Authors: Thomas Kirkwood
Warner knew after a short roll that they were too heavy. He was about to abort the take-off and jettison more fuel when he saw the farmer with the scythe running onto the muddy strip, gesticulating wildly with his free hand.
What was safety? Turning around? Hell no. The crate would have to fly.
They were almost halfway down the strip now. The throttle was buried, the engine was howling like a tortured beast, the airspeed indicator read 40 kilometers an hour. Warner felt as though a fast dog could have caught them and chewed their tires.
He glanced at the trees looming ahead. The huge oaks towered at least 100 feet too high. He spotted a gap in the forest to his left. It was his only hope. Working skillfully with pedals and rudder, he transformed their take-off roll from a straight line into a sweeping curve.
When he hauled back on the stick at the last possible moment, they were traveling at 85 kilometers an hour, the slowest take-off he had ever attempted.
The old Stearman struggled into the air, fell back and lifted off again.
The gap was a dirt road. Their wing tips nearly brushed the trees to either side as the plane fought, shuddering and creaking, for every foot of altitude. When they reached a house at the end of the road, they were so low that Warner had to fly between the twin chimneys.
Behind the house was a lawn, a meadow and a long plowed field. Things were looking better. He lashed the old crate up to 90 feet – and had to dive like a bird of prey when he spotted high tension wires glinting across his path.
They brushed the ground but had more airspeed now. Warner coaxed his craft up to 120 feet and held her there, dodging the higher trees.
Keeping low was the secret, so low radar could not detect them.
He crossed a heavily forested stretch of the French-Belgian border and wove a northward course, avoiding the population centers of Tournai and Gent.
A lovely patchwork of farmland and forest passed beneath their wings as they neared the English Channel. As soon as they were over water, Warner descended to 50 feet. Steven slapped him on the back and yelled the good news to Nicole.
Warner allowed himself a sigh of relief. They had done the impossible. They had broken out of a noose made up of hundreds of thousands of police and military people. Warner throttled back to save fuel and oil, and shed another 20 feet of altitude.
Two hours later, as a brisk tail wind pushed them from the west, he spotted the first of the sandy islands running along the Dutch coast. Some were large, with posh bathing resorts and ferry service from the mainland. But others were small and uninviting, desolate islands whose beaches were littered with flotsam.
Warner chose his island carefully, crisscrossing above it until he was certain they would be alone and measuring the only stretch of unbroken beach to make sure it was long enough for a landing and take-off. He feathered the prop seconds after they touched down and barked orders at Steven while they were still rolling.
“We’re going to rest, but
not
until we have this aircraft totally camouflaged. As soon as I park, I want both you and Nicole to start dragging scrub brush over here. We’ll cover the plane first, then hide under the wings. I don’t want a half-assed job. Yellow stands out like a beacon to anyone looking down from the air.”
Warner got no response. He twisted around and looked behind him. Steven was asleep, his motorcycle helmet between his knees.
Warner poked him. “Wake up, buddy, and wake up Nicole. We’ve got work to do, lots of it.”
“No problem, chief.” Steven was alert by the time the plane came to a stop. He jumped down easily from the wing and held out his hand for Nicole. Minutes later the two of them were rolling and shoving the first load of scrub from the sandy earth above the beach toward the plane.
***
When Warner awoke, night had fallen. He pushed his way out of the canopy of brush covering the plane. It was a lot darker than he had anticipated. A thick overcast hung over the water, blocking the light from the moon and stars he had counted on for take-off. The tide was out, the wind had died, the sea was quiet. He felt as though he was at the end of the earth.
He roused Steven and Nicole, instructed them to start clearing the brush off the plane, and walked toward the surf. The tide had deposited a line of debris in the wet sand. Using his flashlight for a brief search, he found two bottles and shook the water out of them. Back at the Stearman, he felt around the underside of the engine until he located the fuel inspection drain cock.
After filling the bottles with aviation fuel, he planted them in the sand a safe distance away from Steven and Nicole, who were hauling off armfuls of brush without regard for where they stepped.
“I’m going to top up the oil,” Warner said. “You two keep up the fast pace. We’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.”
Steven stopped in his tracks. “A few minutes? How the hell can we take off in blackness, Frank? Can you see anything?”
“Not yet, but you and Nicole are going to build me a big-city runway.”
“How?”
“First things first.”
When the brush had been cleared away, Warner directed Steven to heave on the prop. The engine roared to life on the third try. Warner let it idle and climbed down. “Come with me, you two,” he said, feeling his way to the bottles of aviation fuel. He handed them each one.
“I drained a little fuel from the engine. Listen carefully. The beach runs in a straight line for about a thousand feet. I want you and Nicole to gather up a bunch of twigs from that brush heap you pulled off the plane. I want you to walk down the beach parallel to each other, about fifty feet apart, using the surf as your guide. Make a wood pile every hundred feet or so. Just a few sticks, understand, nothing massive. We don’t want this looking like Kennedy Airport an hour after we take off. Douse each pile with some fuel from your bottle. Don’t light it, just douse it.”
Warner handed them each a book of matches he had picked up in the White House conference room. “When you get to the end of the beach, you’ll damn well know it,” he said. “There’s a deep inlet. You would have gotten a bird’s eye view of it, Steven, if you hadn’t slept through the landing.”
“I was awake. What are you talking about?”
Warner ignored him. “Stop when you get there, put a match to your final wood pile, then turn around and head toward the plane. You should have enough light from that first little blaze to see where you’re going. Once you start back, I want you to hurry – but make sure each pile will stay lit before you move on. The wood should burn long enough to get us airborne. Do you understand, Nicole?”
“Yes, Frank.”
“Then let’s go.”
Warner slid into the cockpit and put the radial engine through its warm-up, listening for irregularities. There were none.
Minutes later, a flicker of light caught his eye. A thousand feet down the beach, two tiny flames were burning, marking the spot at which he would have to lift his wheels out of the sand.
Steven and Nicole had made torches. He couldn’t see what they had used, but it seemed perfect.
They came toward him rapidly, like runners bearing an urgent message, stopping briefly to put fire to each little pile of fuel-soaked wood. When they clambered into the plane, Warner had his runway – a little wavy in spots, but what the hell.
He pushed the throttle forward. The engine howled, the old Stearman rolled slowly at first, shaking and groaning. But the sand was harder and smoother than the mud of Bonier’s field. By the time they reached the ninth pair of flickering piles, they were airborne.
Warner glanced in the direction of the island as they banked steeply over the sea. He saw nothing but blackness. The propeller backwash and swirling sand must have blown out each little flame as they passed it. The lighted runway had lived exactly as long as needed, he thought, and not a second more.
Warner leveled off at 60 feet, skimming the bottom of the sagging overcast, an eye on the altimeter, an eye on the artificial horizon. As midnight approached he spotted a row of lights up ahead, softened by the fog. They were nearing the coast of Denmark.
The one-hour flight over the Danish peninsula was the segment of the flight he considered most dangerous. They would be crossing a densely populated area with TV towers, smoke stacks, high-voltage lines and tall buildings. If the moon didn’t break through so that he could dodge potential obstacles, he would have no choice but to climb to 600 feet. At that altitude, he would show up on the radar screens of one of the Europe’s most vigilant air defense systems. Not a reassuring prospect.
He glanced back at Steven, whose head in his motorcycle helmet hung limply to the side. The copilot was sleeping again. Probably a good thing, Warner thought. He might well be in for a strenuous workout later if they had to find Claussen’s place in this soup.
The clouds opened as they overflew the coastline. They passed low over a sandy marsh, glowing eerily in the moonlight. Warner did a visual estimate of his altitude, and found that it was within ten feet of the reading on the venerable old altimeter. No need to change settings.
The engine was running well, the temp and oil pressure holding steady. The aircraft had been maintained a lot better than he had anticipated. If the moon would only stay out, he thought, he could keep on flying low and forget about radar.
It was not meant to be. The overcast thickened again, and a cold rain began to fall. His visibility, which hadn’t been great before, dropped to zero. He pulled back on the stick and tried to look at the bright side.
At 600 feet they might pick him up on radar. In fact, he was almost certain they would. But picking him up and finding him were two different things. If he increased his air speed, he could make it across Denmark in less than 45 minutes. When he came to the Baltic, he’d dive to 50 feet again and disappear from their screens forever . . .
Turbulence increased, causing the old biplane to groan like a ship about to break up. Rain splattered on Warner’s goggles and ran under his collar. The air grew colder, the muscles of his arms and back grew stiffer.
He kept a flashlight trained on the instruments, whose illumination had picked a fine time to die. His feet were busy with the rudder pedals, holding her level and trimmed though he often felt as if he were banking or flying in loops. Thank God for the artificial horizon.
His airspeed indicator remained at a 155 kilometers an hour, and he knew he had a pretty stiff tail wind. This gave him an ETA in Claussen’s neighborhood of roughly 2:45 a.m. Perfectly timed, he thought, if he could see anything: the world would be asleep.
He turned around to look at Steven, who was still asleep, his head now tilted to the other side. He consulted his watch. In his mind’s eye, he heard the screech of jets sent up to intercept him. He heard the clatter of canon, and felt the Stearman’s wooden frame explode in a hail of gunfire. But the night remained wet and calm, and the flight proceeded without incident.
Half an hour later he whacked Steven on the helmet. “Wake up, first officer. We should be over the Baltic by now. We’re going down for a look.”
“Okay, good,” Steven said groggily.
“Two hundred feet,” Warner called back. “Get the infrared camera lens trained on what’s below. Let me know as soon as you see something other than clouds.”
“Okay.”
“One hundred fifty feet. One hundred feet. Anything?”
“Soup. Thick as before,” Steven shouted.
“Seventy-five feet . . . sixty . . . fifty.”
“Soup.”
Warner turned around and glanced at Steven, who had taken off his helmet and seemed to be using the camera correctly. He decided to descend a little more.