Aubrey pulled back on the stick, felt the blood rush out of her brain. By golly, this airplane was something else. Their speed slacked off as they rocketed straight up. Then she nudged the nose of the plane over into a loop.
There he was, her enemy: behind her, climbing as well, no longer firing long blasts at her. Perhaps he was running low on ammo. She felt Hewitt straining behind her, trying to keep himself jammed into the rear of the plane and not mashed against the now inverted framed canopy. There was no belt back there for him. Again, she dove, trying to get the angle on her prey. The 109 was faster than her enemy’s craft, but the man behind the stick of that deadly bird had more combat experience.
Aubrey dove for the deck. The low hills and sparsely wooded planes rushed up at them. She could feel Hewitt slam into the back of her seat as they reached top speed. The stick was heavy. She had to use all her strength to get out of the dive. There they were again, the tracers: short bursts now. She wondered how many rounds of her own she had left.
Swooping in between the low hills, she saw the last of the rugged German countryside fall away. In the distance was a blue blanket of open water. Aubrey jerked hard right, driving back into Germany, then hard left. This time she kept the turn going, seeking her target. There he was: five hundred yards in front of her, in his own turn. Aubrey strained, mentally willing her plane to turn faster. The plane responded, and she knew she had him. She had reversed the situation and was now behind the enemy.
“Shoot him!” Hewitt screamed.
“No, not until I’m close.” Aubrey closed the distance. The plane in front of her, as if sensing her approach, started a weaving dance of its own, but that only served to slack off its speed.
Aubrey’s aircraft, superior in performance in every way, closed in for the kill. She was learning: she and the plane were now one. When she was a hundred feet behind the Heinkel 51, she opened up. Short bursts, just enough to let some tracer show the path of her fire. She saw it start to impact the target. Little bits of stressed aluminum skin flaked off and spun in the air, catching the fading sun.
Aubrey knew she had him. One final burst and she saw smoke billowing from the engine. Another burst and the plane exploded into a million pieces before her. Aubrey had no time to whoop, scream, yell or cry. She pulled back hard on the stick to avoid the flaming ball of wreckage she had just created, rolled over slightly and watched it fall back to earth, where it impacted in a farmer’s field. She executed a quick S-turn to see if there were any other fighters out there. Thankfully there were none. She put the plane back on course. Hewitt reached over the seat and gabbed her shoulder. He didn’t say anything, just squeezed, and then sank back into his makeshift seat. She had come through her baptism of fire and proven herself worthy.
She put the 109 into a slow, steady climb back up to three thousand feet. She would baby her dear airplane from here on in. A quick glance at the dials showed the heat of the engine was coming down. But, alarmingly, so was the level of fuel in the twin tanks. They were now below the halfway mark. There was nothing to do except hope it was enough to get to land, free land.
Germany dropped away, replaced by white-capped waves on blue steel–coloured water. The sun cast red streaks on the cumulus clouds to the west.
“We’re not going to make it,” Aubrey finally said.
“Don’t say that. We must,” Hewitt said.
“Look at the fuel. Maybe they nicked one of the tanks.”
It was down to a quarter now, confirming her suspicions that the enemy fighters had in fact punctured at least one of them. So they’d made their kill after all, just a delayed one. Those two enemy pilots, brave as they were, would never know they had succeeded.
They flew on for another half hour. Aubrey slowed the plane back to a sluggish cruising speed of three hundred kilometres an hour. It didn’t matter; the slower they flew, the longer it would take to reach land. The end result was still going to be the same. They were going to run out of fuel in the middle of the sea.
The fuel levels seemed to drop faster as they approached one-eighth of a tank. There was no point in trying to come up with a contingency plan. Even if she could do a belly landing, the plane would quickly sink, and without life preservers or a raft, she and Hewitt would too. If hypothermia didn’t get them first.
Then Aubrey saw something amazing in the fading light: irregular shapes on the surface of the ocean, long lines with jutting ninety-degree angles. She was looking at the sleek forms of warships on the horizon.
“Hewitt, look.”
“It’s the fleet! My word—it just has to be,” Hewitt said. “I read they were in the Baltic.”
The fuel levels had dropped below one-eighth of a tank. Aubrey guessed they had a minute, maybe two, before the engine started to sputter and then stopped altogether.
“The big one in the middle, that must be the carrier,” she said.
“Fly along side the fleet and put her down on the water. They’ll put boats down to rescue us,” Hewitt said.
“Nothin’ doin’. I’m going to land on that sucker. It looks big
