Horn fought back the euphoria that drugs men who have cheated death. There was no time for it, because he instinctively knew that the small mountain which almost took his life was his target, Dungavel Hill.
Horn leveled the straining plane and banked it southwest toward the Firth of Clyde. He throttled back until it was cruising toward the sea at 150 miles per hour. A few minutes later he reached the firth and turned south, to follow the coastline. He spotted Ardrossan, the small spur of land jutting out from the Ayr County coast. His flight had been exactly on course. He pulled a catch under the panel and the auxiliary tank dropped from the fuselage and fell toward the sea.
Night was almost total as the plane banked left to make the final approach to its destination. He cinched up the front buckles of his parachute and for the last time checked the position of the release cord. To have attempted to land the plane in a rough Scottish meadow in pitch blackness would have been fatal. And he was too good a German to give the Tommies a chance to closely examine an intact Messerschmitt with its new and secret innovations. Pilot and plane would part company at 3,000 feet.
Several lights flickered below. This was Eaglesham, a tiny town eight miles west-by-southwest of Dungavel House. Anyone so flagrantly violating the blackout laws in Germany would have been arrested.
Horn’s eyes darted between the panel clock and the ground-speed indicator. He could no longer see landmarks, so to gauge distance he counted slowly, unaware he was mouthing the seconds. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.
He thrust the stick ahead. The fighter plunged downward in a power dive, accelerating faster and faster toward the ground. At 1,000 feet he pulled the plane up into a tight arc. Centrifugal force crushed him into the seat and ground pain into his shoulders. The plane swept toward the stars.
Horn had rehearsed the bail-out maneuver in his mind a hundred times. He tugged the hatch release on the windshield frame and slid the cabin roof back over his head. Cold, violent wind poured into the cockpit. He flicked the engine tumbler switches and feathered the props. The mills died abruptly.
The chilling silence heightened the German’s sense of impending danger. Penetrating engine rumble had been a source of confidence, and now there was only rushing wind. The plane was pushed by momentum and it slowed rapidly as it climbed. Timing was critical. At stall speed the flaps and rudders would be useless and the plane paralyzed. Horn had to anticipate the loss of maneuverability by several seconds, because the Messerschmitt had one final, vital act to perform.
An instant before the stall, Horn rolled the plane onto its back. Black Scotland turned upside down. He jammed his left arm against the cockpit wall to brace himself and then popped the safety-strap buckle. Twisted by the wind, the straps dangled crazily and the buckles slapped Horn’s chin. Blood rushed to his head. Gripping the window frame, he let himself drop to a standing position on the seat. Even at this low speed the crash of wind pummeled him against the hatch cover as he emerged from the cockpit. The German waited until the plane was almost motionless, released his grip, and fell into space.
A thudding jolt ripped through Horn and sucked out his breath as the chute burst open and the billowing white cloth strained against its rope environs.
Crystalline silence. Stillness. Horn’s taut muscles unwound. The night air was brisk as he gently swayed to and fro in the harness. His chute was an ephemeral vision, a pale, ghostly presence obscured by the darkness above him. Time was suspended. Maybe only seconds passed. Maybe minutes. Horn had no sensation of descending, just a comforting calmness as Scotland came to him.
Horn hit the pasture, and something cracked in his ankle. He rolled twice, then lay still for several seconds, trying to orient himself. The grazing grass was damp and cold. Just as he raised himself to his knees, a wind gust caught the chute and jerked him backward into the air and heavily to the ground. The parachute bloomed and raced along the pasture. Horn was pulled like a sled at a frantic pace across the field. His hands automatically reached for the release buckles. His one thought: he did not want history to record he had been pulled through a Scottish cow pie.
A new squall blustered the chute into a swirl and whirled it across the field like a cartwheel. The lines twisted and spun Horn onto his stomach, then onto his back, and finally into a bumpy roll. Plow rows, gopher mounds, and creeping blackberry vines bruised and tore him. Damp rye grass splashed his face. His arms bounced and jarred against the ground, reducing his efforts to release the harness to a wild flailing of his chest. He skidded across the pasture.
The parachute suddenly collapsed. Horn quickly stood, tore off the harness, and stepped toward the spiritless chute. His right leg crumpled and he dropped heavily to the ground. He sat upright and painfully reached for his ankle.
“Who ae ye?” The yell was unnaturally loud over the still pasture. “Ae ye German?”
A winded, partially clothed farmer stood ten yards from Horn, whooping great lungfuls of air and nervously rubbing his hands. From his craggy, weatherbeaten face, Horn guessed the man was a plowman who had spent his entire life walking behind a team of horses.
As if in answer, the sound of a metallic, screeching, rending crash lashed out across the pasture. Metal tore from metal, and glass splintered violently. The grinding jumped to a high-pitched wail, which ended four seconds after it had begun. There’s the crash, thought Horn, but where’s the explosion?
The farmer turned from the sound to the pilot, who was trying to stand again, and said, “’ Twasn’t an RAF plane, was it?”
“No,” Horn grunted as he cautiously tried weight on his right leg, “it was a Messerschmitt.” His English was webbed with a guttural German accent.
“Where’d it come froom?” the farmer asked, glancing again toward the wreckage.
“From Germany.”
“And where’d ye come froom?”
“From Germany.”
“Jaysus.” The plowman could not move. He was frozen by the history of this moment. A German had landed on Scottish soil. The invasion had begun.
“Where’re yer goons?”
“I have no weapons. I am alone. There are no others,” answered the German as he stooped to unlace his boot. “I think I have broken my ankle.”
The plowman ran forward and put his arm under the pilot’s to help take weight off the injured leg.
“Me ’ut’s o’er there.” He pointed to the small cottage barely visible in the darkness. Just as the plowman and pilot took the first arm-in-arm step, the sound of a dull, thudding explosion reached them from the remnants of Horn’s fighter. Both men looked over their shoulders, to see a brilliant flame shoot up from the silhouetted wreckage and sputter and die just as suddenly. Horn smiled to himself. Now there would be very little left of his plane.
Tea was brewing when Horn and the farmer reached the house. The plowman’s mother had put her white-lace doily on the lamp table and was scooping sugar into a bowl when he pushed open the door with his foot. He was utterly exhausted and used both arms in a clumsy attempt to keep weight off Horn’s bad ankle. Despite the farmer’s efforts, Horn winced with each slow step. The plowman hauled Horn to the best chair in the cottage, a grainy, horsehair-stuffed leather affair whose springs had long ago conformed to the bony protrusions of the peasant’s thin backside. The pilot gratefully slumped into it as the old woman brought him a cup of steaming tea. She was a little, intense woman with gray hair pulled back into a severe bun. She wore an oft-repaired night robe the same color as her hair.
“No, thank you, madam. May I have a glass of water.”
It was meant to be a question, but it wasn’t. The old lady knew from his first accented word that the man seldom asked for anything. His appearance reinforced this. German pilots wore blue-gray uniforms made of the poorest-quality wool. Horn wore a single-piece fine leather jumpsuit that fit him as if made by a Bond Street tailor. The supple leather of his boots was capped by a dark fur lining that ringed the boot tops. On the silken collars of his azure shirt were patches edged in twisted aluminum cord and embroidered with oak leaves.