Excerpt from The Dog Who Could Fly by Damien Lewis, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The doomed aircraft was thrown savagely around as its left flank caught on a thick trunk, and with a tearing of steel the wing was ripped clean away. By the time it came to a juddering halt, half buried in the snow and with its crumpled nose cone embedded in the thick foliage, Robert had lost consciousness.

He came to with little sense of where he was or how much time he might have lost. For an instant he mistook the thick wisps curling all around him for fog, and then the acrid smell of burning hit him. The very idea that their aircraft might burst into flames at any moment brought him back to reality with a savage jolt.

Choking from the acrid smoke, he reached down, groped for the release catch on his safety harness, flipped it free, and stretched up to clamber out onto the surviving wing. As he did so he felt a stabbing, burning pain shooting through his chest—no doubt the result of the safety harness biting into him upon the sudden impact of the crash landing.

Having dragged himself out of the shattered turret, Robert half tumbled the short distance to the ground and began to stumble away from the wreckage. After a few paces he collapsed into an exhausted heap on the snow, the shock and the trauma of being shot down overwhelming him. For a few seconds he lay there, struggling to regain his breath and fighting back the waves of nausea, before a thought struck him with the power of a speeding steam train: Pierre! Where is Pierre?

Robert searched with his eyes, scanning the wreckage and the tangled, splintered mass of bare winter branches all around him. The fog seemed almost to reach to the ground, mingling with the steam and smoke rising from the crumpled remains of the aircraft. It was an eerie, ghostly scene, one made all the worse by the fact that there was no sign of the French airman.

He risked a call: "Pierre! Pierre! Are you there?"

There wasn't the barest hint of a response. Apart from an angry hissing where the aircraft's hot engines met the snow, all was quiet. The Germans must have seen the fighter-bomber go down. From what Robert knew of how Pierre had thrown the aircraft around during their final few seconds, he figured they must have crash-landed somewhere in the no-man's-land between the French and German lines.

A flare of angry red in the aircraft's fuselage drew his eye. They'd been carrying over a thousand liters of fuel at takeoff, and barely a third of that had been used. Robert sensed what was about to happen and he knew exactly what he had to do. Pierre might well be dead. In fact, being in the front seat of the cockpit, he more than likely was. But that wasn't going to stop Robert from making an attempt to find him, no matter if the aircraft was about to burst into flames.

Scrambling back onto the wing, he yelled out the Frenchman's name, but there wasn't a word of reply. As he peered into the shattered cockpit he sensed the glowing licks of flame all around him—the fire beginning to take deadly hold. At the same moment he spotted a figure slumped over the aircraft's controls, his head twisted at an unnatural angle. It looked as if the silly bastard had broken his neck, but from this distance Robert couldn't be absolutely sure.

He reached forward and snatched at the remains of the cockpit hatch, dragging it open. As he did so he felt a stab of agony in his hand, from what had to be a broken or sprained finger. Ignoring the pain, and the frightening smell of aviation fuel that filled the air, Robert leaned in and felt for the pilot's release catch. He found it and pressed hard, but at the very moment that the metallic thunk signaled to him that Pierre was free, he heard a terrifying sound from below.

There was a hollow, evil crackling as fire rippled along the fuselage. Ignoring the flames at his feet, Robert pulled with all his might, his hands grasping Pierre's armpits as he fought to drag the deadweight up and out. He had Pierre's body halfway free when the pilot's harness caught on some obstruction—yet still Robert was determined not to leave him. They had flown together and fought together, and in spite of their differences they had bonded as brother warriors of the air.

Excerpted from The Dog Who Could Fly by Damien Lewis. Copyright © 2014 by Damien Lewis. Excerpted by permission of Atria/Emily Bestler Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.