B for Buster (20 page)

The runway lights were on, shining across the ground in watery pools of crimson. Lofty stood with his pipe jutting straight from his mouth, looking up as the Halifax came sliding from the sky. All we could see were its landing lights, glowing brighter and larger. The engines raced for a moment, then slowed to a putter.

“You see, Simon?” said Lofty. “There's no such thing as luck. You don't get the chop because you write your name on a blackboard. Even the Kid says it's true.”

G for George
leveled off above the runway to let its airspeed fall away. It flickered in the runway lights, its black bulk seeming only partly whole. Wheels down, it hurtled along the flare path, flashing redness from the struts and the bubbles of glass, but aloft—still flying.

“Put her down,” muttered Lofty. “Put her down.”
George
touched the ground with a squeal, then another. The engines hurried in a mad, deep roar, and the kite struggled up again.

“Oh, God, he's botched it,” said Lofty.

I saw him clearly in the blast that followed. The ball of fire lit him up, and I saw his eyes staring, his lips apart. I heard his breath in the moment before the explosion reached us, before the hot wind tore across the field and plucked the caps from our heads. I saw the look on his face, and wished I hadn't seen it.

In that instant Lofty moved to the top of the Morris list. The little car that Donny Lee had driven, that had passed four times from owner to owner, now belonged to him.

Simon stared toward the fire in the north, in the field beyond the runway. A fire truck and an ambulance were racing toward it.

“Well, Cobber,” he said. “Fancy a ride in your Morris?”

CHAPTER 21

I HAD NEVER SEEN ribbons as long as the ones that stretched across the map the next day at briefing. They dodged across France and over Belgium, then wound their way to the east, so deep into Germany that they almost reached Poland.

The target was Nuremberg, an ancient city full of castles and cathedrals. I asked Ratty, beside me, “Why are we going
there
?”

He whispered back, “I guess that's where they ran out of ribbons.”

The intelligence officer showed us the things to watch for. He pointed at a photograph taken from twelve thousand feet and showed us the monastery and the royal castle and the bronze dome on the tomb of a saint. He said the starlight would shine on that bronze; we were lucky it was there.

“And now,” he said, “here are the defenses.”

We all leaned forward as his pointer scratched along the picture. I thought he would show us a hundred searchlight batteries and a thousand flak towers. But he smiled and ran his pointer along a ditch a hundred feet wide, and back up an ancient wall that nearly circled the city. “That's about it,” he said. “They shouldn't give you much trouble.”

He got a chuckle out of just about everybody. But those defenses seemed very sad to me. I thought they must have been built centuries before, to keep out men and horses, but it seemed that the people inside them hoped they would keep out bombers, too. I remembered someone saying almost the same thing about London, and I thought of the dead baby that I had seen there in the Big Smoke. I supposed there would be a lot of dead babies in Nuremberg, and that struck me as sort of a shame.

The intelligence officer let the laughter fade away. Then he got down to serious business, showing us the things that could
really
hurt us. All along the route there were guns and searchlights and night fighters. But our worst enemy, he said, would be time. To Nuremberg and back, it was eight or nine hours in the air. The darkness wouldn't last that long. “Don't relax when you've dropped your bombs,” said the officer. “You'll battle the fighters all the way home.”

“What about Window?” somebody asked.

“It will help, but I'm afraid they've largely found their way around that.”

There were mutters among the airmen, little coughs and nervous breaths. If it hadn't been for Percy, I would have been terrified. I couldn't have hauled myself into the crate that night if it hadn't been for him.

We drove to dispersal in the Morris. Or most of us did, at least; Pop refused to get into the thing. He wouldn't even throw his chute aboard. So he legged it across the runway as the rest of us drove, with Ratty balanced on the bumper. Lofty parked behind
Buster,
jamming the binders too suddenly. Buzz slid right off the fender and sprawled on the grass. He shouted, but not from anger. He'd landed right on top of a four-leaf clover.

For the first time ever before an op, the keys were left in the Morris. Any change in routine was normally met with fears of a jinx, but no one said anything this time. They must have thought it really didn't matter what we did if we were already on a chop list.

Pop arrived five minutes later, out of breath, frowning at the Morris. “I hate that thing,” he said. “It gives me gooseflesh just to look at it.”

“Then don't look, old boy,” said Lofty.

“I'll never get in it.”

“That's fine, Pop. You don't have to.”

Lofty sounded kind and caring, but the old guy looked nervous. He took out his crucifix, and it was still in his hand when we climbed through
Buster
's door.

In bright daylight we started the engines. We wouldn't see the sun go down until we were halfway to France, and
Buster
was hot and muggy, thick with kerosene fumes. Along the wings, the airscrews thrummed as Lofty and Pop tested the temperatures, the pressures, the flaps and magnetos. They did it carefully, and they did it twice. Each engine was run up and throttled back, each magneto switched to left and right and back again.

“It looks good,” said Pop.

“I don't know,” said Lofty. “Gee, I don't know.”

The bombers started passing, nose to tail along the perimeter. I watched them through my window as they lumbered by, huge and black, shimmering heat from their wings.

The erks pulled our chocks away. Sergeant Piper held up his thumbs. Will, in his place beside Lofty, nudged the throttles. By the sound of the engines I knew he was pushing the levers farther than ever to get
Buster
moving with all the weight of bombs and fuel. We turned onto the runway, then braked to a stop.

“Magnetos,” said Lofty.

“We checked them already,” said Pop.

“I want to check them again.”

Pop sighed. His breath whistled in the intercom. But he did as he was told, and Lofty worried that something was wrong with the magnetos. “Damn,” he said. “There's too much drop.”

That old dodge?
I heard Bert's voice in my mind. But suddenly Lofty said, “To hell with it. Full throttles! Lock 'em, Will.”

If anything really was wrong with
Buster,
she managed to hold herself together. She took us through the evening to the night, all the way to Nuremberg without a murmur from the engines. She took us across the city, lurching through the flak and the billowing smoke from the fires. Percy lay inside my jacket, and I held him tightly as we rolled to the left. Through my window, eighteen thousand feet below, I saw the dome where a saint was buried, and I saw the castles burning.

Buster
brought us home again. She brought us to a land of clouds, and went shivering through them as I tuned the loop and listened on the wireless. I picked up the streams of dots and dashes. “Skipper, we're on the beam,” I said.

Two nights later the old crate took us to Italy, and it was such an easy show that even Fletcher-Dodge came along in his perfect
R for Rags.
It was our best machine, bright and new like a showroom car. He had renamed it for his favorite old dog. More than five hundred bombers went, and all but three came home to England. But Fletcher-Dodge stepped out of
Rags
as though he was Jimmy Doolittle returning from Tokyo. He was still swaggering the next day, when the first of the Lancasters came.

The entire squadron watched it circle round the field. We watched it tilt and sideslip down, then level off above the field, beyond the hedge. We heard the engines fade away, then rise again.

Fliers and erks and WAAFs, they all cheered as the Lancaster touched the ground. No one could have cheered more loudly if the king had arrived inside it. Then they surged forward, and I saw Ratty practically skipping along at the front of them all, Lofty—somewhere in the middle—grinning round his pipe. But I stayed where I was, feeling empty and sad. I saw the ending when that Lanc arrived.

Over the next few days I watched others arrive, one at a time, and a line of Lancs began to grow at the farthest end of the field. I never went near them until I had to, when our turn came around to go up for a spin on the fifteenth of the month. It was a night flight, under a big full moon.

I felt strange getting into a kite without a pigeon box to carry. I kept thinking that I'd forgotten it, that I heard—from a distance—the flutter of Percy's wings, the bubbly coo of his voice. For the others our first pigeonless flight was something to joke about. Simon said he was glad he wouldn't have to smell the bird anymore. “No lie,” said Ratty. “We'll never smell pigeons again, soon as the Kid takes a bath.”

I settled at the wireless, not wedged down in the nose, but high in the fuselage, right below the astrodome and just behind the engines. A trainer took the pilot's seat as Lofty hovered near him. He fired up the engines, taxied to the runway, then steered west to the coast in the moonlight. Down into valleys, up over hills, we took the same sort of winding route we'd taken in
Buster
our first time up, and I loved it all over again.

The Lanc made our old crate look like a dodo bird. Despite what I
wanted
to think, I loved flying in a thing so fast and big. I leaned sideways and looked forward through the front office, out through the windshield at the moon straight ahead. We were climbing toward it, with the engines in their perfect, powerful drone. Lofty was driving now, and it seemed that he could take us there if he wanted to, that he could put us down among the craters, or just loop the loop around that moon. But he throttled back and rolled us over, and I saw the ocean—all bright and sparkling—slant across the glass.

A shiver of delight ran through me. For a moment there was nothing in my thoughts but the joy of flying. I reveled in the weightlessness of dipping into the dive, then felt myself grow huge and heavy as we leveled out above the sea. I grinned as we turned and gamboled through the sky.

“Roaring rockets!” I said, and this time nobody laughed at me. Then I reached inside my jacket to stroke at Percy's feathers, and when I found only sheepskin, all my joy dissolved.

I suddenly missed my little friend so strongly that my heart ached. I felt a terrible guilt that I'd forgotten that he wasn't there. And I thought of what it really meant to be flying in a Lanc—that he would never be with me again.

CHAPTER 22

WE DROVE IN THE Morris to the Merry Men the first night beyond the full moon. It was the sixteenth of August, and we'd been with the Four-Forty-Two almost exactly three months. “Time to celebrate,” said Lofty. I had no choice but to go along. The moon was so bright that there couldn't be an op for days to come. But more importantly, I was the only one who had saved any money, so I was shanghaied to pay for the rounds.

Lofty drove the bus flat out. Will and I clung to the bonnet, Buzz to the boot. Little Ratty rode on the bumper with his goggles on as our slipstream of road dust swirled around him. Simon was in the passenger's seat; Pop had refused to come along.

We flitted through the valley; we raced up the hill. For a moment, at the crest, we were airborne. Then we landed in a thudding four-pointer, jinking across the road. Lofty drove so fast and recklessly that I couldn't decide if he wanted to smash the little bus or if he believed that it
couldn't
be smashed. Maybe he thought that the Morris was somehow blessed on the ground, that it made sure we were safe until it got a chance to smash us in the air.

I leaned back against the windshield, holding on more tightly than I'd ever held to
Buster.
I watched the moon-lit road twist toward us through the headlights' gleam and flash underneath; I saw white ghosts of milestones hurl themselves past. We went laughing into the bar, and for once I enjoyed myself. I played darts and sang songs, not even bothering to pretend that I was getting drunk. But early that morning, back in my bed, I had my dream again.

It was more frightening than ever, coming out of the blue like that. I woke up shouting, dizzy from a spinning world of sky and flames. Then I lay in a sweat, with a racing heart, staring up into utter blackness.

I was glad the moon was full, that its brightness would keep us on the ground. But I couldn't shake away my dream as I sat at breakfast. Lofty was planning a trip to Leeds for the evening when the speaker hummed and the WAAF told us, “You are on for tonight.”

I could see from Lofty's face that he didn't believe it. “It's a full moon,” he said. “This is a joke. Some silly clot is playing a prank.”

But it was no joke. The erks right then were filling
Buster
's tanks. They were getting ready to stuff her belly full of bombs.

The briefing scared me. It scared us all. The red ribbons went straight across the North Sea, over Denmark's narrow throat, then down along the islands of the Baltic. They ended at a village called Peenemünde, a little seaside place that none of us had heard of.

But six hundred kites were about to attack it. Six hundred kites from all over England, they would meet above this little village and bomb it to hell, and none of us could even guess why. It was just another Goodwood, Fletcher-Dodge told us proudly. “It'll be a wizard show,” he said. “Every squadron in England is putting every crate in the air.”

Someone asked him, “Are you coming, sir?”

The swagger stick swished against his leg. “I only wish I was,” he said.

Short little Drippy told us the skies would be clear. “Spectacularly so,” he said. “You might get a glimpse of aurora borealis.” But once the intelligence officer got up, I doubted that anyone would be looking for northern lights. He said there would be flak and searchlights on the ground, a smoke screen laid out as a welcome. Flak ships would be anchored in the Baltic. “Now mind you, watch for those,” he said, as though it might not have occurred to us to do that. We would drop our bombs from just eight thousand feet, below the spotlight of a moon.

I told myself not to worry. I tried to think of Percy and his eye-sign, of his magic as a homer. But I only saw my hands trembling, and I held them together as the briefing went on, each bit of news worse than the last. Ratty and Buzz kept sighing and shaking. Simon doodled slashes on his notepad. Lofty, stoic as ever, stared straight ahead with his empty eyes.

They all had heavy lines scarred in their faces and their foreheads, as though they had been sitting for twenty years inside the hut. I touched my own cheeks, the corners of my mouth, certain that I would feel those same creases and wrinkles. It seemed that my world had gone into a tailspin, and I was more afraid than ever.

The CO ended the briefing with a little talk. “This is the last op for our Hallibags,” he said, his crooked teeth showing in a grin. “The next time we fly, we'll be doing it in Lancs.”

So that was it. His bit of news fell like a wet blanket on the benches full of fliers. He didn't get a smile, let alone the cheers he was probably expecting. He tapped his stick on his toe.

For me it was worse than the flak ships and the full moon, even worse than the low-level bombing. Though I'd known it was coming, and every day I'd expected it, his news made me gasp.

Tap-tap went the stick. Tap-tap. “Any questions, gentlemen?”

I put up my hand. I was the only one who did.

The swagger stick pointed at me. “Yes?” said Fletcher-Dodge. He didn't seem to remember me either from
Buster
or from the loft.

“What will happen to the pigeons, sir?” I asked.

Everybody laughed. It was as though I had touched a pressure valve, releasing it all in a rush and a roar. With the flak and the full moon, and the miles of sea to cross, the birds seemed a silly thing to worry about.

The briefing ended then. Fletcher-Dodge wished us luck, and the airmen rose from the benches. We all stood at attention as the officers filed from the stage. Then I ran for the door.

Lofty shouted after me, “Kid! Hey, Kak.” But I kept going, through the crowd and outside, beyond the huts, along the grass, down to the pigeon loft.

From a hundred yards away I heard the birds squawking. I heard their wings beating at the bars, and I thought of the pigeoneer who had slaughtered his flock to keep them from the enemy. I sprinted the rest of the way. I bashed through the door and into the loft.

Bert was there, in the midst of a swarm of pigeons. He was just beginning to sort out the ones that were “on” for the night. He had his bucket of suet waiting, and the birds circled round him.

“'Allo, sir,” he said, shouting over the noise.

I couldn't see Percy anywhere in the mass of flapping wings. But Bert saw me looking and raised an arm that was covered with pigeons; six of them clung to his sleeve. He pointed to the top of the roosts, and I saw Percy up there, sitting patiently on the highest perch.

“Percy's too smart to mix 'imself up in the melee, sir,” shouted Bert. “Oh, 'e always gets 'is turn.”

I held up my finger and whistled, and Percy came whirring over to perch on my knuckle, his feathers all happily ruffled. He tipped his head to peer at my tunic, trying to figure out what I had brought him and where I had put it. His head moved forward and back, left and then right. He blinked and cooed, then gazed at me with his starry halo.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Gee, I didn't have time.”

He took another look, peering at each of my pockets. Then he blinked at me, his little brow all puzzled.

“Oh, Percy, I'm sorry,” I said.

He flew away and left me. He joined the crowd of pigeons fighting for the suet. I sat down on the feed bags, moaning to myself. “It's the end for them,” I said.

“What do you mean, sir?” asked Bert.

“This is the last op for the Halifaxes.”

“Oh, Crikey.” Bert raised his head and swore. The birds whirled away from him, rising from his arms and shoulders. He came toward me through a storm of feathers, sad and slumped, a bowed-down giant. “Are you sure, sir? Did they tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“Did they tell you what will 'appen?”

I shook my head.

He sat down beside me, the little suet tin looking sad and tiny in his hands. “So that's it, is it?” he said. “It's all over after tonight.”

“I don't know what to do,” I said.

I started to shake, more from fear than anything. I rocked forward until my head was nearly on my knees. Bert's arm pressed across my shoulder, his hand tightening on my arm.

“I thought you knew,” I said. “I came down here, and I heard the pigeons flying, and I thought you were getting ready to destroy them.”

“Never,” he said. “I'd never allow it, sir.”

“But . . .”

“It will all work out in the end. I don't know 'ow, sir, but it will.”

I leaned against him, and he pressed me even closer. The birds came hopping on the floor, turning back and stopping, advancing warily toward the suet tin.

“Going to 'Appy Valley tonight, sir?” asked Bert.

“No,” I said. “Peenemünde.”

“I don't know it, sir.”

“On the Baltic. On the way to Berlin.”

“Oh. Double rations, then.” He collected the tin and stood up. “It's a long 'aul, sir, for the poor little bleeders.”

I started to speak, but he stopped me with a look. “Tonight's just another op, sir,” he said. “No point in upsetting the birds, is there? We'll worry tomorrow about tomorrow.”

He doled the suet out. Though he was doing it for the last time, he did it no differently, making sure that every pigeon got a proper share. I fed the others, the ones that weren't flying that night. They came pecking round my feet as I tossed down handfuls of seed.

We fixed message cylinders to the birds that were on. I clipped them in place as Bert held the pigeons, and it surprised me to see how the birds struggled. “They're uneasy,” said Bert. “Not to worry, sir, but it might be a difficult op.”

I didn't believe that birds could see the future. I thought they were scared because
I
was scared, that they sensed the fear that was growing inside me. When I saw how they fought at the doors of their boxes, I decided not to put Percy inside one.

I carried him from the loft on my shoulder, with his empty box in my hand. Through the rest of the afternoon I kept him right with me. I even ate my eggs and bacon with Percy tucked inside my jacket.

It was still daylight when Lofty drove us out in the Morris. We sprawled on the grass below
B for Buster,
and Buzz went looking for his clover.

Ratty tugged on the string at his neck and pulled out his rabbit's foot. Whole patches of its fur had been worn away by rubbing on his chest. He tapped it on his lips, then slipped it back into his flying suit. The others all saw him and, like people yawning after one person yawns, touched at their clothes for their own little charms. I put the empty box on the ground and let Percy hop around beside it.

We lay there too long. We should have climbed into the kite right away, before our thoughts could work around to the target and all the terrible things that the sun held at bay. Ratty was smoking cigarettes as though he would have no tomorrow to do it. There was one in his mouth, and a butt smoldering in the grass, and already he was fishing another from his packet. Buzz was still searching for his clover, and Will kept asking, almost to himself, “What the hell's at Peenemünde?”

An hour passed. Then we saw a little figure wandering toward us, a man in air force blue, dwarfed below the bombers. He came around the tail of
D for Dog,
through
A for Angel'
s shadow. His hands in his pockets, his head down, he crossed the grass toward us. The sun shone on his white hair.

“Wheezy jeezy, it's the padre,” Ratty said.

“Come to do the last rites, I guess,” said Will.

“No lie.”

It was unnerving to see him coming. He had never walked out around the bombers before. Even Buzz stopped his search and watched that figure growing larger.

The padre stopped and stood above us, his back to the sun, his face a shadow below his cap. “Evening, boys,” he said. “I wanted to wish you Godspeed and good luck.”

He got mutters of thanks, a grunt from Ratty.

“I wish I was going with you, boys,” the padre said, just like Fletcher-Dodge. “I really do. But there's no room for passengers on a Hallibag.”

It bothered me that he said that, taking a word meant only for fliers. Ratty must have felt the same. He cocked himself up on an elbow and told the padre, “You can take my place if you like, sir. Lots of room for gunners.”

The padre forced a thin little smile. “Anything I can do for you, boys?”

“You could help me look for a clover,” said Buzz. “Bet you could find one easily.”

The padre must have wondered if his leg was being pulled. Then Ratty said, “It's true; he needs it, sir. He never flies without one.”

“No, he doesn't need a clover,” said the padre, smiling. “God will be with you all.”

Will looked up. “Do you really think so, sir?”

“I beg your pardon?” said the padre.

“Do you really think God goes flying in bombers?” asked Will.

The padre was standing directly in the sun; I couldn't look at him without squinting, and I couldn't see the expression on his face. He reminded me somehow of the pigeons that got millet while the others ate suet, and I felt the same pity for him, and the same envy, too. Jolly or not, his well-meaning visit had turned to a trial. He said in his calm way, “Wherever you go, He is with you.”

“Then why do so many of us die?” asked Will. He sounded sincere, almost sad, as though the question had tortured him through many nights and days. “If God is with us, why do we die?”

“Knock it off!” shouted Buzz. He threw a little pebble at the bomb aimer. “I don't want to talk about this. It's wrong; it's bad luck.”

Then Ratty surprised me by siding with Buzz. “No lie,” he told Will. “Shut up, okay?” And he turned toward the padre and said, “Oh, Father. Bless us.”

“No!” Will was pushing himself up. “
Tell me!
” he shouted. “Why do we die?”

Beams of sunlight seemed to burst from the padre's hair, from his collars and his boots. He put a hand up, as though to bless us, and the shadow of it fell across Will. “You go in the name of God. You go with His blessing,” he said.