I was sure he would get there before us. But I flew full throttles anyway. Chip was up in his gun turret now; no point in sitting in the belly of the plane at the radio where he couldn’t see anything, listening to dah-dit beeping in German, when he could be firing guns. The Luftwaffe plane wasn’t saying anything new anyway. Silver showed me the last sequence Chip had taken down:

WOBIS

TDUKA

NNSTD

UMICH

HOERE

N

Wobis, wobist? Wo bist… Wo bist du, like Old English, like Chaucer. Where beest thou?

Wo bist du, kannst du mich hoeren?

I gnawed at it as I flew, trying not to think about Ignacy and his underpowered guns.

Where are you… canst thou me hear?

Can you hear me?

Ich hoere nichts.

I hear nothing.

It sort of got me in the stomach. I wondered what had happened to the other plane. Poor lonely Jerry, losing his wingman. I knew how that felt.

We found the pilot who was transmitting, though. We even got there before Ignacy.

The Luftwaffe pilot was alone, as we’d guessed, flying a Messerschmitt 109 fighter dangerously low over the sea, skimming the whitecaps. He circled and climbed and descended again, which was why his messages faded in and out. He was looking for something, a wreck, or a trace of his companion’s crash, maybe.

It wasn’t even a fortnight since 7 November. And here in front of me, getting nearer, were iron-gray wings like knife blades, emblazoned with black Luftwaffe crosses, and with the ugly whirl of a black swastika on the tail.

He saw us and began to climb to meet us.

Silver and I both spotted him—but I was the one with the guns in front.

There wasn’t enough cloud to hide in. The only thing we could do was get down, but you can’t hedgehop over waves and expect the sea to camouflage you the way valleys and woodland and riverbanks do.

Well, this was probably it, then.…

I rammed the controls forward under full power, turning and diving. I’d out-turned a Messerschmitt 109 once before, even if I couldn’t outfly or outshoot them—the Jerry probably didn’t know that, and if he went after me he might leave the Australian lads alone.…

The blasted Australians thought this was a game, their first dogfight. I could hear their pilot, tall Harry Morrow, whooping with excitement as they fired away at the German pilot. They didn’t hit him, though. He swooped up over us, made a wide turn, and came back in over the Australians from behind. I could see tracers flaming from the Luftwaffe cannons and from Dougie Kerr’s gun turret. I threw the Blenheim around and leaned into my own guns.