by Jack Hayes
The extra weight on such a sensitive part of the plane immediately caused the Storch problems. At first Maddox was pulled through the air. Then his mass started to yank the tail lower. He could see Nieder desperately struggling with the controls as he tried to keep the Storch aloft.
The plane struggled.
Its nose began to tilt upwards.
“That’s it,” Maddox said, gripping onto the rope with all his might. “Stall, you bastard, stall.”
But Nieder had other ideas. He manoeuvred the plane into a dive, bringing it closer to the ground. The sharp slope of the embankment was coming up fast underneath Maddox. The captain bent his legs at his knees to cushion his landing.
With a gentle pat, his skis landed back on the earth.
He was picking up speed as he moved down the hill. Nieder still hadn’t realised the cause of his problem as tried to gain lift again.
Maddox briefly left the ground.
“I’m a leaf on the breeze… I’m a leaf on the breeze…”
He swung forward.
The Storch’s engine wasn’t powerful enough. It couldn’t cope with either the extra weight on its tail or the shifting balance of Maddox swinging underneath it like a pendulum. Nieder glanced out the window.
His face was death.
Maddox smiled politely back at the German and winked.
The Storch dived once more, and Maddox’s skis touched back onto the ground. The combination of the dive and the slope caused the Englishman to go ever quicker. Maddox wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or not. If he overtook the plane, he might cause it to fishtail from the instability, bringing it down.
That would be a good thing.
Alternatively, if he got in front of the aircraft, maybe the grapnel would shake loose or he’d lose his clasp on the rope.
In those eventualities, Nieder would escape.
Maddox had to slow his descent somehow.
The embankment was covered in rocky outcrops and tree stumps. Maddox struggled with maintaining his hold and remaining upright. He swung sharply to the left, whistling past the crest of a boulder poking through the snow.
Nieder leaned one arm through the window and fired three shots with his Luger.
Maddox swerved.
With the difficult angle, awkwardness of reaching through the cockpit and struggling to keep the plane in the air, Nieder’s shot went hopelessly wide.
But it worried Maddox. It showed just how vulnerable he was. He couldn’t hope to return a volley and keep a clasp on the rope. Never mind the Sten across his back, he’d struggle to even reach the Webley on his hip.
He had to do more to crash the plane before Nieder could come up with a plan to kill him.
One of his skis ran near a stone.
He slalomed.
It whipped past him.
An idea.
Maddox began zigzagging as he went down the hill. This slowed his descent and, by falling behind the plane, his weight began to tug on its tail as he swung from left to right.
Nieder tried to turn the Storch so that it would fly along the hill rather than down it, making Maddox’s skiing harder. With a particularly forceful jump, the Englishman prevented the move.
Nieder altered course again.
Putting the Storch into a shallow dive parallel to the embankment, he started pulling Maddox with the plane, like a water skier following a motorboat.
Maddox wasn’t sure what the German was trying to accomplish – the effect was to force him to pick up speed again.
He looked ahead to see what Nieder was heading the two of them towards… the lake?
It was frozen over.
What did Nieder gain from that?
Maddox considered his options as he slalomed around a toppled tree.
If he released his boots from the skis, he could try to climb the line up to the plane. If he didn’t have to worry about his path along the ground, he could hold on with one hand and finally get his other to the Sten. He might not be able to guarantee hitting the Storch from down here – but if he got up higher, he certainly hit it.
One Sten magazine contained 32 bullets.
Would that damage the plane enough to crash it?
It seemed doubtful, unless he picked the right target. The fuel tank was out – he wasn’t entirely sure where it was on this design. What about riddling the cabin with slugs? If he didn’t kill Nieder he’d have wasted his ammo. He wasn’t sure if a Sten had enough power to punch holes into the cabin while he swayed beneath the plane.
He had a grenade…
If he climbed to the tail of the plane, he could rip a gap in the skin with his Fairbairn, then stuff the bomb inside.
It might just work…
Maddox tested his theory by hoisting himself, hand over hand, a few feet from the ground. He kept his skis on just in case he failed. Immediately, the Storch experienced problems. It began to shake and he twisted sideways on to the slope.
Nieder used Maddox’s predicament to nudge closer to the earth.
Maddox barely had time to lift his knees. If he hadn’t he’d have landed with his skis facing the wrong way and tumbled head over heels, probably both breaking his legs and losing his clasp of the grappling line.
He managed just in time to turn his feet to face the right way. Nieder had manoeuvred the Storch towards another family of boulders. Maddox twisted sharply against the snow.
Not fast enough.
He was going to be dashed against a child-sized outlier to the rocks.
He pulled again on the rope and jumped.
His feet lifted clear of the ground.
The skis scraped as they ran across the top of the boulder.
He landed on the far side.
Nieder took another set of pot shots at him with the Luger. There was a soft ‘pat’ as two of the slugs impacted the snow to his side. The third punched a coin-sized hole in one of the skis.
“He’s getting closer,” Maddox thought. “I’d better come up with a better idea fast…”
But it seemed that Nieder had already formulated a new strategy.
The Storch levelled out as it reached the bottom of the escarpment and with a bump, Maddox vaulted over a low lip that must originally have been the edge of the lake and found himself skidding across the ice.
The frozen lake clearly made it easier for the Storch to pull Maddox and, without the momentum of the hill to keep his speed higher than the plane’s, Maddox found it harder to swing back and forth and make flying the thing difficult for Nieder.
He realised that Nieder was accelerating. Beneath him, the ice whipped past both more quickly and with a higher, whining pitch as it ran beneath the skis.
First, 60 miles per hour, then 70.
Maddox tried to act as a break by slaloming again – but all the force of trying to slow the aircraft was being carried by the weakest part of this tug of war: his own arms. He couldn’t decide which of his joints hurt the most – his fingers, his wrists, his elbows, his shoulders; every part felt like it was being ripped asunder.
He was in the middle of the lake now and heading rapidly for the far side.
Surely, Nieder didn’t intend to drag him all the way back to Germany?
Then he realized the plan.
Nieder’s altitude was low – but still the length of the rope, plus part of Maddox’s height. That put him around 105 feet off the ground. Maddox looked nervously ahead at the trees lining the far bank of the mighty lake.
“Tremendous,” he muttered.
He might skim the tops of some of the taller, mighty pines but the Storch had clearance to go straight over the forest. Maddox, by contrast would get dragged through the thick meshwork of low hanging branches.
At this velocity, he would likely be ripped to shreds.
There was no way he’d hold on.
There was a subtle sound of cracking underneath his skis.
“Oh Lord, no,” Maddox muttered.
He looked down and had his
worst fears confirmed. He glanced behind his trail as he crossed the ice.
There could be no doubt.
The long Finnish summer had thinned the frozen layer beneath him – here, near the middle of the lake, it was too weak to support his weight.
CHAPTER 50
The fissures in the ice started small but as he raced along, he was pulled away before he could fall through.
There was a slight advantage to being on the ice: with the ground much smoother, and unable to duck and weave, he reckoned he could hold on to the rope with just one hand for a brief moment.
Tentatively, careful to maintain his balance, he reached for his Webley.
Six shots.
Make them count.
He aimed for the cabin.
He loosed the rounds into the underside of the pilot’s compartment.
Before he had time to wonder if he’d hit Nieder, the German poked his pistol back through the window.
Clumsily, Webley still in hand, Maddox clasped the rope again. Two cracks from Nieder’s pistol. Then another two. Maddox swerved as best he could to make for a moving target.
The slugs hit the ice.
Although they landed wide of his position the weakness they created allowed the cracks to spread faster. In a short second Maddox saw the tiny fissures rush past him. HE swore loudly.
He fired the last three rounds of his Webley into the cabin.
“Stupid revolver,” he muttered. “Next time, I’ll bring an automatic.”
If the shots hit anything, it didn’t seem to make a difference. He tossed it aside. The weapon skidded out across the frozen water. Maddox didn’t care. He had more immediate worries. This portion of the lake, unshielded from the Finnish sun by the sloping hillsides, was in near constant light during the summer months.
Consequently, the ice was weaker, to the point of thawing in places.
And the cracks were beginning to turn its smooth surface into a patchwork of icebergs.
The Storch was getting on for maximum speed now. Maddox estimated it from the ground ripping past him at around 110 miles per hour. It was getting difficult for him to dodge the slivers of ice as they broke apart and lifted beneath his weight.
His skis hit one section and he felt his balance upend. A car sized chunk sank into frigid water beneath him – those opposite side rising up and slamming down on the lake’s fragmenting surface.
A ramp!
Maddox bent his knees and sprung into the air.
He glanced across at the far bank. He was two-thirds of the way over the lake.
When he smacked back down he would punch a hole in the surface for sure.
Once his feet disappeared beneath the surface, he’d be upended – he’d either lose them, have his arms ripped from his sockets, drown, get dragged across the ice like a cowboy pulled by a horse in an old fashioned Western…
“I… am… a… leaf…”
The rope slackened as he launched into the sky. Maddox released the end he’d been holding and flailed with his arms. He grabbed a fresh section.
“On the breeze…!”
He caught it.
He had hoisted himself a full ten feet from the lake below. The Storch above now started experiencing problems again – with his feet no longer on the ground, it was supporting his entire mass on its vulnerable tail section again.
The Storch struggled.
Nieder leaned out the window and grimaced.
He’d obviously run out of ammunition or he’d be taking further pot shots, Maddox concluded. The German tried briefly waggling the plane to shake him off, then settled for trying to plough him back onto the broken ice.
Maddox had seconds to consider his options.
Did he try to climb higher and put the grenade in the tail?
He couldn’t risk reaching for his Sten…
He needed something small and easy to hand…
The lake’s surface was closing hard. And with every passing second, the lip of the far bank was drawing nearer.
He needed an edge. He needed a distraction. He needed…
His eyes widened.
The flare!
With the ice looming fast beneath his legs, he bent at the knees once more to give as gentle a touchdown as possible.
Success. Travelling through the air had taken him far enough from the cracking ice that the surface underneath his skis seemed once again able to bear his weight. Now he could briefly hold on with just a single hand, he ducked low and fished the emergency flare from the inside of his sock.
He’d get one shot at this.
The edge of the lake loomed near. The treeline lay barely 70 yards beyond the bank. Maddox picked the smoothest spot he could but there was still a small ramp. Lining himself up, he hit the rim and for a brief moment, once again, sailed through the air.
60 yards to the trees.
It was now or never.
50 yards.
He aimed the signal tube.
Nieder looked out the window and laughed. He knew if mere seconds, Maddox would be torn apart by the branches.
40 yards.
Maddox fired.
The flare, red shimmering angel, rocketed to life from the end of the device. It arched as it whistled into the sky, leaving behind a smoky trail.
The glistening star hit the top edge of the pilot’s window.
30 yards
Nieder reflexively raised his elbow for protection.
It ricocheted down.
Maddox could see the flare’s bright intensity was burning the Nazi’s skin.
20 yards.
It rebounded off the lower edge of the window frame and popped back down to the lake.
“No!” Maddox shouted.
He’d missed!
15 yards.
But Nieder had been distracted for vital seconds.
10 yards.
There was hope!
Maddox’s earlier leap had dragged the Storch lower by ten feet. That vital descent pulled it down so its undercarriage was barely cresting the line of conifers.
5 yards…
Maddox saw his chance. With the razor-like branches rapidly closing toward him he flicked off the skis and spun his back to the vicious boughs. Tucking his head low he felt the reed-thin underbrush ‘thwack’ against his back. Fortunately the Sten gun bore the brunt of the blows.
Without it, at this speed, they’d have surely cracked his ribs.
There was an unhappy scraping above as the Storch struggled, skimming across the spindly tips of the pines.
“I’m a leaf on the breeze,” Maddox said. “And you are a cannonball about to plummet.”
He had ten feet of rope trailing behind him to play with.
He could feel the strain as the Nieder tried to pull the Storch higher and couldn’t so long as he held on.
Twigs lashed across the backs of his hands, lashing them bloody.
Without the skis, his legs bounced along the turf, no longer cushioned by snow, but now comprising centuries of undisturbed pine needles and cones, all brown with age.
“Now,” he hissed.
He powered off the ground, jumping a few yards to the side. At the same time, he allowed the rope to slip slightly through his palms.
The plan worked.
The rope caught around a trunk, with him on one side and the plane, high above, on the other. Before his arms could bear the full force of the plane, his leapt again – this time the other way.
Now the rope formed the beginnings of a hitch, twisted around two sturdy trees.
His speed was slowing now and the plane was starting to tug the rope from his hands.
Another jump.
A third trunk.
The first tree, rope whacking up through its branches, was bending now – a battle between its bulk and the engine of the Storch.
Maddox had slowed to a standstill now and wrapped the remaining foot of rope around the trunk of the third conifer.
Not a moment too soon.
The Storch was battling three anchors and running out of time.
It could move slowly and stay aloft – but it had to keep moving nonetheless.
And now it was anchored.
The pitch of its motor grew higher and higher as the engine strained.
In an instant, with an almighty crash of branches and toppling wood, one hundred feet away at the top of the hawser – the plane was dragged just a few feet too low and plunged into the pines.
There was no giant fireball – no loud marking explosion.
Maddox fought his way through the branches. He ignored the stinging of his face and arms. He knew he must look like a man who’d been flogged. The plane had landed nose down, felling four large firs in the process.
Through the smashed glass of the cockpit he could see Nieder twitching. In the silence of the forest, the German’s pained groans were the only audible noise.
Maddox pulled the Sten from his back.
Useless.
The barrel sleeve had been dented, warped until almost mangled. That wasn’t so much of a problem in and of its self – sure, it increased the likelihood it could jam or that you’d blow your own hand off when you fired it, but you took that risk when pulling the trigger on a Sten in the first place – and, in a pinch, if the enemy was bearing down on your position, you could at least assess the balance of risks and choose to fire if you wanted.
No, the state of this weapon was far worse.
The portion of the barrel that extended past the sleeve to the muzzle was bent to a thirty degree angle.
“If I wanted a sodding boomerang, I’d have borrowed one from Sledge,” Maddox said, throwing the weapon into the underbrush in disgust.
He picked his path to the side of the Storch with care.
He might be able to see what looked like Nieder moaning from his injuries – however, for all Maddox knew, the German was simply ‘playing possum’.
Maddox had reasoned earlier that Nieder had fired the last bullet from his Luger.
But the German was a crafty bastard.
Maddox didn’t want to get this far, only to die from a pistol wound to the gut.
The twigs underfoot snapped as he treaded cautiously to the Storch. The window had gone and a broken branch poked out. Inside Nieder was a bleeding mess. The lower half of his body was pinned beneath the concertinaed dashboard machinery. A support strut skewered him into the pilot’s seat through his left lung.
His hands were feverishly reloading ammunition from his jacket pocket into the Luger magazine. He’d succeeded with one hand inserting three bullets.