Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘Don’t worry… it won’t be.’

Koch was up and quickly tapped five of Buller’s squad on the shoulder. They followed him as he ran towards the planes, ducking low as they went.

Max checked the gauge again, it showed only 3270 gallons had been pumped so far. The speed at which it was pumping the fuel was slowing down. The pressure had dropped; the fuel truck must be approaching empty.

Shit.

The sound of gunfire had returned a couple of minutes ago, and now seemed to have intensified. ‘What’s going on? Can you see anything?’ he shouted up to Pieter.

Pieter looked towards the entrance, where a thin haze of blue smoke above the sandbags was developing. He spotted half a dozen of their men running towards them. ‘Ah, fuck it, they’re running away already!’

Max stood up straight. Running away? So much for ‘as good as the Fallschirmjager ’.

He walked around the end of the fuel truck to see Koch and some of his men approaching them. They veered to the right and headed towards a tarpaulin-covered stack of crates. As soon as they were there they pulled savagely at the boxes and began dragging them across the grass.

‘Okay,’ said Pieter. ‘Maybe they’re not running away.’

Max watched as Koch slung his MP-40 over one shoulder and struggled with two of the crates, one under each arm, across the ground to a position thirty feet in front of the fuel truck. He threw them unceremoniously to the ground and raced back for some more.

‘They’re setting up some cover, I think,’ he shouted up at Pieter.

He heard the sound of liquid bubbling in the fuel pipe, and then he noticed from the gauge that the pressure from the fuel pump had plummeted. Either the pump was damaged or the fuel pipe had sprung a leak. He worked his way back to the rear of the truck and found a geyser of fuel spraying from a gash in the pipe. Most of the fuel was spurting out of the hole; only a fraction of it was getting to the B-17. Already a large pool of gasoline was spreading across the rain-moistened turf; the thick fumes floating above it dangerously concentrated.

Dammit.

Max shut off the pump and closed the valve. One spark and the fuel truck, still half full, and their plane would be a smouldering tangle of metal. They needed another 250 gallons to fill the wing tanks. He looked towards the large fifty-gallon drums, there were only four, and they’d need five. Even if there were that many, it was too much fuel to pour manually five gallons at a time.

He called up to Pieter. ‘The fuel pipe’s severed.’

Pieter ducked inside the cockpit for a moment and then returned. ‘Our tank is nearly full, more than three-quarters… won’t that be enough?’

It could be.

It was a virtually impossible calculation to make. On a full supply of 3900 gallons, they knew the B-17 could achieve a one-way range of about 4500 miles. New York was 4666 miles away. If they flew low, less than say 5000 feet, and at a low cruising speed, maybe 200 miles per hour, they could perhaps squeeze an extra couple of hundred miles out. But if they could just lose some weight…

‘Pieter! Go and remove anything you can, we need to lighten the plane,’ Max shouted.

‘Like what?’

‘Throw out one of the waist-guns, the oxygen cylinders, anything we can afford to lose.’

‘We can’t throw out the oxygen.’

‘We’ll do the rest of this journey under 5000 feet. Now do it! Hurry!’

Pieter’s head ducked back inside.

Mission Time: 6 Hours, 9 Minutes Elapsed

8.14 a.m., an airfield outside Nantes

Buller emptied the clip of his MP-40 and ducked back down just as the sandbag above him shuddered under the impact of half a dozen bullets. ‘Jesus Christ!’ The sand from the shredded bag above him cascaded down onto his head and shoulders. He wiped it irritably from his face and spat out grit from his mouth. ‘Fucking sand.’

‘Buller, we’ve got to pull back now!’

‘Shut up, we’ll run for it when I say so.’

He turned back to see how Koch was doing. They had managed to pull out some of the crates and stack them in twos and threes a few dozen yards in front of the fuel truck, but it was clear they needed some more time to place a few more positions either side in order to build a semi-circle of positions to cover their flanks.

‘Another few minutes, boys,’ he shouted above the din.

The Americans in front had crept forward, moving from tree to tree. They were now only between twenty or thirty yards away. He’d attempted to keep a mental total of the number of casualties they had inflicted on the Americans. So far he’d seen three, possibly four kills, and maybe another six wounded, it was hard to judge. Two of his men were dead, both instant kills, both head shots, another had been hit in the shoulder, and although it didn’t look fatal, the lad could do little more than lie behind the sandbags and hand ammo clips to the other three of his men as they called out for them.

They had done a good enough job slowing them down here at the front, but it was clear the soldiers that had fanned out across the fields either side of the dirt track would soon be emerging from the trees and bushes surrounding the airfield and entering the fray from all angles. The only thing that could sensibly be done in that event would be to pull back and take cover amongst the motley assortment of huts and tents around the canteen. From there they could take pot shots at the Americans as they made their way across the open field towards the planes. If nothing else, that would force them to the ground again. It would slow them down once more.

Buller decided that was the best they could do for now. Their ammo was running low and the increased silences between their volley fire were proving dangerously encouraging to the Americans. They were close enough now to risk a dash across the open ground. Perhaps they’d lose a man in the process, but they’d be able to vault over the sandbags and shoot Buller and his men like dogs in a pit.

He leaned across to the young lad with the shoulder wound. ‘Right, we’re leaving, Erich. You stay put and make sure you keep your hands away from any guns when they get to you, okay?’

The young lad nodded.

Buller tapped the other three men, and pointed towards the canteen. ‘I’ll give you covering fire, head for the canteen, we’ll pick ’em off from there.’ The three men nodded.

‘Right, off you go,’ he said quickly, before lifting his MP-40 up above his head and firing indiscriminately over the sandbags. The three men, keeping their heads low, sprinted away from him, as a fusillade of return fire thudded into the sandbags above Buller. He heard some of the Americans shouting above the noise of their weapons, and, a moment later, just as Buller was preparing to fire another clipful over the top, they directed their fire at the three fleeing men. Buller felt the displaced air as the bullets whistled over him and a dozen divots of wet soil flicked into the air either side of the fleeing men. One of them, Werner, fell forward, punched hard by a hit in the small of his back, he flopped down with a muted grunt, face buried in the mud, and writhed from side to side for a few moments before another bullet thudded into his prone body to settle the matter. The other two men weaved erratically until they reached the loose arrangement of tents, pursued by raking lines of flying soil.

‘Fuck this,’ Buller muttered. He readied himself to fire off the clip in his gun, his last clip. Once he’d emptied it he would run after the other two, and hope that he wasn’t as unlucky as Werner, now lying motionless on the muddy ground amidst a growing pool of blood.

He winked at Erich. ‘Remember, let ’em see your hands clearly. I’ll see you later after we’re done here.’ He propped his gun over the top and emptied the clip before leaping to his feet and running for the canteen as a barrage of bullets peppered the ground behind him.