Louvre Escape: An Archaeological Thriller (A Darwin Lacroix Adventure Book 7), page 1
LOUVRE ESCAPE
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL THRILLER
DARWIN LACROIX ADVENTURE SERIES
BOOK 7
DAVE BARTELL
Copyright © 2024 by Dave Bartell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
Preface
Prologue
Part I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
Part II
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
Denouement
Epilogue
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To my mom, Gussie, whose sense of aesthetic inspires me to seek it everyday.
PREFACE
On 13 July 2023, France adopted a bill to fast-track the return of artworks looted during World War II.
“I hope it will be a year of decisive progress for restitutions.”
Rima Abdul Malak, Minister of Culture
PROLOGUE
March 1945
Alsace-Lorraine, German-Occupied France
Ted Archer seized a handhold as the bomber jerked violently. The B-17’s massive wings flexed in the storm’s gathering fury. Lightning ripped the sky. Ted’s eyes pinched closed as the blinding flash faded.
“Hang on, boys.” The captain’s voice in their headsets stated the obvious. Art Spencer, at twenty-seven, was the old man on the crew.
Sally Mae’s ten men had been together since their first mission in mid-November. Thirty-five times, they’d joined hundreds of B-17s into enemy territory—delivering tons of high-energy explosives to crush German manufacturing. Fighters swarmed to protect their homeland, but each four-engine Flying Fortress bristled with thirteen Browning M2 machine guns. Getting close was like trying to grab a porcupine.
Today was their final mission. Last night in the pub, they’d drunk a pint to the toast “Home.” Afterward, Ted lay in his bunk, hoping for a milk run—hitting a coastal city where the Luftwaffe had been exterminated.
This morning’s briefing had been a bitter pill: strike a factory in Stuttgart, deep in the German homeland.
Ted focused on his instruments as the plane banked right. He cleaned the optics on the Norden bombsight for the third time since leaving England. Be ready. His stomach dropped as a wind sheer thrust them upward.
“Dang. This is like riding ol’ Nightmare back home,” said Tex, the nineteen-year-old waist gunner from Oklahoma. No one knew how he’d come by the nickname, but he’d bragged about being a rodeo cowboy so often that it had stuck.
“Where’d this weather come from?” asked Art.
“Don’t know, sir,” said the co-pilot. “Reconnaissance reported storms over central France but clear skies eastward.”
“George, what’s our position?”
“Checking, sir,” said George, the navigator, sitting just behind Ted.
Both sat below the flight deck with the pilot, copilot, and engineer, Nick. Behind them was the bomb bay and then the rest of the crew: Harry, the radio operator, and Sean, a diminutive Irishman who fit in the belly turret. Two waist gunners, Tex and Carter, aimed out to the sides, and the tail gunner was Bob. Each man wore long underwear beneath heated jumpsuits, coats, and, for the gunners, flak jackets. They all plugged into their stations for electrical power, communications, and, most importantly, oxygen. Flying in an unpressurized B-17 was like standing atop Mount Everest—humans did not live long in the death zone without proper equipment.
The men chattered using their throat microphones about what they’d do first when back home. Ted tuned them out. While he welcomed the banter, his role as bombardier was vital to the mission’s success. Today’s flight path had them heading south towards Paris and then turning east to Reims and passing over the Vosges Mountains north of Strasbourg. Once across the Rhine River, they’d swing wide and come at Stuttgart from the south before hightailing it back to England.
And home. Ted thought of his parents in California and his girlfriend, Clara, working at the Douglas plant in Long Beach. They wrote to each other, joking about both spending their days inside a B-17—her riveting the airframe, him directing its payload. When they’d parted last year, he hadn’t been ready to pop the question, but her letters had convinced him. She’s the one.
Thinking of her had kept him sane these last few weeks. The war was winding down, but the enemy wouldn’t quit even as civilian casualties mounted. Ted shook the thought off and focused on the job. He just wanted to go home.
Broken clouds gave glimpses of the farmland far below. Patches of green fit like puzzle pieces among fallow fields. Darker woodlands grew where the rolling hills were too steep to plow. A river snaked through it all, mercurial in the muted sunlight.
George announced, “We’re passing Strasbourg and will cross the Rhine in three minutes.”
Art’s voice crackled in their headsets: “Roger that.”
Ted’s plexiglass dome in the B-17’s nose gave him a 180-degree view—a front-row seat suspended thirty thousand feet above the earth. Only the bombsight was farther forward than him. Ted reflected on his crewmates. He’d grown close to Sallie Mae’s crew. They'd trained as a group back in the States and spent virtually every moment together since arriving in England. They played hard when not on a mission, as life on a bomber had worse survival odds than being in the infantry.
Today, Sallie Mae flew on point in group one of the twelve-plane combat box—a diamond shape that reduced the group’s attack surface. But enemy fighters weren't their concern at the moment.
Massive thunderheads darkened the sky. Another wind sheer swatted them. Ted braced himself against the bulkhead. Jesus. The plane leveled, and he frowned. Given this weather, his on-target rate would be zilch.
A perfectionist, Ted hated shoddy work. He was about to comment but then stopped. It doesn’t matter. Just finish the mission. We’re going home.
He focused on the bombing run. In sixty miles, Sallie Mae would turn hard right to approach Stuttgart from the south. He looked at the photographs of the Bosch factories, imagining his lineup again. Releasing the bombs was his only job. As he polished the Norden’s optics once more, all hell broke loose.
His body slammed into the instruments on the left wall, and a horrendous screeching came from aft. A boom rocked the plane. Sallie Mae’s nose dropped. Ted watched the ground rotate ninety degrees. Another concussive wave punched them. Voices yelled over the intercom:
“We’re hit!”
“What was it?”
“Did you see it?”
A blood-curdling scream.
Then, silence as the view outside the plexiglass rotated above the Rhine River.
Ted tapped his headset and turned the switch on the jack box. Nothing. What the hell? He looked at George, who shouted, "Art cut the comms!"”
Ted observed the mayhem. B-17s scattered across the heavens as Art straightened their flight path. A long moment later, the headset comms came back on, and confused voices filled Ted’s ears.
“Quiet!” yelled Art. When the chatter stopped, he asked, “Ted? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. What—”
“Get back to Bob,” Art cut in. “I need a damage check.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Ted grabbed a portable oxygen bottle, connected his breathing hose, and noted the time. He’d have about eight minutes before needing the central oxygen.
“I need eyes, people,” Art barked. “Sean, Nick, what’s our formation? George, get me a position. Harry, find out what the hell just happened.”
Ted yanked his comms cable and moved a
Ted whipped around, looking for Tex, the starboard waist gunner. Must have gone aft. Then he saw it—a hole where the rear gun turret should be.
Past the waist gun openings, air tore through the cabin like a class five hurricane. Ted grasped the railing for dear life. Where the hell’s Tex? He looked around but couldn’t find him.
A few more steps, and he saw Bob. His body hung by his safety strap, buffeted by the wind, and his breathing mask had been ripped off. There was no way to reach him.
Damn! Ted offered a silent prayer and then focused on the damage. Nothing critical had been cut. He stooped and peered through the opening. Art had leveled the plane, and Ted could see five other B-17s in no particular formation. But one trailed smoke. Badly.
Three parachutes opened as the plane lost altitude. C’mon. C’mon, he thought, willing the others to safety. When all ten had deployed, he noted the time.
He fought his way back to midship, shivering in the frigid air. He patched into Tex’s jack box, then moved across the fuselage. “Bob’s dead. Carter’s got a head injury. But seems stable.”
“What about Tex?” asked the co-pilot.
“He’s gone.”
“Dead?”
“No. Tex is gone. I can’t find him. Must have been sucked out.”
“Jesus,” said the co-pilot.
Ted bandaged Carter’s forehead, ensured his air and heated suit were connected, and buckled him against the bulkhead. “Hang in there, kid,” he said to the unconscious man.
Art’s voice came over the comm. “Ted, what’s the damage back there? The tail feels loose.”
“Rear turret’s destroyed, sir, but I didn’t see any other damage from the inside.”
“Thanks. Stand by.”
Ted unplugged and moved forward to report when the parachutes had opened. Harry put a finger on a map east of Müllen. Ted plugged in to hear Art respond to the update.
“Roger that, Harry. George, plot the safest course back home. I’ve never seen anything like this. That wind sheer drove our tail into Loaded Dice’s cockpit. They plunged into group four below. Sean says we lost six planes, one of them the Jolly Roger.”
Ted’s heart sank. His childhood buddy, Sid Ipsen, was the Jolly Roger’s co-pilot.
“I’m sorry, Ted,” Art said gently.
“Thank you, sir.” Ted unplugged from the jack box and trudged forward, where a whistling sound grew louder.
Holy Mother of God! Ted froze, his heart hammering. As daylight flooded through a partially open door, wind blasted into the bomb bay. A bomb on the starboard rack sagged against the door, pressing it open. Its arming wire had been yanked free, and its nose fuse pinwheeled in the rushing air.
Ted plugged in the jack box. “Art, we’ve got another problem!”
“Can it wait, son? I’m—”
“No, sir. We got a loose bomb.”
Art flew from the cockpit, piling into Nick at the flight engineer’s station. Both squeezed into the bomb bay door. Ted lay on the floor, his gloved fingers holding the fuse vane from rotating.
“How long did it spin?” Art yelled over the howling wind.
“I don’t know, sir,” said Ted. With all the commotion back here, I missed it on my way to check on Bob. Sorry, sir.”
“Not your fault.”
Turbulence rattled the bombs. As Art connected to an oxygen bottle, Nick said, “No way we can land with that thing. We’re three hours from London.
“Where are we?” asked Art. “I’m not dropping these on Strasbourg.”
“I’ll check.” Nick turned. Another wind shear slammed them, bashing Art’s head into the bulkhead. His body crushed Ted’s ribs. The kid yelped, pulling back his hand.
The plane bucked, ramming the bomb against the door. As Ted gasped for breath, the vane flew off.
Ted’s eyes bugged out as he stared down a live five-hundred-pound bomb. Another bounce. He jumped up, heaved Art onto the flight deck, and ran to the bombardier station. He opened the bay doors and yanked the bomb release. The port-side rack emptied, but the starboard side froze. Shit!
He shoved past George at the navigator’s station and grabbed the rope rail on the catwalk. The air roared in the wide-open bay. Clouds blasted past. While the dark green forest scrolled by, Ted murmured, “Please, God. Please. Let me see Clara again.”
He ripped a screwdriver from where he’d taped it to the fuselage and worked himself flat on the catwalk. Ted repeated the prayer, Please, God, as he wrapped an arm around the narrow catwalk. He pressed close to the cylinder—death hanging by a wire—and reached out with the screwdriver.
The plane bounced, and his body flew up. He pulled at the catwalk with all his might and then slammed down.
“Oomph.” Air burst from his lungs, but he hung on—his face mashed into the metal catwalk. He breathed and then reached for the shackle holding the bomb. Inserting the screwdriver into the mechanism, he pulled.
It jammed.
Shit! He slumped. Wind howled. His fingers were numb. Please, God. I don’t want to die. Clara’s smile filled his vision. Her hand reached for his. “Come on,” she said from a memory last summer. He’d been afraid to jump into a water-filled quarry. Clara took his hand, giving him the courage to leap.
Ted concentrated and maneuvered the screwdriver inside the shackle. The plane bounced again. He pulled. The screwdriver snapped. The second bomb clanged into the first, knocking it free.
The third and fourth bombs fell, but one whacked his hand on the way out. He screamed and pulled himself out of the bomb bay.
“Ted?” Art had regained consciousness, but he still lay on the bomb deck.
Ted knelt, holding his fractured wrist. “I did it. They’re away, sir.”
“You saved our lives, son. And you’re hurt.”
“I’m just happy to be alive, sir.”
“We all are, son. I’ll see you get a silver star for this.” Art got to his feet and yelled to the navigator, “George, where did we drop that load?”
“In the Vosges Mountains southwest of Strasbourg. Nothing besides farms.”
That night, they drank to the memory of their lost crew member, Tex, and the men in the planes that had gone down. Ted made a silent toast to his friend Sid, co-pilot of the Jolly Roger. He sighed and looked at the bar, where a new squad with pressed uniforms and devil-may-care attitudes laughed and drank. They were heading on their first mission tomorrow.
Ted’s melancholy soon passed, and a hand grasped his shoulder.
“Hey, everyone!” Art called out to the bar. The reverie paused, and he described Ted’s heroic effort to loosen the bomb, saving Sallie Mae’s crew.
Whoops and cheers erupted. Someone shoved a pint in Ted’s good hand, and everyone there, including the publican, signed the cast on his left arm.
As the celebrations simmered down, George gathered Art and Ted close. “I have some news. When I filed the mission report, British intelligence confirmed there was a German prisoner camp where we dropped the bombs.”
