On Glorious Wings by Stephen Coonts

Author:Stephen Coonts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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When I was plugged in again, I asked Marrow if he was getting on all right. He didn’t answer. I thought perhaps the interphone was knocked out, so I called Prien and he did respond, though his voice sounded farther away than the tail of The Body. Then I ran a check all around, and I got a sassy answer from Farr; an echo of it from Bragnani; an absent-minded response from Lamb, who sounded as if he weren’t on this trip but were sashaying down to Florida by Eastern Air Lines; no word from Junior Sailen, who had been removed to the radio room; the usual stout and reassuring boom from Handown, who was back up in his turret; no answer, again, from Marrow; and of course I didn’t even try Clint and Max.

For a second I wondered whether Marrow had lost the power of speech. I couldn’t get anything out of him. He just flew along, and his control was still subtle and smooth, but otherwise he was a huge, leather-clad robot. I supposed that his jackbox might have been ruptured.

Some of our guns were firing.

A brief glance outside the plane showed me that we had fallen back underneath part of the lead group, but we still had an umbrella. The air battle was continuing. I saw two new German Staffeln coming up, and (no credit to myself; just the astonishing persistence of the human mind in its habitual patterns of association and rambling, even during a cataclysm) I began ruminating about the efficiency of the Germans, and the obvious co-ordination of their attacks. One could suppose that they must have assembled, to meet both the Regensburg strike and ours, fighter squadrons all the way down from Jever and Oldenburg—we knew those units from our battles with them over Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg, and Kiel—and up from airports we knew in France, such as Laon, Florennes, and Eyreux, and since the planes had limited range they must have set them down for refueling along the way to us, somewhere near our expected line of flight but far ahead of us, and then got them up not only in time to meet us but also just in time to replace other squadrons who were having to retire. Such ingenuity put to the service of killing!

These thoughts, in their dreamlike detachment from our real situation, and in their vividness that was also dreamlike, took only an instant or two.

Then it occurred to me that we would do well to climb, to hug as closely as we could the remainder of our group, so that The Body could take maximum advantage of the formation’s firepower and not be singled out, yet, as a potential straggler, and I suggested this to Marrow on interphone. I shouted, thinking his headset might not be giving him but a shred of sound.

No answer.

Then I tapped his shoulder, to convey by gestures what his ears apparently could not hear, and he turned his face, and my heart froze at what I saw.

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