The next two days passed very quickly due to the fact that Shane wasn’t allowed to fly in any patrols because of his mission.
Closer and closer came the time that he was going to fly in his perilous mission.
At five minutes to 2000 Shane walked outside and told the mechanics to warm up his plane.
Ten minutes later brought him travelling over no man’s land at a height of 20,000 feet. He was looking to his left when he noticed a Fokker DV.III flying towards him. This startled and annoyed Shane greatly. He put his nose down in the hope of avoiding combat and this worked.
One hour later and he was landing at the field. As soon as he hit the deck a figure leapt from the hedge bordering the field and sprinted towards the Bristol.
That was when the machine gun opened fire. Gray almost soiled his pants as he heard bullets ripping holes in the fabric of his plane. He looked around and saw the agent getting into the rear cockpit of the Bristol. Not having time to turn the plane around Shane decided to risk taking off with a small runway.
He slammed forward the throttle and zoomed up just missing the top of the hedge that bordered the field.
Deciding not to waste time climbing for altitude, Shane put in a fine display of low level flying. As he kicked the rudder bar to dodge a church tower that lay in his path he saw three Albatrosses behind him and a few thousand feet higher than him.
Blast those damn Jerries, he thought to himself.
He knew that they would catch up and he would be in deep trouble.
Still dodging obstacles, he looked over his shoulder and saw they were almost within effective shooting range.
Subconsciously he decided that he’d die fighting and at least take an enemy with him.
Spinning around he caught the Jerries off guard and managed to get a burst in before them. Although he didn’t notice at the time with that first burst he’d shot the propeller off the leading plane meaning it had to crash land.
Doing an Immelmann turn he caught the second Albatross unawares. One minute the Bristol had been in its sights the next it was gone. Looking around for the Bristol he never saw it again. It had got on the Albatrosses tail and the first burst hit the pilot killing him outright. The crash of the plane could be heard above the noise of Shane’s engine.
The third Albatross was disgusted about the loss of the two planes and decided to turn around and head home.
Shane breathed a sigh of relief and set his nose towards the front lines.
Ten uneventful minutes passed before the archie started firing at him. For a change the firing was fairly accurate and just behind the German front lines an archie shell bust right in front of him.
The Bristol’s engine coughed and spluttered for a few seconds before dying completely.
Looking down Shane decided that it’d be a close thing of whether or not he made it past the German lines.
Then a terrible thought hit him. He was carrying a spy and if caught would be put up against a brick wall to face a firing squad.
Fifty feet up and he passed the German front lines. Knowing he wasn’t safe yet he prepared to do a pancake landing on the rough shell torn surface below that is no man’s land.
Luckily he missed the craters and managed to get down with only severe shock. Looking behind him he saw the agent was unconscious. Well he hoped he was only unconscious.
As it turned out he had only fainted meaning they both escaped injury.
They began the long and dirty task of crawling the hundred yards to the British front line.
When they were ten yards away they were spotted and immediately taken prisoner by some waiting Tommies.
After telling their story they were freed and a tender arrived to take them back to Shane’s airfield.
