The darkness was only momentary, and light returned to the cockpit once more as the seawater swiftly drained away.
For a few short seconds it was silent except for the sound of the sea slapping against the bomber’s fuselage.
Max felt a warm stream of liquid rolling down his forehead. He put his hand to it and felt a gash above his right eye, just below the hairline. He wiped the slow trickle of blood away before it got in his eye.
The plane’s floating.
He fumbled frantically to undo his harness; aware that the valuable time she would give them both as she filled with water would disappear quickly.
He heard the sound of water cascading inside from below. It was coming in through the shattered plexiglas canopy of the bombardier’s compartment directly underneath him. He climbed out of the pilot’s seat shakily and made his way through the bomb bay, sparing a glance at the bomb.
Goodbye, you piece of shit; may you rot at the bottom of the ocean.
He felt an irrational loathing towards the little beer-keg-shaped device, and a grim sense of satisfaction that it was destined for an eternal, dark grave.
He entered the navigator’s compartment. Stef was struggling to undo his harness, his hand slipped and flapped around the buckle like a drunkard hunting desperately for his zipper down a back street.
‘Here, let me help you,’ said Max, leaning over and releasing the strap. Stef remained seated, close to losing consciousness.
There was a storage locker above the navigation desk in which the emergency kit was supposed to be stored, according to the flight manual. He pulled it open and the raft rolled out into his hands, a tightly packed cylinder of rubber. As he spread it out on the floor it was immediately obvious the thing was going to be no good to them. One side of the raft had been shredded. He looked up at the locker to see a shaft of light beaming in from the outside. Another of the fragments of debris that had peppered the side of the plane during the last dogfight had cruelly found the compartment.
‘Shit,’ he muttered.
Water rolled across the floor of the navigation compartment, just an inch deep, followed quickly by more coming from the waist section. A small wave lapped inside through the bulkhead along the floor. It was ankle-deep. By the look of it they were going down tail first.
‘Stef! We’ve got to get out now!’
The young lad stirred, his heavy-lidded eyes opened quickly, roused by the icy cold water that had found his feet.
‘Oh God, no!’ he whispered.
‘Stef, we’ve got life-vests, we’ll be all right, but we need to leave now.’
We’ll be all right? No, we won’t. Stef sure as hell won’t.
Stef looked up at Max, as if he’d heard his thoughts, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Max… I can’t swim, my leg…’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘No! I don’t want to drown… that’s the worst way — ’
‘I won’t let you drown, Stef.’
Stef shook his head. ‘I’ll drown… I don’t want to go that way.’ His eyes focused on Max’s pistol. ‘Please?’
Max looked down and understood what the young lad was asking of him. Stef was right. There was no way he would make it ashore. He would die of hypothermia if he didn’t drown first.
The water had quickly risen to just below his knees, and he could feel the ice-cold water starting to get a grip on him.
‘Please, Max?’ whispered Stef, already his lips were turning blue and a puff of evaporation escaped from his mouth. ‘Don’t let me drown.’
A memory of a conversation they had all had months ago flashed through Max’s mind. The four of them huddled around a paraffin heater in some hastily assembled camp, back when KG-301 was still a functional squadron, sombrely discussing ways they might die. They had all agreed that burning to death had to be the worst way to go. Stef had confessed to a terrible fear of drowning.
‘Okay, lad… okay.’
He reached down for the gun and pulled it out of its holster, his hand trembling almost uncontrollably from the cold.
‘Please, Max… please hurry, just do it.’
He reached out with one hand and rested it on the top of Stef’s head and patted his ginger hair.
‘I’m sorry. Stef… I couldn’t land the plane ashore, I couldn’t let them have it.’
‘I kn-know,’ the boy said, his lips trembling. ‘It’s all right, Max. That w-was the mission.’
The water was thigh-deep now, but for Stef still seated, it was around his stomach, and rising swiftly up his chest. ‘P-please…’ he muttered, shaking uncontrollably.
Max slid his hand around the back of the boy’s head and embraced him with a rough and clumsy hold.
He wondered whether he could have done this for Lucian. Probably.
For a moment they both gasped and shivered in silence as the water quickly rose noisily around them, and then Max placed the barrel of the gun against the side of the boy’s head and pulled the trigger. Stef jerked once, violently, his hands clawed against Max’s back for a second before slackening.
Max let his limp body drop from his arms and slowly slide beneath the water. He held back the grief behind gritted teeth and smacked the sea angrily with one hand.
Only an inch of the little window in the navigation compartment remained above water, and through it the faint glow of the gathering dusk outside was fading fast. For a moment he considered turning the gun on himself and joining Stef and Pieter below the waves. Now the mission was over, they could once more be comrades, if only in death. One quick movement of the arm and another of his index finger and it would be over, no more struggling, it would be the easiest thing.
There’s still time to get out.
He dropped the gun, suddenly galvanised into action.
‘All right then,’ he muttered through trembling blue lips amidst a cloud of vapour. There were two ways to exit, both of them were underwater now and he would have to dive down and feel his way out blindly. He could either go back down into the waist section and out through one of the gun portholes. There might be enough room to squeeze his way out, since the port side gun had been jettisoned. Or he could climb forward, down through the flooded bombardier’s compartment and out through the belly hatch.
He decided to head for the waist section.
He waded towards the bulkhead leading to the waist. There was now a gap of only inches at the top, the water was around his chest and rising fast.
It’s flooded beyond the bulkhead, no air until you’re outside again… you ready for that?
Max breathed deeply several times. Each time he exhaled the dwindling space in front of him between the water and the roof of the fuselage filled with his foggy breath. Water bubbled and spat as trapped air from the aft of the plane hissed out through the last inches of the bulkhead doorway above the waterline.
He watched the top of the bulkhead dip below the water and felt the rear of the plane beginning to swing downwards, the plane now held above the sea by the air trapped in the front half. His ears popped from the buildup of pressure.
There was a loud, deep metallic groan. It sounded like the mournful cry of a whale.
She’s sliding under… go now!
He filled his lungs quickly and ducked through the bulkhead. Under the icy water he could hear a whole new world of sounds, the sound of metal straining and contorting, the roar of expelled air and incoming water, the click and clatter of debris spinning in circles and eddies. He pulled himself deeper and forwards, down towards where both waist-guns had once spewed bullets in anger. He was encumbered by his uniform and the thick leather flying jacket. His progress was torturously slow, but there was no time to tread water while he struggled to unzip it and shrug it off. He worked desperately with his arms, grabbing hold of the internal ribs of the fuselage and pulling himself forward to the next. His hand scraped a jagged bullet hole, one of a row that had stitched a line diagonally
