A thousand suns

Some of the Americans had been caught by the blast and had suffered the same agonising end as Schroder’s men earlier. The majority, it seemed, had been far enough away to escape that, but nonetheless had been thrown off their feet by the blast. Max watched as some of them had their wits about them to scramble to their feet and grab their weapons in a last-ditch attempt to shoot out the canopy glass and prevent the plane from taking off.

He felt his face contort in anticipation of the bullets that awaited them as they approached the raging wall of fire.

Twenty yards left.

Max checked their speed, ninety-two miles per hour. He sensed the plane beginning to pull upwards, her giant wings grabbing hungrily at the air and forcing it under them.

‘Hold on!’ he heard himself shout as the burning chassis of the fuel truck raced towards them and disappeared from view beneath the nose of the plane. For the briefest moment the cockpit of the plane was immersed in the churning column of oily flames below.

Max felt the landing gear smash into something below, and the plane shuddered violently as it cleared the smoke.

‘Shit!’ Pieter shouted once more.

The plane was now at one hundred miles per hour; the lift beneath her wings and the hot air of the inferno below pushed the plane upwards. He felt the lift and pulled back on the yoke. The bomber’s nose rose and they were off the ground and climbing steeply.

Scholn watched the B-17 recede to the west, tailed closely by three of the Messerschmitts. The sporadic fire from the Americans had ceased. It seemed everyone, through unconscious collaboration, had agreed to momentarily suspend the fight in order to watch what happened to the bomber as it had charged down towards the flaming truck. Now it was away, it appeared that normal business was ready to be resumed.

Koch’s order had been to surrender once the planes were up. The few men that were left were probably ready to do that now; he knew he was. They’d given a good account of themselves, and more importantly the job was done. The planes had made it away.

The gunfire hadn’t started up yet; it was silent save for the gentle hiss of drizzling rain, and to his right, the crackling fire amidst the burned carcasses of the 109s. He decided to take advantage of this lull.

‘Okay, lads, put your weapons down,’ he shouted, his voice echoed loudly across the airfield.

The men huddling behind the crates nearby did as they were ordered, clearly relieved that this particular skirmish was over. He raised his hands above his head and slowly raised his head above the crates.

A single shot rang out, thudding mercifully into the ground nearby and he immediately heard the sharp voice of an officer calling a ceasefire.

Scholn slowly got to his feet and shouted loudly in heavily accented English, ‘We surrender!’

There were no further shots, and one by one the men near him rose from behind their crates, hands raised unequivocally. He saw movement from the canteen and movement from the hangar doorway. Only a single man emerged from the canteen, and three others from the hangar. Scholn totalled up the survivors. There were twelve of them left. Twelve out of the original thirty.

He thought there would have been more.

One of the American soldiers stood up from behind the sandbags and walked slowly across the grass towards Scholn, his rifle raised warily. From the uniform and rank insignia Scholn could see he was a captain. The American came to a halt a few feet away and studied him silently for a full minute, his jaw working hard behind sealed lips on a piece of gum. He shook his head and tutted like an adult admonishing a child.

‘I mean… what is it with you guys? The war’s over, and yet you people still insist on giving us a hard time here.’

He shook his head once more, ‘Jeeeezz…’

Chapter 46

Getting Wallace

Mark brought the Cherokee to a halt. Devenster Street was empty save for a man walking his dog, and, across the way, three kids dressed in jeans and hooded tracksuits, doing their best to look urban. Other than that, it was deserted.

Chris scanned the road for anyone else, perhaps hiding in a shop doorway, or in the opening of some side street, or watching patiently from one of the many pools of darkness between the sparsely spread streetlights.

‘It looks clear, I guess,’ Chris uttered quietly, not entirely sure that it was.

‘So where’s this Wallace guy staying?’ asked Mark.

Chris pointed towards a small, traditional-looking wooden house, halfway up the street, with a colonial-style porch in front of it. All it needed was a dinky front lawn surrounded by a white picket fence, he mused, to fit the olde New England cliche. ‘That place over there. At least, I think that’s the one.’

‘Okay, how are we going to do this?’