0815 hours
Standing in a closed office of the C-n-C with William and Julia, Col. Giles was succinct. "To fly you need an aircraft."
More understating of the obvious, William complained to himself. "Sir. I believe I might know where a plane is located. I noticed an old plane, a Ryan M-1 if memory serves, while we were on the road, just sitting in a dilapidated farming shed. How it escaped the bombing or the Jerrys I don't know, but there it was. If I can get it working, and a petrol ration, Major Ogden says she knows how to fly it."
Giles' skeptical gaze pinned each of them. "And you agree to this scheme, Major?"
"Sir. I assure you I've flown before. Haven't had much opportunity since the war began, and I'm certainly not a dog fighter as they say, but I can indeed pilot a single engine plane," Julia answered him.
To his credit, the colonel didn't seem particularly shocked. "Excellent, Major. Are you sure you want to volunteer for this duty? This is no quiet Sunday stroll. We're at war, and you may have to evade some anti-aircraft fire from the Jerry's. Are you up to it?" he asked.
"Sir, my childhood heroine was Bessie Coleman. I used to practice some of her tricks," Julia laughed.
"Very well, Major." Dabbing at his mouth daintily with a napkin, he nodded. "How very modern."
Julia stiffened, not absolutely sure that was approbation or not, then he smiled slightly and continued.
"Officially, there will be no note of this on your record. However, I will speak to your command for you." Col. Giles agreed, adding in his dry tone: "Just to be certain, I will arrange plan "B" for you captain."
William and Julia looked at each other and nodded. "Yes sir," they answered in concert.
0830 hours
Once again in the old battered Jeep, Julia braced herself as best as she could against the jolts and swaying. Who knew this thing had the suspension of a blanc mange? William wasn't kidding when he told me to hang on.
Still, it was rather endearing how his arm kept shooting out to protect her every time they hit a bump in the road and William drove with as much precision as possible, careful to avoid the craters and ruts in the road as best as he could.
Luckily, the drive was short, and soon he pulled up to an old farm, for true to his word, an old Ryan M-1 plane sat in a barn shed. He drove her closer, got out of the Jeep and manhandled the rest of the large wooden door aside. "Julia?" he asked.
To her surprise, the plane appeared intact - propeller, wings, struts, tail and landing gear - all wedged into the barn shed with inches to spare, a smattering of debris on the wings, and what she guessed was bird droppings spotting the portions of the skin not covered in canvas. Nodding, she answered his unasked question.
"Yes, I can indeed fly the machine - provided we can get it running again." Heaving her sore body out of the jeep, she stumbled over to the old plane, gradually getting her legs back under her. She walked around the plane, giving it a cursory examination, making mental notes of what to check and looking around for what tools might be there while William went to the house to see if anyone was there.
Soon she heard footsteps approaching and French being spoken as she hid behind an old oil can until she ascertained that the footsteps and voices belonged to William and a farmer of indeterminate age.
"Julia, the man here, Monsieur Durand, says this is his plane. He bought it in the late 20's after the first world war - he was a pilot in that conflict," William explained as he rolled up his sleeves. "Last time he took it up, it worked fine, but he hasn't been able to take it up since the invasion - so it's been idle for approximately four years," he added. "He's giving it to us, Julia. I told him that I could make no promises that I could ever bring it back and he says he's fine with it if it's for a good cause."
"Merci, Monsieur Durand," Julia thanked him in her schoolgirl French.
Motioning towards her, the man asked William a question, and laughed, and given William's tell-tale blush, Julia knew it must have been a crude comment. Typical Gallic Machismo. Still, if the man was giving them a plane, she'd grin and bear it.
William gestured back towards her and informed him that she was the pilot.
"Oui? Comme Amelia Earhart?" he asked.
"Et Bessie Coleman..." she said for the second time that day.
The man threw his head back in laughter and nodded. "Bon."
The three of them immediately set to work: She checked the engine and other parts of the plane. The man ran about the barn and brought over any tools or parts he thought would be useful, while William tested and examined the structural integrity of the plane. Surprisingly, Julia found the plane in good working order, but given that it had been sitting idle for four years, the battery and spark plugs were no longer working.
"Je suis désolé, je n'ai pas ces choses," he said regretfully.
Looking back inside the engine, Julia wondered if there was anything she could do to restore the necessary parts when William snapped his fingers and ran outside. Looking out after him, she saw that he was pulling those items from the jeep!
William soon ran back into the barn with the battery and spark plugs needed, while Julia looked at their size.
"William, they're both different sizes. They're not the kind the plane needs," she informed him as he waved her off.
"This is simple, Julia. Remind me to tell you about Sgt. MacGuyver sometime," he laughed.
"Sgt. MacGuyver? Who is that?"
"He was someone I worked with on the force back in Toronto. I've always fancied myself as someone quite resourceful, but he could make the most incredible things out of mundane items," he explained, as he pulled the old parts out of the plane and rewired the jeep's parts to plane's wiring. "Quite incredible, really," he added as he began to fit the new battery and spark plugs to the plane. "Hand me that spanner, will you?"
He had confidence he could get the electrical and mechanical components up to snuff. He basically only needed the electrical to get the engine started. The landing gear was more problematic. The frame appeared sound but to his eye the rubber tyres looked sketchy, yet he supposed if they could take off without them coming off the wheels then it was going to have to serve for a landing. What was the saying? Any landing you walk away from is a good one?
He also needed fuel. Julia was going to have to calculate the gas consumption across the channel to a landing strip on the other side. Thinking about that possibility of a hard landing, maybe too much excess fuel was a bad idea…
Meanwhile, Julia stood in amazement. Was there anything the man couldn't do? He has got to be the most intelligent person I've ever known.
"Julia." William called her over. "We need to make this trip in daylight. You will have to fly by compass and sight, yes?"
"Yes. The easiest thing would be to hug the coast and then cross at Calais, but we cannot because it is not yet in Allied hands. Instead we will have to fly east to Cherbourg then north to the Isle of Wight. "
William did a quick calculation. "About seventy five miles of open water."
"We could use some references and maps, William. A stopwatch and a compass. Can you get them?"
He nodded. "And a way to make sure we are not shot out of the sky."
"That too," she smiled. "We are lucky the weather and winds are near perfect today for flying."
"That means we have…" he checked his watch, "roughly twelve hours of good light to get this plane up and across to England."
She thought he might be having doubts. "That sounds right. William. I can do this."
"I have no doubt in you, Julia. None at all." And it was true. He was very confident that she could perform brilliantly. "While I work on this, can you please look over the area this plane requires for take off? I assume you need a certain distance and for it to be flat?" He pointed to the dodgy rubber tyres.
Julia acknowledged his concern and looked up to study the terrain. "I'd prefer at least 1,000 feet, but can do it in less in a pinch. I learned to fly from a bush pilot, a friend of my uncle's from Australia. I've seen him do it in less, much less. Let me ask M. Durand how he managed it."
She started walking away then looked over her shoulder back at him with a saucy grin. "You know, my sister will just be green with envy when I tell her of this adventure. She is always complaining I am a big stick in the mud while she is off gallivanting, slipping in and out of a maharajah's palace or an Arab shaikh's harem." She laughed. "She has tall tales about her life as a war correspondent and all the high level contacts she has. I can't wait to tell her we fixed an aeroplane with the equivalent of my garter belt and flew it across the English Channel to boot!"
She could feel his eyes staring at her backside as she sauntered off. Though today's mission was serious, she felt light-hearted and in a playful mood. She also overheard the farmer say something to William again and given that he didn't reply but had a blush accompanying his grin, Julia knew it also had to have been off color.
She chuckled to herself as she walked through tall grass to the field the farmer showed her, located a short distance from the shed. He told her it was what he used to use as the runway as it was a relatively long stretch of flat land, if now overgrown. The land used to be fertile before the conflict, now only a few sheep used it for grazing. Julia began pulling weeds and stomping down long grass so that the plane wouldn't get caught up in the overgrowth when the farmer joined her with what she had to guess was his family: a short, but formidable woman who must have been his wife, and three children, the oldest of which was no more than 12. Silently, they joined her in the field with scythes (the wife kindly offering her a pair of tough gloves) as she and her oldest son found grass cutting machines to trim a lane out of the grass and eliminate any saplings which the sheep had neglected to mow.
A couple of hours later, they'd cleared enough for what she calculated was a sufficient airstrip and the sheep were safely penned, while William continued on repairs, topping off fluids and tightening bolts. She heard a rumble, and squinted to see William and M. Durand pull up in an old farm truck. The two men unloaded a barrel from the back, then the farmer set out to fuel the plane which he and William had dragged out into the sun in front of the shed and chocked. She came over to supervise.
Julia thought the Ryan M-1 looked a little worse for wear in better light, a tarp still caught on her tail section. She inhaled oil, turpentine and paint fumes while skimming a hand over the skin of the fuselage, hot from the sun's rays. Nodding to him, William gave her a leg up into the cockpit and settled into the seat, luxuriating in the sensation.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught William making what she thought was a Catholic blessing for good luck. Smiling to herself, her heart racing in anxiety and excitement to be in a plane again, she ran her fingers over the gears and controls with pleasure, imagining the thrill of being up in the air again.
Now, will she fly?
In the cockpit, Julia crossed her own fingers and tried the ignition. With a whine and a sputter and lots of black and blue smoke, the Hispano-Suiza engine turned over, spinning a protesting propeller into full rotation.
"Voila!" she exulted over the roar, waving to the Durand family and William on the ground clapping. "It worked!" She tried all the directional and lift mechanics and they seemed tight but functional. Julia just let 'er go to clean the fuel lines out a bit and checked instrumentation again before powering down, feeling triumphant.
William caught her around the waist as she came off the wing. He felt how lithe and graceful she was. "Do you think you can get us to Wight in this?" he asked. "From there we can get them to take us to Bletchley. They'll spot us at Ventnor before we can even see it, so we'll need to announce we're coming; no use in trying to make it to the mainland any other way."
"Yes, I can. I suppose you're going to tell me that there's a super secret technology that enables people to see things before they can actually be seen?" Julia laughed.
"Radar is not that secret, Julia. Of course the Americans have made some major improvements over the past few years that are quite classified, but I'll stop there, namely because I myself don't know what those are," he chuckled back, circling the plane with her one more time.
"You have been busy, William." Julia continued to examine the plane, approving of the repairs.
He smiled, holding up a leather satchel. "I come bearing gifts. I went back to the hospital and found my comrades. By getting them a lift to their - shall we say headquarters - they gave me maps as well as the stopwatch and compass you requested. Col. Giles requisitioned a radio from Sparky. It's significantly better than the one in the plane, and we'll need it," he added, holding up the items for her inspection.
She was pleased with his finds, taking them eagerly. The maps were good, allowing her to calculate distance using time and airspeed as a backup for visual references in case of fog or foul weather. While Julia worked on navigation, William and M. Durand dragged the plane from the shed to the edge of the field and double checked the tyres and struts.
When she was confident in her numbers, she approached William. "I think we're about ready to go. It's midday now, the skies are clear." His serious face surprised her, and she got worried when he took her aside.
"Julia, M. Durand is a pilot and he knows the plane. I think he'd jump at the chance to fly it again, and …" The plane was more than twenty years old - he worried about those tyres, the struts, the wings shearing off over the ocean, the tail separating, a crash landing when the gear collapses on touchdown...The very idea of Julia going down with this rickety old plane...
The thought of losing her by involving her in his mission wrenched his guts, and he was more afraid of that than the anger brewing in her blue eyes. "Julia...You are wonderful. Brave. Daring. But I think it is too dangerous. M. Durand...I love you and I don't want you to…"
"William Murdoch! No! Absolutely not! I'm your pilot William, and don't you ever forget that!" she cut him off.
For a long moment the two of them stood face to face, breathing hard, staring eye to eye in a fierce battle of wills. Slowly, very slowly, the tension between them eased and their breathing gentled. Julia cracked a smile first, taking his hands in hers. William let out one more large breath and took a lungful in and out again. He shifted his gaze, looking up at her from under his lashes.
"Is that a marriage proposal, Doctor?"