Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton

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      There wasn’t time for another shot, so he compared his readings with the Gee fix. Four shots with a four-mile-wide cocked hat to show their position. Not bad at all.

      Cohen looked at his plotting-chart in the tiny circle of his desk light. To make good his track he drew the wind-speed and direction and calculated their ground-speed from the remaining side of the triangle thus formed. ‘Eleven minutes to the Dutch coast,’ he said. No one answered.

      Lambert shifted his behind on the hard parachute pack. The heavy unpowered controls required a lot of physical strength to move them and already he had an ache in his shoulder and the usual pain in his spine. He sat upright to stretch his back and rolled his shoulders. ‘We are within radar range,’ he warned the crew. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for fighters.’

      Like all of the bomber stream’s wireless operators, Jimmy Grimm, whose father had a radio shop in Highgate, was tuning his radio to the frequencies between 7050 and 7100 kilocycles trying to find an enemy voice. Then he could transmit a signal on the same frequency to blot out the conversation between controller and fighter pilots. A microphone was fitted into an engine of each bomber especially for this purpose. Suddenly he heard August’s voice.

      ‘Order: start turning … now.’

      ‘Turning,’ said Löwenherz.

      Jimmy Grimm was excited. ‘I’ve found one of their controllers and a night fighter.’

      August Bach’s voice came over the headphones with the same clarity that Löwenherz heard it. ‘Order: steer 097 degrees,’ said August. ‘Announcing: enemy range ten kilometres.’

      ‘The plane he’s following is on our heading,’ said Cohen.

      ‘Every plane in the stream is on our heading,’ said Digby. He was full-length in the nose trying to see the Dutch coast.

      ‘I wish I could understand German better,’ said Jimmy Grimm. ‘That’s the trouble with being a radio ham; in peacetime I used to pick up all sorts of stations and only speak a few words of everything.’

      ‘While you types are sodding about, some poor bastard is going to get the chop,’ said Digby. ‘Why don’t you jam him?’

      ‘Perhaps it’s us he’s after,’ said Binty from the mid-upper turret.

      ‘Can we steer on to 080 degrees just to be sure, Skipper?’ said Cohen.

      ‘You’re the navigator,’ said Lambert and put the plane into a shallow banking turn.

      ‘He’s still a long way behind the bomber,’ said Cohen, ‘and the Controller keeps telling him to lose height.’

      ‘You are still well above him,’ August told Löwenherz; ‘lose another five hundred metres.’

      Again Löwenherz touched the control column and the fighter dipped. Beside him the observer had his field-glasses on his lap; the bomber was too far away and the night too dark for there to be a chance of visual contact yet. Behind Löwenherz, facing rearwards, the radar operator was boxed in with so much equipment that he was scarcely able to move. His three radar screens that showed range, altitude position and lateral position were tucked under his right elbow and to see them he had to cock his head on one side like a sparrow. It was useless to look at them yet, for the equipment wouldn’t show the target until they were three thousand metres away.

      ‘Order: hold it,’ warned August. Löwenherz throttled back.

      Flash Gordon was staring through the newly open part of his rear turret. God, it was cold, but he could see better than he had ever done before. If he bent forward he could almost get his head outside the aircraft. When he rotated the turret the slipstream passing across the barrels of the four Brownings made a gentle screaming sound, like high wind through telephone wires. He kept the turret moving, making the gun muzzles describe little circles as he had practised at gunnery school with pencils in the muzzles. A good gunner could write his name like that. It was a lonely position in the rear turret, especially when night fighters were about, for then chatter on the intercom was forbidden. Flash Gordon and Löwenherz were staring towards each other with all the concentration they could muster, but the night was too dark for either of them to see anything.

      Flash heard Cohen order a change of course and watched the clouds slide past the tail.

      August watched the red blip change direction on the Seeburg table. Willi marked it with the pencil. ‘He’s turned to port,’ said August. ‘Order: steer fifteen degrees left. He’s very close now.’

      ‘I think it is us,’ said Cohen. ‘He’s told him to change direction.’

      ‘Jam him,’ said Lambert urgently. Jimmy Grimm tuned his 1154 transmitter to the 1155 receiver, heard its whistle, sought the silent ‘dead space’ and switched on the microphone that was fixed inside the engine. Lambert banked steeply to change course again.

      In the night fighter they were silent. Löwenherz had turned as directed; Mrosek the observer had his field-glasses to his eyes and was scanning each side of the aircraft where the radar did not point. Suddenly Sachs’ radar tube lit up at the end of the range circle: a Tommi at extreme range.

      ‘We’ve got him,’ said Sachs, trying hard to keep the excitement out of his voice. Suddenly jamming deafened them, so near were they to Jimmy Grimm’s radio transmitter.

      ‘Just in time,’ said Löwenherz and they tuned the noise to minimum. Löwenherz switched the gun safety-catches to ‘fire’ and a line of red lights appeared on the instrument panel. Suddenly the whole Junkers hit a patch of turbulence. The plane dipped steeply like a horse refusing a fence. A wingtip fell and Löwenherz had to use all his strength to correct the plane’s heading.

      ‘The Tommi’s slipstream,’ said Löwenherz, but the others knew what it was. The force of it showed how close they were behind the speeding bomber.

      ‘He’s turning right,’ said Sachs as the blip on his screen started travelling along its base line. ‘He’s turning, keep turning.’ He watched the tube.

      ‘Level out but keep turning, range still closing. Straighten out, range still closing too fast. Twelve hundred metres.’ Löwenherz followed the turn until when heading almost due south the bomber straightened out and Löwenherz did too. ‘Where do you want him?’ asked Sachs.

      ‘Slightly starboard.’

      ‘He’s about seven degrees starboard.’

      ‘That’s enough, read off the range.’

      ‘Under one thousand metres, closing slowly.’

      Löwenherz wanted to move on to the bomber as slowly as possible, for that would give him the maximum duration of gunfire. ‘Bring me in level with him. I’ll lose height when we get a visual.’

      ‘It’s still very dark; you’d do better to have him against that bright cirrus.’

      ‘Very well, bring me in a little below him.’

      ‘Nine hundred, left a touch. We’re coming in too quickly, Herr Oberleutnant.’

      ‘I can’t see him.’

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