A Good Clean Fight (34 page)

“I'm a German shufti-kite,” Dalgleish told him. “Very small, very slow. Make a beam attack.” He brought his Tomahawk down to three hundred feet and let it waffle along at a bit above stalling speed, while Hooper curled around in a big circle and charged in. Dalgleish dropped a wing to make his shadow even bigger. Hooper aimed at the center of the black shape flitting along the side of the dune and he fired. The shadow fluttered like a frightened moth. He eased the stick back and leaped the dune. “Missed me,” Dalgleish said from above.

He climbed and waited for Hooper to turn and return. “Bloody awful,” he said amiably. “Too bloody fast, and far too bloody soon. No bloody deflection to speak of. By the time your bloody silly bullets reached me I was elsewhere and they were too bloody tired to stay bloody up.”

“Poor bloody show,” Hooper said.

“Definitely no coconut, I can assure you.”

“I'll get closer next time, Blue Leader.”

“You do that, Blue Two. Okay, now make a quarter attack from the stern. Assume I'm an Mel 10.”

Hooper's second attempt failed. He overhauled the other Tomahawk in a long and shallow dive, saw his bullets make explosions of sand a good length ahead of the racing shadow, and suddenly there was no shadow at all.

He climbed and rejoined Dalgleish.

“The bloody Hun's not going to hang about,” Dalgleish said. “First shot and he's off, right?”

“Right, Blue Leader.”

“So kill him quick. Stick your nose up his bum and blow his sodding head off. Okay, do a stern attack.”

This time Hooper chased the shadow patiently, got squarely behind it; crept even closer and raked it so thoroughly that he ran out of ammunition.

They flew home. The landing-ground was loud with the snarl and grumble of taxiing fighters. Airmen sat on the ends of the wings, guiding the pilots through the dust the props threw up.

“Learn anything?” Dalgleish asked.

“Beam attacks aren't too easy,” Hooper said.

“Beam attacks are a bitch. Even if you get everything right the bugger's still flying
across
your bullet-stream. In 1940 some boffin did his sums on an eight-gun Spitfire and he reckoned that in a perfect beam attack, if the enemy's doing three hundred miles an hour and you open fire at two-hundred yards' range, the best you can expect is to hit his machine with seven bullets.”

“Seven hits?” Hooper said. “Eight guns, and only seven hits?”

“Seven
maximum.
Eight guns each firing twenty rounds a second, that's a hundred and sixty bullets a second, and they nearly all miss, because why? Because the enemy's in and out of your bullet-stream like
that
.” He clicked his fingers. “Even those seven strikes are far apart. Did they teach you lethal density at flying school in America?”

“The phrase came up.”

“In 1940 we reckoned it took sixteen strikes per square foot to blow a lethal hole in a 109.”

“That was with .303 ammunition. We've got .50.”

“And the 109 is tougher and stronger. Look, I'm not saying it can't be done. Some guys can do it, they attack on a beam and they lay off full deflection and they allow for bullet-drop and wobbly ammo and gun shake and hot flushes and Christ knows what else, and they blast the bugger to tiny bits. But those guys are special. What
you
do, Hick, is you get yourself
behind
the enemy. Right? Now he's flying in line with your bullet-stream and you can really hose him down.” They walked toward the mess tent. “See anybody else up there?”

“Um . . . No, I guess not.”

“Never guess, Hick. Use your eyes. Always look. The war doesn't stop for gunnery practice, you know.”

“Sure.”

“When I was a very small boy I was doing a test flight when I got jumped by a 109. If he hadn't been such a rotten shot he'd have killed me, and quite right too. The war doesn't stop for test flights.”

“I'll remember that.” But Mick O'Hare had given him the same advice, Hooper thought, and he had forgotten it. Throughout gunnery practice he had assumed Dalgleish was protecting him. Never once had he searched the sky. Delayed fright made the back of his neck cringe.

In the mess tent, the pilots were talking about drink. At midday they always talked about drink.

“Next time I'm in Cairo,” Billy Stewart said, “I'm going to buy a chromium-plated bucket and keep it permanently filled with gin and tonic.”

“Two buckets,” Fido Doggart said. “One to drink while the other's being refilled.”

“Can't stand gin,” Tiny Lush said. “Gin's for tarts and sailors.”

“My mother drinks gin,” Fido said.

“And a bloody good bosun she is,” Tiny said.

They sprawled on old ration boxes or petrol tins, their eyelids heavy with heat, their voices flat and slow. Nobody moved except, occasionally, to scratch. They were like cattle, drowsing through the hottest part of the day.

“Bugger gin,” said Sneezy. “Vodka. And ice water. Rivers of it.” His eyes closed. “I swim in vodka and ice water,” he murmured. “I swim . . . And I drink . . .”

“The Romans had the right idea,” Doggart said. “Fountains flowing with wine.” Before he could stop himself he had licked his lips and tasted the salt of dried sweat. His tongue also collected a few grains of sand. He spat them out.

“Don't waste it, Fido,” Lush said. “Spit on me.”

Fanny Barton bustled into the tent and everyone woke up. “Too bad about the dust-storm,” Barton said. “All ops are off for the rest of the day. Good news for tomorrow, though. No strafing. Bomber escort instead. Won't that be fun?”

“What height?” Pip Patterson asked.

“Oh . . . the usual. The bomber boys won't want to be lower than ten thou, so we'll be at angels twelve or fourteen. Nice and cool. Wear your woolly knickers.”

“What time?” Dalgleish asked.

“Take off 1500 hours. Back in time for tea. Special treat tomorrow: soft-boiled eggs and hot toast. If we can get the eggs. And some toast, of course.”

“Target?” Tiny Lush said.

“Same as always. Front-line British infantry.” Barton went out, whistling.

“That last bit's got to be a joke,” Hooper suggested. Nobody answered.

“Angels fourteen,” Dalgleish said to Patterson, “at three in the afternoon.” His voice was flat as a mill-wheel.

“Look on the bright side,” Patterson said. “Jerry will think it's a mirage. He'll never believe it.”

Hooper looked at O'Hare. “Angels fourteen is bad news,” O'Hare told him. “Above eight thousand the Tomahawk flies like a brick. At fourteen, like two bricks. Also, if you take off at three, sun's going down in the west, which is where the enemy lives. His 109s hide in the sun until a couple of bricks stooge by and they bounce them. The End. Kindly take your umbrella when you leave the theater.”

“You can't bounce a brick,” Doggart said. “I've tried.”

Ten minutes later, when the adjutant came into the mess for lunch, the pilots were silent. He asked what was up. Dalgleish told him. “We all want a crack at a 109,” he said, “but . . .” He made a sour face.

“I'm sure Group has its reasons.”

“Oh, yes. They're brave at Group,” Fido Doggart said. “By God are they brave.”

“Don't blame Group for an operational necessity,” the adjutant said sharply. “Anyway, it's not the first time the squadron's flown cover for our bombers. We did the same job at Maastricht in 1940. A very proud moment in the squadron's history.”

Patterson caught Skull's eye. “Tell me it's not going to be like Maastricht.”

“What happened there?” Hooper asked.

“What didn't happen? As Uncle says, a very proud moment. By the end of the day the pride was spread extremely thick, because there were precious few of us left to spread it on.”

“And as it turned out,” Skull said, “Maastricht didn't make a tremendous amount of difference anyway.”

There was nothing that Kellaway could add to that. He chewed his food and tried not to think of a particular pub in Kent where the draft bitter washed away all the sins of this wicked world. The memory of the taste persisted. “Skull,” he said, “what was that pub called, near Bodkin Hazel, where we used to drink? All the chaps put their footprints on the ceiling. Bloody good beer.” The adjutant clicked his fingers.
“Red Dragon!
That's what it was called.”

“No it wasn't.” The answer had strayed into Skull's mind like a moth through an open window. “It was the
Spreadeagle
.”

The adjutant knew immediately that Skull was right and he resented the fact. Clever sod. Bloody smart-aleck intelligence officers. Bloody heat. Bloody grub. He pushed his plate away: let the flies have it. “Anyway,” he said, “I've solved the problem of the latrine pits. Got hold of some TNT. I'm going to blow enough holes in this lousy desert to accommodate all your bowel movements for the rest of the war.”

Throughout the afternoon, the camp trembled to the crash of explosives. Cordite tinged the air. Neither the bangs nor the stink did anything to help the pilots relax. Skull put on a record of a slow fox-trot. Ray Noble's band got behind the crooner and urged him on:

Won't you make my life sublime,
Darling, to the ends of time?

A detonation jogged the needle. “To the ends of time, the ends of time, the ends of . . .” Skull ended it.

At the end of the afternoon the CO announced that the bomber-escort job was off. Scrubbed. Forget it.

Immediately, everyone's spirits revived. Life was suddenly better, brighter, brisker. “Back to normal tomorrow,” Barton said. “Dawn strafe as usual.” There was a rumble of satisfaction.

Skull watched this with something like amusement. Later he said to Kellaway, “One wonders whether there really was a bomber mission to be escorted.”

The adjutant had mislaid a stick of dynamite, so his mind was elsewhere. “Of course there was,” he said. “What are you suggesting? Fanny made it all up?”

“Morale has definitely improved since he scrubbed it.”

“Morale was always perfectly sound.”

“No. Too much strafing. The chaps were getting brassed off.”

“Not nearly as brassed off as the Hun, I bet.”

“Then where are his standing patrols?”

“You tell me. You're supposed to have all the brains.”

It was a cheap way out, and they both knew it; but Kellaway didn't care. He had more pressing problems. Holes didn't grow on trees.

*   *   *

What was extraordinary was that Paul Schramm knew he was dreaming; and since it was only a dream he need not take it seriously. On the other hand, he'd better pay attention, because the music was Schumann's Third Symphony, the
Rhenish
, and he was first percussion. Indeed, he was the only player in charge of the drums and cymbals and bits of ironmongery. It was a very responsible position. Schramm knew that he was deeply honored to hold it, him with one leg shorter than the other.

Listen, pay attention
, he told himself,
this is Schumann, this is important. Concentrate.

He took up the big padded drumsticks. The whole orchestra was spread below him, all solemnly working their way toward the end of the slow movement. You could tell it was the end because Schumann had put in a few slow drumbeats. Not many. Two or three. Maybe five. Seven at the most. Paul wasn't worried. It was only a dream.

The conductor looked up. He was Charlie Chaplin. That was fine: Chaplin was entitled to dream too. He aimed his baton and signaled the first drumbeat. As Schramm brought down his right drumstick it turned into a German infantry stick-grenade, so he whacked the nearest musician on the head with it and created a splendid explosion. Keeping strictly to the beat, he hit another head with the left-hand stick-grenade, and then kept on banging heads with grenades as the score said. It was marvelous fun. Schumann might not have liked it, but Schumann was dead. So was everyone within reach. What a performance! Someone was shaking his arm. Probably Chaplin, trying to take away his stick-grenades. Idiot! Didn't he realize it was only a dream?

“Better wake up if you want to get any rest,” a man said. He was not Chaplin. Only one arm, and no mustache. Nice smile, though. He went away and came back with a mug of coffee.

Schramm swung his legs out of the bunk. “Dreaming,” he said. He took the mug.

“Looked more like fighting.”

The air had the stunned, sour smell of all concrete bunkers. Schramm sipped his coffee and new life trickled into him. He even remembered the one-armed captain's name. It was Mix. Karl Mix. Funny name, Mix. There was a Hollywood cowboy called Mix, but he had two arms . . .
Wake up, Paul, for the love of God
. “Anything happening out there?” he asked.

“No. The British bombed Benghazi as usual.”

The bunker was in the corner of a satellite airfield near Soluch, about thirty miles south of Benghazi. Luftwaffe Intelligence had been told by an Arab informer that an SAS patrol would raid it that night. A few dummy aircraft and some good-looking wrecks had been placed as bait. Mix's men had some clever new night binoculars that let them see in the dark, or so Mix claimed. Their machine guns were on fixed lines of fire. Now it was nearly three a.m. and the gunners out there must be bored to death.

“Do you miss your arm?” Schramm asked. “Sorry. Very stupid question. I'm an idiot.”

“My wife misses it,” Mix said. “In bed.”

“Oh.”

“There are certain things that can't be done with the left hand. Or not as well. Are you married?”

“Technically.” Schramm glanced at Mix. The man had a lean body that looked good in uniform, gray eyes with plenty of lashes, and rich chestnut hair. Given another arm he could have been an actor, or a model. As it was he looked improbable, like an adult who was hiding his arm in order to frighten the children. “Shoelaces must be a problem,” Schramm said.