“Sorry.” He drew in a deep breath. “That landing gave me the screaming abdabs. Apparently these chaps—”

He waved the cigarette at the Luftwaffe aircraft.

“They came over from Norway this morning. I don’t think they have enough fuel to get back. They seem to be unarmed—they want to surrender. Or to negotiate. See the white flag?”

Jamie took another long drag on the cigarette. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe they had a change of plan at the last second, or something—the pilot seemed to lose control completely. The plane just went berserk. I suppose the loose webbing might have tangled in the tail—”

He pulled in a long breath of air that had nothing to do with smoking, and said, “I thought he was going to land on top of us.”

“So did we,” Ellen said soberly.

Jamie looked down at his shaking hands. “And I guess this is what it feels like when you actually do lose your nerve! Thank God it didn’t happen in the air.”

A section of the clear dome over the Junkers 88 cockpit slid open, and a hurricane of angry German shouts tore through the air. Jane, who always favored her left ear over her right a little bit, stood listening with her head cocked to one side like a bird watching a worm.

Suddenly a man catapulted out of the plane as if he’d been shot from a cannon. He tried to catch himself on the way down, missed, and sprawled beneath the wing on the tawny winter grass. He was wearing a flight suit and leather jacket and helmet, which I couldn’t have told apart from any of our British gear. A moment later another man climbed out after him.

The first scrambled to his feet and leaped at the other, pulling him to the ground. They rolled over and over beneath the wing of their plane, wrestling and throwing lightning-fast punches at each other. Then a third airman climbed out and joined the pileup.

By now there was a big crowd watching. It was nothing like a secret operation—nothing like last November. Young men in hastily buttoned uniform jackets piled in to try to separate the fighting Luftwaffe airmen.

The first man, the one who’d been thrown out of the plane when the hatch opened, got the worst of it. He fought like a cornered mongoose, but he didn’t stand a chance against so many, or even just against Chip Wingate. The American gunner, in pajamas and a life jacket like Jamie, fought like a whole family of cornered mongooses, and he seemed to enjoy it, too. The others wrestled the flailing German airman to the ground, pinned him flat on his face, and wrenched his arms behind his back. Finally one of our ground crew pulled off his belt and used it to lash the German’s arms together.