Schroder rolled his plane over, belly up, and pulled back on the yoke so that the plane began a long, graceful arc downwards. He looked ‘up’ to see the bomber below against the dark blue background of the Atlantic. A mushroom cloud of oily smoke was being left behind it, and beneath the cloud he saw hundreds of tiny fragments each tumbling and fluttering to the sea on its own spiralling path.

There was no sign of the Spitfire any more.

He noticed a fire burning along the bomber’s spine and guessed that the Spitfire had exploded and sprayed burning fuel onto the bomber’s back. It looked worse than it was. The fuel would burn out in a few seconds.

He hoped whoever it was who’d saved his life hadn’t been caught by the blast. It seemed unlikely, though; he could see what looked like hundreds of pebbledash spots along her waist section. Whoever had fired the port waist-gun had probably been shredded by the wall of shrapnel.

He turned his attention to the score sheet…

Three of theirs, one of ours. Much better.

Once more his eyes quickly searched the sky around him. He watched as the other Me-109 hung tightly to the tail of a Spitfire that was already in trouble, a white stream of unignited fuel behind it. It fired several short bursts. None found their target, but that seemed academic, the plane was desperately scrambling to find a way out of the skirmish.

‘Who is that? Will? Let him go and form up with me behind the bomber.’

The radio crackled and a moment later the pilot replied. ‘It’s me, sir, Gunter.’

‘Gunter? Well done, man. It’s just us now. Let’s tighten our position around the bomber.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Chapter 49

Mission Time: 6 Hours, 28 Minutes Elapsed

200 miles across the Atlantic

There was still no reply from Stef.

‘Stef! Are you all right?’ Max called once more. Over the interphone he could hear only laboured breathing and the grunting of effort as both Pieter and Hans worked their guns.

Not Stef, please.

‘You want me to go back and take a look?’ asked Pieter over the comm.

‘No, not yet, not until we’re done here.’

Max himself wanted to go back and see what had happened to the young lad, but until this exchange was over, he needed every pair of hands busy, holding something useful.

‘They’ve had enough! They’re pissing off!’ Hans barked loudly.

‘You sure? Pieter, can you see?’ Max sought confirmation.

‘Yup, two of them, plus one limping. They’re heading back east.’

‘Right, in that case, Pieter, go and see what’s happened to Stef.’

Pieter climbed up the metal rungs leading from the bombardier’s compartment and hastily made his way through the bomb bay and through the navigation compartment. He stopped in the bulkhead leading into the waist section and studied the damage.

It had been perforated with hundreds of ragged holes. Several small fires were burning on the wood-panelled floor, fuel that had made its way inside from the exploding Spitfire. Stef was sitting on the floor, both hands clasped tightly around one of his legs, holding it desperately. His trouser leg was black and wet with blood. Considering the mess there, the lad looked like he’d got away lightly.

‘I think I’m hurt pretty badly,’ he said.

‘Stef. Let me take a look at that.’

Pieter squatted beside him, ripped the ragged material of his trousers open and moved it out of the way to inspect the wounded leg. There was a triangle of still smoking metal, the size of a packet of cigarettes, lodged into his leg just above the knee. It had clearly severed an artery and Stef had done the best he could with the tight grip of his hands to slow down the blood loss. All the same, the wound was pumping muted jets of blood past his tightly clasped fingers.

‘Not too bad, boy,’ said Pieter, doing his best to sound in charge and calm. ‘We’ll need to get a tourniquet on that,’ he added, looking around for something to use. He ripped off the rest of Stef’s trouser leg and from that tore a strip long enough to tie around his leg above the knee. He secured it around and tied it up. ‘We need something we can use to wind it tighter. Something long and thin.’

‘Like your pecker?’ Stef grunted painfully.

Pieter smiled and knuckled the lad’s head. ‘At least it’s long.’

He found a socket wrench in a toolbox beneath the port waist-gun. He inserted the wrench between Stef’s leg and the tourniquet.

‘Now this is going to hurt a lot, sorry.’ He twisted it round once and the tourniquet tightened with a creak. Stef let out a scream of agony that he quickly bit down on, turning it into little more than a stifled whimper.

Pieter winced sympathetically. ‘It’s okay, you can let it out if it hurts.’

Stef shook his head stubbornly, his mouth clamped tightly like a vice, refusing to let out anything more than a grunt.

Pieter patted him roughly on the shoulder. ‘So… no more of that “Baby Bear” shit, then. I promise.’

The boy smiled. That was about as much praise as he would get from the bastard. But it was more than enough.

‘You’re not going to pass out, are you?’