as any widow.

Restlessness prickled her legs and arms. She stuffed her feet into her slippers and pulled on her bathrobe and coat.

Helen padded downstairs and onto the front porch. Fog blurred the houses across C Street, the thick “tule” fog that clung to the ground in central California and the Delta each winter. Somewhere behind the fog, the sun was rising.

Helen bounced her legs against the damp chill penetrating her pajama pants. She sat in the wicker rocker and set it in motion to warm up, hunching over her crossed arms. Half an hour remained before she had to get dressed and get Jay-Jay up.

The stillness of dawn didn’t hold its usual peace.

She wanted out. But how? She had a year to pay off her debt, a year before she could free her salary for rent and necessities to set up house. Papa would never help her. He’d made that abundantly clear. And where else could she stay? Betty was expecting another baby, and her house would be jam-packed come May. All her friends had filled their extra rooms with boarders. She was stuck.

Helen rocked harder.

Motion on the lawn caught her eye. The Scalas’ orange tabby strutted along, an affectionate cat. Helen clucked her tongue to get his attention, the sound amplified in the fog.

The cat stopped and turned to Helen—with a bird in his mouth.

Ray had written about a feline gunner who failed to bring down his aerial prey. The Scalas’ cat had succeeded.

“ ‘Thence will I bring thee down.’ ” Helen tugged her coat against a shuddering chill.

28

Over Germany

Ray let go.

Sky and plane and clouds tumbled around him. In panic, he groped for the security of his plane.

No. It was a false security. He forced his mind to remember his training. He had to clear
Ascalon
’s falling debris.

When clouds appeared in his vision, Ray flung out his arms and legs spread-eagle. His body rocked on the air currents, but now his plane fell faster than he did. Without any reference point, the only evidence of his fall was the frigid air howling past.

Count to ten. He was supposed to count to ten. How could he remember his numbers with nothing but clouds between him and solid ground?

Ten seconds must have passed. He gripped the ripcord on his left shoulder harness and squeezed it tight in his gloved fingers. If the parachute didn’t open, he’d be with Jesus in less than two minutes.

A firm tug. The chute whooshed out, snapped open, yanked him hard around the groin and chest. He coughed from the impact. But the wind’s whistle ceased.

Ray’s vision darkened. How long had he been off oxygen? He felt around his left thigh pocket, found the green wooden ball on the release cable of the bailout bottle, and pulled it.

He drew deep drafts until his vision lightened. His breath came hard and his heart whammed in his chest, but what did he expect? He hovered four miles high with only a circle of white silk to save him.

Ascalon
tumbled in flames into the cloud bank, surrounded by chunks of debris. Two parachutes billowed ahead and beneath him. Two? Probably Casey and Rogers from the nose. But only two? No others?

“Oh Lord.” For the first time in his life, words for prayer escaped him. The other men never made it out, never had a chance.

Ray descended into the clouds and took one last glance above, where the silver trail of B-17s left him behind. They’d report the fall of
Ascalon
and the sighting of three chutes.

Only three. Jack would assume he was dead. Dad and Mom would receive a telegram that he was missing in action, but Jack would send a letter with details. Everyone would think he was dead until his name appeared on the prisoner of war list, which often took months.

“Oh no. Helen.” She’d mourn him, and worse, she’d blame herself. In her last letter, she wrote that she’d driven Jim into danger and she’d done the same to Ray. But she hadn’t. He’d mailed his reply, hadn’t he?

Her plea tugged at him. “Please take care, Ray.”

His heart felt as heavy as the cloud around him. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

When he broke out of the clouds, he floated over a picturesque landscape of snowy fields, gentle hills, patches of woods, and small towns centered around churches. But this was not the way he wanted to see Germany. Instead of cruising the Rhine, hiking the Alps, and touring Heidelberg and Neuschwanstein castles, he’d sleep in a Stalag Luft for the duration of the war.

Life in a prison camp. Cold and hunger, captivity and deprivation. He’d have to make the best of it. At least he’d have plenty of men to minister to.

Soon he made out people and vehicles and farm animals. He unfastened one side of his oxygen mask, and it flapped to the side.

People rushed around below. One of the parachutes collapsed as Ray’s crewman landed. A German ran up to him, took something from him, then backed up and pointed. A retort, and the airman crumpled.

Ray gasped. They shot him! Shot him with his own pistol.

The other parachute collapsed. A mob surrounded the officer with flailing fists and sticks. They were beating him to death.

Ray’s breath came faster, harder. He had to get away. He tugged his parachute cords and shifted his course hard to the left.

“Lord, lead me. Lead me to someone who’ll turn me in.”

A snow-blanketed field, a barn, a thick wood to his left, and no people in sight. Maybe he could hide in the woods until nightfall, make his way to town, to a church, where he wouldn’t be lynched.

Ray raised bent legs and gripped the straps overhead. The ground rushed to him. The jolt shuddered through his body. He fell flat on his face in the snow, knocking out his breath.

For a horrific moment, he couldn’t breathe. With great effort, he forced open his ribs like a bellows and sucked in air.

He pushed himself up onto wobbly legs, only to stumble as a breeze caught his billowing parachute. Ray pulled the cords to draw it in.