"Guy N. Smith - The Wood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

PROLOGUE



Bertie Hass dosed his eyes, braced himself for the limb-wrenching jerk when
his parachute billowed out, tried to will it to open. The cold night air
rushed by him, tore at his heavy clothing. It won't open, Bertie, A jeering
whisper inside his head. You know it won't. Didn't that clairvoyant in
Stuttgart tell you it would happen like this?

Falling, faster and faster. And faster. Now he was preparing himself for the
crunching impact when he hit the ground far below. He could see it in the
faint moonlight reinforced by the flames from his crashed plane and the
inferno of a city way beyond the horizon. The night was burning like hell
itself, and there was only one place he was going. Down.

Mission accomplished, Herr Commandant, the city is destroyed, razed to the
ground. Pride, overwhelming satisfaction. You always lost men on raids, it was
inevitable. Soldiers, airmen were of necessity a dispensable commodity in war.
Secretly, selfishly, you hoped it would not be your turn, always somebody
else's.

Falling.

And then the cords jerked him, twisted him, tore at his arms as though they
sought to rip them from his body, bore him some grudge for his loyalty to the
Fatherland. He almost blacked out, had a blurred glimpse of Ingrid's face
again. Darkness and the torments of hell lie below you. Do you not see the
flames?

The night sky was a fiery glow now, so bright that he could not shut it out
even by closing his eyes. He felt the searing heat, heard the muffled
explosions; bombs still going off, incessant ack-ack fire, the drone of heavy
bombers, interspersed with the hornet-like whine of Spitfires.

But that was all behind him, ten, fifteen, even twenty miles away. His plane
had come down, the crew still inside it except for himself. A sense of guilt,
cowardice. No, it was every man for himself when you got hit, everybody
accepted that. Try and bale out, take your chance.

He was floating now, drifting steadily on a downward course, a sense of
euphoria overwhelming him. The bombing and gunfire were barely audible;
perhaps he had come even further than he had thought. Just a faint orange glow
over the horizon. He glanced down again, saw a mass of shadows, some darker
than others, a silvery sheen beyond that was undoubtedly the sea. He certainly
had lost his bearings.

Darkness and the torments of hell lie below you.
Bertie Hass tried to shrug off his uneasiness, attempted to shut out the voice
that undoubtedly belonged to Ingrid the clairvoyant. He had not visited her