Chapter Twenty-Six

Alec dreamed of bones in the mud. He ran bent at the waist through a trench so filled with water and piss that every stride was a struggle. His rifle was frozen to his hands, the tips of his fingers purple with frostbite, like hardened grapes. Exploding shells blew dirt cascades across the lip of the trench, where bloated bodies floated in the muck. And wildly overhead, untouched by it all, flew a single, soaring plane, its pilot an angel with muslin wings.

“Alec, listen.”

He opened his eyes instantly, the dream vanishing. He saw the night sky framing Ellenor’s face, her hair loose. “You’re beautiful,” he told her.

“Kind of you to say, but the bells are ringing.”

The distant chimes of Basilique Saint-Vincent carried across the darkness.

She kissed him. “It’s time.”

He got dressed without speaking. At some point they had untied their joined hands. Alec saw it all over again, her rolling on top of him, her black sweater pulled over her head and cast away—

The dream returned. Men drowned in their own goddamned trench. He could have been one of them, a member of the infantry, where human life seemed to have no value. Perhaps he should have been. Only luck and reflexes had saved him.

As he pulled on his shirt, he bumped against her. He turned, barely able to see her but sensing the awkwardness their silence had created. In an effort to dispel it, he said, “When you meet my mother one day, it will be best not to mention this part.”

“If I meet your mother, I’m telling her everything.”

He smiled to himself. They were going to be fine.

Alec pulled on his boots. Behind him, Ellenor did the same.

As mighty as Hildegard might have been, her petrol tanks were insufficient to fly all the way from here to the Channel and then to England. Alec loved the idea of returning with Ellenor on his arm, the prettiest woman in all of Derbyshire. The two of them could settle into the sedate business of news printing and attend Saturday evening socials at the civic hall.

It sounded dreadful. Boring and dreadful. And that northwesterly wind had other ideas.

Once dressed, he helped her to her feet. Before she could say another word, he pulled her close, resting his chin on her head and breathing the perfume of her hair. Every flight was dangerous, this more than most. They’d be moving at a hazardously low altitude in full darkness, so close to the ground that any German with a sidearm was a threat. If one of those flaming onions managed to let loose, they were finished. Even though Ellenor would be seated directly behind him, there was a solid chance he’d never speak to her again.

He knew she understood this. He felt it in her embrace.

The cathedral bells had stopped ringing. At this very moment, Sarah and her friends were shoving burning bundles into windows.

“You’ve got to pull the propeller now,” he said.

“Lucky for me I’m an expert.”

He was afraid to release her. “Listen, whatever happens to us tonight—”

She put her fingers over his lips. “Tell me everything when we land.”

That was all she needed to say. Alec didn’t necessarily share her faith in the outcome, but that turbulent energy was back in his blood, the borderline madness that always gripped him before a flight. Win or lose, live or die, he would do it with his teeth bared to the wind. “You ready for this?”

By way of response, she put on her pith helmet and tightened the strap below her chin.

He smiled, infatuated with her courage, and then pulled himself into the plane.

****

Propeller churning, wheels thumping, tail skid plowing a furrow in the field, the aircraft built speed as Ellenor hooked the safety belt across her lap. The goggles they’d given her dangled at her neck, and she hurriedly got them fixed over her eyes as the breeze in her face became a gale. Each rut the wheels encountered sent a jolt through her wooden stool and all the way up her spine. She clamped her teeth together. Directly in front of her, Alec’s scarf fluttered like a flag.

Then everything changed. The plane ceased contact with the ground. The banging and heaving were replaced with an exhilarating pressure that forced her into her seat; the fight against gravity had commenced. Tilted backward, she watched the yawning night sky spread wide and vast before her. For a few moments, the plane almost seemed to stall, caught in a defiance of physics. Then, by brute determination, it muscled its way higher and leveled off.

Alec swung them toward Metz.

Ellenor took the first of what would be hundreds of glances over the side of the plane, first the left and then the right, trying to get her bearings. The land below lay in shadow. By touch she located the lever that was hitched to the release cable. Having found it, she let go, afraid of yanking it by accident and vaporizing a city block. Metz appeared, a glimmer of tiny lights from lamps and fires and gas-powered bulbs along the streets.

She reminded herself to breathe deliberately, one after the next.

Alec lowered them closer to the ground. They skimmed the treetops and rushed toward the city’s defenses at sixty, then seventy miles an hour. Nothing earthbound could match these speeds.

Alec dipped the nose slightly. He held up his right hand in a signal that appeared in silhouette against the sky. He pointed down repeatedly.

Ellenor saw the first anti-aircraft gun, its long tube pointed up, a single lantern at its base. It was fifty yards away, thirty yards away, twenty—

Frantically she grabbed the lever, looked over the side—

The plane passed over the target and left it behind. Alec threw up a hand in agitation.

Damn it! Ellenor looked back, but she was too late.

Alec banked them into a hard turn, slamming her against the fuselage’s interior. She gave a sharp bark of pain. They were coming back around for another pass. She could not miss again.

The plane leveled out, engine howling. Ellenor could barely make sense of her environment, with the darkness and unbelievable velocity, much less be expected to get her timing correct. But she had to try. She leaned over the side again, and this time when Alec gestured madly at the ground, she was ready. Her eyes focused on the only shape in an otherwise empty expanse. The plane charged toward it, devouring the distance.

“Three…two…”

She pulled the lever.

For the longest time, nothing happened. The plane sped toward its next target, the wind and the propeller too loud to ignore. But then a light appeared behind them, followed by the shockwave, followed by the sound. The ground behind them turned into a lake of fire.

Alec shouted something that Ellenor hoped was his approval. Too stunned to respond, she shoved the lever back into place, readying the next bomb. Had she actually done it? Her body buzzed so violently her teeth ached.

Alec held up two fingers, then tipped the right wings up and the left wings down, angling them toward the second of their four targets…

Something flew directly in front of them.

Alec jerked the plane off course to avoid a collision, tossing Ellenor hard against her restraining belt. The force of the impact caused her to bite her tongue. She had no idea what was happening, or why. He’d warned her of the shrapnel bursts if one of those big guns was allowed to open fire, but this was a different thing. This had wings.

A German aircraft had found them.

****

Gustov had nearly given up when the sound of the distant engine shook him to his senses. He assumed that he’d misjudged the distance the fuel would be delivered, and the Rumpler was at least a hundred kilometers away. Or the Englander was nearby but had no intention of flying tonight. Either way, Gustov had rolled the dice and lost. He slumped in the plane’s single seat with his head reclining on his rolled coat, hoping that Mier had brought all the boys home from the day’s patrols. He’d rejoin them tomorrow.

Then a distinctive cry carried across the void.

He sat up. Held very still. Listened.

The aircraft’s engine was far away but coming closer.

Gustov shouted at his borrowed mechanic, who’d fallen asleep in the summer grass. Even before the idiot had gotten to his feet, Gustov ran through his pre-flight check and struggled into his coat. The mechanic pulled the chocks as Gustov donned his goggles and padded cap. He squeezed his hands into his form-fitting gloves and yelled for the mechanic to engage the prop.

The Fokker lit up immediately. Gustov opened the throttle, rumbled across the field, and lifted into the air, gathering altitude as quickly as he could without stalling the engine. He was already several crucial minutes behind the Englander, wherever the man was going. The two planes boasted nearly equal top speeds, which meant Gustov would need to rely on wits and raw luck to close the gap.

As it turned out, there was no gap.

Gustov could be sure of nothing in the dark. The Rumpler was practically invisible. But for just a few seconds he caught sight of it framed against Metz’s lamps below, and it seemed to be turning, following the outline of the city.

A second later, a firebomb appeared.

The explosion startled him so much he nearly swore. The night lit up with flames.

What the hell?

The Englander was bombing Metz.

Gustov kicked the rudder bar hard and dove after the man, cocking his guns as he went.

****

Alec searched frantically for the other plane. He’d avoided a collision by fortune more than skill, the two birds unable to see each other until it was nearly too late. The German response had been almost instantaneous. How had the bastard gotten into the air so quickly?

He looped Hildegard in wide spirals so as not to create a predictable line. She responded beautifully, graceful even though she weighed over one ton. She bobbed and darted hungrily at the slightest touch of her control wheel. It was like riding a shark through the sea.

Alec pointed her at the next ground target. He had to trust that his pursuer didn’t know his destination and would be flying randomly in the dark. Alec had barely gotten a look at the enemy’s craft; he knew it was a fighter—but what was it? A rickety old training model kept on hand for emergencies? Or something truly deadly? The thing’s belly had flashed in front of Hildegard’s prop too fast to reveal more.

The ice moved like medicine through Alec’s veins. Everything felt cold, a sensation that had kept him alive for over a year as a pilot because it numbed his pulse and calmed his breathing. Many times it had turned him into a killer. He guided Hildegard over the rooftops and belfries of Metz, wheels only a few feet from chimneys, turning his head in a constant search of the black sky.

The second ack-ack appeared.

Though the 90-millimeter gun was no more than a gray finger pointing upward, Alec’s keen eyes recognized it. Keeping his left hand on the wheel, he waved his right in the air and then pointed like he was stabbing someone, hoping Ellenor was paying attention. They had to destroy these remaining weapons and then get the hell out of here before the German flyer made sense of the dark.

Alec turned his head: “Do it! Do it now!”

****

Gustov couldn’t see for shit.

He’d almost rammed into the stolen Rumpler accidentally, narrowly missing, and now he’d lost the damn thing entirely. Fate had deigned to sentence him to a duel on a moonless night, so the only things he saw were the twinkle of innocent windows in the city below. A fire raged to the south.

Gustov went high.

The triplane ascended faster than any other bus he’d ever flown. It could climb to a thousand meters in only three minutes. Gustov didn’t need that much height; he needed only to get above his enemy. Once there, he would be able to see the Rumpler framed against the glow of Metz, and then he would fall like a falcon, talons bared.

****

By the time Alec shouted—“Do it! Do it now!”—Ellenor had already pulled the lever. The bomb dropped. She’d been ready, barely able to breathe for the knot in the back of her throat. A direct hit wasn’t necessary, as the explosion’s radius would raze everything in the area.

She closed her eyes.

The noise ripped the night apart, sending steel and rocks in every direction. The plane wobbled as the force caught up with it. Ellenor’s stomach swam.

She put her head over the side just in time to vomit into the air.

With no time to recover, she swallowed the gunk in her mouth and tried to focus, but a German in a plane was out there somewhere, hunting them. At any moment, she expected his guns to open up and shred her where she sat. What if the fuel tank caught fire and she burned to death? What if Alec were hit first, torn from her hours after he’d whispered his affections in her ear?

Bashert, Josef said in her mind: destiny.

“No, thanks,” she replied. She spit the foul taste from her teeth and grabbed the lever.

****

Alec was not flying The Dragon. Had he been screwed into the seat of his cherished S.E.5, oh, how he would have enjoyed this joust. Hildegard wasn’t as lithe, but she was strong, and Alec depended on that strength as he bent her into such a steep left turn that she stood nearly completely on her side in the air, her wings almost vertical, her struts straining, her wires keening.

Two anti-aircraft guns remained.

Alec leveled the plane, his head sweeping left to right in search of his foe. The German, whoever he was, had vanished. Alec needed to reach the other two targets before the Hun got a fix on them. He asked Hildegard for more speed, and she replied.

His strategy of flying low had so far succeeded. No doubt the people in the cramped houses below were thinking it a raid. Lights faded as lamps were extinguished. Alarms were probably being sounded and children were being whisked under dining tables to protect them, even though Alec had no intention of harming anyone but the AA crew. He’d studied Sarah’s map and stenciled the position of the guns in his memory. He didn’t need to be able to see them to understand the geometry of their destruction. Hildegard roared closer.

Alec didn’t realize he was smiling.

****

From high above, Gustov saw his opponent. That was the first step in killing him.

The second step was getting within range and pouring bullets into him. Without thinking about it, he gave the guns the customary check, just to make sure they’d fire; sometimes the whole rig failed. But a slight squeeze of the trigger mechanism discharged a trio of tracer rounds into the clouds. Satisfied, Gustov reduced speed, angled the nose down, and drove the Fokker into a precipitous dive. He held the stick in both hands, cradling it between his legs, his gaze locked on the Rumpler that was outlined perfectly against the city below.

It occurred to him that he was about to fire on a German-built plane above a German-inhabited town. Of all the unlikely situations in which he’d found himself since his exploits as an airman began, this was the most radical: gun down a madman and his female partner who’d pilfered a plane in order to bomb a contested city. That sounded like a plot concocted by boys pretending to be pilots, their plane made of a crate on wheels borrowed from their little sister’s pram.

He shoved the image away and dove toward his enemy’s head.

****

Ellenor gripped the lever so hard the muscles pulsed painfully in her forearm. Her other hand, which had been tied to Alec’s not very long ago, clutched the front of her coat so as to reduce the trembling. She sucked in cold wind, exhaling through her mouth in ragged little grunts. Five days ago, the most daring thing she’d ever done was inspect her hive frames without wearing gloves or a veil, risking a sting. And she’d thought herself brave. Jesus.

The plane streaked toward the next collection of guns, a cluster of armaments aimed upward, awaiting deployment. Men rushed toward them, soldiers intent on counterattacking. Now that they’d had time to respond, they charged their equipment. As the plane neared, the men gripped handles, threw off safety locks, and swiveled barrels. If even one of them acquired a target and opened fire, Ellenor and Alec would be much too close to the ground to evade the incoming rounds.

Alec must have realized the same thing, because he increased their speed. Ellenor could hardly breathe in the wind. How could anything manufactured by human hands move so fast? It was like being shackled to a storm.

Three, two—

By now she understood the pattern even if she couldn’t explain the physics behind it.

—one.

The fireball murdered the gunners below. This time, Ellenor didn’t close her eyes.

****

Bullets tore through Hildegard’s wing.

Alec swore and banked right, jamming his foot on the rudder bar. Red streaks sliced the air, bullets coated with pyrotechnic gel streaming from the German’s machine guns. Loose fabric fluttered around the half-dozen holes. Alec looked up in time to see the black, cross-like shape of the airplane above him. Seconds later, the German dropped directly behind them.

Alec almost panicked. He had almost panicked many times when locked in aerial warfare. It was part of the ritual. You went balls first against terror but never crossed its line, giving it the finger as you held fast to your wits. With the calm of a monk, Alec began evasive maneuvers, swinging first left and then dipping slightly and bringing his bird around in a rapid right-hand curve.

The German followed him and fired again.

Alec jiggled Hildegard instinctively, taking the rounds in the tail. The bullets thudded into the wood like fists against a barn door.

“Alec!”

He heard Ellenor’s scream but could do nothing about it. The German behind him was a sorcerer, clinging fast despite Alec’s efforts to elude him.

The fourth and final ack-ack battery, flanked by thirty-seven-millimeter flaming onions, waited only a quarter-mile ahead. If Alec was going to be beaten tonight by the German pilot, he would do his best to take those guns with him and clear a path for the French.

But he didn’t want to lose the girl of his dreams. A heroic death sounded far less appealing than seeing her naked again.

He laughed and pushed Hildegard even closer to the ground.

****

“He’s insane,” Gustov said when the Englander dropped another ten meters. Soaring over the city, the two planes were so near the slanted rooftops that the Fokker’s wheels nearly scraped the lip of a fireplace flue. Telegraph poles became crucifixes upon which he’d impale himself if he weren’t careful. He worked the stick constantly, hypnotically, making tiny little adjustments that flicked his three wing decks just enough to keep him clear of the obstacles. The Rumpler, twice as large, had somehow tucked itself into a clear channel and moved like a slipstream between the centuries-old buildings.

A hundred meters back, Gustov fired.

Tracers squirted out as if from a hose, some of them swatting the Rumpler’s right wing, some of them drilling into a house nearby. Each of his two guns was fed by a five-hundred-round ammunition drum. Always miserly with his ammo, he’d used only ten percent so far, hitting the Rumpler with at least three bursts. None of those, however, had struck anywhere near the fuel supply, the engine, or the pilot. The aircraft was so well engineered that the rest of it could be turned to splinters and it would still find a way to fly on unless one of its vital organs was torched. Gustov needed to get closer. His top speed was virtually the same as that of his enemy, but the Rumpler couldn’t reach full tilt as it jigged and jagged across the top of Metz’s slate shingles. Gustov could catch him only if he stayed high enough to fly straight and fast. Then, when the moment was right and he was directly on top of the man, he’d end it abruptly with a blast from both guns. It would be a pity if Miss Jantz were riding in the observer’s seat.

He pushed the throttle as full and fast and hard as he was able. Seconds later, he hurtled toward the point of intersection at almost two hundred kilometers an hour, a speed he had reached before only in his dreams.

****

Ellenor knew she would miss the fourth and final target. Too many buildings flashed by. The plane jostled and jolted to avoid them, shaking her apart. Her guts felt stuck to her lungs.

The bullets that riddled their wing could strike her dead at any moment. She desperately wanted to twist around and look for the plane that chased them, terrified of it, but she couldn’t afford to glance away from her target. Her hand shook so violently that the release lever rattled against its housing no matter how tightly she gripped it. She made a high-pitched sound every time she exhaled, bordering on hyperventilation, but she kept her gaze bolted to that single spot on the ground. It got closer, larger.

She pulled the lever and immediately recognized her mistake.

“No!” She clutched the side of the plane and stared at the ground behind them.

The bomb fell too early. Its steel fins angled it downward and gave it a stabilizing spin. It landed thirty yards from the great wheeled gun, blossoming into a bouquet of flames that did not touch their target.

She missed.

In front of her, Alec shook his head.

Ellenor was about to lean toward him and make a stupid and useless apology, but then the plane whipped forcefully to the left, throwing her into the sidewall and knocking the last of the breath from her body.

Anger and fear washed over her, lining her goggles with tears.

****

Alec saw the German gaining on them. In seconds the man would be close enough to fire. Hildegard could withstand only so much punishment before she fractured, her wooden structure collapsing and sending them to the ground.

The fourth ack-ack had survived. Shit. Nothing could be done about that now. They’d had a damn good run of luck; it was a miracle they’d gotten three of them. Hopefully he and Ellenor had done enough damage that the Frenchies could manage to avoid getting themselves killed in action when they arrived just before dawn to annihilate the factory. Now all that remained undone was escape.

Escape, though, was not to be had. He tried it all, every crafty bit of dancing he could coax from his crate, but the German was too fast and too light in the air.

Alec pulled back on the control wheel, pointing the nose straight at heaven, and then faded to the left and down again, trying in vain to shake the Hun from his tail.

Too late. The bastard arrived and opened fire.

Alec flew through a hailstorm of lead. A strut took a slug and cracked. A piece of laminated wood the size of his arm broke free of the lower-right wing and fluttered like a tossed playing card. The engine took two hits—ping! ping!—but amazingly keep churning. Alec did his best to dodge most of the barrage. A lesser pilot would have absorbed so much lead that he would have snapped in half right then and there. Alec bent and twisted his crate in ways it had never moved before, but the iron-hard truth of the matter was that Hildegard was wounded and nearly out of tricks.

Nearly.

Alec knew he and Ellenor had one and only one advantage. They could shoot backwards.

He turned his head and shouted at Ellenor to use the gunner’s mounted weapon. She didn’t hear him.

“Ellenor!”

The wind devoured his words. The German ripped off another twenty rounds and then hurtled by, close enough that Alec could identify his plane, even in the dark. It was a Fokker Dreidecker, a devil with three sets of wings.

“Ellenor!”

****

Ellenor leaned forward as much as she possibly could and screamed: “What?”

“Shoot that fucker!”

Shoot him? Her eyes went to the machine gun mounted on the ring that encircled her seat. What had Alec called it? A para-something. He’d shown her how to unlock it so that it could be rolled out of the way as she worked. Was he now expecting her to fire the damn thing?

In her mounting hysteria, she almost laughed aloud. But if she just sat here, paralyzed now that her last bomb had dropped without effect, she would die, and so would Alec, and that was unacceptable.

As Alec hooked the plane into an upward, right-leaning arc, Ellenor freed the gun as he’d taught her. The weapon instantly rolled along its track in the direction their momentum pushed it. She caught it with trembling hands, then leaned into it, holding it like she’d held the rifle she borrowed from Father’s cabinet whenever she visited her hives. She’d used that old bolt-action Mannlicher to scare off foxes and a pair of curious wolves, and of course she’d almost killed Alec with it, and now she repeated what it had taught her: put the stock against the shoulder and sight along the barrel. She remembered to release the safety and chamber the first round.

She peered through the sight and into the swirling chaos of the night.

Everything moved: the plane, the sky, the ground. Nothing was stable anymore. The enemy plane flashed by.

Ellenor pulled the trigger.

The recoil ripped the weapon from her hand. The string of bullets burned tiny red slashes in the dark. She tried to regain control, but Alec was swooping maniacally to dodge the German, who was sending expert bursts at them every twenty seconds. Ellenor, struggling against vertigo, could barely keep the gun braced against her shoulder; she had little chance of hitting a moving target. Tears trapped in her goggles made it nearly impossible to see.

She clamped down on the trigger and didn’t let go.

****

Gustov coolly nudged his stick and tipped the Fokker sideways to avoid the river of crimson-coated bullets suddenly pouring at him from the gunner’s seat. He realized that it was most likely Ellenor Jantz at the other end of that barrage, which was so spectacular a notion that Gustov couldn’t help but shake his head in admiration. He should have met her under different circumstances, at an opera in Monte Carlo, perhaps, or at an equestrian event in Prague. Now he was going to be forced to kill her, which saddened him in an honest and almost boyish way. Innocents had died every day since July of 1914, but one more seemed too much. Her bullets washed the night air without ever endangering him. She had no idea what she was doing; the machine gun was too much for her. That made it even sadder.

For a brief moment, Gustov allowed himself a fantasy: a single shot into the Englander’s skull, the pilotless Rumpler gliding mostly safely to the ground, Miss Jantz surviving the crash…

He sighed.

The Rumpler continued evasive maneuvers, now well away from the outskirts of Metz and crisscrossing the sky while attempting to take on altitude. Obviously the Englander planned to use the darkness to escape, so it was imperative that Gustov stay on top of him. Pursuit became a circus of twists, feints, and darting turns that tested Gustov’s skill at the stick. Lining up another shot was far from easy, especially with bullets flying back at him from the inexperienced but determined gunner. Gustov danced through them.

He fired in return.

He sent a precise line of lead into the Rumpler’s undercarriage, emptying his first of two ammo drums. Though he couldn’t gauge the damage in the dark, he assumed he’d chiseled away much of the landing apparatus. It wasn’t a direct hit, but that’s how you brought down one of these big bombers—you bled it to death with a thousand razor cuts.

Gustov cleared his mind and let instinct work the controls. He wove through Miss Jantz’s bullets and forgot who she was so that he could get on with this business of killing her. In this war, there could be no opera in Monte Carlo or any kind of nice ending at all.

****

Alec ran out of options. The goddamn Hun on his ass was capable of witchcraft at the stick. No matter what Alec tried—from the classic cutbacks taught by the masters to the gambits of a lunatic—the German countered him. Ellenor’s constant rat-a-tat kept the man at bay, but every minute or so he lunged forward and placed another surgical stitch into Hildegard’s wings. The beautiful old bird would not last much longer. Alec needed another option.

Should he land? He considered the outcome. Prisoners of war were treated humanely, especially if they were officers and certainly if they were women. Alec would spend the rest of the war in confinement. Could he do that? Of course he could; the men of the Corbin-Dawes line might be bourgeois nobodies, but they had spine. But he would more than likely never see Ellenor again. They’d be separated. Even if they both survived incarceration, he would lose her forever. At least landing would save her life.

And that was how he decided to set Hildegard down and surrender.

He reduced speed, leveled out, sent the signal he was giving up. Trusting that the German was a man of honor, Alec resisted the urge to fight until his wings were shredded, choosing to provide Ellenor a chance at a life beyond tonight. He would face repercussions for what he’d done, and so would she. But he trusted she’d come out on the other side in one piece, and she’d look back on this and think kindly of him for making the wise choice for once in his life. Sarah, too, would be thankful.

He removed his goggles and felt the wind against his cheeks one last time. Whatever they did to him in the coming weeks or years, they would never let him fly again.

****

Gustov was about to pulverize the Rumpler when it suddenly went limp. The Englander slowed, cruising at a mere hundred kilometers an hour—and now down to eighty. The man presented a target that even a wet rookie couldn’t have missed.

“He’s white-flagging it,” Gustov realized.

The relief that flooded his chest surprised him. Miss Jantz would not die today. Gustov released the trigger. A defeated opponent was yielding the field, and Gustov would nobly accept. He relaxed, nodded to himself, and tucked in directly behind the Englander. The feeling of satisfaction was more potent than he’d anticipated. This was a fight that would make him famous. He’d hunted down a stolen aircraft, beaten the thief in the air, and run the wounded plane to ground to be repaired and sent aloft for the Fatherland again. The story would write itself on the front page of the papers.

What would he say to Ellenor Jantz?

What would she say to him?

He rolled his eyes at himself. Fool. More important things awaited: accolades, toasts, a good night’s sleep. Flexing the fingers that had turned to granite around the stick, he followed the Englander toward the ground.

****

“What the hell are you doing?” Ellenor shouted.

“Saving your arse, thank you very much.”

“He’ll kill us!”

“Little chance of that, actually. Fairly certain our chap’s a man of the code.”

Ellenor, scowling, looked back. The German plane was only forty yards behind them, framed against the stars.

Could she simply give up?

They’d been through so much. And what had happened between them a few hours ago was something worth defending. Ellenor needed to see where they would go next, what they’d accomplish together, what this handsome daredevil would say when he realized he loved her. But the only way to discover any of that was to eliminate the German plane, which meant shooting it down.

The machine gun had proven impossible to control. Every time she’d held the trigger down, the damn thing sent tremors into her upper body and ruined her otherwise accurate aim. Using a fully automatic gun required either training or luck, both of which were in short supply. Ellenor knew she had almost no chance of putting all of those shots into the German who chased them.

“I don’t need to hit him with a hundred bullets,” she said to herself. She needed only one.

She leaned down gently, cheek against the weapon’s smooth steel. If she touched the trigger lightly, just a single stroke, she could release a round without having her bones jarred to powder by the fiendish recoil.

Their plane continued its descent. The German mirrored them.

Ellenor closed one eye.

She could not see the pilot directly, but she knew his approximate position. The propeller made a perfect circle; she aimed at the top of its arc. Her papa had taught her to shoot varmints that came to snatch the chickens, and she recalled his lessons about sight picture and center mass. Ellenor had killed more than one opossum and raccoon, and they were tiny creatures—the propeller’s circle was at least eight feet across. Behind it was the engine, and behind that was the pilot who was bringing them down.

The wind swirled her hair. The stars looked on.

Ellenor fired.

****

Gustov was checking his gauges to ensure a proper touch-down when his prop exploded.

Something struck the blade. The wood split. Then, almost instantly, its own centrifugal force obliterated it. Fragments and jagged bits showered him.

He swore and tugged the stick. He lost almost all his forward speed, the engine still humming but the entire propeller gone, part of it lodged like a spear head in one of the wings.

The Fokker glided.

Gustov fought back. He scooped the nose into position, slapped his hand to the gun, and seared off the remains of his ammo drum. Tracers peppered the air all around the fleeing Rumpler. Gustov willed the slugs toward their target, biting down on his teeth in anger, but his bus had already drifted too far, like a powerless swimmer against the tide.

He watched in horror as the Englander took on new speed and climbed straight up.

“Shit!” He slammed the ball of his fist against the cockpit, again and again. Nothing could be done. Just like that, it was over.

Gustov shut off the engine and let the Fokker float wherever the hell physics wanted it to go. He kept it on a stable path, unable to do anything but make sure he landed with his wheels right-side down.

With the motor silent, everything was very quiet as he fell.

He looked up, thinking no thoughts at all, watching Ellenor Jantz and the Englander disappear.