The Human Front (8 page)

It was easy. It was ridiculously, pathetically, trivially easy. Four of us had National Service experience with tanks, so we split into two groups and after firing a few shots to keep the enemy’s heads down we knocked the shackles off the chains and commandeered both tanks. They were fuelled and armed, ready for action. We crashed them off the sides of the flatbeds and drove them perilously down the steep slope to the road, shelled the train, drove under the bridge, shelled the train again, then shelled the bridge. Then we drove over the tracks and around the back of the now-collapsed bridge and a couple of miles up the road, and off to one side, and when the relief column arrived—a
dozen troop trucks and four armoured cars—we started shelling that.

By midafternoon we’d inflicted hundreds of casualties and had the remaining troops and vehicles completely pinned down. Reinforcements from our side began to arrive, pouring fire from the ridges into the glen, raiding more weapons and ammunition from the train and the relief column; and then attacking
its
relief column. The battle of Glen Carron was turning into the biggest engagement of the war in the British Isles. The increasingly appalling weather was entirely to our advantage, although my squad, at least, were on the point of pneumonia from the soaking we’d got earlier.

The first we knew of the bomber’s arrival was when we lost contact with the men on the ridge. A minute later, I saw through the periscope the other tank—a few hundred metres away at the time—take a direct hit. That erupting flash of earth and metal told me without a doubt that Gordon was dead, along with Ian, Mike, Sandy and Norman.

“Reverse reverse reverse!” I shouted.

Murdo slammed us into reverse gear and hit the accelerator, throwing me painfully forward as we shot up a slope and into a birch-screened gully. The tank lurched upward as the bomb missed us by about twenty metres, then crashed back down on its tracks.

Blood poured from my brow and lip.

“Everybody all right?” I yelled.

No reply. Silence. I looked down and saw Andy tugging my leg, mouthing and nodding. He pointed to his ears. I grimaced acknowledgement and looked again through the periscope and saw the bomber descend
towards the road just across the glen from us, by one of the trapped columns. Five hundred metres away, and exactly level with us.

There was a shell in the chamber. I swivelled the turret and racked the gun as hearing returned through a raging ringing in my ears, just in time to be deafened again as I fired. My aim was by intuition, with no use of the sights, pure Zen like a perfect throw of a stone. I knew it was going to hit, and it did.

The bomber shot upwards, skimmed towards us, then fluttered down to settle athwart the river at the bottom of the glen, just fifty metres away and ten metres below us, lying there like a fucking enormous landmine in our path.

I poked Murdo’s shoulder with my foot and he engaged the forward gear. Andy set up a bit of suppressing fire with the machine-gun. We slewed to a halt beside the bomber. I grabbed a Bren, threw open the hatch and clambered through and jumped down. My ears were still ringing. The wind was fierce, the rain an instant skin-soaking, the wind-chill terrible. Water poured off the bomber like sea off a surfacing submarine. There was a smell of peatbog and metal and crushed myrtle. Smoke drifted from a ragged notch in its edge, similar to the one on the crippled bomber I’d seen all those years ago.

I walked around the bomber, warily leaping past the snouts of machine-guns in its rim. With the Bren’s butt I banged the hatch. The thing rang like a bell, even louder than my tinnitus.

The hatch opened. I stood back and levelled the Bren. A big visored helmet emerged, then long arms levered up a torso, and then the hips and legs swung up and
out. The pilot slid down the side of the bomber and stood in front of me, arms raised high. Very slowly, the hands went to the helmet and lifted it off.

A cascade of blonde hair shook loose. The pilot was incredibly beautiful and she was about seven feet tall.

We left the tank sabotaged and blocking the road about five miles to the west, and took off into the hills. Through the storm and the gathering dusk we struggled to a lonely safe-house, miles from anywhere. Our prisoner was tireless and silent. Her flying-suit was dark green and black, to all appearances standard for an American pilot, right down to the badges. She carried her helmet and knotted her hair deftly at her nape. Her Colt .45 and Bowie knife she surrendered without protest.

The safe house was a gamekeeper’s lodge, with a kitchen and a couple of rooms, the larger of which had a fireplace. Dry wood was stacked on the hearth. We started the fire and stripped off our wet clothes—all of our clothes—and hung them about the place, then one by one we retrieved dry clothes from the stash in the back room. The prisoner observed us without a blink, and removed her own flying-suit. Under it she was wearing a closer-fitting garment of what looked like woven aluminium, with tubes running under its surface. It covered a well-proportioned female body. Too well-proportioned, indeed, for the giant she was. She sprawled on the worn armchair by the fire and looked at us, still silent, and carefully untied her wet hair and let it fall down her back.

Murdo, Andy, Neil and Donald huddled in front of the fire. I stood behind them, holding the prisoner’s pistol.

“Donald,” I said, “you take the first look-out. You’ll find oilskins in the back. Neil, make some tea, and give it to Donald first.”

“Three sugars, if we have it,” said Donald, getting up and padding through to the other room. Neil disappeared into the kitchen. Sounds of him fiddling with and cursing the little gas stove followed. The prisoner smiled, for the first time. Her pale features were indeed beautiful, but somewhat angular, almost masculine; her eyes were a distinct violet, and very large.

“Talk,” I told her.

“Jodelle Smith,” she said. “Flight-Lieutenant. Serial number …” She rattled it off.

The voice was deep, for a woman, but soft, the American accent perfect. Donald gave her a baleful glare as he headed for the door and the storm outside it.

“All right,” I said. “We are not signatories to the Geneva Convention. We do not regard you as a prisoner of war, but as a war criminal, an air pirate. You have one chance of being treated as a prisoner of war, with all the rights that go with that, and that is to answer all our questions. Otherwise, we will turn you over to the nearest revolutionary court. They’re pretty biblical around here. They’ll probably stone you to death.”

I don’t know how the lads kept a straight face through all that. Perhaps it was the anger and grief over the loss of our friends and comrades, the same feeling that came out in my own voice. I could indeed have wished her dead, but otherwise I was bluffing—there
were no revolutionary courts in the region, and anyway our policy with prisoners was to disarm them, attempt to interrogate them, and turn them loose as soon as it was safe to do so.

The pilot sat silent for a moment, head cocked slightly to one side, then shrugged and smiled.

“Other bomber pilots have been captured,” she said. “They’ve all been recovered unharmed.” She straightened up in the chair, and leaned forward. “If you’re not satisfied with the standard name, rank, and serial number, I’m happy to talk to you about anything other than military secrets. What would you like to know?”

I glanced at the others. I had never shared my father’s story, or my own, with any of them, and I was glad of that now because the appearance of this pilot would have discredited it. Compared with what my father had described, she looked human. Compared with most people, she looked very strange.

“Where do you really come from?” I asked.

“Venus,” she said.

The others all laughed. I didn’t.

“What happened to the other kind of pilots?” I asked. I held out one hand about a metre above the ground, as though patting a child’s head.

“Oh, we took over from the Martians a long time ago,” she told us earnestly. “They’re still involved in the war, of course, but they’re not on the front line anymore. The Americans found their appearance disconcerting, and concealing them became too much of a hassle.”

I glared down the imminent interruptions from my men.

”You’re saying there are two alien species fighting on the American side?”

“Yes,” she said. She laughed suddenly. “Greys are from Mars, blondes are from Venus.”

“Total fucking cac,” said Neil. “She’s a Yank. They’re always tall. Better food.”

“Maybe she is,” I said, “but she is not the kind of pilot I was expecting. And I’ve seen one of the other kind. My father saw it up close.”

The woman’s eyebrows went up.

“The Aird incident? 1964?”

I nodded.

“Ah,” she said. “Your father must be … Dr. Malcolm Donald Matheson, and you are his son, John.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“I’ve read the reports.”

“This is insane,” said Andy. “It’s some kind of trick, it’s a trap. We shouldnae say another word, or listen tae any.”

“There’s eggs and bacon and tatties in the kitchen,” I said. “See if you can make yourself useful.”

He glowered at me and stalked out.

“But he’s right, you know,” I said, loud enough for Andy to overhear. “We are going to have to send you up a level or two, for interrogation, as soon as the storm passes. Will you still talk then?”

She spread her hands. “On the same basis as I’ve spoken to you, yes. No military secrets.”

“Aye, just disinformation,” said Murdo. “You’re not telling us that it wouldn’t be a military secret if the Yanks really were getting help from
outer space?
But making
people believe it, now, that would be worth something. Christ, it’s enough of a job fighting the Americans. Who would fight the fucking Martians?”

He leaned back and laughed harshly.

The woman who called herself Jodelle gazed at him with narrowed, thoughtful eyes.

“There is that argument,” she said. “There is the other argument, that if the Communists could claim the real enemy was not human they would unite even more people against the Allied side, and that the same knowledge would create all kinds of problems—political, religious, philosophical—for Allied morale. So far, the latter argument has prevailed.”

My grip tightened on the pistol.

“You are talking about psychological warfare,” I said. “And you are doing it, right here, now. Shut the fuck up.”

She gave us a pert smile and shrug.

“No more talking to her,” I said.

My own curiosity was burning me inside, but I knew that to pursue the conversation—with the mood here as it was—really would be demoralising and confusing. I got everybody busy guarding the prisoner, cleaning weapons, laying the table. Andy brought through plate laden with steaming, fragrant thick bacon and fried eggs and boiled potatoes. I relieved Donald on the outside watch before taking a bite myself, and prowled around in the howling wet dark with my M-16 under the oilskin cape and my belly grumbling. The window blinds were keeping the light in all right, and only the wind-whipped smoke from the chimney could betray our presence. I kept
my closest attention to downwind, where someone might smell it. There was no chance of anyone seeing it.

I was looking that way, peering and listening intently through the dark to the east, when I felt a prickle in the back of my neck and smelled something electric.

I turned with a sort of reluctance, as though expecting to see a ghost. What I saw was a bomber, haloed in blue, descending between me and the house. There might have been a fizzing sound, or that may be just a memory of the hissing rain. For a moment I stood as still as the bomber, which floated preternaturally above the ground. Then I raised the rifle. Something flashed out from the bomber, and I was knocked backwards, and senseless.

I woke to voices, and pain. My skin smarted all over; my eyelids hurt to open. I was lying on my side on a slightly yielding smooth grey floor. The light was pearly and sourceless. Moving slightly, I found I had some bruises and what felt like scrapes on my back, but apart from that and the burning feeling everything seemed to be fine. My oilskins were gone, as were my weapons and, curiously enough, my watch. I raised my head, propped myself on one elbow and looked around. The room I lay in was circular, about fifteen metres across. My comrades were lying beside me, unconscious, looking sunburned, but breathing normally and apparently uninjured. There was a sort of bench or shelf around the room, which in one section looped away from the wall to form a seat, at which a tall person with long fair hair sat with their back to me, hands
on a pair of knobbed levers. Other parts of the shelf were not padded seating but tables and odd panels. Above the bench was a black screen or window which likewise encircled the room.