Beneath Still Waters. Alex Archer
turn, slamming the Mustang with a barrage of fire from the Junkers’s forward-facing 20 mm cannons. Tracers whipped between the two aircraft as the American sought to respond, but Brandt had been just a hair quicker off the mark and drilled the other aircraft with gunfire even as it began to take evasive action.
One second the Mustang was racing toward him, the next he was doing everything he could to get up and over the exploding cloud of debris that had once been an American aircraft.
Brandt let out a shout of triumph.
His exultation was premature, however. In focusing on the lead aircraft he’d lost sight of the second, and that came back to bite him as the American roared up from below. The pilot had anticipated Brandt’s roll-out, diving and then swooping back up to come at the Junkers and its unprotected belly. Bullets ripped through the port engine, the wing and the cockpit as the Mustang flashed past. One of the bullets took a chunk out of Brandt’s calf, and he gasped in pain; he could feel blood course down his leg and into his boot.
The enemy gunfire shredded the controls for the wing flaps and set the engine alight, causing the plane to yaw heavily to the left. Fortunately Adler’s guns roared to life in that moment, catching the Mustang as it raced past and sending it spiraling out of control to crash into the nearest mountainside.
“I’m hit, I’m hit,” Adler called, but Brandt couldn’t do anything to help him because not only was he hit himself, but he had his hands full just trying to keep the plane aloft. He fought the controls, hands straining on the yoke, feet pumping the foot pedals in an effort to force the damaged hydraulics to work long enough to get the ailerons and flaps trimmed the way he needed them. At the same time, he maneuvered through the maze of snow-covered peaks, desperately trying to avoid ending up like their recently departed foes. He could hear Adler thrashing around in pain but had no choice but to block it out as he concentrated on keeping them both alive.
By the time he managed to get the aircraft level again, Adler had gone quiet and still. Brandt knew what that meant; Adler was either dead or, at the very least, too wounded to be of any help. For the first time Brandt noticed the freezing air flowing in through the holes in the cockpit floor and canopy, chilling him to the bone but helping to keep him from slipping into shock from his own injury. Shock was probably the least of his worries, for the plane was losing altitude fast and the rushing winds were fanning the flames in the port engine into a veritable bonfire. Brandt didn’t know which would be worse, slamming into the side of a mountain or being blown to bits when the engine exploded. Right then, both seemed like a possibility.
He racked his brain for a solution to the problem facing him and came up with…nothing. All he could do was fight to keep the plane in the air and pray for a miracle.
Then he saw it.
A few miles ahead of him was the frozen surface of a long, narrow glacier.
If he could get to it, he could attempt a landing. He knew his chances weren’t good. With a fully operational aircraft it would be a difficult feat. With the mangled wreck that he was flying it was going to be nearly impossible, but what other options did he have?
None.
You can do this, he told himself.
He was coming in too hot and too steep, so he needed to bleed off some of his airspeed and he needed to do it immediately. He dropped the flaps, feathered the engines and tipped the nose up slightly to create more resistance as the plane continued what could best be described as a controlled fall out of the sky.
The Junkers wanted to drag to the left, but Brandt fought the stick, doing everything he could to keep it lined up on the glistening surface of the glacier, now dead ahead of him.
Come on, baby! Keep it in the air just a few more minutes! he urged.
As Brandt drew inexorably closer, he hit the switch that controlled the landing gear, only to hear the steady drone of the alarm warning him that the hydraulics had failed.
He cursed a blue streak even as he reached over and began turning the crank that would lower the wheels by hand. By the time he was finished he was almost to the glacier and little more than five hundred feet in the air.
It was going to be close.
Brandt continued to push the aircraft on, demanding that it stay airborne for a few more seconds, just long enough to get him past the trees lining the shore and over the ice itself.
Fate took pity on him, for the aircraft did just that, sailing over the tree line with barely inches to spare and flying toward the ice in front of him.
You’re only getting one shot at this. Make it count, he told himself.
Brandt kept the nose up as best he could as he came in, knowing to do anything less would be disastrous. He reached out and killed the engines as the wheels made first contact with the ice, the whole aircraft bouncing once, then twice, before settling down and racing toward the opposite end of the glacier.
Now Brandt had a new problem on his hands: how to stop the lumbering wreck before it crashed into the shore on the far side. He pumped the brakes while holding the yoke steady, but it was little more than throwing cupfuls of water on a raging forest fire. He was going to stop or he wasn’t, and there was little he could do about it either way.
He was lucky that the glacier was several miles in length and he had plenty of room to run. Gradually the plane began to slow and finally it came to a skidding halt in the middle of the glacier.
Brandt leaned back against the seat and breathed a sigh of relief.
The sound of the ice cracking beneath the weight of the aircraft was a thunderous boom, and instantly he realized his mistake.
He hadn’t set down on a glacier at all, but the frozen surface of a mountain lake!
With a lurch, the nose of the aircraft dropped several feet as the ice beneath the wheel struts gave way. Brandt shouted in fear and scrambled to open the cockpit canopy, knowing he had to get out of the aircraft before it slipped beneath the surface of the icy water or he was as good as dead.
He quickly unbuckled the safety belt holding him in his seat and grabbed the latch to eject the canopy, giving it a good yank.
Nothing happened.
He did it again, pulling harder this time, but it still wouldn’t budge.
The safety latch!
Removing the safety was normally the job of the observer, as it was above the rear panel in that section of the compartment, which was why Brandt had nearly forgotten about it. He twisted in his seat and looked into the rear section of the compartment.
Adler was dead, just as he’d suspected. He was still buckled into his seat, however, which would make getting past him to the safety latch a little bit easier. Brandt began to squeeze around his own seat, preparing to do just that when there was another splintering crack and the plane lurched downward.
Except this time it kept going.
Water began filling the cockpit through the bullet holes in the canopy as the rest of the ice beneath the Junkers gave way. The crippled aircraft dropped into the icy waters of the lake, heading for the bottom.
Even then Brandt wasn’t prepared to give up. He pulled himself back into his half of the compartment and climbed onto his seat, ignoring the pain from his injured leg as he began pounding at the glass above, desperately trying to break it. The cockpit glass was extra thick, both to withstand the pressure of the G-forces it would be subjected to in flight and to keep it from fragmenting when a bullet passed through it. Pounding on it was like railing against a tsunami and about as effective.
As the water reached his waist and his view of the surface above was eclipsed by floating blocks of ice, Brandt realized that he’d managed to escape the war after all.
Just not in the way that he’d intended.