Flight Lieutenant Clyde Boar took a drag on his cigarette, dropped the stub to the ground, and crushed it with his shoe. Night had receded to a gray sky, the sun still sunken below a smoky horizon. He watched a squadron of Hurricanes, or what was left of it, approach the runway in a line formation to land.

“How many?” Ralph asked.

“Eight.” Boar looked at his copilot, a short, pudgy man with his hands stuffed into his trousers.

Ralph grimaced. “Should be twelve.”

Boar lit another cigarette. Five minutes later, another squadron came in. Only six. After landing, one of the pilots was carried to a stretcher; a bullet that pierced the cockpit had torn through his calf.

Flight Lieutenant Boar watched a medic tie a tourniquet around the pilot’s leg, his pants blackened with blood. The man was screaming something that sounded like “I can’t lose my foot” or “They shot off my foot.”

“We should have been with them,” Boar said as the pilot was placed in an ambulance.

“What do you mean?” Ralph asked. “We were the only unit to score a hit last night.”

Boar recalled the Luftwaffe bomber they had shot down. He had maneuvered his unit through the clouds, then swooped under the bomber, allowing a clear shot for Benny, his turret gunner. A spray of bullets pierced the fuselage. The bomber exploded, and he’d darted back to the clouds, losing two enemy Messerschmitt fighters.

The RAF’s Bristol Blenheim, designed to be both a light bomber and night fighter, excelled at neither. It was a utility vehicle. Mediocre. A nocturnal predator able to find success only under the cloak of darkness. In fact, the last daylight mission Boar led against a Luftwaffe airfield near Aalborg in Denmark had resulted in disaster. Seven of the twelve Blenheim bombers in his squadron were lost. And a companion unit produced an almost 100 percent casualty rate. In the clunky armor of a Bristol Blenheim, Flight Lieutenant Boar felt like a knight sent into battle with a wooden sword.

“The Blenheim is no match against the Messerschmitt. We only have a chance with the Spitfire or the Hurricane.” Boar flicked his cigarette, barely smoked. “I intend to lead a real fighter squadron and win this bloody war.”

“You may be the best pilot in the RAF, but we have our orders for Source Columba,” Ralph said.

Flight Lieutenant Boar had volunteered for Source Columba, believing that taking on such a dangerous mission would gain him favor with Commander Davies regarding his requests to lead a fighter squadron. And it had worked, especially when Davies had selected him to attend the meeting in London with British Intelligence. But things went sour when the American interfered.

“How was your meeting with the commander?” Ralph asked.

“Splendid.”