UFO Down

By DC Alden

In the skies over Nazi Germany, RAF gunner Harry Wakefield faces a horrifying choice - jump from his crippled bomber without a parachute or burn to death as it crashes to earth.

Harry jumps … and survives with barely a scratch.

Twenty years later, a powerful earthquake rocks Harry's remote farm. Convinced that a plane has crashed on a nearby peak, he races up the mountain, only to discover the wreckage is unlike any aircraft Harry has ever seen.

And something inside has survived.

As dark agents of powerful organisations seal off the mountain, Harry must choose between his civic duty or revealing to the world the truth of a bizarre and fascinating phenomenon…

One that Harry has witnessed before in the skies over war torn Europe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Double Tap Press
• Release date: Jan 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9781738498819

DC Alden

Thanks for stopping by.I am a UK-based, Amazon best-selling author, screenwriter, and award-winning writer/director.I'm a former soldier and police officer, and real-world events and a lifelong interest in power structures and realpolitik inspire much of my work. Readers have described my writing as bold and uncompromising, and my narratives are often ‘everyman’ tales, reflecting the struggles of ordinary people living in an uncertain and unforgiving world.I write military and political thrillers with a dark edge. Beware all who enter them...And I also write sci-fi!

Book preview

PROLOGUE

THIRD REICH AIRSPACE - 15TH MARCH 1944

‘Steady. Steady. Hold that…bombs gone!’

Arty Fraser’s voice crackled through Harry Wakefield’s headphones, and a moment later he felt the Lancaster bomber soar higher into the freezing night sky as six tons of explosive payload dropped out of the belly of the aircraft and whistled down to the target area below. 

Harry powered his clear perspex dome in a quick circle, sweeping the surrounding blackness with the muzzles of his Browning .303 machine guns. Far below, white flashes lit up the rail yards as thousand-pound bombs obliterated rolling stock and tore up train tracks. 

‘Photograph taken, skipper.’

The Lancaster rattled violently as Captain Jonny Marsh banked the aircraft around and gunned the engines. Now it was all about getting home fast, and in one piece. 

‘Jesus!’ 

Harry ducked as a fleeing Lancaster thundered overhead, a giant black shadow only twenty feet above his top turret. That was close. Getting shot down was one thing; colliding with a friendly was a pointless death. After forty-seven combat missions over Fortress Europe, during which Harry, his crew-mates and Margot—the nickname for their beloved aircraft—hadn’t suffered so much as a scratch. The twenty-two-year-old from Ilkeston in Derbyshire knew they were all riding their luck. So many friends and comrades had died, yet here they were, still breathing, still in one piece. Still fighting. Harry wasn’t much of a churchgoer, so if it wasn’t God watching over him, it had to be someone else. Lady Luck, perhaps. 

Maybe it was She who’d helped them survive mission after mission into the black heart of Nazi Germany, to dodge the often impenetrable clouds of flak, to avoid the vengeful night-fighters and their superior radar, not to mention mechanical failure, pilot error, or a host of other mishaps that, in wartime, often made the difference between returning home or never seeing it again. Yet there was hope for all of them. The war had been costly, both in men and aircraft, but the Nazis were finally on the back foot. Jerry was getting squeezed on both fronts. With any luck, the war would be over by Christmas.

He heard Marsh’s voice over the intercom.

‘Keep your eyes open, chaps.’

‘Roger, Skipper.’ 

Harry spun his turret around, watching the sky. On the plus side, the night was moonless, the burning rail yards to the south and east the only visible light in any direction. The darkness was their friend, and now they were travelling fast and light. Apart from the threat of night-fighters, the only other problem now was the weather.

The wind, in fact. The flight over from England was as bumpy as Harry could remember, and the icy northerly wind that carried snow all the way down from the arctic circle and dumped it across Europe was now trying its best to blow them off course. Or worse, into each other. Harry could feel Margot repeatedly banking to the north to stay on course. It wasn’t long before they gave the order, and Marsh confirmed it—breaking formation. Harry watched the Lancaster above them slip to the south and disappear into the void.

Margot shook as Marsh coaxed her towards her maximum operating ceiling of twenty-one-thousand feet. Harry pedalled the turret left and right, his Brownings cocked and ready. Soon they were alone, the earth a pale blanket far beneath them, the sky a cold, lifeless void. 

Harry flexed his fingers to keep them warm. He grabbed a rag from the recess beneath his seat and gave the Perspex turret a wipe. Looking down the fuselage he saw Joe Pyle, Margot’s tail-gunner, swivelling left and right, but there was nothing to the east or south of them. Even the rail yard fires had disappeared over the horizon.

‘Cloud bank coming in from the north,’ Marsh’s voice crackled over the intercom. ‘We’re going to duck in there for a bit, try and stay out of trouble.’

The turret whined as Harry swivelled it around to face north. The cloud bank was enormous, pale against the night sky and towering up to the heavens. Bumpy it might be but it would serve them well if they could ride it all the way back to Norfolk. Wisps of grey cloud became clumps, and moments later they were thundering through the sky, invisible.

Harry felt himself relax a little. It wasn’t complacency—they were all too experienced for that—but if a Jerry fighter wanted to find them he’d practically have to run into them. So, a respite then. Small, but welcome. He smiled as he thought about the navigator, Spencer, sweating over his charts and compasses. With no visual landmarks, Spence would have to work for his supper this evening, but he was one of the best. He would get them home.

‘Got something on our tail. Directly behind us.’

Harry spun his turret around, his gloves gripping the handles of his Browning machine guns, his eyes searching the sky behind Margot’s tail. 

‘What’ve you got, rear-gunner?’

‘Not sure, Skip. Thought I saw a light through the cloud. Below us, due east.’

Harry could see Joe’s turret moving, the clouds whipping across the fuselage between them. Margot’s engines droned.

‘Talk to me, rear-gunner.’

‘Sorry Skip. I thought I—Jesus Christ! There! Coming up beneath the starboard wing! Look at that thing move!’

Harry swung the turret around, his fingers hooked inside the trigger guards of his Brownings —

 Then he froze. A strange green light reflected off the clouds, off Margot’s fuselage, and then Harry saw it, an airship, but one he’d never seen before, flying a dozen yards off the starboard wing. It was huge, three, maybe four times the size of Margot, its black fuselage smooth and shiny and seemingly devoid of rivets and seams. There was no cabin beneath it, no lights, other than a soft green glow coming from an exhaust port at its tail. Harry had seen nothing like it in his life.

‘Are you chaps seeing this?’ Marsh asked from the cockpit. Everyone responded affirmatively.

‘It’s not an airship. Too fast. No engines, either.’

‘Can’t see any cockpit or cabin. What the hell is it?’

‘It’s amazing,’ Harry gasped. He panted like a dog inside his oxygen mask. ‘Can’t hear any engine noise either. Something that close, we should be able to hear it.’

‘Foo fighter,’ Arty Fraser’s voice hissed. ‘We’ve all heard the stories, right?’

 ‘Recommend we put a little distance between us, skipper. That thing’s lighting us up.’ It was Spencer, his voice calm, reasoned. Spencer never flapped. 

‘If it was Jerry he would have opened up on us by now,’ Joe said from the rear turret. His voice wasn’t calm, but it was a long way from panic. He sounded like he was in awe of it. And Joe was right; it wasn’t the enemy. Harry had an unmistakable feeling that whatever its reason for being there, its intentions were friendly. Playful, even. Harry swung the turret around as the object slipped effortlessly beneath Margot and came up on the port wing. It sped up ahead of them, silently, then held its position, cloaked in that strange green glow that reflected off the clouds like a giant firefly. Guiding them, Harry sensed. Was that its intention? Was it leading them to safety?

The tracer rounds zipped past Harry’s turret, angry red bees buzzing through the cloud. Margot shook as several of them punched their way through her fuselage in showers of sparks. Incendiary rounds. Harry knew it then; forty-seven missions and the biggest thing to hit them in all that time was a flock of seabirds over the Belgian coast. Despite their better judgement, they’d felt invincible. They were so close to the finish, but Harry knew it was not to be. Lady Luck, or whoever had kept them alive for so long, had finally abandoned them.

Harry heard the whine of the fighter plane as it shot past somewhere in the darkness. As the noise of its engine faded, Harry turned towards the nose of the aircraft where the green glow still reflected off the clouds. As he watched, the object sped away and vanished in an instant.

He heard Joe’s Brownings open up, saw his outgoing tracer lancing through the clouds. Harry fired too, tracking his own rounds parallel to Joe’s, hoping the Jerry pilot would fly into them unwittingly. The Brownings shook in his hands. Brass rattled at his feet. The whine of the hydraulic turret competed with the roar of Margot’s engines as the skipper put her nose into a shallow dive. That’s when Harry saw them coming, knew they would make impact. When they did the sound was terrifying, the glowing rounds punching through Margot’s thin skin, through Arty’s flesh and bone, his awful scream, Spence’s quiet encouragement to get us the hell out of here. 

Harry glimpsed the fighter as it sliced through the cloud behind them and levelled out. A Messerschmitt 109, fast and deadly. Harry and the Kraut fired simultaneously, Harry’s rounds tumbling through the night sky, the incoming rounds chewing up Joe in his rear turret, shredding Margot’s tailplane. The 109 banked away into the cloud. Margot shuddered from nose to shattered tail. Smoke filled Harry’s turret. He was blind.

He cranked the vent, and the smoke cleared, long enough for him to see the port engines belching flame that enveloped the wing. Smoke caught in Harry’s lungs. He coughed violently. He heard the roar of the Messerschmitt and felt more rounds punching through Margot’s body. The old girl was dying. Marsh knew it too. 

‘Bail out! Everyone, bail out now while I keep her steady!’

Harry felt his backside warming up. His parachute was in a compartment below his turret because it was too bulky to wear in the gunner’s seat. He reached down, but the heat made him pull his hands back. Through the smoke below him, everything was on fire.

Including Harry’s parachute.

The smoked thickened. His lungs screamed. Margot screamed too and started to pitch steeply, nose first. The Skipper must’ve got out, hopefully the others too. Harry prayed they did, because he wasn’t going to make it.

He knew men who’d survived fire, who still lay in hospital, the horribly charred and disfigured husks he’d once called friends. Harry promised himself he’d never go out like that. If he was going to die, it would be on his terms.

The flames engulfed his parachute. Harry uncoupled his oxygen and heated suit and dropped into the main cabin. Then he stumbled through the flames towards the rear door. It was already open, and Harry felt a moment of relief—someone had made it out.

Margot groaned again, not in pain this time but with a fatal acceptance. Her nose pitched steeper. Harry had seconds to act. There was no time to find another parachute. As Margot spiralled out of the sky, flames engulfed Harry. He threw himself out into the night sky.

The wind extinguished the flames, but it didn’t matter. They’d been flying at over twenty-thousand feet when the fighter had attacked. Without a chute, Harry wouldn’t even feel the impact.

The thin, freezing air roared past his ears as he fell to earth. He glimpsed Margot as velocity ripped her to flaming pieces. He said goodbye, to Margot, to his parents, to his friends. He couldn’t breathe. His vision blurred. 

Harry Wakefield slipped into the welcome arms of oblivion.

CHAPTER 1

27 RED

LIVERPOOL, SEPTEMBER 1962

Norman Rolfe considered himself to be a smart man. In fact, he often surprised himself at how smart he really was.

He was smarter than the other punters around the roulette table, frittering away their money while they watched him continue his lucrative winning streak. Six turns of the wheel now, and Rolfe was still winning. He wanted to keep pushing his luck, maybe nine, ten turns, until the towers of coloured chips in front of him soared, but the smart move was to quit while he was ahead. Or in tonight’s case, when he got the signal.

Norman had walked into the private gaming club two hours earlier, a vast, smoky basement situated beneath a department store on Chapel Street. He’d bid good evening to the cabbage-eared doormen, flirted with the pretty cloakroom girl as he’d slipped out of his overcoat, smiled at the smartly dressed punters as he’d strolled down the carpeted stairs. His heart had raced, as it always did, when the room opened up before him, a discreetly lit den of vice wrapped in a fog of blue cigarette smoke and crowded with the well-heeled of Liverpool and its environs. The laughter, the drinking, the spin of the wheels, the snap of the cards, the rattle of chips, all of it intoxicated Norman, filling him with an excitement he’d rarely experienced throughout his fifty-seven years. If gambling was a sin, then Norman prayed he’d go straight to hell where the wheels would spin for eternity.

He’d ordered a drink at the bar, a twelve-year-old malt over two cubes and served in a cut-glass tumbler. He’d fired up a Monte Cristo and let the smoky flavours waft around his mouth. He’d smiled at the pretty hostesses as he’d strolled around the tables, then he’d slipped into a recently vacated seat at a blackjack table. He’d changed twenty pounds into chips and started betting small, biding his time, glancing at his watch, at the wide, carpeted staircase. And then, on the stroke of ten, there she was.

Nobody paid Carol Braithwaite any attention. For starters she was an employee, dressed in her croupier uniform of black, knee-length skirt and a stiff-white blouse that was buttoned to the neck. Her blond hair was tied back into a ponytail, and Norman watched it bob through the crowd until she’d taken over at Roulette Table Number Four. And second, Carol was rather plain, but as far as Norman was concerned that was a minor detail. What was important was the love she’d declared for him, the hope she had for their future, and the bitterness she felt for her employer. Tonight would be Carol’s last night, and then she would be free, to pursue a life with Norman.

He played a few more hands at the blackjack table, going head-to-head with the dealer, making sure the man remembered him, not as a shrewd card player but as a punter who liked to take risks. Surprisingly, Norman found himself walking away from the table several pounds richer, yet the night was still young. He glanced at his watch as he sauntered through the crowd. Still an hour to kill. He played Baccarat, then a couple of hands of poker, orbiting ever closer to Carol’s roulette table like a dying satellite, until he was finally able to squeeze into a chair halfway along its length. Roulette was a popular game at the casino, and Norman could understand why. It took no skill at all, other than a basic knowledge of odds and the belief that luck was either with you or against you. One simply had to pick a number, or a series of numbers, or a colour, and lay a bet. Not exactly brain surgery.

He threw a twenty pound note on the table and waited for his chips. Curious eyes looked in his direction. Carol barely glanced at him.

‘Changing twenty,’ she announced, sliding the note into the cash slot and pushing his chips towards him. Norman felt a familiar rush of excitement as he arranged the chips in front of him in neat little towers.

And so it went, starting small at first, working up to his first big wager, just as they’d planned. Five pounds, on black. Carol spun the wheel. Hungry eyes watched the ball bounce and rattle before settling on a number.

‘Fourteen, red.’

Norman heard a few groans around him but he wasn’t concerned with that. He was looking at the table, stroking his heavy jowls as he considered his next bet. At least that’s what he wanted everyone to think. In fact, he was watching Carol’s left hand, waiting for the index digit to tap twice on the polished wood surround⁠—

There.

Two taps, without question. Norman felt his heart race. They were in business.

He bet low again, seemingly stung by the loss of five pounds. Ten shillings on black, five shillings on red, on the corners where the odds were reasonable. The money started to trickle in, a pound here, two pounds there. After forty minutes, Norman was several pounds ahead. Time to shift up a gear.

He placed five pounds on the black diamond and immediately doubled his money. He placed bets on corners and thirds, on colours and rows, odds and evens, winning, losing a little, mixing it up, and the chips soon mounted. A crowd gathered. Punters began shadowing Norman’s wagers, and Carol made them pay. No one was hitching a ride on their wagon.

Spin number seven.

The wheel rumbled and the ball rattled, hopping and clacking until it finally settled on…

Twenty-seven red.

Norman had twelve pounds sitting on that very number. A gasp went up around him, and he felt hands slapping his back. Four-hundred and twenty-quid in one turn. Norman hopped excitedly as Carol passed the chips across, adding to the pile in front of him. Spins eight and nine went much the same way, drawing people away from nearby tables. As far as Norman was concerned this was better than sex, not that he’d enjoyed much of that in his life. Tonight though, would be