The Call of the Thunder Dragon (5 page)

Falstaff felt the
bucket of cold water hit his back. He shivered. The water did
nothing for the pain on the side of his head. He found his hands
bound behind his back. He’d been stripped to his shirt and
trousers. He glanced around quickly, then let his eyes close. He
heard men pacing around him. He took a deep breath and decided to
get up. He shuffled on to his knees. dxxii

The Colonel spat,
“Before you die we will know a lot more! Bring me a drink!” He
guzzled at the cold tea offered by Keiko. “Put something on the
fire. I prefer a warm drink, don’t you Falstaff?” dxxiii

Tsuba in Japanese,
Hilt/guard 560

Oh, Shit! Oh hell!
560

Anata wa toroi desu
ne. Japanese ‘You’re slow to catch on, aren’t you?’, toroi- Slow to
catch on, doesn’t “get it” 560

Karma – as in Fate
561

Croton Poilanei is a
shrub or tree growing up to 10 metres tall. The tree is harvested
from the wild for local medicinal use. 561

After resting another
hour finally, Falstaff had had enough of brooding. Lang had barely
spoken to him and there was no sign of Zam anywhere. dxxxix

Falstaff passed up the
last of the bags and provisions, keen to start the engines
immediately, a lump of bitterness had been forming in his chest.
Zam had gone, departing for the monastery before he could say
another word and now he wanted to seek the comfort of distance.
dxlvi

Punarmilāmah, Sanskrit
for goodbye. 561

The Dolphin’s engines
roared, crackling noisily. Echoing like a growl around the valley
waking the birds, shaking them from their trees. Falstaff took the
flying boat out onto the lake. There was a favourable northerly
headwind. The Dolphin skimmed across the lake taking to the air
heading for the rising mountains. With the twin engines howling at
full power, the boat took off its nose rising skyward. At the
moment they became vertical, Falstaff side-slipped turning sharply
back the way they had come: South East, Three thousand nautical
miles to Formosa. dxlvii

Falstaff straightened
the collar on his black dinner jacket as he strode into the
Raffles’ saloon bar. dl

Endnotes dlvi

Falstaff’s work as a
mercenary pilot fighting against the advance of the brutal Japanese
menace through China is about to come to a woeful end...

Map 1 China Yunnan
Province January 1940

Prologue

At the controls of the obsolete
Biplane skimming outrageously close to the surface of the flooded
rice paddies, its English pilot brazened it out in the open
cockpit. As behind him, bombs continued to fall on a burning
airfield.

“Oh, bugger!” Was all he had time
to say, as he swerved to avoid the two Japanese fighters strafing
the remaining aircraft on the ground. The pilot with maverick
nonchalance adjusted his goggles and flicked a silk scarf over his
shoulder as he waved cockily at the fighters behind him.

“Adios! Sayonara! See ya around
pigeons!”

His name was John Falstaff Wild.
He was in his late-twenties and cherished flying almost as much as
he did women. Right now, he considered staying in the air more
important. There would be plenty of time for women later once he
was back on terra-firma.

There was a burst of oily smoke
in front of him, as the sister plane to the one he was flying burst
into flames and pancaked into a paddy field below.

“Damn it, not Ivan?” He cursed as
the thick plume of smoke and splatter of oil from the stricken
plane hit him.

“It’s time I scarpered,” He
muttered fearfully. The Russian in the crashed plane had been a
good friend.

Falstaff himself was flying a
short stubby bodied Polikarpov I15. It was not an easy plane to
fly; it was unforgiving, requiring constant attention. However, on
the other hand, it would respond instantly and be capable of any
number of tricky manoeuvres. When he was learning to fly, some fool
had likened handling an aircraft to handling a woman. Falstaff’s
experience at the time was that women were easy enough to handle,
but when it came down to it, less inclined to tricky
manoeuvres.

Falstaff was currently flying for
the Chinese Air Force. The Imperial Japanese Army, in the form of a
squadron of bombers, with fighter escort, had unexpectedly appeared
that morning over Falstaff’s beleaguered unit.

Falstaff had spent half the
previous night at a banquet thrown in honour of their arrival. The
other half he’d spent expressing his gratitude to the mayor’s
daughter by teaching her a few tricky manoeuvres.

Lack of sleep had inevitably led
to his waking late. When he had awoken, he’d felt more like a
red-eyed moocher, than eagle-eyed Ace. Hangover or not he had a
contract and for £150 a month plus a bounty for each Japanese plane
shot down.

Falstaff impatiently pushed the
throttles as he glanced around looking for safety. There were
fighters above him closing in. He decided to try to get over the
tree line on the hill to the south.

Watching him from the hill a
stranger looked on in horror. The smudge of oil and the dirt on the
girl’s hands was out of place. Her coat was a superior woollen
garment with fur edged cuffs and collar. Her pantaloons were of
silk. She ran over the crest of the hill, planted with rows and
rows of tea bushes now naked in the grip of winter. The girl was
lost. Lost and afraid. The land she came from had not known war for
many generations. In spite of that, here she saw the landscape
below being torn apart by ironclad bombs dropped by the huge
bombers above.

The prior existence of the small
farm village below was now only marked by the trail of smoke in the
air. The tents and vehicles along the edge of the bare earthen
airstrip were burning unnaturally bright. Incendiaries flashed as
bright as stars amongst the canvas shelters where people screamed
in horror or slept never to wake.

The behemoths drifted over the
village towards another factory. Small flying machines buzzed and
swerved spitting fire causing grounded machines to burst into
flowers of flame.

The girl had watched, the flames
filling her eyes. Whatever misfortune had brought her to the top of
the hill was forgotten as she became entranced by the sight of the
circling machines in the air. She watched the destruction with
dread until, amongst the flames, she saw, first one monoplane, then
another bi-plane trundle off the cratered airstrip into the
sky.

One of the machines had exploded
in the air. It was the first plane, the monoplane that had fallen,
crashing into a paddy field. Chasing the stricken aircraft, a
support truck rushed to its aid; itself already packed full of
ragged and helpless men.

The girl held her breath, her
eyes fixed on the second flying machine, a small brown biplane. It
weaved and ducked high and low. It circled and danced around the
thick black smoke now rising from the factory. Her shoulders fell
when she lost sight of it in the dense fiery fog.

Like a spark, the girl’s eyes lit
up as the small plane appeared from the black smoke, twisting into
the path of one of its pursuers. They collided. The little brown
bird-like plane spun away, leaving the metal buzzing machine torn
to pieces. Fire spat from the brown bird’s mouth. Another silver
machine fell.

The girl gritted her teeth,
squeezing her hands into fists, willing the distant plane on. It
rose again slowly, then darted away as another flock of silver
machines descending from high above sprang an ambush. They swept
towards the hillside where she stood and over the road packed with
fleeing farmers. Finding herself in the path of the machines, she
had to choose, stay on the hill or run back to where she would come
from?

She did neither. She then
continued onward, drawn towards the melee of people below.

The silver machines swooped,
eager to mow down the figures on the road. The people already
filled with fear converged on one narrow bridge. Side by side, wing
tip to wing tip the silver machines sprayed the road with fire. The
little brown plane, with a last burst of life, bobbed up into view
again. Flying out of the river gully and over the bridge. It rose
up spitting fire into the path of the oncoming silver menace.

The girl watched the death of the
silver machines as they twisted together, smashing and burning as
if they were in the grip of a giant dragon. The little brown bird
flew as if staggering in the air towards the truck. She had seen
the man inside, fighting the controls. With a burst of fire from
its breast, its engine had exploded. It hurtled into the wet mud of
a paddy.

The girl’s heart sank. The death
of the brown machine ended the only resistance to the growling
monster bombers in the sky and the buzzing silver planes.

She ran towards the road. Towards
the truck full of broken men. The girl ran towards the crumpled
machine. Relentless another silver plane came mowing the hill,
raking it with machine gun fire. Cutting the helpless running
people down. The girl cried out in terror for the dying around her.
She made a choice at last. The pilot and the truck heading towards
him may be her only hope of deliverance.

Chapter One - Hot Water on Fire Top Mountain

January 1940

Samoa southern Yunnan, China

Near the French Indo-Chinese Border.

Falstaff’s delight was short
lived. Pulling up over the crowded bridge, he found himself flying
through a rain of wreckage. Buffeted on all sides, he felt a
violent impact against one of the wings of the little brown
Polikarpov. He barely had time to level the biplane out, point it
in the general direction of the wettest looking paddy and hope for
the best; before his engine, giving a final splutter of
indignation, cracked its pistons. Oil, broken rods and splintered
casings spewed forth in a hot steaming burst of resentment.

The Polikarpov finished on its
left side. Its wings broken under it. Falstaff groaned in pain,
wanting only to rest his aching body and his splitting head until
he realised that water and the foul smelling ooze of the rice paddy
was seeping into the cockpit where he lay on his side. The cool
water eased the discomfort of the hot oil on his face. He mopped at
his brow, tensing as he wiped away the blistering spots of oil.

How many times had he been
compelled to hear his father recall how it felt to be shot down
over the Pas-de-Calais and forced down behind enemy lines in a
muddy river basin?

“Serves you right, you daft old
bastard!” Falstaff thought as he rolled out the cockpit and
slithered on his side into the mud of the paddy. “Hope you’ve still
got trench foot you rotten old bugger!”

He staggered up, his long leather
coat soaked with mud. The sheepskin collar now dripping with black
water from the paddy field. He pulled off his goggles and looked
about. His dark brown hair that once had been traditionally and
neatly cut, as required by the RAF and the Imperial Airways alike
had now acquired a roguish curl.

Falstaff limped towards the
approaching truck. He was pleased to recognize the group of
survivors from the airfield. Amongst them, he saw Wu Sam Wong. A
little grey haired Chinaman whose support to the fighter group was
usually indispensable. With nothing left, he now clung to his
little silver pipe and puffed clouds of smoke over his head. He was
what you would call a master spy by profession. In China, like most
countries they say you are never more than a few yards from a rat.
China and probably most of Asia it could be said you were also
never far from a friend of Wu Wong.