Steven Boyett - Fata Morgana

“Don’t encourage him,” said Plavitz.

The bomber droned on over Holland. Still no antiaircraft fire. Farley checked the instruments, his position in the formation, the group’s position on the map, the fighter escort. He scanned the clear sky for enemy aircraft.

“No one up here but us chickens,” Broben said.

Farley nodded. He reached down and dialed up the suit heat and then knocked spit from his oxygen mask before it could freeze and block the on-demand valve.

“Shorty, isn’t there anything we can listen to?” Everett pleaded. “I’m about ready to cheer for Axis Sally.”

Farley muted his throat mike. “Sometimes,” he told Broben, “I find out more about our mission from her than I do from our briefings.”

Broben nodded. “I don’t know how they do it. I’d sure like five minutes alone with whoever that dame gets her information from.”

“I hear they’ve got one out in the Pacific islands, too. Tokyo Rose.”

“You know how I know we’re gonna win this war?” Broben asked.

“Because we’re right and we’ve got God on our side?”

“Shit. We’re gonna win because they play our records. Nobody plays theirs.”

“Well, you can only listen to Wagner so many times.”

Broben squinted. “You sure talk smart for an iron jockey.”

“I prefer to think of myself as a philosopher on wings.”

Broben cracked up.

Just past the German border their fighter escort had to turn back. The Thunderbolts waggled their wings and peeled off to head due west, canopies flashing in the noonday sun. Farley was sorry to see them go. Supposedly the Army was working on a long-range fighter. He wished they’d hurry up about it.

With the fighters gone the mood changed in the bomber. Everybody knew they were on their own now. Next crew check there were no wisecracks, no jokes. Just “Navigator checking in,” “Bombardier here,” and the rest. Germany lay below them now and they had to get across most of it to reach their target.

A thought made Farley frown. He thumbed the “talk” button again. “Pilot to radio operator. Have you caught any ship-to-ship?”

“Frying bacon across the dial. It’s been radio silence since we were over France, anyway.”

“Roger, Shorty. Keep me posted if anything changes.”

“Will do.”

Everett’s voice came on the interphone. “Anybody heard any new jokes? Since there’s no music or anything.”

“I got one,” said Francis. He started to tell the one about the German paratroopers, but everyone yelled the punchline— Zat vass ze pilot!— before he got two lines in. “Gee whiz,” he complained, “a fella can’t get two shakes in with you guys.”

“We better be nice to Francis, or he won’t go to the next war with us,” said Garrett.

“Anyone want to read a letter from his girlfriend?” Everett persisted. “Tell a good story? I’m dying here.”

“Martin has a story I think we all want to hear,” said Broben.

Farley looked at him sharply.

“I do?” said Martin.

“Sure you do,” said Broben. “The guy who made it off the Ill Wind has to have a story.”

“Beechnut was on the Ill Wind ?” Everett asked.

“I heard they were all dead on board,” said Plavitz.

“I heard that was all bunk,” said Garrett.

“Why don’t we let the guy who was there tell it?” asked Broben.

Farley muted his mike. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m giving him a chance to come clean. Anything goes wrong today and these guys find out our belly gunner was on the Ill Wind, they’ll eat him alive. And they’ll blame you for putting a jonah in the crew.”

“There’s not much to tell,” said Martin. “The bomber got shot up pretty bad and I jumped. The end.”

“Ill Wind,” said Francis. “Ill Wind. Say, wasn’t that the ghost ship that landed in Jordan Abbey? Man, that story gave me the willies.”

“ That’s where I heard that name!” said Shorty. “Holy jumping—You were on the ghost bomber, Beech—um, Martin? No fooling?”

The engines droned for a while before Martin’s voice came over the interphone again. “Yeah, I was belly gunner on her last mission.”

“Well come on, chief, spill it,” said Garrett. “Everything I heard about that crate sounds like stuff we told around the campfire to scare the bejeezus out of each other.”

Shorty made a sound like a creaking door. “Vell-kum to Inner Sanctum ,” he said.

“Can it,” said Farley. He scowled at Broben. “How bout it, Martin?” he asked. “We’ve all heard a bunch of different stories about it. You want to set the record straight?”

Droning engines filled the long pause.

“I’ll set a record, all right,” Martin finally said. “But it’ll be anything but straight.”

It was my eighth mission on the Ill Wind . We were bombing a big marshaling yard in Pleitzhaven, lots of oil and materiel, some troop transport. We’d hit it twice before, and the Germans always seemed to get it fixed up pretty quick.

The mission was a little bigger than the runs we’d made before, four squadrons carrying five-hundreds. It’s a short run, right by Holland on the German border, but the Germans had it staked out. You could have mapped our route from the flak alone, just about. We took an awful pounding but we made the IP okay and dropped when the lead bomber dropped.

So the eggs are whistling down below me and dropping from the formation all around. They’re right on the Aiming Point and it looks like they’re going to mess up that railyard pretty good.

The bomb bay doors close in front of me, and Captain Ryan banks us down and picks up speed to run us under their ak-ak bursts, and then bam, we take a huge hit on the right side. I thought it was a 105 shell, so I swing around to look for damage. I think I’m gonna see the tail falling off, a broken wing or something, but there’s not a mark on her.

Next thing I know it’s raining B-17s all around me. I realize the Germans have moved their eighty-eights a lot closer to the railyard this time out, and they’re firing almost straight up from the Aiming Point. Some of their shells set off the bombs that just got dropped, and some of those went off right under the bomb bays and gutted those B-17s like fish. It was awful. I only saw a couple of parachutes. Mostly the bombers just broke apart and fell. We lost about a third of the squadron in less than a minute.

We turned out and got past the flak line and leveled off. We’d just re-formed about ten minutes later when the entire Luftwaffe showed up. There were more bandits than I ever saw at one time before. Me-109s, Focke-Wulf 190s. They didn’t engage right away. They paced us out of firing range and then pulled ahead of us. When they were about a mile in front they turned and came at us head-on. They were wing-to-wing in groups of three and four, and they didn’t start shooting till they saw the whites of our eyes. I could see them coming, but they were level with us and I couldn’t shoot up at them. The only guy who could fire on them was the bombardier, up front, and he just had a thirty-cal, like Boney. That must have been scary as hell. They’re coming in side by side, and they’re close enough throw rocks at before they start firing, and even if you shoot the pilot his plane’s probably going to plow right into you. Take you and your whole ship with him to Valhalla, or wherever. The very last couple of seconds they would open up with those twin .30 cannons. They sounded like a freight train going up a hill.