Lillian needed to disarm Ursula quickly. To accomplish that, she brought Ursula’s wrist to Lillian’s mouth and clamped down. A part of Lillian was happily satisfied with the howl of pain that came from the Nazi agent. The gun dropped on Lillian’s chest. She grabbed the pistol and tossed it to Henry. It skittered across the hangar floor. “Go after Graf.”
Henry, now sitting up, dove for the gun as Graf fired in their direction again. Henry snatched up the pistol and put two rounds into the fuselage behind which Graf hid.
“On it,” the British agent said. To the Geigers, he said, “Find cover.”
They obeyed without question.
Lillian heard a metallic rasping. The next thing she knew, a wire wrapped around her throat. If it hadn’t been for the collar of her blouse and jacket, Lillian’s throat would have been sliced open by Ursula. As it was, Lillian, gasping for breath, fell back on Ursula.
The Nazi pulled hard.
Lillian didn’t even have breath to gasp or try to call for help. Not that there was any help. Henry pursued Graf somewhere in the hangar and the Geigers were hiding. Lillian was able to snake a couple of fingers in between the wire and her neck, but they did little good. Ursula just yanked and pulled harder. Lillian’s vision blackened around the edges.
This was it. This is where I die. Voices in her head warred with each other. No, it’s not. Not here. Not today. And sure as hell not like this.
Lillian’s free hand flailed. She tried to punch Ursula. Her hand met only air.
Ursula tugged harder. One of Lillian’s fingers holding back the wire sliced opened. Her blood poured out of the wound. She knew she only had seconds to live or die.
Her hand hit something. It was the knife she had plunged into Ursula’s thigh. Lillian gripped the handle. She shoved downward. Ursula grunted in pain but didn’t let up on her efforts to choke the life out of Lillian.
In a last desperate maneuver, Lillian withdrew the blade. The blade still pointed downward. Lillian flipped the knife in the air and caught the handle again. Now the blade faced her. Moving aside as much as possible, Lillian jammed the knife past her face and into Ursula.
There was a gurgling sound, then a gasp. With a jerk, the wire around Lillian’s neck slackened. Lillian fell onto the floor and scooted away from Ursula as fast as possible. It was only then she looked back at her handiwork.
The knife protruded from Ursula’s eye socket.
Lillian gulped, her lungs craving the luscious sweetness of fresh air. She coughed and spat on the ground. The blood still flowed from her injured finger. All she was aware of at that point was the floor of the hangar and her breathing.
Before she knew it, James and Elsa rushed to her side. “Lil, are you okay?”
Lillian could only nod. Through a rasping voice, she asked, “Henry?”
As if in answer, gunshots rang out at the back of the hangar. A man’s guttural yell echoed through the empty chamber.
Trying to stand, Lillian stumbled once.
“You should take it easy,” Elsa said.
“When we’re safe,” Lillian said, using James’s shoulder for leverage to stand, “then I’ll take it easy.” She looked around, swaying and unbalanced. “Any weapons?”
“No.” James put his arm around her. Elsa stood on the other side, steadying her.
Lillian looked at James. She focused on his face, the familiar lines now deeper than they were in their university day. She used him to center her mind, reminding her what was at stake.
An idea formed in her head. “Find the keys to the planes. Just two.”
“What?” James asked, shocked.
Lillian grabbed his lapel. “Do it. Fast. I don’t know if Graf called in reinforcements.” She stumbled away from them, heading to where Henry went.
“Can you even fly a plane?” James yelled after her.
“Sure.” Under her breath, she said, “I’m learning tonight. How hard can it be?”
With steps that steadily got more sure, she ran across the hangar. She skidded to a halt when she smelled gasoline.
CHAPTER 56
“Over here,” Henry Clark said to Lillian.
She looked around and spied the British agent hunkering down behind one of the biplanes. She ran over to him.
Someone fired a bullet in her direction. It pinged off the concrete.
“What’s going on?” Lillian asked.
“Graf,” Henry said. “He’s holed up in one of the offices. I spread gasoline across the front of it. Now we’re negotiating.”
“Negotiating what?”
Henry pointed with his finger, tracing a line from the office to the planes. “He’s got a direct line of sight to the planes. We try to get in one or two, he just takes careful aim and shoots us or the tanks. Isn’t that right, Graf?” These last words he shouted at the closed door.
The office where Graf had taken refuge had glass windows that faced the hangar. One was already shot out. Broken glass littered the ground.
Across the hangar, James smashed through the window of the main office. He reached around the window and opened the door. He ducked inside and emerged a minute later with a handful of keys. He held them up to show Lillain.
She nodded. “Okay, we got the keys to the planes. Now what?”
“Convince your old professor to let us go.” Henry spread his palm and indicated the office.
Lillian, her voice still raspy, shouted, “Colonel Graf?”
“What?” His voice sounded small from the office.
“You’ve been beaten.”
“Not really,” came the reply. “I’ve already alerted the Wehrmacht. They’re on their way.”
“No, sir,” Lillian called. God, it hurts to yell. “You’re bluffing.”
No response came.
Lillian racked her brain trying to remember details of what Professor Gunter Graf was like. One came to mind. “Your wife; she was a good cook.”
No response.
“She made dinner for some of your favorite students. I was one. I remember how good her food was.”
In answer, a gunshot. “Leave my wife out of this!”
Lillian smiled grimly. She had her edge. “What do you think she would tell you were she here?”
“To fight on.”
“No, sir. She would want you to be safe. To stay alive. We’ve won. You’ve lost. All you have to do is let us go.”
A moment of silence. Then, “I will fight you until the end!” A gunshot punctuated the response. It flew harmlessly into one of the planes.
Henry whispered, “We’re getting nowhere. What’s your next play?”
Lillian Saxton thought about the situation. Gunter Graf was her old history professor, but that was a lifetime ago. Now, he was the enemy. She hated taking life, but understood it was part of her duty at times. Is this one of those times?
“Colonel, are you going to let us leave without incident?”
“Never!”
Lillian took the gun from Henry. “This is your last chance. Let us go or die.”
“You don’t have the stomach for such a decision!”
Without another word, Lillian raised the gun and fired at the cement floor coated with gasoline. The bullet caused a spark which ignited the fluid. Almost instantly, huge flames surged up. They followed the line Henry had drawn, almost to the door of the office. More important, there was a line of flame in front of the broken window. The flames gave Lillian and Henry the camouflage they needed to scurry back to James and Elsa, climb into two planes, and taxi out of the hangar.
Keeping back tears of rage, Lillian shoved the gun back into Henry’s hand. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 57
Colonel Gunter Graf heard the last words of Sergeant Lillian Saxton. “This is your last chance. Let us go or die.”
He chuckled. The student he knew from the university was too timid to make such an idle threat. He remembered her constantly hounding him during office hours, asking him a million questions,
all in the vain hope she could answer his questions exactly as he wanted them answered on tests. Lillian Saxton was a fool, a woman whose only ambition as a young woman seemed to be to land a husband such as James Geiger.
A person like that would never knowingly, and in cold blood, do anything so drastic as light the gasoline.
With confidence in his voice, Graf responded. “You don’t have the stomach for such a decision!”
A few seconds later, Gunter Graf was proven wrong.
A single gunshot ricocheted off the cement floor of the hangar. The spark lit the gasoline. Flames rose up almost instantly.
Graf smelled the smoke first. Then he saw the flames run across his field of view out the windows. He stood up, knowing for a fact that Saxton and Clark would be making their way across the hangar floor to the planes that would deliver them to safety.
Vaguely, through the orange fire, he saw two figures running. In defiance, he fired at them. He couldn’t tell if his bullets reached their targets. In the next instant, he lost sight of them.
The flames in front of the window grew. They found the wooden crates directly in front of the office and fed on them. The fire consumed the crates and craved more.
Gunter Graf opened the office door. Raging fire blocked his escape.
He closed the door. He looked around the room. It was an interior office. No windows provided an exit. He was trapped.
The smoke curled into the office. Graf coughed. The black smoke clogged his lungs. He coughed harder. With no alternative, Graf slid to the floor where the smoke was not as dense. He still coughed.
His mind wandered back to Wilma. He brought to his vision her lovely face. It was there, right in front of him, amid all the smoke. Her face shone bright amid the darkening office. He thought of her cooking and their lovemaking, how they both fulfilled him beyond all measure. Tears crested his lids and streamed down his face.
“Meine Ehefrau,” he whispered. “Ich liebe dich für immer.”
He put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked on metal. Nothing happened. It was empty.
“Oh my.” Colonel Gunter Graf lay on the floor and awaited eternity.
CHAPTER 58
“The fire’s giving us camouflage,” Henry said. “I’ll cover you just in case. Go.”
Lillian needed no more prompting. She got up and ran across the hangar.
Henry ran close at her heels.
Graf shot at them. They ducked, but his aim must have been off for she couldn’t tell where the bullet landed.
The two of them rounded a plane and nearly plowed into James and Elsa. “Whoa, there,” James said. “We’re here. We have all the keys. That’s so no one can follow us.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Henry muttered.
James looked at Lillian. She only nodded.
“Okay,” Henry said, command in his voice, “here’s the plan.” He put a finger in James’s face. “No discussion. James goes in one plane with Lillian. I’ll take Elsa.”
“Then what?” James asked.
“We fly to the Channel. As far as we can. His Majesty’s Navy rules the Channel. They’ll pick us up.”
“What if the Luftwaffe find us?” Elsa asked.
“They won’t.”
“How do you know?” she pressed.
Henry didn’t respond to her question. “Where’s the office?”
James pointed.
Henry took off running.
“Can you fly a plane?” James asked.
Lillian gave him her best assured smile. “Sure.”
He cocked his head to her, the same gesture he used to make when he was trying to get a secret out of her back in their university days. “Lil, I know you.”
She gave him a firm look. “No, you knew me. I’m different now.” A slight smile curled half her mouth. “As you can see now. And yes, I can fly a plane.”
Elsa said, “Your hand. How is it?”
Lillian clamped her bleeding fingers into her dress. “I’m fine.”
Henry whistled and gestured that they all come to him. They ran, stopping in the office. Smoke now started to fill the hangar.
“Here,” Henry said, “I didn’t feel like lugging them across the hangar.” He tossed a life vest to each one of them. “They call this a Mae West. You’ll see why when we ditch in the Channel.”
Lillian frowned. “Ditch in the Channel?”
Henry nodded. “I don’t know the range of these planes. I’m not sure they’ll make it all the way across the Channel. The plan is to fly directly northwest, toward England. As soon as you see a ship, light a flare”—he showed them the box on the desk—“jump out of the plane, and parachute to the water. The good guys’ll pick us up. Now, put these parachutes on. Hurry!”
They all set about donning the parachutes. Lillian had parachuted out of planes before. Unlike traveling by sea, she had little issue with a smooth plane ride. She and Henry cinched their parachutes quickly, then helped the civilians with theirs.
The acrid smell of smoke and fire became thick and heavy. They didn’t have much time. Everyone picked up a flare. In short order, Henry showed them how to ignite them.
Henry pointed through the office window and across the hangar. “Lillian, take James in the yellow one. Elsa, climb into the rear seat of the white one. Go! Now!”
“What are you going to do?” Lillian asked.
“Make a phone call.” He gave her a lopsided grin and winked.
At that moment, Lillian wanted nothing more than to kiss this handsome British agent. Instead, she burst out laughing.
Henry kept grinning while he frantically gestured to them to follow his orders.
They did. After James and Elsa exchanged a tight hug and a kiss, Lillian and James helped his wife into her seat. Next, they ran to their yellow plane. James offered to help her up, but she refused. “I got this.” She climbed into the front cockpit, James into the rear one. Scanning the dials and knobs, Lillian found the starter. She jammed the key into it and cranked up the engine. She bit her lip, willing the propeller to spin.
It did.
The sudden wind current in the hangar dissipated the thick smoke now clogging the entire hangar. It helped Elsa who was all but in the dark cloud.
Lillian released the brake. The biplane slowly moved forward. Hers was the plane nearest the hangar door. In seconds, she had cleared the hangar and taxied to the runway. The last vestiges of sunset enabled her to get her bearings. The runway faced west. The runway was the direction of safety.
She looked behind her and verified Henry’s white plane was moving. It was.
“Hang on!” she yelled to James. “Here we go!”
Lillian engaged the throttle and the plane surged ahead. The runway was little more than a dirt road, but the rocks had been cleared. The plane picked up speed and Lillian prayed that her little training behind the control stick of a plane while it was on the ground would serve them today. She pulled back on the stick, and the plane lifted into the air.
She let out peals of laughter at her achievement.
“Why are you laughing?” James called to her.
“I did it! I actually did it!”
“You really can’t fly a plane, can you?”
“Nope. But I can now.”
Flying directly west, Lillian looked back over her shoulder to Antwerp. She literally saw the line between the approaching Wehrmacht and the B.E.F. Fires all along the front and into the buildings of Antwerp lit up the ground. Behind them, the hangar was now engulfed in fire. It was like a single beacon on the dark land.
Soaring above the war-torn Continent, Lillian felt free. The fresh air cleared her lungs of the smoke. It also cleared her head of all the worry about this mission. They were headed to safety. They had won.
After about an hour, the vast darkness of the English Channel loomed ahead. Up until then, flying over land, Lillian knew that if anything happened, all she had to do was land the plan
e or jump out with the parachute. Looking down, she saw no evidence of ships at all.
She trusted Henry. They flew on.
Another hour later, the engine started sputtering.
“Great,” she muttered.
A second later James yelled, “That doesn’t sound good.”
“We’re out of gas,” Lillian said. “Get ready to bail out.”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Yes, you can. Light the flare!”
She banked the plane higher, hoping to keep the nose up as long as possible. The bright red glow from behind her told her James had ignited his flare.
“Unbuckle the seat belt and jump.”
“Together,” James yelled. “I can’t do it without your help.”
Lillian bit her tongue on a retort. She unbuckled her seatbelt. Still holding onto the control stick, she stood on her seat. She pulled one of two flares. One she lit and tossed it onto the floorboard. She looked at James. He also stood on his seat.
In the glow of his flare, all of his aging disappeared. He looked just like he did six years ago: young, vibrant, handsome. The scene calmed her. She smiled.
“Okay,” Lillian called. “On three, I’m releasing the stick and we’re jumping.” She put a foot on the side of the cockpit. He mirrored her.
“One.”
He reached out his hand to her. She took it.
“Two.”
James opened his mouth to say something, then closed it.
“Three!”
Hand in hand, Lillian and James leapt into the darkness.
CHAPTER 59
Lillian fell. She yanked her hand from James’s grasp. “Open your chute!”
James used his flare to see the toggle. He pulled it. The chute deployed. He stopped falling. Lillian continued for a second more, then pulled the ripcord. Her chute bellowed and she, too, stopped her descent. Below them, the ink-dark English Channel roiled.
Overhead in the darkness, she heard the sound of the other biplane. Henry’s plane must have had more petrol. Her plane, the other flare igniting something on the floorboard, burst into flames as it plummeted to the sea. She watched it pitch, gracefully roll, and plunge into the Channel.
Ulterior Objectives: A Lillian Saxton Thriller Page 28