Stover turned toward Phips, his expression still unforgiving. “We can go north to Sweden if we have to, bail out, and be interned. That assumes, of course, that we can even find Sweden.”

“Yeah,” Phips responded angrily, “and we’d be interned for the duration of the war and who knows how long that’ll be. The experts say it’ll be over in a few months, but with our luck it might just be decades. It also presumes that the Swedes won’t turn us over to the Nazis. I hear the Swedes spend a lot of time kissing Hitler’s ass since the krauts are right next door to them. And, oh yeah, we might just accidentally bail out over Nazi-occupied Norway or over those nice people in Stalin’s Soviet Union.”

It was common knowledge that Russia had interned some American and British fliers and wasn’t keen on returning them. Winding up chopping frozen rocks in Siberia was not a pleasant option.

Kent chimed in. “Again, I suggest we turn north and west in hopes of finding the Baltic. At that point, I further suggest we stay over the water until we hit Denmark, and I mean that figuratively and not literally.”

“Good.” agreed Phips. “And then we can cut the angle by flying over Denmark. I don’t think the krauts will waste sending fighters after one lousy lost bomber.” Of course, he thought, nobody thought their little flight of eighteen bombers would have been attacked by so many German fighters.

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Kent said, and Stover sullenly nodded agreement. “But when are you going to dump the bombs? We will need that fuel if we’re going to make it back.”

“I don’t have a target,” Phips said.

Stover shook his head in disbelief. “Christ, Chief, we’re only a couple of thousand feet over Germany. The whole fucking country’s a target. Just drop the damn things.”

Phips thought for a second and decided he agreed. Finally he felt he was doing the right thing. Maybe he could recover from this nightmarish day. Back in England, he’d be criticized for his mistakes and the loss of Carson, but maybe, just maybe, he’d be allowed to learn from those mistakes and fly again. Regardless, his first job was to get his crew home.