Jim Shepard - Paper Doll

The ship ahead of them throttled up, hesitated, and began to roll, the grass on both sides of the tarmac flattened by the propeller wash, and gravel and bits of paper flashed up to make gritty sounds against the windshield.

It disappeared into the haze throwing up big wings of spray and they followed its lights, edging up and to the side. Gabriel set the brakes and advanced the throttles all the way. The engine sound created a physical overpressure on the ears and the plane strained and shivered against its locked wheels. Bryant kept an eye on the oil pressure and rpm’s. Gabriel’s hand played over the brake release knob as if refining the drama, and then he released the brakes.

They did not rush forward, they never did, and Bryant hated the disappointment of the fully loaded 17 simply rolling slowly forward after all that straining and racket. He hunched and unhunched his shoulders hoping to affect the acceleration. The tarmac began to wheel by and Cooper called the airspeed in increments of ten, his calls coming more quickly, and Bryant caught a glimpse of a black-and-white-checkered runway control van disappearing along a side panel window and began to feel the great pull of acceleration on his shoulders, and at Cooper’s call of 90, 100, the engines’ sound changed, and they could feel the tail come up, and at 120 Gabriel pulled them off the ground, the hedges and fence rolling softly past the nose, and they bucked and swayed but gained power and swept high over some trees.

They broke out of cloud near their assembly altitude, and Bean gave a fix on the radio beacon of their assembly plane. All around them B-17’s were popping from the clouds trailing mist and carving into the blue sky above, looking for their colored squadron flares. Group leader ships at higher altitudes were firing yellow and green flares in graceful parabolas. Each squadron circled in its section of sky waiting for completion, a horizon of small groups at play, and Bryant watched in wonder from his turret the planes sweeping by opposite and above in a dance of leviathans. Their squadron, Pig Squadron, consisted of two vees of three planes each, with their vee fifty feet ahead and below as the lead vee. With two other squadrons they formed an extended vee, and soon a fourth squadron filled the slot behind them to complete a diamond. They matched with another group after forty-five minutes of laborious circling and maneuvering, and finally came out of a long wide sweep and headed toward the Channel together with a staggered and shaky precision. Above and behind him he could see Boom Town and Geezil II , their belly turrets already cautiously turning.

The Channel eased brightly beneath them and he could see the bulge of East Anglia receding beyond Paper Doll ’s huge tail. He could not make out any evidence of their expected fighter escort. He imagined hundreds of Luftwaffe pilots over Holland and northwestern Germany scrambling for their sleek monsters, and clouds of silhouettes from his aircraft spotter charts rising to meet him, Plexiglas canopies glittering over the fuselages with the heartlessness of the eyes of insects.

He double-checked the seal on his oxygen mask, the heavy gloves giving him little feel for what he was doing. Lewis and Piacenti were clearing and testing the guns, and the plane shook, and already he could pick up the ugly cordite smell through his mask. He felt the tremor of Snowberry firing beneath him, and cleared his own guns, pointed away from the aircraft above, and squeezed the thumb triggers on the hand grips that controlled the azimuth and elevation of the guns, and the twin fifty calibers on either side bucked and fired visible tracers with a lazy, drooping sweep. Then everything was silent against the steady background of engines and slipstream. Smoke puffs trailed from the guns of Boom Town and Geezil II.

He swung the turret around at medium speed, the gun barrels tracking the horizon smoothly. The ease of the electronically operated controls reminded him of a ride at a fair. Track the Jerries, five cents, he thought.

“Shouldn’t we turn back?” Piacenti called in. “My gun’s not working.”

“What do you care?” Lewis said. “When do you ever do anything with it?”

They rendezvoused with their expected escort, RAF Spitfires. The Spitfires waggled their wings out of range to show off their markings before approaching, a precaution against trigger-happy Yanks. They roared ahead to the front of the formation, their razored contrail streams like scratches on the ice of the sky.

They continued to ride. The altocumulus and cirrus high above them were sheeted and pebbled like the silvery lining of a shell. His electric suit and sheepskin jacket and pants kept him unevenly warm, but the air was bitterest winter, 40 below zero at altitude. Bryant worried about his suit shorting out from sweat or urine and had heard enough frostbite stories. The air came in blasts through the openings for the gun barrels, and for comfort’s sake he found himself turning away from Paper Doll ’s nose. His eyes and temples ached under the goggles and strap.

The interphone crackled and Snowberry’s voice came over low, singing. “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas,” he crooned. Contrails began to unfurl from the bombers above them like long streams of white spun sugar, or cottony bandages unrolling endlessly from the engines. They reminded him of enormous wakes from motorboats. The effect with a large bomber group was spectacular. The spectacle was lamentable, considering their position. “When we’re up that high and putting out that kind of contrail signature, I think Rommel in North Africa can see us coming,” Gabriel had once told him glumly. Ice had formed on the upper seal of Bryant’s mask, and there were smallish crystals on his goggles. “Where the treetops glisten/And children listen,” Snowberry sang.

“Can it,” Gabriel said.

Bryant struggled with his mask. It was dark and cold and smelled heavily of rubber, and condensation inside it was dripping down his neck and freezing. He thought of the water freezing in the rubber hose, of oxygen starvation, and his hands shook. Every so often Cooper called them to check in, for that reason. It was Lewis’s private terror that in the tail he’d only be reached too late.

They were over the Dutch coast. There were little thumps and pings occasionally, and Bryant watched smallish clouds with interest as they appeared and drifted backward through the formations.

“It’ll be easier over the target,” Eddy said over the interphone. “Without these little clouds.”

“Little clouds, my butt,” Gabriel said. “That’s flak, you idiot.”

Bryant gave a start. They could feel the delicate musical sound of the light shrapnel. The plane lurched and straightened out.

“That one s.o.b.,” Lewis said. “He’s set up right at the end of the Zuyder Zee. I can see his flashes.”

A burst shook Geezil II above them, the ship rocking and sideslipping.

“He is hot,” Lewis said. “Dick Ott used to call him Daniel Boone. Up yours, pal.” They could hear him chatter his guns out at the ground below, uselessly.

There was a minor commotion.

“Piacenti’s sick,” Ball commented. “We put it in a box, and left it in the bomb bay.”

“War is hell,” Snowberry said. “They shoulda thought about this when they invaded Poland.”

“What’s the matter, Duce? ” Lewis asked. “Nervous in the service?”

The plane lurched again dramatically and Bryant felt a momentary terror that they’d been hit. “Wop Barf Kayoes Ack Ack,” Lewis said. “What a story.”

The Dutch coast was disappearing behind them and Bryant was beginning to feel a good deal more excited and frightened. Wherever their fighter escort had been, it was around now turning back.