Yone gaped at it in mortal dread. “No,” he said.
The Typhon rolled right and shed a dandruff of flailing repair drones. Farley glimpsed the seed-shaped weapon pod beneath the raked right wing, the sleek fury of the fearsome head as the unrelenting construct tore its damaged way across the contested German sky.
Farley looked up at Yone. “It’s been guarding that thing you’re holding for two hundred years,” he said. “Did you think it would just let you fly away with it?” he said.
And Broben bolted upright in his copilot seat and pulled a steel plate from a flak-jacket pocket. He twisted around and rammed the plate into Yone’s face. The blunt metal cracked the palate bone above Yone’s upper teeth. His head snapped back and the headset cord tore from its jack and blood sprayed from his nose and mouth. His arms flailed and the gun went off. Wind hissed through the sudden hole in the top of the cockpit as Yone fell back into the lower pit—where Garrett knelt behind the bomb bay bulkhead, aiming his own service .45.
Garrett rushed to Yone and yanked him up and brought the small man’s arms up into a full nelson. Broben dropped the metal plate and wrenched the pistol from Yone’s hand. Farley glanced down at the steel plate and saw a flattened .45 slug in a dimple near the top.
Garrett turned Yone around and pinned him against the bulkhead and jammed his pistol up against Yone’s eye. “Why’d you do it?” he yelled into Yone’s bleeding face. “Why would you do this?”
Yone tried to say something and blood bubbled from his mouth.
“He’s a Luftwaffe pilot,” Broben said.
“He’s a Nazi?” Garrett slammed Yone’s head into the back of the copilot seat. “You’re a stinking Nazi?”
A roaring wind tore into the bomber as the bomb bay doors swung open behind them.
“Captain!” Francis yelled in Farley’s headset. “That vulture’s back, it’s blowing everything out of the sky!”
“Some details would be nice,” Farley said automatically as he brought the landing gear back up.
“Three miles back, seven o’clock level and coming back around. It’s not flying so good, but holy jeez it’s fast.”
Farley turned ten degrees left and shoved the wheel hard forward. The Morgana dove. Dead ahead two miles away a massive column of smoke roiled above a cluster of low buildings. The munitions plant they had dropped on only minutes and a week ago.
A desperate idea formed.
“Come on, girl,” Farley told his bomber.
From the radio room’s opened doorway Everett and Shorty and Wen watched Garrett lurch toward the opened bomb bay. Yone hung bleeding from him like an untied butcher’s apron.
The bomber nosed into a sudden dive and everybody grabbed what they could grab.
Yone began to struggle, and Broben climbed down and helped Garrett dead-carry him to the bomb bay entrance, fighting against the deafening wind and diving aircraft. Broben looked down through the opened bomb bay doors at a tree-lined road eight thousand feet below. He let go of Yone’s legs and patted the writhing man’s chest. “Auf Wiedersehen, Johann!” he yelled, and moved aside.
A voice cut through the raging wind. “Wait! Wait! ”
Broben looked back to see Boney’s lanky form unfold from the crawlway. He cradled a yard-long metal cylinder and struggled toward them. Broben saw a cotter pin in the top of it and recognized the fuse booster Farley had asked Boney to pull from the jammed bomb in case they had to blow the ship. Somehow he had hidden it where even Wen and his repair drones had not found it.
The bombardier raised the heavy cylinder high and pulled the collar of Yone’s stretch armor and shoved the cylinder down the front. He looked Yone in the eye and yanked out the cotter pin.
Garrett heaved Yone out onto the little platform that led to the catwalk and dangled the bleeding man above a mile and a half of empty air. Yone kicked and screamed.
Boney leaned into the entryway and set a hand on Garrett’s shoulder. “Not yet!” he said.
Garrett looked back in disbelief. Yone twisted in his grip and Garrett shook him like a terrier with a rat.
Boney squinted past the big man at the countryside sliding past below. He seemed to be performing some internal calculation. He closed his eyes and held up three gloved fingers and silently counted off, three, two, one, and then he opened his eyes and pointed. “Now,” he said.
Garrett let go. Yone dropped screaming from the bomb bay and shot back in the slipstream.
Broben cupped his hands to his mouth. “Take that back to Hitler, you Nazi fuck,” he yelled.
Farley plunged toward the climbing pillars of smoke. The engines strained, the airframe shook, the rushing wind sang off the wings. Farley’s senses filled the metal and the bomber spoke to him in a language of rudder and flap and engine.
The smoke column towered before the diving bomber like a warning from a wrathful god. Craters clustered around the damaged factory at its base.
“It’s on us cap it’s right behind us!” Francis yelled in Farley’s ears. “That cannon on its wing is lighting up I think it’s—”
Farley pulled the yoke with all his might. His nose came up. The blood drained from his head. His wings creaked like cracking timbers. Red lace webbed his vision.
Hold on. Hold on.
In the shaking belly turret Martin hung like a bug in amber and watched the munitions factory grow before him with terrifying speed. They were going too fast and getting very low, and Martin couldn’t see how they could pull out of the dive.
The bomb bay doors swung down in front of him. The crew was going to bail! They would leave him bolted in this metal coffin while the captain slammed the ship into the target and pulled the chasing Typhon with it.
Martin was about to yell for them to get him out when someone dropped out of the bomb bay and shot back under the turret. Martin swung around to look for a parachute—and saw the Typhon two hundred yards behind them. Wings swept and planed head straining forward. Beneath one wing the weapon pod sparked deep within the barrel, then blazed.
The falling man was scooped into that white-hot bore.
A jet of flame erupted from the rail-gun core.
The weapon pod exploded in a swell of light.
A giant’s hand pressed Martin down. His vision clouded as the horizontal stabilizers bowed. The turret strained within its socket. The captain was trying to pull the Morgana out of the dive.
Too late, thought Martin as they screamed toward the cratered ground.
He set a gloved hand on the lump of medicine bag beneath his flight suit and watched the thunderbird die.
A chain of explosions erupted across the Typhon’s engulfed body. One delta wing tore off and spun away. The Typhon slanted and began to fall. A stump grew where the wing had broken off. It thickened, extended, and burned. The Typhon plunged blazing like a thing cast out of Heaven, furiously altering its structure to find some ideal form, to claw its way up from the abyss. Crowned by fire now the planed head swept from side to side as if in denial.
The Flying Fortress shot into the pillar of smoke and then shot out again, coiling billows following and treetops whipping past two hundred feet below. In its wake the burning Fury sank into the welling smoke and struck the damaged weapons plant. The building detonated and a ring of shockwave spread across the landscape like a pond ripple. A brilliant hemisphere swelled out from the blast. The smoke column coalesced into a curling boil.