“Skipper,” a voice came over the earphones, startling him.
“That’s Horham.
If you think you can make it, Fersfield is about twenty miles.
Steer 270.” Bitter decided that trying to make another twenty miles was less risk than breaking into the traffic here, and turned so the vertical marker on the compass covered the 7 in 270.
There were no airplanes in the air over Fersfield, which was a relief.
Which was immediately replaced by terror when there was a sharp blast right beside him in the cabin. He looked and saw that the flight engineer had fired a flare out the copilot’s side window.
“What was that for?” The flight engineer gave him a strange look.
“Wounded aboard,” he said. “We fire a flare when we have wounded aboard.” Ignoring the pain that shot through his knee and leg when he worked he rudder pedals, Bitter turned the B-17 onto its final approach path, retarded the throules, and had several hasty, terrifying thoughts, Flaps! What the hell kind offlaps do I use? Are they working?
The gear! How is this big sonofabitch going to handle when I put the gear into the slipstream?
The flaps and the gear.
Am I now going to dump it, after having brought it this far?
How am I going to steer this sonofabitch on the ground if my knee goes out?
Or If aint?
Should I go around and pick up altitude and let the others bail out?
One of the questions was immediately answered, “Gear going down,” the flight engineer’s voice said, then, “Gear down and locked.”
“Twenty degrees flaps,” Bitter ordered.
The airspeed immediately began to drop, and control went mushy.
He pushed the throttles forward.
“Twenty degrees flaps,” the flight engineer reported.
He was now lined up with the runway, approaching the threshold.
He was afraid to cut power. He suspected the seventeen might sink like a stone without it. He would fly it onto the ground, as a fighter is landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier, and pray that he would be able to stop it once he was there.
But almost instantly he recognized that had been the wrong decision.
The B-17 was high above the runway. He reached out for the throttle quadrant and puxed the levers toward him. And still it wanted to fly.
He pushed the wheel forward and the wheels touched and chirped, and then it bounced into the air again. His hands on the wheel were shaking.
He touched down again and raised the nose, and it bounced again into the air, then touched down a third time and stayed down. He tapped the brakes, tapped them again, and again, and was aware that every time he pushed hard he was making an animal-like noise–a cross between a moan and a shriek–when the knee flamed with pain.
But finally, with five hundred yards of runway left, the B-17 shuddered to a stop.
He gunned the port inboard engine enough to get him off the runway, then he chopped the throule again and flipped the MASTER switch to off.
He exhaled. When he inhaled, he smelled the vomitus in his lap, and something else foul. And there was a stabbing pain in his knee and leg. And he felt a clammy sweat soak his face and back and was sure he was going to pass out.
But instead, without warning he threw up again. He was dimly aware that crash trucks, and ambulances, and a parade of other vehicles were heading toward the airplane. He looked at his wristwatch. His whole arm was trembling so severely that he could not see where the hands were on the face of his watch.
FOUR] When It. Commander Edwin H. Biter, USN, exited the aircraft, It. Commander John B. Dolan, USNR, was there to greet him. But his welcome was not exactly what Bitter expected.
When Bitter put his arm around Dolan’s shoulders to take the weight off his knee, Dolan’s strong arm went around Bitter, and he looked at him with concern and compassion. But what he said was, “Goddamn you! I told you, you should have told that little shit to fuck himself!”
“The liale shit’s dead, Dolan,” Biter said, and made a vague gesture toward the airplane.