A Distant Melody (36 page)

Never before had her dreams been so vivid, so frightful. She folded back the covers and dropped to her knees on the rug beside her bed. “Oh Lord, he’s half a world away. He belongs to another woman, but you want me to pray for him, and I’ll do so.”

Allie burrowed her forehead into the mattress and prayed harder than ever. She could feel her prayers swirl about her, mingle with the Holy Spirit, and waft across a continent and an ocean to the man she loved.

“Come on, Preach, hold still. Gotta get the tourniquet on.”

Walt screamed, and his body contorted, but he raised his arm to let Pete work. This was nothing, nothing like any pain he’d felt before, like hitting his funny bone, but it wouldn’t go away.

Pete cut through the sleeve of Walt’s heavy B-3 flight jacket and eased it off his arm. The wool shirtsleeve, no longer olive drab, came off next. Pete wrapped a tourniquet above the elbow and bore down hard.

Walt cried out.

“Yeah, I know. We’ll get you a new jacket.”

He tried to smile. “You’d better.”

“The cold will do you good, help close up the wounds.”

Somehow in his pain-wracked head he remembered hearing about a B-24 gunner in the 93rd Group whose backside had been filled with flak over Vegesack. The crew saved his life by sticking the injured part outside through a hole in the fuselage.

Pete sprinkled sulphonamide powder on the wounds. “I’m ready for the morphine, J.P. Got it thawed?”

J.P. sat in the copilot’s seat, his hands on the wheel. He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a syringe. “Yeah. Looks good.”

“No morphine,” Walt said. “Gotta fly this plane.”

Pete leveled clear blue eyes at Walt. “You can’t fly if you can’t sit still.”

He groaned and nodded. “All right, but not too much.”

“Yes, sir,” Pete said, but he sank the entire contents of the syringe into Walt’s upper arm.

Walt sighed. Now he’d have to fight drowsiness as well as pain and blood loss. He was the only one left who could fly the ship. J.P. knew the mechanics of the bomber, but he’d never been behind the controls. Walt was the crew’s only hope.

While Pete wrapped bandages around his elbow, forearm, and hand, Walt tried to engage his brain. It was 1430, an hour and a half past the target, and at least two hours from Thurleigh.

“Well, Pete,
Flossie
should make it to England, although it’ll be tight. What about me? You think I can last two hours?”

Pete’s pause didn’t assure him. “Sure. I just—just need to stop the blood loss.”

Walt screwed his eyes shut. “We’ve got about half an hour to decide. That’s when we reach the Channel.” They were over the North Sea with the continent in sight to the south, and they could drift over land to bail out. It’d be a tough jump with four wounded men, two unconscious. Most would survive, although as prisoners of war.

On the other hand, ditching a B-17 in the Channel was tough—not as bad as a B-24, which disintegrated when it hit the water—but still tough. Even if they got out of the plane in time, they had only a 28 percent chance of rescue, and the injured men wouldn’t last in the icy water.

Before long, the morphine kicked in, and the pain lessened to a throbbing ache. The sensation of moving in syrup intensified. When he tried to look from the altimeter to the tachometers, his eyeballs took a second to respond.

“Good news, Preach,” Pete said from back in the waist section. “Fontaine woke up. He wants to know what’s for breakfast.”

Walt looked at J.P., who grinned back under his mask. “Tell him he has a choice between German rations or American.”

“American.” Louis’s voice came through weakly. “Y’all know the Jerries won’t have Tabasco sauce.”

“Okay, but we’re alone up here. I need your help to plot a course. Can you do that?”

“Sure. Can’t write with these broken arms, but Bill can help.”

“Anyone want to bail now?” Walt said. “Our chances aren’t great, and Abe would do better on land than in the water.”

“Are you crazy?” Louis said. “He’s Jewish. Once he said he’d go down with the plane rather than face the Nazis.”

“All right,” Walt said with a sigh. “Pray hard, everyone. ‘The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust.’” Psalm 18:2, inscribed on the nose of the B-17 and in Walt’s mind and heart.

The continental coast faded behind him. He studied the fuel and oil gauges and made his fogged mind do the calculations. J.P. had transferred fuel from damaged engine number three to number one, but they needed every drop of fuel, every bit of airspeed.

Walt took
Flossie
down to five hundred feet. “Okay, men, let’s lighten our load. Dump everything we don’t need anymore— oxygen equipment, masks. Bill, get rid of whatever radio equipment you can. We’re below German radar, so ditch the guns, the ammo. Al, go down into the nose, make sure that’s clear.”

“Okay,” Al said. “But you ain’t gonna get me to dump my fifty cases of whiskey.”

For a moment, laughter took Walt’s mind off his pain and his dilemma.

While the crew heaved equipment out the hatches, Walt talked J.P. through landing. J.P. shook his head at the mass of instruments on the panel. “You have to stay awake. I can’t do this alone.”

“I’m trying.” Walt blinked hard against the fatigue. “But if I don’t, you’re in charge.”

J.P. frowned. “We can’t bail out over England. We’re too low for a jump. But I can’t land this plane.”

“Don’t say that. I know you can.”

J.P. shot him a skeptical look.

Walt winced and shifted position on his seat-pack parachute. His arm lay numb, heavy, and icy in his lap. “Yes, I lied to you, and you have no idea how much I regret it, but I never lied about your ability. You’re one of the smartest, most capable men I’ve ever met, and I’d rather have you up here than half the commissioned pilots I know.”

J.P. snorted and glanced out the window.

This was why Walt would never lie again. “Listen, you have to admit I’ve never been a flatterer.”

J.P. turned dark eyes to Walt and nodded.

“So do it. Land this bird.”

“I’d rather have you around to do it.” One side of his mouth hiked up, and Walt smiled at the glimmer of friendliness.

“All clear down here,” Al called on the interphone from the nose.

“Thanks. How’s the back, Bill?”

“Stripped to the bones. The only dead weight remaining is Worley.”

“Preach, tell Bill I heard that, and I’m coming to get him.”

Walt laughed, a mistake, used up too much energy. His lips tingled, and his vision darkened. He dropped his head to the control wheel until the sensation passed.

J.P. leaned over and tightened the tourniquet. “How are you doing?”

“Okay.” He raised his head and looked to the gauges. They’d gained some airspeed. Good.

“Two B-17s approaching,” Mario said from the tail. “Squadron letters
VK
—yeah, 303rd Group. Oh. And an escort.”

“Spits? Thunderbolts?” They could guide
Flossie
to an airfield, or at least notify Air-Sea Rescue if she went down.

“Um, no. Fw 190. Oh no. He changed course. Coming our way.”

Allie’s alarm clock on the bedside table read seven-thirty. She needed to get dressed, take a long bus ride, and get to March Field by nine o’clock.

Her legs were cramped from kneeling so long. She got up, winced at the pins and needles, took a step, and slipped on papers underfoot—Walt’s last letters. She retrieved them and crossed the cool hardwood floor to her desk.

Walt’s portrait gazed at her, professionally stoic but good-natured. No wonder Emily fell for him. Allie added the letters to the thick stack in the top left drawer—for the last time. Something broke inside her.

She picked up the tiny grand piano and her face crumpled— “Für Allie. W.J.N. ’42.” Although he didn’t love her, he’d been the dearest of friends.

Allie stroked
Flossie
’s wooden cockpit. Her prayers hung unresolved, like six notes in a musical scale.

What about the hospital?

Allie sat at the desk and opened her Bible to Psalm 91. As a volunteer, she could be admonished but she couldn’t be fired.

“No guns,” Walt whispered.

“We’re dead,” J.P. said.

Walt hated pessimism, but in this case it was warranted.

“Six o’clock level,” Mario called.

Attacking a Fort from the rear was suicidal, and the German was too far off to know they had ditched their guns. Either he was confident or stupid.

“He’s closing,” Mario said.

Walt rolled to the right, but he was too low to dive. The left wing shook, and the fighter climbed up and away. Walt righted the plane. Oil pressure fell in number two, and the engine slowed, sputtered, and stopped. The prop windmilled, as useless as a child’s pinwheel.

He had to get that prop feathered, couldn’t afford the drag.

He ran through the feathering procedure but he didn’t know why he bothered. The Fw 190 cut a loop in front of him, then a graceful saddle-shaped chandelle. Showing off. The German circled
Flossie
clockwise and pulled alongside the cockpit on Walt’s side.

What was he doing? Inspecting the damage? Fine. Maybe if he saw the shattered nose, the two dead engines, and the lack of guns, he’d let them die of their own accord. No need to finish them off.

The pilot flipped up his goggles, squinted at
Flossie’s
nose, and pulled off his oxygen mask. The man had a square chin and wide-set eyes, and his lips moved as if reading something out loud. Strange that the enemy was human.

Walt scanned the Fw 190’s yellow nose, the black cross on the fuselage, and twenty hash marks on the rudder. Swell, an ace.

“Hey, Preach,” Mario called. “I’m up in the waist. Cracker’s pistol! I’ve got Cracker’s pistol. I can get a shot in.”

“Wait, no! Hold your fire.” Walt whipped his gaze back to the Luftwaffe pilot, still moving his lips. He was reading the verse on Walt’s plane. “Dear Lord, help him translate.”

“Preach, have you lost your mind? You know I’m a good shot. I can get him.”

“Tagger, no. That’s an order.” He met the eyes of the enemy. With his left hand he brought his shattered right arm up in a salute, biting back a scream from the pain that shot through him.

The German nodded and raised a traditional military salute, not a stiff-armed “Heil Hitler” salute. Then the fighter wheeled away.

“He’s gone! He’s really gone,” Harry said from the waist. “What happened?”

“We’re not worth the ammo.” Cracker’s voice was feeble.

“No,” J.P. said, eyes on Walt. “It was the Bible verse— Novak’s Bible verse. He read it and he left.”

Louis cheered. “I told you it was good luck.”

“No such thing,” Walt said. “It was God’s mercy. Pray for more mercy. We’re in worse shape than before and a long way from home.”