Piece of Cake (75 page)

Barton sniffed. “Yes and no,” he said. “Yes, we go flat-out to make the interception. No, we try not to get killed in the process.”

Macfarlane still wasn't satisfied. “But that doesn't mean we actually fly
away
from the bandits, does it? We might never find them again.”

“Bandits are like buses,” CH3 muttered. “Plenty more along soon.”

“Now hang on there,” Barton declared. “Let's get this clear. When we get vectored onto a raid, that's
our
raid and we make every effort to hit it.”

“Every intelligent effort,” CH3 said.

“Well, for God's sake, let's not split hairs,” Barton said to him.
“If any of us had any brains we wouldn't be here now, would we? On the other hand, if you're going to wait until everything up there is perfect you might as well …” He checked himself before he said something tactless. He could feel his temper slipping. CH3's insistence on intelligent behavior irritated him. He forced a grin and said to the pilots: “When in doubt, kill a kraut. Simple as that.”

They brightened up, until CH3 added: “But remember: that's exactly the sort of thing that some bright
Geschwader
commander is telling
his
men too, probably right now, and they've usually got the advantage of height.”

“Christ, CH3, you're in a cheerful mood today,” Barton said.

“I just don't want these guys kidding themselves that what the sector controller tells them is necessarily true,” CH3 said stubbornly. His hands were thrust into his pockets and his shoulders were hunched. “All the controller knows is what he sees on that table in the ops room at Brambledown. Half the time his angels are out by a couple of thousand feet. That's marvelous, when you—”

“Okay, we all know the system's not perfect!” Barton picked up his cap and beat some non-existent dust out of it. “It's still a bloody sight better than anything Jerry's got.”

“Yes, but the point is …” CH3 began, when the phone rang. Barton took the call. “‘A' flight's scrambled,” he announced. “I'm leading,” he told CH3. “You sit this one out.” The door banged as Macfarlane headed the charge. Already, the Merlins were starting to popple and belch. The first engine fired, with a bang like a smash-and-grab, and began roaring.

CH3 leaned against the doorframe and watched the hasty ritual. Mae West on. Parachute on. Groundcrew kneeling to bring the straps together. A lumbering run to the plane, parachute slung under the backside like a cushion. Heave up onto the wing, big swing of the legs to get into the cockpit, settle the parachute in the bucket seat. Groundcrew helping with the safety harness. Helmet on, check oxygen and radio leads, gloves on, quick squint at the instrument panel. All ready to go.

And a touch of panic squeezing the guts, probably. This was always the worst moment. Sitting in the cockpit, waiting and wondering. Remembering. Hoping. Fearing.

It was much better when the leader gave the signal to move, and there were things to do. CH3 saw Barton's plane taxi out, an airman clinging to one of the wingtips to help it turn. Automatically he glanced at the sky. A fine clear day.

Renouf and Zabarnowski were standing nearby. As the flight got airborne, Zabarnowski said, “All this talk … Waste of time. Flying fighters is very simple. You want to know the secret of success?”

“What?” Renouf asked.

Zabarnowski put his mouth to Renouf's ear. “Get this close,” he whispered, “and kill the bastard first time.” Renouf recoiled and wiped his ear.

“Your English seems to be improving fast,” CH3 said.

The Pole looked away. “Is dump,” he said.

Fanny Barton kept a vivid memory of this scrap. Some fights printed themselves onto his brain permanently; others erased themselves by their own manic, whirling pointlessness, leaving only a taste of terror, an echo of triumph. Perhaps because the calm weather made everything look so neat at first, perhaps because both sides came at each other in the same way, flying the same formation, Fanny remembered this one clearly.

Everyone saw the 109's from a distance. There were eight: four pairs in a long, saw-toothed line. When Fanny banked his own saw-toothed line of Hurricanes to complete the interception, the enemy leader matched the move precisely and the two formations curled steeply toward each other. For an instant everyone had a target and everyone was a target. Fourteen sets of guns fired, just a flicker of flame before the two formations met and broke up like sheets of glass smashing each other.

Barton glimpsed planes going in all directions and decided the place to be was on top. A hard-turning climb brought him a fine view of the chaos. A yellow-nosed 109 showed its belly to him and he went after it but it rolled and saw him and slipped away. The R/T was staccato with warnings, curses, questions. A different 109 chased a Hurricane into his vision and he gave it a squirt that made it jump. Then he was through the scrap and out again and he heaved the fighter onto its side in an effort to drag it around and get his sights on an enemy.

The strain grayed-out his vision for a second or two and when the mist cleared there was tracer streaking at him from the beam. A 109 came blinding across his nose, so close that the wash rocked him, and then more tracer chased it and a Hurricane boomed over his head, still firing. Barton glimpsed Cattermole's letter painted on the side. Cattermole seemed to be locked onto the German: each brief burst of fire knocked more bits off. The 109 hauled itself into a vertical climb. Cattermole angled up and blew it to pieces. Eight Browning machine-guns pounded the cockpit area for three seconds. The fighter came apart. It was like a plastic toy that had been badly assembled. The pieces scattered. No parachute.

Elsewhere, Macfarlane was racing around desperately looking for Cox, whose wingman he was supposed to be, while Cox raced around driving 109's off Macfarlane's tail. Steele-Stebbing had long since lost Barton and now was reconciled to death. He had put his long, thin body through such a whirling, bewildering string of violent maneuvers in order to dodge the apparently endless 109's that his stomach had quit the fight. Vomit was bubbling over his lips, tears of pain were fogging his goggles. A Messerschmitt swam into view and he jabbed his thumb on the firing-button, pouring all his hate and pain and misery at this vile object, and he kept firing and firing until the breechblocks clanked and wheezed and he had no hate left. Miraculously he was still alive. The enemy had vanished.

The enemy had, in fact, been Haducek, and he had vanished not because Steele-Stebbing hit him—all the shots went very wide, and after the first second or so Haducek was hopelessly out of range anyway—but because Haducek's Hurricane was in a howling dive, chasing an unhappy 109 down to ground level. The 109 was trailing smoke and streamers of fabric. Haducek chased it across the fields and villages of Kent, over the cliffs and beaches, and halfway to France before he gave up. He landed at Bodkin Hazel with little more than fumes in his tanks. There was a nasty mess lying in the middle of the grass which he carefully avoided. Bing Macfarlane had written off another Hurricane.

Hornet squadron got scrambled three more times that day. The first scramble, at Section strength, was recalled almost at once, and the second, also at Section strength, patrolled for an hour
without finding anything. When “B” flight was sent up it was early evening and the sky was a beautiful soft blue, like the finest velvet. Flip Moran led a battle-climb to twenty-two thousand feet. The view was stupendous: they could see from the Thames estuary to the Isle of Wight to the Dutch islands and deep into France. They could see the curvature of the earth and a couple of early stars. They could also see a special Dornier 17, always tantalizingly above and ahead. It had to be a special version, probably with bigger engines and better superchargers, because when it grew tired of inspecting southern England and decided to go home, it left “B” flight gasping and straining.

The controller returned them direct to Brambledown. “A” flight was already there, stowing their gear in the lockers.

“Was lousy,” Zabarnowski told Skull.

“No, no,” Moran said. “That's not the way it was at all. We made a perfect interception, if only the blessed bandit had had the manners to come within range.”

“Is a fat old cow,” Zabarnowski grumbled. “One Spit better than ten lousy cows.”

“On a point of fact,” Cox said stiffly, “I don't think cows have lice. Not English cows, anyway. Maybe Polish cows are different.”

“Shut up, Jew-boy,” Zabarnowski said. “Stay out of my Poland.”

“I wouldn't be seen dead in it.”

“Chosen people,” Zabarnowski muttered. “Chosen to stink.”

“Hey!” Moran said. “That's enough, Zab.”

“I'd sooner be a stinking English Jew than a perfumed Polish ponce,” Cox said.

“Okay, can it, Mother,” CH3 ordered.

“Lousy kike,” Zabarnowski muttered.

“What sort of pansy wears a hairnet in bed?” Cox demanded. “A Polish pansy!”

“Pack it in, the pair of you,” Barton said.

“And
silk stockings,” Cox added rebelliously.

Skull closed his notebook. “No actual combat, then,” he said to Moran, when Zabarnowski punched Cox in the head. At once Cattermole hit Zabarnowski a solid thump to the ribs and Haducek attacked Cattermole with a flurry of blows. Cox kicked Haducek in the groin and Barton sprayed the lot of them with a fire extinguisher, working the jet back and forth and up and down
while elbows jabbed and fists slammed and the room echoed with rage and profanity in three languages until the whole fight was drenched and the floor was awash. Haducek kept swinging, so Moran kicked his legs from under him. Zabarnowski wiped his hair from his eyes and spat at Cox. Patterson, Fitzgerald and Gordon grabbed the Pole and threw him out of the hut.

“You open your mouth and you're chopped,” Barton told Cox. He was standing with a foot planted on Haducek's chest. “Get some towels, Moggy,” he ordered. Renouf reached into his locker and offered a towel. “Is your name Moggy?” Barton roared. Renouf gaped. Cattermole shouldered him aside. The door crashed open and Zabarnowski stormed in.

“I am good Polish Catholic!” he bawled. “Lousy English Jew insult me, insult Catholic Church!”

CH3 had found another extinguisher. “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,” he said, and the jet hit Zabarnowski high in the chest. The Pole opened his mouth and CH3 filled it. Zabarnowski staggered and fell on his backside. CH3 washed him down as he crawled out of the door. End of fight.

Half an hour later they were all on the carpet in Fanny's office, having large strips torn off them.

Brawling and insulting behavior were bad enough, he told them. If they had been airmen they would have been put on charges and given two weeks' jankers, scrubbing out the latrines and shoveling coke for the boilers and doubling off to the guardroom for extra parades in full kit every hour on the hour from 6 a.m. to midnight and God help them if a button was dirty.

What made it worse,
intolerably
worse, was that they were commissioned officers. Supposed to set an example to the men. Who all knew by now that there had been a squalid and stupid punch-up in the locker room. What, Fanny wanted to know, was each of them going to say if an airman was brought before them on a charge of brawling or insulting behavior?
What?

But above all (and here Fanny took out his copy of
King's Regulations
and banged it on the desk) they were on
active service
. And they had
disobeyed his orders while on active service
.

He expanded on that theme at some length and with considerable
feeling. Kellaway, listening, noticed that he had become quite fluent since taking over the squadron.

“You may consider yourselves lucky to escape with severe reprimands,” Fanny said. “You two …” He aimed a finger at Cox and Cattermole. “Go and mop up that shambles. I don't see why the troops should do your dirty work. You two,” he told the others, “stay here.”

“Lunatic,” Cattermole said as they went down the corridor.

“Maniac,” Cox said and kicked him on the leg. Cattermole kicked him back, so Cox knocked his cap off. Cattermole shoulder-charged him into the wall. Cox trod on his cap. A Waaf clerk came out of an office to see what all the noise was about. Cattermole advanced on her, grinning fiercely and gnashing his teeth. “All the better to eat you with, my dear!” he roared. She fled.

“I wish to apologize,” Fanny Barton said. Haducek looked pleased, Zabarnowski was suspicious. “You shouldn't be flying Hurricanes. It was stupid of me not to realize that long ago. Quite obviously the Hurricane is altogether unsuitable for you. Too big, too heavy, not fast enough. The obvious thing to do is to switch you to Spitfires. Mmm?” He gave them a fast, formal smile.

They were listening intently. So was Kellaway.

“Well, the good news is you're grounded. No more Hurricanes.” He widened his smile, made it almost congratulatory. “I knew you'd be pleased …” They weren't looking pleased. “Now it's just a matter of going through the formalities.” He fished a sheet of paper from his in-tray. “You're not the only ones, of course. Dozens of chaps are itching to fly Spits.
Itching
. Personally, I think it's a bloody awful kite, always going wrong, doesn't turn anywhere near as tightly as a Hurri, very shaky gun-platform, and it's got that knock-kneed undercart, all you have to do is run over a small turd and the whole shootingmatch capsizes. Plus, of course, the Spit's got no stomach for Jerry bullets, stop a couple and you've bought it, whereas the Hurricane gobbles 'em up and comes back for more … Anyway … Where was I?”

“Long waiting list for Spits,” Kellaway said.

“Ah, yes. Thank you, adj. So the powers-that-be have made a rule. If you want to transfer to a Spitfire squadron …” Barton consulted the paper. “… you have to score five confirmed kills in
a Hurricane first. Yes. Well, I think that's everything. Once again I'd like to apologize. That's all.”