Authors: Robert Muchamore
With no ladder, the only way into the cockpit was to duck under the wing and pull yourself up. Noah was strong enough, but Marc had to slide out of his way and was horrified by bright red, circular wounds where most of his hair used to be.
‘Joseph’s dead,’ Noah shouted. ‘Let’s move.’
Marc tugged a leather strap to pull the cockpit shut, then settled into a tiny flip-down jump seat. As he hunted for the seat harness, Davey turned sharply and headed for the runway.
But while nobody had interfered up to now, half the base had watched a man in British commando uniform climb aboard. Fortunately the armed security patrols were nowhere near, but the same couldn’t be said for the base’s fire-fighters.
The main fuel fire was beyond the scope of these teams, and they were concentrating on smaller fires causes by flying debris. As Davey turned on to the runway and began accelerating, two powerful water jets swung into their path.
There was nothing in the flight training manual about what you’re supposed to do when you’re hurtling along a runway at full throttle and someone aims a fire hose at you, but Davey strongly suspected that the pressure of several tons of water hitting the tail would send them dangerously off course.
‘Hold on, boys!’ he shouted.
Davey swerved off the runway. His first plan was to keep up the pace and swerve back on to the tarmac, but at this speed any dramatic turns would most likely rip off the undercarriage.
The grass up ahead looked clear and flat, though it was impossible to be sure. Davey had to take a split-second choice between throttling back and giving up, or keeping on full throttle and hoping he could reach take-off speed before they hit the base’s perimeter fence, or some other unseen obstacle.
The top of Marc’s head slammed against the inside of the cockpit as the engines went at full throttle.Everyone’s eyes were stung from the acrid smoke produced by burning aviation fuel.
‘I’m sorry, boys,’ Davey shouted. ‘Brace yourselves; I don’t think we’ve got the speed.’
But the bumps had stopped before the last word was out of Davey’s mouth. Marc could see nothing but the flaming airbase reflected bright orange in the cockpit glass as Davey pulled back on the control stick.
There was a crashing sound, as branches thrashed against the undercarriage. The engine made several loud misfires as the plane lurched violently sideways, snagging on something heavy. Davey threw the control stick in the opposite direction, more in hope than expectation, but they broke clear of the trees.
Marc put his head against the seat back as the flames on the ground shrunk from view.
‘We’re full of fuel,’ Davey said happily, as his eyes darted around the cockpit checking the rows of illuminated gauges. ‘Oil pressure good. Controls feel OK.’
Marc looked across at Noah whose face was smeared in blood. ‘You OK?’
‘Just burns, I think,’ Noah said. ‘We were still too close when the fuel tanks went up. I got hit by shrapnel, but Joseph was closer. The fireball threw him a good thirty metres into the air. I didn’t see a body, but there’s no way he could have survived that.’
‘I’m sorry, mate,’ Marc said, as he felt Noah’s hand trembling above his own on the narrow armrest between the two seats.
‘This one was never going to be easy, was it?’ Noah said.
‘Quite a ways from home yet, chaps,’ Davey said anxiously, as he pressed his face against the cockpit glass to cut out the reflection from the illuminated dials. ‘Whatever we snagged on the way up has shredded our right tyre.’
‘Can you land on one?’ Marc asked.
‘No idea,’ Davey said. ‘Looks like I’ll be giving it a try though.’
Ironically, after all Marc had been through it was the combination of a hard seat and the scabs from his thrashing by Sister Raphael that gave him most discomfort on the flight home.
Davey was targeting an RAF airfield at Bexhill, on England’s southern coast. It was less than two hundred kilometres from their take-off point, making a forty-minute flight for the night fighter. They flew at two hundred metres. This was below German radar coverage, but also low enough that an unexpected hill or a tiny lapse in Davey’s concentration could easily lead to a crash.
The coast was well defended, so Davey went higher and took a slight detour to avoid the searchlights and anti-aircraft guns around the port of Dieppe.
Long-range aircraft such as bombers were able to navigate using networks of directional radio beams. But night fighters carried no advanced navigational receivers, leaving Davey to rely on a simple compass bearing, and any features he could identify on the ground while skimming over at 280 kph in darkness.
When they reached the English Channel, Davey cut the altitude to 125 metres. He hadn’t dared retract the undercarriage in case it didn’t come out again, and he got Marc and Noah to shine a torch out of the cockpit in an attempt to inspect the damage.
With the British coast in sight they encountered three Hurricanes on a routine patrol. They’d probably been sent to investigate a signal picked up by powerful ground radar stations dotted along England’s southern coast.
Every British pilot in the sky that night should have been warned to look out for a lone JU-88 night fighter, flown by a friendly pilot. But Squadron Leader Davey had given enough pre-flight briefings to bored and exhausted pilots to know that this far from guaranteed their safety.
Luftwaffe and RAF planes used different radio frequencies, so Davey had no way of talking to his fellow RAF pilots. His only way of showing friendly intentions was to put on his landing lights and then go into a gentle upwards climb.
In this position, the bottom of the aircraft was exposed, making the largest possible target. It was the aviation equivalent of a dog rolling over to let you tickle its tummy.
‘Oh Christ,’ Davey shouted, as he watched one of the Hurricanes break formation and dive into an attack run.
He threw the JU-88 to one side, but in this position it would only take one machine gun blast to blow their fuel tanks.
Fortunately, at least one Hurricane pilot had paid attention during his briefing – or maybe just realised something was fishy about an enemy plane that flew at you belly up with its landing lights switched on.
Either way, the attacking Hurricane broke off and as Davey levelled out a second Hurricane moved alongside. They were close enough to see goggled faces illuminated by instrument panels and the two RAF pilots exchanged thumbs up.
Two of the Hurricane’s resumed their patrol, but to prevent further mix-ups one stayed on the tail of the German night fighter. For the next several minutes, Davey flew calmly, but kept an increasingly wary eye on his fuel gauge.
He studied his instruments. Having the undercarriage down created extra drag, but that wasn’t enough to explain the rate at which they’d been burning fuel.
Marc had noticed Davey’s increasingly anxious movements, but decided it was better to let his pilot concentrate than ask what was going on and risk breaking his concentration.
Two near-simultaneous events caused Davey to break his silence.
‘I’ve left the choke out,’ he shouted, first of all. ‘That’s a rookie’s mistake, damn and blast!’
Marc had learned about choke when he’d learned to drive cars and motorbikes. By pulling out the choke lever, an engine got fed a richer fuel mixture that was needed while it warmed up. But if you left the choke out once the engines were warm, you burned too much fuel.
Then Davey said, ‘And that’s Worthing blasted pier. Which means we’re a good ten miles off course and running on fumes.’
‘Can we make it to the airfield?’ Marc asked.
‘It’s touch and go,’ Davey said.
Marc and Noah exchanged anxious glances. Neither of them knew enough about flying to discern whether Davey’s mistakes were down to incompetence, or just the fact that he was doing a very difficult job. All they could do was keep quiet and let him concentrate.
The other pilot in the Hurricane was confused by the sudden change in course when they reached the coast, but he kept flying just behind. Then the right engine went into a death spiral, choking with several misfires as the propeller slowed to a halt.
‘We’re too low to glide in,’ Davey shouted, as he rolled the plane to the left, hoping to tip any last dregs of fuel towards the surviving engine. ‘We’re less than ten minutes from Bexhill, but we’ll only get a few seconds if the second engine goes, so if I see a good spot I’m going to try and plant her.’
The plane felt twitchy with only one engine running and Marc’s heart thudded when the engine spluttered, but mercifully kept running.
‘I’m seeing a good flat stretch of field up ahead,’ Davey shouted, as he turned the plane gently.
The left engine stuttered and misfired twice more.
‘You two brace yourselves. It’s going to get bumpy.’
The plane landed hard, with grass and stones pelting the underside, as Davey used left and right flaps to try keeping the JU-88 balanced on its one good wheel. All was good until their only wheel ran into the stump of a felled tree.
The wheel tore off, along with the engine pod under the right wing. The frame of the aircraft buckled, making the cockpit canopy break its bolts and shoot open. Marc’s neck snapped painfully as Noah’s huge bulk crushed him against the side of the plane.
They were pirouetting. The sound was deafening and a boulder dented the fuselage right next to Marc’s head.
As the speed decreased, the rustling and ripping sounds grew more like normal. It was almost a relief, but in a final act the right wing broke off completely and they tilted tail first into a narrow stream before coming to a complete halt.
There was only moonlight. Noah had thumped his head on something hard and moaned as Marc struggled to get out from beneath him.
‘Noah, move,’ Marc shouted, as he felt around in the dark, trying to release his safety harness.
The big Canadian was concussed, but conscious. Up front, Davey had smashed his face on the control stick and he was spark out, with his nose caved and a deep gash in his cheek.
Even the fumes in an empty tank of aviation fuel are enough to cause an explosion. Marc fought his seat buckle and used every bit of strength to push Noah to one side and knock off the remains of the shattered cockpit.
‘What’s going on?’ Noah asked, completely off his head.
‘You need to stand up and get out of the plane,’ Marc shouted. ‘Can you understand me?’
As Marc stepped out of the cockpit he realised they were at a steep angle. He could step backwards, then slide down the unbroken left wing to the ground, but he didn’t want to abandon Noah and Davey.
‘Come on, you fat bastard,’ Marc said, as he undid Noah’s harness and gave him a tug.
Noah almost head-butted Marc as he stood up. After the noise of the crash, the plane was making eerie sounds. Broken hydraulics hissed and hot engine parts pinged and gurgled.
As Noah slid face-first down the wing, Marc leant over the cockpit sill and reached into a bloody mess to undo Davey’s harness. It took everything he had to drag the pilot’s torso over the side of the cockpit.
‘Stop what you’re doing and put your hands where I can see them,’ someone shouted, in English.
Marc had been too busy huffing and grunting to hear two men and a woman crossing the field towards the wreckage.
Marc spoke in English, ‘I’m trying to get the pilot out. He’s RAF!’
A shotgun blast rang out and a man shouted angrily. ‘That was a warning shot. Next one won’t be, you devious Boche bastard.’
Marc had no choice but to step away from the cockpit and slide down the wing towards a pair of waiting shotguns.
‘He’s an RAF pilot,’ Marc repeated.
‘We saw that Hurricane shoot you down,’ the younger of the two farmers said irritably.
Marc was pissed off because he wanted to help Davey, but he understood the gunmens’ perspective. They’d seen a German plane chased by a Hurricane, followed by a crash landing and the emergence of two people who spoke English with funny accents.
Noah was starting to get his senses back, and looked up at the shotgun pointing in his face.
‘We should move further from the aircraft,’ Noah said. ‘If it catches light we’ll know all about it sitting here.’
Marc looked around towards the nose of the aircraft, as Davey groaned from up in the cockpit. At least it meant he was alive.
Although several of the aerial pieces had snapped off, Marc was optimistic because the nose cone with the sensitive radar set inside appeared to have suffered nothing more serious than scuffs and dents.
But the men with the shotgun were on edge. They didn’t like Marc looking around, or Noah giving them orders.
‘Devious Kraut bastard,’ the younger of the two farmers said, before swinging the butt of his shotgun and knocking Marc cold with a blow to the temple.
CHERUB campus looked different. There was a new perimeter fence and a US Air Force team working security on the front gate. The road up to the old village school where CHERUB agents lived was a sea of mud, churned up by trucks and construction machinery building a runway at the eastern end of what had been a British Army artillery firing range when Marc left a year earlier.
Marc had spent two nights in hospital under observation. He had a dressing over his right temple and mild burns on the back of his neck as he stepped out of Superintendant McAfferty’s little Austin.
Inside, a toddler sat beneath a table in the hallway, playing with spent shell cases. Charles Henderson’s head popped out of his office and his face lit up when he saw Marc.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Henderson shouted. ‘Bloody good to see you!’
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ the toddler under the table repeated.
‘Terence, what have I told you about Daddy’s naughty words?’ McAfferty asked, as she gave Henderson a dirty look, then picked up the smirking toddler and gave him a good squeeze and a kiss on the cheek.
Henderson and Marc exchanged a solid British handshake, followed by a Gallic exchange of kisses on the cheek.
‘Seems quiet,’ Marc said, as he looked up the staircase towards the rooms where young agents and trainees slept.