Safely outside the wall, the Allied forces were able to take a moment to breathe and collect themselves. A brief firefight with the Germans had allowed them the time to pull back and melt into the woodland behind the Chateau. True to their word, the French had led them to an old gate leading out into the farmland beyond. It was there that the other resistance fighters that had not accompanied them in disguise had rallied once they had broken contact.

“They see through our subterfuge faster than I expected,” Laurent conceded once he made it back to them.

“Little hairy alright, but we got your chaps out. What now?” Matheson asked, inserting a fresh magazine into his weapon.

“Our original plan, it will not work anymore,” Garnier admitted, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but the boat is entirely out of the question now.”

“So you’re gonna fuck us over?” Down snapped, “We risk our necks for you and it’s ‘oh sorry, no can do.’?”

“That is not what I say,” Yvette snapped. “I said the boat is out of the question, not that we cannot aid your escape. Listen for once, oui?”

“Everyone calm down,” Matheson barked before turning to address the French. “What’s your new plan?”

Yvette glanced at André who shrugged and nodded.

“The boat would have been the most quiet method to get you out but that is no longer suitable given the elevated German response. As it stands we will have to go to ground to avoid reprisals from these pigs after what just happened,” she sighed. “What we can do, is get you to Roclincourt, it is a village north of Arras that 'as an aerodrome. Before the Germans took over, it was home to a bomber squadron of the Armée de l'Air.” she let the idea sink in for a moment before continuing.

“The Germans, they have used it and other aerodromes to store our equipment before they scrap it for war material. Right now there are perhaps, thirty to forty aircraft parked awaiting the saw, we can get you there and to a plane, the Germans, they have only token guards at the gate.”

“Bloody risky caper that,” Maddox opined as he glanced at Matheson. “I’m worried about us being able to pilot your French kites, what do they have there?” he asked turning to Yvette.

She smiled. “You may be familiar; your Government, they give us fifty of your Bristol Blenheim light bombers before the invasion.”

With a plan in place, André Laurent bid them farewell and departed with his men to the south and back in the direction of the farm. For the brief time they had worked with him, they had been impressed with his dedication and his drive. Maria sorely hoped that he would survive the war.

The pilots were left in the hands of Yvette Garnier and two of her men. Loading them into a Citroen van, they sped away to the east before turning north to put distance between themselves and the village of Saint Léger. The van was a civilian vehicle belonging to a nearby bakery and one that allowed them to blend into the traffic on the roads with little difficulty. According to Mademoiselle Garnier, the airfield was scant ten miles to their north.

“Are you going to tell me about the blood then?” Matheson asked Maria as they sped along narrow lanes in the cramped rear of the van. It was difficult to see where they were going exactly, but the windows in the rear doors showed flashes of green as they passed.

Maria set her jaw and swallowed. “The Sergeant that they had torturing those poor men in the basement, he got free. He jumped me when I went back and… I took care of it.”

Andrew squeezed her hand. “Why the hell did you go back down there?”

Maria smiled thinly and pulled the folder out of her jacket and handed it to him. “I saw you collecting files upstairs and I assumed someone at home might fancy a shufti at this.”

The German text on the front of the file said everything it needed to; ‘Reich Security Central Office - Sicherheitspolizei - Infrastructure & Organization Directory - Occupied Territory of France - 1941.’

“Jesus,” Andrew muttered, folding the document and handing it back to Maria.

“I remembered seeing it when we went down there the first time. He was referencing it while he was writing some report, I figured it might be useful to the chaps back home.”

“Not half! Bloody nice find, but a silly risk to take, Maria.”

“We’re going home aren’t we?” Maria asked uncertainly, not letting go of Andrew’s hand as they bumped along the French lanes.

“We’re going home,” he agreed. “Tonight, you’ll sleep in your own bed, or at least, one back in England.”

“If we make it,” she muttered dryly. “We still need to get there first.”

Twenty minutes later, the van slowed as they approached the aerodrome on the southern edge of the village of Roclincourt. They rolled along a gravel track from the main road until they came to a stop by what appeared to be a checkpoint. The French had been correct; the only two German guards on the entire site were not prepared for intruders and it took them barely a minute to silence the men.

Driving out onto the airfield, Maria was dismayed to see so many aircraft in various states of disassembly. French fighters and bombers lay, their wings and other components removed, in heaps along one row of buildings while mounds of scrap metal were piled to the far side.

Civilian workers paid them little attention as they drove the van slowly across the packed yard and out onto the grass of the aerodrome.

“The newest arrivals are on the far end here,” Yvette indicated ahead of them along the line of parked aircraft. “Most of them come in as they were found, so they likely still have fuel and ammunition onboard. The workers, they unload it ‘ere.” she explained.

“Awful trusting of Jerry,” Hamley muttered, watching over Yvette’s shoulder in the cab.

“What is one plane going to do against the entire Luftwaffe?” she shrugged. “They’re not afraid of them.”

The van parked at the far end of the row and the crew disembarked. Before them, a line of twin-engined Bristol Blenheim light bombers stretched wearing the red, white, and blue roundels of the Armée de l'Air.

The bombers were antiquated before the war even broke out Maria recalled. Originally designed as high-speed airliners, they had been redesigned to RAF specifications as a light bomber. They were fast and capable little aircraft, but an insignificant payload and a weakness to the more advanced German fighters in daylight left them woefully unsuited for their job.

“Ok, find us one with fuel,” Matheson ordered. “We don’t want to stick around here long, and I don’t want a repeat of the Junkers.”

Maria grinned sheepishly and held up her hands in mock surrender. “In my defense, I didn’t get a lot of options to pick from.”

“Not blaming you, but I don’t fancy swimming halfway to Dover,” Matheson smirked.

“I’ll go get some fuel cans,” Down offered, jogging off with one of the Frenchmen.

Maria rolled her eyes and started her walk around of the nearest bomber. It wasn’t a type she had flown, but it wasn’t much bigger than the Ansons she had piloted in her initial training. The irony was that she might have flown one of these very aircraft had her life taken a slightly different pathway. Where might her life have gone if she had not been placed in the circumstances that led to internment at the Regensburg camp? Squashing the thought, she got back to the task at hand.

Once satisfied, she clambered aboard the aircraft, cursing the German uniform skirt as she clambered first onto the wing before lowered herself into the cockpit through the roof hatch. Taking a moment to absorb the familiar surroundings, she began checking over the instruments. Unlike the German transport, everything here was written in English within the bomber’s cockpit, its new French owners hadn’t bothered to change the placards. The uniquely British quirks of the instrument panel were comfortingly familiar after so long away from home.

While bloody useless as a bomber, the aircraft was more than suitable for their specific purposes. Fitted with a single .303 machine gun in the port wing, one in the nose, and a pair in a dorsal turret on her back, she was armed enough to make a run for the cost. With her Bristol Mercury engines, she could manage two hundred and sixty miles per hour; It was no Hurricane, but it was good enough. Pulling a chart out of the side pocket, she began to study the route they would need to take to the Channel coast.

A few minutes later, Matheson clambered aboard and dropped himself into the copilot’s seat beside her. “What do you reckon? Are we good to go?”

“Probably,” she opined. “Seventy or eighty miles to Folkestone as the crow flies, course three zero five. Will take us twenty-five minutes or so once we’re up.”

“Avoiding Calais and Dunkirk I assume?”

Maria nodded. “Will be where they have most of their triple-A I suspect. I don’t want to encourage Jerry to have a pop.”

“Down and the French have managed to tea leaf some petrol from the other birds and Hamley has a few cans of .303 for the guns. Let's hope we don’t need it eh?”

Maria pushed her hair back and let out a sigh. “Good, I can’t wait to get this kite up in the air.”

“Feel like a pilot again?” Matheson grinned.

Maria wrinkled her nose and gazed around the cockpit. “Feels like a lifetime ago, a different lifetime. She’s no Hurricane, but she’s British; it feels good.”

“That it will,” he agreed. “Let's get ourselves home, eh?”

Once fueling was completed and the crew was aboard, Yvette Garnier clambered aboard the wing and leaned down into the cockpit. “You are all ready to get out of here, yes?”

“I think so,” Maria nodded. “As we’ll ever be I suppose. Look,” she hesitated. “Best of luck and all that. If we don’t… keep yourself out of trouble, Yvette, okay?”

The Frenchwoman grinned. “I aim to be in as much trouble as possible ma chérie, but I understand what you say, yes?”

Unable to fight the urge, Maria dragged herself up until she stood on the pilot’s seat, her upper body out of the cockpit hatch. She hugged the Frenchwoman fiercely and gave her a brief wan smile. “Stay safe, and thank you.”

“Thank you all,” Yvette replied softly, “You helped return our people to us, and you didn’t ‘ave to. Keep up the fight eh? And get these boys home safely.”

“I will,” Maria nodded. “Best of luck.”

The woman smiled and hopped down from the wing before retreating to a safe distance.

Dropping back into her seat, Maria flipped the starters and cranked over the big Mercury engines. With a high-pitched whine, the starters engaged and the bomber’s engines roared to life, in a cloud of smoke and noise.

After a moment of staring at the shuddering instruments, she pulled the roof hatch shut and slid her side window closed. Checking over the instruments one last time, she keyed the intercom. “As much as I’ve enjoyed this little adventure, it’s time to go home.”

“Home for tea and medals,” Hamley chuckled from the nose.

“You Brits and your damn tea,” Down complained from somewhere in the tail. “Can’t fuckin stand the stuff.”

Maria rolled her eyes at Matheson and shot him a slight smile, “Hold on boys, next stop, old blighty.”

Gunning the engines, she coaxed the bomber out onto the grass of the aerodrome and lined up with the grass runway. One last look over the instruments confirmed they were ready to go, and with a last glance at Yvette and her men, she threw them a sharp salute before advancing the throttles to their stops.

The bomber began to roll, its engines roaring as it accelerated across the grass of the airfield. French workers stopped and stared in awe, unfamiliar with the sight of an aircraft actually leaving their graveyard the way it had arrived. Some even cheered, watching the French colors take to the air once more.

The Blenheim thundered across the field, its tail rising as it picked up speed. The aircraft became light on its wheels before slowly lifting away from the ground, its twin propellers clawing at the air to drag it back into its natural environment.

Once airborne, Maria turned them around and thundered back across the airfield at a low level, wagging her wings in the victory salute to the French resistance members down below. She knew there was a very real chance that she would never see Yvette Garnier or André Laurent ever again. No matter what, she was most certainly grateful to them. With a last look down, Maria banked away and set course fo the French Coast.

“How does it feel to be back in the front seat of a Bomber?” She called down to Hamley in the cramped nose compartment of the aircraft.

“You know lass, I think I’ve missed it.” he chuckled, his voice sounding more tinny over the intercom connection. “But I’m sure as hell glad I flew in Wellingtons; they’ve got a lot more room than this wee tin can.”

“Just keep your eyes peeled,” she laughed, “and the same with you in the rear turret Mike; the last thing we need is to get jumped by some Jerry out for a constitutional.”

“Someone has the feeling back,” Andrew smiled, switching the intercom back to local. “Feels right, doesn’t it?”

Maria glanced over at him and smiled happily. “Yes, it rather does. Glad to put Germany, that bastard Bergmann, and the camp far behind us.”

“Rather a bad lot, him showing up when he did.”

“Like a proverbial bad penny.” she agreed.

Maria paused for a moment, staring out as the French countryside retreated below them. “When I first met him in France, he almost seemed like an okay sort of chap. He was a nice, kind, and friendly man. At the time I saw a lot of common ground. I don’t suppose I saw his dark side until much later.”

“People do that,” Matheson agreed. “They show you what they want you to see, what we need to see until it no longer benefits them.”

Maria watched the town of Béthune pass by their starboard wing as they flew northwest towards the coast. “Has it only been a week Andrew?” She asked glancing over at the man beside her. “One week and the world has changed so much.”

“Sometimes that’s all the time you need.”

“I’m afraid of what it’s going to be like when we get home,” she admitted quietly.

Matheson reached over and placed a hand on her arm, a comforting and intimate gesture. “Don’t; what’s done is done, and what will be, is tomorrow’s concern. Focus your energy on what you can effect now.”

“Deeply philosophical of you,” she observed dryly.

“I had a long time to read in that bloody camp,” Matheson admitted.

“Fighters, four O’clock high!” Maddox called from the rear of the fuselage. “Down, get the guns around.”

“Shit,” Matheson muttered. “Philosophy later, this bloody mess first.”

“I count six, single-seaters; coming up on us fast,” Maddox called from the rear.

Maria pushed the controls forwards in a futile effort to coax a little more speed out of the bomber. She was no slouch for her type but when compared to a fighter she might as well have been standing still. Diving the Blenheim down low would make their detection a little more difficult too.

Adjusting the mirror on the cockpit roof, she managed to focus on the specs in the blue sky above them. “Looks like 109s” she declared, eyeballing the boxy nose profiles. “Damn it to hell, this isn't what we need.”

“How are they on us so quickly?” Matheson muttered, “We’ve only been up ten minutes.”

“Guesswork or someone saw us take off,” Maria offered without looking. “It doesn’t really matter, we’ve got at least ten more minutes to the coast. Keep those things off me and I’ll do my best to be hard to hit.”

Increasing the angle of their descent, Maria pushed them down towards the countryside below. Their only hope was to be difficult to see and to hit. By flying low across the terrain she made that possible. It had the coincidental benefit of also defending the Blenheim’s atrocious weak underside from attack. Dodging a few steeples and trees was a small price to pay for the added protection.

Once they reached the channel, however, that defense would be all but gone. Without anywhere to hide, the Germans could come at them from any angle they pleased. The .303 guns of the Blenheim would be of little use against the twenty-millimetre cannons of the Messerschmitt fighters.

The first attacker descended on them and a burst of fire shot past their nose. Maria threw the Blenheim sideways to evade the gunfire and make them more difficult to sight. Behind her, Down was going for it in the rear turret, his guns chattering away loudly in the enclosed space of the cabin despite the roar of their engines.

“Let me know where he is.” Maria barked, yanking the controls over to the right with all her strength.

The bomber was smaller and more nimble than most, but it was still a twin-engined bomber; it responded sluggishly to her commands like a pit pony on a cart. The Blenheim was nothing like the thoroughbred racehorse that was her Hurricane, much to her chagrin.

The second attack came from their nine o'clock, a German fighter diving out of their port side. Maria chopped the power, slowing the aircraft enough to cause the German to miscalculate his aim. Tracer streaked across the windscreen mere feet ahead of them.

The first attacker swooped by them, chased by the tracer from the dorsal turret. “Come on Yank, I thought you cowboys were crack shots,” She screamed over the intercom. “Bloody hit something already!”

“I’m trying, the damn Jerries won't stay still.” The American cursed, the strain evident in his voice.

“Three are going past us high, they’re going to get ahead of us,” Hamley called from the nose. “They would do that to us in the heavies; get ahead and dive on the nose where we were weakest.”

“Copy,” Maria replied tersely, trying to evade one of the fighters chasing them from behind.

She’d never been the crew of a bomber evading a fighter attack, but she’d most certainly been the one doing the attacking. There were many ways to take down a target, but when you outnumbered an enemy, you could afford to distract them while you set up your main thrust. Hamley’s suggestion of the head-on attack seemed logical, British Bombers were weakest to the front.

Reaching up, she flipped down the gunsight for the wing-mounted machinegun and flipped off the safety catch. Behind, another of the Messerschmitt’s was doing a run, its tracer jabbing holes in their left wing.

The German fighter swooped past them on the starboard side before bursting into flames and rolling away towards the countryside below.

“Wooo Yeah Baby!” Down screamed over the intercom. “Got ‘em!”

“It took you this long to hit one? I’ll be impressed when you do it again,” Matheson called back to the American, “Seriously though, nice shooting Doc Holiday.”

“Wait, after all this time I finally get a nickname? When we’re about to die? That’s not fair!”

“Don’t be a silly bugger, shoot better and we won’t die,” Maddox chimed in.

Maria barely heard the banter exchanged between the crew. Voices had become muted and the world closed into the bubble of her cockpit; it was her, the aircraft, and the enemy. She grimaced as she hauled the controls around, banking them away from one of the other attackers. Her muscles were burning from the effort it took to throw the ungainly aircraft around the sky. It was futile, they were playing a losing game. They might have hit one of their attackers but in a six-way fight, they stood little realistic chance and she knew it.

The Germans had been playing with their food. They had a massive advantage and it had shown with the one-on-one attacks sent against them. With the loss of their comrade, however, they switched strategy and began a more concerted effort to down the fleeing bomber. Several strafing runs managed to score hits, peppering their airframe with holes.

While they were occupied by their pursuers, one of the group that had flown past dove down to begin his attack run. It was meant to be a surgical strike on the occupied bomber, its guns aimed in other directions but it didn’t work quite as planned.
Watching the fighter swing around and dive head-on towards her, Maria was ready. As the German angled his aircraft and waited for the perfect shot, Maria hauled back on the controls and aimed the lumbering bomber up at the oncoming fighter. Before he could react, she thumbed the trigger and sent a stream of tracer and armor-piercing ammunition into his engine.

The Messerschmitt belched black smoke and rolled away to port, the pilot bailing out of his stricken ship quickly before it became engulfed in flames.

“Bloody good shooting!” Matheson cheered, clapping Maria on the shoulder. “That will show ‘em!”

Maria shook her head and pushed the nose back down, trying to keep the aircraft as close to the ground as possible. “That trick will only work once,” she sighed.

“Four left,” Hamley called from the nose, “And the coast is in sight.”

Maria looked down from the circling German fighters and spotted the strip of blue just visible on the horizon: The English Channel.

It was a beautiful but tragic sight; the channel meant they were close to home and safety, that their journey was almost at its end. Sadly, with four of the German fighters still up and active, it also meant that they would die within sight of home.

“Nowhere to hide out there,” she muttered under her breath, dodging a church steeple as they sped along barely fifty feet off the fields below. “I’ll keep us down here until we run out of land, but then we’re absolutely at their mercy.”

“You’ll do what you can, and nothing more.” Matheson offered reassuringly. “I believe in you.”

“Depends if it’s enough,” Maria grumbled to herself.

The villages and woodlands that dotted the French landscape grew more scarce as they flew ever closer to the coastline. The remaining four German fighters loitered up above them at altitude. They seemed to have realized that soon their quarry to run out of places to hide. After losing two of their number, they seemed marginally more reluctant to get close to the troublesome Bomber.

Maria took her hands off the controls and flexed her cramping digits. “Best reload the guns now,” she called over the com. “Get everything ready while we have some quiet; they’ll hit us the second we cross over the water.”

Matheson reached behind him and hauled a machinegun onto his lap.

“What the hell do you have that for?” Maria balked, glancing over at the weapon, one clearly pulled from one of the other bombers before they departed.

“I figured it was insurance… should something like this happen.” Matheson shrugged, patting the weapon’s cover. “Not like we have a surplus of firepower on this crate.”

“And just where do you expect to fire it?”

“We have windows.”

Maria shook her head. “Don’t you dare get cartridges stuck in my controls or you kill us all.”

“Yes Mother,”

Maria glared at Andrew for a long moment before returning her attention to the landscape outside, deftly flicking them past a stand of trees.

They blasted across the coastline near the village of Le Sodit. Ahead of them, twenty miles of the English Channel lay spread out before them. It was a barren featureless expanse of water that left them exposed from all sides. Even above, the spring sky was absent of clouds giving them nowhere to hide. Maria glanced down at the water far below. It felt like a lifetime ago she had been guided to land by those very same waves. Back then, she had been the hunter, now she just prayed that she would survive.

The Germans were on them almost from the moment they crossed the coast. Diving low, two of the boxy fighters came at them from the forward port quarter, only to be denied by Hamley’s valiant efforts on the bow machine gun.

“Left side, left side,” a call over the intercom cried. “On the tail, going right!

“Under us to the left!”

“Right, two o’clock!”

“Above, Five o’clock!”

Bullets ripped through the left wing, tearing panels off the engine nacelle. Oil began streaking back along the wing as the engine began to bleed.

“We’re hit, left side.”

Maria glanced at the instruments, “Losing oil, blast, Shut down one.”

Matheson shut down the left engine and feathered the propeller. Losing the engine was bad, but having it run out of oil and cease up while they were flying could rip it from the wing.

“We’re going to be severely hampered with only one engine, they’ll have us now for certain.”

“Do what you can,” Matheson growled as he slid open the cockpit hatch above their heads. Hefting the machine gun in his hands he pulled on a pair of goggles. “If we’re going to go, we go down fighting.”

Fire from the dorsal turret clipped one of the Messerschmitts, causing it to smoke but not outright killing the bird. The result was the same however as the stricken aircraft turned and made for home.

“Three remaining but they’re persistent buggers,” Maddox yelled forward.

Maria checked her instruments, “we should be nearly halfway by my calculations. We’re slower than I’d like with only one engine; one fifty or one sixty at most. It’s going to be tight but I can maintain altitude, not much left for evasion though.”

“Focus on flying, and try not to toss me out, ok?” Matheson insisted. Standing up in the cockpit, he braced himself against the rear framework and hefted the machine gun’s barrel out into the airstream.

One of the three fighters dropped down and began a run from their five o'clock. He stayed low, to remain under the top turret’s depression where they were at their weakest. As he drew closer, he began to angle in for an attack, only to have Matheson open up with the gun from the roof hatch. Not constrained by a turret track, he was able to angle down at the fighter slithering up in their blind spot and rake its fuselage with bullets.

“Two now,” Maddox called from the rear, “but I can only see one of them.”

No sooner had he spoken than Andrew Matheson was hurled bodily against the cockpit floor, his blood spraying across the windshield as bullets tore through them from above. Shielding her eyes from exploding glass, Maria banked away from the unseen attacker just in time to avoid further damage. The Messerschmidt overshot them and pealed away, easily dancing away from Hamley's tracer fire.

Maria recognized the aircraft immediately, it was one she had danced with before. The red and yellow markings on the nose were distinctive; it was Bergmann’s aircraft.

“Andrew!” She screamed, daring to look away from the windshield to the wounded man. “Where are you hit?”

Matheson was slumped down in the cockpit, propped awkwardly against the forward bulkhead. His left arm was a bloody mess and his skin was pale.

“I’m…I think they got me,” He murmured, watching the blood pulse between the fingers clamped over his wound.

“Maddox get up here,” she screamed over the intercom, “They got Andy, I can’t… I can’t right now… jesus christ.”

The other German raked the aircraft, and black smoke started billowing from their remaining engine. Maria watched with dread as the cylinder head temperatures skyrocketed and flames burst from the cowling.

Looking out of the blood and oil-spattered windshield, she could barely make out the dirty smudge of the English coastline in the distance. She wasn’t sure how far they were away, but they were not going to make it if she didn’t act fast.

Grimacing, she firewalled the burning starboard engine only serving to fan the raging inferno within its cowling as she fed it more fuel. Unbalanced by the asymmetrical thrust of the remaining engine she fought to keep the wounded aircraft straight as she prayed they didn’t explode.

Bergmann banked around, the other 109 sticking to his rear quarter like a good wingman should. Clearly, Maria grimaced, he considered them wounded enough to be worth his time now.

Maddox scrambled through the space above the bomb bay and slid into Matheson’s seat beside her. “I got him, you focus on flying,” he yelled over the roar of the engine. “Just get us over dry land.”

Maria nodded grimly and returned her focus to the job at hand. All she had to do was fly the plane. She visualized that she was alone in the cockpit of a Hurricane once more; there was nobody else aboard that she cared about and she was entirely alone. She repeated the mantra over and over to herself, attempting to blot out the knowledge that everyone else's life depended on her.

The remaining engine spluttered alarmingly but remained alive for the time being, the flames licking back along the wing as she demanded what little it had left. Their speed was dropping now, but she had managed to gain another thousand feet in the meantime. It wasn’t much, but it meant a few hundred yards extra if they needed to glide.

The sound of the world seemed to fade away as Maria fought to control the bomber in its death throws. Screaming voices were muted, the roar of the engine fell away and the tracer fire streaming past the windscreen was eerily silent. In what felt like their final moments, everything was serene and peaceful.

Bergmann’s aircraft rolled over and dived down towards them, its cannons blazing. He wouldn’t miss; they couldn’t fight back or even evade him. In the end, they would be an easy kill for even a rookie pilot.

Maria looked over at Andrew, huddled in the footwell beside her. He was pale, but his eyes were clear and he was staring right back at her. She smiled and she was glad that he was here when it happened. She was glad they were all together, their little family.

An explosion slammed the aircraft, peppering them with debris as Bergmann’s Messerschmitt detonated in mid-air. It took barely a fraction of a second and suddenly all sound came roaring back to the world at once.

Tracer fire streaked down from above and the distinctive oval winged shape of a brace of Spitfires streaked past.

Maria wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, to shout and join the whooping joy of the others as their rescuers set upon the remaining German fighter but her hands were full with their stricken aircraft. She had no idea where their angels had come from, but she was beyond relieved that they had.

Spluttering and coughing, the burning engine finally gave way and died. The Blenheim’s nose dropped and they began sinking down towards the waves, the drag of the still windmilling propeller pulling them to the right. Managing to feather the propeller, Maria finally achieved some modicum of control and began to ease the aircraft back towards an even keel.

She had barely four thousand feet of air and they were dropping like a stone. As far as she could guess, they were perhaps a mile or two off the coast. Ahead of them, she could just make out the houses of a small seaside village nestled behind sand dunes.

Maria turned to Maddox and jabbed a finger at Matheson. “Get him aft, and get yourselves braced, this is going to be rough.”

The man nodded and hauled his friend up and through the narrow gap above the bomb bay and into the rear fuselage of the aircraft. Up front, Arthur Hamley was already crawling out of the nose compartment, the bombardier could already tell what was coming.

“You need a hand lass, or are you ok?”

“I’m fine, strap in and hold on.”

The Irishman pulled down Andrew's Jump seat and strapped himself in beside her. The aircraft groaned as it dropped, the winds shifting beneath them as they flew now silently onward. The rush of the wind was considerably louder now that the massive radial engines were silent and every shift was audible through the thin skin of the bomber.

Clear of their pursuit, the two Spitfires returned and were now flying alongside, fifty yards off of her wingtips as she made her final descent. At any other moment, when she had a second to think, she would have felt joy to see spits off her wings again. As it was, she barely acknowledged their presence.

She shot over the beach with around eight hundred feet under her wings. They were dropping rapidly, and by the time she cleared the houses of the village, she was barely above the church steeple. Glancing out over her port wing, she watched the Spit pilot throw a salute before pealing away and upward, closely followed by his wingman to their right. Seeing them go was a sobering thought as they plummeted down towards the countryside. She wondered if she would ever know their names; they had done what they could, and whether those pilots saved them now depended entirely on her actions.

“Brace for impact!”

The Blenheim seemed to hover for a moment, suspended over the grassy heathland. Time passed as though immersed in molasses as Maria let go of the controls and grabbed hold of her harness, bracing for the impact to come. The sky gave her up and she slammed into the ground with a deafening screech of tortured metal. Maria squeezed her eyes shut and held on for dear life as they careened across the terrain, the vibration and noise almost too much for her to stand. They bounced once and slid sideways before finally coming to rest in a small depression by a dry stone wall.

The bomber seemed to sag after it finally stopped moving and the cabin was filled with eerie
silence. Maria opened her eyes slowly and glanced around, They were stationary and they were on the ground. She wasn’t entirely sure where they were, but it was most certainly England.

“Everyone alive?” a voice in the rear called out. Affirmations rang out from most of the crew.

Maria glanced over at the Irishman beside her and grinned sheepishly. “Not my best landing.”

The big man smiled broadly and patted her leg.“Lass, as far as I’m concerned that was your best.”

Unfastening her harness, she pulled herself upright and peered into the back of the aircraft.

“How’s Andrew doing?”

Maddox gave her a thumbs up before kicking out the escape panel and hauling his friend clear of the aircraft.

“Come on lass, out we go,” Hamley ordered, taking Maria by the hips and hefting her up and through the cockpit hatch until she was sat on the roof.

“Quite undignified,” she huffed, pulling her legs clear before sliding down onto the wing root.

Carefully hopping down onto the ground, she ran across to where Maddox had propped Andrew up against the stone wall.

“How is he? Andrew? Are you ok?”

“See for yourself,” Maddox grinned leaning aside to reveal the pilot looking bloodied but very much alert, his arm bandaged tightly with field dressings and strips of clothing fabric.

“Nice landing, Captain,” Matheson chuckled softly. His features were drawn by pain, but there was more color in his cheeks than there had been at first.

“You had me so worried,” she admitted sheepishly. “I thought… god, I thought the worst Andrew.”

She perched nervously on her knees beside him, wanting so very much to reach out and touch him just to believe he really was alive and well.

“Oh sodding hell, just kiss him already,” Maddox laughed as he stepped out of the way.

Maria needed no further bidding. Kneeling beside the man she loved, she took his face in her hands and kissed him deeply. They were home and they were alive; they were all alive. She no longer felt embarrassed by her feelings towards him. Nothing else really mattered after what they had survived; no longer did she feel afraid.

Down walked up beside Maddox and Hamley as the men watched the reunion play out before them. “They finally get around to that?”

“They got around to that in bloody Belgium old boy,” Maddox admitted with a smirk.

“I expected as much,” Hamley agreed. “I suspect my missus is going to want a few minutes with me once she finds out I’m back.”

“After she kicks your butt for getting caught, Paddy,” Down jeered. “Man, I never thought I’d be so pleased to see jolly old England.”

Maddox glanced around, slowly taking in the rolling Kent countryside. Unbelievably, they were home. Somehow, it didn’t quite seem real. Mere moments before, they had been in a fight for their very lives, their chances of survival slipping closer to zero by the second. Somehow, after their insane odyssey, they were back on English soil once more.

“Heads up lads,” Hamley warned, pointing at a group of Home Guard marching purposefully across the field with their rifles raised. “Remember how we’re dressed, eh?”

“Oh bloody hell,” Maddox sighed. “Hey, you two,” he called down to the couple. “If you can stop with the happily ever after for a minute, I think we’re about to be arrested.”

Maria sat up, her cheeks flushed, “pardon?”

“Dad's army is here and they’re looking a bit keen.”

The closest of the soldiers arrived at the crash site and waved his Lee Enfield rifle at them menacingly.

“Handy hook, Fritz,” One of the men ordered, waving his rifle in their direction. “Speaken ze Engleesh?”

Maria stood slowly, her hands raised, and turned to face the soldiers, “We are English, not German.”

“Sure you are Helga,” a sergeant in his sixties added, rolling his eyes, “The lot of you can turn around; you’re under arrest.”

“This is a French plane, Sarge,” One of the soldiers pointed out, prodding the French colors on the aircraft skin with his rifle butt. “What they doin' in a frog plane if they’re jerries?”

“Probably ran out of their own, didn’t they Derek.”

“Shut up Clive, I know what I’m talking about.”

The Sergeant sighed, “Oi! The lot of you better shape up and get this bunch into custody or I’ll have your hides, on the double!”

“Hey buddy, seriously, we’re not Germans,” Down exclaimed as a pair of soldiers handcuffed him. “I’m from Texas, man.”

The Sergeant approached Maria, who stood defiantly in front of Matheson. “Fraulein, please.”

“Sergeant, My name…is… well… I’m Pilot Officer Campbell, We are escaping prisoners of war fleeing occupied Europe. We are only wearing German uniforms as part of a disguise, if we were Jerries why on earth would our own people shoot at us?”

“Frau….Ma’am, I’m not sayin’ I don’t believe you like, but I have a job to do. I’m sure we’ll work it out with the brass but we’ve got to hold you till we work it all out, see?”

Maria sighed with exasperation; she knew they weren’t going to get anywhere with these soldiers. “Fine, but please, my friend here needs medical attention,” she indicated, stepping aside to allow them access to Matheson. “He was shot during our escape.”

The Sergeant waved a medic forward who bent down to take care of Matheson while he escorted her to one side.

“I need to pat you down Ma’am, rules are rules.”

Maria nodded her consent. The man was smooth and efficient and was done within moments, only pausing at the bulge in her jacket pocket. Carefully, the man reached inside and withdrew the small leather photograph album and the manilla folder. “What are these?”

“A captured document for command and… a precious gift from a friend.”

“A friend?”

Maria sighed, “She’s dead now.”

The Sergeant nodded and smiled kindly before putting the book back inside her pocket.

Slipping the cuffs over her wrists, he gestured off towards the town. “Well, either way, Ma’am, welcome to England, or welcome home.”

 

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