Jim Shepard - Paper Doll

At Antwerp the Spitfires heeled about and flew back the other way, having waited as long as possible for the P-47’s to show up and carry on the escort. The P-47’s did not show up. Some of the Thunderbolts assigned to the rear of the formation arrived, Lewis was able to report, but there was no sign of the groups charged with their protection at the front of the stream. They waited and searched and cursed. Piacenti suggested from the waist that they were all back in their bunks, having sex with each other and farm animals.

They flew over dark green forests dotted with red and white farms and silver and blue lakes. There were a series of small villages forming a loose chain along tan roads. The sky was piercingly clear. There were no Thunderbolts. To the right a cluster of the gray and tan lanes converged on a town.

“Eupen,” Hirsch announced. Bryant felt his forehead cool and could see the planes in the formation above and behind them edging closer together, closing up the box. He swiveled his guns to the front and ran his gloved hands over the charger assemblies to reassure himself. He kept his turret moving from side to side, metronomically, to keep the fluid warm for smoother tracking. He could feel his fingertips and palms.

“I know what I hate about this so much,” Snowberry said over the interphone. They could hear him charging his guns. “No one is ever glad to see us.”

“There they go,” Lewis called. Bryant twisted around in his sling. The Thunderbolts in the rear were peeling off, their wings flashing sunlight, their fuel already exhausted.

Gabriel’s voice was constricted and the interphone buzzed and popped. He said, “It won’t be long. Call ’em out.”

“Here they come,” Eddy said. “Here they come.”

Bryant picked them out as well, miles away, hundreds of insects rising in the heat. From all around them in a crescent to the south the flattened specks were lifting off the pale landscape and wheeling toward them, and Bryant and everyone else swung their guns around like talismans. They floated higher, spreading across the sky.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Piacenti said over the interphone. “The shit is about to officially hit the fan.”

The engines throttled slightly back, Gabriel slowing speed to allow the following planes to pack it in and close the formation further. Plum Seed slipped into No Way ’s slot and together with Archangel swung close enough to hit with a rock. The specks grew larger and Bryant recognized the fatter noses of the Focke Wulfs. Someone said, “Here they come.” There was a chorus in Bryant’s ears over the interphone: Here they come.

They were above the bombers now, and swinging out in rows in a descending arc toward the leading elements of the stream, their formations perfect, coming on in groups of five, wingtip to wingtip.

Bryant called them in as they flashed through the upper groups, giving the numbers, reeling off line after line as they passed through firing. Eddy mentioned that the higher groups seemed to be getting the worst of it, and the sixth line to disengage dropped lower, and came for them.

Gabriel was shouting reminders on the interphone as they closed distance and everything accelerated, and he began slewing the plane slightly to the left and right in formation to present a more difficult target. He was warning Snowberry and Bryant at the same time to be alert, telling Eddy in the nose to call the break, down or up, to let everyone know instantly whether they’d decided to sweep over or under Paper Doll ’s vee. They grew like nightmares because of the combined closing speeds of the head-on attack, holding fire as they swelled in Bryant’s Plexiglas vision: no move, no flickers or razoring lines of light, just the configurations from the aircraft identification charts on a collision course. He urinated, pissing the fear out, he hoped. His thighs warmed and then cooled and he felt the wet on his calves. He chose the central Focke Wulf and it grew and shook in his gunsight, the canopy glittering and malignant like the eye of an insect. He started firing and the plane shook and his tracers spiraled outward at the line, and Eddy and Hirsch started firing, and the wings of the fighters flashed and threw light, their tracers expanding magically and radiating past as if Paper Doll were flying into a garden sprinkler, and his own guns were drowned out by the high-pitched hammering of their pass, all of them skidding sideways as they roared by, firing in short bursts, and were gone.

“Hits?” Gabriel yelled. “Any hits? Everybody okay?”

Another line had detached ahead. “Twelve o’clock! Twelve o’clock!” Eddy was calling.

“Bryant! Bryant! Bandits coming down on you twelve o’clock!” Hirsch shouted. Someone else cut in about another bandit at ten o’clock.

The Focke Wulfs were growing in a line of seven with wing roots and noses winking light at him as they closed. They shot through the vee ahead and above them, firing all the while, and the intensity of the head-on attack was such that Bryant could see the entire vee ahead go sloppy, and Eddy screamed, “Breaking high! Breaking high!”, and there was a white flash on the top corner of the cockpit over Cooper’s seat and the Focke Wulfs broke over them, still firing, the center plane rolling and sweeping over their nose upside down, filling the sky over Bryant’s dome, shaking him and all of Paper Doll with the enormous air compression, the German’s eyes in the Focke Wulf’s black cockpit flashing into Bryant’s, the oddly shaped goggles and brown leather mask distinct and shocking. Then it was gone.

“Jesus Christ,” Bryant said hoarsely. The cockpit metal ahead of him and to the right was twisted upward where the white flash had been, and a thin wire trailed back in the slipstream. He could feel the cold now, coming over the co-pilot’s seat onto his legs.

“Cooper’s okay,” Gabriel said in response to someone’s question. “He’s a little shook up. They enlarged his view.”

“Did anybody see that son of a bitch who just came over?” Lewis asked from the tail. “I think his wingtip hit my guns on the way by.”

Behind Archangel, Quarterback was washing around in formation. Its upper turret was a red smear, cracked and jagged. One of the gun barrels stuck up at a bizarre angle. The flight engineer climbed out of the smashed shell like a bloody chick, dazed perhaps by the explosion. He held on and swayed, impossibly, against the force of the air. Bryant felt acutely their interchangeability. That was Paper Doll , this was Quarterback. Someone in Quarterback was trying to pull the gunner back in. The gunner held a finger into the battering slipstream like a man testing the wind and reached back for his parachute too late, as if remembering something, and was blown away behind them, out of sight.

“Who’s that? Who’s that?” Snowberry called. Bryant looked right and left and caught a column of smoke diagonally looping away beyond the tail.

“It’s Boom Town, ” Lewis called. “Charley Rice. Three out. Four.”

Bryant remembered Hallet, fighting with him after the cat throw.

“Stop counting,” Gabriel cut in. “They’re coming around again.”

Way off to their right the Germans were flying alongside, passing their formations easily, pulling ahead to come around in more head-on passes. Bryant watched them all stream by outside of the group’s range, lining up like kids at the city pool to use the diving board, running along the edge after a dive to get back into the forming line.

They flew into the far distance and massed, wheeling, and a fraction detached, seven, and turned toward them. Others swept out at the higher squadrons.