Free Once a Warrior by Fran Baker

emergency. That he wouldn’t let his crew down. And, if worse came to worse, that he would meet death like a man.
    So far, with the exception of a few bad flak attacks, his prayers had been answered.
    “Got any names picked out for the baby?” Bob asked him now.
    “John, Jr., if it’s a boy.”
    “And if it’s a girl?”
    “We can’t decide between Mary and Margaret.”
    “How about Mary Margaret?”
    “Mary Margaret.”  John mulled that over for a moment, then smiled. “I like it.”
    As they crossed the Romanian border, thick puffs of black smoke filled the sky, blotting out the sun. From dead reckoning, John placed the antiaircraft guns about a hundred miles from target. The shells exploded well to the right of the formation. But like ants at a picnic, he knew, there were plenty more where those had come from.
    “Oxygen check,” Bob clipped out.
    “Pilot OK,” John said tersely.
    They were nearing Bucharest now and everyone was on full alert. Going in on a bombing run, they were bound to attract heavier flak than when they were coming out. After all, an empty bomber couldn’t hurt anyone. The cloudless sky was no comfort, either, because it gave the German gunners a clear shot at them.
    John had just taken over the controls again when he heard it . . . a faint sound, like gravel being thrown on a tin roof.
    “Did you hear that?”  Narrow-eyed, he scanned the instrument panel but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
    Bob frowned. “Hear what?”
    There was no mistaking the second hit. It tore through the ship with a thunderous roar, shattering the windows and buckling the floor. A hunk of hot metal caught Pat in the throat, killing him instantly.
    “Oh, my God!” Bill screamed as he stared at the mittened hand with which he’d just wiped his face. “I’m bleeding!”
    “Everybody into their flak suits,” Bob ordered as the sky suddenly erupted into a sickening mass of smoke and flame and spheres of exploding steel.
    B-24s began going down all around them. The lead plane went into a steep dive with both wings trailing bright orange flames. Another one barrel-rolled onto its back and plummeted toward the ground. Yet a third plane took a direct hit in the bomb bay and disappeared in a cloud of oily black smoke.
    “Two o’clock low, sir,” Norm directed.
    John had already moved up to the lead position when he looked to his right and saw those ugly black spots climbing ever closer to their altitude. They missed completely. But seconds later the plane lurched again, as if swatted by some giant hand in the sky, and red-hot shrapnel ripped through the ship.
    “Mary, Mother of God.”  Norm sounded surprised as he slumped forward in the rear of the nose—blown back there by the flak blast.
    “I smell smoke!” the tail gunner cried.
    “Right waist gunner to pilot, we’re on fire.”
    Smoke from the battery of antiaircraft guns protecting the marshalling yard boiled up before John’s eyes. He tried to blot it and everything else out of his mind and concentrate on flying. The controls had gone soft on him but the railroad tracks he was following told him he was right on target.
    “Hit the bailout bell,” he snapped as he started losing altitude.
    Bob did as he was ordered.
    “Get out, you guys.”  John feathered the prop to cut down on drag and air resistance, then pulled up so that his remaining crewmen could jump. “I’m going in.”
    Fumbling with his parachute straps, Bob looked at him like he had oatmeal for brains. “You’re coming, too.”
    “I can’t.”  An icy calm descended on him as he glanced down and noted that his right leg had been severed and was hanging by just a few shreds of skin. His life’s blood gushed from the torn tissue but, oddly, there was no pain—only a merciful numbness. “I’m hit. Bad.”
    “I’ll help you hook up your pack,” his co-pilot insisted.
    “Get the hell out of here,” John shot back.
    “You gutsy sonuvabitch, you.”  Bob’s voice