A Tapestry of Fire (Applied Topology Book 4)
Page 20
Overhead a small plane swooped, making a sound like a buzz saw. I flinched.
“’Sall right, luv, that’s one of ours!” The Salvation Army girl pumped her fist in the air. “That’s right, get him, get him!” she shouted as the plane’s machine guns rattled.
“What’s he shooting at?” The small plane was far below the heavy bombers still droning through the sky.
“Bloody parachute bomb – Yes! Another bugger gone!” she cheered as an explosion in front of the plane filled the air with veins of golden light.
“Pammie, dear. Language!” It was the very proper lady who’d taken charge of my burn victim.
Pammie turned red at the reproof, but then a shrill whistling sound overhead distracted both of them. It became louder, became a tortured scream, and Pammie and the first aid lady threw themselves down into the gutter. “High explosive, get down, get down!” she shouted at me.
The screaming of the bomb was very close now, and it turned into a roar like a train trying to fit itself into a too-small tunnel.
Leutnant Richard Lehmann had been expecting to die ever since the forecaster announced, “The latitude north of London has no more astronomical darkness.” A year ago these bright clear nights had been welcome, but now the English had learned to fight back. To their fighter planes, his wing of Heinkels would be sitting ducks. His one hope was to get in and get out as fast as possible. His was the first bomber group to follow the “Fire Raisers,” the task force whose job was to light up the London targets with chandelier flares and incendiaries. It might just be that the unwary English would fail to get their night fighters in the air before he had dropped his load of incendiaries and high explosive bombs and swung away for the return flight.
They had been nearly two hundred miles away, still over France, when he first saw the shifting red skyline that marked London on this night. The Fire Raisers had done their task well – perhaps too well. Between fires and moon, Lehmann felt as exposed as if he were flying in broad daylight.
Now they were over the Channel, with only a little over half an hour to wait until they were in position to drop their bombs. In the moonlight, at four thousand meters, the water looked like a luminous sheet of green glass. His navigator, Fischer, spoke. “The ground speed is 264 kilometers per hour. We shall be over London in exactly thirty-five minutes and ten seconds. You had better climb to five thousand meters. I will tell you when to start losing height again.” He fell silent again and the irregular whine of the desynchronized engines filled Lehmann’s ears.
As they approached London the pilot caught his breath, awed. The Thames was a serpent of copper light, winding through glowing streets with buildings outlined in fire. White searchlights stabbed up through the darkness. He thought, “They cannot withstand this. No people could. I am watching the death of a city.” On Fischer’s cues, he took the Heinkel down to three thousand meters. The English searchlights were useless; the entire bomber had a thick coating of black soot that made it virtually invisible from that distance, a black plane against a black sky. He thought the English fighter planes had not yet taken off. With luck, they would not be in the air until after he was over his target. That would be at 12:30, just an hour and a half after the raid began.
The six-armed intersection of Elephant and Castle stood out like a burning star. “Bomb doors open,” Fischer reported over the intercom… “Bomb gone.” Lehmann felt lighter. They had only to find one more target for the second 500-lb bomb and they would be nearly free to get out of this; the incendiaries weren’t so important, they could be dropped anywhere.
19. An order is an order
London and France, May 11, 1941
“That one was nearer home!” the chief warden bawled over the deafening blend of noises that filled the air. The Heavy Rescue Squad had beaten the wardens to the wreckage of Walton’s Stores on the New Kent Road. Not that there’d been much for them, or anyone, to do at this bomb site; no one was supposed to have been in these buildings. The standard procedure was to call for silence and listen for any cries for help even if they thought the buildings had been unoccupied, but there was no silence to be had in the Elephant and Castle district this night. They waved goodbye to the Heavy Rescue Squad and headed back towards Reporting Post 12.
This high explosive bomb had indeed landed close to home. It had made a direct hit on the Salvation Army post, passing through the building and all three floors to explode in the basement. One entire side of the basement had been opened up by the bomb crater.
“Look down there,” a fireman, giggling in a shockingly high voice, told one of his mates. “Nothing to rescue. They’ve all been bombed into the bloody wall!”
The “safe” shelter where he’d sent Thalia to wait for him.
Lensky raced to the edge of the bomb crater and threw himself flat. Moonlight and flickering tongues of fire illuminated the far wall of the basement, and there he saw human shapes imprinted on the wall, the only remains of the bodies that had been there when the bomb exploded.
Where he’d sent Thalia to wait for him. Where he’d sent Thalia…
The young fireman was still giggling hysterically. Lensky leapt up and grabbed his throat. “Think it’s funny, do you, mate? Think it’s funny?” In that moment of black despair, it seemed as though there would be some relief in smashing that laughing face and throwing the man into the crater where Thalia had died.
“’Ere, Yank, we’re all on the same side!” The warden’s voice was an irrelevant buzzing, no more important than the shrill whistling of descending shrapnel or the thunder of anti-aircraft guns.
“Brad! Stop! Lensky!” Hands on his arm, interfering with his one remaining goal. “Stop it stop it stop it!” a woman screamed in his ear, and amidst the crackling of fires and the drone of the bombers he recognized that voice.
He released the fireman and sat down, hard, against the shattered remnants of a wall. “Thalia?”
“Me. Are you going to cut it out now? You really mustn’t go around strangling firemen, you know. It’s not done here.”
The sharp edge in her voice was the sweetest music he’d ever heard.
“I told you to wait for me – there.” He indicated the bomb crater.
“See, sometimes it’s a good thing that I don’t always do exactly what you say.”
He reached upwards and pulled her down into his arms; such a small woman, fine-boned, but not fragile. Not, thank God, fragile at all. “And what have you been up to?”
“Helped a few people get out of burning buildings.”
“What?”
“I raised a shield first, stupid.”
“The rest of the Mathematical Mafia had shields when they set fire to the SCI building, and they still got scorched.”
“Yes, well, they didn’t have nice heavy coats. Or a little help from a mage.” She pushed the skirts of the coat aside and the turtle-snake thing poked its ugly little beak out of a coil of silver scales. “The only problem is…”
He cradled her in his arms and rested his cheek on the scarf that covered her hair. “If you’re here, and alive, there isn’t any problem.”
“The thing is… I’m not exactly sure I can take us back to our own time right now.”
“Not to mention crossing an ocean.”
“No, we don’t have to do that topologically. I flew to London. I only had to teleport from Heathrow to this intersection. And, of course, seventy-seven years back. This place looks completely different in our time, did you know?”
“I’m not surprised. From the looks of things, this whole neighborhood will be a smoldering ruin by morning. I expect it had to be totally rebuilt.”
“Anyway, about getting home: I’ve got two reservations for a flight back, one in your name. And,” she said triumphantly, “I’ve got our passports and some emergency cash and a credit card, all sewn inside my dress thanks to Annelise. That girl is a fountainhead of practical skills. But the time travel bit is trickier. Teleporting back all these yea
rs pretty well drained me. And as for getting us back – well, I’ve been doing a lot more teleporting since I got here. And much of it with passengers, which makes it harder. I’ve been munching sugar cubes, but even so I’m not feeling very strong right now.”
“Then rest. There’s no hurry.” Except, could he find a safe place for her to rest in this madhouse?
He remembered something about teleportation. Topologists expended much more energy taking passengers than teleporting themselves alone, didn’t they? She’d just hinted as much. “Why don’t you go back on your own. You can rest, eat, take your time. Then come back for me when you’re ready?” The thought of being left alone here again chilled him. But letting her stay in this maelstrom of death and fire was even worse.
“At this point, I’m too wiped out to go back, even if it’s just me,” Thalia announced. But her fingers brushed one cheek as she spoke. That was one of her tells, the hand raised to her face.
“You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“Okay, at least that’s honest. Unacceptable, but honest.”
“And you can’t make me.”
That was, regrettably, perfectly true. He shifted position a little, resting his back against the wall. “Oh, well. I don’t hear any more bombers. Probably we’ll get the All Clear soon.”
He felt her renewed tension. “No?” he asked.
“The All Clear won’t come until after five in the morning. Will made me study accounts of this night before I jumped,” she explained.
“Oh.”
“But the problems in this area will be mostly fires, not bombs. At least we can see the fires.”
But she’d spoken too soon, or Will hadn’t taught her as much as she thought. When the second wave of bombers hit, the light of the fires also showed them the sticks of bombs falling. Where the bombers crossed the moon, they could see them moving through the sky in rows, dropping their bombs simultaneously. Lensky’s new friends in the wardens’ post were out again in disregard of the danger, telling the Heavy Rescue Squad where people were likely to be trapped, shifting debris where the job did not require the Rescue Squad’s special skills. And he could not just sit and watch them.
But where could he possibly leave Thalia while he helped the wardens? Two shelters, a new above-ground brick one and the basement under the Salvation Army post, had already been destroyed. If she was in the remaining brick shelter, she would be at risk of being smashed under its cement roof like the people in the first one.
There was no safe place here. Not in 1941.
“For the love of God, Thalia, go back to our own time!”
She remained obstinately three-dimensional and opaque, and no darkness shimmered around her. Damned stubborn woman!
“Well, at least shelter in a doorway, can’t you? Mr. M., keep a shield up around the two of you,” he snapped, and dashed to join the wardens without waiting to see if the turtle-mage obeyed his command.
As soon as he’d dropped his second bomb in the Elephant and Castle area, Lehmann released his incendiaries and headed south towards the coast.
“Well, we lived through that,” he thought.
But to Krause, his wireless operator, he said, “Tell base, ‘Mission completed.’”
No one spoke as the Heinkel drove steadily through the night. Lehmann did not relax until he saw the lights of the airfield. “Prepare for landing.” He thought that he felt a reduction of tension coming from the entire crew. Their part was over now, and they’d come back safely.
Lehmann made a perfect landing and taxied back to the mechanics. As he climbed from the plane, they were already climbing over the plane, testing every part. Waiting on the landing strip were the armorers, ready to refill the Heinkel’s bomb bays with another load of death and fire, but that was no longer Lehmann’s concern. A second crew would be responsible for the next sortie.
The frosty grass crunched under Lehmann’s feet as he walked towards the office, and he shivered. He was wearing his summer flying uniform rather than the fleece-lined winter jackets worn by the rest of his crew. These would give them a better chance of survival if they were shot down over the sea, but Lehmann preferred the mobility of his summer kit so that he could turn and move freely in the cockpit. He might as well see if he could find one of the warm jackets after his report; there would be no more flying for him tonight.
But as he finished his report, the duty officer said, “Get back to your plane with your crew, check that it’s refueled and loaded, and take off again.”
Lehmann couldn’t believe what he’d heard. Did the high command care so little about the lives of their aircrews that they would force them to take these insane risks twice? “Sir, there must be some mistake. It’s practically suicide to fly over England in this weather.” And he desperately wanted someone else to take on that suicide mission. He’d done his part.
But the duty officer did not look flustered; only sad. “This order comes from the Field Marshal personally. Due to the large number of missions planned, all crews are to fly two sorties. And tonight of all nights, an order is an order. Tonight we shall finally break the Englanders’ will.”
“Yes, sir.” What else was there to say?
His crew had gone to the mess hall; he was the first one back to the plane. With a sense of unreality, he signed the bomb manifest and gave it back to the head armorer. Soon afterwards the navigator Fischer and his mechanic Scholz joined him, followed by the gunner, Unteroffizier Anschiess. The eighteen-year-old gunner, the youngest of his crew, waited in vain for Lehmann’s usual joke about living up to his name (Anschiessen – “to shoot.”) But Lehmann was too preoccupied to make a joke about anything.
The wireless operator, Krause, was not with them. Lehmann felt a jolt of hope. He could not be expected to take off without a wireless operator. “Is Krause coming?”
“Yes, Herr Leutnant,” answered the ever-correct Fischer. “The Oberfeldwebel will be here soon.”
Fifteen minutes later – barely in time for their scheduled takeoff – Krause climbed into the plane, full of excuses. Lehmann thought that Krause was probably as reluctant to make this second sortie as he himself was, and tried to stifle the unpatriotic wish that the man had had the guts to desert. Lehmann’s hope was replaced by despair. As the signal for takeoff was illuminated, he thought, “We are all dead men.” And as the plane droned on through the night, he felt the cold that he had been able to ignore previously.
20. Lampposts wilting like flowers
London, May 11, 1941
The head warden handed the spade to Brannigan and leaned against the one wall the bombs had left standing. His shoulders obscured the graffiti proclaiming, “London can take it!” Maybe London could, but he wasn’t so sure about himself; digging out survivors was heavy work for a man in his sixties.
“Well, there’s one thing to be thankful for, lads,” he joked. “That block of offices that just went down? My dentist had an office there, and I had an appointment tomorrow. Guess I won’t have to go after all.”
“I like office buildings, and them empty at night,” Brannigan said. “No survivors to dig out.”
And by all indications, there were none here. He knew the families that had lived in this next bombed-out building. Two of them sheltered in the Tube every night, and the third one had decamped to relatives in Kent. Might as well enjoy this break; there would be a new disaster soon enough.
“I like survivors,” young Finch said cheerfully. He had sat down on a pile of bricks to take off his artificial foot and readjust the stump sock. “They appreciate us,” he said while smoothing the sock. “Makes a nice change. ‘Oh, it’s Warden this, and Warden that, and Warden, you’re a flop,’” he half-sang the music-hall parody, “‘But it’s Thank you, Mr. Warden, when the bombs begin to drop.’”
“And thank the volunteers too,” said the head warden with a glance at Lensky. “For an American, he digs like – like –”
“Right, Grandpa, after we clean up this place you’re going to volunteer to fly Beaufighters, is it?” Finch jeered.
Lensky wondered if he would change history by telling them, jinx the future of the war. Surely not. It wasn’t as if they’d have reason to believe him, after all.
“I am absolutely certain,” he said slowly, “that America will be in the war before the end of the year. Next year you will not be fighting alone.” Now that he’d learned they were in May of 1941, it didn’t take a historian to know that much. December 7, 1941 was, as FDR had predicted, a date that had lived in infamy.
By 3 a.m. the fires were so much worse that the Rescue Squad and the wardens could hardly get to bomb sites. It started when a burning building fell square across one of the streets feeding into the Elephant and Castle intersection. Buildings on both sides went up in flames and the fires chased themselves down the street towards the intersection while exhausted firemen dragged their hoses to this latest crisis.
In this inferno of flames Lensky was no longer cold, but the watch cap and gloves helped to protect his head and hands from the cascades of red sparks that floated through the air. He felt a sudden surge of heat along his side, and slapped at the place where his shirt had caught fire. Then without pausing he slapped Brannigan on the back where a spark was smoldering ominously on his blue serge uniform.
The most important job now was that of the firemen, and after the water lines burst they could only work sporadically as one reserve source of water after another was used up. The nearest, a tank of 5,000 gallons by Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, had gone dry in five minutes. Pumps were sent to the Manor Place Baths on Walworth Road, where the emergency supply of 125,000 gallons gave the superintendent a breathing space. He used that space to send a hose truck to the Thames at London Bridge, but the hose laying was a desperately slow task. He also sent pumps to the third nearest site, the basement of the Old Surrey Music Hall, whose 200,000 gallons might preserve the Elephant and Castle district until they could draw water directly from the Thames.