Broben snatched off his headset. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled. “I got shocked.”
Farley frowned. He held the wheel with one hand and clamped the other under his arm to pull off one of his wool-lined gloves and the thin Rayon glove beneath. The cockpit air felt like ice. He tapped the throttle with a bare finger—and saw the bluewhite flash just before he felt the shock.
He glanced at the instruments as he put his gloves back on. The azimuth indicator was rolling like a hamster wheel. Every level indicator was topped—oil, manifold, fuel, batteries.
“We’re picking up some kind of static electricity,” Farley said. “Everybody keep your gloves on and be careful what you touch.”
Broben pointed to his throat and shook his head. The interphone was out.
Then Farley felt the drumming of two sets of twin .50s as Martin and Wen began to fire.
The interphone went dead and Martin realized that there would be no coordinating with the crew on targets. And no help getting out of the ball. He was as isolated as he could get. Procedure now was to shoot at anything that moved and spoke German. But even as he worked the range finder pedal and sighted on the closing fighters and felt his thumbs slide above the red fire buttons, he could not rid himself of the memory of the Ill Wind, of an image of the crew above him all dead at their stations, the Fata Morgana a ghost ship sailing Martin toward the landing he’d evaded once before.
For a few seconds the world dissolved. Martin had seen horses walleyed and crazed but until that moment he had not understood that blind fear could be a literal truth. And then it cleared and he was screaming as both thumbs mashed the fire button at the Bf 109 fighter closing on the bomber’s tail so straight and fast it looked like the son of a bitch was going to ram them.
Above him the bomber began to shake. The fuselage was ringing like a bell.
Martin’s tracer rounds were falling short. The bandit was still out of range. Martin’s suit was still unplugged and he couldn’t feel his feet. Frostbite would be the least of his worries if he didn’t smear this joker.
The German pilot would likely fire a one-second burst at the last possible moment and then veer off. The Messerschmitt was flying level behind the bomber because the tail gun was no longer a threat. Two others hung back in formation behind it, waiting their turn. Martin could not fire upward and Wen, in the top turret, could not fire down. The bastards were going to be hard to hit.
The yellow-nosed fighter in the lead began to glow as if some powerful spotlight were being trained on it.
The bomber shuddered so violently that Martin could not get the bandit in his sights. The ringing grew louder, and underneath it rose a deep thrumming that shook Martin’s bones. A sudden migraine throbbed in time with whatever rhythm made the bomber tremble. Bluewhite lines glowed along the turret framework. Through his little window Martin saw the single-engine fighter lined in lightning.
The bomber bucked so hard that Martin thought they had slammed into something. Martin tasted blood and heard gurgling in his oxygen mask. He yanked it down and felt warm blood turn to frost upon his face. His nose was bleeding. If it froze, it would block the hose and he would die. He eyed the closing bandit as he banged blood from his mask.
Farley and Broben saw it at the same time. Dead ahead the flak-smoke funnel Everett had spotted drained down to an abrupt ending, a shaded pencil drawing suddenly erased at its base. Colors flickered at the bottom of the truncated cone, yellow flashes and bluewhite lightning, dull reds pulsing like a wound, a glowing violet outline that was somehow dark and bright at the same time. It hurt to look at but the two men could not look away.
Farley and Broben were fighting to level the aircraft. Their arm muscles felt like they were being squeezed in a blood-pressure cuff. Crackling bluewhite outlines traced the F-shaped throttle handles, tabletop lightning that grew to filigree the cabin. Farley felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, felt a sudden panicked urge to run, smelled sharp metal. The hull began to thrum around them like an oscillating fan thrown out of balance.
Ahead of them a hole yawned open in the sky.
Farley’s head ached with a sudden piercing migraine. Warm wetness filled his oxygen mask and quickly grew painfully cold. He whipped off his mask and banged it against the seat to knock out the bloody slush, then scraped the frost of blood from his face.
Broben was bad off. His head lolled and his eyes rolled back and bright blood crystals rimmed his rubber mask. Farley spat out blood and put his oxygen mask back on and pulled off Broben’s. He set it on Broben’s lap and slapped his face. Jerry’s head went straight and his eyes focused. He nodded at Farley and banged blood chunks out of his mask and put it back on and grabbed the controls.
Both men fought to steer the bomber but the ship would not respond. Farley tried to push the yoke to dive beneath the coruscating maw before them in the air but the yoke would not move. The bomber was a tiny bug drawn down a swirling drain.
Farley jabbed the button for the bail-out bell. Nothing happened. The thing before them pulsed with purple light that shot dull pain into Farley’s eyes. His splitting headache throbbed in time.
This is what killed the gyros. This thing fried the radio and screwed the compass. And now it wants us. Farley thought it was some kind of storm and he thought it was a weapon and he thought it was alive and he thought all three were true.
Now the yoke shook in his hands as the bomber bucked like a marlin on a hook. Farley yelled and Broben yelled, but Farley couldn’t even hear himself against the resonating thrum that felt like something pushing out within his chest.
I won’t let you kill me, Farley raged. Not me. Not my men. Not my ship.
Fata Morgana and her ten crew and one pursuer dove into that awful gullet—
SIX
—and crossed over.
The engines died. The instruments died. The controls did not respond.
All went quiet in the cockpit.
Farley’s migraine vanished. His stomach lurched as if the ship were in a power dive. He lowered his oxygen mask and blew blood out his nose. The red spray broke apart to form bright globules that floated in the bluelit cockpit.
An arclight glow came from everywhere. There were no shadows. Beyond the windshield all was white.
The recon map floated in the air above the instrument panel.
Farley looked at Broben and jerked back in his seat. Bright-red blood crystals glinted on the copilot’s face around his oxygen mask. Above the frozen blood his eyes looked sunken and hollow and his skin was luminous. Through it Farley saw the bone of Broben’s skull.
I’ve been hit, he thought. This is what you see before the lights go out. What everyone sees who ever lived. No evading, no outrunning. You sit there and you take it. We’re all dead.
Squadron Commander Hauptmann Adler opened fire as the American bomber in front of him flew into the whiteout tunnel in the sky. The violet-edged opening irised shut on his Messerschmitt and sheared it in two at the instrument panel.
Adler stared stunned beyond the telling at the sudden vista before him. The front of his aircraft was gone. Propeller, cowling, engine, leading edge of both wings—simply gone.
His thumb still rested on the fire button. Freezing air screamed into a cockpit inexplicably open to the sky in front of him.