The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time (42 page)

*

Faith Gilcrest circled high overhead while Able strafed an enemy column. The P-47’s had dropped all their bombs and returned to their base to refuel or reload. She hoped they’d come back low enough to miss seeing her. Otherwise, she and Able’s little ambush wouldn’t work. Meantime, at least one of us is having a good time, she thought, as she looked down upon the smoking vehicles, evidence of Able’s handiwork. She knew his sense of loss was still powerful enough for him to enjoy the slaughter. She’d seen the look on his face when he realized he was going to get to strike another blow for his family and wondered how long it would take for him to put the loss behind him.

She saw two dark spots off to the southeast and keyed her mike.

“Better grab some altitude, Able. We’ve got company coming.”

“I copy that,” he radioed back.

She saw him break off his latest attack and start to climb.

“Remember, Able, if it gets too hot, head for the deck. They don’t like it down low.”

“Roger,” he replied dryly, conveying in that one word the impression that it couldn’t get too hot for him.

Typical pilot, she thought and turned all her attention to the approaching planes. Able set off a smoke flare; and from a distance it looked like his ultralight was in trouble.

Soon she could see the enemy planes were taking the bait. Both of them lined up on Able’s tail, losing altitude as they dove on him. She waited until she was between them and the sun, then dropped the Pitts like a stone. For a second, when she saw how fast they were closing on Able, she thought she’d left it for too late. Then she saw she was gaining on them.

That was when she made her first mistake, a mistake common to rookie fighter pilots. She lined up on the plane closest to her, thinking she could get them both with one pass. An experienced wingman shoots first at the plane closest to his partner.

Her finger tightened on the trigger and a stream of bullets smashed into the tail section of her opponent. She lifted the nose of her Pitts and the line of bullets walked up the plane toward the cockpit. He banked hard right and for a second she had to fight the impulse to follow him and complete the kill. Her M60’s were still a bit light for air-to-air combat against a flying tank like the P-47. She’d done some damage but not enough.

She twitched the nose of her Pitts over toward the other Thunderbolt in time to see him spew a line of tracers toward Able’s Hornet. Fortunately, just as the enemy fired, Able slipped his plane sideways and rolled into a tight loop.

The enemy pilot banked off to the left before she could get off a shot. She jerked the Pitts into a harder left, cutting the corner on his turn. She pulled the trigger and he flew through her line of fire. A sequence of holes appeared in his port wing and fuselage as he whipped past, but again no major damage was evident in the way the plane flew.

“Faith! Your tail!” Able screamed through her radio.

She didn’t take time to look. She wasn’t that much of a rookie. The Pitts shuddered. It was hit. She snapped the plane hard right and kicked the rudder, dropping it into a spin. Tracers slashed by in the space she’d just vacated. She applied full throttle, kicked opposite rudder and powered out of the spin into a climb fast enough to get off a crossing shot at the guy who thought he’d killed her. She missed.

Able didn’t. The two enemy pilots had ignored him; rightfully assuming the Pitts posed the greater danger. That didn’t mean Able wasn’t a threat, as the guy who’d shot at Faith found out. Able’s bullets smashed through the P-47’s cowling and ruptured an oil line. Instantly, the engine faltered and streamers of oil covered the Thunderbolt’s cockpit. Dense smoke billowed from the stricken fighter. The pilot tried to climb, but the plane’s engine was sputtering. The Thunderbolt did a slow roll. As it began its final dive to the earth, the pilot slid back the canopy and bailed out.

Faith wanted to applaud but she was too busy. The bullets her Pitts had absorbed had damaged her right aileron. Her rudder was starting to feel mushy. And, as if he could sense she was in trouble, the remaining enemy pilot was boring in at her. His guns twinkled and again she felt the Pitts shudder.

She nosed over into a split “S”, then, spotting the P-47 above her, gave the Pitts full throttle and pulled up into a hammerhead stall. Her guns thundered, stitching the underside of the fuselage with holes. The enemy pilot jinked left and dove past her, pulling back up in a loop.

All right! Faith could still loop tighter than he could. She twisted the crop duster around into a dive and followed the P-47 around. But he hadn’t been trying to get on her tail. Able Emery’s Hornet loomed in front of him and a line of shells leapt from the Thunderbolt to the ultralight.

Able had lined up for a crossing shot when, all of a sudden, the Thunderbolt jerked around and headed straight at him. He’d tried to roll out of the way but the enemy’s bullets had taken off the lower left wing and most of the tail section of the Hornet. The little plane began to spin wildly. Able popped the ballistic chute, but it became entangled in the wreckage and failed to deploy. Struggling against G-forces, Able crawled out of the cockpit and jumped.

He was several thousand feet above the ground, so he decided to free-fall for a while. The closer he was to the ground when he opened his chute, the less time there’d be for enemy troops to shoot at him. At least he was behind Allied lines. He could see Springville off to his right and Provo to his left. He wanted to roll over and watch the air battle above but he was far from being an expert jumper and was afraid the maneuver would start him to tumbling out of control. He could hear guns roaring above him.

The ground was getting closer fast now and he decided to pull the ripcord. He wasn’t experienced enough to know he was still over three thousand feet up. The pull handle for the ripcord came off in his hand. Its lanyard had been severed by one of the P-47’s shells. He didn’t have a reserve chute. For a second, he panicked. Paralyzing fear shot through him. Then adrenaline kicked in and jump-started his heart. His right hand flashed to his survival knife, freeing it from its scabbard. He twisted his arm up behind him and began frantically slashing at the lacings that held his parachute in. He was tumbling now, but he didn’t care. Besides, it was impossible for him to be any more frightened than he already was.

The ground really was close now, less than 600 feet. The lacings parted and his chute popped open. An agonizing jolt of pain lanced through him as his parachute jerked him upright. The knife flew from his hand. His face contorted in a grimace as if he’d been shot, but it was worse than that. In his struggles to free his parachute, his right testicle had become wedged between his body and the crotch strap of the parachute harness. When the chute snapped open. Well... Able hurt so bad he couldn’t even scream, just gasp weakly. Tears blinded him. He felt like his balls were in a vise. He slipped his right thumb down between the harness and his body and eased it down toward his crotch. The pain when the offended part slid free was so intense he passed out. Able hit the ground with a limp thud.

Later, the soldiers who picked him up and gave him a ride back to Provo wondered why he preferred to stand with his legs braced wide apart in the back of the bouncing truck, but his gray-faced countenance convinced them to hold their questions.

Meanwhile, Faith had her hands full just staying airborne. The damage her plane had suffered had tipped the scales in favor of the enemy. She could just barely outmaneuver him. His superior speed, the fact he could out climb and out dive her, was beginning to tell. She knew if she didn’t do something drastic and soon, it would be all over. She was so desperate that on his last pass she’d tried to ram him. The Pitts was missing the outward quarter of its top right wing as a result. But she’d damaged the Thunderbolts right wing also and put a scare into the enemy pilot at the same time. She had seen the naked fear in his eyes as he wrenched his plane out of her path. At least he was firing from farther away now, taking longer, less accurate shots, taking no chances.

Her engine sputtered and died. She glanced at the fuel gauge: empty. He must have hit the tank. She nosed over in a dive to gain airspeed, knowing he could dive faster, knowing it was futile. She unstrapped herself and prepared to bail out. She decided that when he got close enough she would pull up into his path and jump. Hopefully, his momentum would carry him into the Pitts before he could react. She watched him carefully as he got closer and closer.

That was how she happened to have a front row seat when the front half of the Thunderbolt literally disintegrated under a hail of lead. A P-38 with its left prop feathered flashed by behind her. That was one good thing about a P-38. With all its guns jammed together in the nose of the plane, it put forth such a concentrated stream of firepower that it could blow apart practically anything.

“You okay, Faith?” The voice was both concerned and familiar.

“Jase?” She was stunned. Where in the world had he come from? She pulled out of her dive and leveled off as much as she could without stalling.

“You got it, sugar! YEE-HAW! If you don’t mind my saying so, damn it feels good to be back in the air.”

“I’d say its good to see you, but that wouldn’t begin to cover it.”

“Say, you got a problem there, sweetheart?” He’d noticed she was still losing altitude and her prop wasn’t spinning.

“Nothing a little avgas wouldn’t cure.”

“And me without a gas can. Look below you, honey. See that Conoco station? Just set her down right there. You can fill up on my card.”

“That’s mighty big of you, you flying hunk of man.”

“Think nothin’ of it, darlin’. You flew top cover for me not too long ago and did a bang-up job of it. I just like to return such favors.”

Suddenly his voice turned serious.

“Get that flying junk pile on the deck, honey. This Eagle’s got business to attend to.” It was the first time he’d ever called himself an eagle out loud, though he often thought of himself as an eagle among men.

He peeled off and started climbing.

Faith looked around. In the distance, three black dots were approaching.

“Good luck, Jase,” she whispered. “Good luck, my Eagle.”

When was the King going to run out of planes?

*

Jason had the P-38 climbing as fast as one engine would allow. He couldn’t make them out yet, but he was certain he would be able to identify them when they got close enough. Jason would have died before he let anyone think he was an egghead, but the truth was he had been bucking for an assignment as a military history instructor at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, just before The Dying Time. His store of knowledge about past military actions, weapons and even military insignia was vast.

He studied them as they drew nearer. One, obviously some kind of bomber, was much larger than the other two. He finally made it out as a Boeing B-17G heavy bomber. American fighters in WWII referred to it as the Flying Fortress. In addition to the bombs, it carried thirteen .5 inch Browning machine guns in eight positions--two in the chin turret, two on the nose cheeks, two in the upper Sperry turret, two staggered waist guns, two in the ball turret under the belly one positioned to fire upwards from radio area behind the bomb bays and two in the tail. The damn thing bristled like a porcupine. It was also heavily armored, built to withstand a lot of punishment. It would be very tough to knock down. It had to be Jason’s priority target.

The fighters were close enough to ID now and he didn’t like what he saw. One was a Mitsubishi A6, the so-called Zero or Zeke. The other was a Focke-Wulf FW-190, one of the best-designed fighters of World War Two. Where in the hell did the King find all these old fighters? Jason wondered briefly why the King hadn’t restored any jets, but jets were harder to maintain and so fewer survived in a restorable state. He sure wished he was in his F-18 Hornet right now.

Jason quickly reviewed what he knew of the Focke-Wulf. It could out climb his P-38, even when the Lightning had both engines. It was very heavily armed, with four 20 mm cannon and two 13 mm machine guns. He thought he could out dive it. And even though the Lightning only had one 20 mm cannon and four .5 inch machine guns the fact that they were concentrated in the nose made their punch deadly. With only one engine, his plane, which normally was faster and had a higher operational ceiling, was again at a disadvantage.

The Zero was quite a different story. It was a fast, lightweight, agile fighter, armed with two 20 mm cannons and two 7.7 mm machine guns. Its drawback was that it was so lightly armored that, one on one, even a single engine P-38 stood a good chance against it. In the Second World War, Zero pilots had learned to fear the sheer volume of firepower from the Lightning.

Of course, he needed to kill the Fortress. The 6000 pounds of bombs that plane could carry would devastate the Allies forward area defenses. Unfortunately, that meant dealing with the fighters first. Jason had kept his plane between them and the sun, hoping for a sneak attack, but they must have spotted him. Both fighters climbed to intercept him. The B-17 lumbered on toward Springville.

That was a mistake, boys, Jason thought as he dropped the nose of the P-38 and began to dive. One of you should have stayed down to cover the bomber. Since his plane wasn’t much in the agility department right now, he realistically figured he would only get in one or two passes. Make the most of this one, he thought, as he dove straight toward the Zero.