Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘I see ’em Max, I see ’em!’

Pieter swung his gun up and carefully lined the gun sight with the first of the three planes. Ten yards for every two hundred range.

He pulled his aim down slightly, anticipating the continued path of the leading Spitfire. ‘Come on, you little bastards,’ he muttered to himself.

The plane in the lead was holding his shot until the very last moment, two hundred feet away and still Max waited with a face screwed up with anticipation for the first high-calibre round to strike home and begin the process of shredding him and the front of the plane to pieces.

Suddenly, he saw the muzzle flash of the fighters’ six guns blazing and tracer lines began to lance down through the air just short of the bombardier’s compartment in front of the plane.

At the same instant from the compartment below, Max heard Pieter open fire.

Both Pieter and the pilot appeared to have overdone their target-lead, but in the few seconds that were left before the bomber’s cockpit resembled nothing more than the chewed-up knuckle of a dog’s bone, Pieter was going to have to pull his aim up and hit the Spitfire first.

‘For fuck’s sake, draw in the lead!’ Max shouted with desperate frustration as the fighter found the nose of the plane and dozens of rounds punctured holes through the metal plate above the bombardier’s compartment and below the cockpit.

He winced as loose shards of debris rattled around in the compartment below him with bullet-like velocity. Pieter surely had to have been hit by some of that, a bullet or shrapnel. But he could hear the gun still firing. Max watched as the tracer lines from Pieter’s gun rose up from below and found their target.

The duel MG-81s, firing a steady line of tracers, shattered the cockpit glass of the leading Spitfire and the fighter plane ceased its firing immediately, speeding down, missing the nose of the bomber by mere feet. Pieter continued firing towards the same point in space, knowing that the second and third fighters were lined up directly behind where the first one had been. The two other Spitfires cautiously avoided the solid line of fire coming up towards them and broke in different directions, roaring past the cockpit on either side, their attacking dive foiled this time.

Max heard Pieter hooting with pleasure. ‘Got ya’, you stupid bastards!’

The idiot sounded okay.

He felt a rush of relief and, with a gasp, released a breath that only seconds earlier he’d been convinced would be his last. ‘Saved my skin, Pieter… are you okay?’

‘Apart from nearly shitting myself, I’m fine.’

You and me both.

Schroder pulled past the port side, the tip of his wing yards from that of the bomber’s, rising upwards in a steep sixty-degree climb, the same damned Spitfire pursuing with single-minded, dogged determination. It fired again; this time the bullets thudded into the underside of his fuselage, one tearing through the flimsy metal plating into his cockpit, where it fractured against the solid metal frame on the underside of his seat, sending a spray of heated shards and sparks up at him past his legs.

He felt a white-hot pain shoot up his right arm as the leather of his flying jacket exploded and a fine spray of crimson appeared on the inside of his canopy.

‘Shit! Bitch!’ he screamed out in pain.

As the Spitfire rushed hungrily in pursuit of Schroder, sensing the kill was only a volley or two away, it passed carelessly close to the port waist-gun.

Stef jerked back in surprise as it roared upwards, only twenty feet away and he panic-squeezed the trigger, his aiming, at best, erratic. The MG-81 pumped forty-plus rounds at close range into the exposed belly of the British fighter plane. One of the rounds punctured one of the Spitfire’s wing tanks and the plane instantly exploded, punching the bomber in the ribs with a powerful shockwave and a fleeting moment later showering the waist section with fragments of shrapnel and burning gasoline.

‘Fucking hell! What was that?’ shouted Hans over the comm.

‘Anyone know what that was?’ asked Max.

‘I think Stef just bagged one. Stef, was that yours?’

There was no answer.

Schroder rolled his plane over, belly up, and pulled back on the yoke so that the plane began a long, graceful arc downwards. He looked ‘up’ to see the bomber below against the dark blue background of the Atlantic. A mushroom cloud of oily smoke was being left behind it, and beneath the cloud he saw hundreds of tiny fragments each tumbling and fluttering to the sea on its own spiralling path.

There was no sign of the Spitfire any more.

He noticed a fire burning along the bomber’s spine and guessed that the Spitfire had exploded and sprayed burning fuel onto the bomber’s back. It looked worse than it was. The fuel would burn out in a few seconds.

He hoped whoever it was who’d saved his life hadn’t been caught by the blast. It seemed unlikely, though; he could see what looked like hundreds of pebbledash spots along her waist section. Whoever had fired the port waist-gun had probably been shredded by the wall of shrapnel.

He turned his attention to the score sheet…

Three of theirs, one of ours. Much better.

Once more his eyes quickly searched the sky around him. He watched as the other Me-109 hung tightly to the tail of a Spitfire that was already in trouble, a white stream of unignited fuel behind it. It fired several short bursts. None found their target, but that seemed academic, the plane was desperately scrambling to find a way out of the skirmish.

‘Who is that? Will? Let him go and form up with me behind the bomber.’

The radio crackled and a moment later the pilot replied. ‘It’s me, sir, Gunter.’

‘Gunter? Well done, man. It’s just us now. Let’s tighten our position around the bomber.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mission Time: 6 Hours, 28 Minutes Elapsed

200 miles across the Atlantic

There was still no reply from Stef.

‘Stef! Are you all right?’ Max called once more. Over the interphone he could hear only laboured breathing and the grunting of effort as both Pieter and Hans worked their guns.

Not Stef, please.

‘You want me to go back and take a look?’ asked Pieter over the comm.

‘No, not yet, not until we’re done here.’

Max himself wanted to go back and see what had happened to the young lad, but until this exchange was over, he needed every pair of hands busy, holding something useful.

‘They’ve had enough! They’re pissing off!’ Hans barked loudly.

‘You sure? Pieter, can you see?’ Max sought confirmation.

‘Yup, two of them, plus one limping. They’re heading back east.’

‘Right, in that case, Pieter, go and see what’s happened to Stef.’

Pieter climbed up the metal rungs leading from the bombardier’s compartment and hastily made his way through the bomb bay and through the navigation compartment. He stopped in the bulkhead leading into the waist section and studied the damage.

It had been perforated with hundreds of ragged holes. Several small fires were burning on the wood-panelled floor, fuel that had made its way inside from the exploding Spitfire. Stef was sitting on the floor, both hands clasped tightly around one of his legs, holding it desperately. His trouser leg was black and wet with blood. Considering the mess there, the lad looked like he’d got away lightly.

‘I think I’m hurt pretty badly,’ he said.

‘Stef. Let me take a look at that.’

Pieter squatted beside him, ripped the ragged material of his trousers open and moved it out of the way to inspect the wounded leg. There was a triangle of still smoking metal, the size of a packet of cigarettes, lodged into his leg just above the knee. It had clearly severed an artery and Stef had done the best he could with the tight grip of his hands to slow down the blood loss. All the same, the wound was pumping muted jets of blood past his tightly clasped fingers.