A Private Little War (49 page)

The result was horrific. Smoke and dust and clouds of debris fortunately hid the worst of the details of the carnage, but they still left visible just enough to catch Carter’s eye like a burr and sink deep into his brain: horses cut off at the legs, squirming on the tortured, icy earth; indigs catapulted from their mounts and torn by shrapnel; indigs then trampled by following lines of horsemen trying to control mounts blowing bloody foam, bleeding from the eyes and ears. These images would give him nightmares, he knew. Provided he lived long enough.

The precision application of explosives slowed the pursuit briefly but did not stop it. The enemy was determined. Or perhaps crazed. With two years of practice, of knowing what waited for them whenever they crossed open ground, they absorbed the casualties like scratches to the body and just kept coming. At that point, the indigs were roughly thirty-five miles from the Flyboy encampment and closing fast.

Carter signaled for his flight to re-form on him, took them up to five thousand feet, and ordered his remaining planes back to the field for reloading. He would remain on station until Jack Hawker returned to take his place, allowing him, then, to go home, rearm, reload, come back. The flight could not maintain the consistent, withering, demoralizing fire that Carter would like because they simply could not carry enough bullets and bombs and cannon rounds to keep up the fight for more than thirty minutes at a stretch. Carter crossed the center of the moving battlefield, tangling briefly with B flight’s pattern, then rolled out to get a look at the larger picture and prime his cannon. In the strange, hanging gravity of the combat dive, he tried to place his shots with care, aiming for standard bearers or large concentrations of horses;
but following the first pass by the fighters, the enemy had immediately spread itself out, lessening the ratio of shots to kills, to wounds, to cripplings and maimings and terrible slow, cold death.

His .303s are nearly dry. He has run completely out of bombs. He calls Fenn as he sees all but two of his fighters chuddering off in the direction of the airfield and asks, “You, too?”

“Dry as dirt. Shot their wads.”

“Hadn’t anticipated this particular problem.”

“Me either. Those odds are beginning to look more and more right. Eddie’s odds, I mean.”

Carter thinks for a moment. His finger strokes delicately at his machine gun’s trigger—not firing, just teasing. “This isn’t that,” he says, finally. “I don’t think this is that.”

“Maybe. But it makes one think.”

Fenn says something to his fighters, and his two remaining wingmen roll over and fall into fierce dives, guns spitting sparks of light—tracers that, when they hit the hard-packed and frozen ground, bounce. Unless, of course, they find a body to embed themselves in. Something soft and warm and welcoming. They’d gone after a small knot of horses milling briefly around a flag. When they are through, there are no more horses. There is no more flag.

Ted’s voice crackles on the radio. “Command to A flight leader. Carter?”

“Copy, Ted. What’s up?”

“What’s the distance between the two parties now?”

“Parties?” As if this were a lark, an outing. Looking down, Carter can see a trail of wrack and ruin and meat and blood and death running back from where the horses are now to where the planes had first engaged them; a track, sometimes thick, in some places thin. A brief flurry of snow swirls between him and the ground—greasy, fat flakes offering a mercy of blindness.

“Between the retreating monkeys and the pursuing force. How far?”

“Mile and a half and closing fast. Maybe two miles.” Carter brings his machine around like reining up a skittish mount. She turns to the left as if bee-stung, the torque of the engine dragging her whole body in a skidding, ferocious inside turn. Carter groans as he is shoved roughly
back into his seat, then continues. “Retreating forces are backing up at the river.”

“What about between the pursuing horses and the main body?”

“That’s a long way. Five miles. More.”

“How bad have you fucked up those horses?”

“Bad,” Carter says, recalling in a flash the bomb drop, the screaming he’d imagined, of the damaged and the dead. “But they’re not stopping. They’re taking it.”

“Connelly is not in position to intercept ground forces. If we don’t stop this advance right here, there will be nothing between the Lassateirra and us to slow them up.” There is a pause, static, whistle of distortion. Over the radio, Carter can hear engine sounds, shouts, the husking of the wind. Ted is still on the flight line. Carter pushes a fresh magazine into the cannon—one of his last two—then primes it. He takes a breath and blows it out through pursed, frozen lips, a thin line of steam almost instantly sucked back into the slipstream.

“Carter. A flight is scrambling in bombers. Lay off the horses. All fire to be concentrated on turning back the main body. Hawker will lead the bombers in. Berthold and Vaughn are ahead of them by a few minutes, already in the air.”

“Roger that.”

“Captain Teague is remaining on station to spot for me. Bring everyone else in to reload now—understand?”

“Understood, Ted. Roger and out.”

Carter switches channels, drops his nose, lets two rounds go, curses as the ejected shells spang off his knee and he hits the switch. “Fenn? Carter. You talked to Ted?”

“I did. Lovely man.”

“So you’re staying.”

“Eyes in the sky.”

Carter hears a long rip from Fenn’s guns, muffled but still audible.

“Save those rounds, pal. You’re gonna be all alone up here for a bit.”

“One of them gave me the finger. Had to teach him some manners.”

Carter laughs. “All right then. Porter and Lefty are inbound, but a few minutes off. Call in whoever’s left of your flight and put ’em on my tail. I’m headed for home.”

Fenn does that. They all shoot their guns dry on the way, waggle their wings at the outgoing fighters when they pass, then again at the bombers just making their way to the strip, confusing things, causing delays. Carter calls his mutt flight off approach and puts them into a long, lazy circle. He tries to catch his breath. He hunches down tight in the seat and hides from the wind slipping past the cockpit coamings. His lips are chapped and numb. His nose is running, and when he reaches up with his gloved hand to try and wipe it, he can’t feel his own hand on his face.

The bombers lumber into the air. Carter brings the fighters down. On the field, every hand is turned to loading death into the idling machines. There is very little talking. This is something they are good at. Carter is scooping spent cannon shells off the floor of Roadrunner’s cockpit with his hands like bailing water. He is bouncing in his seat and slapping at his frozen face—the lower half of it, the part not covered by the helmet. He is straining his muscles as Max hands him up belts of .303 ammo to be stowed and, all the while, he is listening to Fenn’s flight channel.

This is how he hears Lefty Berthold die.

Key

TWR: Transmission from lead controller Diane Willis

RAM: Radio area microphone, voice or sound source

RDO: Transmission from ground control

-1: Identified as Cmndr. Theodore “Ted” Prinzi

-2: Identified as Controller James McCudden

-3: Identified as Controller Shun Le Harper

OPS: Transmission from Iaxo operations control, Theodore Prinzi

HOT: Cockpit or pilot microphone, voice or sound source

-1: Identified as Cpt. Fennimore “Fenn” Teague, call sign “Jackrabbit”

-2: Identified as Sqd. Ldr. Porter Vaughn

-3: Identified as Louis “Lefty” Berthold, call sign “Bad Dog”

-4: Identified as Sqd. Ldr. Jack Hawker, A flight

-?: Voice unidentified

( ): Questionable insertion

[ ]: Editorial insertion

13:22:04

START OF RECORDING

HOT-1:
Return flight one-two, I have you inbound.

HOT-2:
This is one-two return. Where are you?

HOT-1:
Not something a fighter pilot ought to be asking, flight leader. I’m just saying.

HOT-2:
Ah, go fuck yourself, Captain. [Laughter] You in the soup?

HOT-1:
Roger that. Five degrees your left. Eleven o’clock high at… ten thousand.

HOT-2:
’Kay. We’re incoming.

HOT-1:
I’m winking at you. Can you tell?

HOT-1:
Descending now.

HOT-1:
Passing six thousand. Split out and form on me for formation.

For what time he had remaining, Carter would hear the voices in his head. Ghosts that, once embedded in the soft meat of his brain, could not be dislodged. In bed, in flight, at peace and at war, they would be there, taunting him, joking, dying. There would come nights when he would wake with his ears sore and his scalp bloody from trying to claw off imaginary headphones. To make the voices stop.

HOT-2:
One-two inbound to control. We’re on-target. Spotter on capture.

TWR:
Copy one-two.

TWR:
Ground capture, one-two inbound approach to target.

RDO-3:
Thank you, control. I have both targets.

HOT-2:
Fenn? One-two inbound. I have you on capture.

HOT-1:
Roger. I’ve got visual. I’m maintaining at five thousand. Pass below and come around.

HOT-2:
Yeah, I…

HOT-1:
Porter?

HOT-2:
Yeah.

HOT-1:
Cut out there for a minute, flight leader.

HOT-3:
Over there. Uh… Your two o’clock-ish. Low. Way low.

On the field, Carter only dimly acknowledged the sound of Lefty Berthold’s voice. He was busy. No idle hands. The ammunition belts passing through his fingers were heavy and cold as if knowing their own freight and destiny. He liked the sound of them sliding over the cockpit coaming, a clatter like an abacus rattling. He smelled the snow on the air and the heat radiating off his engine and the sweet, thick stink of aviation fuel from the pumps near him and the pour-cans being run across the field. When he caught himself speaking aloud, under his breath, saying, “Come on, come on, come on,” he willed himself into calm, unclenched his fists, closed his eyes. He barely made note of Lefty’s voice in his ear. Not yet, anyway.