A thousand suns

Koch lay down on his side, still holding the steering wheel with one hand as the windscreen imploded and showered him with glass. He heard the engine hood and the radiator grill clang and shudder as a multitude of bullets began to shred the front of the vehicle. He stole a quick look over the dashboard. The men ahead of him were now the size of a thumb at arm’s length, no more than forty or fifty feet away.

Now’s as good a time as any.

With his knees he held the steering wheel, with his hands he grabbed one of the grenades, unscrewed the cap and grabbed hold of the fuse-string inside the handle.

Here we go.

He pulled on the string, and the grenade’s fuse commenced its ten-second burn. He dropped it on the passenger seat and reached for the handle on the driver-side door.

From where they were at the top of the strip, it looked like the truck was now almost amongst the soldiers at the bottom. Max wasn’t sure if the young captain had intended to blow the vehicle up or simply drive it through to distract them momentarily. If he’d intended to blow it up, Max thought, he’d have done it by now. Whatever his plan, he decided it would be best that they start their way down the strip now and take advantage of the distraction and confusion the truck was currently causing.

Of course, there was the added danger that the truck was going to blow up just as Max lifted the plane over the top of it. The way things had gone here this morning, he wouldn’t have been surprised if that was the way this mission was going to come to a messy end.

Go now or not at all.

He set the tail-wheel lock to ON, and turned to look at Pieter.

‘We’re going,’ he said as he eased his foot off the brake and opened the throttle. The plane’s four powerful engines roared angrily at 3000 rpm, and the bomber began to roll forward down the grass strip, hungrily consuming the distance between it and whatever consequence lay ahead at the end of the strip.

‘Stupid damn thing’s stuck!’ Koch shouted aloud as he fumbled with the door handle, lying flat across the seats with one foot still down on the accelerator. He pulled hard enough on it to crack the ceramic handle, but the door remained closed.

‘Shit!’

The driver-side door had taken a volley of bullets, which had dented and buckled the metal outside. The truck was still bouncing along on suspension that had given in while the truck’s hood and cabin rattled and clanked with the impact of small-calibre bullets raining in. He quickly stuck his head up to snatch a glimpse through the shattered windscreen. They were no longer ahead of him; he was now amongst them. Both the passenger- and driver-side windows exploded as bullets whistled in from the left and the right of him. He instinctively dropped back down onto the passenger seat as bullets slammed into all sides of the cabin. He looked down at the stick grenade in his hand.

Five… six…

For a moment he considered throwing it out through the passenger side window and aborting his plan to detonate the truck. But then there was the bomber to think about. Already he could hear it approaching, its engines roaring loudly, pulling the giant plane rapidly towards him, the truck and the American soldiers.

No, the truck needed to go up. There wasn’t time now for foolish indecision.

He smiled, it might not have been a Gran Sasso, but today’s fun and games had done the regiment proud.

… Seven… Eight…

He was intrigued about the last thing the pilot had said to him. The thing they were doing was going to win the war for Germany… so, it wasn’t just an escape plan for some cowardly general. The pilot hadn’t seemed like the kind of man who would part on a lie.

… Nine…

He was curious, though — how a single stolen American bomber was going to do that, win them the war.

… Ten…

Ahead, Max could see the fuel truck slowing down amongst the American soldiers. It had almost come to a full stop when it was suddenly ripped apart by an immense explosion.

‘Bloody hell,’ Pieter muttered, instinctively bringing his hands up to cover his face.

A brilliant ball of flame rolled upwards into the grey overcast sky, while flaming gasoline rained down around the carcass of the truck.

‘We’re going to fly through that!’ cried Pieter.

‘Over it, if we’re lucky,’ answered Max through clenched teeth. He checked their speed; they were running at seventy miles per hour, not fast enough yet. She would lift only over one hundred miles per hour, and they were rapidly running out of strip to achieve that speed.

‘We’re going to hit that bloody thing!’ Pieter shouted.

There was nowhere for him to go with the throttle, and all four engines were screaming at full capacity, the ailerons were fully extended in the vertical position, there was nothing he could do but watch the fireball race towards them and hope to God that the plane lifted off before they smashed into the remains of the fuel truck.

Fifty yards to go.