Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘Shit,’ he muttered.

Water rolled across the floor of the navigation compartment, just an inch deep, followed quickly by more coming from the waist section. A small wave lapped inside through the bulkhead along the floor. It was ankle-deep. By the look of it they were going down tail first.

‘Stef! We’ve got to get out now!’

The young lad stirred, his heavy-lidded eyes opened quickly, roused by the icy cold water that had found his feet.

‘Oh God, no!’ he whispered.

‘Stef, we’ve got life-vests, we’ll be all right, but we need to leave now.’

We’ll be all right? No, we won’t. Stef sure as hell won’t.

Stef looked up at Max, as if he’d heard his thoughts, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Max… I can’t swim, my leg…’

‘Yes, you can.’

‘No! I don’t want to drown… that’s the worst way — ’

‘I won’t let you drown, Stef.’

Stef shook his head. ‘I’ll drown… I don’t want to go that way.’ His eyes focused on Max’s pistol. ‘Please?’

Max looked down and understood what the young lad was asking of him. Stef was right. There was no way he would make it ashore. He would die of hypothermia if he didn’t drown first.

The water had quickly risen to just below his knees, and he could feel the ice-cold water starting to get a grip on him.

‘Please, Max?’ whispered Stef, already his lips were turning blue and a puff of evaporation escaped from his mouth. ‘Don’t let me drown.’

A memory of a conversation they had all had months ago flashed through Max’s mind. The four of them huddled around a paraffin heater in some hastily assembled camp, back when KG-301 was still a functional squadron, sombrely discussing ways they might die. They had all agreed that burning to death had to be the worst way to go. Stef had confessed to a terrible fear of drowning.

‘Okay, lad… okay.’

He reached down for the gun and pulled it out of its holster, his hand trembling almost uncontrollably from the cold.

‘Please, Max… please hurry, just do it.’

He reached out with one hand and rested it on the top of Stef’s head and patted his ginger hair.

‘I’m sorry. Stef… I couldn’t land the plane ashore, I couldn’t let them have it.’

‘I kn-know,’ the boy said, his lips trembling. ‘It’s all right, Max. That w-was the mission.’

The water was thigh-deep now, but for Stef still seated, it was around his stomach, and rising swiftly up his chest. ‘P-please…’ he muttered, shaking uncontrollably.

Max slid his hand around the back of the boy’s head and embraced him with a rough and clumsy hold.

He wondered whether he could have done this for Lucian. Probably.

For a moment they both gasped and shivered in silence as the water quickly rose noisily around them, and then Max placed the barrel of the gun against the side of the boy’s head and pulled the trigger. Stef jerked once, violently, his hands clawed against Max’s back for a second before slackening.

Max let his limp body drop from his arms and slowly slide beneath the water. He held back the grief behind gritted teeth and smacked the sea angrily with one hand.

Only an inch of the little window in the navigation compartment remained above water, and through it the faint glow of the gathering dusk outside was fading fast. For a moment he considered turning the gun on himself and joining Stef and Pieter below the waves. Now the mission was over, they could once more be comrades, if only in death. One quick movement of the arm and another of his index finger and it would be over, no more struggling, it would be the easiest thing.

There’s still time to get out.

He dropped the gun, suddenly galvanised into action.

‘All right then,’ he muttered through trembling blue lips amidst a cloud of vapour. There were two ways to exit, both of them were underwater now and he would have to dive down and feel his way out blindly. He could either go back down into the waist section and out through one of the gun portholes. There might be enough room to squeeze his way out, since the port side gun had been jettisoned. Or he could climb forward, down through the flooded bombardier’s compartment and out through the belly hatch.

He decided to head for the waist section.

He waded towards the bulkhead leading to the waist. There was now a gap of only inches at the top, the water was around his chest and rising fast.

It’s flooded beyond the bulkhead, no air until you’re outside again… you ready for that?

Max breathed deeply several times. Each time he exhaled the dwindling space in front of him between the water and the roof of the fuselage filled with his foggy breath. Water bubbled and spat as trapped air from the aft of the plane hissed out through the last inches of the bulkhead doorway above the waterline.

He watched the top of the bulkhead dip below the water and felt the rear of the plane beginning to swing downwards, the plane now held above the sea by the air trapped in the front half. His ears popped from the buildup of pressure.

There was a loud, deep metallic groan. It sounded like the mournful cry of a whale.

She’s sliding under… go now!

He filled his lungs quickly and ducked through the bulkhead. Under the icy water he could hear a whole new world of sounds, the sound of metal straining and contorting, the roar of expelled air and incoming water, the click and clatter of debris spinning in circles and eddies. He pulled himself deeper and forwards, down towards where both waist-guns had once spewed bullets in anger. He was encumbered by his uniform and the thick leather flying jacket. His progress was torturously slow, but there was no time to tread water while he struggled to unzip it and shrug it off. He worked desperately with his arms, grabbing hold of the internal ribs of the fuselage and pulling himself forward to the next. His hand scraped a jagged bullet hole, one of a row that had stitched a line diagonally above the starboard waist-gun. Frantically his hand felt along the metal, seeking the edge of the porthole, as he felt his body urgently commanding him to take another breath.

He found the top rim of the porthole and with one frantic exertion he pulled himself down deeper into the flooded waist section, down and through the porthole. His legs now kicked desperately as he struggled to rise to the surface, but his flying jacket was weighing him down, and he had precious little energy left to fight the drag.

Life-vest, you idiot! Life-vest.

He felt for the pull-cord, patting his chest to find it, all the while feeling himself sinking slowly. He heard the painful groan of metal under stress below him. The plane was going down. The noise began to diminish as it pulled away from him, sinking at a greater speed than he was. He saw the bomber’s tailfin pass by closely. As it descended and faded from view he felt a rush of bubbles rising swiftly past him and the tug of the backwash from the plane plummeting below.

He felt the tickle of string against the back of his hand — the cord — and frantically waved his hand to find it again. He made contact, grasped the cord in his hand and pulled.

The vest inflated violently with a roar of bubbles and Max felt himself pulled rapidly up through little more than twenty feet of water.

He broke the surface with a roar of expelled air and gasped for a fresh lungful.

The plane was gone, marked now only by a handful of floating items of debris. The sea was kind this evening, only small swells, but it was painfully cold. The sun shone weakly; a few hours more and it would be gone. Max turned towards it.

Rises in the east, sets in the west.

West was where he was headed. He started to swim, in his heart knowing the cold would get him before long.