By the Blood of Heroes

by Joseph Nassise

  Graves’s assignment made sense and Burke didn’t think twice about it. What was surprising to him, however, were the orders regarding the big game hunter, Clayton Manning. According to the communiqué, Burke was instructed to give Manning a free hand if the opportunity arose for him to “expedite the removal of certain key members of the opposition.” A list of half a dozen names followed. Burke recognized only one of them, that of Baron Manfred von Richthofen, commander of Jagdgeschwader 1 and the enemy’s ace of aces.

  But he didn’t need to recognize the names in order to understand the role that Manning had been asked to play. Apparently it wasn’t all that wide a leap from big game hunter to government assassin. No wonder neither Manning nor Nichols had wanted to talk about it at the briefing the day before. Killing a man in the heat of combat was one thing, but gunning him down like a rabid dog was something else, in Burke’s view, and he would have protested the necessity of such tactics if he’d known about them.

  Too late now.

  As Burke expected, the remainder of the communiqué outlined the operational details for getting his team in place to make the assault on Stalag 113, the POW camp where they believed Freeman was being held. He turned to it eagerly.

  The plan was simple and direct, which, as far as he was concerned, was the best kind. The Victorious was to carry them across the line and into occupied territory before depositing them ten miles from the camp. The Victorious would then retreat to the safety of a higher altitude, there to await the signal that the mission was complete. In the meantime, the squad would hike cross-country to a farmhouse where they would rendezvous with a group of French partisans.

  Burke’s contact among the freedom fighters was a man named Pierre Armant. According to the documents, Armant’s group was responsible for several recent guerrilla raids against truck convoys and distribution centers. They were well positioned to help them with their strike on the POW camp. They had been watching the camp for the last few days and would relay their observations to Burke. Using that information, he would then decide the best means of infiltrating the camp, rescuing Freeman, and getting them all back out again, preferably in one piece. The partisans would provide backup during the assault and, once the squad busted Freeman out of the camp, would take the group deeper into occupied territory on the assumption that it would be the last place the enemy would look. Upon reaching the departure site, the team would signal the Victorious and journey aboard her back to friendly lines.

  Burke wasn’t thrilled with having to depend on strangers to provide them with an escape route, but really, what choice did he have? Familiarity with the local terrain might make the difference when it came to a successful exfiltration, and that certainly wasn’t something he or anyone else on his team could provide.

  In the end, the details of the plan were still a bit sketchy, but the general outline was there and that was good enough for Burke. It gave him something to work with, and that was more than he’d had when they’d left the ground.

  He filled Charlie in on the details, both to get his input and to be certain that someone else in the squad knew what was supposed to happen. That way the mission wouldn’t be in jeopardy if Burke suffered an injury or, God forbid, ended up killed in action.

  The two men were deep in discussion of the particulars when Burke felt the ship rock beneath them.

  Charlie must have felt it too, for he looked up at the same time that Burke did, glancing at the whitewashed walls around them as if they might provide some answer.

  When, after a moment, the strange impact wasn’t repeated, they shrugged and went back to examining the map that they had spread out before them on the bunk. Both men were trying to memorize as much of it as possible so that they wouldn’t waste precious time having to consult it in the midst of the operation.

  A few seconds later, the airship rocked again. This time it lurched downward, the angle of attack so steep that anything that wasn’t held down—knapsacks, ammo belts, helmets, and the like—flew through the air. The men swatted frantically at the loose objects as they flew past, fighting to keep their balance and avoid getting struck at the same time.

  The ship righted itself quickly enough, but that didn’t stop the men from wanting to know what was going on and looking to Burke for answers. He just didn’t have any to give them.

  Or at least, not yet.

  But he intended to find some.

  The tramp of boots on the catwalk outside reached his ears. Burke moved to the door and hauled it open, startling the group of men who were passing by. Wilson, the chief machinist who had shown him around the Victorious earlier that afternoon, was one of them and Burke snatched at his arm as he tried to get past.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’re under attack,” he answered gruffly, his attention clearly on the task ahead of him. “Get back inside and secure yourself as best . . . Wait! Are you afraid of heights?”

  Surprised by the question, Burke answered before he thought about why the other man might be asking. “No.”

  That was all Wilson needed to hear. He grabbed Burke’s arm and dragged him along in his wake, his burly strength overcoming what little resistance Burke mounted before willingly deciding to comply. Anything to get out of that cramped compartment and get a sense of what was going on.

  “We can use your help,” Wilson told him, as they rushed down the catwalk in the direction he’d originally been going. “How comfortable are you with a Vickers gun?”

  The Vickers was a heavy machine gun that used a 7.7 mm cartridge. Water-cooled, it had a tendency to jam too often for Burke’s comfort, but the British had adopted it as their heavy machine gun of choice, and he’d trained with it earlier in his career. It was bulkier than the American Lewis gun, with which he was more familiar, but the basic operation was the same and Burke didn’t think he’d have any trouble with it.

  He said as much to Wilson.

  “Good,” the chief machinist said. “In that case, I’ll load and you fire. I can’t aim worth hell.”

  Burke was still trying to figure out where on earth they’d set up a machine-gun emplacement on a ship like this when Wilson dragged him through an unmarked door and into the room that lay beyond.

  Much of the space was filled with a metal contraption that looked like a lion’s cage with a reclining barber’s chair in the middle of it. Mounted on a tripod in front of the chair was the Vickers, a belt of shells already loaded, with the bulk of an ammunition case sitting close by. A thick lever, like that seen at a railroad crossing, jutted up from the flooring next to the ammunition case.

  Behind the strange-looking contraption against the far wall Burke could see what looked to be two bicycle frames, sans wheels, mounted about ten feet apart from each other. Large chains ran from the frames into the walls on either side of the room. They reminded Burke of the anchor chains on the merchant vessel he’d sailed aboard when being deployed to Europe, all thick links and solid iron. Two midshipmen sat on the seats, their feet on the pedals, and from the sweat staining their shirts it looked as if they’d been pedaling hard for a while.

  A groan of pain from one side caught his attention, and he turned to find a medical orderly frantically trying to bandage the chest of a wounded man lying on the floor, the deck around them awash in blood. Another man lay slumped against the nearby bulkhead, a small red hole on the front of his uniform that at first glance didn’t look too bad, but from the way he stared off into space, Burke knew he was already beyond help.

  The airship rocked again, shuddering beneath their feet, and the time for sightseeing was over. Wilson pushed him forward, toward the contraption, and guided him into the seat in the center of it, right behind the Vickers. Burke had already sat down before he noticed the blood smeared on the seat beneath him and splashed across the inside surface of the cage nearby. His gut clenched at the sight, but it was too late to back out now; Wilson was already strapping him into place with thick, leather belts.

  “Wha
t do I need those for?” Burke asked, as he shifted against the tightness of the straps and tried to get comfortable.

  “You’ll see,” was all the chief machinist said.

  When Burke was properly strapped in, he watched for a moment as Wilson thrust his feet into leather straps next to the chair and set about buckling them down tight over his boots, with extra straps wrapping around his ankles as well, then turned his attention to the gun before him.

  It was mounted on a gimbaled tripod that supported its heavy weight while still allowing him to swing it up, down, and to either side with minimal difficulty, even with the lessened dexterity of his clockwork arm.

  Now all he needed was something to shoot at.

  “Better put these on,” Wilson said and handed him a pair of goggles with thick lenses protruding for the eyepieces. Burke pulled them over his head and was still trying to get them adjusted when Wilson turned to face the far wall where the other men had gathered and shouted, “Ready!”

  The men stationed on the bicycles began pedaling at a furious rate. A loud grinding noise filled the room as the exterior wall split in two across the center of its horizontal axis, revealing that the wall was in fact two massive doors. Burke watched in astonishment as the doors moved outward from the hull for a few feet before sliding in opposite directions, one up and one down. The gap beneath them widened as the crew continued pedaling, and Burke got his first glimpse at the gray sky just beyond. As the gap widened, a cold breeze rushed in from outside, filling the room with its hoary caress.

  Burke immediately realized why Wilson had asked if he was afraid of heights.

  “We’re not going out there, are . . .”

  That was as far as he got.

  Wilson shouted, “Hang on!” and then hauled back on the lever beside his station.

  The locks holding the gun emplacement sprang open and the entire platform shot out through the open door along a rapidly unfolding track to hang suspended thousands of feet above the ground.

  Chapter Twenty

  TWO MILES HIGH

  The wind whipped and shrieked at them, trying to tear them from their perch with freezing fingers, and Burke was glad for the straps that held him in place even as he gazed about in amazement. The bulk of the Victorious rose behind them, filling the view in that direction with its steely gray hide, but the action was out ahead of them where the sky was filled with aircraft whirling and diving about one another and the massive airship in an intricate dance that made Burke dizzy from trying to watch it all. He was unable to pick out friend from foe; they all looked the same as they dove and spun about one another with seeming abandon. For the first time since he’d entered the war, Burke was thankful that he’d joined the infantry.

  He tore his gaze away from the dogfight in front of him and glanced to the side. A bank of deep black thunderclouds loomed a few miles to the east and, despite the flashes of lightning he could see dancing deep within, the Victorious seemed to be headed directly toward them, climbing as she went.

  The storm was the least of his concern though, as Wilson tapped his shoulder and frantically pointed out ahead of them into the distance.

  At first, Burke didn’t understand what the other man was pointing at; there was just too much going on. He reached up with his good hand, trying to clear the light mist that seemed to be gathering on the surface of his goggles, and discovered that the right-hand lens rotated through different settings, each one making the distant objects much clearer. By chance he landed on the proper one and the German biplane that was speeding toward them sprang sharply into view, its machine guns already spitting a hail of lead in their direction!

  With his heart in his throat and his pulse beating a mile a minute, Burke grabbed the handles of the Vickers and swung it around at the oncoming aircraft, depressing the firing trigger even before he’d gotten it lined up properly.

  A stream of tracers arced out across the sky toward the Albatros even as the German machine-gun fire bounced off the steel cage around the two men, the sound of the bullets lost in the howl of the wind and the hammering cry of the Vickers. The plane grew larger with every passing second, and Burke found himself screaming wordlessly in defiance as it filled his view, bullets flying back and forth between them.

  At the last minute the pilot pushed the stick forward and the biplane dove beneath the firing cage to disappear somewhere beneath and behind them.

  Burke didn’t have a lot of time to worry about him, however, for another plane rushed into view, this one moving laterally across his field of vision, and he recognized the brilliant red paint job even in the midst of all the sensory overload. He swung the guns to follow it, sending a stream of bullets across the space between them, but the aircraft zigged when he thought it would zag and he never even touched it.

  There wasn’t time for regret however, for Wilson was already pointing out another German plane as it came into range and Burke spun the gun mount, trying to line up a shot. That’s how it went for what felt like hours, Burke firing until the gun went dry and then waiting impatiently for Wilson to feed another belt into the firing mechanism before beginning the process all over again. The enemy, of course, was doing their best to kill them in turn, for Burke and his companion stood between them and their prize, the Victorious herself. Bullets constantly rattled against the outside of the firing cage, and there were more than a few close calls, including one in which a bullet came close enough to burn a crease down the side of Burke’s cheek with the heat of its passage.

  Burke’s first kill was a Fokker D.III that came too close while trying to shake the Sopwith Camel on its tail. He chopped its tail assembly to pieces with a burst from the Vickers, sending the plane spinning earthward with a long spiral of black smoke pouring from the engine. Not long after that, while working in conjunction with one of the escort squadron’s Bristols, he helped send an Albatros with silver-tipped wings to the same fate.

  Each time they caused damage to an enemy aircraft, Burke screamed in primal triumph and pumped his clenched fist, high on bloodlust and the need to kill those who had come to deliver the same fate to him. The urgency of the squad’s mission, the danger of the enemy guns, even the precariousness of his position in a simple cage of wire mesh and steel thousands of feet above the ground all brought his senses alive like only the heat of battle could. This was why he joined the war: to feel the pulse of life pour through his veins. He felt ready to take on the world and everything in it, and he found himself wishing it would go on and on, reveling in the excitement and the glory.

  The Albatros appeared out of nowhere, its blue-and-gold-striped frame hurtling toward them from out of the morning sun, and Burke spun the Vickers in its direction, trying to line up the shot. The German pilot kept a steady stream of tracers headed in their direction while avoiding Burke’s return fire, turning away only at the last second. As he did so he lobbed something toward them with his free hand.

  The world slowed down as Burke watched the object tumble through the air, turning end over end in a manner that he was all too familiar with, for he’d seen it hundreds of times over the years as enemy soldiers rushed toward him across no-man’s-land. Fear rose like a spectre in the night, threatening to overwhelm him, as his brain finally cataloged what his eyes had already recognized.

  Grenade!

  There was nothing he could do; he was strapped in tighter than a lunatic in a straitjacket. The potato masher would explode long before he managed to even get the first buckle undone, never mind free himself from the harness. Even if he did get free, there was nowhere for him to go. He’d never be able to crawl back along the rails supporting the gun platform to the safety of the airship’s interior without slipping, not with the wind and the movement of the ship.

  All this and more passed through his mind in the three seconds it took for the grenade to arc through the air, bounce off the top of the cage, once, twice, and then slip through an opening to disappear amid the wire mesh beneath their feet.

&
nbsp; Burke closed his eyes and waited for the end.

  A minute passed.

  Then two.

  Burke began to think he might just live.

  “Why are we still here?” Wilson asked, his voice shaking, though whether from fear or relief Burke didn’t know.

  Burke’s voice betrayed his own confusion when he answered, “Don’t have a clue. Just be thankful we are.”

  The universe apparently didn’t believe him, however, for the faulty grenade chose that moment to live up to the purpose for which it had been designed and exploded in a fury of sound and pressure.

  For Burke there was a thunderous boom followed by a brilliant flash of light, and then the explosion enveloped him in its velvet fist.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  GUN PLATFORM #3

  Time passed, though in his vaguely conscious state Burke didn’t know how long. He didn’t care, he just wanted to drift in the peace and silence, to let the world pass him by unhindered and unnoticed.

  A voice began shouting at him, dragging him from his rest, but he couldn’t make out what it was saying. He wanted to tell the voice to go away, to leave him alone and to let him go back to sleep, but for some reason he couldn’t get his thoughts together well enough to form the words. That worried him, and the concern he felt was like a kick in the teeth, jarring him toward conscious awareness of where he was and what he was doing.

  Which, as it turned out, was hanging by his harness from the remains of the gun platform.

  It took everything he had not to scream when he opened his eyes and found himself bobbing there in midair with the earth lain out like a giant patchwork quilt thousands of feet below.

  “Burke! Buuurrrkkkke!”