Death Ray (16 page)

Having flown with the Special Duties squadron, I knew this wasn’t the first time Nils had made forays into France. ‘Had problems before?’

He nodded.

I gulped. ‘What can we expect? Will the coast be lit up by searchlights?’

He shook his head. ‘Fritz doesn’t care about anything other than his industrial heartland. Close to cities like Hamburg and Bremen they drench the night sky with beams of light, creating a so-called
Lichtdom
or cathedral of light. It’s about twenty miles wide. Our chaps just fly round it. On the coast, Finn, I don’t anticipate seeing more than the occasional searchlight, and that’ll only appear if they hear us and get twitchy.’

Breathing a sigh of relief, I took my turn on the controls. Keeping to fifty feet proved even harder than I’d expected. I repeatedly had to make small adjustments every time Loki yelled into my ears that we were too high or too low. Sweat formed on the nape of my neck and trickled down inside the collar of my leather jacket. I found myself gripping the column so tightly my knuckles looked like they were about to explode.

Then it happened. Without warning a distorted, faint voice crackled over the radio. A German voice … And he was talking to us!

THE HAIRS ON
the back of my neck prickled. ‘Bandits, Loki! Can you see them?’

‘No, Finn. They must be on our tail. Being this low, we’re sitting ducks.’

‘Keep your eyes peeled.’

Nils reached down and switched off the lights in the wing tips. ‘Hold her steady, Finn, while I try to get him off our backs.’

Nils explained over the radio to the German pilot that we were on a special mission – at least that bit was true! We had prepared for this situation and our response was based on several things in our favour. First, we were in a German Heinkel in Luftwaffe colours and markings, albeit the wrong ones for this area; our plane actually belonged to a Luftwaffe squadron based in Norway, not northern France. Second, we were flying low and slowly because we had engine trouble and so were limping home. Third, we spoke reasonable German, Nils more or less fluently, so we reckoned that would help convince the enemy. While I frantically scanned the night sky, Nils spoke to the pilot, trying to sound natural and reassuring, telling him that everything was otherwise fine, or, as the Germans say,
Alles in Ordnung
. Unfortunately the rather suspicious enemy
didn’t
buy it for some reason and kept mentioning something about our
Zwilling
, which had me baffled. I knew was that
Zwilling
was German for ‘twin’ but as far as I could tell, he was saying our
Zwilling
wasn’t on, whatever that meant.

Remembering something, Loki came to our rescue. ‘Finn, when we flew that first time with Dieter Braun, his navigator mentioned to me that a special system was fitted to the plane. I think he called it something weird like
Zwilling
and, although I didn’t understand everything he said about it, I reckon it sounds a bit like that IFF system you mentioned earlier, Nils.’

‘Thanks, Loki.’ Nils began frantically scanning the instruments.

It hadn’t occurred to me that the Germans probably had a similar system. If there was one, then there had to be some controls for it. Nils located a small group of switches to his left and, reaching out, said that he might as well try them.

‘Wait!’ I said, grabbing his arm. ‘It would look rather odd if we suddenly turned it back on. Can’t we say it’s broken?’

‘Good point. Let’s give that a try.’ He flipped the transmission switch on the radio and proceeded to inform the enemy that our
Zwilling
was totally
kaputt
, that we’d been hit by flak over the English coast and that it had screwed up some of our systems.

A few heart-stopping moments of silence were eventually followed by the pilot’s reply. It began with a groan of sympathy, followed by, ‘
Kein Wunder! So ein Peck!
’

‘Above us at two o’clock!’ Loki yelled into our ears. I looked up to my right and saw the silhouette of a small plane. My mouth went so dry I had trouble swallowing. At first I assumed she was a Messerschmitt 109 but then I saw that she was too small and her wings were tapered like those of the Hurricane. ‘What is she?’ I asked.

Nils gazed at her a moment. ‘Looks like one of their new Heinkel 113s, Finn. They’re even faster than the Messerschmitt 109. No way can we outrun or outmanoeuvre her.’

‘Want me to blast her to hell?’ Loki called out.

‘No, Loki,’ Nils snapped. ‘Wait. I think we’re OK.’

The enemy kindly offered to escort us. Nils set about dissuading the pilot, saying we hadn’t far to go and that we were fine as we were. He was getting nowhere, however. Just as I was thinking that we’d dug a mighty big hole for ourselves and that Loki might be forced to have a go with his machine gun, the enemy pilot suddenly said, ‘
Es tut mir Leid, aber wir haben noch eine Freya Detektionsmeldung empfangen … Gute Reise … Wiedersehen
.’

Without further explanation his plane turned sharply left, cut across our path and disappeared into the night. I felt even more choked.
Freya Detektionsmeldung empfangen
– he’d made another Freya discovery. What on earth did that mean? I turned and saw Nils staring at me, his eyes narrow and questioning.

‘Bloody hell!’ Loki exclaimed through our headphones. ‘Told you, Finn. I said they knew we were coming. They were looking for Freya.’

Nils angrily unfastened his mask. ‘You told him?’ he snapped at me.

I removed my mask too. ‘Yes. It just slipped out. Sorry.’

‘Do the others know?’

‘No … Well, only Max – I mean Luc.’

He shook his head at me in disappointment.

‘But I still don’t get it,’ I said. ‘What does it mean?’

Nils looked up at the night sky in exasperation.

‘Do we turn back?’ I asked.

‘Too late,’ he replied. ‘There’s the French coast, Finn. And if we were to turn round now they’d know something was up for sure.’

Straight ahead I could see the horizontal grey smudge of a line: the tall cliffs of France. We were almost there. And Nils was right, we had to press on. To turn round now, with the enemy so close, would look suspicious, and undoubtedly they’d be swarming all over us like flies around a rotting apple within minutes. I squeezed my eyes shut and said a quick prayer. Then I opened them again, took a deep breath and said, ‘Right, Nils. Let’s do it.’ I checked the time and our airspeed, then calculated our position. ‘Turn parallel to the coast heading east. We should see the river estuary in about five minutes.’

WE FLEW IN
the shadow of the cliffs. They lay to our left, towering above us almost within touching distance. In the moonlight they looked like a solid black wall. The wind was stronger than forecast too, and seemed to be drawing us towards the cliff face as if we were caught in the strong pull of a magnetic field. Having to continually adjust our position, we knew that one slip and in the blink of an eye we would become little more than a mangled wreck encased in a ball of flames. I didn’t like the way we kept lurching from side to side either, everything not securely bolted down rattling as if jittery with nerves. For once I wished I was one of the others, huddled against the fuselage in the crawl way, oblivious to the risks we were taking.

‘There’s the river, Finn.’ Nils pointed.

I saw the estuary ahead, a broad sweeping gap in the cliffs where the sea seemed to be eating into the land. Nils turned away from the coast and then set us on a gentle turn so that we ended up approaching the river head on. The waterway curved and snaked inland, slowly narrowing to little more than a twisting sliver of silver. It reminded me of a snail’s slimy trail. Nils leaned forward and turned our wing lights back on. ‘I figure we need all the help we can get going in so low. Better tell
the
others, Finn. Less than ten minutes to landing.’ He flashed two handfuls of fingers at me to make sure I’d understood.

I climbed out of my seat and headed back, stretching out my arms and pressing my hands against the plane’s fuselage to steady myself. Four pairs of eyes looked round at me expectantly. I crouched down. ‘Ten minutes, give or take,’ I shouted. In the dim glow of the small red lamp I was startled by just how scared Freya looked. She had never looked this fearful. Never! Her knees drawn up, she hugged her suitcase against her chest. Amélie, full of nervous energy, was fiddling with a crucifix on a slender gold chain about her neck, while Jacques stared as if held in a hypnotist’s trance. Only Max, or should I say Luc, responded to my message. He nodded, smiled at me, and held out a hand. I leaned forward, grasped it tightly and shook it. He said something to me but I didn’t catch it over the din of the engines. So I just smiled back. As I turned to head for the cockpit, Freya stopped me, calling out, ‘Finn!’

I crouched back down in front of her, so that our noses were almost touching. ‘Finn, I just wanted to say …’ She hesitated. ‘Take care of yourself. I love you two, both of you. You and Loki.’ She kissed me on my cheek.

Overwhelmed, I reached out and hugged her tightly. ‘I’ve got the easy bit,’ I said. ‘Your father would be so proud of you. And you’re going to be just fine. I know it. Max here has promised to look after you. Isn’t that right, Max?’ He didn’t hear, so I shouted at him,
‘Isn’t
that right, Max? You’ll see Freya’s still in one piece when we come to pick her up.’

Max gave a thumbs-up.

‘See! Told you.’

Freya managed to force an unconvincing smile onto her lips.

‘Loki and I love you too,’ I said, squeezing her.

When I was back in my seat, we prepared for our tricky landing. ‘About four miles to the rendezvous,’ said Nils. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for their signal. Green light and we’re OK, a red one and we’re out of here before you can say
Gute Nacht, Fritz
. Once we land, I want you and Loki to go and help the others. Arm yourselves with a couple of Stens and stay out on the floats until everyone’s safely in the boats and heading for the river bank. Then get back into the plane double quick. I don’t want to be here a second longer than is necessary. I’ll keep her engines running just fast enough to hold our position against the flow of the river.’

Looking at our instruments, I realized we were hurtling up the middle of the estuary at eighty-five miles per hour, at an altitude of about fifty feet. Our airspeed was gradually falling. ‘Won’t she stall if we go too slowly?’

Nils’ reply hardly filled me with confidence. ‘We’ll soon find out, Finn.’

The landscape was hard to make out, but struck me as flat. I saw only occasional lights and the outlines of buildings whizzing past. I guessed that anyone at home would get the fright of their lives as we roared past their
bedrooms
or rooftops, but by the time they ran to their windows or doors we’d be long gone. The river looked scarily narrow in places too, and it seemed as if our wing tips were trimming the branches of trees lining both banks. Strange dark shapes in the water caught my eye: boats were moored mid-river and I dreaded unwittingly crashing into their masts. My other worry was German patrols out there in the darkness. They could be anywhere, even on the river itself, and we could do nothing about it. That was a job for our reception committee, the local Resistance. It was down to them to keep a lookout.

‘Green light. To our left. Three to four hundred yards,’ Loki announced.

Spotting it as well, Nils wasted no time. He throttled right back and set the flaps to their maximum angles, creating as much drag as possible. His treatment of the controls was so fierce, the plane seemed to jolt as if it had struck something. Our airspeed plummeted and we descended rapidly, everything rattling like bones in a metal coffin. Flying in so low, it took only seconds for our floats to strike the surface. We bounced off the water, the nose of the plane lifting about thirty degrees before pitching forwards again. Like a pebble skimming across the surface of a pond, we struck the water four times before the plane’s massive floats settled, the sudden drag slowing us down sharply. ‘Get going, you two. There isn’t a moment to lose,’ Nils shouted. ‘I’ll turn and position us as close to the bank as possible.’

I unbuckled and headed back, pressing past the others
and
making for the hatchway. Flinging the door open, Loki joined me and handed over a Sten, plus several magazines of ammunition. Moments later we were outside, crouching on the floats, machine guns poised, scanning the gloom. Jacques clambered down the ladder next and then set about catching each of the waterproof holdalls as Max threw them out. Although the engines were barely ticking over, the noise seemed frighteningly loud – I reckoned we could be heard for miles.

Thankfully the river was broad where we’d chosen to land, which made it slow flowing. When the moon briefly hid behind a cloud, the night grew as black as coal. It was chilly too, and a thin veil of patchy mist seemed to hang in the air, partially shrouding the banks.

All the supplies had been unloaded by the time I spotted the strange insect-like shapes of two rowing boats heading towards us, the rhythmic lifting and dipping of their oars making them look like bugs crawling over the surface of the water. Max helped Amélie and Freya clamber out of the Heinkel and then he slid down the ladder too.

The first rowing boat arrived, clonking hard against the metal of the float. The man in it hurriedly drew in his oars, flung Max a rope and said, ‘
Bonsoir. Faites vite! Vite!
’

Our contact was a hulk of a fellow with a huge moustache. Clad in dark jacket and hat, he struck me as extremely nervous, flashing glances up and down the river and at the opposite bank.

Jacques startled us all by drawing a revolver and
pointing
it at the oarsman. ‘Where is Monsieur Truffaut?’ he asked sternly in his native French. His hand was shaking. ‘We were expecting him.’

‘Albert was rounded up by the SS three days ago,’ the man snapped back. ‘Along with several others. Now get a move on. We haven’t much time.’