Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘There it is! I can bloody well see it! Hans!’

Hans jumped a little as Pieter’s voice crackled over the interphone.

‘We’re there! Look out the port side!’

Hans kept the gun trained on Max as he leaned across to peer out of the porthole. Ahead he could see the faint silhouette of a cluster of tall buildings against a darkening grey sky. He guessed it was about fifteen miles away. A few thousand feet below he could see the start of an intermittent carpet of low buildings. By the look of them they were homes, a belt of suburbia.

‘Are we there?’ said Max quietly.

‘Yeah,’ replied Hans with a grin, too elated to feel the need to chastise him for talking. ‘We’re here, Max. We did it!’

Pieter’s voice came over the intercom again ‘All right, Hans, time to get things ready. We need to drop this bomb as quickly as we can. I’ve got no idea how much time we have left before we’re dry.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ he replied, pulling his mask up and shouting excitedly into it.

‘Max knows, he’s already put in the code… it just needs arming. Get him into the bomb bay…’

Hans nodded and turned to Max. ‘Time to get it done. Up you get,’ he said, nodding towards the bulkhead leading to the bomb bay.

Max pulled himself up, stiff and sore from the cold and the inactivity.

‘I’m not going to do it, Hans, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Just fucking MOVE!’ he shouted, his voice breaking hoarsely.

Max slowly ducked through into the bulkhead and held on to the bomb rack beside the walkway. Hans followed, squeezing through after him, the Walther aimed at Max all the time.

‘You’ve made the bomb ready, Max, but Pieter says you’ve got to arm it… so do that now.’

Max shook his head. ‘You know I won’t, Hans. We have got to take this bomb out to sea and ditch it.’

Hans raised the gun and banged it roughly against the bomb rack out of frustration. ‘Shut up and do it, or I’ll bloody well shoot you right now!’

‘Hans, I’m going to open the bomb bay doors, make sure you’re holding on to something,’ Pieter shouted down from the cockpit into the bay.

Hans held tightly on to the bulkhead, while Max tightened his grip on the bomb rack. With a loud clunk and a whir of motors, the bomb bay doors cracked open. A slither of brightness widened beneath them as the doors juddered open. The bay was quickly bathed with the sepia light of the waning evening sun. The wind rushed noisily below them, a roar and a high-pitched whistling together, and both men stared in awe down at the passing suburban tapestry.

Hans cast a glance at the bomb. There appeared to be only one button on the whole contraption, a blue button beside a row of numbers.

‘It’s the blue button you need to press, isn’t it?’ he shouted against the roar of the wind.

Max said nothing, certain that a denial would sound like an obvious lie.

‘It’s the blue button, isn’t it?’ Hans asked again, his voice rattling with anger.

He remained silent.

Hans nodded, all of a sudden certain that Max’s silence was nothing but an affirmative. There was nothing else on the bomb that looked like a switch or button.

‘I’ll arm the bomb myself then. It looks like we don’t need you now,’ he said, smiling coldly.

‘God have mercy on you, Hans, because those people down there won’t if they get hold of you.’

Hans once more aimed the barrel of the gun at his head. ‘I never thought you’d let us down, Max, never. But you have, and now you’re the fucking enemy… it’s just me and Pieter left.’

Max looked into his eyes, desperately searching for a trace of mercy. ‘Hans, don’t do this.’

Captain Eugene Delaware caught the faint hum first, above the crumple of wind and the rumble of traffic and activity from down below. In the streets below, full of cars accelerating and braking in concert with the myriad of pedestrian crossings and traffic lights, the faint hum of the B-17 was the only engine on a steady note.

‘I can hear something, Mr President, sir,’ he blurted into the phone. ‘I think it’s coming from the south-east. Definitely a plane, sir.’

Delaware pulled the binoculars up to his face and scanned the broken clouds in the distance over Brooklyn. He scanned systematically, sweeping from left to right, as the faint hum, every now and then fading behind the downtown symphony from below, emerged, a little louder, a little more distinct, a little closer.

‘It’s definitely approaching our position, sir. But I can’t see it just yet.’

President Truman’s voice crackled over the phone, ‘Just keep looking, Captain.’

‘Sorry, Max, goodbye.’

Max closed his eyes and waited for the bullet.

‘What’s going on!?’ shouted Stef.

He opened his eyes to see Hans half turn in surprise, the gun pulling a couple of inches off target, away from his head. Leaning through the bulkhead, the young lad appeared groggy and confused by the sight of the handgun.

Max, still holding tightly to the bomb rack, reached out with one hand for the gun and twisted it sharply in Hans’s hand.

‘Fuck!’ Hans bawled with surprise, squeezing the trigger three times in rapid succession. Even with the roaring of the wind below them, the report of the Walther was deafeningly loud. The barrel was close enough to Max’s cheek that he felt the sting of burning gunpowder from the muzzle flash. Two of the bullets rattled around chaotically inside the bomb bay, ricocheting off the metal spars of the rack. The third bullet was aimed upwards, and left the bomb bay via the forward bulkhead into the cockpit.

‘What’s going on?’ Stef shouted once more, as both Hans and Max wrestled one-handed to gain possession of the firearm, each of them holding on desperately with the other hand to avoid being pulled off balance and pitched into the gaping chasm below.

All of a sudden the bomber lurched and started to roll to the left. Through the open hatch both struggling men paused in their efforts as they stared down to see the suburbs of Brooklyn slide away and the steely grey of the Atlantic begin to drift into view. The plane was rolling hard to port, taking them inland. If it continued much further it would roll over onto its back and begin an irrecoverable dive.

Hans suddenly screamed as he lost his grip on the bulkhead and swung out over the open chasm. The only thing keeping him from falling was his grip on the gun. His legs seesawed desperately as he tried in vain to swing them up onto the walkway above.

‘SHITshitshitshit!’ he gasped up at Max.

Max held on to the gun with grim determination. ‘Hold on! Hans, grab my arm with your other hand!’ he shouted down to him.

The bomber pulled out of the roll, momentarily levelling, before beginning to roll to starboard.

Hans reached up with his other hand and grabbed hold of Max’s sleeve. Max was struggling hard to keep from tumbling out, his one-handed hold on the bomb rack weakening fast.

‘Get your legs up on the walkway! I can’t hold on to you much longer!’ he shouted down to Hans.

His long legs swung several times, but came nowhere near close to the metal grating. He shook his head. ‘I can’t do it.’

Max looked to Stef for help. The lad was making his way towards them on his hands and knees, groaning with the effort, but he looked too weak to be of any use. Max’s grip was weakening rapidly; another ten seconds and he could see both himself and Hans tumbling side by side down to earth.

‘Hans, I can’t pull you in, you’ve got to get your legs up!’

The big German tried again. This time his left heel swung high enough to hook over the top of the walkway.

‘That’s it! Come on, you big idiot!’ called Stef weakly, lying on the walkway beside Max.