It did: sitting on the tarmac in front of the hangar was a beautiful Bf 109. Its camouflage paint looked brand new, and the glass of the cockpit canopy reflected the sunlight. Aubrey checked her watch. It was four o’clock; there were only a few hours of daylight left.
“Is it fuelled up?” she asked Albert.
“I would suspect so,” he said. “They are doing night trials this evening; right now, they’re just waiting for the sun to go down. You don’t intend to have me fly you out of here, do you? This is a one-seater.”
“No, we’ll just take it off your hands.”
“You’re going to steal it?”
“That’s the plan. Hewitt, climb aboard and get behind the seat.”
“What if there isn’t enough room?”
“Suck it in.”
Hewitt put his gun away and awkwardly climbed up the small, protruding two-step ladder attached to the side of the aircraft. When he was at the open canopy, he looked around. Then he pushed and shoved his way inside the cockpit.
“Now, I’m going up. I suspect you’re going to run and start yelling. I’m going to keep my gun on you until we get that thing going, and then you can go sound the alarm.”
“They won’t let you get away with this.”
“They won’t have a choice.”
She climbed the ladder. Hewitt’s head was just visible through the back of the canopy, and he had his gun out, pointed down at the German flyer. Aubrey got into the cockpit, took a quick glance at the complex controls and found the starter. She turned on the fuel pump and heard a hydraulic whine. She pumped the flaps, set the magnetos and the pitch on the propellor. There was no time for a pre-flight check, but she was confident this plane would have been gone over by the best mechanics on the base.
Albert was backing up slowly, getting ready to turn and run. When the prop started spinning, that was his cue. Aubrey could have shot him in the back; the sound of the engine probably would have masked it. But she had been telling the truth about the German having a wife and baby at home. She remembered the pictures he’d shown her when they were in Warsaw together.
The propellor caught. Albert disappeared around the side of the large hangar, waving his arms.
“Damn it, the chocks,” Aubrey said.
“Where are you going?”
“I forgot to kick out the wheel chocks. We’re not going anywhere just yet.”
She squeezed out of the cockpit, jumped to the ground, removed the wooden blocks wedged up against the two tires and threw them across the tarmac. Armed men came running around the corner where Albert had disappeared. They were taking their rifles from their shoulders, taking aim, their faces wearing looks of incredulous disbelief. They had apparently not believed their frantic comrade.
Aubrey dashed back up into the cockpit as the first shot rang out. She pushed the throttle and the plane jerked forward. A smile spread across Aubrey’s face; this was a real thoroughbred, a greyhound, one fast cat.
Their speed across the tarmac increased quickly: twenty kilometres an hour, thirty, forty. She made a hard turn onto the main runway and pushed the throttle to the hilt. The plane responded instantly, and they were soon over one hundred kilometres an hour, roaring down the tarmac. She could feel the lift building under the wings.
“This thing can’t wait to take off,” she said to no one. Hewitt couldn’t hear her unless she yelled. She pulled the canopy closed. Other soldiers, alerted by the firing or the unscheduled takeoff, were running to the tarmac. Some had weapons, but there was nothing they could do. The plane was going too fast to hit.
She pulled the stick back and the Bf 109 rose gracefully into the air. She found the wheel retractor. She’d never used one before, but gave it a try and heard the whine of the motors as the wheels of the thoroughbred tucked up under. Then the light went green.
The ride smoothed out after that. Moments later, Aubrey realized they were headed in the wrong direction, deeper into Germany.
“I don’t think we can make Poland,” she yelled back at Hewitt. He leaned forward as much as he could.
“Why not?”
“They’re going to get their aircraft up, try and stop us. If we flew north, to Denmark or even Norway, that might throw them off.”
“Can we make it?”
She checked the tanks. They were indeed full.
“Yes. What little information I did get on this plane from the exhibition was her range. We could fly all the way to France, but I think that would be pushing it, don’t you? They would suspect that as well.”
“I agree—try for Denmark.”
Aubrey had no map, no heading, no radio operator, no homing beacon. All she had was an understanding of where she was starting and in what general direction freedom lay. She pointed the nose of the German fighter plane north.
For the next while, Aubrey had her hands full, learning the ins and outs of her new aircraft; she even nursed a humorous illusion that she would be allowed to keep it. She could certainly win air races in this beauty. The 109 was magnificently designed, and not just in terms of the flow of its fuselage and the seemingly effortless grace with which the wings rode through the air; the cockpit was laid out perfectly. It was designed to allow the pilot to maximize the abilities of the aircraft and focus on one thing: destroying the enemy.
There was a black cap on the top of the stick. She flipped it up. Underneath was a red button. She grinned; she’d never been in a fighter plane before, but it could be only one thing. She rested her thumb on it and then squeezed down gently.
The machine guns kicked into action, and the vibration rocketed through the entire plane. Bright green tracers zipped out of the front of the plane, through the propellor. There was a synchronization mechanism that prevented the blades of the
