Flight Lieutenant Boar was slumped to the side, his face and neck covered in blood from a deep vertical gash across his right eye, and he didn’t seem to be breathing. He appeared dead, until Ollie grabbed his flight jacket.

Boar grunted and cracked open his good eye, if one could call it that, the socket red and bulbous, his eyelid swelled shut. “Ralph?”

“Dead,” Ollie said.

“Bloody hell.” He coughed and extended a hand toward his copilot but stopped short of touching him.

Ollie unbuckled the lieutenant’s harness.

Boar grimaced.

“Can you move?” Ollie asked.

Boar struggled to wipe blood from his eyes. “It seems I don’t have a choice, Yank.”

Realizing that he would have to remove the lieutenant through the windshield, Ollie cleared away the rest of the glass using the sleeve of his jacket. He wedged a hand under Boar’s arm and pulled. Boar rolled forward. Ollie’s shoulder flared. He maneuvered Boar onto the nose of the plane, then slid him to the ground.

Boar fell to his back. He struggled to stand, then sat back down.

Ollie slid down from the cockpit and examined Boar, but there wasn’t much he could see because of all the blood covering his face. He ripped away the tail of his shirt and placed it over Boar’s eye. “Keep pressure on it.”

Boar cupped the fabric to his face. “You hurt?”

“Ankle.” Ollie touched his shoulder. “And my arm’s hanging loose.”

“Broken?”

“Not sure.” Ollie looked around. To the west, the sun was sinking below a large field, dotted with mounds of straw. Beyond a hill, a thin stream of rising smoke, possibly from a farmhouse chimney or another downed Blenheim. To the east, thick woods. It’d be dark soon. Twenty, perhaps thirty minutes. “Where are we?”

Before Boar could respond, a distant shout echoed over the hill.

“Beeilung!”

Adrenaline shot through Ollie.

“France.” Boar unzipped his jacket and fumbled to unsnap a pistol from its holster. “Somewhere between Amiens and Abbeville.”

Ollie got to his feet, most of his weight on one leg.

“Where you gonna run, Yank?”

“Who you gonna shoot?” Ollie pulled Boar to his feet. “You can’t see.”

Boar gripped his pistol, his breath in heavy gasps.

“Your legs work?”

Boar nodded.

Ollie looked for someplace to run. But there were no houses. No roads. Only a dirt trail that led from the far end of the field to a hill where the voice came from. And in the opposite direction, the forest.

“Beeilung!” The shout was louder. Closer.