The Long Flight Home

by Alan Hlad

  CHAPTER 21

  NORTH WEALD, ENGLAND

  The low growl sent a shot of adrenaline through Ollie’s body. The soldiers stopped. The siren rose to a roar.

  “To your posts!” shouted the sergeant. He pointed at Ollie. “Go!”

  Ollie looked at the plane. Then to the sergeant.

  “Now!”

  Ollie ran to Bertie’s truck. He fumbled with the key and started the engine. As he pulled away, he saw the soldiers jump into their trucks and speed toward a hangar. Men scrambled across the base, several tossing on helmets and climbing into sandbag pits. Shells were stuffed into antiaircraft guns, their barrels cranked toward the sky.

  At the far end of the base, men wearing flight jackets ran from their barracks. It would take the crews a minute, perhaps two at most, to reach the planes. He glanced in the rearview mirror. The Blenheim’s bomb-bay doors were open. It’ll only take a second, he thought. He slammed the brakes and veered off the runway. He threw open the door, ran to the Blenheim, and crawled inside. The tail was packed with cages and secured with a cargo net. Bronze pigeon eyes stared from behind wire. The siren wailed.

  Only a narrow archway along the roof led to the tail of the plane. No aisle. No crevice to squeeze himself through. Had he paid attention to how the men had loaded, rather than taking glimpses of the cockpit, he would have known how difficult it would be to reach the tail, and maybe he’d be speeding back to the farm in Bertie’s truck. He could either crawl over the top . . . or leave. Without thinking, he lifted himself onto the cages.

  Pigeons flapped their wings. He crawled, spreading out his limbs to distribute his weight, like a man on a bed of nails. The cages creaked. A metal beam running along the ceiling scraped at his spine. A beak poked his finger. Sirens howled.

  Reaching the back, he slid himself down to the floor, into a small gap between the cages and the plane’s tail. His knees pressed into his chest. As he unhooked the cargo net, antiaircraft fire boomed. Ollie jerked and bumped his head. Pain flared. He threw open the net.

  “Duchess!”

  Pigeons rustled. The cages blocked most of the sunlight shining through the turret, making it difficult to see. He scanned the cages. No Duchess. He lowered himself, his palms against the cold metal floor. On the bottom, two rows in, something flashed. His eyes adjusted. And he saw her.

  Duchess flapped her wings, her bright plume sparking like a lightning bug.

  Shells exploded. Ollie flinched, then slid out a bottom cage, like he was removing a building block. The stack tilted but held in place. He quickly placed the cage in the corner and reached his arm into the hole. He stuck his fingers through the wire of Duchess’s cage and tugged. It held firm. He pulled harder, feeling wire cut into his skin. But the cage didn’t budge.

  Ollie pressed his back into the tail. With his boots, he pushed the cages and made a crevice. He reached back into the hole and pulled on Duchess’s cage, feeling it wiggle. He strained harder. The cage slid. He leaned down, creating more leverage. Duchess blinked her eyes. As he pulled the cage through the opening, the antiaircraft guns paused, if only for a second. But it was long enough to hear it. Whistles. Like hundreds of boiling teakettles. Hairs stood on his neck. The whistling grew, then suddenly stopped. As Ollie tucked Duchess’s cage into his chest, explosions shook the ground, each approaching closer than the one before, like the feet of a giant stomping toward the plane.

  Ollie climbed onto the cages. Wings beat beneath him. His foot tangled in the cargo net.

  Antiaircraft guns fired.

  Ollie yanked hard with his leg, freeing his foot from the netting. As he clasped Duchess’s cage and crawled forward, he heard what sounded like a blast of dynamite. His back slammed the roof of the plane. He fell back into the tail, buried in a mound of cages.

  Ollie opened his eyes. Pigeons flapped their wings.

  “Duchess!” Ollie shouted but couldn’t hear his voice because of the intense ringing in his ears. He pushed cages from his face, but several more fell onto his head. The plane vibrated. The ground quaked with more explosions. As the throbbing in his eardrums subsided, it was replaced with the sound of propellers.

  CHAPTER 22

  NORTH WEALD, ENGLAND

  The plane lurched forward, pressing Ollie’s back into the tail. The Blenheim rumbled and shimmied as it accelerated down the runway.

  “Wait!” Ollie shouted, his voice drowned by exploding shells. He struggled to push away cages. Wings beat. Feathers flew. The plane rocked hard to the left, slamming his shoulder into a support beam. “I’m in here!”

  The hum of spinning tires suddenly stopped. The floor seemed to slope sharply, and the plane tilted to the right. Christ, we’re in the air, Ollie thought. Cages covered his head and chest. He grabbed the cargo net and pulled himself up. Emerging from the pile, he saw a gunner standing with his head in the turret.

  The gunner leaned back, pointing the barrel skyward. His arms shook as he squeezed off rounds of machine-gun fire. Something incredibly fast buzzed over the plane. As the gunner swung his gun around, he saw Ollie emerge from the cages. “What the . . .”

  Holes popped across the fuselage. Thin light beams shot over the floor. The gunner’s jaw dropped. He buckled over, like a boxer who had been sucker-punched in the kidneys.

  Ollie crawled over the cages. He reached the gunner, slumped against a box of ammunition.

  The gunner coughed, blood spraying his flight jacket.

  “Hold on,” Ollie said, pressing his hands over the gunner’s abdomen.

  “Benny!” someone shouted from the cockpit.

  The gunner’s larynx gurgled as he tried to speak.

  “He’s hit!” Ollie shouted.

  Heads jerked in the cockpit.

  Shots opened more holes in the fuselage. Sparks flew.

  The plane banked hard to the left. G-force pressed the gunner against the fuselage, causing him to moan.

  Ollie turned the man over and propped his head. He applied pressure to the gunner’s abdomen, noticing that the leather flight jacket was warm and sticky.

  The gunner grunted and mouthed words but was unable to speak, as if his vocal cords had been cut.

  Ollie scanned the plane and spotted a first-aid kit mounted on the fuselage. He grabbed the kit, but bullets whizzing up through the floor caused him to jump into the turret. Through the glass dome, he saw a swarm of enemy fighters surrounding their unit. The Blenheim bombers dodged left and right but held their formation. The sky was filled with the phosphorous glare of tracers. High above, Luftwaffe bombers were headed west, dropping what appeared to be endless payloads. Ollie swung the turret and saw a diving Messerschmitt targeting the Blenheim behind them. The enemy fighter fired its guns. The Blenheim’s cockpit glass shattered, causing the nose to drop. And the plane spiraled toward the ground.

  The Messerschmitt swooped left, then right, and zeroed in on their plane. Ollie’s heart pounded. He dropped the first-aid kit and grabbed the machine gun, his hands slick with blood. He pointed the barrel as best he could, never having aimed anything more powerful than a peashooter, and pulled the trigger. His arms shook like he was wielding a jackhammer. Bullets flared, missing its target. But the Messerschmitt veered away.

  Ollie swung the gun around its turret, looking for the enemy, but the Messerschmitt fighters left to escort their Luftwaffe bombers. Gunfire trickled to a stop, leaving the drone of the Blenheim engines. He felt the plane climb. Within seconds, they were hidden in the clouds.

  Ollie returned to the gunner, the man’s eyes closed, bloodied spit oozing from his mouth. He checked the gunner’s pulse. A weak beat. Ripping open the first-aid kit, he pulled out the largest bandages. He unzipped the man’s flight jacket to a strong copper smell and immediately realized that things were worse than he expected. The bullet had pierced the abdomen and come out his side, leaving a hole the size of a peach. He placed bandages on the man’s torso, desperately trying to contain the loss of blood. Ollie briefly thought of
his father trapped under the tractor, leg snapped, hip crushed. His mother’s bloodied fingers, nails ripped away as she frantically scraped the earth to free her husband. He shook the vision from his head and applied the last of the bandages. The gauze instantly became saturated with blood.

  Glancing toward the cockpit, he saw the captain using the radio. The copilot was in control, pushing the wheel forward to level off the plane. Ollie turned his attention back to the fallen gunner, pressing his hands on the man’s wound. The gunner let out a frail whimper, like a fevered child too ill to wake.

  The captain left the cockpit and went to his fallen gunner. He removed his cap, revealing a crop of black hair.

  Ollie cringed, immediately recognizing the captain. “He’s bad,” Ollie said.

  Flight Lieutenant Boar grabbed Ollie’s jacket. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Ollie looked at him. “I was retrieving a pigeon your men mistakenly loaded when we were attacked.”

  Boar looked at his gunner. “Bastard. You got him killed.”

  Ollie pushed Boar’s hand away. “Luftwaffe shot him.” He pressed the gunner’s abdomen. “And he’s not dead.”

  Boar glanced at the holes in the fuselage, then kneeled and placed his hands on the gunner’s cheeks. “Benny!”

  The gunner moaned.

  “Benny!”

  The gunner slid open his eyes.

  Boar squeezed the man’s face. “Hold on, Benny!”

  The gunner blinked.

  “He needs a hospital,” Ollie said, pressing the man’s wound.

  “We’re not going back,” Boar said.

  A jolt shot through Ollie’s body.

  “The mission has commenced.” Boar ground his teeth. “Keep him comfortable.” He stood and returned to the cockpit.

  Ollie pressed harder on Benny’s wound, trying to slow the bleeding. But the hole, caused by a high-caliber bullet that could pierce steel, was far too big. Blood dribbled down the man’s leg to form a puddle. His face turned white. The floor turned red. As the plane flew high above the English Channel, the gunner gave a final gasp, desperately trying to suck in air. Then his chest deflated, like a partially filled balloon snipped with scissors.

  With shaking hands, Ollie zipped the man’s flight jacket, then brushed over Benny’s face to close his eyes.

  CHAPTER 23

  10,000 FEET ABOVE THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

  “He’s dead,” Ollie said, standing behind the cockpit. Thick clouds masked the window, as if they were flying through milk.

  Flight Lieutenant Boar tightened his grip on the controls, veins protruding over the back of his hands.

  “Bloody hell,” said the copilot. He adjusted his cap, wiped perspiration from his forehead, and turned to get a good look at the American. His eyebrows raised.

  Ollie noticed the man staring at his blood-stained hands and slid them behind his back.

  The copilot reached inside his jacket and removed a bronze St. Christopher medallion. He rubbed it feverishly with his thumb, as if he were trying to erase the engraving or absorb its saintly protection.

  “You’ll pay for what you’ve done, Yank,” Boar said. “But for now, I need you to do exactly what you are told.” His jaw muscles flexed as he glanced at his watch. “Secure Benny. We’ll be over our target in forty-eight minutes. I don’t want to lose him when we open the doors.”

  Ollie nodded.

  The copilot swallowed again, as if he were about to become sick.

  “Who was he?” Ollie asked.

  “Our gunner,” Boar said.

  “No, I mean who was he?”

  Boar stared at his instrument panel. “Benny Sullivan, a miner from South Wales.” He shook his head. “Bloody fool believed the air war was less dangerous than the coal fields.”

  The copilot slid open his side window. Air rushed in, pushing back a growing metallic smell.

  Ollie returned to the gunner, propped near the cargo doors, and scanned the fuselage for a place to move him. But the plane was small and packed with pigeons. The only places to stand were in the turret and over the cargo doors, both not an option. So Ollie moved several cages into the base of the gunner’s turret, making sure there was enough room to swivel the gun. He placed several more cages on an empty bomb shelf mounted to the side of the fuselage.

  Standing over the gunner, Ollie placed his hands under the man’s armpits, the left side warm and sticky. He suddenly felt weak and out of breath, but forced himself to slide Benny to the back, his soaked body painting the floor. Using the cargo net, he covered the gunner, an arm and leg woven through the webbing to ensure he wouldn’t slide. The pigeons closest to the gunner had closed their eyes or stuffed their heads under their wings.

  He sat in the gunner’s turret, in the mounted chair that Benny once used, and pressed his head against the gun. The steel felt cold. A man was dead. He was on his way to France. And this would be his last flight. He’d screwed up. Even if Bertie was best friends with Air Vice-Marshal Park, Winston Churchill, FDR, or God, for that matter, there was no talking his way out of this mess. But most of all, his body ached with the thought that he might never see Susan again. They’ll lock me up. I’ll never be with her again. He struggled to fully grasp the impact of his blunder. He’d never hear the sweet timbre of her voice, nor would he hold her in his arms again. His heart sank. We could have had a future together.

  As the drone of propellers filled the cabin, he wondered what his parents would have thought of his choices. Would they approve of him trying to join the fight? Surely, yes. But not with how he had handled things—stowing away on a ship, punching a lieutenant, getting thrown in jail, and being sentenced to a pigeon farm. And now, being caught onboard an RAF mission, no doubt a serious offense that would likely have him spending the rest of the war behind bars.

  He exhaled and saw his breath, the temperature plummeting from the altitude. As he went to blow on his hands, he noticed his blood-stained fingers and stopped. With nothing to clean himself, he untucked the tail of his shirt and rubbed until his skin turned raw.

  For the next forty minutes, Ollie sat in silence until heavy turbulence made him peek his head into the turret. The camouflage of clouds was dissipating. He counted bombers. One missing—a miracle considering the surprise attack. Suddenly, the plane tilted its wings, causing him to brace himself against the machine gun. He watched the Blenheim bombers fall out of formation. Through breaks in the clouds, he saw the French coastline, Earth’s crust rising from the depths of the English Channel. The planes spanned out, each taking solo routes to drop their pigeons along the French countryside.

  Ollie felt a hand touch his shoulder. He turned and saw the copilot.

  “We’re approaching the coast,” the copilot said. “I’ll be unloading.”

  “I can do it,” Ollie said.

  The copilot shook his head. “Flight Lieutenant wants it done right.” He glanced to the tail and saw the body wrapped in a cargo net shroud.

  Ollie saw the color drain from the man’s face. “How about I hand you the pigeons?”

  The copilot rubbed the medallion inside his jacket and said, “Fine, but stay clear of the doors.”

  With the other planes having gone their separate ways, the buzzing of two engines seemed comparably soft. Ollie stepped from the turret, making room for the copilot, and found a cramped space next to the gunner. He looked at the pigeons. Most had their heads under the folds of their wings. Somewhere deep in the tail of the plane was Duchess. He thought of Susan and silently promised to make sure her pigeon was returned.

  “Prepare for drop!” Flight Lieutenant Boar shouted from the cockpit.

  The copilot gripped a hand brace mounted near the bomb doors. He looked around for a safety cord to attach to himself but found nothing but ammunition.

  The doors cracked open. Freezing wind gushed into the fuselage.

  “Where’s Benny’s safety cord?” The copilot frantically looked around the cabin.

&
nbsp; Ollie pointed to Benny, a wrapped wire cord strapped to his belt. “You looking for that?”

  The copilot bit his lip. “Yes.”

  Ollie retrieved the cord, having to unbuckle the gunner’s belt, then handed it to the copilot.

  The copilot quickly fastened one end of the wire to his belt, the other to a hook near the bomb doors. Wind blasted his face, making fleshy waves over his jowls. “We’ll drop them one at a time. Every twenty seconds. To spread them out.”

  Ollie nodded.

  “Hold tight.” He pointed to a leather strap mounted on the fuselage. “We’re likely to have company.”

  Ollie gripped the strap. Far below, the water turned to earth. They flew over a small cluster of houses and a stone church. An empty road snaked through the village and into the countryside. No guns. No tanks. No Nazis. Only dried-up fields intertwined with clusters of forest. The place looked deserted, as if the French had waded into the Channel and drowned, rather than live with Nazi occupation.

  “Drop!” Boar shouted.

  Ollie handed the copilot a cage. The pigeon perked its head, suddenly becoming alert. The copilot released the package. The pigeon attempted to fly, its instincts taking over, wings beating against the sides of the cage. The chute shot open. And the cage floated toward a field.

  In the distance, Ollie heard the crack of Nazi antiaircraft fire. His heart rate spiked. He quickly handed the copilot another cage.

  Cage after cage, Ollie transferred them to the copilot. The pile dwindled. Pigeons floated like dandelion clocks to the fields.

  Reaching the tail, Ollie saw Duchess in her cage, her head jutting side to side as if she were trying to understand why her companions were individually exiled from the plane. He placed Duchess in the corner and handed the last two cages to the copilot.