Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
The large black crow climbed silently and lazily in the gentle thermal
airstreams that rose up, unseen, from the English countryside in the county of
Suffolk. It slowly circled in the warm updraft, rocking its wingspan
occasionally to maintain stability as its head flicked, instinctively, to snap
at insects that came within its range. Even the insects were lazy on this
September afternoon, making no effort to avoid their enemy. Perhaps they knew
their life was almost spent, as their first and only summer drifted towards
sleep. The balminess of the English air soothed the earth, soothed the woods,
soothed all living things. It infused a contented serenity into the bucolic
landscape, while an expansive sky reflected an undemanding pale blue whose
juncture with the horizon was a melding of soft, brown haze.
The crow looked down from its high kingdom towards the village of Coney
Hinton which lay amidst the flat, well-wooded farmlands of the area known as
Brecklands. It seemed to be assured that all was well below, intact and
patterned as it had been for the last two hundred years.
A cricket match was in progress near the village school, conducted at a
leisurely pace, for how else can cricket be conducted. A scattered group of
spectators made use of shading elm trees, and made no pretense at animation,
save that of a gentle heaving of chests as a minimum exertion necessary to
maintain life. The players were very young, the non-players were very old.
The rest of the village, like the cricket spectators, appeared to be asleep
except for a freckle-faced, ginger-haired boy skipping flat pebbles across a
stagnant, green pond. He was intent on making the pebble bounce four times
before it hit the far bank but at the
same time avoiding a confused and
ancient duck. As his arm swung back for the hundredth time, the boy's
concentration broke away from viewing the pond's surface. Instead, his face
turned slowly upwards to the sky and canted to one side, as though he wanted to
strain an ear to hear a distant sound. So he stood, frozen, frowning. Suddenly
puzzlement ceased and determination commenced. The youth ran like a hare over to
a bright-red mailbox against which his bicycle lay. He mounted it on the run,
and frantically pushed the pedals while jerking the handlebars from side to side
to coax the utmost speed from his steel steed. He was very soon passed the
village pond, passed the village pub, and on the road to Nettledown.
The crow stopped circling and headed east, issuing raucous, cawing tones and
beating its wings to gain altitude. It was either being threatened or was,
itself, about to threaten. The crow and the boy had suddenly disturbed the
languid afternoon. Their flight and their anxiety were somehow connected.
The crow saw it first, about three miles away at 1000 feet; another bird with
stiff wings, big stiff wings that seemed to have five heads, one of which was
glowing yellow and orange and disgorging a trailing plume of black, oily smoke.
The big bird must be sick, and yet it raised no compassion in the crow, only
indifference, for the crow wheeled away from its frontal appraisal and
gracefully side-slipped down to the safety of a small copse.
The big bird continued to penetrate the tranquil English summer afternoon,
bringing its writhing, battered shape ever closer; a harbinger of a foul evil
being played out on a foreign shore. This bird with the stiff wings was a Boeing
B-17G Flying Fortress. Her name was Seattle Susie. It was September 6, 1944, and
Seattle Susie was returning from a bombing raid on Berlin. She had been aloft
for seven hours; she was tired; she was hurt. That Seattle Susie continued to
fly was a miracle.
A 210-millimetre German rocket fired by a Messerschmitt-109G fighter had
blasted a hole four feet high and three feet wide in the fuselage section of the
radio operator's compartment just aft
of the bomb bay. The radio operator's
body had been literally torn apart, and lay fragmented and twisted in with the
aluminum and steel debris of the shattered fuselage and radio equipment. Dark,
congealed blood and viscera coated the jumbled mass; a disgusting union of man
and metal.
The tail section had been hit by flak, as evidenced by half the rudder being
missing, and the tail gunner's aft-most compartment being cleanly shorn off. The
port and starboard outer engines, engines 1 and 4 respectively, were both
stopped and propellers feathered. The starboard inner periodically belched smoke
and flame. One engine kept the plane in flight. One 1200 horsepower, 9-cylinder,
radial, air-cooled, Wright cyclone engine, model number R-1820-97.
Inside the cockpit the activity bordered on panic as the pilot worked
feverishly to maintain control. It seemed that he had a thousand things to do at
once. He had hoped that the fire in number 3 engine would quench itself, but now
it had a determined hold. He would have to shut it down completely and do
without the small but useful power it was providing. At the same time, he had to
concentrate hard on his approach to Nettledown airfield, just three miles away.
He was not going to enter the traffic pattern but come in for a power-off
landing. He dared not execute any turns for fear of stressing the damaged tail
section. If that fell off or the elevator controls jammed, it would mean certain
death.
The pilot closed the fuel shut-off valve to number 3 engine and commenced the
feathering procedure. Close throttle, press feathering button, mixture control
in "idle cut-off", turn ignition off, pray like hell. Set fire extinguisher
selector and release CO2, pray again. But nothing worked. No CO2 release. No
engine shutdown. No propeller feathering. The electrical system had partially
failed, and the fuel shut-off valves were spring-loaded to stay open without
solenoid activation, even though the toggle switch on the cockpit control
pedestal was switched to "closed".
The pilot cursed and frantically flicked or pushed the various activating
switches and buttons time and time again. He averted
his eyes momentarily
from the starboard inner engine to look at his navigator who was occupying the
copilot' s seat. The copilot had been dead for four hours; a clean kill over
Berlin by a shell fragment entering the cockpit side and then the copilot's
brain. The dead airman had been put down in the bombardier's compartment
forward. Curled up in the fetal position, he no longer feared death; he was
present but absent. The navigator's eyes met the pilot's. They were steady but
cold eyes, eyes that had been disciplined by thirty-five missions, eyes that
were almost expressionless. There was no need for conversation, no time for
conversation. The series of orders and acknowledgments between them was directed
solely towards keeping themselves and the rest of the crew alive. The pilot had
broken communication with the remainder of the crew but they knew he would do
his best in the last few minutes. If his best were not good enough, then death
be quick. They were all veterans. They had been at war a long time and knew the
odds on survival.
The pilot abandoned his attempt to shutdown number 3 engine and concentrated
on his approach. He was two miles out at 800 feet, and knew that he should
prepare to fire off a couple of red flares to alert the flight controller and
Emergency Services that he had dead and wounded on board. But the pilot did not
have time for that, and, anyway, if the flight controller could not see with his
bare eyes the immense damage to Seattle Susie, then he should be shot for
treason. The landing gear had already been lowered to avert damage to the right
wheel and hydraulic lines by the fire in number 3 engine. Indicated airspeed 140
miles per hour. "Lower the flaps one third," ordered the pilot, then he waited
for the additional lift and applied a correction on the control column. He
raised the nose a bit more to reduce speed further, and gingerly moved the
rudder pedals to stay on course.
The pilot's thoughts reached a frenzy. Will the rudder hold? Will it jam?
Will the whole goddamn tail come off? Will I ground loop it? Is the starboard
wing going to burst into flames? Shit!
The navigator read off the airspeed, "135, 130, 128, 125, 120."
"Full
flaps," said the pilot.
Hydraulic pressure only 200 p.s.i. now. Bye, bye brakes. 450 feet. Too high.
Break the glide at 150 feet. Power off on the good number 2 engine and settle
in. Keep her straight. Hold rudder. Hold rudder, goddamn it! Over the fence at
50 feet. Don't stall her. Slipping a bit right. Christ, that fire! Where's my
wing going? Where's my wing?
"Oh, hell!" yelled the pilot. "Shit! Shit! And more shit!"
Seattle Susie came over the runway, trying her best to float gracefully in,
but then in the last five seconds she lost it. Her internal agonies broke loose.
The starboard wing tip hit the ground at the same time as the whole tail section
fell backwards. The wing crumpled, and, acting as a fulcrum, heaved the fuselage
and port wing almost into the vertical plane in a slow, rolling motion. The
starboard wing burst into flames, then the fuselage, then the port wing. The
blazing plane continued crashing and grinding its way down the airfield and off
the main runway; its port wing eventually settling down horizontally. With its
momentum spent, the plane stopped and gave one more final eruption of flame and
black, billowing smoke into the pale blue sky.
Three crows appeared and circled in the man-made thermal rising above the
dying big bird with the broken stiff wings. The peace of the September afternoon
had been shattered, had been, perhaps, merely a soporific illusion organized by
the gods of war to make their entry more dramatic, more
explosive.
