“We didn’t steal the airplane.” Drake angled back to the northeast and slid the compass back into his pocket. They’d gotten a bit off course when they had to bypass that stream. “We’ll be within the five-mile radius of the crash site in another minute or two, I should think.”

Margot would know it by the second. She could probably chart it all out in her head and keep them on course without even looking at the landscape around her. A compass, a watch, a gauge of their speed.

He glanced around. “You’re sure there are no enemy soldiers about?”

“Our reconnaissance said the area is clear.” Camden brushed a stray pine needle from his jodhpurs and struck out. “And the RNAS didn’t know I was the one flying it. If they had, they wouldn’t have let Hall requisition it. Ergo, I flew it without permission, which is, if I’m not mistaken, stealing.” Half his mouth tilted up in his usual mischievous smile. “Look at that. Another offense for which they can court-martial me.”

“You’re welcome.” Drake kept pace with ease. And paused to thank the Lord for it. His side didn’t hurt anymore, and he really wasn’t any slower now than he’d been before. Or if so, not by much. All that training on the stairs had paid off.

They both came to a halt when there was a break in the trees, a winter-brown meadow stretching out ahead of them.

“This must be it,” Camden said. “The place the pilots spotted on their descent.”

Drake nodded and looked at the treetops on the opposite side of the meadow for any sign of debris. “Assuming they told the truth.”

“They didn’t seem in a state of mind to lie well.” Camden turned in a circle, his neck craned up as well. “I’ve never seen anything like their disorientation.”

Drake squinted at something glinting across the way, in a branch halfway down one of the tall pines. He couldn’t make out what it was, but something man-made, surely, to shine like that. He pointed at it. “I didn’t realize zeppelins could fly high enough to produce altitude sickness.”

“They shouldn’t.” Camden squinted, too, at where he indicated and nodded. They started off across the meadow. “They must have gotten caught in an updraft. From what I could glean, it was their panic from the sickness that caused the crash, not the weather itself.”

They’d survived though and were now in Allied custody. Drake prayed with every step that it would work out to their benefit. That they’d find the codebook, the one they needed. That somewhere in those slips of yellow in the book about Go, there would be answers.

“Will you stop that?”

Drake angled a look at his friend. “Stop what?”

“Praying. I can tell you are, and it’s blighted annoying. Reminds me of my brother.”