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Then the plane jerked. Something heavier had hit them. It didn’t register for a moment. Marshall saw smoke puff from the #4 engine. The engine began to sputter.

“Shut down number four!” Webb commanded. “Feather the prop!”

Marshall yanked the throttle and punched the feather button as quickly as he could.

“Done,” he said.

Underpowered, the Dirty Lily was sluggish again, and they were unable to keep up with the other Forts. The drag on the starboard wing was severe. Losing speed, she was dropping from formation. Marshall struggled to trim the plane, while Webb pushed the yoke forward and descended. They needed to get away from the action, where they wouldn’t be noticed. They hoped the Dirty Lily’s olive-and-gray camouflage paint would make them inconspicuous. Alone, a straggler, she would be easy prey.

“We can get back on three engines,” Webb said, stating the obvious.

Webb was too calm, Marshall thought. That was because this wasn’t really happening.

Marshall didn’t know what had hit them. Probably flak. But maybe it was a chunk of metal blown off a Fort. The sky was a pandemonium of random debris, shells and fragments, ragged junk, pieces of airplanes.

This wasn’t what he had imagined back in flight school. This was all wrong.

WHEN THEY WERE LOW enough to doff their oxygen masks, Webb sent Marshall back to the waist to inspect for damage. The waist gunners were scanning the skies through their open windows. Marshall noted some flak rips in the plane’s skin, but nothing serious—a few punctures, a couple of jagged metal bits of flak underfoot. The fuselage was cramped, crew jammed together ass to elbow. But the light coming through the windows was dazzling.

Then, as Marshall turned back toward the cockpit, the light flickered. A wisp of cloud washed past. Then another. Marshall hurried forward. Through the cockpit windows he saw a lovely drift of whiteness in front of them. Clouds. Webb burrowed into the mass. The lighting dimmed. They were inside a soft gray haze, concealed from sight.

“Thank God,” Webb said, as Marshall slid into his seat. “If this cloud-bank goes far enough.…”

He didn’t need to say more. If they could work their way west hidden within clouds, Jerry wouldn’t spot them.

They flew on, steady and cold and watchful. They alternated. Webb flew for a while, then handed off to Marshall. From time to time, they dipped below the clouds so the navigator could get a peek at the ground, to correct his position coordinates. The crew was grim and silent. Marshall refused to believe they might not reach base. The trip home should be simple now, a steady push into the west. Slow, maybe, but they would get there. They were having steak and ice cream at mess that night, rare treats.

“Webb, I need you to drop below again.” It was Campanello, the navigator.

“Roger.”

Webb took the controls from Marshall and eased back the throttles. The plane sank gracefully toward brightness below. She floated downward into the clear. Marshall was counting the seconds till they could climb again.

They depended on Campanello to guide them home. On the way over, there was no need to navigate. They had played follow-the-leader, the sky full of Forts all going in the same direction, and Campanello could take it easy. But now, with his compass, ruler, and a pencil, and only a few glimpses at the world below, he had to take them home by dead reckoning.

Lily lifted up into the clouds again.

THEY HAD BEEN FLYING more than an hour, disbelief masking dread. They were still swaddled in clouds when a Focke-Wulf 190 suddenly appeared alongside Marshall’s starboard window, materializing out of the gray mist. Marshall and the German pilot spotted each other at the same moment, and each froze. The Jerry’s leather helmet was pushed back, exposing a patch of bright blond hair. Then the FW-190 flipped and vanished.

“Bandit starboard!” Marshall yelled on the inter-phone just as he heard the guns open up.

“Where did that come from?”

“Did you see that guy?”

“Let