A Thousand Suns

Chapter 43 Mission Time: 6 Hours, 1 Minute elapsed

Max cast a quick, anxious glance at his wristwatch; fifteen minutes had passed since they had landed. He checked the pump gauge on the side of the fuel truck; it showed a reading of just under 3000 gallons. They needed to fill the main tanks at least — they took about 3600 gallons. The extra tanks inside the fuselage towards the rear of the plane were useless. Several gashes, caused undoubtedly during the skirmish with the Mustangs, had resulted in their losing the entire load. The gashes were so bad they couldn’t even consider patching them. Hans had reported that the back of the plane near the tail-gun reeked of aviation fuel.

Pieter was leaning out of the pilot’s window and periodically calling out the fill readings for their tanks, but his attention was caught by movement near the entrance to the airstrip.

‘Max!’ he shouted down. ‘It looks like something—’

The pizzicato rattle of gunfire from the barricaded entrance to the airstrip made both of them jump. It was a quick exchange, no more than a couple of bursts from two different guns. A moment later Koch jogged across the grass field towards them from the direction of the guard hut.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Max.

‘It was a jeep-load of American soldiers. They drove up to the barricade and my men opened fire on them.’

‘Did they get away?’

‘Yes. So, I expect we’ll have some more company very soon.’ Koch studied the fuel gauge and turned to Max. ‘How much longer do you need?’

‘Another five, ten minutes.’

The young captain gestured at the Me-109s parked in a cluster nearby, each pilot awkwardly attempting to fill their wing tanks from five-gallon fuel drums. ‘And them?’ he said, pointing towards the fighter planes.

‘They’ll leave as soon as we’re off the ground.’

Koch nodded. ‘If that jeep was on its own, we’ll have a while before word spreads, but I’ve got a feeling that we’ll be due some company very soon.’

‘Can you hold them away for ten more minutes, though?’ Max asked.

Koch turned towards the guard hut and barricade and the small crescent wall of sandbags. It was hardly a great defensive position, and in any case, the airfield wasn’t contained. The Americans could easily by-pass the official entrance and enter the strip from any direction via the woods that surrounded it.

‘All we can do is fire enough shots to make them keep their heads low, slow them down a little, that’s all. I don’t suppose any of them want to be heroes today.’

Koch looked around at the collection of planes. The B-17 was parked up beside the grass strip; beside it was the fuel truck, a large container vehicle full of aviation fuel. Nearby, parked in an irregular cluster around a hastily assembled collection of fifty-gallon drums, were the Me-109s. The fighter pilots were sloshing a lot of the fuel onto the grass in their haste to transfer it to their planes.

‘It’ll take one well-placed shot to take the lot of you out if you’re not careful,’ Koch said.

Max looked around. The young man wasn’t wrong. But there was little they could do about that apart from fill up as quickly as possible and get away. ‘Well, if you can keep them off our backs for a few more minutes, I’d be very grateful.’

Koch grinned and nodded. ‘We’ll do that.’ He turned on his heels and jogged across the short grass in the direction of the hangar.

Max looked at Schröder and his men refilling their planes. He’d sent both Stef and Hans across to help them out. Both of them were working hard holding a fifty-gallon drum at an angle to pour the fuel out into the more portable five-gallon drums. The pilots were struggling backwards and forwards between their planes, emptying the fuel into the wing tanks and returning to Stef and Hans to collect another load. They were all soaked in fuel and the air above the central stash of fuel drums danced with gasoline vapours.

It might not even need a bullet, one spark is all it would take… and they’re all history.

Koch’s men or even Schröder’s should have been supplied with funnels and pumps; it would have made the task a lot quicker and a lot safer. The sooner they were up and away, the better. Max checked the gauge. It showed just 3050 gallons… 550 to go.

Koch entered the hangar and looked around for Schöln. He saw the stocky man on the far side of the hangar overseeing the prisoners now all gathered in there and lying face down on the ground. If it weren’t for the movements amongst them one could be forgiven for thinking that these poor men had all been mercilessly gunned down.

‘Schöln… over here!’

He jogged over towards Koch. ‘Yes, sir?’

Koch looked around the hangar; there were six of his men watching over approximately sixty prisoners. Some of these guards could be freed up to help the Luftwaffe pilots with their fuel.

‘Is the door to this hangar the only way in or out?’

Schöln looked around. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right, well, pick one of your men to remain with the prisoners and send the others over to help those pilots. The quicker they get under way, the better for everyone.’

Schöln looked back at the prisoners lying face down on the ground, hands behind their heads. One man to guard all of them? Under other circumstances he would have considered that as taking a bit of a chance, but looking at them now, none of them were combat soldiers. He couldn’t foresee any of them attempting an escape. He nodded and turned to carry out Koch’s orders as the first of a series of bursts of small-arms fire could be heard coming from the direction of the guard hut.

Here they come.

Koch headed at the double out of the hangar towards the front entrance. Büller and a dozen of his men were dug in there, the sandbag bunker proving the only sensible place to set up a defensive enclave.

Seconds later he slid to the ground behind the sandbags, and worked his way over to Büller.

‘All right?’

‘Hello, sir. Looks like the jeep had some friends with it,’ he replied, squinting through a gap between the bags. He made way for Koch to peer through.

Fifty yards beyond the flimsy barricade on a dirt track that led from Nantes to this airfield were four trucks and several more jeeps. As he watched, US soldiers spilled out of the backs of the trucks and spread out to use the cover of poplars that lined both sides of the dirt track.

‘I’d say that’s a full company they’ve sent to deal with us,’ said Koch to Büller.

‘There must be a base nearby… it’s only been half an hour since we took this strip.’

‘Well, I guess we’ve been a little unlucky. Listen, we’ve only got to hold ’em here for a few minutes, okay? Nobody needs to do anything stupid. Just keep them busy for a while with some covering fire. It’ll probably take them a while to organise something anyway.’

Büller nodded and spread the word amongst the men sheltering behind the sandbags and inside the hut to lay down some suppressing volley fire on the dirt track. The rattle of gunfire increased as the sporadic bursts intensified. Koch watched with satisfaction as the American soldiers, still piling out of the trucks, went to ground. He was right; it was going to be a while before they were fully deployed and ready to retake the airfield.

They won’t realise how time-critical this little skirmish was.

We’ll do this yet.

The soldiers who had taken cover behind the poplars began moving. Koch watched them as they ducked under some hedges that lined the track and jogged across into an open field beyond. They stopped and dropped several times as Büller’s men sprayed a little fire in their direction.

‘They’re trying to flank us,’ he shouted above the clatter of their gunfire. ‘Those Yanks are pretty good, not your average bunch of GIs,’ he said to Büller. Büller nodded; these men were almost as good as the Russian convict brigade they’d faced outside of Murmansk. He’d wager a packet of cigarettes that these soldiers had already seen some action.

We spoke too soon.

‘They’re working their way around to the sides. They’ll get to the planes unchallenged unless we pull back. I want you to direct most of your fire on those men moving across the fields to the left there, and those men moving off the track to the right.’ Koch pointed towards a copse of trees to the right of the track. The copse extended around to the top end of the airstrip, where it grew a little thicker and became a narrow stretch of wood. The planes and the fuel truck parked there at the bottom of the landing strip were only fifty, perhaps sixty, yards away from this treeline.

That wasn’t so good.

‘Slow down those ones heading for the trees on the right. If they get to the trees, then keep them ducking with a few shots into the woods. You’ve got to slow them down.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’m going to take some of your men and establish a tighter defensive ring nearer the planes.’ Büller nodded and Koch clapped him on the back. ‘Hold your position as long as possible and then fall back towards me.’

A few dozen yards away from the gathered planes was a stack of supply crates; tinned food, probably destined to be relief for the recently liberated citizens of northern Germany. A typically American gesture, he thought. They bomb the fuck out of us, then shower the poor bastards left alive with food parcels.

The crates were small enough to be manhandled. It would take only a few moments to pull them out across the ground around the planes to create some reasonable defensive positions.

Koch pointed towards the cluster of planes and the fuel truck to one side of the strip.

‘That’s where we’ll hold them back.’

Büller turned to look. ‘That’s open ground—’

‘Don’t worry… it won’t be.’

Koch was up and quickly tapped five of Büller’s squad on the shoulder. They followed him as he ran towards the planes, ducking low as they went.

Max checked the gauge again, it showed only 3270 gallons had been pumped so far. The speed at which it was pumping the fuel was slowing down. The pressure had dropped; the fuel truck must be approaching empty.

Shit.

The sound of gunfire had returned a couple of minutes ago, and now seemed to have intensified. ‘What’s going on? Can you see anything?’ he shouted up to Pieter.

Pieter looked towards the entrance, where a thin haze of blue smoke above the sandbags was developing. He spotted half a dozen of their men running towards them. ‘Ah, fuck it, they’re running away already!’

Max stood up straight. Running away? So much for ‘as good as the Fallschirmjäger’.

He walked around the end of the fuel truck to see Koch and some of his men approaching them. They veered to the right and headed towards a tarpaulin-covered stack of crates. As soon as they were there they pulled savagely at the boxes and began dragging them across the grass.

‘Okay,’ said Pieter. ‘Maybe they’re not running away.’

Max watched as Koch slung his MP-40 over one shoulder and struggled with two of the crates, one under each arm, across the ground to a position thirty feet in front of the fuel truck. He threw them unceremoniously to the ground and raced back for some more.

‘They’re setting up some cover, I think,’ he shouted up at Pieter.

He heard the sound of liquid bubbling in the fuel pipe, and then he noticed from the gauge that the pressure from the fuel pump had plummeted. Either the pump was damaged or the fuel pipe had sprung a leak. He worked his way back to the rear of the truck and found a geyser of fuel spraying from a gash in the pipe. Most of the fuel was spurting out of the hole; only a fraction of it was getting to the B-17. Already a large pool of gasoline was spreading across the rain-moistened turf; the thick fumes floating above it dangerously concentrated.

Dammit.

Max shut off the pump and closed the valve. One spark and the fuel truck, still half full, and their plane would be a smouldering tangle of metal. They needed another 250 gallons to fill the wing tanks. He looked towards the large fifty-gallon drums, there were only four, and they’d need five. Even if there were that many, it was too much fuel to pour manually five gallons at a time.

He called up to Pieter. ‘The fuel pipe’s severed.’

Pieter ducked inside the cockpit for a moment and then returned. ‘Our tank is nearly full, more than three-quarters… won’t that be enough?’

It could be.

It was a virtually impossible calculation to make. On a full supply of 3900 gallons, they knew the B-17 could achieve a one-way range of about 4500 miles. New York was 4666 miles away. If they flew low, less than say 5000 feet, and at a low cruising speed, maybe 200 miles per hour, they could perhaps squeeze an extra couple of hundred miles out. But if they could just lose some weight…

‘Pieter! Go and remove anything you can, we need to lighten the plane,’ Max shouted.

‘Like what?’

‘Throw out one of the waist-guns, the oxygen cylinders, anything we can afford to lose.’

‘We can’t throw out the oxygen.’

‘We’ll do the rest of this journey under 5000 feet. Now do it! Hurry!’

Pieter’s head ducked back inside.