Page 50 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“I agree.”
Fifteen minutes later they both spotted an airfield at the same time. The runway was clearly marked out with signal flags, and two large hangars had been erected along the flight line. Near them were a clutch of smaller buildings. Several planes were flying in a loose formation in the direction of the field following their morning patrol. The planes looked like insects from their altitude.
“Here we go,” Holmes called and eased back on the throttle, at the same time putting the big plane into a circling dive.
It was just bad luck that the lead fighter heading in for a landing took one last look around the sky and spotted what he assumed was a German plane intent on bombing their airfield. He put on speed,and the two planes lined up with him also aborted their landing and began a furious climb toward the bomber.
Bell and Holmes increased pressure on their respective wheels in order to steepen their dive and thus reduce their exposure. Holmes also gave the bomber a little more throttle, but not like their earlier near-suicidal dive.
The Allied fighters were climbing as hard as they could, approaching the plummeting German plane with the speed of a knight in a joust. They would only get one crack at using their machine guns before flashing past. By the time they got turned back around, the bomber would have had time to unleash its payload, by their reckoning.
Holmes and Bell watched the planes grow larger through the windscreen. They were rushing at each other at a nearly two-hundred-knot closure.
“Nieuports,” Holmes said when he recognized the model. “French kites. Very good.”
They waited as long as they dared as the range shrank at a frightening rate. Just seconds before the lead plane opened fire with its Vickers machine gun, Holmes and Bell worked the wheel to slew the Zeppelin-Staaken out of the direct line of fire. Their move made the pilot miss entirely and left him with no time to adjust his aim before the two aircraft rocketed past each other.
They successfully avoided the attack run by the second plane, but the third managed to pour a half dozen 7.7-millimeter rounds into the bomber. Most of the bullets slammed into the starboard engine and lower wing. Two shattered the windows on Bell’s side of the cockpit, but thankfully missed both men.
The lead starboard motor seized a moment later, as all its lubricant had drained away through a crack in the oil pan.
The asymmetry of the thrust made the plane crab through the sky as it continued its descent. They countered this by each stomping on the rudder pedal in the opposite direction. Holmes quickly reduced power from the port engines to compensate. In just a couple of seconds they’d fully recovered the plane.
“Where are those Nieuports?” the Brit asked through bloodless lips.
Bell looked aft as best he could. “The lead plane is coming into a dive after us. I can’t see the other two.”
They remained tense as the altitude bled off. It was a race to the ground. Bell kept trying to track the lead fighter, but the Nieuport had to be directly behind them and hidden. The others had yet to show themselves again. They swerved the giant bomber through the sky as they descended, trying to foul the pilot’s aim as his quicker and far more nimble fighter swooped down on them like a hawk.
Moments later they were too low for evasive maneuvers and were forced to hold her steady as they lined up on the runway. They were less than thirty feet above the grass field when the trailing Nieuport had them in his sights and opened up with his Vickers. It was like a buzz saw against a balsa-wood toy. The Zeppelin-Staaken’s tail took the brunt of the stream of lead slugs that the pilot directed for maximum effect. Wood and canvas and yards of control wiring came apart in a spectacular failure that saw nearly the entire assembly disintegrate.
The result was instantaneous. Without the double horizontal stabilizers countering the main wing’s natural rotation, the plane’s nose dipped. There was nothing either pilot could do. The front landing gear hit the ground hard enough to crack the axle. That impact knocked the nose up once again and then the main gear struck the field. Both men were slammed into their seats by the force andshaken like rag dolls as the plane barreled down the runway with zero control.
There was more torque being generated on the port side because both engines were still functioning and so the plane started a ground loop, turning in a long arc that nearly flipped it onto a wing tip. The pressure against the landing gear drove the two sets of main tires to collapse. The props still spinning flew apart when they came in contact with the ground, sending wood splinters the size of daggers through the cabin just aft of the two battered pilots.
The remaining engines ceased working and the wreckage came to an ignoble stop.
As much as Bell wanted to leap from his seat and get as far from the downed plane as he could in case there was a fire, he couldn’t bring himself to move for nearly a minute. His spine felt like it had been wrung out like a wet rag and the base of his neck like he’d been hit with a tire iron. He managed to look over at Liam Holmes. He was unconscious, blood oozing from his forehead where he’d cracked it against a window frame.
The sight of the unconscious pilot galvanized Bell into action. He shucked off his seat belt and knelt next to the Brit. As he got close, Holmes moaned and pulled himself upright.
“You okay?”
“I wish this was the worst hangover of my life,” he said. “It would feel better.”
“You’ll live,” Bell replied with a smile at Holmes’s very British humor.
He helped the man out of his seat and supported him by an arm as they shuffled out of the cockpit toward the still-open starboard door. There was no smoke outside the aircraft, just a cloud of settling dust. In the distance uniformed men were running from thehangars toward the downed plane. Bell gestured for Holmes to wait until he was on the ground in order to catch him.
Bell tossed down the incriminating briefcase and sat on the wing’s trailing edge. He slid aft until he tumbled off of it. He hit the ground after a five-foot fall and dropped to his knees as if in prostration.
When he looked up, it was into the glowing tawny eyes of a juvenile lion that was staring at him from no more than two feet away.
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The incongruity of his situationfroze Bell in the position in which he’d fallen, on his knees, his chin inches from the ground. The lion’s tail twitched in agitation and a rumble built deep in its throat. Its mouth opened to show a pair of inch-long fangs. It took a tentative step toward him. Its claws were still retracted, which he took as a good sign.
And then Bell saw boots and heard voices.
