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dying!”
    In one violent flash of terror and outrage, the pilot jerked the stick to port and headed the roaring fighter back inland. His tear-filled eyes pierced the Scottish mist, searching out the landmarks he had studied so long in Denmark. With a shudder of hope, he spied the first—railroad tracks shining like quicksilver in the night.
Maybe the signal will still come
, he hoped desperately. But he knew it wouldn’t. His eyes scoured the earth for his second landmark—a small lake to the south of Dungavel Castle.
There
…
    The Messerschmitt streaked across the water. Like a mirage the small village of Eaglesham appeared ahead. The fighter thundered across the rooftops, wheeling in a high, climbing circle over Dungavel Castle. He had done it! Like an intravenous blast of morphine, the pilot felt a sudden rush of exhilaration, a wild joy cascading through him. Ignited by the nearness of death, his survival instinct had thrown some switch deep within his brain. He had but one thought now—
survive!
    At sixty-five hundred feet the nightmare began. With no one to fly the plane while he jumped, the pilot decided to kill his engines as a safety measure. Only one engine cooperated. The other, its cylinders red-hot from the long flightfrom Aalborg, continued to ignite the fuel mixture. He throttled back hard until the engine died, losing precious seconds, then he wrestled the canopy open.
    He could not get out of the cockpit! Like an invisible iron hand the wind pinned him to the back panel. Desperately he tried to loop the plane, hoping to drop out as it turned over, but centrifugal force, unforgiving, held him in his seat. When enough blood had rushed out of his brain, he blacked out.
    Unaware of anything around him, the pilot roared toward oblivion. By the time he regained consciousness, the aircraft stood on its tail, hanging motionless in space. In a millisecond it would fall like two tons of scrap steel.
    With one mighty flex of his knees, he jumped clear.
    As he fell, his brain swirled with visions of the Reichminister’s chute billowing open in the dying light, floating peacefully toward a mission that by now had failed. His own chute snapped open with a jerk. In the distance he saw a shower of sparks; the Messerschmitt had found the earth.
    He broke his left ankle when he hit the ground, but surging adrenaline shielded his mind against the pain. Shouts of alarm echoed from the darkness. Struggling to free himself from the harness, he surveyed by moonlight the small farm at the edge of the field in which he had landed. Before he could see much of anything, a man appeared out of the darkness. It was the head plowman of the farm, a man named David McLean. The Scotsman approached cautiously and asked the pilot his name. Struggling to clear his stunned brain, the pilot searched for his cover name. When it came to him, he almost laughed aloud. Confused, he gave the man his real name instead.
What the hell?
he thought.
I don’t even exist anymore in Germany. Heydrich saw to that.
    “Are you German?” the Scotsman asked.
    “Yes,” the pilot answered in English.
    Somewhere among the dark hills the Messerschmitt finally exploded, lighting the sky with a momentary flash.
    “Are there any more with you?” the Scotsman asked nervously. “From the plane?”
    The pilot blinked, trying to take in the enormity of what he had done—and what he had been ordered to do. The cyanide capsule still lay like a viper against his chest. “No,” he said firmly. “I flew alone.”
    The Scotsman seemed to accept this readily.
    “I want to go to Dungavel Castle,” the pilot said. Somehow, in his confusion, he could not—or would not—abandon his original mission. “I have an important message for the Duke of Hamilton,” he added solemnly.
    “Are you armed?” McLean’s voice was tentative.
    “No. I have no weapon.”
    The farmer simply stared. A shrill voice from the darkness finally broke the awkward silence. “What’s