Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘Okay, Max, let’s complete the mission,’ Stef nodded, his words slurring.

Captain Delaware watched as the bomber straightened out and headed in an easterly direction, passing once more over the Hudson River and, as its form dwindled to no more than a speck appearing and disappearing between the rolling grey clouds, he pulled the binoculars away from his eyes.

‘Damnedest thing… it’s heading away again, sir.’

There was a long pause before the President replied. Even above the cacophony of rush-hour New York, he could sense the obvious relief in the President’s voice. ‘Which way, Captain, where’s it headed?’

‘It’s due east, sir. The plane is back over Brooklyn, sir. If it keeps on that course, sir, it will be heading out to sea again.’

The captain could hear other noises over the phone, a chorus of voices in the background. Truman’s voice came on again. ‘Good work, Captain. Keep your eyes peeled, though, son. If there’s any further sign of that plane you pipe up, understand?’

‘Yessir!’ replied Delaware.

‘Let’s keep this line open,’ added Truman, ‘but for now, this call will be kept on hold. Thank you for your help this evening, Captain.’

There was a click followed by a steady tone and Eugene Delaware pulled the phone away from his ear and turned to his gunnery sergeant.

‘Well, that was just about the weirdest fucking five minutes of my life.’

5.27 p.m., EST, several miles off the coast of Rhode Island

The empty fuel tank gave them only five more minutes before the last engine stuttered and died. They were gliding now.

‘Stef… go and strap yourself in, it’s going to be a hard landing.’

Stef pulled himself up slowly, groaning with the effort, and staggered back through the bomb bay towards the navigation compartment. He slumped down in his chair and, with the last of his strength, pulled the harness around him and buckled it.

Max checked their altitude, it was dropping past 1000 feet and falling quickly, they were going to hit the sea hard. It would be critical that the nose of the plane should need to be pulled up at the last possible moment; too soon and they would lose the forward momentum and stall, the bomber would drop the rest of the way like a stone; too late and the nose could catch a wave and the plane would flip. If he could land her smoothly and she stayed in one piece, they’d have a minute, maybe two, before the bomber was flooded and sank. Two minutes was time enough to release themselves, inflate their life-vests, possibly even retrieve and inflate the life-raft. Max knew how important the raft was for both of them. They’d die of exposure in less than an hour if they couldn’t get themselves out of the water.

Four hundred feet.

Below, the sea looked calmer than he thought it would be. He could see the faint feathery crests of white horses punctuating the rippled grey of the sea. It looked like a light chop only.

The rate of descent was increasing. The bomber was gliding, now there was nothing but the rush of air under her shuddering wings to keep them from tumbling down. Max fought an almost overpowering urge to pull up, away from the swiftly ascending sea; without engine power, that would be the death of them.

Save the pull back for the last moment before she touches down. She’ll splash heavily; she’ll skid along the surface. And then it’s just a swim for shore.

He wondered how far they had flown out from New York. He had lost track of how long they had been flying away… ten minutes, twenty, thirty? He had fought with the plane’s desire to pull to the right. Both engines on the port wing had been dutifully running until they’d started to misfire and eventually failed minutes ago. Max had been pulling against the starboard lean, steering the bomber reluctantly north-east to counteract it. He hoped he had not overdone it, and the plane had been heading more east than north. According to the map, the coastline above New York curved round to the right as New York State gave way to Connecticut and then Rhode Island. He hoped the fluctuating course he’d attempted to hold had not drawn him too close to that coastline. It would be the cruellest irony if, despite his best efforts to seek the deep water of the Atlantic, he found himself splashing down on some shallow shelf.

He had no idea how far out from the shore they were.

Three hundred feet.

Pieter’s lifeless head lolled forward as the plane’s nose continued to drop and their angle of descent steepened. Max felt a stab of guilt and anger towards the body in the seat beside him. They had flown together for nearly five years, survived some of the worst times of the war together, and in the end the bond he thought had existed between them had counted for nothing. When it came to the crunch for Pieter, their partnership played second fiddle to his sense of duty.

He had proven himself to be a better soldier than Max in the end. Unthinking, unquestioning.

Two hundred feet.

The evening light was beginning to fade below the low cloud ceiling above. To the west, the sun poked out beneath it and picked out the suds at the top of each shallow swell as a glittering amber highlight. For some crazy reason the water looked warm.

One hundred…

Max readied himself for the splash-down, tightening his harness. He shouted back over his shoulder, ‘Stef! Brace yourself!’ The sea suddenly seemed to accelerate towards them as the last few dozen feet slipped from beneath the plane.

Now…

He pulled back on the yoke in a last-second attempt to prevent the nose of the plane catching a swell that would turn it over. The flaps on both wings and the tail fins swung upwards, and the nose of the plane lifted only slightly.

The light of day vanished instantly as all of the windows in the cockpit were shrouded by churning water and the nose of the plane buried itself beneath the sea. Max felt as if the plane had hit a wall — he was thrown hard against the harness, his head snapped forward, and he banged his forehead against the yoke.

The darkness was only momentary, and light returned to the cockpit once more as the seawater swiftly drained away.

For a few short seconds it was silent except for the sound of the sea slapping against the bomber’s fuselage.

Max felt a warm stream of liquid rolling down his forehead. He put his hand to it and felt a gash above his right eye, just below the hairline. He wiped the slow trickle of blood away before it got in his eye.

The plane’s floating.

He fumbled frantically to undo his harness; aware that the valuable time she would give them both as she filled with water would disappear quickly.

He heard the sound of water cascading inside from below. It was coming in through the shattered plexiglas canopy of the bombardier’s compartment directly underneath him. He climbed out of the pilot’s seat shakily and made his way through the bomb bay, sparing a glance at the bomb.

Goodbye, you piece of shit; may you rot at the bottom of the ocean.

He felt an irrational loathing towards the little beer-keg-shaped device, and a grim sense of satisfaction that it was destined for an eternal, dark grave.

He entered the navigator’s compartment. Stef was struggling to undo his harness, his hand slipped and flapped around the buckle like a drunkard hunting desperately for his zipper down a back street.

‘Here, let me help you,’ said Max, leaning over and releasing the strap. Stef remained seated, close to losing consciousness.

There was a storage locker above the navigation desk in which the emergency kit was supposed to be stored, according to the flight manual. He pulled it open and the raft rolled out into his hands, a tightly packed cylinder of rubber. As he spread it out on the floor it was immediately obvious the thing was going to be no good to them. One side of the raft had been shredded. He looked up at the locker to see a shaft of light beaming in from the outside. Another of the fragments of debris that had peppered the side of the plane during the last dogfight had cruelly found the compartment.