The distance closed. The planes were still in their turn to the left, one in front of the other. Probably the most experienced pilot was leading the second. Or maybe the master was letting a newbie get his first kill? Aubrey moved into their slipstream and positioned herself behind the rear of the second fighter. If she’d only had guns herself, she could fire at them. Maybe just scare them off. Or, if necessary, send them hurtling to the ground in a fiery wreck. But she had no guns, just her intuition and two thousand hours of flying time.
The tables were turned and now her positioning robbed her hunters of their vision. They could not see her. She closed the distance; her plane was just a tad more manoeuvrable. She toyed with the idea of flying up beside the rear plane and flipping the pilot the bird.
Around and around they went, gaining altitude, then losing it as the German fighters searched for her. She had plenty of fuel, but what about them? If the German authorities were on to the man in the rear of her plane, they would have had to have these fighters already airborne when she’d landed to pick him up. They’d been up there, waiting for her to take off if she got away from the guys on the ground. And gotten away she had. She knew fighters were like sports cars: great fun to ride in but hell on fuel economy.
After a dizzying two minutes of her trailing them, the lead fighter banked hard to the right and swooped down. The other one seemed reluctant to do so at first, but then followed suit. She flew above them. Unless they had eyes in the backs of their heads, she was still invisible to them. They were heading east, back into German territory, convinced they’d lost her. She was giddy with joy; her ploy had worked. The fighters increased their speed and left her. She then turned back westward and rose slowly up into the cloud cover and onwards to Belgium.
2
The sun was rising behind her by the time she crossed the border. She had the map of north-eastern Belgium resting on her thigh. The plane had suffered damage but was still airworthy. The cockpit had been punctured by machine gun bullets, and the controls were stiff. A control cable to one of the ailerons must have been shot to bits. She should by all rights put the aircraft down; there could be more cables or wooden spars on the verge of giving out, she knew. But she wanted to complete the mission. The rendezvous spot was twenty miles over the border. Thankfully, the sun was dissipating the morning fog and she could make out landmarks of the Belgian countryside.
She realized that this terrain would be similar to what her father had flown over seventeen years before, during the Great War. There were Flemish windmills, and smoke rising from chimneys. She had dead reckoned fairly accurately and saw the rendezvous spot approaching in the distance.
Her passenger was silent, and she didn’t have time to try to speak to him. Just get the airplane down, hand him over to the friendlies and be on your way. There was a proper airport nearby; she could put down there after dropping the man off and see to getting the damage to her plane repaired. With any luck, she might be able to continue on in the rally. She might even make up the time and place fairly well. If she managed to get in the top ten, it might even make the newspapers back home. She had visions of her career being revived, and for a few minutes she smiled to herself at the prospect of being on top again. She might gain a sponsor, one who would put her behind the controls of another plane. One she could call all her own.
She wouldn’t mind owning one of these Polish planes, if any were being exported. She definitely wanted an upgraded aircraft; the era of the biplane was at an end. Then she remembered the deadly effectiveness of the two Heinkel fighters she’d encountered and thought better of it.
She saw the town of Dinant, its distinctive cathedral and Belgian flag a welcome indicator of her location. She checked her Longines wristwatch, given to her by a close friend just before he died. She was on time. Even after that dalliance with the German fighters she’d managed to stay on schedule.
Outside of the town, she found the country road. It was long and flat and deserted. Ideal. There were grassy fields on either side where she could pull off. She suspected that, after dropping her passenger off and doing a quick inspection, she could be on the way to that nearby airport in a matter of minutes. This touch-down and takeoff was going to go a lot easier than the one in Germany, no doubt.
She throttled back, flared and came in for a perfect low, single-bounce landing on the dirt road. She brought the aircraft to a slow crawl and manoeuvred off the road into the nearest field. It was only after the engine was shut off that she heard moaning from the rear of the cockpit. She turned to look and recoiled in horror. Her passenger was slumped back in the seat, his clothes drenched in blood. The skin on his face looked waxy.
Aubrey quickly climbed back and unbuckled him, and another gush of blood came out of his stomach. She saw a large tear in the stretched aluminum where a round from the fighters had punctured it and torn into the man.
He moaned again. It took all her strength to get him out of the rear seat and over the lip of the rear doors. She dropped down to the ground
