Piece of Cake (54 page)

As they turned away, Rex saw a tiny gray shape drifting across the pastel landscape, far below. It was so small and so gray that he thought it must be a shadow, yet there was nothing above it. “Jester Leader to Green Section,” he said. “Bogey at ten o'clock, low. Go seek him out.”

Flash Gordon acknowledged. Green Section fell away.

Flak-bursts clustered near the gray shape and made it swerve. Flash saw discreet German crosses. It was a Henschel 126, a fixed-undercarriage high-wing reconnaissance plane, little more than a sporting aircraft. For an instant he wondered at its courage and stupidity in straying so far into France; then he concentrated on the kill, glanced quickly left and right to check that the new men were still with him, and he had a startling idea: Why not let them polish it off? Give them a bit of confidence …

“Green Leader to Green Section,” he said. “Line astern, Green Two first, then Three, then Leader last. Line astern, go.”

They re-formed. Gordon let the others get well ahead of him. The Henschel had taken fright and was heading for home. Nugent at Green Two bore down at full speed and opened fire from four hundred yards. The little plane swerved aside as if someone had grabbed a wingtip, and wandered away from the cone of bullets. Nugent was still blasting at nothing as he stormed past. McPhee too began firing from four hundred yards but the Henschel had sidestepped again and raised its nose toward him. He over-corrected, washing his ammunition all around the target in a great spiral spray and was past it before he knew what to do.

As the two Hurricanes dwindled, carried a mile or more by their own momentum, the Henschel turned away from them and toppled into a dive. Its only hope now was to reach ground level and hedgehop back to Germany, dodging between trees, going where the Hurricanes were too big and fast to go. Flash Gordon followed. When the Henschel flattened out he was close behind. He saw it swell to fill his gunsight like a moth under a lens, and then he blew it apart. The sheer speed of destruction was astonishing. He merely touched his gun-button and the Henschel went to pieces, the wing spinning away in two chunks, the body smashed in half, shattered fragments exploding in a corona of debris. Gordon had an instant
in which to register this frozen fury, and then he was hauling his Hurricane up and away, searching for Green Two and Three. When he had time to look back there was nothing to see but fields: no smoke, no wreckage, no scars in the landscape. Two men were dead yet all he felt was a certain wonder at the suddenness of it all.

Green Section rejoined the squadron, slotting into the tail of the spearhead. They flew back to Château St. Pierre, and saw the smoke before they saw the aerodrome. A hangar was on fire, and there was a remarkably neat line of craters running across the airfield, spaced alternately left and right, like footprints.

Rex called the tower. The local transmitter still worked. A phlegmatic flight sergeant told him that some bombs had not exploded; whether they were duds or delayed-action nobody knew. Rex ordered him to mark the unexploded bombs with flags; meanwhile the squadron would orbit the field at a safe height.

It was a glorious, golden morning. The haze had gone, and the sharply angled sunlight cast long, precise shadows. Fanny Barton, flying as Yellow Leader, enjoyed the slightly theatrical feel of the landscape: distant enough to look like toytown, close enough to reveal action and movement. He relaxed and enjoyed the slow, easy circuits. There was nothing to do except keep tucked in behind Rex and think about breakfast. Bacon and eggs: the English classic. Best meal of the day …

Tucked in behind Barton was Flip Moran, leading Blue Section. He too was hungry, but he was worried about landing on that battered field, and he glanced repeatedly at the damage. He was worried not so much for himself as for Nugent and McPhee. Green Section would be the last to land, so they would have the least fuel, which might be awkward if something went wrong and they had to go round again.

While Moran worried about landing, Nugent and McPhee worried about their failure to shoot down the Henschel. Each knew that his technique had been right: go in fast, start firing at four hundred yards, keep your thumb on the button: that's what they had been taught. Yet the Henschel had fluttered away and before they knew it they had overshot and the bloody rear gunner was potting at
them
… No doubt the squadron commander would have things to say when they landed. Meanwhile, Nugent and McPhee
remembered his keenness on tight formations and they watched Flash Gordon's wingtips very carefully.

During the third circuit a flight of Messerschmitt 109's came out of the east: out of the sun. There were six fighters, well spread in line abreast, at about six thousand feet. As Hornet squadron wheeled and flew west, two of the German fighters peeled off. Their swoop was easy and unhurried, carrying the first to within fifty yards of Green Two. The 109 was slightly below and to the right of Nugent when he shot him. It was a lucky shot, since the bullets from the twin machineguns passed harmlessly through the fuselage behind Nugent's seat and one cannon missed completely; but two shells from the other cannon bashed through the rear of the canopy, hit Nugent's skull just behind his right ear, and blew the top of his head off. The other 109 had slipped behind Green Three, also slightly to the right and slightly below, and it hit McPhee with everything. The bullet-stream raced across his upper body. McPhee felt nothing. Cannon shells had torn through both lungs and ripped his heart to shreds. The two attacks lasted, in all, three seconds.

Flash Gordon heard nothing. When eventually he missed his wingmen he was annoyed, then startled; he began searching but he did not at first look below and so he failed to see the two Hurricanes falling until they had begun to spin.

They hit the ground almost simultaneously. Flash couldn't believe what he was seeing. He never thought to look high above, in the sun, where the 109's were rejoining their flight.

“Learn from that,” Rex snapped. The pilots were grouped around him at the edge of the field, but his eyes were focused on something beyond, some problem that was angering him. “Don't daydream. Jesus Christ …” Reilly was frolicking around his feet. Rex seized the chewed-up tennis ball and hurled it with all his strength. Gleefully, Reilly raced away. “For God's sake, stay alert. All you have to do is keep formation.”

They stared sulkily at the ground. They were hungry, and depressed by the double crash, and resentful of Rex's anger.

“How did it happen?” asked Moran. He too felt let down. All his worry had been wasted.

“God knows. I expect one of them was gawking at these damn
craters,” Rex said. “Lost his place, wandered into the next chap, down they both went.”

“Didn't anybody on the ground see it?” Flash Gordon asked.

“Too busy filling in holes and putting out fires.” Rex shook his head. “What a bloody silly way to go,” he said bitterly.

They returned to the mess for breakfast. Rex went straight to his office to call Rheims for more replacements. As the others sat down to eat, Mother Cox came in, looking sick. His forehead was purple and swollen, the result of yesterday's crash-landing. “I saw it all,” he said. “I was up on the roof. Saw everything, start to finish.”

“Congratulations,” Cattermole said. “Now kindly give the mustard a shove.”

“I couldn't believe it,” Cox said. “It made me feel ill just to watch.”

“It makes me feel ill just to listen,” Gordon told him. “So shut up.”

Cox sat and twiddled the mustard-spoon. His face was twisted. “But you just let them do it,” he said. Cattermole lost patience and grabbed the mustard, spilling the spoon. Cox stared at him, accusingly. “You just let them shoot those poor bastards down,” he said.

Everyone stopped eating.

“Let who?” Moran demanded. “Who shot them down?”

“You mean they didn't collide?” Gordon said.

“You didn't see the 109's?” Cox asked. There was absolute silence inside the room. The remote rumble of artillery fire made a window-pane buzz. “Christ almighty,” he said. “You didn't see the 109's. You didn't even
see
them.”

Rex ate breakfast at his desk, phone in hand. At seven-thirty he sent for his flight commanders. “We're moving,” he said. “Area HQ thinks this place is too hot, so we're shifting west about sixty-seventy miles. Town called Mailly-le-Camp.”

“Jesus,” Moran said. “Retreating already, sir?”

“Regrouping,” Rex said firmly. “There's a world of difference. Talking of regrouping, I've switched Patterson to ‘B' flight and brought back Cox. That still leaves us light but we can pick up replacements at Mailly, I hope. All clear? Get the batmen to start
packing. We're off in an hour. That's all.” He picked up his phone and jiggled the cradle impatiently. Moran and Barton did not move. “Problem?” he said.

“Mother Cox says it wasn't a collision,” Moran told him. “According to Mother, we got jumped by 109's.”

Rex banged the phone down. “Cox had concussion. He can't see straight.”

Barton said, “All the same, the chaps are a bit twitchy. They think Trevelyan must have been jumped too. Green Section's getting a bad name. Nobody wants to be ass-end Charlie.”

“Nobody wants …?” Rex scoffed. “By God, they'll go where they're put! What do they think this is? A fighter squadron or a bolshevik commune?” He hunched his shoulders and chanted, with a schoolgirl lisp,
“Please sir, I don't want to be in Green Section, sir, it's not very nice in Green Section
… Christ give me strength.” He grabbed the telephone again. “Get out and get cracking.”

They moved slowly to the door.

“There's a lot of talk about back-armor, too,” Moran said.

“Out of the question,” Rex snapped. “Get me Wing ops,” he told the operator, “and get your bloody finger out.”

Gordon grabbed a car, picked up Fitzgerald and dashed down to the village. “I bet Nicole's hopping mad,” he said. “She feels very strongly about foreigners invading France. She gave me hell about Joan of Arc, once.”

“Joan of Arc? That was us, wasn't it?”

“So she says. Frankly I don't know much about it, Fitz, but Nicole won't hear a word said against the lady. Nicole's a bit of a Joan herself, you know. Now and then I get the-feeling she thinks I don't take the war seriously enough. She thinks I just use it as an excuse to have a good time with the boys.”

“Mary's not like that,” Fitzgerald said. “All she thinks of is the baby.”

“Maybe Nicole's jealous of her.” Gordon considered the idea gloomily. “I've done my best, God knows. The bloody thing's worn down to a stub.”

They found their wives in the schoolyard. Classes had not yet begun, and the din from screaming children was endless.

“I heard you got bombed,” Mary said.

“Just the grass.” Fitzgerald kissed her, and the children pointed and whooped. “Ought you to be here?” he asked. “This place is a bit sort of vulnerable, isn't it?”

“So is anywhere. You look tired. D'you want some coffee?”

“No time, I'm afraid. We're moving out.”

“Today?”

“Now. At once. Before Jerry comes back and does it for us.”

“Oh dear.” She brushed his jaw with her finger. “It's the first time I've seen you unshaven. It makes you look like a gangster. A nice gangster.”

“Don't you want to know where we're going?”

“I expect it's a secret.”

“It is, actually, but that doesn't matter because—”

“I don't want to know, Fitz. I'll only worry, and worry's bad for the baby.”

“Ah. Well, I wouldn't want us to have an anxious infant.”

Nicole and Flash had gone inside where it was quieter. “Show me on the map,” she ordered.

“I haven't got a map. What difference does it make? Look, I'll be in touch as soon as we get settled. Everything depends—”

“
Non
.” She led him into a classroom with a map of France on the wall.

“It's supposed to be a secret,” Gordon said. “What if the Germans found out?”

“They won't find out from me. You think I want to stay here? Twice the
boche
has taken this part of France, twice in seventy years. I don't stay. I come with you, Flash. Now please show me where you go, and I go there too.”

Gordon sighed, and looked for the place on the map. “Near Troyes,” he said. “Mailly something … Here it is: Mailly-le-Camp.”

“Good.” She kissed him. “I meet you there. Tonight or tomorrow. It depends on the roads.”

“Mailly looks awfully small. Why don't you go and stay with your brother in Dijon? You'll be perfectly safe there and—”

“Perfectly safe and I never see you.” She squeezed his fingers. “Don't worry about me.”

“But I do worry, Nicole. Look at—”

“No, it's too late, it's all decided. I don't stay here. I go to Mailly and we fight the
boche
together.”

Gordon had never seen her so vivacious. Not for the first time, he was amazed by the woman he had married. He hugged her. “I'd better go,” he said. “Take care.”

The telephone was ringing when Rex walked into the only building at Mailly airfield: a wooden hut so new that the nail-heads were still shiny. The place smelt of raw timber and baked sunlight. He picked up the phone. “Paddington Station,” he said. “Platform three speaking.”

“About time too,” someone said. “The ops officer wants a word. Hold on.”

A different voice said: “How soon can you take off?”

“We can't. The groundcrews aren't here yet. This is a bloody awful place, isn't it?”

“Look in the woods behind the hut: you'll find a fuel dump. Get your kites topped-up and call me when you're ready. I've got more plots on the board than I can count.”