Piece of Cake (45 page)

Simon laughed, but only briefly.

“I think,” the man said, “we both deserve a brandy.”

Simon left the nursing home two months later. They had found him a job at a nearby civilian airfield, as office-boy in the flying club. The manager, who was also the instructor and barman, asked Simon if he'd like a couple of lessons in a Tiger Moth. “Great fun,” he told him. “Mind you, it helps if you're a bit mad.” Simon accepted. The manager said he was the best pupil he'd ever had. A year later he was in the RAF.

When CH3 left him, Stickwell wandered about the upper floors of the chateau until he came across the adjutant's office. The door was open. “Hello, uncle,” he said.

Kellaway grunted. He had a pencil between his teeth and he was searching through a thick bundle of dog-eared carbon copies. His desk was littered with files; more files were stacked on the floor. Micky Marriott sat opposite him, searching through another bundle of papers. “Do something for you?” Kellaway said around the pencil.

“Is this where I join the Foreign Legion?” Stickwell asked.

Marriott muttered: “It must be here somewhere.”

Kellaway, still searching, shook his head and sighed.

“All right then, how about the merchant navy?” Stickwell asked.

“Hey, look at this.” Marriott pulled out a blank sheet of paper.

“Or the cowboys?” Stickwell leaned against the doorframe. “Or the Texas Rangers, or the Salvation Army, or
anything?
”

Kellaway and Marriott stared at the blank sheet. “I bet some twerp put the carbon paper in backward,” Marriott said.

“Anybody need a good street-sweeper?” Stickwell asked.

“Stop playing silly-buggers, Sticky,” the adjutant said stiffly. He took the blank sheet. “You mean
this
is the copy? Or what ought to be the copy? Hell's bells …”

Stickwell left them peering at nothing, and wandered on. Rex's office was just around the corner. He tapped on the door and went in. There was nobody there. He walked over to the desk and saluted the empty chair. “Just came to tell you, sir,” he said. “I'm off to win the war.”

Rex was, at that moment, showing Dumbo Dutton's replacement, Pilot Officer Lloyd, around the château. “Gun room,” he said, rapping on the door as they walked by. “D'you shoot?”

“Just woodpigeons, sir.” Lloyd had a melodic Welsh accent. “On the farm, you know.”

“Yes. Well, there's deer around here somewhere. I'd like to get in a spot of stalking once these have come off.” He raised his right hand, still bandaged: a relic of Dutton's crash. “Billiard room over there. Library. Ballroom up at the end. Not a bad little billet, is it?”

“Very good, sir.”

“I pinched it off some frog plutocrat … Have you met our unspeakable Yank?” he asked as CH3 came in sight. “Lloyd, Hart. Hart, Lloyd.” They shook hands.

“Hart is so unspeakable that everyone refers to him by some sort of chemical code which I don't pretend to understand: Co2 or V8 or 4711 or something.”

“Have you been pissed on yet?” CH3 asked. “Rex has a dog called Reilly who pisses on people.”

“Reilly's not very discriminating, I'm afraid,” Rex said. “He'll splash anything lower than a squadron leader.”

“I didn't know there
was
anything lower than a squadron leader,” CH3 said.

“Actually, you and Reilly have a lot in common,” Rex said to him. “Since neither of you can catch a damn thing. How are your reconnaissance liaison flights going, by the way? WC2 is our
Reconnaissance Liaison expert,” he told Lloyd. “He's quite invaluable. Wherever he goes, Jerry is never there.”

“Good heavens,” Lloyd said.

“So we always know that Jerry
must
be somewhere else.” Rex smiled proudly at CH3. “It's not a vast amount of information, I agree, but it's utterly reliable.”

“This is a truly wonderful squadron,” CH3 told Lloyd, “provided you like being pissed on.”

Rex was already walking away. “Billiard room,” he said. “Library. Squash court around the back …” Lloyd hurried after him.

“Don't forget to tip the guide,” CH3 called out. “Sixpence is enough.”

Five minutes after takeoff, Stickwell's Hurricane jumped a wood, left a line of treetops swaying in its wake, dropped to ten feet over a meadow, and went through the French flak belt before they could catch it. He noticed guncrews running, a flicker of fire from a machine-gun, and out of the corner of his eye he saw tracer, like a string of party lights, drifting behind him. Then he was easing the fighter up and over the Maginot Line—someone in a pillbox had a shot at him—and a sprint across no-man's-land took him into the German flak, which was wicked and got rapidly wickeder.

The Maginot was a thin line: a concrete tunnel made bombproof with earth. The Siegfried Line was three miles deep, laced with wire, spattered with pillboxes, striped with concrete barriers. The ground swelled and dipped and every hilltop held a battery. Stickwell saw the gun-muzzles flash and then the sudden blots of flak appeared, ahead and above and around, dirty-brown and feeble-looking until one of them burst nearby and exposed its ferocious little red-and-yellow heart with an angry grunt that cut through the roar of the Merlin.

He was too high. He ducked down to the valley floor and zigzagged strenuously. His stumpy legs ran out of strength to work the rudder-pedals just as the valley ended. He blinked at the wrong time, nearly hit the hillside, yanked the stick back and bounced like a sports car hitting a hump-backed bridge. “Watch it, dopey!” he shouted, and then, more quietly: “Oh, no!”

It was like flying into a lavish New Year's binge where the air
was thick with colored streamers. The next valley was alight with tracer: curling lines of red, of green, of orange, climbing, slanting, crossing. The first guns had warned them he was coming. Too tired to zigzag, he tried to dodge by leapfrogging but that felt stupid so he heaved the stick into his stomach, shut his eyes, and climbed. Something hit the machine and made it shudder. “Go away!” he shouted, and kept his eyes shut. He was small and he made himself smaller. He pictured the Hurricane shrinking to a dot. When he was sure he was at three thousand feet he looked. The altimeter was creeping up to two thousand and there were more flak-bursts than he could count. A hole the size of a plate showed in the starboard wing near the red-and-blue roundel. There was cloud as thick as fleece only a few hundred feet above. “Come on, come on, come on,” he said, over and over, until he barged into its clammy sanctuary and gave everything a rest: body, mind and airplane.

Bad start.

When he took off it had seemed like a bright idea to stay at zero feet, catch everyone by surprise, whiz into krautland, find a fighter field, do the dirty deed, whiz back home.

Not healthy at zero feet. Better think again.

Guessing he was clear of the flak belt, Stickwell eased down until he broke cloud. He dropped one wing, studied the ground, saw nothing but forest and field and hopped back into the cloud, not too disappointed.

He repeated this three times. The next time, he saw more forest and field plus a twin-engined plane, quite low, flying north.

He turned and followed it, still ducking in and out of cloud. Within two minutes it led him to a large
Luftwaffe
airfield: three concrete runways, a dozen hangars, plenty of aircraft dotted about. He looked it over for three seconds and then ran away and hid.

“Congratulations, Simon,” he said aloud. “You have located the enemy and you have him at your mercy. Now jump on the buggers and win the war. Piece of cake.”

From beside his seat he pulled out the battered metal chamberpot that had been dropped by the Me-109, and placed it between his knees. He slid open the cockpit hood and locked it. “Piece of cake,” he said again, and before he could give himself a chance to think, he shoved everything into a corner: stick, rudder, throttle; and hurtled into clear air.

The triangle of runways spread across his windscreen, tilted almost vertical. Aircraft were perched on them like flies on a wall. Some of the flies were moving. Stickwell felt a tremor begin to build as the speed increased. He straightened his legs to get more force on the rudder-pedals and wrapped both hands around the spade-grip of the control column. A red flare burst above the airfield tower and fell sideways. The howl of the Merlin grew and intensified, like a power saw screaming at a hardwood log, and he rolled the Hurricane straight, swinging the airfield back to the horizontal. Suddenly everything down there seemed to be moving. Men who had been walking were running, vehicles were vanishing behind hangars, the very hangars were changing as their huge doors slid shut. The activity gave Stickwell a surge of confidence: he was making them jump! Then the flak opened up and everywhere the sky was dotted and blotted with bursts of brown and puffs of white.

He leveled out at fifty feet and aimed for the control tower half a mile away. It was like flying through a tunnel: everything in front was abnormally clear and sharply detailed, everything to the sides was a streak, a blur. The flak ceased. “Thank you!” Stickwell shouted, and then saw why: a plane had just taken off, was heading for him. Twin engines, long thrusting snout, lean and hungry look: Messerschmitt 110. The pilot hauled its nose up and four points of fire blazed from the top of the snout. “Hey!” Stickwell shouted. The streams of bullets seemed to strain upward and chase him, but the Messerschmitt was always ten feet too low. It flashed beneath him. “You bastard!” screamed Stickwell. The fright left him furiously angry. He skidded away from the tower, chucked the Hurricane onto the other wingtip and whipped back in a full circle, hunting for the 110.

It was gone. Nowhere. “Bugger it!” he bawled. The flak returned, chasing him with its dirty snowballs, and he was overtaken by rage. Everyone ganged up on Sticky! He kept turning, looking for blood, and into his tunnel vision swam a line of parked aircraft.

The blast of his eight Brownings made him flinch, and their recoil checked the Hurricane like a headwind. He kept his thumb on the button and gloried in those rods of golden fury converging to thrash and smash one German plane after another, until he had swept past the line and there was only a petrol bowser in view so
he gave it a massive burst and felt it blow up beneath him and help the Hurricane on its way like a wave heaving a boat.

It was a good time to go. A dozen ropes of tracer in lots of jolly colors were snaking about, seeking to snag him. Planes were getting airborne all around, mainly little 109's. Something walloped the Hurricane's tail and made the plane skitter. Bullet-strikes pounded the engine-cowling, stripping paint, flinging ricochets past the cockpit, some bouncing off the reinforced windscreen. Stickwell prayed nothing was bust and hared over the perimeter.

Jinking and swerving between a house and a haystack, he felt something loose banging about in the cockpit. He was over a hill and crossing a lake before he felt safe enough to look down. It was the old metal jerry. He'd forgotten to drop it.

A glimmer of wintry sunshine leaked through the clouds as he banked, turned, and aimed for the hill. It tinged the lake with silver, leaving the rest of the water twice as black, twice as cold. He was amazed at what he was doing: he muttered, admiringly: “This isn't like you, Sticky.” Racing over the hilltop he passed an Me-109, going flat-out in the opposite direction: gone before he could even wave. A mile or so ahead, thick black smoke climbed high, billowing like deep velvet.

The Hurricane smashed through the smoke and reappeared in the middle of the airfield like the demon king in a pantomime. He swung toward the tower, tossed the jerry out of the cockpit, immediately slammed the plane into an opposite bank, and flew straight into a burst from a heavy machinegun.

The instrument panel seemed to blow itself to bits. For a second, Stickwell couldn't see through the chaos of splintered glass and wood. Automatically he leveled out and climbed. That gave the flak batteries a better view. There was a hell of a bang under the port wing and the poor bloody Hurricane was hurled on its side. When he got it straight the cockpit had cleared and there was a great rip in the port wing with petrol gushing from it. Automatically, he dived. “Make up your sodding mind!” he shouted at himself. The barrier of smoke loomed up and he rushed at it thankfully.

The hill led back to the lake, the lake to a river. Nobody chased him, nobody caught him. He followed the river through a forest, staying always at tree-level, counting every mile he put between
himself and that frightful place, until eventually the truth was inescapable. He had got away with it. Amazing!

Well, perhaps not so amazing. The light was getting bad: that glimmer of sunshine had marked the end of the afternoon. Now gloom blotted out the horizon. Stickwell felt safe enough to climb to a thousand feet and try to get his bearings.

From a thousand feet the world looked equally bleak in all directions. His compass, of course, was a ruin. Bearings would not be easy to get. His left wing had stopped leaking petrol, which meant that one tank was empty. The Merlin sounded happy enough. But how long, oh Lord, how long?

The answer to that was twenty-seven minutes.

Stickwell guessed which way France lay and tried to keep a straight course in that direction while searching for landmarks. The cockpit stank of some disgusting chemical from the smashed-up panel, and his face was stinging: he touched it and shards of glass came away on his gloves; but as long as the Merlin was happy, he was happy. He was happier than he had ever been. He had proved himself. He belonged!

After twenty-seven minutes the Merlin coughed once, and then died. The nose dropped. Stickwell poked his head out and tried to see something helpful through the windmilling propeller. It was gloomy down there. Nothing but fields. Oh well, one field was as good as another. He watched and waited while the Hurricane whooshed softly downward. He could hear the fluting of air in the gun-ports. A lovely sound. He noticed a hedge drifting past, and then everything seemed hidden by the wings so he guessed it was time to haul the stick back. He guessed too soon. Slightly less than three tons of fighter fell out of the sky like a truckload of bricks. Stickwell's body jack-knifed inside his straps and his head cracked against the gunsight. The plane bounced twice and went skating across a muddy pasture, but he knew nothing of that.