Ruth leaned forward and peered up through the windshield. To the east, a swarm of fighter planes were battling in the sky. Machine guns barked as the aircraft rolled and twisted through the air.
“French?” Lucette asked.
Ruth strained her eyes and recognized the roundels of the Royal Air Force. “British.”
An RAF fighter veered away from the pack, and it was pursued by a German aircraft. The British pilot ascended, turned, and dived his plane in an attempt to shake the enemy fighter from his tail. But as seconds passed, the German pilot closed the space between their planes.
“Please get away,” Ruth breathed.
A burst of machine gun fire erupted from the German fighter, and smoke poured from the RAF plane. The damaged aircraft lost altitude and, within a few seconds, it rolled into an inverted dive.
“Non!” Lucette shouted.
Ruth squeezed the steering wheel and prayed to see a parachute open. But the plane continued its plummet with no sign of the pilot bailing out.
“Jump!” Lucette shouted.
Ruth’s breath stalled in her lungs. The front wheels of the ambulance rumbled over the berm. As she turned the wheel, getting the vehicle back on the road, they passed a dense area of towering pines that obstructed their view. She slammed the accelerator and raced ahead. As they arrived at a clearing, a solitary plume of smoke rose from behind a hill. The German pilot circled his aircraft once over the area, as if to confirm his kill, and headed toward the massive dogfight that raged on the horizon.
“Did he get out?” Ruth asked.
“I couldn’t tell.”
A tank gun exploded, less than a few kilometers away. Startled starlings flew from trees and blackened the sky above a field.
Ruth pressed the brake and slowed the ambulance to a stop. She peered in the direction where the plane went down. “What do you want to do?”
“We need to see if he survived.”
“I agree.”
Lucette pulled a well-worn map from under her seat. She scanned it, and ran a finger over a route. “Up ahead, there looks to be an unpaved road. It should take us near the accident site.”
Ruth sped ahead. Reaching what turned out to be a dirt lane that ran between two sprawling farms, she turned right. Ruts and potholes jostled them in their seats. Soon, they passed an old farmhouse with the front door wide open, as if the owner had hastily fled. At the end of the lane, a wooden gate blocked the entrance to a large, upward-sloping grass field.
Lucette pointed. “The gate has a chain and padlock.”
“Hold on.” She pressed the accelerator.
Lucette placed her hands on the dashboard.
The front bumper of the ambulance smashed through the wooden gate, shattering one of the vehicle’s headlamps and sending broken boards over the ground.
Ruth downshifted and drove the ambulance up the hill.
“That way!” Lucette said, pointing.
She adjusted the wheel and continued the climb. At the summit of the hill, she stopped the vehicle under the branches of two thick beech trees for camouflage, and gazed over the landscape. From her high vantage point, she spotted the smoldering wreckage of the RAF aircraft, two hundred meters away. To the east and a kilometer away, two divisions of Panzer tanks—separated by a series of hills—were headed in their direction. She clenched the wheel to keep her hands from trembling.
“My God,” Lucette said. “There are hundreds of them.”
Ruth fought away her fear and turned her attention to the wreckage. “Do you see the pilot?”
Lucette looked at the smoke, drifting from the plane debris. “Non. I hope he got out. No one could survive that.”
Ruth scanned a forest beyond the aircraft ruins, and her eyes locked on a piece of white material that protruded from a pine. “There!”
Lucette placed a hand above her eyes and squinted. “I see a parachute.”
“Can you spot him?”
“Non.” Lucette glanced at the tanks, rolling over the hills and closing in on their location. “Can we make it there in time?”
“We’ll have to.”
Before either of them could change their mind, Ruth threw the vehicle into gear and sped down the meadow, placing them into the path of the advancing Panzers.
CHAPTER 16
LIART, FRANCE—MAY 15, 1940
Ruth barreled the ambulance down the sloping, grass-covered field, all the while praying that they wouldn’t be spotted. The steering wheel juddered in her hands as the vehicle rumbled over the rough terrain. Within seconds, the ambulance neared the base of the hill, placing them out of view from the Panzers.
“Do you think they saw us?” Lucette asked.
“I don’t know, but we’ll soon find out if they did.”
The terrain leveled off and Ruth veered the vehicle past the smoldering remains of the fighter plane, filling her nose with an acrid stench of burning aviation fuel. As she accelerated through an area of high grass, her hope of finding the airman faded at the sight of a large crevice.
