Day of Vengeance by Johnny O'Brien Page A

Tour
    Jack tasted blood in his mouth. He opened his eyes. He was lying on his side in the cockpit and his whole body throbbed with pain. Angus was slumped on top of him, unmoving. The canopy of the cockpit had been shattered. Jack blinked and tried to understand where they were. He looked up. They were surrounded by a damp swirling mist, which limited visibility, but he could make out a complex tracery of interlocking iron girders rising high above them, disappearing into the cloud. He twisted his head round and peered down over the edge of the fuselage where it met the canopy at the edge of the cockpit. He felt his chest tighten in fear when he looked down. Below, the same strange structure of metal latticework disappeared down into an endless grey void of swirling mist. Jack could not see the ground. The fuselage of the aircraft seemed to have come to rest on its side, but was firmly wedged between at least two sections of interlocking girders. The wings had been ripped free in the impact. Jack had no idea where they were, but they were suspended in midair and the ground was nowhere to be seen.
    The weight of Angus, lying on top of him, crushed him into the side of the cockpit. Was he dead? Jack poked his friend in the back with his free hand. Angus groaned, and Jack felt a wave of relief. But the relief turned to horror as Jack realised that the blood in his mouth was dripping from Angus’s face. Jack could only seethe back of his head – but it was clear that there was a lot of blood and that Angus was in a bad way.
    “Angus – are you OK?”
    Angus groaned again. Jack rocked himself forward to try and get a proper look at Angus’s injuries. But it was hopeless. He was completely stuck, with Angus unmoving right on top of him. His legs and back were numbing under the pressure. He pushed forward a second time and suddenly there was a groaning and scraping of metal as the whole aircraft moved against the steel struts that held it precariously in place. Jack froze. If he moved – the whole aircraft also moved. It was unstable and if it dislodged, they would plummet earthwards and then there was no way they could possibly survive.
    They were trapped.
    Jack felt anger welling up inside. Anger at Pendelshape, anger at VIGIL, anger at himself for getting them into this situation. They were utterly helpless and, to his dismay, Jack could feel the breeze was beginning to freshen. That wasn’t good. Wind whistled through the strange structure and its criss-crossing iron beams appeared and then disappeared as the mist churned and eddied all around. Then, off to one side, Jack saw something extraordinary. The mist cleared for a moment and, as it did, a very large piece of red cloth floated down only a few metres away from them. As it dropped to earth, it suddenly unfurled right in front of Jack’s eyes to reveal a large white circle on which was painted a strange black emblem. Jack had seen this particular emblem in scores of books and films and now it appeared in front of him like some ghostly warning. It was a Nazi Swastika. As quickly as theflag had unfurled before him, it wrapped itself back into a damp ball of red cloth and dropped out of sight into the mist below.
    Jack was scared. He was in pain, his best friend was bleeding to death and there was nothing he could do about it, and now Nazi images were appearing, spectre-like, in the mist in front of him. Maybe he had died in the crash and this was hell. Finally, his eyes flickered and he passed out.
     
    Voices. Very close. From his position he couldn’t see anyone, but he could hear them. From out of nowhere a rope flopped onto the side of the fuselage and dangled into the canopy. Jack heard someone shouting at him, urgently, “Ecoutez moi, on va vous lancer une corde. Mettez–la autour de votre taille. Dépêchez-vous, on n’a pas beaucoup de temps! ”
    Jack didn’t understand what they were saying, but he knew the language: French. And he knew enough French to