Flying Angels(58)

“Don’t let them kill you,” she said softly. “Many people depend on you.” She could tell that from the way his men looked out for him, and what the British were doing for him. “I want to see you again,” she said, and meant every word. It had been the strangest night of her life, trying to save him so he could escape. He leaned forward then, and his hands were strong but gentle as he pulled her toward him and kissed her in a way she knew she would never forget if she lived a hundred years. Her eyes were full of tears when he stopped. She wanted him to live so she could see him again. Or maybe he would just be a fantasy forever. She was a young Black air forces nurse from Raleigh, North Carolina. If what he said was true, he was a French count. She guessed him to be about ten years older than she was. He was a white French nobleman, a powerful agent of the Resistance whom every German in the area wanted to put in front of a firing squad. The chances of her ever seeing him again were slim to none. In her mind, she knew it, but in her heart she wished it could be otherwise. There was a fairy-tale quality to meeting him that she wanted to remember in every detail.

   One of his men came to walk him into the next room when it was time to leave. They cheered when they saw him on his feet, and the shots Louise had given him helped him to move more freely than he should. He might pay for it in pain later, but for now, he looked like a healthy man again, which might save his life. She quietly joined her team and watched him from across the room. He and his men and the two women went up the ladder. Louise and her team were to wait an hour, and then two members of the Resistance would lead them back the way they’d come. They would be picked up that night at a designated location by a British transport plane. And Gonzague would be on his way over the mountains by then, in a truck headed north to the Swiss border.

   He was the last one of his group to leave the subterranean room, and he turned with one hand on the ladder. His piercing sky-blue eyes found her again. He said nothing, but she remembered his lips on hers. He nodded, thinking the same thing, silently reminding her of his promise to find her, and then he was gone.





Chapter 14


Louise’s team returned safely to the base after an arduous journey. The plane picking them up had trouble landing and there were German fighter planes in the area, but they eventually were picked up after the pilot made several passes at it and then flew them home.

Five days later, Paris was liberated. Five hundred Resistance fighters were killed in the fight for Paris. Louise and her crew had saved nine of them, one of them being the most important Resistance leader of the war.

Even after the liberation of Paris, which was a jubilant event, people’s nerves were frayed. They were tired of the war. It had gone on for too long. Five years since it all started in Europe. And three for the Americans, who were fighting alongside their Allies in Europe and the Pacific, even if not on home turf, as the Europeans were. They kept hearing promises that it would be over soon, but it never was. Another devastating battle would happen, another border would be crossed, and for every victory there were costly defeats and heavy losses.



* * *



—

   It had been two months since Pru’s brother had been killed in August, and she wanted to go back to Yorkshire to see her parents, but hadn’t had a day off since. She knew Max hadn’t had leave since then either. He hadn’t had time to visit her. They all worked constantly. Pru wrote to her mother regularly, and her mother’s letters sounded valiant, but there was an undercurrent of sadness now beneath the surface of the brave words.

Pru had just mailed her a letter the day before she took off on a flight to pick up men in the Argonne Forest, from a field near the American 12th Evacuation Hospital. Ed was supposed to fly with her, but Lizzie had somehow gotten a day off, and he put in a request for a day off so he could be with her. He apologized to Pru the night before. She said she didn’t mind.

“Someone should have some fun around here.” She hadn’t in a long time. She was still sad about her brother but tried not to let it show. Everyone had their losses to deal with and her stock-in-trade was her cheerful, positive demeanor. She thought it was important for a nurse. And she didn’t begrudge Ed the time off. He and Lizzie were so much in love that it made everyone around them happy to see it, and she told him to have fun and forget their missions for a day.

Reggie got the flight off smoothly the next morning despite some fog low to the ground. Autumn weather had set in, but they rose through the clouds into blue skies above. As soon as they did, they saw two fighter planes head toward them. Reggie tried to outrun them. They hadn’t picked up their wounded yet, and Reggie played tag in and out of the cloud cover with the planes. He thought he had outflown them when a third one appeared just above and opened fire. The others flew close, and they could see Reggie in the pilot seat when they too opened fire on them. The three fighter planes shot through their fuselage and peppered the plane with hits. The C-47 plummeted with a trail of smoke behind it, and hit the ground with a massive explosion from a full tank of fuel. The copilot had radioed back to the base while they were under attack, before they killed him. Reggie was already dead, and one of the corpsmen had taken a direct hit, and he said the nurse in charge was down too. He went off the airwaves after that.

   A reconnaissance team went out looking for the wreckage later that day and saw where it had gone down. There was a blackened crater where the plane had exploded close to the location the copilot had given them. There was some debris in the area, and nothing else left. The crew of five had died when the plane crashed, and some before. There had been no other passengers, no wounded aboard.