Hornet Flight (47 page)

The aircraft wobbled and straightened out. Harald saw that he was about to crash into the petrol tanker. He stamped on the left pedal, and the right wingtip of the Hornet Moth missed the truck by inches.

Peter Flemming was not so lucky.

Glancing back, Harald saw the Buick, completely out of control, slide with terrible inevitability toward the tanker. It smashed into the truck at top speed. There was a booming explosion, and a second later the entire park was lit up with a yellow glow. Harald tried to see if the tail of the Hornet Moth might have caught fire, but it was impossible to look directly behind, so he just hoped for the best.

The Buick was a furnace.

“Steer the aircraft!” Karen yelled at him. “We're about to take off!”

He returned his attention to the rudder. He saw that he was heading for the mess tent. He pressed the right pedal to miss it.

When they were on a straight course again the aircraft sped up.

Hermia had begun to run when she heard the plane engine start up. As she came into the grounds of Kirstenslot she saw a dark car, very like the one at
the station, tearing along the drive. As she watched, it went into a skid and crashed into a truck parked alongside the drive. There was a terrific explosion, and both car and truck burst into flame.

She heard a woman cry, “Peter!”

In the fire's light she saw the woman in the blue beret. Everything fell into place. The woman
had
been following her. The man waiting in the Buick had been Peter Flemming. They had not needed to follow her from the station, because they knew where she was going. They had come to the castle ahead of her. Then what?

She saw a small biplane rolling across the grass, looking as if it was about to take off. Then she saw the woman in the blue beret kneel down, pull a gun from her shoulder bag, and aim at the aircraft.

What was happening here? If the woman in the beret was a colleague of Peter Flemming's, the pilot must be on the side of the angels, Hermia deduced. It could even be Harald, escaping with the film in his pocket.

She had to stop the woman from shooting the aircraft down.

The park was lit up by the flames from the petrol tanker, and in the brightness Harald saw Mrs. Jespersen aim a gun at the Hornet Moth.

There was nothing he could do. He was heading straight for her and, if he turned to one side or the other, he would merely present her with a better target. He gritted his teeth. The bullets might pass through the wings or the fuselage without causing serious damage. On the other hand they might disable the engine, damage the controls, hole the petrol tank, or kill him or Karen.

Then he saw a second woman runnning across the grass, carrying a suitcase. “Hermia!” he shouted in astonishment as he recognized her. She hit Mrs. Jespersen over the head with her case. The detective fell sideways and dropped her gun. Hermia hit her again, then grabbed the gun.

Then the aircraft passed over them and Harald realized it had left the ground.

Looking up, he saw that it was about to crash into the bell tower of the church.

Karen thrust the Y-shaped control column sharply to the left, banging it against Harald's knee. The Hornet Moth banked as it climbed, but Harald could see that the turn was not sharp enough, and the aircraft was going to hit the bell tower.

“Left rudder!” Karen screamed.

He remembered that he, too, could steer. He jammed his left foot down hard on the pedal and immediately felt the aircraft bank more steeply. Still he felt sure the right wing would smash into the brickwork. The aircraft came around with excruciating slowness. He braced himself for the crash. The wingtip missed the tower by inches.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

The gusty wind made the aircraft buck like a pony. Harald felt they could fall out of the sky at any second. But Karen continued the climbing turn. Harald gritted his teeth. The aircraft came around a hundred and eighty degrees. At last, when it was heading back over the castle, she straightened out. As they gained altitude, the aircraft steadied, and Harald recalled Poul Kirke saying there was more turbulence near the ground.

He looked down. Flames still flickered in the petrol tanker, and by their light he could see the soldiers emerging from the monastery in their nightwear. Captain Kleiss was waving his arms and shouting orders. Mrs. Jespersen lay still, apparently out cold. Hermia Mount was nowhere to be seen. At the door of the castle, a few servants stood looking up at the aircraft.

Karen pointed to a dial on the instrument panel. “Keep an eye on this,” she said. “It's the turn-and-slip indicator. Use the rudder to hold the needle straight upright, at the twelve o'clock position.”

Bright moonlight came through the transparent roof of the cabin, but it was not quite enough to read the instruments. Harald shone the flashlight on the dial.

They continued to climb, and the castle shrank behind them. Karen kept looking to the left and right as well as ahead, although there was nothing much to see but the moonlit Danish landscape.

“Fasten your seat belt,” she said. He saw that hers was done up. “It will save you banging your head on the cabin roof if the ride gets bumpy.”

Harald fastened his belt. He began to believe that they had escaped. He allowed himself to feel triumphant. “I thought I was going to die,” he said.

“So did I—several times!”

“Your parents will go out of their minds with worry.”

“I left them a note.”

“That's more than I did.” He had not thought of it.

“Let's just stay alive, that will make them happy.”

He touched her cheek. “How do you feel?”

“A bit feverish.”

“You've got a temperature. You should sip water.”

“No, thanks. We've got a six-hour flight ahead of us, and no bathroom. I don't want to have to pee on a newspaper in front of you. It could be the end of a beautiful friendship.”

“I'll close my eyes.”

“And fly the aircraft with your eyes shut? Forget it. I'll be all right.”

She was being jocular, but he was anxious about her. He felt shattered by what they had been through, and she had done all the same things with a sprained ankle and a sprained wrist. He hoped she would not pass out.

“Look at the compass,” she said. “What's our course?”

He had examined the compass while the aircraft was in the church, and knew how to read it. “Two hundred and thirty.”

Karen banked right. “I figure our heading for England is two-fifty. Tell me when we're on course.”

He shone the flashlight on the compass until it showed the right course, then said, “That's it.”

“Time?”

“Twelve-forty.”

“We should write all this down, but we didn't bring pencils.”

“I don't think I'll forget any of it.”

“I'd like to get above this patchy cloud,” she said. “What's our altitude?”

Harald shone the flashlight on the altimeter. “Four thousand seven hundred feet.”

“So this cloud is at about five thousand.”

A few moments later the aircraft was engulfed by what looked like smoke, and Harald realized they had entered the cloud.

“Keep the light on the airspeed indicator,” Karen said. “Let me know if our speed changes.”

“Why?”

“When you're flying blind, it's difficult to keep the aircraft in the correct attitude. I could put the nose up or down without realizing it. But if that happens we'll know because our speed will increase or decrease.”

He found it unnerving to be blind. This must be how accidents happen, he thought. An aircraft could easily hit the side of a mountain in cloud. Fortunately there were no mountains in Denmark. But if another aircraft happened to be flying through the same cloud, neither pilot would know until it was too late.

After a couple of minutes, he found that enough moonlight was penetrating the cloud for him to see it swirling against the windows. Then, to his relief, they emerged, and he could see the Hornet Moth's moon shadow on the cloud below.

Karen eased the stick forward to level out. “See the rev counter?”

Harald shone the flashlight. “It says two thousand, two hundred.”

“Bring the throttle smoothly back until it drops to nineteen hundred.”
Harald did as she said.

“We use power to change our altitude,” she explained. “Throttle forward, we go up; throttle back, we go down.”

“So how do we control our speed?”

“By the attitude of the aircraft. Nose down to go faster, nose up to go slower.”

“Got it.”

“But never raise the nose too sharply, or you will stall. That means you lose lift, and the aircraft falls out of the sky.”

Harald found that a terrifying thought. “What do you do then?”

“Put the nose down and increase the revs. It's easy—except that your instinct tells you to pull the nose up, and that makes it worse.”

“I'll remember that.”

Karen said, “Take the stick for a while. See if you can fly straight and level. All right, you have control.”

He grasped the control stick in his right hand.

She said, “You're supposed to say, ‘I have control.' That's so that the pilot and copilot never get into a situation where each thinks the other is flying the aircraft.”

“I have control,” he said, but he did not feel it. The Hornet Moth had a life of its own, turning and dipping with air turbulence, and he found himself using all his powers of concentration to keep the wings level and the nose in the same position.

Karen said, “Do you find that you're constantly pulling back on the stick?”

“Yes.”

“That's because we've used some fuel and changed the aircraft's center of gravity. Do you see that lever by the top forward corner of your door?”

He glanced up briefly. “Yes.”

“That's the elevator trim lever. I set it all the way forward for takeoff, when the tank was full and the tail was heavy. Now the aircraft needs to be retrimmed.”

“How do we do that?”

“Simple. Ease your grip on the stick. You feel it wanting to go forward of its own accord?”

“Yes.”

“Move the trim lever back. You'll find less need for constant back pressure on the stick.”

She was right.

“Adjust the trim lever until you no longer need to pull on the stick.”

Harald drew the lever back gradually. Before he knew it, the control column was pressing back on his hand. “Too much,” he said. He pushed the trim lever forward a fraction. “That's about right.”

“You can also trim the rudder, by moving the knob in that toothed rack at the bottom of the instrument panel. When the aircraft is correctly trimmed, it should fly straight and level with no pressure on the controls.”

Harald took his hand off the column experimentally. The Hornet Moth continued to fly level.

He returned his hand to the stick.

The cloud below them was not continuous, and at intervals they were able to see through gaps to the moonlit earth below. Soon they left Zealand behind and flew over the sea. Karen said, “Check the altimeter.”

He found it difficult to look down at the instrument panel, feeling instinctively that he needed to concentrate on flying the aircraft. When he tore his gaze away from the exterior, he saw that they had reached seven thousand feet. “How did that happen?” he said.

“You're holding the nose too high. It's natural. Unconsciously, you're afraid of hitting the ground, so you keep trying to climb. Dip the nose.”

He pushed the stick forward. As the nose came down, he saw another aircraft. It had large crosses on its wings. Harald felt sick with fear.

Karen saw it at the same time. “Hell,” she said. “The Luftwaffe.” She sounded as scared as Harald felt.

“I see it,” Harald said. It was to their left and down, a quarter of a mile or so away, and climbing toward them.

She took the stick and put the nose sharply down. “I have control.”

“You have control.”

The Hornet Moth went into a dive.

Harald recognized the other aircraft as a Messerschmitt Bf110, a twin-engined night fighter with a distinctive double-finned tailplane and long, greenhouse-like cockpit canopy. He remembered Arne talking about the
Bf110's armament with a mixture of fear and envy: it had cannons and machine guns in the nose, and Harald could see the rear machine guns poking up from the back end of the canopy. This was the aircraft used to shoot down Allied bombers after the radio station on Sande had detected them.

The Hornet Moth was completely defenseless.

Harald said, “What are we going to do?”

“Try to get back into that cloud layer before he gets within range. Damn, I shouldn't have let you climb so high.”

The Hornet Moth was diving steeply. Harald glanced at the airspeed indicator and saw that they had reached one hundred and thirty knots. It felt like the downhill stretch of a roller-coaster. He realized he was grasping the edge of his seat. “Is this safe?” he said.

“Safer than being shot.”

The other aircraft came rapidly closer. It was much faster than the Moth. There was a flash and a rattle of gunfire. Harald had been expecting the Messerschmitt to fire on them, but he could not restrain a yell of shock and fear.

Karen turned right, trying to spoil the gunner's aim. The Messerschmitt flashed past below. The gunfire stopped, and the Hornet Moth's engine droned on. They had not been hit.

Harald recalled Arne saying that it was quite difficult for a fast aircraft to shoot at a slow one. Perhaps that had saved them.

As they turned, he looked out of the window and saw the fighter receding into the distance. “I think he's out of range,” he said.

“Not for long,” Karen replied.

Sure enough, the Messerschmitt was turning. The seconds dragged by as the Hornet Moth dived toward the protection of the cloud and the fast-moving fighter swept through a wide turn. Harald saw that their airspeed had reached one hundred and sixty. The cloud was tantalizingly close—but not close enough.

He saw the flashes and heard the bangs as the fighter opened up. This time the aircraft were closer and the fighter had a better angle of attack. To his horror he saw a jagged rip appear in the fabric of the lower left wing. Karen shoved the stick over and the Hornet Moth banked.

Then, suddenly, they were plunged into cloud.

The gunfire stopped.

“Thank God,” Harald said. Although it was cold, he was sweating.

Karen pulled back on the stick and brought them out of the dive. Harald shone the flashlight on the altimeter and watched the needle slow its counterclockwise movement and steady at just above five thousand feet. The airspeed returned gradually to the normal cruising speed of eighty knots.

She banked the aircraft again, changing direction, so that the fighter would not be able to overtake them simply by following their previous course.