Kitty laughed. ‘I’m sure Excalibur will be just how you left her.’ She eyed the pyjama top that Gwen had managed to almost completely unbutton before becoming dizzy and sighed in regret, then reached out to do the buttons back up. ‘Come on, let’s get you back in bed. You’ve got the day off and I’m going to make sure you actually use it to rest.’
Gwen allowed Kitty to help her under the covers and smiled up at her when she smoothed down her hair. ‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure. Oh, by the way, the first of the supplies have come off the boats and we’ve got some actual food, if you want any? It’s only canned stuff, but it’s better than that damn fish stew we’ve been eating. I could do you some soup and I think I saw some fresh bread...’
‘That would be lovely, thank you.’ Gwen smiled, but she could already feel her mind shutting down as the warmth of the bed lulled her back into the oblivion of sleep.
Chapter 7
Abby had the pilots assemble on the airfield a good two hours before dawn the next day and they stood near where the ramp led down into the hangar, hugging their greatcoats around themselves against the morning chill.
Gwen was feeling rested and alert and was one of the more awake pilots - a single day in bed with decent food had done wonders for her and she was more than ready to get back into the air. At that moment, though, she was content to have her arm around Kitty and gaze up at the stars with her and she smiled when she saw that Tanya and Drake were only yards away from them, doing exactly the same thing.
‘What the blazes are we doing here so bloody early, Abby? I was having a bonzer dream about this Sheila back in Brisbane. She was just about to...’
Abby cut Bruce off before he could go into details. ‘Just wait and see, will you?’
Even as she spoke, a horn sounded, the ground cracked open behind them. Once the huge metal slab thudded into position, Abby led them down into the hangar, but then brought them to a halt once more.
The horn sounded once more and the ramp hummed and squealed as the clockwork mechanisms lifted it back into position.
The ramp closed with a loud clang, plunging them into absolute darkness as it blocked the faint glow from the moon and stars.
Silence fell once again and this time it was only ten seconds before Bruce felt the need to break it. ‘If this is a surprise birthday party for someone I’m going to be a bit miffed, because I didn’t bloody get one...’
The pilots grinned, waiting for Abby to tell the Australian to shut up or something, but in the end she didn’t need to because, when the overhead lights came on with a crack as the electrical circuit was closed, every single one of them was rendered instantly speechless.
Half a dozen wagons had arrived during the night, after the Misfits had gone, bringing the first shipment of crated-up fighters. The squadron’s fitters had come with them, as had most of the Arturo’s mechanics, who had volunteered almost to a man and woman, to transfer temporarily to Hal Far. They had worked the night through and managed to assemble seven Spitsteam Mark IIb fighters, one for each of the pilots who didn’t have aircraft. The brand-new machines were sitting wingtip to wingtip next to Excalibur and Dragon, extending in a long line across the massive space, their immaculate paintwork buffed and shining in the harsh white lights. The teams of RAC and Naval personnel were standing proudly next to them, grinning, waiting for their pilots to come and claim their aircraft.
Abby took a few steps forwards then turned to face her pilots. ‘I could say something trite like “Today we start to take back the air”...’
‘Uh, you just did, Boss,’ interrupted Bruce with a grin.
Abby glared at him. ‘...but I won’t. Instead I will merely say that today we will finally be able to begin the task that we were set by the King on New Year’s Eve.’
‘Mac would have hated this.’ Scarlet muttered. ‘Look at them all sitting there, identical, nothing individual about them, nothing to tell you who the pilot is and nothing of the pilot in them.’
‘No,’ said Gwen firmly, shaking her head, ‘he wouldn’t; it was Harridans he hated, he actually quite liked Spits. He told me once “at least they have character.”’
Scarlet snorted and turned on Gwen, but Abby saw the argument brewing and acted quickly to forestall it. ‘This mission was always going to be a difficult one, but now, with the Prussians firmly entrenched in Sicily, it is going to be a bit of an uphill struggle. We are Misfit Squadron, though, no matter what aircraft we are flying, and I am confident that we will get the job done.’
The pilots nodded and she smiled grimly in satisfaction. ‘I had your flightsuits brought over from the house - they’re in the ready room. Go claim your aircraft, make sure you thank your fitters in the name of the squadron, then have some breakfast and get changed. Briefing in fifty minutes. Takeoff in one hour.’
Gwen squeezed Kitty’s hand and smiled at her. ‘I’ll see you in the mess, I just want to check Excalibur.’
‘OK, don’t be long.’ Kitty gave her a quick peck, then trotted off towards her fitters, obviously more excited about the aircraft than the prospect of a good breakfast.
Gwen watched her go, then chuckled and wandered towards her own machine.
Bruce had apparently seen where she was going and hurried over to fall in by her side. She looked up at him suspiciously. ‘I heard you flew Excalibur yesterday. I hope you took care of her.’
‘Of course!’ He said with a wide smile. ‘She’s a real beaut, is your machine, Gwen. Swap you a Spit for her?’
‘Not on your nelly!’ Gwen laughed, but then gave him a hard look when she detected a certain hint of nervousness behind his smile. ‘What did you do to her?’
‘Nothing!’
His answer was just a bit too quick for her liking and she scowled at him.
He grimaced. ‘Well... I might have had a bit of a near miss, chasing an FU88 through the ack-ack barrage over Valletta.’
Gwen frowned and hurried her steps, wanting to see what damage he’d caused by doing such a stupid thing, however, when she got to her aircraft all she could see were a few scrapes in the paintwork of the nose. She reached out to run her finger over them. The paint had been taken back to the metal and the Duralumin was scored behind the airscrew, but only lightly. It was a fairly easy repair and she was relieved. ‘I thought it would be much worse than that,’ she said, to herself.
‘Um...’
Bruce tilted his head towards the back of the aircraft sheepishly.
Gwen looked at him, alarmed, then ducked under the wing. She stopped short at the sight of the tail, hidden from her until then by the fact that she had approached the aircraft from the front.
Almost the entire rear of Excalibur, from the rudder to the roundel, was peppered with small holes and there was barely any of the black paint left on her underside.
Bruce saw her horrified expression and shrugged. ‘It’s not that bad!’
‘Bruce, how is this not that bad? I’ve barely got a tail left!’
‘Oh, come on, don’t exaggerate! The control wires aren’t damaged and she still flies perfectly well. She’s just a bit scarred at the moment and that’ll be easily fixed when we get the stores from the Arturo’s hold.’
Gwen glared at him for a second, then smiled and reached out to pull the startled man into a hug. ‘You’re right, it’s not too bad. I’m just glad you didn’t get hurt. You’ll have to give me a full report this evening when we’re done for the day.’ She released him, then began to turn away, but stopped when something occurred to her. ‘Oh, and you know that any kills you got yesterday belong to me, right?’
She grinned, then ducked back under the wing, putting it between them so that he couldn’t answer back, and went to tell Giuseppe that, after Sergeant Jenkins’ death, he was now officially in charge of keeping a Misfit fighter in the air.
Drake smiled contentedly as he ran his hand over the gleaming paintwork of the sleek fighter. The Spitsteam was nothing new to him, but it had been a
while since he had flown one and he couldn’t wait to see what she could do with the new mark of spring and a hydromatic airscrew.
‘Does she meet your approval, Squadron Leader?’
Drake gave the wonderful machine a last stroke then turned to face Forrester and her team, their ranks now swelled by naval mechanics. He nodded his thanks to them, before looking at his chief fitter. ‘Very much so, Sergeant. Does she meet yours?’
Forrester shrugged, as dour as ever. ‘She’s not a Harridan, but I suppose she’ll do.’
Drake nodded. ‘Yes she will.’ He smiled at her and, while she didn’t smile back, he thought he detected a gleam in her eye that hadn’t been there before.
Abby smiled contentedly as she watched her pilots rush off eagerly to their new aircraft, but then realised that two of them were still with her.
Predictably, Scarlet and Chalky weren’t quite as pleased as the others, especially the small Irishwoman, who stomped up to her and stood with her hands on her hips, staring up at her, as confrontational as ever.
‘Yes, Ophelia?’
‘When are we getting one of those, eh? Or are we not good enough to kill Prussians with the rest of you?’
Chalky put his hand up. ‘Actually, I’m fine without one, thank you; I’m not really a fighter pilot.’
‘Quiet, Chalky.’ Scarlet shot over her shoulder without taking her eyes off Abby. ‘Well? We can do our bit too, you know.’
Abby glanced at Chalky and he shrugged helplessly, but kept silent, not wanting to antagonise Scarlet any more than she already was.
Abby nodded. ‘Actually, I have something special in mind for you two, something far more in keeping with your particular talents and far more important than just shooting down a few enemies. I’ll tell you about it at the briefing if we have time, if not, tonight over dinner.’
Scarlet stared at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘It’ll better be good.’
‘It will be.’
With one last squinting stare, Scarlet turned and walked off towards Hummingbird, sitting lonely at the side of the hangar out of the way.
Chalky just gave Abby another shrug, then wandered off in the direction of the intelligence office, where he’d been immersing himself in the current situation since he’d arrived.
Abby had told Dorothy Campbell what she had planned and the Sky Commodore had been watching from the shadows at the side of the ramp. She now moved over to stand with her friend and together they watched the happy pilots clambering over their new machines.
‘You haven’t told them about the orders from the Ministry yet?’
‘No, I didn't want them rejecting the Spitsteams before they’d even given them a chance. I’ll give them a few days to fall in love, then break it to them.’
Campbell’s doubtful expression spoke volumes, but she said nothing and just nodded, then wandered away to make sure everything was set up for the briefing.
The news of the successful destruction of one of the Misfit aircraft and the probable death of the pilot had spread like wildfire through the Coalition ranks, giving new confidence to Prussian and Italian pilots alike, and their morale had been at an all-time high the day before, as they had begun their campaign to destroy the few surviving British ships in Valletta Grand Harbour.
That confidence hadn’t dampened in the face of the minimal losses they sustained at the hands of the two remaining Misfits and the fierce ack-ack barrage over the docks and they were certain that, with their overwhelming numbers, they would prevail eventually.
When the raid came over that morning and found themselves faced by the same two aircraft as they had the day before, they fully expected to once more brush them aside, drop their bombs on the ships with relative impunity, then go back to their bases for a slap-up breakfast.
The Misfits had other ideas.
Gwen squinted up into the sky through her canopy, her most powerful lenses in place over her goggles, but even knowing they were there, she couldn’t find the seven Spitsteam fighters that were above her at thirty-five thousand feet. And if she couldn’t see them, the Prussians had no chance.
The Misfits had barely been able to contain their glee when Dorothy Campbell had told them what she and Abby had cooked up to take advantage of the initial shock and surprise that the appearance of new aircraft would cause.
The plan was simple and very much like the one with which they had surprised the Barons over Lincolnshire. This time, though, it would be two Misfits acting as bait, not outmatched RAC pilots, and it would be the bombers who would be pounced on as soon as the enemy fighters had been drawn away.
It worked like a charm.
The Prussian and Italian fighters raced ahead of the bombers, eager to drive off the impertinent British and the two Misfits retreated, drawing them further away from their charges.
That was when the Spitsteams pounced and started knocking the aircraft the Coalition fighters were supposed to be protecting out of the sky.
The enemy fighters realised they’d been duped and seemed to hesitate for a moment, unsure whether to continue with their pursuit of their original targets or turn to protect the bombers from the new threat, and Abby and Gwen capitalised on it. They performed the sharpest turn they could, reversing course in seconds, and charged the fighters head on, cannons and machine guns blazing.
The Misfits poured all of their anger, sorrow and frustration into the engagement that morning and the bombers never made it anywhere near the island. However, they had used up the element of surprise and the enemy were ready for them after that. The following engagements were much less one-sided than they had been for weeks; even though they were still very much outnumbered, the fight for air superiority over Malta had taken a definite turn in favour of the British.
That afternoon, Wendy was told in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t hang around the hospital waiting for Owen to recover and was discharged from the hospital. The Welshman had finally regained consciousness, but he was in an incredible amount of pain and was being kept so sedated that he had no idea of what was happening around him. It had been touch and go for a while, the doctors almost despairing of him living at one point, so extensive were his burns, but he had surprised them and pulled through. He was still in real danger, though, especially of infection, and contact with him was being kept to a minimum.
The big woman was understandably eager to get into the fight, but with Dreadnought still trapped in the Arturo’s hold there looked like there would be no way of her doing so, unless she got into a Spitsteam, like Scarlet had wanted to. However, Abby told her the same thing as she had told Scarlet, that she had a few ideas for what the grounded pilots of C flight could do, and that evening, after the sun had gone down, she and Dorothy Campbell sat down with the pilots in the mess over dinner, to let them know exactly how they were going to conduct their little corner of the war.
After they all had food, Abby started things off. ‘Today was encouraging, but we’re not going to get very far taking the enemy apart piecemeal; the Prussians can get reinforcements here much quicker than we can and we can’t afford to lose anyone else.’
There was some muttering at what she knew must sound like defeatism, but she just smiled and held up her hands for quiet. ‘Which is why we’re not just going to be knocking down their bombers, we’re going to be going after their airfields as well. Then, when we’ve done that, we’ll see about cutting their supply lines to North Africa, which is what we were really sent here to do.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Bruce with a snort. ‘And what are going to do next week?’
‘This is going to take a bit longer than that,’ said Campbell, ‘but I can always send you to Sicily to tell the Prussians jokes. I’m sure that would shorten the war considerably.’
‘How’s your German, Bruce?’ Abby asked with a grin.
‘Well, Boss, I had a bit of a fling with a Prussian Sheila in thirty-five. She taught me some German. And quite a few other things as well, I can tell you!�
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‘But you won’t.’ Abby cut him off.
The banter drew genuine laughter, but it didn’t last long and Abby moved on quickly. ‘Look, I know that the odds are still heavily against us, I don’t need Bruce to tell me that.’ She glared at the Australian, who smirked back. ‘And if we’re going to have a hope in hell of winning this fight, or even just surviving, we’re going to need intelligence. Which is where you two come in.’ She looked at Scarlet and Chalky Isaacs. ‘We’re blind at the moment and we haven’t got the hydrogen to spare to send Vulture up, so you two are going to have to come up with another way of getting photographs of the airfields on Sicily.’
Chalky nodded, doubtfully, but Scarlet had a grin on her face which worried Abby. ‘This is top priority. I want those photographs and you can have all the resources you need,’ she grimaced, ‘well, all the resources we have to get them. Having said that, though, while I don’t care how you do it, I do want you alive and in one piece at the end of it.’
Scarlet pouted. ‘Spoilsport.’
Abby just shook her head and turned to Wendy. The big woman was looking dejected and lonely and would need to be kept busy for her own good. ‘Wendy. In the meantime you’re going to be working with the undersea boat boys based at Manoel Island. That’s in Marsamxett Harbour, which is only a very short walk from the hospital...’ She gave Wendy a pointed look and the woman brightened considerably. ‘Your contact there is a Lieutenant Commander Strangeways. I want you to work with her on a way for us to sink ships - the Italian torpedo bombers were pretty effective apparently and I want you to find out what the Navy have got that would mount on our fighters.’
Wendy nodded happily. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already been working on a few ideas.’
Abby chuckled. ‘I had no doubt that you would’ve been.’ She looked around the group. ‘That’s it, unless anybody has anything else to say?’ Bruce opened his mouth and she rounded on him. ‘Anything sensible to say.’
The Maltese Defence Page 12
