Aubrey let out a gleeful laugh.
“Aubrey!” Hewitt shouted at her.
“Sorry—just wanted to see what that felt like. Did it scare you?”
“No,” he said defensively.
“How about this, then?” Aubrey pulled back on the stick and pushed it over to the side. The plane rose and did a quick barrel roll. “How about that?” she called back to him.
“Unless you want my breakfast spilled all over this cockpit, I suggest you refrain from doing that again.”
She laughed again. “Very well. I promise you a smooth ride from now on.”
“Plus, don’t we need to conserve fuel?”
“Quite right,” she said.
Aubrey fiddled with the controls—fuel flow, propellor pitch and acceleration settings—to get the plane at the perfect flying attitude. They were at three thousand feet right now, and already they were experiencing the chill. Neither of them was wearing a flight suit. When they reached the Balkan Sea, the expanse of water between northern Germany and the Scandinavian countries, they would get even colder. They would just have to endure.
The green pastures and rolling hills soon gave way to low, sweeping plains of hay fields and marshes as they approached the coast. The hum of the engine was hypnotizing. Aubrey was used to this sensation. She’d been on long flights before, knew how the hours ticked by slowly as the roll of the ground or water below lulled you into a dreamlike state.
Her reverie was shattered abruptly when the fighter planes sent to catch them opened fire. The lead plane came from behind, its machine guns firing a long, steady burst. Aubrey was ripped from complacency by the sound of bullets hitting her 109. She instinctively jerked the stick to the left and put the stolen fighter into a sharp turn. The stream of tracers shot past her. The pursuing aircraft then roared by, its nose pointed downwards, followed by another one. They were Heinkels, her old friends from that scary night not so long ago. They had come down on her from a higher altitude, and now they put their strut-mounted biplanes into a turn to try and come up on her tail.
It wasn’t going to be like last time, though. Aubrey now had a far superior aircraft, and she was armed. She rubbed her thumb over the black Bakelite cap that prevented her from firing her guns, then flicked it open and rested her thumb on the red button.
Aubrey weaved and ducked, putting the 109 through its paces. There was a bank of cloud a thousand feet lower, and she dove for the cover. She needed time to think. Hewitt was silent, but she felt his hands gripping the corners of the small pilot seat from behind.
“Aubrey…” he said urgently a few moments later, through gritted teeth.
“Shut up. Let me think,” she snapped.
The cloud enveloped them, and the canopy was suddenly awash in streams of water. She pulled back on the stick and cranked it over to the right in a slow, steady turn. A dark shape went past, a hundred feet off her wing, diving down. Then another one. Her pursuers had followed her into the low clouds. Aubrey pulled back on the stick some more to gain altitude. The engine started to strain and their speed decreased. She had come to Germany to find out the stall factor of Germany’s newest fighter, among other things; now, it seemed, she was going to learn it firsthand.
Then they were out of the cloud, back into the fading daylight. It was already approaching dusk; the sun’s setting rays filled the windscreen, blinding her. She quickly glanced around: there were no fighters, but more might be coming. She had to deal with these two, then get the hell out of there.
She didn’t have to wait long: the two warplanes had guessed her manoeuvre, broken through the bottom of the cloud bank, seen that she was not there and then raced upwards to find her. She saw them emerge through the top of the clouds and turned to attack. She pointed the 109’s nose at a spot in front of the lead Heinkel. It had a slower rate of climb, less manoeuverability. She was diving, increasing speed.
“Aubrey,” Hewitt said again, an uncertain plea in his voice. He was looking over her shoulder, and although his view was restricted, he could see the enemy plane filling the windscreen in front of them.
“Aubrey, what are you doing?” Hewitt said, his voice cracking.
“Hold on,” she said.
The lead plane was rising to her. It opened fire. The green tongues of tracer reached out for her, wavering, searching. Then they stopped. Perhaps the pilot had overheated his guns? Aubrey waited, closed the distance. At one hundred yards, she fired just as the plane coming at her reengaged its guns. She was quicker, more accurate. The rounds from her twin machine guns tore into the centre fuselage of the Heinkel. Sections of the cowling around its engine flew off, and there were flashes of mini-explosions as the rounds tore through the guts of the aircraft. Aubrey jammed the stick hard right and plunged down, past the dying plane, just as an explosion tore it to pieces.
She’d just killed a man, she realized. Perhaps a family man like Albert. But she had no time to grieve now, no time to ask for forgiveness. There was one more plane, and it would want to kill her now, more than ever.
She rocketed the stick back to the other side and then back again, over and over, swirling it around, until finally she put the plane back into level flight and a wide, sweeping turn.
“Do you see him?” Aubrey asked, her voice cracking with the strain, just like her passenger’s had.
“Wait,” Hewitt said. “There, at your ten o’clock. He’s coming at us.”
Aubrey saw him, turned in to meet him, but the other plane had position. He was better than the first pilot. He waited to get as close as possible before unleashing a torrent of phosphorous-backed lead on them.
Aubrey tried to shake
