Farley rubbed his face, unfazed by the activity around him. “If there’s no coffee around here,” he said, “they can have it.”
The crowded jeep slowed down but did not stop as it went by the dark shape of the bomber in the predawn light. Martin, Garrett, Everett, Francis, and Shorty hopped off and shouldered their heavy Browning machine-gun barrels in their oily sleeves. They waved thanks to the driver, who sped off to collect the next crew. Garrett and Everett headed for the waist hatch, griping all the way. Their bright yellow mae wests flapped in the cold damp morning as the men heaved their parachute harnesses into the bomber and climbed in after. Francis went around to the other side, where he had his own little hatch at the rear of the aircraft for his tail gunner post.
Wen Bonniker was already doing a walkaround with Case Miller, the ground crew chief. Wen was not a small man, but he looked tiny beside the stern, bull-like Bostonian with pant cuffs half a foot above his ankles and sleeves halfway up his forearms. Case had been a company truck mechanic before the war, and Wen nodded as the huge man pointed a thick finger at Number Four engine and gave a detailed account of its most recent service.
Martin was layered up in thermals, wool uniform, leather trousers and fleece-lined jacket. Lined gloves stuffed in a pocket. He stood a moment and took it all in: Jeeps speeding crews to bombers, crewmen jabbering, trucks grinding through gears as they drove from the equipment shed for last-minute adjustments and repairs. Sounds of banging metal and tense laughter from inside the bombers.
Vestiges of night still lay upon the field. The sun a bad rumor at the horizon and dew blanketing the airfield. Tendrils of mist out near the fields, grassy mulch bordering the runways. A distant church spire.
The B-17F Fata Morgana was covered with dew that sparkled like a coat of diamond dust. It was as utilitarian as an aircraft could get. No comforts, no amenities. The cabin was not pressurized or heated. Interior ribs and metalwork were all exposed. There was barely even a floor—lengths of planking, and a bare metal catwalk to get across the bomb bay. The B-17 had not been built to deliver men, it had been built to deliver bombs. The men were provided what they needed to allow the aircraft to accomplish this and get back, and not one thing more.
And yet every man who flew in one loved her. Found a beauty in her aggressive form and purely functional design. A grace, even. They would fly in her, fight in her, bleed in her, curse her, even die in her. But they would never truly hate her. Any enmity a man expressed toward his bomber masked a profound disappointment, and was grudgingly given only after being insistently earned.
But unlike every other bomber here, the Fata Morgana was new. She was not patched or re-welded. She had never been shot at. Had never taken flak. Never burned an engine, blown a tire, dropped a bomb. She had yet to cross some remorseless boundary the other heavy bombers traversed like grim commuters, was not consecrated by the sacrament of blood and fear the other bombers wore like ghostly vestments.
Wen glanced at Martin as he came around the B-17 with Case. Maybe the flight engineer thought Martin was working up his nerve to climb aboard. Martin didn’t really care. There would be no other time to take this moment in.
Finally he took a deep breath and lowered his chest chute and heavy .50-cal barrels to the ground, and he approached the ball turret that would be his home for most of the mission. The yard-wide sphere protruding from the belly of the bomber would hold a small man, barely. Not a small man and a parachute. Not even a small man in a full flak jacket. It had the best view in the house, and over pretty country it was awe-inspiring. In the middle of exploding flak and closing fighters and streaking tracer rounds it was terrifying beyond the telling.
Martin sat on the concrete with his legs on either side of the turret and made sure the brake was not engaged, then turned the ball until the ammo-can cover faced him. He unfastened it and checked the two belt feeds. They looked like a madman’s roadmap, but his trained eye saw that they’d been loaded correctly. He sealed the cover and then screwed the heavy twin machine-gun bores into the gun assembly and rocked them on their cradle to be sure they were secure. Above him he heard Garrett and Everett banging around inside the bomber, joking and swearing and giving each other hell.
Martin glanced back to see Wen standing with his hands on his hips, watching him set up. Martin held his gaze and Wen nodded approval, then turned to talk to Case. The two men ducked under the fuselage to enter the aircraft from the opened bomb bay.
Martin spun the turret again until the hatch faced him. He undogged it and swung it down and saw that a lineman had placed a flak vest on the hard seat like some kind of Army elf. Martin checked the electrical cables and fuses, then backed out of the cramped space and sealed it up just as a crowded jeep drove up and slowed down to let Captain Farley, Lieutenant Broben, Sergeant Mullen, and Sergeant Plavitz hop off. They had just come from the storage shed after the mission briefing, and they wore their flight suits and mae wests and carried their parachute packs. The jeep sped off to the next bird in the line.
Farley gave Martin a two-fingered wave and set down his parachute. “All right,” he called. “Everybody out of the pool.”
Shorty, Wen, Garrett, Everett, and Francis came out of the bomber from different exits and gathered around Farley under the wing. “What’s the word, cap?” Wen asked.
Farley surveyed his crew. “We’re bombing a munitions plant in Zennhausen. Eastern Germany.”
Garrett socked a palm with a fist. Everett held a hand out to him like an expectant bellhop. Garrett scowled and pulled out a wellworn fiver from his pocket. He held it by the middle and moved it up and down to flap it reluctantly into Everett’s hand. Everett kissed it and tucked it into a pocket.
“Listen to the rest,” Farley told Everett, “and you might even get to spend that.” He nodded at Plavitz, and the navigator removed a recon map from his accordion case and unrolled it on the concrete hardstand. He weighted it with stones and a .50-caliber shell. The crew squatted to study it. All of them were smoking, except for Martin.
“Intelligence says Zennhausen’s a major munitions factory,” Farley continued. “Reinforced concrete, dispersed production. A rail line runs close by it. Good news is, it’s not a heavily populated area. No schools, no civilian neighborhoods nearby.” He pointed at the map. “We’ll meet up with a flight group from the Hundred and Second Bomber Group out of Covent St. George off the coast near Norwich. We’ll head northeast and come in across the north coast of Holland. From there we turn east and thread the needle between Bremen and Hanover. Those cities are heavily fortified, so we can expect flak.”
“When can’t we?” Garrett asked.
Farley pointed again. “We turn due south just east of Brunswick and drop on the target in a north-south line.”
“What’ll they have waiting for us at the target?” Martin asked.
“It’s heavily defended,” Farley said. “Eighty-eights and probably some one-oh-fives. Luftwaffe bases are here, here, and here.” He tapped the map. “So they’ll be dancing at this party, too.”
“The weather’s nice, though,” said Plavitz. He smiled thinly. “So that’s something.”
“This is a pretty big facility covering a lot of ground,” Farley continued. “Our flight group’s carrying M44 thousand-pound concussion bombs. The boys from the Hundred and Second are carrying M17 incendiary clusters. They’ll drop ten seconds after we do. The idea is to crack it open and then light it up.” Farley surveyed the faces before him. None of what they were hearing was news, but it never got any easier to hear. Their thoughtful nods masked anxiety and fear. Farley would have had serious doubts about anyone who wasn’t fearful of what they were about to do. “Any questions?” he asked.