He heard the captain's voice again: "All right, boys, here we go. What is it our friends the limeys say?

"Tally ho!" Now, anyone here got any idea what the hell they mean by that?"

The twin fourteen-cylinder Wright Cyclone engines started screaming as the captain pushed them far past their redline. The maximum speed of the Mitchell was supposed to be two hundred and eighty-four miles per hour, but Tommy Hart knew they had pressed past that point. They were coming in out of the sun as best they could, low against the horizon, and he thought showing up nice and dark in the sights of every gun in the convoy.

Lovely Lydia shuddered slightly as the bomb bay doors opened, and then again, buffeted in the sky by the sudden wind of fire, as the guns awaiting them opened up. Black puffs filled the air, and the motors screamed in defiance. The copilot was shouting something incomprehensible as the plane ripped through the air toward the line of ships. Tommy had risen from his seat, finally staring through the cockpit window, his hands gripping a steel support bar. For the smallest of moments, he caught sight of the first of the German destroyers, its wake streaming out in a white tail behind it, as it spun about in the water, almost like a ballet dancer's pirouette, smoke from all its weapons rising into the air.

Lovely Lydia was slammed once, then again, skewing through the sky.

Tommy Hart had felt his throat dry up, and some sound was welling up from deep within himself, half a shout, half a groan, as he stared out ahead at the line of ships desperately trying to maneuver out of the path of the bombing run.

"Let 'em go!" he'd shouted, but his voice had been lost in the scream of the engines and the thudding of the flak bursting all around them.