Piece of Cake (90 page)

They got up and went out, glad to escape; all except Cox. He shut the door. CH3 was sitting on a table and gripping it as though he thought it might collapse.

“Well, you certainly told them,” Cox said. “Now forget it.”

“He was in my flight. Bloody idiot. Why do they have to be such bloody idiots?”

“I might ask the same of you.” That made CH3 look up. “I hear you had a date with Jacky last night.”

“A
date?
That wasn't a date.”

“Whatever it was it hasn't done you any good, has it? Now you're going around looking for asses to kick. It's not
their
fault if you've got popsy problems.”

“She's not my popsy.”

“If you treat her the way you treat us, I'm not surprised. She's not going to wait forever, you know.” Cox got a cloth and wiped the inside of his oxygen mask. CH3 gazed at the floor and let his right foot bang against the table-leg. “Still, that's your funeral,” Cox said. “It's Fanny I'm thinking of. Every time you turn grim, Fanny gets worried.” CH3's leg stopped moving. For a moment the room was silent.

“I was looking at that new kid, Todd,” CH3 said. “He's all keen and eager. And I thought: poor bastard, he doesn't know what he's getting into. He doesn't know beans about what it's going to be like, and chances are he'll never live to find out.”

“But he
thinks
he's good,” Cox said. “He thinks he'll be an ace by this time next week. And that's a terrific advantage! He's got confidence in himself. If he's nervous, if he's scared, he'll hang about and hesitate and some dirty little 109 will spit in his eye and that'll be that, goodbye Todd. Come on, CH3, snap out of it. You can't save his life by worrying. What you
can
do is make him feel good. Make him think we're the hottest squadron that ever flew, and by God what a lucky man he is! Right?”

CH3 slid off the table. “Christ, I could sleep for a week,” he said.

“He's probably going to buy it anyway,” Cox said. “He might as well get his money's worth.”

CH3 opened the door. “Hey, Toddy!” he shouted. “Come here, I need your advice.”

Barton's conversation with the CO of the Defiant squadron was brief. He was a tall, softspoken man with prematurely gray hair. His name was Grant.

Barton made sure there were no problems with fuel or ammunition, and then inquired how Grant wished to operate. Relative altitudes, for instance. Suppose the Hurricanes patrolled two thousand feet above the Defiants?

“I'm afraid I don't understand,” Grant said. “Have you had new orders to join us on patrol?”

“No. I just thought … I mean I assumed you were here so that we could give you an escort.”

“Frightfully kind of you,” Grant said, examining the horizon. “We don't actually need an escort. I do command a fighter squadron, you know.”

“Yes, but …” Barton had blundered in; now he had to blunder out. “It's none of my business, of course, and I know it wasn't your squadron, but they were Defiants, and they did get pretty badly hammered by 109's, didn't they?”

“Only because they were bounced. We don't intend to get bounced.”

“No, of course. On the other hand if they come at you head-on, how can—”

“Please don't concern yourself. We know what to do.”

Barton nodded and walked away. After a few paces he stopped and turned. Grant was pulling on a pair of fine leather gloves, although the day was already hot. Barton went back. “This is crazy,” he said. “You chaps shouldn't be here, right in the front line. You should be up in Scotland or somewhere, in reserve.”

For the first and last time, Grant looked him straight in the eye. “We have been given the place of honor,” he said, “and we must take it.”

The morning was quiet, although Skull kept bringing news of raids elsewhere. An additional ack-ack battery arrived to guard the aerodrome. The adjutant drove in and announced that their backpay had at last been sorted out. Sticky Stickwell came over to visit. They gave him a deckchair and a cup of tea. “I hear you're saving up to be a lumberjack, Sticky,” the adjutant said. “Jolly healthy life.”

“No,” Stickwell said. “Who told you that?”

“Well, I've seen pictures of them in
National Geographic.”

“No, no. Who said I want to be a lumberjack?”

“Moggy did.”

“Well, he's got it all wrong. I'm training to be a surgeon.”

“No, I don't think so, Sticky,” Flash Gordon said. “Moggy told me, too. He was very definite about it.”

“They all laughed,” Cattermole said, “but I reckon you'd be very good, Sticky. All that hacking and chopping with dirty great axes, it's right up your street.”

“Awful,” Stickwell said. “For a start, you've got to live in Canada.” He shuddered.

“Well,” the adjutant said, “it's not too late to change your mind. I'd think it over very carefully if I were you.”

“I'm going to be a surgeon.”

“Much of a muchness, really,” Barton said. “Hacking and chopping, chopping and hacking.”

“What are you going to be, when you grow up, Moggy?” CH3 asked.

“Obscene and disgusting, I hope.”

“What about you, Haddy?” Barton said. “Got any secret ambitions?” But Haducek just looked blankly at him. Since Zabarnowski's death, Haducek had said very little.

“I'm going to be world champion,” Gordon said confidently.

“What at?” Cox asked.

“That hasn't been settled yet. I leave all these details to my agent.”

“Nothing much changes, does it, Fanny?” Stickwell said. “They still talk a lot of cock.”

“Nonsense,” Barton said. “We have very serious discussions nowadays. Skull, say something serious for Sticky.”

“Um … let me see. Well, the Soviet Union has just annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. That's quite serious.”

“Shocking lot, the Bolsheviks,” Kellaway said. “I was there in 1919. The RAF was helping the White Russians. Trying to, anyway.”

“It was probably all agreed last year,” Skull said. “Russo-German pact. That's when Hitler and Stalin carved up eastern Europe between them.”

“We flew Camels,” Kellaway said. “Did a lot of low-level strafing. Bolshevik cavalry, mainly.”

“I thought the Nazis were against the Communists,” Fitz said.

“They were,” Skull said, “but they kissed and made up.”

“Never itched so much in my life,” Kellaway mumbled.

“Well, what d'you expect?” Cattermole stretched and yawned. “They're all as squalid as each other, aren't they? Communism's every bit as bad as Nazism, as far as I—” He crashed sideways out of his deckchair. Haducek had him by the throat and was banging his head on the ground and screaming abuse. It took half the squadron to drag him off. “I am a good Communist!” he shouted. “I fight and I die for my country and for Communism! You say Communists are same as Nazis I kill you!”

“Take a walk, Moggy,” Barton said.

“I'll come with you,” Stickwell said.

They went and sat on the ruins of the clubhouse. It still stank of high explosive. “Bloody foreigners,” Cattermole wheezed. “They ought to be put down at birth.”

“Listen, Moggy,” Stickwell said. “I didn't want to mention this before, but … See, I keep getting letters from the bank … That stuff I sent you, I mean, it added up and … Well, I just wondered what …”

“I gave Rex all the bills,” Cattermole said hoarsely. “Anyway, Rex went for a burton.” He coughed, painfully.

Stickwell nodded several times. “I was afraid that was it,” he said. “Oh, well. I'll manage somehow, I suppose.” He stood up and walked back to his squadron. As he passed the deckchairs, Fitz called out: “When you're a lumberjack, save us a tree.” Stickwell waved.

In the crewroom, Barton was tearing a strip off Haducek, who simply sat and shook his head. “What the hell's the matter with you?” Barton demanded. “You must be crazy.” Haducek nodded.
Normally, Stickwell piloted a Defiant but today he was an air-gunner. His squadron had more pilots than gunners at the moment. Grant had put him down as a reserve pilot, which was very boring. Then one of the regular gunners developed appendicitis and Stickwell grabbed his place.

They were scrambled just before noon.

He enjoyed being in the turret. Facing the tail, he got a completely fresh view of the sky and the squadron. And swinging the guns was great fun, too: the electrically operated turret went around like a fairground ride, while the guns angled up or down very slickly.

They climbed steadily, heading south. He got a bit restless, unable to see what was ahead. Then he heard the tally-ho, and the plane tipped sideways, and there were Dorniers everywhere.

All things considered, the squadron acquitted itself well. It broke up the raid before the Dorniers reached the coast. There was then a collection of dogfights in which each Defiant pilot strained to hold a position that allowed his gunner to keep a bomber in his field of fire. The Dorniers dodged and jinked and used their crossfire to hit the Defiants from both sides. The Dorniers could fire forward and backward and sideways but each gunner had only one gun, whereas the Defiant had four. Stickwell was vaguely aware that his plane was being hit, he heard occasional plunks and saw holes sprout in the tailplane, but the thrill of letting fly with four shuddering, battering Brownings entranced him. He raced the turret from left to right, squirted quadruple death and destruction, and whooped when a Dornier sheered away. He searched from right to left. The turret stopped halfway. The tail went up and he was aiming at the sun.

Stickwell shouted on the intercom. No answer. He twisted his neck. The prop was windmilling. The pilot's head was a red smear, pressed into a corner of the windscreen. Stickwell began kicking the turret controls, punching the Perspex, whacking the sides with his elbows. Nothing moved.

In the end the Defiant changed its mind and eased out of its dive so that it made a neat belly-landing on the water. It sank at once. Bright spray charged past the turret and turned to a swirl of light gray-green that became steadily darker. Stickwell began undoing his straps and then stopped. He knew he wasn't going anywhere.
The water charged up to his knees and climbed more slowly to his waist. He looked up and saw, far away, the shiny-metal surface of the sea. Everything outside was turning black. He had no idea the sea was so dark. He was still gripping the gun-handles. He squeezed but nothing fired. You couldn't kill the sea. The water reached his chest, and he gasped at the cold grip. “I didn't really want to be a sodding surgeon anyway,” he said aloud. His voice sounded old and cracked, but that was because his ears were full of buzzing and whining. A Perspex panel caved in and the sea smashed him in the face.

The field was littered with broken Defiants and fire-trucks and blood-wagons when Hornet squadron got scrambled. They made a good interception on a bunch of Heinkels just as they were bombing the giant aerials at Pevensey. Haducek destroyed a Heinkel but the escort was heavy and in the frantic scrap that followed, Sergeant Todd got shot down. There was no parachute.

Each flight was scrambled once during the afternoon. “A” flight found nothing. “B” flight chased a raid back across the Channel but most of its pilots were always out of gun-range.

A flood of black cloud was hurrying in from the west when the squadron took off early in the evening. They climbed to twenty-two thousand feet and joined a squadron of Hurricanes from North Weald, just north of London. The raid they had been given was making its approach up the Thames estuary: fifty-plus bombers covered by forty Me-110's; these in turn were protected by a great swarm of 109's.

When Barton sighted this mass of aircraft churning toward him he felt a surly resentment: why was it always so one-sided? Why couldn't they for once fight on even terms? Or even—what a luxury!—outnumber the enemy? The feeling passed, and half a minute later he was astonished to see all the 109's and half the 110's detach themselves and fly south.

“Low on fuel,” CH3 suggested.

“Not the 110's,” Barton said.

“They're low on appetite,” Cox said.

This seemed the explanation. As soon as the Hurricanes peeled off to attack, the 110's formed their familiar tail-chasing circle. The fighters ignored them and concentrated on the bombers,
harrying and chivying the flanks to drive them off course. Fitzgerald broke from one such attack and discovered that he had lost his wingman. Flash Gordon had gone.

He climbed, weaving to search, and glimpsed a solitary Hurricane
inside
the ring of 110's, whizzing around, vertically banked. It had to be Gordon. A Messerschmitt fell out of formation and the Hurricane dropped behind it, squirting flame. Fitz opened his throttle wide and went down to guard his wingman's back.

After a couple of thousand feet he was scrabbling at the inside of his windscreen, scraping off the ice-crystals that had formed. When the screen was clear again his Hurricane was still half a mile behind the fight, although the airspeed was frighteningly high and the controls were so stiff that it took both hands to budge the stick. His ears were buzzing like doorbells and his skull felt too tight for his brain. The ground looked strangely fuzzy, like a map left out in the rain, but Flash and the 110 were still clear enough and Fitz guessed there was haze or fog down there. The German saw barrage balloons coming up and he sheered away, back toward the estuary. Again Fitz's windscreen iced-up and he pressed against his straps as he cleaned it. His sinuses throbbed and a flicker of blood fell from his nostrils and splashed on the panel. He braced himself and hauled back, and leveled out in the yellow haze. The others had disappeared.

He licked blood from his upper lip and snuffled it up his nose. The smoky sky fled past him. What to do? Flash wouldn't give up, not yet anyway. What about the Hun? The Hun would go on down and try to sneak home at wavetop height. Fitz went down in search of them. In fact he overshot the 110, which was limping along on one engine. The haze turned into a dense sea-mist. He throttled back and gave it another ten seconds; then he was going home. The 110 limped up behind him. It was sheer luck. The pilot fired an enormous five-second burst that lit up the murk with brilliant tracer. All the cannonshells and almost all the bullets missed but a dozen rounds ripped into the Hurricane's instrument panel. Fitz broke left: the wrong way, he remembered too late, but it didn't matter, the 110 wasn't looking for a fight. It limped on home and claimed a definite kill.