Out of the Blue
Authors: Alan Judd
Alan Judd
is a novelist and biographer who has previously served in the army and the Foreign Office. Chosen as one of the original twenty Best
Young British Novelists, he subsequently won the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Award, the Heinemann Award and the Guardian Fiction Award; he was also shortlisted for the
Westminster Prize. He is currently motoring correspondent for the
Spectator
and a comment writer for the
Daily Telegraph
. He lives in
Sussex with his wife and daughter.
Also by Alan Judd
F
ICTION
Inside Enemy
A Breed of Heroes
Short of Glory
The Noonday Devil
Tango
The Devil’s Own Work
Legacy
The Kaiser’s Last Kiss
Dancing with Eva
Uncommon Enemy
N
ON-
F
ICTION
Ford Madox Ford (biography)
The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and
the Founding of the Secret Service (biography)
First World War Poets (with David Crane)
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Alan Judd 2015
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and ©1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Alan Judd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eBook ISBN: 978-1-47115-063-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
To Nigel, Susan and Stephen Judd
Chapter One
Frank Foucham winced at the flash of light. It was only the afternoon sun catching the stream where he had cast his fly but he
couldn’t help it. Nor could he stop the trembling in his arms that followed. His hands were not obviously shaking but the tiny rapid quivering of his
muscles was enough to vibrate the tip of his rod. He lowered it into the long grass and clasped his hands hard. The shakes came only now and again but if
Phil, the squadron doctor, saw him spill his beer in the mess he might take him off flying.
He kept his eyes on his fly, which was still on the water. It was an Infallible, a wet fly, which meant that it would gradually sink. He
would have preferred a dry fly, or at least some grease to keep his line afloat, but there was no chance of finding
either. He had been a keen angler since his first boyhood trips with his stepfather, back home in Canada, but now, here in wartime England, he no longer minded whether he caught anything. You were almost never alone
in the air force and he treasured these rare periods of solitude, content to be in the presence of the unknown, loving the quiet
mystery of dark pools as much as – perhaps more than – solving it.
For a second or so the flash was imprinted on his eyelids, recalling others he had seen that morning, distant flashes from the
greenhouses and windows of northern France 15,000 feet below in the early sun. And later those other flashes, less pure white, mixed with red and
yellow and sometimes a puff of black smoke, as rockets from the low-flying Typhoons found targets on the German airfield. One, a
Focke-Wulf 190, was on the runway and had almost got off the ground when it burst into flames and skidded into others parked
nearby. That made a bigger flash, with much more red and a great revolving pall of black smoke.
It was just after this, as Frank tipped his Spitfire left to get a better view, that he saw the other flash, the one like the flash of sun
on water, very brief and pure white, on his right quarter.
At the same moment his headphones were filled by Patrick’s voice. ‘Foxtrot Alpha One break right!’
He
heaved on the stick, banking and turning so tightly that he felt the skin of his neck bulge
and the blood begin to drain from his head. For a long second he hung vertically and seemingly motionless on his propeller, his engine
roaring and straining, while the white flash mutated into the cockpit window of an FW190, closing fast. It had already opened
fire, tracer rounds streaking just below him. For every one that glowed there would be nine unseen. He
had a vivid glimpse of the plane’s yellow propeller spinner and the immaculate black eagle on its fuselage,
then he was alone, twisting and climbing into an empty sky.
It was anything but, of course.
He looped upside down out of his turn to see below him a mêlée of Focke-Wulfs and Spitfires wheeling, soaring and plummeting above
the spiralling smoke from burning aircraft and camouflaged corrugated hangars on the airfield below. The remaining Typhoons, their job done,
headed low and fast for home, pursued by the black puffs of exploding anti-aircraft shells, leaving several of their squadron burning fiercely in
the woods.
The Focke-Wulf did not pursue Frank through his upward spiral, knowing he could be out-turned by Spitfires and trusting
to his superior acceleration to get away. He had judged well; by the time Frank saw him again he was out of range and climbing like a
demented bee. Frank gave him a burst, half in acknowledgement, half as a sop to his own pride. If it hadn’t been for Patrick’s call the German would have had him, deservedly.
Below Frank the scrap was in full spate, the sky teeming with Focke-Wulfs where there had been none moments before. The British attack had achieved
surprise, with the Typhoons going in below the treetops, and it was unlikely that any Germans had got off the ground. The Focke-Wulfs were probably
from Évreux-Fauville, a formidable lot only a few minutes’ flying time away. Frank’s face was hot, his palms sweating, the muscles in his arms trembling. He broke left
and tipped his wings to get a better view. A Spitfire flashed across his nose, the
pilot’s goggled face turned towards him in horrified surprise. Shaken by the Spitfire’s slipstream, he heaved on the
stick and banked left again. Three thousand feet below he saw the Dodger in Foxtrot Alpha Four chasing a smoking Focke-Wulf as it
dived to get away. Unable to close but still within range, the Dodger was firing short bursts, clinical, controlled, concentrating on his kill. Concentrating too well; behind
and above him, gaining fast, were two more Focke-Wulfs. Don’t chase the damaged down, Patrick was always telling them, look out for your
own tail.
Frank put his nose down and opened the throttle, shouting ‘Alpha Four break now, break now!’ into his radio.
Alpha One vibrated as she always did in a dive, not dangerously, but as if quivering with excitement. He closed on the nearer Focke-Wulf’s rear quarter at over 400 knots, adjusted his sights,
counted three more seconds and pressed the trigger. At that moment the Dodger broke right and climbed steeply, either spotting
his pursuers or in response to Frank’s call. The Focke-Wulf did the same and Frank’s cannon shells passed inches below its tail-plane. But the
farther Focke-Wulf made the same mistake as his quarry, concentrating too hard and breaking right to pursue the Dodger. As he turned, he
briefly filled Frank’s sights, two white plumes trailing his clipped wingtips, his markings clear.
Bits flew off him as Frank’s cannon shells struck behind the cockpit. There was no burst of flame or smoke but
the entire aircraft shuddered as if in an unsteady camera frame, then began an almost leisurely roll to the right, nose down, showing its yellow underbelly. Frank
steepened his dive and gave it a long burst, his shells exploding into the fuselage. As he
broke away it went into a spin and the cockpit cover flew off. For an instant he could see the pilot struggling to get out. He would have no chance.
Frank levelled out at under 3000 feet. He was over woods and fields, miles from the airfield, with no other planes now
visible save for the last moments of the plummeting Focke-Wulf, spinning and smoking. It hit the ground with a wide flash and a plume of
thick black smoke. Frank began a long, turning climb, watching for anything behind or above. His hands were clammy and sweat trickled down inside his
goggles. A tremor in his legs made him feel he wanted to kick out or get up and run around. It was sickening to see a fellow pilot, even a German one, atomised
in an instant of heat. But there was also the elation that always followed a kill, the thrill of victory in mortal
combat, the sense of potency. It was like being back at school and scoring a goal, only here you were on your own with no one to cheer
you, just that coiling black smoke to mark an extinction that could have been you.
At 10,000 feet he circled, looking for the target airfield. It was marked by flames and smoke miles to the
north now, with just two or three dark specks circling above like distant crows. Huns, probably, since the scrap was over.
The Spits must have been low on fuel and Patrick would have told them to break for home. Frank was
Patrick’s wingman and they’d be wondering what had happened to him. He had enough fuel to get home provided he didn’t
run into trouble. It was always dangerous, returning without a wingman. The enemy, thoroughly aroused by the poking of their nest, would be hunting in pairs for returning
marauders, especially damaged ones. Frank checked all his systems. He was undamaged, but still vulnerable. There was broken cloud at 20,000 feet, not
much, but any cover was better than none. Forty gallons meant he had enough fuel to gain height. He resumed his climb, heading west in order to give the airfield a wide berth before
setting course 323 degrees for home. Foxtrot Alpha One’s Merlin engine note was reassuringly steady.
Frank loved his aeroplane.
Frank taxied to Dispersal, revved the engine to clear it, then switched everything off and sat motionless, savouring the silence
before the ground crew clambered up around him. His head still rang with noise and vibration and he could smell the hot
fumes, but for half a minute the healing balm of silence spread from within, like consciousness of grace. Even the shouts and
exclamations of the mechanics, startlingly clear after the distortions of the radio, did not at first dispel it.
He had picked up the Dodger on the way back, finding him limping along at 230 knots and 15,000 feet,
a tell-tale thin dark vapour-line of burnt oil behind. Frank was at 20,000 feet and just
within sight of the coast of France. He approached the Dodger in a long shallow dive, well off to his right so as not
to alarm him. When he was parallel and sure of being seen and identified, he moved in close. There were no flames but the Dodger’s engine cowling was streaked with oil and holed
near the rear. He flew level, however, and his prop was regular. Not wanting to give their position away by breaking radio
silence, Frank tipped his wings and held up his thumb, wriggling it from vertical to horizontal. The Dodger’s goggled face grinned and he held his thumb up. Frank dropped back and
climbed to 17,000 feet, playing guardian angel all the way back to the Kent coast. By the time they reached the airfield the
Dodger’s oil vapour was thickening ominously and he was feathering his engine. He turned it off and glided down to a perfect
landing.