The Mercenaries (36 page)

A few minutes later he was bumping along the grass and Sammy and Ellie were running towards him with Lawn and Wang and the Chengs, followed by a long string of grinning coolies.

As he switched off and jumped clear, Ellie flung her arms round him, her eyes full of tears.

‘Thank God I was wrong, Ira,’ she said as he pushed back his helmet. ‘I’m sorry for what I said. No woman’s got the right to stop a man just because he’s doing what happens to be dangerous.’

Sammy was waiting by the wing-tip, his face sombre with pride. ‘She’s beautiful, Ira,’ he said solemnly. ‘Beautiful! She climbs like a homesick angel. We got three aeroplanes now, and two of ‘em are transports. We can convert that rear cockpit to carry goods and she’ll lift anything. She’s built for lifting weights.’ Ira nodded, delighted by the De Havilland’s performance, but still worried by what he’d seen along the river, and even as they talked, he saw De Sa’s old Model-T Ford bumping across the field towards them. The storekeeper had a black eye and blood on his shirt, and his swarthy face was sick-looking.

‘You must take me down-river to Loshih,’ he said at once.

Ellie’s face went white and she began to light a cigarette quickly.

‘Kwei is coming,’ De Sa went on. ‘I am told also that Chiang heads for Shanghai and is willing to fight for it if necessary. It is the end, Major Penaluna. The students tell me my coolies are no longer allowed to work for me. They will come to see you soon. A month from now you’ll have no coolies either. Tsosiehn is Tsu’s city and Tsu is finished.’

5

Tsu, it seemed, had reached the end of his crooked road. On the way south to Loshih, they flew over troops massing in the valleys and on the road that came up from Canton, orderly regiments very different from Tsu’s straggling rabble, squadrons of cavalry and strings of artillery and lorries, every group with its own banner. By the time Ira had returned to Yaochow, Hwai-Yang had fallen again and Tsu’s army was evaporating. His only ally, General Choy, had finally abandoned him and thrown in his lot with Chiang, and the mob was in control.

No one was certain where Tsu was. His motor cavalcade had left Hwai-Yang in a hurry with Tsu, Lao and his wife and son, and had vanished into the hills on the way to Tsosiehn and had not been seen since, and it was said that Kwei troops were across his path. Europeans in Tsosiehn were already busy barricading their houses because his disappearance meant that his army would go on the rampage for loot. Hungry and angry and lacking in discipline, they would splinter into small units, murdering and raping and stealing.

It was already growing dangerous to go into the city. Chiang agents were preaching hatred everywhere and mobs of students had established themselves in the Chang-an-Chieh and were patrolling the streets with their slogans and their bugle bands, ready to attack any foreigner or any Chinese who was unwise enough to work for him. The British gunboat was said to be coming back to take away everybody who wanted to go to the coast and the streets were full of Tsu’s useless banknotes and the Chinese merchants had put up the shutters and hired junks to take them down-river to Siang-Chang. Tsosiehn would be the next place to fall.

There were Kuomintang flags everywhere now. Every one of the junks that bobbed six deep along the bund wore one and a huge red and blue banner floated over the shabby hotel that had once been used by European businessmen. The ancient walls had sprouted a rash of virulent propaganda sheets, urging the people to support Chiang and throw out the foreign devils, and rewards were being offered for Tsu or any of his family.

Lawn was growing daily more nervous and unreliable. His woman had been beaten up by the students and had left him and he had had his bag packed for a fortnight. Half the time now he was stupid with drink.

‘I’m getting out of ‘ere,’ he kept saying. ‘This is no bloody place for a civilised bloke! ‘

But he never quite summoned up the courage. He needed Ira and the others as much as they needed him, because the wall newspapers were blaming the deaths of Chinese peasants in Hunan on the Europeans and it wasn’t safe to move about alone.

They only went near the town now to buy food. All the unions had joined together into a single movement against the Europeans, and the student parades along the river, all the way from Kenli to Loshih, and Hwai-Yang to Tsosiehn, had become cocksure and noisy, with cartoons showing white sailors murdering Chinese women and children with bayonets, and placards claiming fantastic numbers slaughtered by machine guns in the Yangtze Gorges. Landlords, rent collectors and Chinese Christians were being shot up-country and the trickle of missionaries to the coast grew broader and stronger.

In Tsosiehn, the agitators were openly distributing pamphlets of the writings of Sun Yat-Sen, and it had been safer for some time for everyone to sleep at the field and eat beans and bully beef out of tins than go into the city for meals. The generator was already on the lorry ready to leave and they were using lamps with wicks in bean oil that Wang had made.

In his bones, Ira felt there would be a visit from the mob before long, and he had long since transported all their petrol from the godowns along the river to the field, and erected a sign, oriental air carriers, in English and Chinese, on the road alongside in the hope that it would discourage the looters.

Feverishly, while Sammy worked to perfect the De Havilland, they began to pack crates and boxes with everything worth taking. If they were to operate as a private concern, they couldn’t afford to leave any of their sparse stores behind.

One evening, aeroplanes appeared over the city--new De Havilland Nines with tapered snouts, the sun picking out the blue markings with Chiang’s sunrays on them. A few bombs were dropped but most of them fell either in the river or in the paddy fields at the far side, and nothing was damaged and no one hurt, but, for safety, they decided to disperse the machines at once and finally to drain the petrol tanks.

Two nights later, the De Havillands came again, just before dark, and this time they ignored the town and roared across the field at Yaochow. They came low over the trees, their bullets bouncing up from the hard earth, their bombs going off in flashes across the field, so that they all had to dive for the ditch, clawing frantically at the frozen ground.

‘If they touch my aeroplanes,’ Sammy was yelling bitterly, ‘I’ll kill the bastards!‘

As the sound of engines died away, they scrambled to their feet and ran to where the aircraft were parked, Sammy in the lead, the coolies trailing along behind. They were still running when the last of the planes came over, an American Curtiss, its engine missing badly so that it had fallen behind the others. As it appeared over the trees, so low they felt the backlash of the propeller, Ira flung himself at Ellie and dragged her to the ground. One of the coolies near them went over like a shot rabbit, end over end over end, until he stopped, sprawling face-down in the dust, and Ira saw the bullets ricochetting round the Avro as the Curtiss banked.

The Chiang plane vanished as suddenly as it had come, leaving holes in all the machines but no serious damage, and they buried the dead coolie at the edge of the field, hacking a hole from the hard earth with picks, and left him with his friends wailing and burning joss sticks over the grave. They were still patching the planes and packing the last of their equipment when darkness came, and it was only as they stopped to eat that they noticed the coolies had gone. One minute they were there alongside them, moving among the tents, carrying spares and tools and cans of oil, then the next there was utter silence. Where there had always been the high yelling of Chinese argument, now there was nothing except shadows and the hollow sound of their own voices bouncing back at them from the tent walls, and scared looks on the faces of the Wangs and the two Chengs.

They finished loading the lorries and stuffed what they could aboard the De Havilland, then they snatched a hurried meal of corned beef and coffee and lay down to wait for morning. Over Tsosiehn there was a glow in the sky that silhouetted the tower of the pagoda, and Peter Cheng, who had sneaked into the city on a bicycle, came back to say that the mob had set fire to De Sa’s store again and that the gunboat had returned at last and was gathering rafts and sampans to ferry Europeans out to the ship.

Afraid to go to sleep and half-dozing in his blanket in tent against the lorry, with Ellie huddled in his arms, Ira could feel no other sensation but relief that it was all over. The enthusiasm for their projected air carrying company had gone, and all their happiness with it, in the hatred of the Chinese. They seemed not to have had their clothes off for days, and he was longing for sleep, but it was bitterly cold and had started to rain, and in addition to having a mind busy with all the things he had to remember, he knew it had now become unsafe to sleep. Then the rain changed to sleet and flurries of snow, and within an hour everything was coated with a patchy white, the wings of the aeroplanes like grey gashes across the black sky.

There was a feeling of defeat in the air and he was overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness. Tomorrow, they’d be on their way to Nanching, well to the south and off the route of the armies, and from there even further, and he couldn’t wait to put it all behind him. At least their future was secure because his back was against a suitcase containing Shanghai and American dollars, and they could afford to pay off all their outstanding debts and still be in business with a little capital behind them.

He felt Ellie stir in his arms and as he lifted his head he noticed that the red sky over Tsosiehn seemed to be growing brighter, and he became aware of the yells of the mob and occasional shots. Then Sammy, who was prowling round the perimeter of the field with a revolver strapped to his waist, yelled suddenly.

‘Ira! I think the bastards are coming!‘

A shot whined across the airfield, then as Ira reached under the blankets for his own revolver, all hell broke loose. His ears were filled with a high-pitched yelling and there seemed to be lemon-coloured faces everywhere. As he burst out of the tent, he heard Sammy fire, then he was bowled over by a rush of figures in the darkness. Another shot rang out and he took aim from the ground as another bunch of dark shapes hurried by, black against the snow, but they continued past him to the aircraft without apparently noticing.

‘The planes, Sammy,’ he yelled, scrambling to his feet.

Flaring torches seemed to be all round him. lighting up the thin snow and, as he fired again at the shadowy figures, he saw the tent where Lawn had been sleeping go up in flames. Sammy was yelling and swearing somewhere in the darkness and he could hear Lawn’s boozy voice in the background, then he saw that the Fokker, which had never flown since his crash-landing after his fight over Hakau had grounded it for lack of a propeller, was surrounded by yelling shapes with paraffin cans and torches and he began to run. There was a flare of flame from the cockpit, and even as he ran to put it out, he knew it was useless, and almost immediately he heard the sound of metal on metal and guessed the mob was trying to puncture the stacked petrol drums.

Shouting, he whirled on his heel and ran towards the dump. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw old Lawn lumbering towards him, then a flaring torch was swung in the darkness and there was a ‘whoosh!‘ and an explosion that threw them both over. As he lifted his head, he saw running figures black against the flames and a youth whose clothes were alight being dragged away, screaming in agony.

He rushed to the lorry for the fire extinguishers and bumped into a student just climbing into the cab. He swung the revolver and the boy reeled away with a shriek, and grabbing extinguishers with Lawn, he ran to the drums of petrol. But there was another explosion and another fountain of flame and he saw at once that the extinguishers were useless. Racing back to the lorry, he saw a coolie with a torch trying to set light to the tarpaulin hanging over the back and lashed out with his foot. As the man collapsed with a grunt, he jumped into the cab and roared away from the blaze with screaming gears.

As he climbed down again, he saw the remaining Peugeot was burning now and snatched up the extinguisher again in a vain attempt to put it out. As he turned away, his hair and eyebrows singed, his face black with smoke and runnelled with sweat, he realised their assailants were gone.

He could see Ellie in the shadows at the other side of the blaze, then Sammy appeared through the darkness, his face streaked and a smear of blood down one cheek. He was staring at the burning Fokker, already only a glowing framework devoid of fabric, its wings sagging and its fuselage broken-backed.

Ira stood alongside him, his eyes hard. The Fokker had never been a good aeroplane by the standards of any aeronautical society, and she’d arrived, patched and battered and darned like a poor relation even to the old Avro. But her engine and construction had been basically sound and they’d made a reliable machine of her, and it was heartbreaking now to see her burn.

‘The bastards,’ Sammy was sobbing, the tears wet on his face. ‘She was a tip-top little aeroplane.’

‘And they were too bloody well organised,’ Ira grated. ‘They were everywhere at once.’

It was only as he turned away that he realised that Sammy was hugging his right arm to his chest and that he was in pain.

‘What happened, Sammy?’

‘Me arm’s bust, I think. Some bastard with a carrying pole got me. I think I shot him. He’s over there somewhere.’

‘What about the other planes?’

They’re O.K. It’s a bleddy good job we emptied the tanks. They’ve both lost a bit of fabric but that’s all. There’s no real damage. They’ll fly again.’

Ira shook his head. ‘Not just yet, they won’t.’ He indicated the flare where the petrol dump had been. Patches of grass were still burning fiercely.

As they moved towards the dump, he saw Ellie coming towards them. Her shirt was torn off her shoulder and she stared at them numbly, her expression full of shock and horror.

‘They tried . . .’ She choked on her words, her throat working, then as Ira stepped forward, she flung herself into his arms, sobbing.