Operation Afterlight, page 14
The blood had drained from Embry’s face. His lips twitched as if trying to find words.
Well, Durban thought, you’ve done it now.
Career over.
Get ready to be grounded.
Lane was next to him now, he realised, blinking rapidly, her lips pursed. Her hand rested on his sleeve. He wondered if she knew it was there.
“Wing Commander Durban,” Embry said, the words slow-paced, as deliberate as a court statement under oath. “It appears I owe you an apology.”
“Sir?”
The AVM rubbed at his neck. Hard. His hands shook with his own anger, but he kept it from his voice. “I certainly did not mean to imply…” He let out a sharp breath and stood straight. “The squadron is yours. I know you’ll lead it well. Mister Stahl, Squadron Officer Lane, you are welcome to join me in the Ops Room to observe the mission.” Without a further word, he strode from the briefing room. Stahl’s gaze fixed on Durban. Unreadable. Then, without a word, he followed the AVM.
Lane’s long fingers still rested on Durban’s arm. Only now did she appear to notice, almost snatching her hand away. “Let’s talk when you get back,” she said.
“I’d like that,” he said, waiting until she left his sight before taking a deep, shuddering breath and freeing it in a single explosive blast. Then he set off to find Grant, marvelling at how close his flying career had come to ending and trying to ignore the clamouring voice in his head that wished it had.
Chapter Twenty
Above Germany, 22 March
Grant had never seen so many bombers before. Even now, with the formation dwindling behind them as the Mosquitoes sped towards their target, they seemed to fill the sky like a distant flock of huge, dark birds. Their wings left faint contrails that glowed in the early afternoon sunshine. The smaller shapes of dozens of escort fighters lurked above them, poised to drop with lethal grace onto any German fighter foolish enough to challenge the vast air armada.
None had.
Grant adjusted his smoked goggles. They took the edge off the sun’s brightness but could not stop its rays from turning the expansive Perspex cockpit into a greenhouse.
An errant drop of sweat stung his eyes. He blinked.
Without the suspense that darkness brought, that constant nagging fear that something was lurking just out of sight, the scene felt unreal. Off the nose to the left, a smudge of urban sprawl on the horizon broke the monotony of the North German plain stretched below them. Hanover. Gratitude fluttered in his chest. Their flight path mercifully kept him from seeing the miles of shattered factories and fire-gutted homes that were the legacy of so many Bomber Command raids. Of course, that wasn’t why his map told him to avoid it. Hanover might be all but dead, but flak still clustered heavily around the corpse.
The city served a purpose, though, as a good final aiming point for their descent towards Hildesheim. There, the flak should not be heavy at all, except around an isolated church on the southeast side.
“Thirty seconds,” he said.
To his left, in the pilot’s seat, Durban nodded and thumbed his R/T switch. “Colt Leader to all callsigns. Attack plan Delta.”
No response came. None needed. Behind their right wingtip, Barton’s Mosquito peeled away in a steep dive to the southeast, the other seven Mosquitoes of A Flight following. The plan was simple. A Flight’s job was to hit the laboratory itself, attacking at low level from the shallow hills to the south, six minutes after the first attack began. By then, Durban had briefed them, the flak would be suppressed or distracted, leaving Barton a clear and unopposed run at the target.
That still left the small matter of the suppressing and distracting.
“Ready?” Without waiting for an answer, Durban pushed forward on the controls.
The earth seemed to float upwards until it filled the windscreen. Even with the throttles at minimum, the whistling of air past the nose grew louder. The green expanse of the landscape began to break apart, individual trees and buildings emerging from the amorphous mass, reaching towards them. No flak yet.
Grant checked their six. No enemy fighters, either. Just the seven Mosquitoes of B Flight arcing down, slicing through the late spring air.
Durban pulled out of the dive at four hundred feet, then allowed the Mosquito to sink still lower. Ahead, a railway line and a road meandered through a low valley, the river that had carved it over centuries a thin band of blue alongside them. “Kittens, stay at fifteen hundred feet and loiter here. Mark the flak positions but engage only on my signal.”
“Wilco, Colt Leader.”
Suspicion writhed in Grant’s guts. Attack plan Delta called for B Flight to race in at fifteen second intervals and strike the three flak positions that Section Officer Gerrard had highlighted. There had been nothing about the Squadron Commander going in alone.
Alone, but for the terrified navigator sat to his right.
Grant checked his map, comparing the lay of the land to the villages and streams flashing past beyond the Perspex. They were still about three miles short of the target, far less than a minute of flying at this speed. Just outside 20mm flak range. His stomach lurched as the Mosquito bobbled in a crosswind. Ahead, a line of trees on a low ridge obscured their view. Durban pulled back on the controls to bring them over the top.
The church, peaceful and alone among green fields and trees, came into sight. Which meant the flak dug in around the building could see the Mosquito, too.
Where at first Grant saw only the rapidly closing shape of the old stone building, suddenly the ground itself seemed to transform as tiny figures raced to pull aside camouflage netting. Ugly black shapes emerged from beneath, each pointing to the sky with four thin fingers. Directly off the nose, one crew wrestled their gun into position, faster than the rest. The tips of the barrels turned towards the onrushing aircraft. Each blinked, the muzzle flashes visible even in the sunlight.
Tracers sawed through the air on either side of them.
“Hold on,” Durban said into the intercom. With a sharp wrench, he threw the Mosquito into a hard right turn which hid the guns from sight. That brought no sense of relief. It merely exposed the vulnerable belly of the aircraft to their fury. Barely three thuds of Grant’s frenzied heartbeat and Durban shifted the controls again. Dived the Mosquito to barely fifty feet. Pulled it into a tight left bank.
Grant dragged his head back, agonised neck muscles protesting as he stared almost directly up through the cockpit roof. First one gun, then three spun in place to track their movement.
Shells poured out in long streams of glowing beads. The Mosquito shuddered as one smashed a hole through the right wing. Grant heard a whimper. His own voice.
At this height, any damage to the flight surfaces meant instant death.
Durban’s grip remained firm as iron on the controls. He guided the Mosquito around in a half-moon circuit to the east before pulling into a shallow climb. The guns continued to track them, firing more in hope than expectation now as the range increased. “Colt Leader to B Flight. Did you see them, Kittens?”
“Marked all three, sir.”
“They’re all yours. Start your attack run now.”
Grant swallowed. Sour vomit burned his throat. The professional part of him wanted to congratulate the Wing Commander. By exposing their own aircraft, Durban had led the flak crews to reveal their positions, making them far easier targets for the onrushing B Flight. Grant could understand the logic in it. It didn’t help him control the terror that left his body trembling. His eyes remained locked on the guns, waiting for them to come closer, daring them to creep into range again.
Sweat poured down his spine, soaking his shirt. Not the sun’s fault. Not now.
“Stay alert,” Durban said, levelling out at a thousand feet. “Shout if you see anything.”
Grant nodded. No obvious admonishment in the Wing Commander’s voice, but there didn’t have to be. Too fixated on the flak, he had neglected to watch for fighters. He scanned the sky above and behind. Nothing but the near-cloudless azure expanse beyond the Perspex and the town of Hildesheim spreading out to the north, nestled at the foot of the low hills. The people there must have heard the crack of the Flakvierlings. Did they know what was coming for them, just a few minutes away now? Probably not. Night had brought terror to nearby Hanover so many times, but surely the daylight meant safety.
Continuing his scan, Grant’s gaze drifted back to the church. So innocuous. Like they had picked the wrong building, despite the ferocity of the flak. Then the first Mosquito emerged from the valley beyond, two hundred feet above the railway line, racing at full throttle.
Still focused on Durban and Grant, the air defence crews reacted a second, a lifetime too late.
Beneath Kittinger’s Mosquito, bomb doors dropped open. The aircraft swept past the first gun position. Two small objects tumbled down as it passed over the second. The gun crew kept firing until, after half a second’s delay, five-hundred pounds of high explosive detonated either side of them. Grant glimpsed twisted metal hurled into the air, alongside smaller, less sturdy fragments. Then a rapidly spreading ball of smoke, dust and ejected soil and grass obliterated the gun position from sight. He couldn’t be sure if the sudden buffeting of the aircraft was shockwave or simply a pocket of warmer air, but there was no mistaking the dull thuds of the detonations even above the roar of the two Merlin engines.
“Nicely done,” Durban said.
The second Mosquito hurtled in. It seemed like an age had passed since Kittens had attacked, but Grant knew that was just a trick of the mind. Fifteen seconds, no more. The Mosquito struck the first flak position. Only one explosion this time. The second bomb must have been a dud. It didn’t make an iota of difference. One was enough. As smoke bloomed, Grant saw enough to know that the blast had left the gun largely intact. The crew was a different matter.
The second Mosquito followed Kittinger’s path, low and fast. It was almost clear when it suddenly lurched in the air, almost crabbing sideways before the clawing propellors regained their grip on the warm air and righted its course. Trailing fragments of shattered fuselage, it raced away to the east, chastened.
A faint puff of smoke hung in the air among thick bushes to the east of the church.
“There’s a fourth gun position,” Grant yelled, pointing.
“Seen,” Durban said. He didn’t radio it in, simply pulled on the controls and swung the nose towards the new threat.
The third B Flight Mosquito was already inbound. Grant felt a surge of relief as the flak crews focused their ire on it, but that emotion turned instantly to guilt. He pulled his eyes away from the vulnerable attacking Mosquito and back to the target position ahead.
He looked at Durban. Saw the concentration on the man’s face. “Should I open the bomb doors?”
“No,” Durban said. “Guns will do.”
The flak position grew larger. Close enough now that Grant could see the individual men of the crew, expertly working their Flakvierling as they plotted to bring a Mosquito down.
The B Flight Mosquito. The wrong Mosquito.
Another second, and Durban depressed the firing stud.
Their airframe juddered. The enormous recoil of four 20mm cannon and four .303” machine guns arrested its momentum as sharply as if the pilot had somehow slammed on the brakes. Durban’s first rounds fell just short, the cacophony of the firing guns finally alerting the brave gunners to their imminent doom.
Heads turned. One man threw out a hand. A last panicked attempt to hold a beast at bay.
Bullets, shells, and razor-sharp fragments shredded through human flesh. A soldier took a half-pound high-explosive shell full in the chest, his body virtually dissolving into red mist as the limbs fluttered uselessly from either side. Another collapsed, head and upper torso sawn away.
The eviscerated remains of the crew disappeared beneath their nose as they passed overhead.
Grant’s stomach heaved. It took everything he had to keep his breakfast from exploding over the flight instruments ahead of him. The Mosquito trembled as a passing shockwave marked B Flight’s destruction of the final Flakvierling. Then they were clear and climbing into the blue sky.
“Colt Leader to Bravo One, is that all of them?”
“Roger, Colt Leader.” Kittens sounded almost bored. So calm. “Looks like a clean sweep.”
“B Flight, clear to the west and loiter in case we need to reattack. Alpha One, are you in position?”
“Yep,” Barton replied. “Is anything left for us to hit?”
“We don’t get a bonus for bringing bombs home. Once you’ve dropped, break hard to port. Make sure you don’t stray too near to Hildesheim. The Lancasters will be there any moment now.”
“Yeah, we remember the brief. Out.” The radio fell silent.
“What an obnoxious fellow,” Durban said as the first A Flight Mosquito approached the target, flying slower now that Colt Leader had eliminated the flak as a planning factor.
Whatever Barton lacked in civility, he clearly possessed in skill. The first two 500lb bombs impacted in the dead-centre of the target area. They sent twin plumes of dirt into the air, their pre-set delayed fuses giving them time to burrow deep into the earth. Moments later, the ground itself heaved upwards, the grass sheath of the hidden laboratory splitting apart and great clods of mud spattering against the church walls.
“Bang on the money,” Durban said. “Are you ok? Johnny?”
Grant opened his mouth to reply, but then his stomach bubbled again. He clamped his lips tightly shut. Partly it was the image of the butchered gun crew that clung to his retinas. Partly it was the thought of what high explosive and blast in the tight confines of the underground bunker would do to soft tissue and skin.
Mostly, it was knowing that Durban had deliberately drawn the enemy fire to them, putting Grant’s own vulnerable body in the firing line to make it easier for the others. That it had worked, and that the aircraft of A Flight now struck the laboratory with impunity and clockwork ease, offered zero consolation. Yes, it had worked. This time.
He said nothing.
“For what it’s worth,” Durban said, “one hundred percent oxygen always does the trick for me.”
Grant fumbled for his mask before gulping in a lungful of sweet, fresh air. The nausea subsided, his head clearing. The memory of the dying men faded, but still lingered.
Above the incessant growl of the engines, a thudding sound filled the cockpit. One, two, then dozens, then a constant rhythm. To the north, columns of smoke twisted their way into the sky above the town of Hildesheim, trying to reach the hundreds of dark silhouettes that filled the sky above.
Chapter Twenty-One
Norfolk, 23 March
Durban stared through his office window, idly turning his car keys between his fingers. Little stirred outside. Normally, Charney Breach was a hive of activity at this hour. Engineers working away, air tests, pilots enjoying the downtime that came with a limited flying schedule. Today, it seemed it wasn’t just the low clouds that hung lazily over the base. He knew a good leader could inspire his command with his energy and enthusiasm. Was the opposite also true? His own body carried the same torpor he sensed outside, but then he’d only slept two or three hours at best. The rest of the night he had simply lain staring at the ceiling, trying in vain to look through it to the sky above.
He already knew the next target. Uelzen. The question was when, and not even Sarah Lane could tell him that.
A knock, and the door opened. He saw a tall figure reflected in the window’s glass. “What is it, Bony?”
“Sorry to disturb, sir, but you said you wanted this as soon as it arrived.” The Ops Officer passed him a large brown file cover.
“Thank you. Would you ask Squadron Officer Lane and Mister Stahl to join me, please?”
“Yes, sir.”
Letting his car keys clatter to the desk, Durban opened the file. The trembling was back in his fingers. Something to keep an eye on, while preventing others doing the same. The Squadron Medical Officer might have something in his dispensary that would help. A trapped nerve, he thought. Nothing more. Opening the file, he sifted through the glossy enlargements until he found the photo he wanted. Two seconds told him everything he needed to know.
He sighed. He had thought it would be more satisfying.
Stahl walked in silently and took up his customary position with his back to the wall and his hands touching in front of his chest. Lane took a few minutes more. “Sorry, Andy,” she said as she came in, fumbling the door shut behind her, ignoring Stahl altogether.
Durban felt an odd flutter in the pit of his stomach. She looked like she’d recently woken from an afternoon nap, her hair a little out of place, eyes a little bemused. It seemed he wasn’t the only one who had slept badly.
Damn, it was good to see her.
“The battle damage assessment from Hildesheim has arrived,” he said, motioning her to sit. “A PR Mosquito from 680 Squadron went over the town about four hours after we left. The images are a little obscured by smoke in places, but I think you’ll agree they tell a story.” He pushed the first one in front of them.
“You didn’t damage the church.” Lane smiled. “Somehow, that’s comforting.”
“I imagine there is some shrapnel in the stonework,” Durban said, “but nothing it won’t survive. As you can see, the main lab has been exposed here and here. This debris field spreading here was likely ejected by a bomb that landed in the centre of the lab after the first detonations tore away the overhead cover.”
“What are those?” She pointed to two large rectangles near the bottom of the image.
“The doors,” he said. “Blown outwards by the overpressure of the first bomb detonating inside the bunker. This area here looks like it has caved in. Any parts of the bunker not destroyed outright by the bombing were likely buried when the roof collapsed on top of it.”
She nodded. “Any survivors?”
