HEART OF THE COUNTRY SHORT STORY COLLECTION BY NICK ARMBRISTER out on amazon

HEART OF THE COUNTRY

       SHORT STORY COLLECTION

            BY NICK ARMBRISTER

out on amazon

NORWAY BOMBER STORY – SCENE 1
The Halifax bomber soared over the small coastal islands at the mouth of the fjord, clearing the rocks by a scant few feet. Gently levelling off the plane remained at thirty feet above the silent Norwegian water. Four ripples of water followed the plane at two hundred and forty miles an hour. Vertical rock sides reared up three thousand feet at either side of the mile wide fjord, giving a breathtakingly stunning view that was almost primeval in its power and imagery.
Unusually, the alert German defences remained quiet, too quiet. No flak, no fighters from their nearby base at Kristiansand airfield. Was something up? Or was it just his nerves, the pilot thought as he scanned his instruments and the outside view speeding by every second. Not even the radar and listening posts stationed at Oderoya Stadion had found them; they were undiscovered till now, or so it seemed. Maybe they would make it – they had pulled a bad and dangerous mission; to get back home would be nothing short of miraculous. Fuck this! No time for doubts, press on, all the way to their objective, the target! If the pilot failed, he would die trying. Again he scanned his instruments, moodily this time and frowned. He spoke slowly and clearly into the intercom. “Pilot to Flight Engineer. Starboard outer is running a bit hot, come up front and keep an eye on the gauges. I’m busy checking for those frisky Krauts.”
“Engineer to Pilot. On my way.”
“Pilot to crew. Keep an eye out for Flak and fighters. Keep scanning. If you see the bastards, call ’em out and for fuck sake, use the clock system. We’re in enemy territory now. Let’s do this mission and make it count. Pilot, out.”
Banking around the fjord edge, the heavy warplane followed the dark water like a huge bird, built for war, to kill or to be killed on the most dangerous mission of the war. And of their lives. This was it – to prove it was possible, even achievable, for soon they would find out one way or another.
Now the fjord was straight ahead, a deep glacial valley, steep sided and water filled. Three miles of calm cold water as dark as death itself and as cold as Norwegian ice. German guns ringed the cliff tops on each side with a clear field of fire in their line of sight. Just one shell could end their day now, badly. Surprise remained theirs – the guns were silent. Suddenly a thought came to the pilot and his heart turned cold, at the thought of her, the lost one. Shaking his head he snapped out of his reverie and flew the plane.
                                                                                                                                                                                    “Dark Stone”                                                                                                                                                          
Oh how I yearn to be with you, my dark angel of the forbidden realm,                                                      Our time was brief, full of enduring emotion, of bridges crossed, forever.                                                           Now you’re gone, nothing but dust, your memories haunting me, tempting me to my grave.                       So tempting, to stop the pain in my soul, just one quick action and I’ll be with you.                                      Not now though, as I have a job to do.                                                                                                      Soon enough we will be as one.                                                                                                                 Now I use my pain, our pain to do my eternal duty.                                                                                               Forgive me for going to war against your kind, now my enemy by circumstance.                                                
I love you my dark one…

The heavy bomber roared down the fjord, thirty feet of air between it and the water, three miles to the objective, the target, the secret facility. Now the Germans woke up, sporadic firing coming from the hilltops on either side of the fjord; the height of the cliff sides was lower here so the guns could target the plane… just. Large guns and small alike spewed out their deadly fire. Several waterspouts sprang up behind the bomber, fingers of white water a hundred feet high. Straining against gravity, they collapsed, harmlessly. Nazi gunners made the classic mistake of firing on sight of their enemy but not allowing for forward movement, so the shells fell behind. They would soon learn and adjust their aim.
In the cockpit of the Halifax bomber the pilot watched the shore based weapons fire ineffectively and he acted accordingly. He gently brought the left wing up thirty degrees and climbed twenty feet and allowed the bank to starboard to continue, a little. Enough to leave their present course by yards but enough to keep forward momentum up the fjord. After ten seconds and half a mile he corrected his course to the original. This paid off: the second salvo of large anti-aircraft shells thundered into the water at where the plane would have been. Yes, the gunners had re-aimed correctly but their target wasn’t there, it had been a hundred yards to the right. Onboard the pilot spoke. “Knew it would work. Okay, two miles to go, keep alert. The square heads want to nail us now.”
Flying out of range of the last German guns brought them into contact with more, an ongoing game of chess, who would draw blood first? Yellow and red tracer shells arced in several directions as the light guns on the shore tried to find the range, and failed. Proximity-fused shells exploded in the air, scattering small razor-sharp fragments far and wide. Like a fine rain this fell into the water in small splashes, well away from the plane.
“Top Turret Gunner to Pilot. Can I return fire at the enemy guns?” the frustrated gunner asked.
“Okay, but keep your bursts short; save some ammo for our home trip.”
With a soft mechanical whirring noise the top turret turned to port and lined up on the shore guns, four hundred yards. A staccato of gunfire shot from the four point .303inch Browning machine guns in the turret, at the limit of their range, a definite morale boost for the gunner and his crew. The small shells fell around a shore based twin 20mm gun position. Caught reloading, two of the gun crew fell dead, the price of war. When their bloodied corpses had been removed, the Halifax was out of range…
Events moved so quickly, a rollercoaster of war that was unstoppable with its ferocity and vengeance, calling for more death, more high explosives, more gunfire and flying steal. Soon the surprise of the bomber ran out, ran away from them and left them naked and now vulnerable; all that remained was a large slow four engine heavy bomber with seven men on a suicide mission and a quick death.
With the target in sight, less than two miles away down the far end of the fjord, it all went wrong. It was so simple, really. A large explosive charge had been placed in the water – was it one or many? That never mattered; the bomber crew never suspected death lay lurking in the dark water below them. When the bomber passed over at a mere thirty feet, under many of the guns but just right for the moored explosives, primed for action, tragedy struck. Six steel cables held a ton of High Explosive just below the surface delicately, balanced by twenty four large air bladders. Now the shore guns lost their battle, but this outcome was different.
Placed a mile and a half from the end of the fjord, away from the so-called “target” which was out of blast range and within good visual range of the officers who controlled the detonator, they pushed the plunger and sent an electrical spark down waterproof wires under the water to the bomb that slept no more. Here the fjord was just half a mile wide; those on either bank had better duck or the blast wave would take the air from their lungs and give them a huge slap in the face. Watched through several pairs of binoculars away from the target and from other locations, the plane flew into to the trap. As planned, like a child to a toy. No more seconds ticked away and more badly aimed shellfire splashed around the plane, ineffectively. On the ultimate part of the mission, so close yet so far to confirm what was suspected but not known. Would it soon be a fact, were the Germans and their evil allies doing their deadly business? No one on the Halifax would ever know. A great “kick” in the water erupted into a tower of blinding white water and spray, rising like some huge awakening monster from slumber. At nearly two hundred and fifty miles an hour and just above zero feet, the plane roared into it. Avoidance was impossible.
Onboard the bomber the pilot saw the blast and water rise when he was a hundred yards away, rising, forever increasing in height as the blast energy forced the water upwards. In two seconds it was there – events were devastating. Up front the Bomb Aimer manning the single front gun screamed: “Fuck! Skipper turn, turn away!”
But it was too late. Nosing into the water, metal was torn, sheets of aluminium were torn, breaking, flying from the wing surfaces. Exposed ribs and stringers of the inner wing structure bent and creaked under immense strain. Several main wing fuel tanks ruptured, fuel mixing with water. Propeller blades on the port two engines snapped like matchwood and sent fragments spinning like confetti; number one port engine coughed and died, flooded by water. Number two now bladeless continued to run for a split second, screaming as the engine oversped; in a blur the top cowling cover was torn free and spun into space like an autumn leaf in a gale. Straight after, the engine mountings failed and snapped. Freed of the wing, the engine tumbled free and fell into the fjord waters. Loose electrical cables sparked and arced, shooting sparks into the air like angry little creatures themselves alive as the warplane died. Under the upward shove of rising water, the bomber lurched upwards as if by a giant hand, and both bomb doors failed immediately, the port door jamming up against the warload, the starboard door bending downwards and coming away in the spray of water. Both right engines continued to run, turning their airscrews at full power. As the port wing engines had no power, the starboard side yawed out of control and added to the destruction, overstressing the right main spar that coupled with the upward thrust from the blast to separate the starboard wing cleanly from the fuselage. Now coming out of the terrific column of water the airplane was battered, broken, wounded, dying. Sure enough, the explosives had worked as intended. Spinning like a falling leaf, the right wing soared and careered two hundred yards through the air. Visible damage amounted to large sections of alloy missing from the lower surface and three single panels from the upper. Both engines turned a speed until the wing hit the surface of the sandy shoreline, under a cliff face, in a noise made like Thor himself, and the aerofoil ceased to be. Ruptured fuel tanks exploded as metal sparked against rock, igniting hundreds of gallons of gasoline. The structure collapsed, bent and deformed, sending metal fragments in all directions, shattering in a ball of angry orange flame. Black smoke rose into the air as the remains tumbled and bounced, dislodging part of the rock face by the narrow beach. In a cacophony of sound, tons of loose rock fell onto the wreckage and into the shallow water, sending ripples gently outwards as the fire burned, fed by burning alloy and fuel vapour. It resembled a scene from hell. Was this a snapshot of what would soon happen if the Nazis used their new super weapon?
Missing a wing, the Halifax continued in the direction of flight for a few more seconds. Now only a fine mist remained of the water tower from the explosion, gravity dragged the battered outburst back to its home, the fjord. Ripples spread far and wide as a reminder the blast. In the air, the mortally hit Halifax curved to earth in a big arc, what airspeed there was fell away. It resembled a child’s model plane, broken and thrown away, discarded after a tantrum. But this warplane contained seven men. In the tail gun position the gunner, a 26-year-old Irish man, a veteran of eighteen missions, was very fearful. He glimpsed the torn-off wing hitting the beach and the chaos that followed and he knew what would follow, that he was about to die. In the top turret the 22-year-old gunner screamed, an animal sound as he prepared to die. Up front the Bomb Aimer was one of the lucky ones; knocked unconscious by the blast, it was his young fiancée back in England who would be unlucky. In the cockpit the pilot struggled in vain to control what was uncontrollable: until the last moment he struggled, a lost battle – he was a brave man. Down by his side the Flight Engineer hung on for his life, with no functioning engines to monitor now. Never in his young nineteen years had he ever been as scared but he still had faith in his pilot to land this broken plane, even now. His young innocence was also naivety. Behind the Bomb Aimer, the Navigator quickly prayed as he felt the bomber shake and lurch through the air. He quickly looked at the view ahead and past the unconciouss Bomb Aimer and he became upset. He had reason to be.  The last crew member, the Wireless Operator, in the fuselage, was already dead. A piece of metal had broken away and had hit him on the head, fracturing his skull. He was slumped over his radios, dead at his post.
Now, falling tail first to the earth from an altitude measured in a few dozen feet, debris broke away and followed the plane, small splashes in the water. Touching once, violently, the Halifax bounced back into the air, tail lifting for a second and then plunging into the water followed by the rest of the machine. The glazed nose area caved in, smashed in by the water; torrents poured in past the Bomb Aiming position, washing the Gunner down the fuselage, along with the Navigator, who drowned, horribly. Water cascaded like a mad serpent through the plane, filling space occupied by air in less than ten seconds, a watery tomb for all on board. Those alive and conscious drowned and left this world. Settling into the dark water, lower and lower until the fuselage disappeared completely, the plane disappeared from view. Due to the missing wing, the starboard side sank first to the bottom of the fjord, thirty metres below and a hundred from the shore. In two minutes calm water replaced the ripples and waves; only floating debris remained, along with the burning wing on the shore. It was like the airplane has ceased to exist. Now the pilot was with his dead Satanic love.
Orders had been followed and sombre congratulations were passed by radio to the gun crews and special explosive crew who had taken part in the battle and won. Victory was won, proving the technique of placing a ton of explosive in shallow water, could bring a plane down. Gun crews had harried their enemy but equally helped in the end result. Would the next attack be as easily repulsed? What if it was a dozen bombers, a hundred? Only time would tell…