He lifted the Kalashnikov and sent one final, short burst of automatic fire back over the top of the stone all before setting off at a run across the road, heading directly into the grassy field in the hope that darkness might conceal his retreat. Thorne heard the revving of diesels then as he ran on, and there were at least two or three different engines he could pick out. Perhaps two hundred metres or so west of Church Road, a pair of low trees stood in the middle of a grassed access track that curved right around from the A20 to The Ridgeway, on the northern side of the field. The pasture had been hit several times during the earlier shelling from assault guns and mobile artillery, and one had landed right between the trees, leaving them defoliated, blackened and smouldering at opposite sides of a large crater. Thorne took cover inside, crouching at the rim with rifle ready as he surveyed what was going on behind him.
There was little detail he could make out against the dark background of trees and church buildings, but the faint, slitted driving lights of three armoured vehicles were visible all the same, the faint light from the moon on the horizon coating their grey silhouettes in an almost ghostly sheen. One main battle tank, a light tank, and what appeared to be an assault gun rumbled out of the trees on either side of the church, not damaging the structure of the building itself but giving no thought to the graves and headstones around the parish grounds as they crushed them beneath their heavy, steel treads. Each smashed through the stone wall in turn, before coming to a halt in the middle of the Church Road, each positioned roughly fifty metres apart with the Weisel light tank in the centre. As the roaring of their diesels subsided, Thorne suddenly heard more engines to either side of him, and only then did he realise the tanks’ approach had masked the sound of a pair of Puma armoured cars that had moved up along either side of the field in a flanking manoeuvre, and were now making their way slowly through the pastures toward him from behind his position.
“You in the field…!” Spoken through a loudhailer of some description, the voice reached him from the direction of the armoured car approaching from the south. “Throw down your weapons and show yourself. You will not be harmed if you surrender now.”
He’d been caught easily in the end, and Thorne knew in that moment there was no longer any hope of escape. No doubt the German he’d spoken to and insulted earlier via radio had been an intelligence officer, and they’d been able to determine his approximate position through RDF. It was clear they’d recognised he was an important target and wanted to take him alive: they’d not shown the same level of care in their pursuit of the other retreating soldiers earlier.
Placing the rifle on the ground at his feet once more, he drew his pistol from the holster at his belt. The Heckler & Koch automatic, identical to those issued to US Special Forces in Realtime, was a powerful weapon firing a heavy .45 calibre bullet. He had no idea whether he’d actually have the courage to pull the trigger, but Thorne knew there was no way he could allow himself to be captured. He rolled over and lay back against the inside wall of the crater, cocking the pistol before slowly raising the muzzle to his temple.
It was only as he paused for a few seconds with hands shaking, the muzzle at his forehead as his finger curled around the trigger, that the unmistakable, deafening and utterly wonderful sound of a fighter jet streaking past through the clouds overhead drew him back from committing that last, final act of defiance. Quickly engaging the safety, he holstered the pistol once more and desperately fumbled for the controls of his belt radio.
“Phoenix Leader to Harbinger…! Phoenix Leader to Harbinger…!” The desperation in his voice was crystal clear as Thorne finally managed to get the radio tuned to the F-35’s direct cockpit frequency. “This is Max Thorne… you’ve just overflown my position, heading south… I’m surrounded by enemy forces and in urgent need of assistance… please respond… over…” The few seconds’ pause that followed seemed excruciating, but the speaker/mike at his shoulder finally burst into life.
“Harbinger calling Phoenix-Leader… Harbinger calling Phoenix-Leader… reading you loud and clear, Old Chap…” Alec Trumbull’s voice was possibly the sweetest thing Max Thorne had ever heard at that moment. “Executing a hard turn and returning to your position… visibility is nil at my altitude, but I have thermal systems operating… what is your situation… please mark your position if you’re able…”
“My ‘situation’ is surrounded by fucking Krauts, Harbinger…!” He snarled back testily, holding the mike button in one hand as he searched about the pockets of his combat jacket with the other. “Position is inside a crater, two hundred yards west of Smeeth and about one-fifty north of the A20… just look for the bloody circle of German tanks in a bloody field, and I’ll be the silly bastard stuck in a fuckin’ hole in the middle…!” He finally found what he was searching for, and drew a small signal flare from an inside pocket. “Setting flare now… colour will be red… I’ll be directly to the east — repeat east — of its position, so whatever you’re about to do, try to avoid shooting my arse off in the process!” Igniting it, he instantly hauled back with his right hand and hurled the hissing ball of red/orange fire as far away as he possibly could before immediately diving back inside the crater, well aware of what reaction he was likely to get from the Germans approaching on all sides.
Tracer indeed converged on the flare’s position from several of the armoured vehicles’ coaxial machine guns, but as the long streaks of pink and yellow sizzled past above him, Thorne realised their aim was slightly ‘off’. None of the firing was actually hitting the ground, and was instead streaking away into the distance, ricocheting from the ground 800 metres away at the far end of the fields and bouncing high into the air before disappearing from sight. It didn’t take a fool to recognise they were using the fire to keep his head down, and he could tell from the flickering glow of headlights on either side that both of the armoured cars were now much closer.
“Overhead now, Phoenix-Leader,” Trumbull advised over the radio a moment later. The sound of the jet’s engine was barely audible, and still sounded as if it were off somewhere to the south, but Thorne knew that meant the F-35E was travelling quite fast as it passed by above him. “Suggest you cover your ears, Old Chap… Fox-Two! Fox-Two…!”
“‘Fox-Two’…?” Thorne was barely able to mutter in confusion as he did exactly that, clapping both palms securely against the sides of his head. ‘Fox-Two’ was the standard NATO brevity codeword for release of a heat-seeking air-to-air missile, and he could only assume from the little training Trumbull had received on the simulators, that he’d tried to advise of something else and chosen the wrong term.
He was proven wrong a second or two later as something small, bright and incredibly fast streaked downward out of the clouds at the head of a smoky exhaust trail and slammed into the turret of the southern P-7A. It vanished in an explosion of flame and smoke that lit up the darkness for miles around as debris rained down all about and coated Thorne with earth. All that was left of the armoured car and its crew as the smoke cleared was now a shattered, burning hulk as a black cloud rolled high into the sky above it.