New Heavens Read Online Free Page A

calm and an uncanny silence. I feel as though I am suspended in that huge sky, only the cool breeze blowing over my cheeks and upward through my hair, freed now of the leather helmet, which makes me realize that I am falling. The silence is broken by the deep thump of bombs and the sharper cracks of ack-ack over Mestre a few miles to the west. But at the same time, I have a feeling of utter loneliness as I look for my stricken aircraft. A minute later, I see the Kittyhawk plunge into the sea in one final dive, and as the sea closes around her, I feel I have lost something dear and close.
    The big, incredibly beautiful canopy of the chute bulges above me as I sway gently below it. Over to one side below me but dangerously close, the docks of Venice exude clouds of smoke and dust with the sky above it peppered by antiaircraft fire. I am close enough to make out the campanile of St. Marks and the Lido. In spite of dread at the fate in store for me, I am glad we have succeeded in our mission to destroy the main Axis port in Italy.
ALONE WITH MAE WEST
    My thoughts quickly return to my own predicament and I prepare to hit the icy Adriatic. I look at the sea far below.With momentum gathering deceptively slowly, it seems to loom toward me, and I realize that I shall soon plunge into it. I turn the parachute harness button and hold my fist in front of it ready to hit it smartly for releasing, knowing how many pilots have made a safe landing in the water, only to choke and drown in the harness and shrouds. I inflate my Mae West life jacket with a twist of the lever from under the flap and note with relief the shiny yellow material swell as the gas fills the life vest. I decide to wait a little and continue to fall. God, it’s a good thing I didn’t release. I must still have been a thousand feet up. Then a sudden shock as I hit the freezing water. All at once I hear a ghastly sound of retching and groaning.
    I look around in astonishment for the source of the inhuman racket, only to realize that the source is me as I spew water from my lungs, all the while pushing and dragging the parachute away from my head. When I finally get free of it—just moments ago my salvation but now a threat to my life—I search blindly in the water under my buttocks until I find the dinghy package whose hardness I cursed on every flight. By the time I find the inflation bottle, my fingers are numb. I remember Rusty who had bailed out six weeks ago into the same sea east of Lake Comacchio only to be found frozen dead inside his dinghy two hours later.
    I grope in the water below me, trying to remove the safety pin so I can unscrew the bottle to inflate the dinghy. But my frozen fingers cannot even feel the pin. After one last desperate effort, I realize it’s a losing battle. The more I try, the more frozen my fingers become. When I realize the heavy dinghy package is dragging me down into the depthsbelow I give up, unhook the dingy package, and watch it sink into the watery abyss beneath me.
    As we started our dive on the ships, the radio silence ended and the racket in my earphones was overpowering. Now with my helmet and earphones gone, the wind blows gently through my hair and the peace and quiet around me seem unreal. The anti-aircraft guns booming from the nearby shore and the whine of the Merlin and Allison engines above form an uncanny background. I am completely alone immersed in what looks an endless cold ocean, with no contact to anyone who can rescue me. I see the yellow fluorescent dye from my Mae West staining the water around me. I pray my pal Tony above is keeping his eyes on my bobbing head in the slowly expanding patch of discolored water from my Mae West.
    The three remaining Kittyhawks of my flight circle high above me as they try to keep me in sight among the waves. It is comforting to feel that I have not been abandoned, but I know that my chances of coming out alive are minimal. Apart from the paralyzing cold, which