Piece of Cake (46 page)

“Overdue?” said Rex. “Who gave him permission to be overdue?”

“More to the point, sir,” Moran said, “who gave him permission to fly?”

Rex looked wistfully at the billiard table and handed his cue to Mother Cox. “If you don't win now,” he told him, “I'll have you
grilled in parsley butter with an apple in your mouth.” He took Moran outside. “You didn't know he'd gone?”

“He didn't even get clearance from the tower. Just climbed aboard and skedaddled.”

“So he might be anywhere.” Rex ran his knuckles along the top of a radiator. “And anywhere is a big place. Especially at night.”

“I talked to his fitter,” Moran said. “He says Sticky took that old tin jerry with him, the one the Messerschmitt dropped.”

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

Rex went upstairs and told the adjutant.

“Sounds as if he was pissed,” Kellaway said. “He wandered in here a couple of hours ago, talking a lot of cock.”

“What, for instance? It might give us a clue.”

Kellaway scratched his head with the eraser-end of a pencil. “He said he wanted to join the cowboys.”

Rex sighed, and walked over to a typewriter. Using one finger, he hit a few keys at random. “Anything else?”

“Or the merchant navy, he said. Frankly, I didn't pay much attention. You know what they're like. They all talk a load of cock half the time.”

Rex nodded. “You'd better tell Headquarters he's missing.”

Hornet squadron was sitting down to dinner when Skull hurried in. “Rheims just called,” he said. “The French army have a report of an airplane apparently making a forced landing near the Belgian border. They seem to think it might be a Hurricane.”

“Seem to think?” Rex said. “Might be? What's the matter? Can't they go and look?”

“No, they can't. It's inside Belgium.” Skull spread out a map. “There. Between Bouillon and Florenville,” he said. “Near Sedan.”

“About sixty miles from here,” Moran said. “I bet that's him.”

“If so, the Belgians will, of course, have interned him,” Skull said confidently. “They guard their neutrality very jealously, so I'm told.”

“Damn their neutrality!” Rex cried. His fist came down on the map with a crash that made the candelabras flicker. “I want my pilot! Who's with me?”

At ground level the night was so black that the pilots crossed the field with arms outstretched. A local thaw had melted all the snow.
Only the squelch of the gumboots of the man in front guided them; and when the French officer stopped, the line behind him bumped into each other and stumbled and cursed beneath their breath.

The Frenchman steered Rex to an oak tree and showed him a ladder that was lashed to the trunk. It proved to be the first of three. Rex guessed they were fifty feet up when they stopped climbing. The darkness was fractionally less: after a lot of staring between the branches he thought he could see the blurred beginnings of more fields.

The officer took Rex's arm and pointed it. “
par là
” he whispered.
“Peut-être cent mètres, pas plus. Au milieu d'un champ.”

Rex stared beyond his arm, but it might as well have been pointing into a coalsack. “
Vous pouvez le voir?
” he asked.

“Non. Mais nous avons illuminè la terre avec une fusée éclairante. Vous comprenez? Lumière brillante
.”

“A flare. You sent up a flare?”

“Oui, oui.”

“Didn't it attract the Belgians?
Faire venir les Belges?
”

“
Non
.”

They climbed down.

“Gather round,” Rex said softly. “Stickwell's Hurricane is apparently in the middle of a field, about a hundred yards ahead. Now the French have, at my request, already cut the barbed wire to let us through. They've also stationed a very large tractor by the hole. We're going to take some wire rope and tow the plane back over the border. We're also going to collect Stickwell, of course, if he's there. Who's got Reilly? I'll take him now. Right, off we go. If anyone gets lost, find the rope. That'll lead you home.”

The French officer guided them to the wire. A hulking caterpillartractor made a heavier blackness in the night. Someone sitting on it cleared his throat as they passed. Another man gave Rex the looped end of the wire rope. He stepped through the gap and leaned forward to make the rope pay out. The drum squeaked as it turned, in time with his steps. Others took hold of the rope and the resistance vanished. Rex tramped forward with Reilly at his side. The drum-squeak faded to nothing.

He took short paces to avoid splashing through puddles, and counted his paces: At a hundred and twenty he stopped and looked around, still blind in the blackness. He could smell the Hurricane,
an unmistakeable reek of oil and petrol and coolant. Reilly smelled it too and strained against his collar.

The wreckage lay thirty yards to the right. One wing had snapped in half; the other had buckled and was pointing upward, like an extra rudder. The tail-unit was nearly torn off and the fuselage looked thoroughly dislocated. All this he saw by the shielded glow of a flashlight.

The cockpit was empty.

Rex found Moran. “If the Belgians took him,” he whispered, “they'd have left a guard, wouldn't they?”

“Maybe he bailed out.”

“This looks more like a belly-landing to me.”

Moran fingered the edge of the cockpit. “The hood's been locked open. Maybe he got thrown out and broke his neck.”

“Maybe. Look: you get the rope fixed. I'll scout around.”

He walked slowly along the track plowed out by the Hurricane, feeling the broken turf under his feet. Reilly was not interested. Reilly wanted to go a different way. Eventually Rex gave in and allowed himself to be towed behind the dog. Reilly got more excited, thrusting this way and that as the scent twisted and turned, until he suddenly stopped and began scratching at something. Rex took out the flashlight and flicked it on and off. They were standing beside a fox's earth. He dragged Reilly away. “This is serious,” he told him.

The rope was hooked around the Hurricane when he got back. Rex sent the new man, Lloyd, to tell the tractor driver to start hauling. The rest stood with their hands in their pockets and shivered. They had left the mess without having had dinner, and it was starting to rain.

Reilly howled.

“Shut up!” Rex hissed, and jerked the leash. Reilly howled more loudly, a long and passionate delivery. Rex stooped and groped for him. Reilly felt the leash slacken and he leaped forward, breaking Rex's grip, and charged into the night. “Heel!” Rex commanded, uselessly.

“Bloody foxes,” he explained. “Oh well.”

For another minute they stood listening to the feeble patter of the drizzle.

The tractor rumbled distantly. The rumble rose to a roar and,
as if this had been a drumroll in a circus, a searchlight split the night. It came from the Belgian end of the field and it shone almost horizontally, boring a dazzling hole through which the rain drifted like smoke.

“Everybody down!” Rex shouted. They flattened themselves on the boggy grass. The searchlight scanned fast and found the Hurricane, which by now was bouncing and bucking as the rope began to wind in. Caught in the narrow glare, the wreck seemed to be making its own way over the field, and the searchlight followed it as if fascinated.

For five seconds they pressed their faces in the mud. A loudhailer spoke, harshly and incomprehensibly. Rex raised his head. “Keep well away from the plane!” he called. “Get back to the wire! Run!”

They heaved themselves up and ran, splashing and skidding. The Belgians noticed something: the searchlight wandered suspiciously. Just as it was about to start nibbling on the first runner, it changed its mind and swung back to the other side of the field. There it hunted around until it found Stickwell, lurching across the grass while Reilly repeatedly jumped up and scrabbled at him.

Everyone stopped. They could hear Stickwell snarling at the dog: “Gerroff! Gerroff! Bloody animal …” The loudhailer manufactured another string of urgent noises. Stickwell seemed suddenly to become aware of the light. He turned and squinted at it through his fingers. More loudhailer. He dropped his hands and walked on. A rifle cracked. Stickwell halted. Reilly sat and scratched himself behind the ear. “What's up?” Stickwell asked vaguely.

“Forget him!” Rex told the others. “Leave him! Keep running!”

Rex stood, sucking in dank air as the squelch of gumboots receded. He switched on his flashlight and waved it, signaling to the Belgians; then he threw it, with a careful underarm lob, away from Stickwell. The beam flickered through the night, bounced, and stayed on.

Rex fell flat. The searchlight raced over him and started searching. At once he was up and running, calling Stickwell's name. Reilly heard, and came to meet him. They blundered about, splashing through shallow pools. “What's the game?” Stickwell asked, complaining. Rex ran at the voice and they collided. Rex grabbed an arm and headed for the barbed wire. “Here, what's
the rotten game?” Stickwell demanded. “Come
on
!” Rex urged. Stickwell fell down and took Rex with him.

The searchlight was coming back. It had another look at the Hurricane, now being hustled along at a steady pace, and then rediscovered Stickwell and Reilly, with Rex as a bonus.

The loudhailer barked. It was obviously an order.

“Come on!” Rex said. “Run, you silly bugger!”

Stickwell got up. The light was merciless. It bleached him, flattened him, rubbed out all color. “Wossa game?” he muttered. His legs folded. Rex caught him and heaved him onto a shoulder and set off at a slithering trot.

The fizz of the bullet overhead reached his ears before the bang. He tried to zigzag and dodge the searchlight but it tracked him with appalling ease. Mud doubled the weight of his boots. All the time, the loudhailer kept barking, the tractor roaring, the battered Hurricane squealing and screeching. The next fizz-bang sounded closer, much closer, an angry insect looking for trouble.
Two warnings
, he thought.
Third time unlucky
.

Obviously they wouldn't miss. Aiming along this beam was like dropping stones down a well. Stickwell grew heavier with every stride, but the wire seemed to get no closer.

The next bang was different: less crack, more wallop.
Missed!
he thought. Three more bangs chased each other, and the searchlight died. Rex pounded on, aiming for the tractor's roar. He reached the wire before he fully understood. That had been revolver fire back there.

He scrambled through the gap, dumped Stickwell and staggered a few more paces, his lungs laboring, his heart hammering. Reilly frolicked, delighted at this unexpected fun. Everyone was safe, it seemed. So who shot the light? No, everyone was not safe. Someone was still being chased over the field. Bobbing flashlights showed the pursuit.

Cattermole charged home with ten yards to spare. That left the Hurricane, which was still being winched in. The Belgian frontier guards seized hold of it and tried to drag it back, but all they got was the tail-unit, which snapped off. The rest of the wreck scraped through the hole in the wire.

The tractor abruptly ceased its roaring.

The Belgians gathered, waved their rifles, and shouted a lot of bad language.

The Hornet pilots faced them and sang the squadron song. Rex found Cattermole. “Did you pot that light?” he asked.

“It seemed the best thing to do.”

“Damn good show.”

Rex found Stickwell. “What happened to you?”

“Not sure. Lots of things. Got a shocking headache. Went to sleep in a bramble bush. Woke up when Reilly peed on me. Not very nice, that. Got a shocking headache.”

By now everyone was listening.

“Well, I'm pretty sure what happened, even if you're not,” Rex said. “And I'm even more sure what's going to happen next. You're chopped, Stickwell. Understand? Chopped.”

Stickwell did not understand. A French army doctor asked him what day it was and which country he was in; examined the lumps on his head; and diagnosed severe concussion.

They found a British field hospital outside Sedan which accepted him, and they drove home. Behind came the broken Hurricane, piled onto a truck like booty.

In a gray and empty month, when the war that began with
blitzkrieg
had already been rechristened
sitzkrieg
, news of Hornet squadron's daring rescue delighted the other RAF units in France, especially those who had been shot at by Belgian anti-aircraft batteries. Rex took a stream of congratulatory telephone calls from other CO's. “If you want to know the truth, old boy,” he told them, “I never could stand the taste of Brussels sprouts ever since my nanny forced me to eat the bloody things by the bucketful. If we ever capture a Belgian pilot I shall stuff him with boiled cabbage, just to square the account.”

Air Commodore Bletchley drove down from Rheims. “Officially, the Belgians will get an apology and you will get a reprimand,” he told Rex. “Unofficially, you did the right thing. In any case the Belgians need a dig in the ribs to help them make up their minds which side they're on.”

The doctors let Stickwell get up on the second day. He had a black eye and a split lip, and the bruises on his forehead were turning
the color of over-ripe plums. He was restless yet tired. He had a good appetite, but sometimes he felt oddly distressed in a way he could not describe. They wrote
Delayed Shock
on his file and gave him a large jigsaw puzzle to assemble.

His first visitor was Cattermole.

“God, you look awful,” he said as he came in.

“Do I, Moggy? Do I really?” It was the nicest thing Cattermole had said to him in weeks, and he felt deeply touched. He said: “It's your fault, you great oaf. I only did it to shut you up, after all.”