Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘Mark? I’m in trouble. Mark?’ He heard his voice beginning to break. It scared him even more.

In absolute darkness, in this cockpit with a ridged floor and all manner of debris and silt sitting on it, he was not going to find his torch by touch. That simply wasn’t going to happen.

‘Oh shitshitshit,’ Chris found himself muttering.

Mark’s coming, should be here any second. For fuck’s sake calm down.

A faint light turned the world outside the plexiglas cockpit from black to a deep blue. It flickered brighter and darker, but over time it was growing steadily stronger.

Chris sucked in a big breath and puffed out a sigh of relief.

He saw a dark form through the algae-fogged glass of the cockpit. It was treading water outside. No doubt Mark was calling for him on the radio and probably getting worried that he wasn’t receiving an answer.

Chris found himself smiling with relief. The cavalry was here.

Bless you, Mark.

He could see Mark’s foggy form moving across the cockpit plexiglas, the torch came up and he shone it into the cockpit. The bright halogen beam shone into his face. Chris gestured for Mark to aim it down to the floor of the cockpit, hoping he would be seen through the thin film of scum on the plexiglas.

The beam changed direction and tilted downwards.

Immediately Chris could see the outline of his torch and the camera. He reached down and picked them both up.

But his eye was drawn to movement ahead of him.

The light from Mark’s torch shone through the bulkhead into the radio operator’s booth and beyond down the inside of the fuselage to the waist-gun stations. Manning these positions, silently looking through their gun sights, stood two ghostly young men in flying leathers. They remained motionless, squinting into the darkness, awaiting the inevitable swarm of enemy fighters.

My God!

One of them turns towards Chris as if finally aware that he is being watched. He nods.

And that was the last thing he clearly recalled. The rest was a jumble, Mark entering the cabin and pulling him out, the slow ascent, the short pause for decompression halfway up… and him babbling away to Mark about ghosts in the machine.

Will begrudgingly handed him a mug of coffee. ‘There you are. This’ll help.’

Chris took it gratefully and held it in both hands, savouring the warmth seeping through the chipped enamel to his fingers. ‘Thanks.’

Mark was already out of his dry suit and back in his clothes and starting to pack away the diving helmet. ‘How are you feeling now?’ he said.

‘Like a bloody moron,’ replied Chris.

‘You were saying all kinds of strange stuff coming up.’

‘Yup, rambling like a fool no doubt.’

Mark smiled. ‘Kind of.’

‘Nitrogen narcosis… I know, I know.’

‘Yeah. You were all over the place when I pulled you out. What got you so worked up?’

Chris looked guiltily at Will. ‘I was taking some shots in the cockpit and I guess the flash must’ve spooked an eel or something similar. It knocked me for six on the way out. I lost the torch and the camera, and I suppose that’s when I started losing it.’

‘Yes, you sure did. You gave me a pretty nasty scare back there.’

‘I was sitting in the dark, no radio contact. I lost it… you know, panicked.’ Chris shook his head, angry with himself.

‘Don’t beat yourself up over it.’

He looked up at Mark. ‘Thanks for coming in and getting me. That was nasty back there, it really shook me up.’

‘No sweat. Diving on wrecks, those confined spaces… shit like this happens. It’s easy to get rattled when you’re boxed in.’

Will was ready to start up the engine and take the Mona Lisa back to Port Lawrence. ‘You Boy Scouts done for the night?’

Mark answered before Chris could get a word in. ‘Yeah… No more diving for us tonight.’

Chris looked out of the window of the coffee shop. It was pouring down, and the wind was gusting. The rain smacked angrily against the glass as if frustrated at the missed opportunity to soak him and the two other solitary patrons inside.

Real Brit weather, that’s what Elaine would say.

Chris smiled; she wasn’t wrong. There was many a day as a child he’d been taken down to Southend-on-Sea for a fun-filled bank holiday at the beach only to spend it in a greasy cafe looking out at the rain and sipping tepid tea.

Same deal today, only it was tepid coffee.

Chris checked the time, it was nearly half-nine in the morning. Time to get to work.

He pulled out several prints he had made first thing this morning; an image of the engine casing and the propeller, an image of the waist-gun port and the bullet holes stitched diagonally across it, an image of the nose of the bomber and the plexiglas canopy to the cockpit and the observer’s blister.

And the plane’s ident.

Chris squinted. It wasn’t as clear as he had hoped and he held the glossy paper closer to his face as he tried to make it out. It was a picture of a near-naked lady, smiling wickedly with an arm coyly covering ample breasts. Her hair looked like dreadlocks.

Dreadlocks?

Below the image, faint and peeling, a single word that made sense of the woman, her improbable hair and the mischievous, impish face.

Medusa.

Below that, stencilled in formal USAAF style, were three letters. Chris noted them down on a napkin and then dialled a number he’d pulled off the Internet a couple of days earlier.

A woman answered.

‘Hi,’ said Chris, quickly adopting a more authoritative BBC accent. ‘I wonder if you can help me? I’m making a documentary on the United States Air Force based in England during the war. It’s really a programme that follows the fortunes of the crews of several planes, you know? How they coped with the war, their personal experiences of it. That kind of thing. Are you with me?’

‘So far,’ the female voice replied.

‘I need a little information on the identity marker of a particular plane. Where it served, which squadron it was in, who its crew were… can you help me with this kind of infor-?’

‘I’ll put you through to the Crew Reunion Helpline.’

Chris shrugged. The old BBC documentary ruse wasn’t necessary, then.

‘Crew Reunion Helpline, what’s your Regimental Designation? ’ said another female operator.

‘My what?’

‘Regimental Designation.’

‘Would that be the letters on the plane?’ asked Chris hopefully.

‘Yes.’

‘The letters are L, then beneath that GS.’

‘Okay… just a second…’

Chris could hear the clacking sound of fingernails on a keyboard and in the background the sound of other voices and phones bleeping.

‘You get a lot of calls like this?’ asked Chris casually.

No answer. Obviously not part of the script.

‘Hello. The L denotes the 381st Bomber Group. The GS was the squadron identification code for the regiment. GS was Squadron 535. They were stationed in England from April 1943 to January 1945 and then in Germany until the squadron was disbanded in 1947. What was the plane’s name?’

‘Do you mean the nickname?’

‘Yes, sir, the nickname.’

‘ Medusa. ’

‘Medusa? Like the snake lady?’

‘That’s it.’

Chris heard the clacking sound of nails against plastic keys again. A pause. Then something else being typed. Another wait. Chris thanked God they hadn’t modernised their switchboard to employ an ‘on hold’ musak system.

‘Oh,’ said the female voice.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Not a problem, sir… it’s just never happened before. That record is flagged. I’ll need to talk to the supervisor. Can you hold?’