“What do I do?” Sorsa demanded. “That thing can blow us out of the skies. I know. IVe been flying one for two years now.”
At that moment, the roaring filled the night again, and the mail plane shuddered as cannon shell slammed into the fuselage. One came up through the floor of the cockpit, narrowly missing Sorsa, splinters shattering the windscreen. He pushed the column forward, going down in a steep dive into the cloud layer below, and the Junkers 88S roared overhead, passing like a dark shadow.
Martineau fell to one knee, but got the door open and scrambled out. Several gaping holes had been punched into the fuselage of the plane and two windows were shattered. Kelso was on the floor, hanging onto a seat and Sarah was crouched over Braun, who lay on his back, his uniform soaked with blood, eyes rolling. He jerked convulsively and lay still.
Sarah looked up, her face surprisingly calm. “He’s dead, Harry.”
There was nothing to say, couldn’t be, and Martineau turned back to the cockpit, hanging on as the mail plane continued its steep dive down through the clouds. They rocked again in the turbulence as the Junkers 88S passed over them.
“Bastard!” Sorsa said, in a rage now. “Ill show you.”
Baum, crouched on the floor, looked up at Harry with a ghastly smile. “He’s a Finn, remember? They don’t really like us Germans very much.”
The mail plane burst out of the clouds at three thousand feet and kept on going down.
“What are you doing?” Martineau cried.
“Can’t play hide and seek with him in that cloud. He’d get us for sure. Just one trick up my sleeve. He’s very fast and I’m very slow and that makes it difficult for him.” Sorsa glanced over his shoulder again and smiled savagely. “Let’s see if he’s any good.”
He kept on going down, was at seven or eight hundred feet when the Junkers 88S came in again on their tail, far too fast, banking to port to avoid a collision.
Sorsa took the mail plane down to five hundred and leveled off. “Right, you swine, let’s have you,” he said, hands steady as a rock.
In that moment Martineau saw genius at work, understood all those medals the Finn wore, the Knight’s Cross, and a strange feeling of calm enveloped him. It was all so unreal, the lights from the instrument panel, the wind roaring in through the shattered windscreen.
And when it happened, it was over in seconds. The Junkers 88S swooped in on their tail again, and Sorsa hauled back the column and started to climb. The pilot of the Junkers 888 banked steeply to avoid what seemed like an inevitable collision, but at that height and speed had nowhere else to go but straight down into the waves below.
Sorsa’s face was calm again. “You lost, my friend,” he said softly and eased back the column. “All right, let’s get back upstairs.”
Martineau pushed back the door and glanced out. The inside of the plane was a shambles, wind blowing in through innumerable holes, Braun’s blood-soaked body on the floor, Sarah crouched beside Kelso.
“You two all right?” he called.
“Fine. Don’t worry about us. Is it over?” Sarah asked.
“You could say that.”
He turned back to the cockpit as Sorsa leveled out at six thousand feet. “So, the old girl’s leaking like a sieve, but everything appears to be functioning,” the Finn said.
“Let’s try the radio.” Martineau squeezed into the copilot’s seat. He twisted the dial experimentally but everything seemed to be in working order. “I’ll let them know what’s happened,” he said and started to transmit on the SOE emergency frequency.
Heini Baum tried to light a cigarette but his hands shook so much he had to give up. “My God!” he moaned. “What a last act.”
Sorsa said cheerfully, “Tell me, is the food good in British prisoner-of-war camps?”
Martineau smiled. “Oh, I think you’ll find we make very special arrangements for you, my friend.” And then, he made contact with SOE Headquarters.
At the control room at Jersey, Adler stood by the radio, an expression of disbelief on his face. He removed the earphones and turned slowly.