EPISODE THIRTY-ONE
1136 Words
THIRTY-ONE
"Well, well, time I earned my pay while you stripling pilots sit and gaze in rapt admiration."
Oberstleutnant Jan Bomken studied his timepiece.
"Time, we changed places."
Both men unhooked their safety belts and changed over. Bomken adjusted with fastidiousness, the right-hand seat's back rest until right for him, manoeuvred his parachute to its position of maximum comfort, fastened his seatbelt, unhooked, and adjusted on his head a combined earphones and microphone set and made a switch.
"Kroenig?"
Bomken never bothered with the regulation call-up formalities.
"Are you awake?"
Back in the navigator's tiny and uncomfortable recess, Kroenig appeared to be very much awake. He had been awake for hours. Bent over a glowing greenish radar screen, his eyes never left only to make rapid reference to the charts, an Ordnance map, a picture and a duplicate compass, altimeter, and air-speed indicator. He reached for the switch by his side.
"I'm awake, Oberstleutnant."
"If you fly us into the North Sea, you'll be sent to the Eastern front."
"I wouldn't like that. I make it nine minutes, Oberstleutnant."
"For once we're agreed on something. So do I."
Bomken switched off, slid open the starboard screen and peered out. Although, just the faintest wash of moonlight in the night sky, visibility might as well be zero. A grey opaque world, a blind world, with nothing to be seen but the driving snow. He withdrew his head, brushed away the snow from his face, closed the screen, looked at his pipe, and put it away in his pocket.
For Wenger, the stowage of the pipe, the final proof the Oberstleutnant is clearing the decks for the action.
"A bit dicey is not it, Oberstleutnant? Locating the island in this lot, I mean?"
"Dicey?"
Bomken sounded almost jovial.
"Dicey? I do not see why? It is an island. I can't miss it."
"That's what I mean."
Wenger paused, a pause with more meaning in it.
"And this island is in the middle of nowhere, and with these winds blowing in any old unpredictable direction. A fraction to the south, and we'll crash into the island, a fraction to the north, and we might end up in the North Sea."
"What do you want?"
Bomken demanded.
"Broad daylight? Lights for the drop zone? Those men will land as near to the asset as possible, and extract him, meeting up with the U-Boat circling the island..."
He broke off as a buzzer rang. Bomken made a switch.
"Kroenig?"
"Yes, Oberstleutnant."
Kroenig huddled closer than ever over his radar screen where the revolving scanner-line had picked up a white-spot to the right centre of the screen.
"I have it, Oberstleutnant. Right where it should be."
He looked away from the screen and made a quick check on the compass.
"Course oh-nine-three, Oberstleutnant."
"Well done, Kroenig."
Bomken smiled at Wenger, made a tiny course alteration, and began to whistle to himself.
"Have a look out of your window, will you, Wenger?"
Wenger opened his window, strained his head as far as possible, but still, there was only this grey and featureless opacity. He withdrew his head and shook it.
"No matter. It must be there somewhere."
Bomken spoke said reasonably.
He spoke into the intercom.
"Mũller? Five minutes. Hook up."
"Hook up!"
Mũller repeated the order to his men standing in line along the starboard side of the fuselage.
"Five minutes."
They clipped their parachute snap-catches on to the overhead wire, Mũller checking each catch, before hooking himself up. Nearest the door and first man to jump, Gesetze.
Behind him stood Dänzer, whose previous experiences made him by far the most experienced parachutist of the group whose unenviable task happened to be to keep an eye on Gesetze. Behind him Klaus Hergershimer, Max Von Ribbenstein, and at the end, Mũller.
Behind Mũller two young aircraftmen stood ready to slide packaged equipment and parachutes along the wire and heave them out after the last man had jumped. An air-gunner from the rear of the Junker took up position by the door.
The tension back in the air again.
Twenty-five feet forward of where they were standing, Bomken slid open his side-screen for the fifth time in as many minutes.
He wore goggles now, brushing away snow and moisture with a chamois leather, but the view ahead, or lack of view, remained the same, still that grey driving snow looming out of and vanishing into that impenetrable opacity, still nothingness.
He closed the screen.
A call up buzzer rang. Bomken made a switch, listened, nodded.
"Three minutes."
He told Wenger.
"Oh-nine-two."
Wenger made the necessary minute course adjustment. He no longer looked through the side-screen, he no longer evens looked at the screen ahead of him.
His whole being concentrated upon flying the Junker, his all-exclusive attention, his total concentration, on three things only: the compass, the altimeter, and Bomken.
A degree too far to the south and Junker would crash into the cliffs of Onehouse Island: a couple of hundred feet too low and the same thing would happen: a missed signal from Bomken and the mission would be over before it had begun.
The young face, expressionless, the body immobile as he piloted the aircraft with a hair-trigger precision that he had never achieved. Only his eyes moved, in a regular, rhythmic, unvarying pattern: the compass, the altimeter, and never longer than a second on each.
Again, Bomken slid open his side-screen and peered out. Again, he had the same reward, the opacity, the grey nothingness. With his head still outside he lifted his left hand, palm downwards, and made a forward motion. Wenger's hand fell on the throttle levers and eased them forward. The roar of the big engines died away to a more muted thunder.
Bomken withdrew his head. If he seemed concerned, no trace of it showed in his face. He resumed his soft whistling, scanned the instrument panel, then turned his head to Wenger.
"When you were training with the Luftwaffe, ever hear tell of a strange phenomenon known as stalling speed?"
Wenger started, glanced at the instrument at the instrument panel and gave a fraction more power to the engines. Bomken smiled and pressed a buzzer twice.
The bell rang above the head of the air-gunner standing by the fuselage door. He looked at the tense, expectant faces before him and nodded.
"Two minutes!"
He eased the door a few inches to test whether it moved with smooth German efficiency. With the door fractionally open the deepened roar from the engines sounded startling but nowhere as dismaying as the now-laden gust of icy wind that whistled into the fuselage. The parachutists exchanged expressionless glances, glances interpreted by the air-gunner who closed the door and nodded again.
"That is not a night for man nor beast!"
*
- Writer
