“Get back to your gun,” Bunny said as he kicked the rudder and added 30 percent flaps. There was nothing else that he could do — just fly like hell and hope that his gunners could keep the fighters away.
“I’ve got an idea,” Cole said.
“I haven’t the time, King. You can see I’m busy.”
“Turn the ship around and fly underneath the netting. Halfway in, cut the power and let the fighters overfly us.”
“Don’t be foolish. I don’t want to go back and there may be a hundred cables hanging from that netting. Hold on.” He jerked the yoke to the left and eased it back.
“Maybe,” Cole said calmly. He knew what Bunny knew: it was a chance — maybe a better chance than they had now. They wouldn’t last long with the fighters — the buzzing aircraft would chew them to pieces in minutes. The netting complex held out escape for them: safety, life.
“Right,” Bunny said, banking N-for-Nancy sharply to the left. “We’re going back, chaps. Into the fire, out of the frying pan, to lose these bastards.”
“Are you daft, Bunny?” Peter said. “They’ll get us for sure.”
“King doesn’t think so, do you, King?” He turned to Cole. “Get back to your gun. If you’re wrong about this I shall be very disappointed.”
“You and me both, brother,” Cole said. He moved behind Prentice, steadied himself, took the machine gun in his hands, and waited. He could see past the cockpit and through the windshield of the Hudson. The searchlights were out and there were no angry arcs of tracers feeling through the sky for N-for-Nancy. But there was a strange glow coming from the netting.
What is that? Cole thought.
“What now?” Bunny said. “More tricks?”
Prentice’s gun erupted, followed immediately by the turret mounts. Cole suddenly found himself foolishly firing at nothing and jerked his finger away from the trigger.
“It’s on fire,” he heard Bunny say as if the pilot found the point mildly interesting. Cole looked through the Plexiglas windshield and saw the camouflage netting burning fiercely.
“For Christ’s sake, Bunny, hurry,” Peter said. “Those bloody bastards are on our ass.”
“Here we go,” Bunny said as he dropped the aircraft to wave height. The burning web awaited them like a fiery cavern. Flaming debris dripped off of the mesh foundation while strands of glowing canvas hung like demonic fingers, ready to grasp N-for-Nancy.
They were inside hell and could feel the heat and see the reflection of the burning structure in the water. The light was so bright that every color was burned away and their eyes hurt because of it. Cole could not get his breath, the fire had consumed all of the air, and all that was left to him was heat and smoke. He felt light-headed and he found himself falling against the bulkhead. He saw a blurry figure move in front of him and felt something that tasted of rubber clamped over his mouth. Cool, blissful air flooded his nose and mouth and he gulped it greedily. It was Prentice and he had given Cole an emergency oxygen bottle.
“Peter,” Bunny said, “where are they?”
“Just over our nose, Bunny. Trying to beat us to the finish line.”
“Let them run.” Bunny kicked the rudder and banked the aircraft to the left, barely missing two pylon supports. N-for-Nancy sped out of the camouflage netting, halfway through the structure as the two German fighters waited at the far end for the Hudson to emerge.
Bunny kept the aircraft close to the water.
“Peter?” Bunny said.
“Circling like vultures,” Johnny said, studying the fighters from his position in his turret, “but they haven’t seen us.”
“Too much excitement for you, King?” Bunny asked.
“He just needed a spot of oxygen,” Prentice said as Cole struggled to his feet.
“You’ll have a very nice headache in the morning, thank you,” Bunny said. After they flew on for a few miles, and the crew felt more relaxed, Bunny asked Cole, “Did you find what you wanted to find, King?”
“No,” Cole said.
“More’s the pity,” Bunny said. “But you have to understand that we won’t be going back.”
“Yeah,” Cole said. There was more to be said but not here; not to Bunny. Cole would have to say it to his superiors. He would have to convince them that something had been under the camouflage and now it was gone. Of course they would be skeptical and rightly so. Tell me, Lieutenant Cole, what gave you the right to go flying off to Norway? And tell me, Lieutenant Cole, what do you think the Germans were hiding there? How do you know, Lieutenant Cole — are you an expert at such things? You’ve done a fine job at analyzing photographs, Lieutenant Cole, and His Lordships do appreciate your hard work and they suggest that you remain in the capacity of a photo analyzer with your feet firmly planted on the ground.
N-for-Nancy flew on, occasionally encountering a patch of bad air that batted her playfully.
Cole sat, silent, wedged against the bulkhead, thinking. There was no reason to consider that it was a capital ship; certainly no way to prove it. There had been no directives to look for additional capital ships; everyone had been accounted for — sunk, moored, or damaged. And these things didn’t just spring up, and to think that one had been built and hidden from the British was impossible. Impossible.
How many times in history, the former history professor asked himself, had the impossible proved possible to the downfall of a foe? What could she be? How large was she? Forty — fifty thousand tons, nine hundred feet long? He’d remembered a conversation with Dickie.
He’d sat down with Dickie Moore over tea and some sort of pastry that tasted like cardboard on a gray, rainy London afternoon and talked about things in general. Dickie, waving his ridiculously long cigarettes like a baton, and hurriedly slurping his tea as another bit of gossip came to mind, was anything but military. But Sublieutenant Richard Moore, behind his outlandish mannerisms and air of indifference, was the most intelligent person that Cole had ever met.
“You know, Jordan,” Dickie had said, crushing out a cigarette and immediately lighting another, “we ought to speak in hypotheticals.”
“What’s wrong with English?”
“Droll,” Dickie had said, giving Cole a disappointed look. “Too, too droll. For a scholar you’re very much a man of the common people, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Cole had said. “It comes with being born in a log cabin.”
“Of course,” Dickie had said. “So. Here is my theory. Dear Adolf causes to be built several capital ships, classes F, G, D, and E. Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau — respectively. But wait. Dear Adolf, in a flash of Aryan pride, calls forth a behemoth — a capital ship that dwarfs all others.”
“It was broken up, Dickie,” Cole had said. “It never got off the ways.”
“Kindly refrain from interrupting me when I’m pontificating. It’s bad for my spleen. Remarkable things can be accomplished during wartime. Witness the miracle of Dunkirk.” Dickie paused. “Well, I’m sure that there were other remarkable triumphs for our side, but you see what I’m getting at, don’t you? The H-class lives some place in or around the Fatherland, waiting to make its presence known. It’s unleashed when needed and not before.”
“Why?”
“The ultimate gambit, dear boy. Don’t you Americans have any imagination?”
“We don’t need imagination,” Cole had said, “we’ve got the movies.” He had studied his friend’s face and decided that there was enough there to warrant belief. “Okay, I’ll bite. From now on I’ll look for your giant battleship, but I’m not really sure what I’m looking for.”