Goshawk Squadron (19 page)

Halfway through the bank Peacock lost it altogether. His plane fell sideways, helplessly, like a book toppling from a shelf. Blunt, coming up behind him and hauling back on the control column to get his plane over the hedge, saw Peacock sliding out of the sky and tried to turn inside him. But his plane too was heavy, and it responded reluctantly. Blunt changed course just enough to collide with Peacock head-on. The impact ruptured both fuel tanks. For a moment the
embracing machines hung in the air, waiting, it seemed, for some act of coronation. Then the flames bloomed, and the wreckage fell, magnificently orange and red. It made the other planes droning around the dull sky look puny.

In mid-March the sky over France was all exuberance. Ragged flotillas of cloud sailed before a brisk west wind. Sunlight sought out the gaps and flickered over the new-green fields far below. The sky was a place of awakening, of vigor, as full of life as the million seeds in the earth. Woolley hacked a long, scarlet gash in it with a burst of machine-gun fire and pulled up hard into a tight, half-rolling turn so that he could look back and down.

Still the bastard would not burn.

It was a Fokker Triplane. It flew steadily homewards, nose fractionally down but wings beautifully level, trailing streamers of torn fabric like favors. In the fuselage, holes as big as fanlights showed bright sky on the other side. The upper wing was as bare of fabric as a garden gate. No pilot could be seen.

Woolley and Dickinson and Callaghan had ambushed a patrol of six Triplanes. Dickinson had burned one and gone down with it to confirm the kill. Callaghan had damaged another and been damaged himself. After less than thirty seconds of action everyone had vanished except Woolley and his own sedate victim, whose pilot was already dead. Woolley dived from alternate sides and blasted the aircraft with the close attention of a man beating a carpet. In five attacks he emptied every bullet in the drum, battering away at
the vitals: the engine, cockpit, fuel tank. The Triplane absorbed them all and droned on.

He leveled out on a parallel course. He stood up, holding the controls between his knees, and dragged the Lewis gun down its sliding mounting. Cold air like rushing water battered at his face, beating in his cheeks and making it hard to breathe. The hot stink of the engine tickled his nostrils. He unclipped the empty drum and slammed on a full one, thrust the gun forward and sat down with a thud that shook the cockpit.

The Triplane flew its useless pilot home, unhurriedly, with dignity. Woolley side-slipped and fell behind it, then climbed and injected a long burst into its belly, searching forward until he saw the bullets slashing up between the wingroots. The Triplane shuddered but would not break and would not burn. He curled away so close that his wash disturbed it.

Woolley swore, cursing the enemy into flames. This was his fourth patrol of the day and only his first kill of the week. The Germans would not fight without a clear advantage. Always they had the wind behind them. Pursuit meant slogging home. Woolley approved and resented. Even now, when he had succeeded in attacking, this Triplane refused to be destroyed.

He double-checked the sky, climbed, dived, and blazed away again. Nothing. It was like firing into a sandpile.

He flew alongside and swore again: at God, at the rubber bullets, at the serene stability of the enemy. Then he saw that its nose had sunk a couple of degrees, and it was gradually pulling away. A lick of color pulsed out of the engine, dissolved, came again and grew strong. Orange flame drew out and broadened. The nose dipped further, and the flame suddenly raced along the wings and around the cockpit. In an instant the whole aircraft was outlined in fire like a set-piece at a fireworks display. The explosion detached the separate wings as if they had been plucked feathers. Woolley felt the blast wash over his SE, pushing it aside, and he turned with
the motion and set course for home, dissatisfied at the inefficiency of it all.

Dickinson landed at Achiet and went to the adjutant's office to report his kill and his availability. He found Woodruffe with a tall, one-armed man in a raincoat and a bowler hat. Like many tall men, he had a perpetually upright, weary look, as if he usually slept leaning in a corner. He was examining the dust on top of a cupboard.

“Ah, Dicky,” Woodruffe said. “Did you have a good flight? This is Inspector Philippe of the French civil police. He's looking for Goshawk Squadron. Any idea where they might have gone?”

“The last I saw they were all flying away.”

“Yes. That would be three days ago, now.”

“My goodness. Is it as long as that?”

Woodruffe turned to the inspector. “I'm almost sure they said Brittany, although some of them might have gone to Bordeaux. You could try both.”

“Yes,” the inspector said.

“We didn't see much of them,” Woodruffe went on. “They flew out as we flew in. No time to chat.”

“No,” the inspector said.

“Are you sure they were here?” Dickinson said.

“Quite sure.” The inspector leveled his surviving index finger at the Squadron blackboard, which listed the patrols. Across the top it read “Goshawk Squadron.”

Woodruffe clapped his hand to his brow. “Good Lord! You must think us very ill-organized, inspector.” He rubbed it out and chalked in “73 Squadron.” “There!”

The inspector looked at it, looked at Woodruffe, and said nothing.

“Any message, in case they drop in?” Dickinson asked.

Philippe picked up his dispatch-case. “Please tell them,” he said, “a warrant has been issued against them for manslaughter.” He nodded at Woodruffe and went out.

They watched him get into his car. “Manslaughter?” asked Dickinson.

“The restaurant owner. Chap we stuck up on the chair. He fell off when the police charged in. Hit his head and died, apparently.”

“Oh. Seen Callaghan?”

“He staggered in ten minutes ago with a broken tail. I think he went to have some tea.”

“Tea?”

“That's what he said. Oh, I forgot. We're out of booze.”

“But my dear fellow, how
awful.”
Dickinson sat down and looked at the adjutant, appalled. “There
has
to be booze, there simply must be. The whole thing is quite impossible without booze. It … it can't be done.”

Woodruffe blinked, feeling uncomfortable. Woolley came in, and the adjutant quickly got up.

“Woody says there's no booze, sir,” Dickinson said.

“Did you confirm your Hun?”

“Oh, yes. He went off with a lovely bang.”

“Why is there no drink for the squadron?” Woolley asked the adjutant.

Woodruffe shuffled a little stack of telephone messages. “It seems that Colonel Hawthorn refuses to approve the indent,” he said.

“Who's he?”

“Apparently our new Corps Liaison Officer for Admin. and Supplies. He's been appointed to, as it were, look after this section. Been given a bomber squadron and one or two fighter squadrons and us. He … straightens things out.”

“Get him on the phone.”

“Actually, sir, you can meet him now, if you want to. He went over to inspect the ground staff. Mechanics and armorers and so on.”

“What for? Pox?”

“Something a great deal worse, I'm afraid. Clean webbing.”

Woolley looked sick. “D'you mean that our mechanics have stopped work while some fat asshole from bloody Corps inspects their scrofulous webbing?” he shouted.

The adjutant looked out of a window. “Brasses, too,” he
said. “Colonel Hawthorn told me he puts a lot of stock in men's brasses.”

Woolley lurched toward the door. Dickinson saw his face, heavy-eyed and working like a drunk's. “Also the silk scarves,” Woodruffe added quickly. “He canceled the indent for silk scarves.” The door slammed, and his telephone messages fluttered to the floor.

Gabriel, Lambert and Church met the F2B at the rendezvous point and headed for the Front. The two-seater looked old and battered and slow. They could see the patchwork of new fabric over old, where the repairs hadn't been painted yet. There were moth-holes in the wingtips, and the fuselage seemed warped. It flew very slowly.

They crossed the Line at 3,500 feet. As soon as the antiaircraft fire began to thin out the F2B dived to begin photographing below cloud level. The three fighters stayed above and searched for defenders.

For twenty minutes nothing happened. Lambert distrusted it. Usually, on reconnaissance escort, the Germans drove the camera plane home within ten minutes, and often they got it before it recrossed the Line. This was Lambert's fourth patrol of the day. He kept thinking how nice it would be to lie in a hot bath and soak out the cold and the dirt. The F2B creaked through a 180-degree turn and began photographing another strip. Naked Balinese dancing girls held tankards of ale to his lips. Flak burst, black and bad-tempered, far below. More hot water … Church waggled his wingtips: time to turn again. What luxury it would be to get out and stretch.

For five more minutes they plowed the sky. Lambert forced his treacherous mind to keep alert, and made his tired eyes keep searching the wastes. Again the camera plane turned, and they swung to follow it; and between them and the Line three trim shapes plunged in and out of cloud in a dive pointed at the F2B. Albatros D IIIs: little blue-gray, lethal toys.

Gabriel was looking the wrong way at the crucial second.
By the time he had moved his head, Lambert and Church had gone, falling away in a howling power-dive. He raced after them. The camera plane was grinding up in a laboring climb, turning to present the smallest target. The German planes reached it seconds before the SEs. Gabriel saw bullets sparkle and flash all around the F2B; and then a longer streak from the British observer's rear-firing gun.

Lambert and Church bowled past the two-seater and eased into a long right-hand turn to follow the German planes, Lambert firing short bursts to attract their attention. Gabriel had cut inside the turn and was racing to meet them on their other flank. In the end all six planes came together more or less head-on.

Lambert and Gabriel managed to grab an enemy, but Church had to swerve to avoid Gabriel and he lost sight of the third German. By the time he had gotten clear of the dog-fight the Albatros was a couple of hundred yards away, closing on the two-seater as it chugged westward against the implacable wind.

Church speculated with a long-range squirt, clicking his tongue in self-reproach as he did. The Albatros ignored him. He fired again, and this time it twisted violently. He had hit it, or the pilot was jumpy, for the Albatros banked steeply to the left, flattened out, looked at Church, and dived for home. Church went after him.

Lambert had his German in a tight circle and was chasing his tail; not far away. Gabriel had trapped the other plane in the same way. Alternatively, the Germans had trapped Lambert and Gabriel. What mattered was that the two-seater was getting away. Meanwhile each pilot strained to force an advantage. It was like driving the machines around an invisible Wall of Death. Lambert found that he could look across the circle and see right inside the German pilot's cockpit. The man had a black mustache. Villainous.

Gabriel's man wanted blood and he blazed away at Gabriel's perpetually vanishing tail. Gabriel encouraged this with tiny bursts. After two noisy minutes the German fell silent.
Gabriel waited for him to break away and in that instant got in a good burst, peppering the cockpit. The Albatros dived, and Gabriel turned away to check the state of Lambert's health. He was drifting into a cloud, still chasing the other plane's tail. A few seconds later they emerged, a hundred yards apart. The German saw Gabriel waiting, and dived for home.

Church had followed his Albatros right down to ground level. He flattened out and chased the German up a wooded valley. The other pilot was either new or nervous; probably both; he zigzagged desperately to avoid Church's sniping. The valley narrowed and hampered escape, and now Church began to score. Bits of the Albatros were blowing past him. He was crying with delight, as he often did in anticipation, when his engine started to cough, and he sailed slap into a rocky cascade. Burning gasoline floated down the stream like a Wagnerian funeral, terrifying the trout.

Woolley turned a corner and saw Colonel Hawthorn instructing Corporal Hemsley in the about-turn. Hemsley got it wrong. Hawthorn stopped him, and walked to where he could be seen by the rest of the squad of mechanics and fitters and armorers. He transferred his swagger-stick to his left arm, thrust his hands alongside the piping on his breeches, and aimed his jaw at the horizon.

“Skuh-wod, ay bout,” he sang,
“tun!”
He rotated on his right heel and left toe and brought the left boot alongside the right with a delicate crash which trembled his pink jowls. He paused to let the demonstration sink in. Woolley reached up and pulled the switch on the air-raid warning.