Sentimental Journey (56 page)

She veered southeast and met a cloud or two, then watched the ribbon of English coastline thread along the deep blue water as time and the miles passed by.

She landed the plane at a small field on the south coast. The sky was turning dusky pink and violet-gray when she taxied along the grass toward the ground activity, and someone with a torchlight waved her over toward a group of dark-uniformed soldiers. She parked the plane, and before she could unbuckle, a tall man with black on his face jumped up on the wing.

“We’ve been waiting. Ten more minutes and we’d have had to abort.”

There was a moment’s pause.

“
Charlotte
?”

She didn’t recognize the man’s face through the face-black. She looked closer. “Skip?”

“Say, I’m glad it’s you. Will you help us out and taxi over to those petrol pumps? We’re running late.”

“Sure. No problem.”

He gave her the okay sign.

She moved the plane to the pumps, then got out quickly and tossed her chute and flight bag on the grass. The ground crew had already begun fueling.

Skip was followed by a blond man about their same height. He was smearing on face-black as he ran. He handed his gear to a crew member to stow onboard. He gave Charley a long, assessing look, then climbed on the wing, where Skip handed him a heavy canvas bag and a small black suitcase. The man on the wing tossed the gear in back and turned around. He looked at her, then at Skip.

He rattled off something in German.

Charley stiffened, then looked at him uneasily.

“You’re not amusing, Cassidy. Get your Yank ass inside the damned plane.”

Thank God, a Yank, not a Nazi.

“Yeah. Sure.” Cassidy winked at her. “There’s all kinds of Yank ass around here.” He crawled into the passenger seat.

She burst out laughing.

Skip turned back around. “Sorry. Ignore him.”

“It’s okay. Really. Are you the one who’s flying this plane out?”

“Yes.”

“Will you sign this delivery chit for me?”

He took it and scribbled his name across, then handed it back to her. “I rang you up a couple of times.”

“I know.”

“I can’t call you for a while.”

“I understand. Duty calls.”

He was searching her face for something, but she didn’t know why.

“What’s wrong? A wart on my nose? Lipstick on my teeth?”

“No. I forgot something that night.”

“What?”

He grabbed her by her shoulders and gave her a long, deep kiss that seemed to go on forever.

“Inskip.” Cassidy called down from the plane.

Skip pulled back and looked at her, ignoring Cassidy.

She smiled at him.

“Hey, there, you two. It’s seventeen-hundred.”

They both turned and looked at Cassidy, who was holding up his wrist and tapping his watch.

“I’ve got to go.”

She nodded, and he released her shoulders and jumped onto the wing. She watched him jump up and crawl inside the plane, then buckle in.

He looked at her and gave a quick salute.

“Good-bye, Skip.”

He leaned out of the plane. “No. Not good-bye.” Then he gave it throttle, and a few minutes later he was in the air.

She stood there for a long time after the plane had taken off and banked toward the Channel, stood there watching until it was only a speck in the quickly darkening sky. She touched her mouth and smiled, but when she pulled her fingers away, they were covered in greasy, black face paint. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and laughed as she walked to find a ride to the train station.

Later, she sat in the train unable to see anything outside the painted windows, so she stared at a brightly colored
“Dig For Victory”
poster and wondered where Skip was. If he was safe. He’d only said he couldn’t call her for a while and this wasn’t good-bye. That was all he’d said, and she hadn’t asked more. Loose lips, keeping mum, and all that.

But she thought about him and little else for the long train ride back. She conjured up a hundred clandestine scenarios until they became a little outlandish; only then did she let herself think about the kiss, and she wondered if she would ever see him again.

“THIS IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR”

Saboteurs, like spies, go out when the moon is high. That’s what somebody said once. Somebody was a liar. Since working on covert missions in tandem with British Special Air Service, the SAS, J.R. had yet to go out in a single clear night. He’d been in a cramped sub, only to then silently row a small rubber boat through a cold, solid bank of silent fog where even your breathing could carry enough sound to alert the enemy. There was a seaplane in thick cloud cover. He’d parachuted out of a C-47 transport in a snowstorm—his personal favorite mission—or, there was tonight’s adventure, facing torrential rain as they flew to Alsace, deep in France.

The plane bounced along the unpredictable currents, then dropped like concrete about a hundred feet.

“Jesus! It was clear as vodka when we left.”

“Not here, it isn’t.” Inskip had both hands on the controls.

The plane fell again . . . a few hundred feet; then they hit turbulence that was so strong it almost pulled the yoke out of Inskip’s hands.

“Damn . . . ” He throttled up. “This weather’s soggy as hell. Can’t see a thing.”

J.R. sat forward and looked over Inskip’s shoulder to his white knuckles on the yoke and his intense gaze that was locked on the instruments. J.R. glanced at the gauges.

They were flying low. Real low. He turned and looked outside.

Rain poured in thick sheets down the windshield, blurring everything from view with a film of drenching water. He thought of Kitty.

Now that he was married to her, he found there were plenty of moments like this, when he would catch a glimpse of her world. It always humbled him a little, knowing he was outclassed by her ability to be the person she was: stronger, smarter, and more of an enigma to him than most women he’d known, women who had perfect sight. He was damned proud of her.

Pigheaded, obstinate, smart-mouthed, that was Kincaid. What she did to him with that mouth . . . well, that was something else. God, he missed her. Leave time, whether forty-eight hours or seventy-two, was nothing special for him here. When he got away from the war, what he wanted to do was lose himself inside of her, not inside a local pub, drinking and throwing darts at a board or sitting in a movie house alone or with men he saw day in and day out.

Funny thing, J.R. had never needed anyone before. He’d relied solely on himself. But now there were some nights when he needed her so much he ached for any small reminder of her, something tangible. They’d all talked about it. During war you needed something personal to remind you that all the destruction and killing, the blood and death, was for something invaluable and not just mankind run amok.

Sure, he’d have liked to believe that he was a patriot as he was bouncing around over enemy territory in this goddamn plane, and that merely a salute to the flag would keep him focused on his duty. But it would have been a lie. A salute, the flag and what it symbolized, well, it wasn’t enough. Not now. Instead, at night, he would hold her letters to his nose and breathe them in, because she was home, she was that something that was worth fighting for.

“Look to the west, Cassidy. Can you see anything?”

J.R. looked down. The rain had let up, just scattered drops on the window. “Looks like trees.” He snapped open his lighter and scanned the maps. “The grass field is only a few miles from the train station. Just beyond the hills.”

“We had to come in low and from the south to stay undetected. Wait. There. I see something at ten o’clock.”

“That’s it.”

“Yeah. I see the torches at the ends of the field.” He pulled out his binoculars. “Circle once.”

Skip flew the plane low and around.

“It looks good. I see the
maquis.
Jean-Luc and the others.”

“Okay. We’re going in.” Skip took the plane down.

J.R. checked the gear and pulled his knit cap down over his head.

Half an hour later he was following a couple of members of the French Resistance slogging through the mud to a train depot, teeming with both Wehrmacht troops and a few
SS.

They had to wait three hours. The train was delayed by the weather and flooding on the tracks.

Jean-Luc elbowed J.R. in the side. “Here comes the train.” He used his stolen Mauser rifle to point at a curl of pale smoke slipping over a rise toward the west.

A few minutes later you could hear the chugging of engine as the troop and supply train rounded the bend and pulled to a stop at the station. The steam had barely settled before the soldiers began to load equipment and men into the cars.

By the time the engine pulled out, heading toward
Frankfurt
and then on to
Prague
, J.R., Skip, and
maquis
officer Jean-Luc were lying on top of the second-to-the-last railroad car. The train wound its way out of eastern
France
and into
Germany
over a broad bridge that spanned the
Rhine
and past their objective, an
SS
operation headquarters tucked away in a well-fortified castle. Blowing up the bridge? Well, that bit of fireworks would come afterward.

“I’M SHOOTING HIGH”

LUTON
AIR
BASE

Red was in the briefing room with the other crews of the 17
th
Bombardment Group. The men sat in their small, hard chairs; some slouched down and others tapped out the notes to songs on their knees or chewed gum nervously, waiting—wordless—a sense of tension and anticipation keeping them from talking to one another. Scuttlebutt had been circling around the aerodrome for days that this was the big one—HQ’s most important and largest air operation to date.

The door opened. Everyone turned as the intelligence officer walked down the aisle toward the front of the room, where he paused, then pulled away a dark cloth covering the wall map. The man next to Red let out a low, long whistle. A bright string pinned on the map marked their route, a line from their B-17 base in
England
to somewhere in southern
Germany
.

“Your primary target is here.” The IO tapped a pointer against the map. “This, gentlemen, is the largest center for the manufacture and assembly of the ME 109. You destroy it and you destroy thirty percent of Goering’s fighter production.” He faced them. “I expect you know exactly what that means to all of you on a personal level.”

There were a few laughs. What it meant was lives to the Allies, lives to men sitting inside that room.