Emboldened by the weighty unloaded gun in his hands he began to descend the stairs. Even if the damn thing couldn’t fire it would make a fine club if things got a little nasty. He made his way down carefully taking each step close to the wall, where the wood rarely creaked. His bare feet made little noise on each wooden step and as he neared the bottom Remi prepared himself to bellow a loud and terrifying challenge.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs he took the three steps across the hallway to the kitchen. Steadying himself, he extended a hand inside the room and hit the light switch.

The single bulb above the sink lit the kitchen well. Remi’s gasp of horror at the sight before him was all but drowned out by the rattling of a dozen or more safety catches being slipped off.

Koch reached a gloved hand out and gently relieved the old man of his antique.

‘I think I’d better have that, thank you,’ he said in passable French.

Chapter 35

Mission Time: 3 Hours, 10 Minutes Elapsed

5.15 a.m., over France

Outside, above the dark blue bed of clouds, the sky was beginning to lighten. To the east the pale grey sky gave away the approaching dawn with the slightest stain of amber on the horizon. They were at 25,000 feet, high enough to be discreet, but it meant they were now using the oxygen system. The rubber face-piece of his mask was rubbing irritatingly against the bridge of Max’s nose. He pulled the mask away from his face, rubbed his nose and placed it back.

‘Bad fit,’ he muttered.

The oxygen masks they were all wearing were the personal issue of the American crew that had flown this plane and had been adjusted to fit their faces when first issued. Max and his crew had had to make do with the masks as best they could. They’d had ten to juggle between the four of them to find the best fits all round. Even so, they each had their own minor irritation to deal with.

Max checked his watch, it was 5.15 a.m. Just over three hours airborne.

They had flown south out of Germany, passing over Swiss airspace, to ensure they were well away from any Allied sorties during the night. Then they’d changed course, heading west into France, just north of Lyon. The detour had added another 300 miles to the journey to Nantes. The bomber had been heavy lifting off, the installed internal tanks just beyond the belly gun had slowed her down, and they’d travelled through the early morning hours at a sluggish 220 miles per hour, to conserve fuel.

‘Stef, how’re we doing?’ he called into the interphone.

‘There’s a waypoint coming twenty minutes further along this course.’

‘Heading north-west?’

‘Yes sir, two hundred and ninety-five degrees.’

The course would take them in a straight line up to Nantes, south of Paris and the dense Allied air traffic north of the city.

Stef’s voice on the interphone again. ‘I’ll be taking another reading in five minutes, sir.’

‘Good, give me a shout when you’re about to do it.’

Flying by night and above cloud cover, Stef could only navigate by dead reckoning, backed up with periodic attempts at celestial navigation using a sextant. While he was taking a reading, the plane would need to be as steady as possible. Even the most carefully taken readings could only give them an approximate position and could only be used to confirm Stef’s calculation of where he thought they were based on the track, speed of the aircraft and time passed, offset against drift and any head or tail winds. A good navigator working and communicating constantly with the pilot could, in theory, navigate blind from any point to any other point. In reality, minor inaccuracies, as a result of slight calibration errors in the equipment or human error, could inevitably accumulate to throw the dead reckoning calculation off.

But Stef was good. He had a young and alert mind, and was constantly rechecking his work and confirming speed and drift values with Max over the interphone.

By contrast, Schroder and his squadron had only visual contact with the bomber and Max’s periodic announcements of direction changes and speed to ensure they remained on course. During the dark hours of the night, they had flown much closer to the B-17 and had been able to maintain a visual by moonlight. The Me-109s had flown slightly higher than the bomber and had been able to see it fairly easily silhouetted against the blue tinged snow-like cloud carpet below. But it was getting lighter now, and they had pulled further away.

Which had been fortunate.

At 4.30 a.m. they had passed within a few miles of a squadron of fighter planes. From that distance they had been unable to work out whether they were American or British. It was most likely they were American. If they had seen them, then undoubtedly the Americans had seen them too. The squadron of fighter planes had not changed course, nor had they attempted to raise them on the radio.