A Good Clean Fight (45 page)

“Iced coffee?” the air commodore said. “Fresh from Cairo.” He unscrewed the top of a giant Thermos. “Shepheard's best.”

Barton found a couple of mugs and knocked the sandy dust from them. Bletchley poured. Ice cubes clinked. “Happy days,” Barton said, miserably. Bletchley grunted agreement. They drank. It was blessedly black and
chilled and it went down fighting. “Whisky?” Barton said. Bletchley nodded. Barton drank more. You couldn't have a good wake without good booze.

“I don't suppose you brought any replacements, sir,” he said.

“No.”

“Doesn't matter. We haven't got any kites to put them in.”

“Well, the Tomahawk's seen its day, hasn't it?”

And so have I
, Barton thought. “That sounds fairly final, sir,” he said, and regretted it. Why do Baggy's dirty work?

“Nobody blames you for trying, Fanny. Nobody blames you for . . . um . . . not succeeding.” He saw Barton's wry smile, and said: “That's how I see it. Not a question of failure, as such. Yours was a promising idea and in other circumstances it might have paid off. Handsomely.”

Barton looked out of the window. Nothing handsome could ever have happened at dirty, dusty, duffed-up old LG 181, where even the graves were latrine pits.

Behind him Bletchley was going on about the risks of war and how every operation was a gamble, more or less . . . Barton nodded occasionally, but he wasn't really listening. The truth was, he wanted to leave
now.
If his job was over, then cut its throat and be done with it. No handshakes, no goodbyes, no clumsy speech of thanks to the squadron drawn up in a square while the wind chased dust between their legs and Uncle stood by to call for three cheers for the CO. Barton had heard too many such speeches, and more than once the man delivering them had been on the edge of tears; you could tell from his voice, from the way it faded and cracked and suddenly everyone was staring at the ground or the sky and wishing the bastard would
end.
Barton wondered whether tears would betray him like that. Fighter pilots weren't supposed to be emotional, and fighter
leaders
were supposed to be pure steel. It was all an act, of course, and many fighter leaders
kept up the act with the aid of half a bottle of whisky a night. Failing that, success was a good stimulant. Fighter pilots were a fairly simple-minded crew; Barton had no illusions about that. They did a complex job, but ultimately it was judged by a brutally simple test: either you blew the other plane to buggery, or the adj wiped your name off the squadron board. There was no other reason to fly. If you couldn't do the job you were taking up space that another man wanted. Maybe he'd be luckier. Barton wanted to go
now
, in the Brute, back to Cairo. Let Uncle clean up this mess.

“If anybody's to blame,” the air commodore was saying, “it must be the Luftwaffe. Not their finest hour. Remind me to talk about posthumous gongs, by the way. They can't all have one, but I might get a DSO for Dalgleish.”

That was when Barton really knew he had failed; and for a moment he found it hard to breathe. A fly landed on his arm, and when he shook his arm it did not move so he became infuriated and banged his arm on the table and hurt himself. “You'd better talk to Uncle about that, sir,” he said. “The sooner I get out, the better.”

“Certainly not.” Bletchley stared with astonishment. “You don't imagine I've gone to all this trouble just to taxi you back to Cairo, do you?”

“I thought . . .” Barton was too bewildered to know what he thought.

“For God's sake, Fanny, do you want your job or don't you? The other day you were fighting tooth and nail to keep it. Now you sound as if you don't give a tuppenny toss if your chaps go to Takoradi and you go into a nursing home.”

“When you referred to my lack of success, sir, I assumed—”

“Christ Almighty, man, the Desert Air Force sacks a squadron leader every day and twice on Sundays! Believe
me, nobody sends an air commodore to break the sad news and a Bombay to cart the chap away.”

“No, sir. So why is it here?”

“Didn't you get my signal? Obviously not. Another cock-up. I sent it last night by dispatch rider, so I expect he fell down a well and broke his neck, they're always doing it. Listen. The Bombay will fly fuel, ammunition and food, plus a skeleton ground crew, to LG 250. You will follow in five Kittyhawks which are on their way here now, as soon as they have been adapted for low-level bombing. Your task is to bomb and strafe German fighter airfields. You've proved that the 109s won't come up and fight—which frankly is no surprise, Rommel would be mad to release them before his next attack—so you'll destroy them on the ground.”

“LG 250,” Barton said. “Where is that, sir?”

“A long way behind enemy lines.”

Barton went out of his trailer and took his shirt off. He let the sun dry the sweat that was running down his body. “Have I got any choice in the matter?” he called.

“No. Do it or don't do it.” When Barton didn't answer, the air commodore said, “Don't be tiresome, Fanny. You know you're going to do it.”

“It sounds bloody lethal.”

“I certainly hope so.”

“I mean, if Jerry finds an LG in his backyard, we won't stand a chance. He'll wipe us out.”

“It's the last place he'll look.”

Barton went back into his trailer and sat on his bunk. His eyes were still screwed-up from avoiding the sun and the dusty wind. “I'm getting too old for this game,” he said.

“Bring it off and you'll be a wing commander with a DSO,” Bletchley told him, “and nobody will be more delighted than I.” The air commodore poured out the rest of the iced coffee and handed him his mug.

“You've got a really shitty job, haven't you, sir?”

“We can't all be heroes.” Now that he had got what he wanted, Bletchley allowed himself to relax a little.

“I wouldn't know a hero if he came up and bit me in the ass,” Barton said. “I've met plenty of killers, and a couple of suicides, and one or two poor sods who should never have been pilots in the first place, and a few blokes who were so thick they terrified the enemy without realizing it, but never a hero.”

“You're a hard man, Fanny,” Bletchley said; perhaps mockingly, perhaps not; Barton could not tell.

Bletchley borrowed the battle-wagon and made a quick tour of the camp, talking to the troops and visiting the wounded. He said a few words at the funeral of the airman who had died during the night. Afterward he walked to the mess tent with Hick Hooper. “I'm sorry you're not getting any combat experience,” he said. “Blame the Luftwaffe.”

“I've been good and busy, sir. Made a lot of friends.”

“And lost a few yesterday, I understand.” Hooper had nothing to say to that. “Still, that's how it is with strafing operations, I suppose,” Bletchley said. “You'll let me know when you feel you've learned enough, won't you?”

“I'd like to stay, sir.”

“Stay? You mean for good?”

“Yes, sir. I'd like a permanent transfer to Hornet Squadron.”

“You'll be dead before the bumf is cleared.”

“So forget the bumf, sir.” Hooper was perfectly calm. “I like it here. It's clean.”

“I must say
you
don't look awfully clean.”

“I feel clean. Sun, sand, sky and a bunch of fifty-caliber machine guns playing my tune. My idea of heaven, sir.”

“Good show,” Bletchley said automatically. “Keep on hammering the Hun.”

He sought out Skull. “Fanny seems a bit twitchy,” he said. “It hasn't anything to do with those damn fool ambulances, has it?”

“Ambulances? No. What ambulances? Oh, you mean
those
ambulances.” Skull wiped dust from his spectacles. “How did you know, sir? They weren't in my report.”

“No, but they were in several German reports, and our people have ways and means of eavesdropping that it's better you know nothing about.” Bletchley looked pleased with himself. “What's your version of events?”

“Well, sir, Hooper says he hit an ambulance by mistake and it blew up like Krakatoa. That inspired him to strafe a few more. Half erupted with a colossal and gratifying bang. Half didn't.”

“Mnnnnn.” Bletchley squashed his lips together and made a disparaging noise through his nose. “Of course we have only Hooper's word.”

“True. He seemed quite certain, though.”

“Combat can do funny things to the mind. Hooper had just seen the rest of his flight destroyed before his very eyes, hadn't he?”

“Yes, but—”

“The man was in a state of terrible shock, wouldn't you say?”

“Not when he gave me his report . . .” Skull saw the air commodore raise his eyebrows. “Of course that was much later,” Skull said tamely.

“Terrible shock. His mind was in turmoil, wasn't it? Overwhelmed by a primitive rage.” Bletchley gave a sad smile. His voice was calm and reasonable. “I expect it was swamped by a wild blood-lust to take revenge on the brutal enemy. You'd be the same, wouldn't you?”

“Um . . . approximately,” Skull said.

“So we can discount what Hooper said. After all, ambulances don't blow up. That's a well-known fact.”

“Yes, indeed.” Skull scratched his head and collected a
little sand in his fingernails. “So there's nothing more to be said.”

“Oh, the Germans will probably show some wrecked ambulances to the Red Cross and shout atrocity. Usual propaganda humbug. I mean, we all know what happened to those ambulances. They took a wrong turning and got blown up by their own mines.”

“Happens all the time, sir,” Skull said. “Well-known fact.”

“How's Pip Patterson?”

“Quite murderous.”

“Good show. Got to keep biffing the Boche.”

While they were eating lunch the Kittyhawks arrived. Barton briefed his pilots on the move to LG 250. Only a dozen ground crew would be going, so everyone would have to help with cooking, refueling, rearming and other chores. Once they had been fed, the ferry pilots flew the Tomahawks out. Air Commodore Bletchley put the wounded airmen in the Brute and took off for Cairo. The bulk of the ground crew, not wanted at LG 250, struck their tents and drove away. Finally, the Bombay and the Kittyhawks got into the air and flew toward the setting sun. That night a section of Italian bombers raided LG 181 and missed by a mile, which was not bad for night bombing in the desert in 1942.

*   *   *

The road from Barce to Benghazi was busy both ways. Schramm joined a stream of empty trucks returning from the front and watched loaded convoys flick past in the opposite lane. Surely Rommel must attack soon. Someone was bound to attack, and if Rommel waited much longer it would be the British. How odd to be a general and draw a large arrow on a map, knowing that it meant the killing of thousands of men, his own and the enemy's. Did the
general care? The thought occupied Schramm all the way to the Italian barracks.

He went in, and ten minutes later he came out. Captain di Marco was not in his office, was not in Benghazi. When would he be back? That depended how long he was detained somewhere else. Nobody tried to persuade Schramm to take a seat and have a coffee.

He stood in the sun and thought: bad luck. Immediately he confronted himself: if it was bad luck, why was his nervous system beginning to tingle? Come to that, why hadn't he telephoned di Marco from Barce? Because he didn't want to risk learning that he was not at the barracks, that's why. Schramm got in the car and drove out of the barracks so fast that he sprayed a sentry with gravel. He waved an apology and, driving one-handed, nearly put a wheel in a ditch.

The same bald-headed orderly was reading a different newspaper outside her office. “She's operating,” he said fast, before Schramm could hit him.

The operating theater was off a busy corridor. Schramm was the only person not going somewhere. He stood with his back to the wall and avoided the eyes of the walking wounded, until he found that it made no difference whether he looked or not. The damaged men were interested only in their own pain. He was invisible. And eventually he had seen so many of them that they too ceased to have any individuality. One stained bandage was just like another. They were part of the furnishings, like the stark smell of disinfectant, or the flop of hospital slippers.

His legs grew stiff, so he sat on a windowsill. He felt like a schoolboy, which made him straighten his back, square his shoulders and try to look like à Luftwaffe major; but still he felt like a schoolboy. How odd. Why should that be? He worried about it until his mind almost reached out and touched the answer, and at that moment she came out of the theater, buttoning her white coat, and saw him.
“Oh, no! Not you.” She was shaking her head. “Not now. Not today.”

He jumped down. “It's not important,” he said. “I'll come back another time.”

“Oh, don't be stupid, of course it's important. Why tell lies? It's such a waste. You can walk me to my office.” She took his arm. “Why do you tell such lies?” she said again; only now she sounded weary instead of angry.

They walked to her office. Halfway there, her hand slipped down his sleeve and gripped his wrist. He was too pleased to speak.

“A bottle of the good white wine,” she told the orderly. He handed her a sheaf of messages.
“Good
wine,” she reminded him, “or I won't treat your piles. Give him money,” she told Schramm.

They went inside, and she skimmed through her messages. “Thank Christ,” she said. “No operations this afternoon. Both canceled. The patients had the good sense to die. You have brought me luck, Paul Schramm!” She tossed the bits of paper in the air and embraced him. “Ah,” he said. “Yes. Good.” She kissed him, very firmly and positively. She held him by the ears and looked in his eyes.