He felt N-for-Nancy slowly change direction and he saw the airplane’s nose dip. Bunny’s scratchy voice came to him through the intercom.
“All right, King, we’re going down. One go-round on the flares at about fifteen hundred feet. Then we swing round and come down on the deck. Look closely because we won’t be coming back.”
“You bet,” Cole said. He laughed at himself. His palms were sweating and his tongue seemed too large for his mouth, and his heart beat rapidly, tellingly, through his flight suit. Was it fear or exhilaration? he asked himself; and then he reverted to the scholar by trying to define the difference between the two under these circumstances — or was it an intellectual exercise that he was devising simply to remain calm? He finally resorted to telling himself to shut the fuck up. The mental gymnastics were over.
They were descending faster now, at a much steeper angle, and Cole could see a black shape ahead that blotted out the stars: Leka Island, lifeless and ominous in the night. He felt N-for-Nancy bank to the left, saw her right wingtip slowly rise as he steadied himself.
Searchlights came on. They began to sweep the sky, trying to trap N-for-Nancy in their long silver tentacles.
Nobody said anything about searchlights, Cole thought. This is a surprise.
“Fancy a little illumination?” Bunny said over the intercom.
“No,” Cole said.
“Mustn’t take them too seriously now, King. They’re looking up for us. If they look down for us, it’s a different story.”
“How much farther?”
“Six or seven minutes, old boy. We’re just reaching two thousand feet now. Prentice will chuck the flares out of the bomb bay. We turn around and drop down to two hundred.”
“Is that low enough?” Cole asked.
There was dead silence for a moment. “I say, King. Are you mad? Nancy’s wingspan is just over sixty-five feet. If we have to turn sharply we’ll eat up a good one-third of that two hundred feet. This isn’t an exact science, old chum. One little mistake and no one goes home.”
“Two hundred feet is just fine with me,” Cole said.
“Coming up,” Peter said from the nose of the aircraft. “Ready, Prentice?”
“All set, Peter.”
Cole felt the rumble of the bomb bay doors opening and suddenly he was swaddled in frigid air. It swirled madly within the Astrodome, causing his eyes to tear. The roar of the air rushing into the airplane was deafening, the howl of some enraged beast. N-for-Nancy shook as her sleek lines were destroyed by the protruding bomb bay doors.
“First one on three, Prentice,” Cole heard Peter say over the intercom. “One, two, three, release.”
He didn’t know what to expect, but somehow Cole thought releasing the flare would be much more dramatic than simply words over the intercom. He saw a glint of light just to his left and realized that it was a reflection of the first flare in the Plexiglas dome.
“On three, Prentice,” Peter said again. “One, two, three, release.” The only noise that Cole heard this time was the rumble of the bomb bay doors closing. The stream of cold air lessened and finally disappeared. He watched the searchlights frantically sweep the sky. If those glowing eyes locked N-for-Nancy in their gaze, every gun on the island would target them.
“Here we go, chaps,” Bunny said as the aircraft banked.
“Bunny?” Johnny said from the turret. “I don’t believe that we’re alone up here.”
“Fighters?”
“I can’t tell. Sorry, Bunny, but all I see are shapes. Two, I think.”
“It’ll be a fine thing if we get caught in the glare of those lights and our own flares,” Peter said.
“I’ll try to avoid that just for you, Peter.”
Cole felt N-for-Nancy drop suddenly as he twisted around in the cramped quarters of the Astrodome. The flares spread an eerie, cold white light over the scene. It washed back and forth, as the flares swung rhythmically beneath the parachutes, so that shadows grew and shrunk at a fantastic rate. Cole shielded his eyes, trying to cut down the glare from the flares and the searchlights as they glowed along the soft curve of the dome.
They were virtually at sea level now and the strange island that Cole had studied in the quiet of the photo analysis room was just several thousand yards away. With the searchlights behind the island and the slowly falling flares overhead, Cole saw that it was not an island at all but a vast network of camouflage netting suspended on huge pylons that jutted out of the calm, dark waters. But the most startling sight was what lay underneath the netting: nothing.
“King!” Bunny shouted excitedly. “Time to go home.”
Before Cole had a chance to answer, tracers filled the air in front of N-for-Nancy, bright streaks of angry light slicing across the sky. They looked like fiery baseballs to Cole, coming right at his head. For the first time he was frightened. But he wasn’t satisfied with what he’d seen, either. He wanted another look.
“Take it around again,” he said.
“You bloody fool,” Peter said as shells began to burst around them. “If you want to see it, get out and walk back.”
A shell exploded to Cole’s right. The flash and boom were deafening and he felt the aircraft shudder violently. There was another explosion, higher than the first, but he felt the aircraft pushed down. The whole night was lights, noise, and movement — he felt as it he were in a cavern of the surreal.
“Sorry, King. Too hot here. Time to go,” Bunny said. “Hang on, chaps.”
N-for-Nancy began to dance wildly through the night, trying to throw off the searchlights and antiaircraft gunners.
There wasn’t anything there, Cole thought. Nothing. Had there really been anything there to begin with? Was it built to receive something? Had the thing that it was built to hide never been created?
The aluminum skin in front of the Astrodome erupted as pieces of it flew off into the night. Tracers ate into the fuselage, barely missing the Astrodome, and Cole saw Johnny swing the dorsal turret around and the muzzles of the machine guns flash angrily. The guns’ tracers flew impotently into the night and disappeared into the darkness.
“Two Jerry’s above us,” the gunner called over the intercom.
“I saw them well enough,” Bunny said. “They almost took my head off.”
“We can’t outrun them,” Peter said.
“Beam guns,” Bunny ordered. “We might get out of this yet.”
Cole swung down and unhooked the left beam gun from its restraining straps. He worked the bolt twice, chambering a round. He’d seen that in a movie once; he’d never fired one of these things in his life. Prentice was at his back, manning the right-side gun.
“Nothing to it, sir,” he said, “just remember to lead well ahead of the blighters and watch how the tracers fall. You’ll get the hang of it, I’m sure. I just wish we had another storm to hide in.”
The German fighters swept by again, one after another. They were gone before Cole saw them. He heard the harsh clatter of the turret guns and frantically searched for the enemy planes in the darkness. N-for-Nancy was pitching wildly as Bunny tried to throw off the fighters, but Cole knew it would be only a matter of time before the enemy returned. He dropped the gun in its harness and made his way back to the Astrodome. Behind him he could see the vast canopy of camouflage netting and he knew that they had a chance, a very slim chance to escape.
He squeezed past Prentice and into the foot of the tunnel that led to the bomb aimer/navigator’s position.