Piece of Cake (64 page)

The farmer who gave Nicole a lift was surprised to see her walking away from Rheims up Route Nationale 51. Most civilians were going in the opposite direction. Only military convoys and locals like himself were heading northeast, toward the fighting, and he wasn't going far, only to his farm which was miles up a side-track where he hoped neither side would want to go, God willing, including this plague of refugees, nothing was safe with them around, they'd steal the crops out of your fields and break down your fences for firewood. Thieves. All thieves.

Nicole thought of the peasant who stole her bicycle and said nothing.

The farmer asked where she was going. “I'm going to find my husband,” she said. “He's a fighter pilot with a squadron near Belgium.” She deliberately didn't say RAF.

The farmer didn't know whether to be pleased or alarmed. Wonderful that she was setting such a fine example to the nation, of course. But it was very dangerous ahead. They said the boche was across the Meuse. Sedan had fallen. The boche might be anywhere.

“I don't care,” she said. “Anyway, they're not going to waste their shells on me, are they? I'll get to Belgium if I have to rollerskate there.”

When he dropped her he took out a bottle of wine and they drank to each other's health. Nicole looked around, at the empty countryside, the gloomy skies, the shuffling lines of refugees, and gave herself another long swig of wine. She needed some courage for the road ahead.

For the third time that day, the Battle mechanics re-fueled and re-armed and patched up the Hurricanes, all five of them. The cloud had completely blown away; it was going to be a beautiful evening.

Flash Gordon's machine was lying on its side, in the middle of the field. CH3 remembered seeing a battered-looking fighter parked behind a hangar, and Barton asked a flight sergeant if it belonged to anyone. “You have it if you like, sir,” he said. “It's a Yankee job, Curtiss P-36. A pair of them collided so we built this one out of what was left. The CO wanted it, for fun, but he won't be needing it now, will he? Mind you, nobody's actually flown it yet.”

They pushed it out and Flash climbed into the cockpit.

“The wheels won't retract, sir,” the flight sergeant told him. “We must have put them in wrong. You want to watch the torque, she's got twelve hundred horses. I'm afraid that's all I can tell you. Have you flown one of these before, sir?”

Flash nodded. The pep pills were beginning to wear off, but he still felt extraordinarily positive. He still felt that anything was possible. He couldn't say no to save his life. “You understand all the taps and dials and things, then?” the flight sergeant said. Flash nodded. The cockpit layout was a sweet mystery to him. “Start
her up, chiefy,” he said cheerfully. He began tinkering with switches and levers.
The Lord will provide
, he thought.

Meanwhile, Barton was briefing the others.

“Straight back to Mailly. No scraps. If Jerry doesn't bother us, we don't bother him. Keep your eyes wide open. We'll fly loose, about a hundred yards apart, and staggered so that everybody's watching somebody's tail. Let's for the love of Christ see if we can get home without getting jumped. I'm sick of always coughing up half-a-crown for another wreath.”

“Don't worry, Fanny,” Cattermole said. “You'll be all right with us. We understand one another, don't we?”

Barton stared suspiciously. Just then, Flash Gordon's P-36 started with a colossal bang. Smoke and flame jetted from its exhaust stubs. Mechanics jumped clear and the plane began to roll. Gordon's head could be seen bowed over the instrument panel. The engine was roaring with enormous appetite. Gordon looked up and waved. The P-36 went between two Hurricanes at fifty miles an hour. Flash bounced the machine six or seven times before he got it finally and completely unstuck. By then the Hurricane engines were beginning to fire.

Fanny Barton took them up to fifteen thousand feet, above the French flak, and steered to the west of south, bending their route away from the fighting and the 109's. They kept a wide formation, like a flat W, a quarter of a mile across. All the way, their heads were turning, ceaselessly, as regular as electric fans, left to right, up and down.

Flash Gordon was not with them. His P-36 couldn't get above five hundred feet. Either that, or he hadn't treated it properly. Anyway, the thing refused to climb.

“Please yourself,” he said. Who the hell cared? Five feet, five hundred, five thousand, it was all the same. As long as the kite was off the ground, it was flying. Right? Right.

She was a very breezy little bird, this P-36. Smelled good, felt good, tasted good. Flash enjoyed them all. He'd never really noticed the taste of a fighter before but he had it now, his mouth was full of exciting flavors, especially a kind of silver-blue salty-metallic taste that was pure P-36. He inhaled a good lungful of hot, throbbing engine-aroma and made himself slightly drunk. The countryside went speeding past in a golden rush. Flash felt wonderfully
happy and relaxed. He blessed the memory of that hot-shot RAMC doctor. Genius. Prince. Good egg.

After twenty or thirty miles, Flash wondered where he was going. He knew where he
wanted
to go, of course, but where was this breezy little bird taking him? Only way to find out: pop down and take a dekko at a few road signs. He found a road and encouraged the P-36 to follow it. There were no road signs. What there was, down there, was a kind of miracle-thing going on. Lots of them. Or maybe one very very long one. Like in the Bible. Flash put his mind to work.
Blue Danube
, it suggested.
Don't be bloody silly
, he said.
Red Sea?
it told him.
Parting of the Red Sea?
He put his head out and had a better look.
Sort of
, he said.

What he was seeing was like the Parting of the Red Sea in reverse. Instead of the sea dividing to let people through, here was an endless sea of people who kept parting to let Flash through. The road ahead was packed with people, prams, wheelbarrows, soapbox carts, farm wagons, dogs, children, bicycles, everyone loaded with junk. Hundreds of people, thousands. But the road directly beneath him was always empty. A mile ahead: packed solid. Half a mile ahead they started to run to the sides. A quarter of a mile ahead they were diving over hedges. Two hundred yards ahead they were all falling flat in the fields. And underneath him, nothing. Empty road. Bloody miraculous!

Flash charged on, taking a hugely childish pleasure in his godlike power. All he had to do was look at people and they ran like rabbits! He swung the fighter left and right through a series of bends and almost caught the rabbits before they had time to clear the road. See how they run! “Double up, there!” he roared. “Jump to it, granddad! Whoops, lady, get your finger out!” Then a village rushed at him and made him dodge and he lost the road.

After that it was fields and woods and stuff, forever. Flash began to think they'd stopped making roads in France until he suddenly found a crossroads and there they were again, the rabbits, rushing out of his way by the hundreds. He swung right to circle and pick up the crossroads again, try and see a signpost, and he promptly got fired on by a French army convoy, string of trucks with machine-guns on top, he could see the flicker of flames. Then he found the crossroads and forgot to look for a signpost. The road was red.

It ran east to west, more or less, so the setting sun was shining down it. The red was bright and fresh and it reached to the green verges. So many extraordinary and colorful things had happened to Flash recently that he was not astonished by this; merely intrigued. Then he noticed the black-clad bodies lying on the shining redness, and shock hit him like a kick in the stomach.

He had had no idea that human beings contained so much blood. Nicole had told him, once. Six liters, she said. A gallon and a bit. Spill it on a road, that's what it looks like. A bloody flood.

He circled to look again and midway through the turn he saw a Messerschmitt 110 a mile away not much higher than he was, so he went after it instead, opening the throttle wide, and if the P-36 blew up he'd demand his money back, so help him God.

It didn't blow up. He caught the 110 from behind as it was machine-gunning a fresh column of refugees and he began shooting at it. At once the pilot jinked and went even lower to give his upper gunner a clear shot. Flash discovered that the P-36 had six guns. He was missing with them all. He got even closer and tried again, but the 110 was swinging and swaying too much. He dropped back a couple of lengths, waited until he was utterly certain of his shot, and fired exactly when the German pilot hauled back the stick and climbed at full power and Flash found himself blazing into a mob of refugees. His thumb was off the gun-button in a second but he clearly saw people knocked backward by his bullets as if swept by a great wind.

Flash chased the 110 and eventually caught it and set an engine on fire and maybe shot it down; he didn't know. He ran out of ammunition and watched it drag itself into the east, while he went south in search of an airfield. He couldn't believe what had happened. It wasn't possible. He forgot it for several minutes at a time. But always it came back. The redness, shining in the sun, and the great wind, bowling people over.

The dog Reilly sat on its haunches and howled with misery. There was no escape from the wretched noise. Even a quarter of a mile away, inside the wooden hut, Fanny Barton was constantly aware of Reilly's high-pitched grief. He added it to his list of worries. That made nine.

First on the list was Flip Moran. They'd seen him get out but
nobody could remember exactly where that was. Fanny worried about concussion, and exposure, and bloodyminded Frenchmen with scythes.

Second was Pip Patterson. Those woods had stretched for miles. If his parachute got caught in the top of a tree he might starve to death. But again, no map reference. How could you start a search without a map reference?

Third was Flash Gordon. He had landed his P-36 an hour after the Hurricanes reached Mailly, and God knows what he'd been up to because Flash hadn't said a word about it. Just got out of the plane, left the engine running and walked away. Eyes like marbles, Cox said. Flash went straight to the nearest tent, lay down, fell asleep. Now he couldn't be woken.

Fourth was Rex's death. All very well for Baggy Bletchley to say forget it; Baggy didn't have to fly with the men who'd done it. Someone had been responsible. Which one?
Rex
, said a savage little voice inside him,
Rex was guilty.
Fanny pushed the thought away, and worried about it.

Fifth was the Hurricanes. They needed complete overhauls.

Sixth was the water supply. There wasn't any. A pipe had bust somewhere. Everyone was getting steadily dirtier.

Seventh was the risk of bombing. What if the fuel dump got hit?

Eighth was his ears. They were beginning to ache. How could he lead the squadron if he had ear-ache?

And now, ninth was the dog Reilly.

Reilly had raced from plane to plane when they landed. It took him ten minutes to realize that his master was missing. At first he whimpered, seeking out the pilots in turn and thrusting a beseeching muzzle into their hands. Then he began to whine, and finally as the day came to an end he sat on the grass and howled. It was astonishing that the animal could go on making such an appalling, exhausting noise so long. Reilly's grief was endless. At that rate nobody would get any sleep. Except Gordon, of course.

Fanny covered his ears and went back to worrying about Gordon.

The adjutant came in. “Can't get through to Rheims,” he said. “Something wrong with the line. I've sent a dispatch-rider, so that's taken care of. You must be hungry.”

“Starving.”

“Well, the cooks have done their best and it's stew.”

“Stew? We had stew yesterday.”

“Yes. Same stew.”

“That's no good.” Barton began to fret about food. Cox, Fitzgerald and Cattermole came in. “Christ, you look manky,” he said. It was a word the groundcrew used for anything made foul by neglect.

“So do you,” Fitz said. “Come on, we're going to get rotten drunk. CH3's got his Bentley.”

“I can't, there's too much—”

“Oh, balls. Are you coming, uncle?”

“Rotten drunk, you say?” Kellaway asked. “I think I deserve that. Come on, old boy.” He put a hand under Barton's arm. “Duty calls. Time to get thoroughly bottled.”

CH3 was waiting outside. They drove south, to a town called Arcis, and parked in the main square. The place was full of troops and refugees. “We'll never get a meal here,” Barton said. He was the last out of the car, and he lagged behind the others as they walked around the square.

Eventually, CH3 dropped back and walked beside him.

“What a bloody day,” Barton said. It was dusk, and Arcis was blacked-out: the streets were gloomy. “First Lloyd goes for a burton. Then Moke Miller buys it. Then Rex. And now we've lost Flip and Pip. Where's it all going to end?”

“Stop brooding, Fanny. Worrying about it isn't going to bring them back to life.”

Barton sucked his teeth. “It's all very well for you. You're not CO. I'm paid to worry.”

“No, you're not.” CH3 gripped his arm and stopped him. “You're paid to lead. Now for Christ's sake stop being such a tight-ass. You're spoiling the war for everyone.”

They stood in the failing light and stared: CH3 calm, Barton wide-eyed with astonishment. “I see,” he said. “And what do you suggest I do that I haven't been doing?”

“Do whatever you want,” CH3 said. “You've got the power, haven't you?”

“I say, Fanny,” Cox called. “What d'you think of this place? Think they'd let us in?”

It was a large hotel, the biggest building on the square. Barton
led them up the steps and into the restaurant, which took up most of the ground floor. Waiters swayed between tables; silver and crystal gleamed and sparkled in candlelight. Cutlery tinkled, and the conversation was as soft and seamless as the carpeting. Fitzgerald, following Barton, caught a whiff of roast chicken that made him swallow and twitch his nostrils. The headwaiter appeared, and took in their scruffy uniforms with a single flicker of the eyes.
“Messieurs?”
he murmured.