crack_van | The Long Way Home, by Jean Graham (PG-13)

Fandom: THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
Pairing: none
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: Magnifiction
Why this must be read:

I've saved a favorite to end the month. As you may have guessed, I'm an action and adventure sort of gal, and Jean Graham is a master of breath-taking action, long odds, and near misses, delivered with emotional power.

In this World War II AU the Seven are the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress. In 'The Long Way Home' Chris, Buck, and Ezra are on a special mission to drop an operative behind enemy lines. A milk run... until they are shot down on the return flight and Chris is captured by the Germans. Old traumas and fresh bullets hamper their struggle to reach freedom. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew waits at their base in Bassingbourn, England with diminishing hope.

Test fly The Long Way Home

“Bail out! That’s an order! Bail out, now!”
They had bailed out. In the end only three of them. Palmerston had not responded and, risking his own life, Chris had gone back and dived into the bombardier’s compartment only to find the navigator already dead. With no time left to get back to the others in the waist, he had made his own escape from the hatch in the nose, hoping to God that Buck and Ezra had followed his orders.
Chris watched the billowing canopy of first Buck’s then Ezra’s parachute open below him before he pulled his own ripcord and heard the reassuring snap and rustle of the unfolding silk as it blossomed above him and dramatically slowed his own rate of fall. The darkness he had earlier been so grateful for he now cursed as he plummeted earthwards with no light to guide him and no real idea of where he might land. Damn it all, they had been so close! Almost home. All the way to the Dutch border before the sons-of-bitches had finally found them, pinning them in intersecting beams of light and exposing them to the anti-aircraft guns that had immediately opened fire. So close.
It had been a fluke, a lucky hit, but it had brought them down. Not immediately, thank God, at least he had managed to gain them a few miles before having to give the order to bail out. He had hated doing it; it went against the grain to abandon his plane but his priority had to be men not the machine. He now wondered if he would have been so ready to let go if he had been piloting his own craft with a full crew. No matter. There was no going back on that decision.
Palmerston was dead. He was not a friend, in fact he had not spoken to the Lieutenant more than half a dozen times but that did not stop him mourning the loss of yet another American airman. Buck had been shot but from what he had said nothing too serious. Still, worth a purple heart. He smiled in spite of the fact that he was plummeting towards occupied territory, with the prospect of spending the duration as a prisoner of war a very real danger. Wilmington already had a Bronze Star but he was forever bemoaning his lack of the purple and white ribbon on his chest, claiming it was a sure fire winner with the girls. That was Buck all right. Never let it be said that Wilmington didn’t have his priorities right.

The Long Way Home