The Swiss Courier: A Novel (33 page)

“Thanks, Papi.” Gabi pursed her lips with determination as Eric yanked the cut fence aside so Gabi could scoot through on her knees. When she was through the fence, she motioned for her father to hand her the emergency radio.

Eric pulled on the fencing again so her father could pass her a heavy olive box with a pair of Bakelite headphones.

Bill intercepted the emergency radio from Ernie’s hands. “Here, let me carry that.” He cradled it with both arms. “That was nice of Mr. Dulles to spare one of these.”

“I’m sure we’ll be needing it.” Gabi looked back at Eric and her father. “I love you both,” she said. If she
didn’t
return, she wanted Eric to at least have those words planted in his heart.

Gabi and Bill crouched and scuttled for the Ju-52. Gabi, with nothing in her hands, reached the rear door first. She scrambled into the cabin and extended a hand back to Bill, who, encumbered by a bulky radio, accepted her aid.

“Thanks, Gabi. Shut the door.” Bill instantly switched roles from team player to pilot-in-command. He flipped on a flashlight. The Junkers was fitted with seven rows of leather seats, one seat per each side of the center aisle. He worked his way forward up the steep fuselage and into the cockpit while Gabi struggled to get the fuselage door closed. After setting the emergency radio behind him, he climbed over the cumbersome flap-setting levers and into the left seat.

The smells inside the cockpit—old leather, oil, gas, and sweat—stirred long-dormant feelings in Bill. He was a pilot again, back in his office, and it felt good to reclaim this part of his world. The first thing he noticed was that his Swiss counterpart had left his leather helmet hanging on a hook next to the captain’s seat. Bill settled in and made himself comfortable.

Next, he extended his arms and grabbed the lacquered wooden control wheel, smooth to the touch. Comfortable with the arm extension, he set his feet on the rudder pedals. He recognized much of the instrument panel, although the controls and switches were written in German. The airspeed indicator, he reminded himself, was in kilometers per hour, not in knots or miles per hour like in American planes. What was the calculation? Oh, yeah. One hundred kilometers an hour was sixty-two miles per hour.

He was captain of the ship but had no time to appreciate it. He needed to get the battery switched on and get this lady ready to go. How that happened, however, would be inspired guesswork.

Using his flashlight for illumination, he first set the elevator trim about a quarter up. For the huge flaps that ran the length of the wings—which gave the Junkers its great short takeoff and landing capability—he wound down a quarter. He scanned the instrument panel for the electrical switches and followed a hunch by flicking a pair. A voltmeter flickered, and the cockpit lights came on. The earphones in the helmet next to him crackled as the ship’s radio came to life. He was doing something right . . . but the rest of the cocks and spigots—what the Brits called the valves and switches back in East Anglia—looked like a plumbers’ nightmare. He left them where they were.

Bill turned his attention to the engine controls on the center console. Three sets of levers controlled the throttles, mixture, and fuel cocks, he surmised, one set for each engine. If true, that simplified things a bit. Three guarded switches marked “Start”—the same word in English—looked to be for the electrical starter motors. A long lever marked
Tank
at the back of the pedestal—the fuel tank selector—had three positions for the separate fuel tanks in the right and left wings. He left it in the center
Alle
position, figuring
Alle
meant “all” and would siphon gas from each tank equally during flight.

Okay, back to basics. To start an engine, it needed fuel, ignition, and motion . . . he looked up and saw Gabi entering the cockpit.

“Sorry. I couldn’t get the stupid door to close,” she said. “The wind picked up.”

“No problem. Sit here in the copilot’s chair—duck!” Bill pushed Gabi into a hunched position and bunched himself into a ball as well.

“What’s going on?” Gabi set her arms around her head.

“A truck full of soldiers just shot by. Let me see . . .” Bill peered over the cockpit coaming and immediately saw the source of consternation. A quarter of a mile away, the American airmen had scattered for the exits, and a dozen Swiss military personnel were running around, rifles raised, like a hornet’s nest that had been upended.

“Looks like our Yank birdmen weren’t interested in vacationing in Davos.” Bill continued to peer toward the confusion around the parked B-17. “Something tells me they aren’t going to get very far.”

Gabi straightened up in the copilot’s seat, a smile forming on her lips. “That was nice of Mr. Dulles to arrange a diversion for us, although I feel sorry for the pilots.”

Bill’s eyes grew wide. “You mean Mr. Dulles purposely diverted a B-17 to Dübendorf?”

“Yup. They were just waiting for a signal from my father to give us a little breathing room.”

“Amazing.” Bill couldn’t imagine what league Mr. Dulles was playing in, but it had to be the majors.

“Not as amazing as what I’m about to tell you.” Gabi looked directly at him. “Mr. Dulles asked General Guisan for a favor.”

“You mean this Junkers?”

“It was the only way we could see flying into Germany, so the General offered to fly his plane here—into Dübendorf, supposedly for a quick meeting in Zürich. That’s funny you had the idea to steal this Junkers when that was the plan all along.”

Bill shrugged and set his right hand on the center console. “Brilliant minds think alike, I guess. Okay, it’s flying time, so I’m going to need your help.” The pilot applied himself to starting the right engine. He selected the right fuel cock lever and slightly opened the throttle. “This
Magnet
switch would be Magneto in English, right?”

Gabi peered over to the instrument panel. “Yes, that’s correct.” “There’s also this switch on the magneto panel that says
Haupt
.”

“That’s an old German word for
head
, but here it means ‘main,’ as in a main switch,” Gabi said.

Bill selected the
Haupt
magneto switch. There was no time to vent the lower cylinders on the radial engines, but that was okay since not much oil would have gathered in the short time since the motors had stopped. He took a deep breath and switched on the No. 1 starter. There was an electrical whine, and the cockpit lights dimmed momentarily. Bill flicked the fuel switch . . .

A couple of bangs, and the No.1 engine on the left wing outside his window caught lustily. Exhaust smoke gathered around them. Bill reduced the engine speed with the throttle, and it idled noisily.

“Where’s the fuel gauge?” Bill peered at the instrument panel. “Could this be it?” He pointed at a round gauge that said “Liter x 100.” Below the heading, a numerical figure 12,6 was positioned at 11 o’clock on a timepiece, followed by markings of 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and 0—the 0 at 1 o’clock on a timepiece.

Gabi nodded. “That’s the fuel gauge.”

“Why the comma?” Bill asked.

“In Europe, we use the comma instead of the period for decimal points. Don’t ask me why.”

Bill studied the gauge. The needle rested firmly on the number 7 marking. “Looks like we’re just over half full with around 700 liters of fuel.”

“Is that enough to get us there and back?” Gabi asked.

Bill did some quick mental calculations. “Let’s see. If a full fuel tank is 1,260 liters, and the plane’s range is 1,000 kilometers . . .”

“Mr. Dulles said it was around 250 kilometers to the Ulrich farm, so that makes 500 kilometers round trip.”

Bill closed his eyes and worked the math in his head. “I’m figuring we’re good for 600 kilometers in the air, but that doesn’t leave much reserve in case—”

“Soldiers are running toward us!” Gabi pointed over Bill’s shoulder toward the operations hut.

“Obviously, they didn’t get the word from General Gui-san.” Bill hurriedly repeated the same start-up sequence for the No. 3 engine, which roared to life and belched smoke from the exhaust pipes.

“Two are on a motorbike—coming right for us.” Gabi strained to see beyond the view outside Bill’s window.

“I have one more engine to start up.” The Ju-52’s No. 2 engine was mounted in front of the fuselage.

“But they’ll be here any second!”

They couldn’t wait any longer. Bill reached over to the center console and pushed forward on the throttles of the two engines. The Junkers shook and vibrated from the strain— but didn’t budge.

“The chocks!” The fact that there were wooden chocks in front of the main wheels didn’t surprise him since the Junk-ers didn’t have a parking brake. He would have moved the chocks aside during a visual inspection, but there’d been no time for that—

The motorcycle’s arrival on his left with two Swiss soldiers interrupted his thoughts. The soldier in the sidecar jumped out and shouldered his carbine—

Bill jammed the throttles to the firewall—full power—and the wing-mounted engines instantly responded to a fever pitch. The ship shook to the last rivet, then bounded over the wooden chocks and shot out like a rubber band from a kid’s hand.

“Hang on!” The Ju-52 bounded through the grassy tarmac while Bill worked the compressed air footbrakes—and narrowly missed slicing a parked Me-109 fighter with his left wing. He turned sharply to the right and into the open field, where he finally had time to throttle down the engines and regain control of the aircraft.

“Like riding a bustin’ bronco at the state fair!” Bill brought the Junkers to a stop and searched the airfield for the windsock. He found the red-and-white-striped conical tube up ahead and across the runway, and by its droopy angle pointing east, Bill figured on a light westerly or northwesterly wind. “Good, we’re taking off in the right direction,” he said. “We have to get the middle engine going, but that can happen when you windmill—”

“Wait! Another motorbike.” Gabi peered out her window. Two shots rang out, and one struck the fuselage behind the cockpit.

“We’re outta here!” Bill shoved the two throttles to their stops, and the Junkers fishtailed twice before he regained control. He aimed the aircraft for a departure to the west— and into the prevailing wind. The lumbering transport plane gained speed, and the pair of fully revved engines ate up runway.

At eighty kilometers per hour, the center prop started windmilling. Bill opened the center fuel cock, and within seconds, the middle engine roared to life in front of the windscreen. Bill pushed slightly forward on the control column to raise the tail wheel from the ground. The ship’s speed steadily increased to one hundred kilometers per hour, which he figured was the “decision speed.” Bill pulled the control column back gently. In just a few more moments, they’d be airborne—

“The fence!” Gabi screamed.

The fence? There should be more runway . . . The blood drained from Bill’s face as he suddenly realized that they must have taken a catty-corner departure
across
the grassy military airfield. They were running out of real estate. He regarded his airspeed gauge. They were past one hundred kilometers per hour, which should be enough to break the bonds of gravity.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Bill said, his neck muscles taut as a bowstring. The engines whined at full RPMs as the fencing loomed . . . at the last moment, the Junkers lifted. The tri-motor plane cleared the boundary fence but remained desperately low to the ground.

Flight school training kicked in. He resisted the urge to climb until their speed built up and instead focused on maintaining a level course. As the airspeed nudged 110 kilometers per hour, Bill saw something up ahead that caused his neck muscles to flinch. Etched against a moonlit sky, they were careening directly into dimly lit Dübendorf. Bill couldn’t risk gaining more altitude at this moment—or he would plant the nose of the Iron Annie into the middle of the town square. He held the steering wheel steady and let the Ju-52 zoom right through Dübendorf’s main street, so close to the buildings that they were eye-level with the penthouse apartments in the buildings above the shops.

“The church!” Gabi pressed against the back of her seat.

“I see it,” Bill said through clenched teeth. A medieval church and its steeple, fully five stories tall, anchored the end of the downtown district. They had driven by the church an hour earlier, but this time around, Bill didn’t have enough airspeed to risk swinging right or left of the steeple—

“We won’t make it!” Gabi squeezed the armrests.

“Hang on!” Bill kept the nose down, eased back on the control column ever so slightly to squeeze a little more altitude without losing airspeed, then wound down another quarter of flap. The Junkers bounded up thirty more feet of elevation, just avoiding the cross atop the church’s statuesque steeple.

“That was close!” Gabi exhaled.

The landscape quickly gave away to pastureland, and Bill breathed for the first time in a minute. He watched the airspeed dial slowly rise to 130 kph . . . 145 kph, allowing him to wind in the flaps and turn her north. Bill decided to stay low in case a flight duty officer back at the Dübendorf airfield scrambled a Swiss fighter to chase him.

Bill’s intuition proved correct. Within five minutes, a bright tracer flew past their cockpit, leaving a reddish flare afterglow.

“What’s that?” Gabi pointed at the tracer leaving its mark.

“We have company.” Bill looked to his left—and was startled to see an ME-109 so close that he could practically pass a cup of sugar to the other pilot.

The Swiss Air Force airman, his youthful face illuminated by his instrument panel, held up a radio microphone and mimicked a conversation.

“He wants to talk to us,” Bill said. “No doubt to get us to turn around. You see the leather helmet hooked on your chair? Put it on like this—” He slipped on his leather helmet and listened in.