Piece of Cake (94 page)

“Being crazy certainly helps,” Barton said. “Think about it.”

That afternoon, Haducek was killed.

“A” flight had been scrambled. It was not an experienced unit: Donahue at Red Two, Flash Gordon and Jolliff in White Section, Haducek and Fraser in Yellow. CH3's final advice to the new boys was: “Stick like glue to your leader and do what he does.”

They intercepted about forty Heinkel 111's as they crossed the coast near Dover. There was also a defensive screen of Me-110's but Haducek cut through it with a brisk contempt for his or anybody else's safety that made Fraser's fingertips prickle. He concentrated on following Haducek and tried to ignore the streaks of tracer, the crisscrossing aircraft, the rushing contrails that crowded his vision. Haducek jinked and Fraser jinked after him. Haducek fired. Fraser felt the clatter of metal on his Hurricane, he saw things bouncing off his windscreen, the threat of terror squeezed his throat and he nearly broke away before he got blown to bits; but then he glimpsed a trail of shining fragments ahead and realized he was flying into Haducek's spent cartridge cases. He twitched the nose up. Haducek had closed on the Heinkel and Fraser saw him kill the upper gunner: eight Brownings briefly swamped the turret and the single machine-gun jerked to the vertical. Then the entire enemy formation shook and bounced as it ran over a sudden eruption of flak. One burst blew Haducek's Hurricane out of the picture.

Fraser was astonished. He had blinked when the shell burst and all he had seen of his leader was a flickering blur rising faster than he could move his eyes. The Heinkel swam toward him, wobbling in the turbulence, so he gave it a four-second burst that knocked down its undercarriage, which struck him as an odd reward, and he broke, hard and high.

The sky was spattered with action: streaks of smoke, sparkling
gun-muzzles, hanging snowballs of flak. The whole bloody-minded display of banditry was still thrusting north, except for one item. Falling behind the raid was an unhappy Hurricane, flopping and staggering as a 110 laced it with fire. Fraser guessed it was Haducek and he chased back with the tit pulled out and the Merlin screaming for revenge. The 110 quite wisely held its course and sped toward France, drawing away from Fraser all the time. In any case, Fraser's attempt at rescue was wasted. A shell splinter had penetrated Haducek's skull behind the left ear. He was stone dead long before his Hurricane buried him ten feet below a field of cabbages.

“Come and see this” Skull said to Kellaway

They went to Haducek's room. “Everything was packed,” Skull said. “All his clothes, all his belongings.” He pointed to a big envelope. “Personal papers. He's marked them ‘to be destroyed.' There's a check to pay his mess bill. Five pounds for his batman.”

“Five?” Kellaway frowned. “That's far too much. You don't want to spoil them.”

“Well …” Skull turned the banknote over as if there might be a message written on the other side. “It's Haddy's money. I mean, it
was
Haddy's money.”

“I suppose you'd better let the fellow have it. Five quid … In the last show a batman was lucky if he got ten bob.”

“And there's this.” Skull picked up a much-read copy of
Das Kapital
. “He's left it to Moggy Cattermole.”

“Oh dear.” Kellaway took the book and flipped through it. “Better not tell Moggy about the fiver. It'll only make him jealous.”

Next morning the steamroller was back at work, but not all the new craters had been filled in. An army truck stood in a distant corner of the field, with red flags fluttering around it to mark unexploded bombs.

Most of the pilots were dozing by the trenches, caps pulled over their eyes to keep out the sunlight. The air held a faint tang of autumn. The portable gramophone was playing
Thanks for the Memory
. There were two or three new faces. CH3 wandered from one to another, asking questions but only half-listening to the answers. He was endlessly polishing his goggles.

Barton came down from the tower and walked across to the squadron. Around his neck he wore the lavatory seat from the portable toilet. “Rise and shine,” he said. “We're now on two-minute standby. Lots of lovely trade building up.”

Quirk slowly woke up and blinked at Barton. “You look rather like a horse,” he said.

“He always did,” Cattermole said.

“Yes, but now he looks like the
front
end.”

“Don't talk rubbish,” Gordon said. “Whoever heard of a horse wearing a bog-seat round its neck?” They were putting on Mae Wests and zipping up flying-boots.

“This is no bog-seat,” Barton told them. “This is the Baggy Bletchley Memorial Trophy.”

Cattermole said: “I had an uncle who thought he was a Derby winner. He
always
wore a bog-seat around his neck.”

“Sounds very unlikely to me,” Renouf said. “I don't remember any Cattermole winning the Derby.”

“No, he lied about that,” Cattermole said. “The best he ever did was second in the Oaks.”

“This trophy,” Barton said, “will be awarded each day to the biggest piss-artist in the squadron, as decided by popular vote.”

“Moggy,” Steele-Stebbing said.

Cattermole nodded graciously.

“I nominate Flash,” Renouf said.

“I nominate Nim,” Gordon said. “I saw him wave his hanky at a Dornier the other day. What a ponce! What a piss-artist!”

“I was waving goodbye,” Renouf said. “Some of us still have manners, you know.”

“It had spots.”

“Very rare, spotted Dorniers,” Quirk said.

“Who gets your vote, CH3?” Barton asked.

“Haducek,” he said bleakly. “Haducek, Todd, Phillips, Flip Moran, Fitz and Zab. Every one a prize piss-artist. Must have been. None of them lasted the course.”

“I want to talk to you,” Barton said.

They went to the crewroom. As soon as they were inside, Barton threw the lavatory seat at the wall. “I've had enough of you,” he said. “You've become a pain in the ass. You think you can solve everything by planning, and holding briefings, and organizing
people. You think if you organize the kites, and the pilots, and the guns, and the tactics, and the controllers, and the bloody weather too I shouldn't be surprised, then everything will be perfect and nobody need get hurt except Jerry. You think you can get it all scientifically worked out so that nothing, absolutely nothing, gets left to chance. You're a typical fucking Yank. If there's a scientific way to break wind you'll get a patent on it. That's what's wrong with you, CH3. I used to think you were a brain. You're just a bleeding ulcer.”

“And what's your alternative? Swanning about with a broken bog-seat round your neck?”

“It bucked them up a bit, poor buggers. And with you around, they could do with a bit of bucking up.”

“Fun and games,” CH3 said bitterly. “Half the squadron don't know a 109 from fried chicken and you waste their time on dumb jokes.”

“They'll be scrambled in ten minutes. What they don't know now they'll never learn by then.”

“You can
try
, for God's sake. Tell the new boys which way to break when they get jumped. Tell 'em about blind spots. Deflection. Sun.”

“There isn't time,” Barton said. “It can't be done.”

“Wrong. Anything can be done.”

“How? Are you going to buy an extra week for a million dollars?” Barton's temper was about to snap, and he knew it; but he couldn't slow down. “You don't like this battle. You reckon it's a cock-up. Let me tell you something: it is a cock-up! This whole war's been a cock-up, ever since the Ram fell on his head a year ago.
Every
war's a cock-up, because that's what war is: organized cock-ups. And I'll tell you something else: I don't need you to help me cock it up. Flash Gordon can lead ‘A' flight. I like Flash. His brains are in his guts. You're grounded for twenty-four hours. Now get off this field and out of my sight.”

CH3 went out and walked away, without a word, without a glance. Barton returned to the pilots. He felt a curious mixture of guilt and exhilaration. “Flash, you're acting ‘A' flight commander,” he said.

“Excellent judgment,” Gordon told the replacements. “Fanny
is a very brilliant CO. One day he will be queen of England, mark my words.”

A couple of minutes dragged by. Everyone was restless, fidgety. Some of the replacements were sweating more than the heat required. They were all breathing rather quickly and shallowly.

There was a field telephone on a box. It clicked softly. Nim Renouf turned away and was sick. Barton caught the phone as it rang, and listened.

“Both flights scrambled,” he said. “I'll lead ‘B' flight. Flash takes ‘A.'” They were already hurrying toward their aircraft, Renouf spitting and swearing as he went. “Two big raids,” Barton called. “We've got one each. Lucky us.”

Flash was trembling, not with fear but with excitement. Fear had touched him when he first saw the raid. It hung between two plump clouds like a swarm of bees, and he looked away, not wanting to know how many aircraft or what type. What did it matter, how many? Too many was always too many: there was no comfort in figures. All the same, one part of his mind insisted on proceeding with an estimate. Sixty plus.

He looked at the flight, spread out like a search-party, and realized he didn't know the names of half of them. He looked to the north and the east for signs of help. Nothing.

When the first rank of bombers was about two miles away, Flash took his flight out of orbit and led it into a head-on attack. This was always the worst time. He was trembling so violently that he braced his head against the back-armor.

Their closing speed ate up the gap in about fifteen seconds. “When I say ‘Bingo,'” Flash called, “everyone bloody-well fire!” He was in the middle, leading Red Section, with Yellow right and White left. “Bingo!” he cried. The Hurricanes raced into the raid like a suicide pact. Flash ignored the heavy black blurs and aimed at the holes between them. He was working the machine as furiously as a skier dodging rocks on an icy track. A pair of Heinkels wallowed together and he narrowed his shoulders as he skated between them. The last rank rushed at him. He made his exit with a flashy victory roll just to show them what he thought of them. He hadn't fired a shot.

His wingman, Nim Renouf, was gone, vanished. Flash climbed
steeply, searched the sky and saw part of the German escort tip into a dive. He rolled out of a loop and checked the raid. It had split into three ragged streams. Below these, two bombers spiraled down, locked together like mating insects. Far below them, an instant avenue of bomb-bursts appeared: someone had jettisoned. At that moment, the controller called.

“Popcorn Red Leader, this is Teacake, do you read me?”

“Piss off, Teacake,” Flash Gordon said. A broken Dornier sideslipped out of his gunsight and he had to peel off before he overshot it. “Bugger!” he said. The sky was full of trouble: planes firing, swerving, falling. He noticed another Hurricane up-sun, also on its own, and he maneuvered alongside.

“Popcorn Red Leader, this is Teacake, what is your position?”

Flash squinted at the silhouetted Hurricane. It was a 109 and he wet himself. He broke fractionally faster than the German and fled into an obliging cloud.

“Popcorn Red Leader, this is Teacake, what is your position?”

“Sodding uncomfortable,” he said. His leg was drenched. “Now piss off, you berk.” He came out of cloud and nearly hit a crippled Heinkel being chased by a Hurricane: the bomber jumped at him like a bogey-man, wings spread to grab, the fighter jumped after it, and their shadows flicked his face. They were so close that it took his breath away and he felt faint.

“Popcorn Red Leader, this is Teacake, vector zero-four-zero.”

He sucked down a good lungful of oxygen, and the colors slowly brightened. “Listen, Teacake,” he said. “You can stuff your vectors up your ass.”

Pause. He weaved, and checked behind him.

“Say again, Popcorn Red Leader.”

“Stuff 'em up your ass!” he roared. “Ram 'em up your rectum!” The bomber stream seemed to have regrouped. Either that or he had found a second raid. Anything was possible. He was going too fast so he executed a very pretty barrel roll in order to shed speed and came up on the right rear of the stream. The turbulence was terrible. He kept bucking and pitching and losing the target. He closed up even more, fired, and shot himself. That was impossible but everything else had gone wrong and now, as soon as he pressed the button, something smashed into his left arm. It also knocked the stick out of his hand and sent the plane spinning out of control.

It fell for the best part of two miles, mainly because he was too dizzy and stunned to do anything but flop about in his harness. All the way down, Teacake kept calling, making demands, giving orders. When Flash managed to grip the stick again it was twisted arthritically, but it worked.

Things could have been worse. He felt battered and feeble but he could still use his left hand on the throttle. Better yet, when he killed off the spin and leveled out he knew where he was. He recognized the A20. That led to Ashford. Turn left at Ashford and you couldn't miss Brambledown. He decided to share the good news. “Teacake, this is Popcorn Red Leader,” he called. “Returning to base, not feeling very well.”

“Popcorn Red Leader, this is Teacake. Do
not
return to base. You must pancake elsewhere.”

“Oh, balls to that, Teacake.” Flash was feeling relaxed. The cockpit was flooded with gauzy sunlight and the Hurricane was flying itself home quite competently.

“Repeat, pancake elsewhere, Popcorn Red. You must divert.”

“Don't talk turds,” Flash said. “I've had enough for one day.” He had a bright idea. The best way to stop Teacake bitching and binding was to keep transmitting. “Put the kettle on, Teacake,” he said. Familiar landmarks came and went. “You're a stupid pratt, Teacake,” he said. “You're nothing but a piss-artist.” Brambledown came in sight. Much of it seemed to be on fire. Spitfires were landing and taking off, flying through the smoke. “Here I come, Teacake,” he called, “ready or not.”