The Mercenaries

by John Harris

  There were a couple of sharp taps near him on the Albatros and, glancing upwards, he saw torn fabric fluttering above the centre section, but Sammy was close behind him and, across the circle of the bank, he saw the Caudron’s observer swinging his gun for a shot at the Avro. Instinctively, he lifted the Albatros in a clumsy half-roll that set the wires twanging and sprayed his face with oil, and came back below the Caudron, with the Lewis pulled down on the quadrant and ready for firing.

  For a second, it hung above him like a box kite in a perfect position for the kill, then the pilot, clearly deciding he needed time to work out tactics to deal with this new threat, banked steeply and dived to safety, pulling out just above the ground and heading east.

  Fagan had already landed as the Albatros rolled to a stop. He had climbed from the Fokker and was standing by the farmhouse, gesticulating to Lawn and a circle of pupils and capering coolies. Ira sat for a moment after switching off, huddled in the big cockpit of the Albatros, staring at the Johannisthal works plate set on the dashboard and experiencing the old let-down feeling he’d had so often after a patrol in France, a sensation of relief and a relaxation of tension.

  As he looked up, he was surprised to see Ellie alongside. She was smiling and, as he climbed from the machine, Sammy came running across and, grabbing him by the arms, began to dance round him, all his frustration and despair gone in the moment of triumph.

  ‘I thought you had him by the tripes that time when you were underneath him, Ira,’ he crowed. ‘Next time we’ll make no mistake.’

  Fagan was strutting towards them now, his face grimed beneath his goggles from the cordite smoke where his guns had fired, a noisy mockery of a warrior home from the wars.

  ‘Champagne tonight,’ he yelled excitedly long before he’d reached them. ‘There must be somewhere we can get the bloody stuff! ‘

  Lao arrived soon afterwards, bringing his congratulations and a bottle of whisky which didn’t hide the fact that he’d also brought a demand from Tsu that he wanted the illustrious foreign fliers to press home the victory with aid for his hard-pressed artillery. To Ira’s surprise, he claimed that the alliance of the northern warlords against Chiang K’ai-Shek’s growing power had finally been completed and that Tsu’s agreement with General Choy across the river was at last working well.

  ‘Old Dog-Leg Chiang is finished,’ he said gaily. ‘He cannot fight everyone at once.’

  Fagan gestured wildly and, noisy and excited, grabbed an almost full bottle of rum Lawn had produced.

  ‘We’ve won the war!’ he shouted and took a gulp that was more demonstrative than wise. As usual, his triumph turned to farce at once as he collapsed in front of the pupils he’d been trying to impress, in an explosion of coughing that brought the blood to his face and tears to his eyes, and left him weak and gasping and leaning against the side of the Albatros in a daze

  ‘Sweet Sufferin’ J.,’ he said loudly as he recovered a little. ‘It’s a mortal sin to doctor the bloody stuff like that. What’s in it?’

  Lawn eyed the half-empty bottle bewildered. ‘Best Jamaica rum,’ he said. ‘Or it was when I ‘ad a swig at it.’

  Fagan gestured airily, his eyes on the sniggering pupils. ‘Hell,’ he shouted, ‘they diddled you. It’s raw alcohol, to be sure.’

  Watched by a frozen-faced Ellie who, now that he was safe and triumphant, no longer appeared to be concerned, he seemed unable to divest himself of his leather coat and flying helmet, the trappings of his victory, and stood near the old patched Albatros, boastful and gesticulating, going again and again over his fight.’Lor’, into the Valley of Death,’ Sammy muttered. ‘You’d think that bloody balloon had been armed with whole batteries of cannon.’

  It had been Fagan’s intention, while he could still savour the heady taste of his victory over the balloon, to work the following day with General Tsu’s artillery, but in an anti-climax that came as no surprise to anyone, he went down instead with a galloping hangover, which was not improved when his house-coolie helpfully offered him a cure from a herb doctor in the form of a brew of crystals of musk and child’s urine. Even if there had been any chance of a quick, recovery, the very thought of this concoction was enough to put him on his back at once and it was two days before he got off the ground again.

  Even his return to the air--in the Avro, with Sammy unwillingly in the rear cockpit because of an unaccountable drop in revs in the Monosoupape that called for a mechanic aboard--was conducted with his usual flair for the melodramatic. He set off in a steep climbing turn round the Chang-an-Chieh that set Ira’s teeth on edge, and threw the whole airfield into a state of nail-biting anxiety by failing to return.

  Greasy from working on the oil system of the Mercedes, Ira watched the sky with Ellie and Lawn, none of them suffering from much apprehension about Kwei’s air force--if the Caudron was an example of what he could put into the air even the unpredictable Fagan hadn’t much to fear--but all well aware that, with his ability to make the simplest thing difficult by showing off, he could easily still do a great deal of damage to himself and to Sammy.

  Six hours overdue, the Avro came back in the late afternoon just when the sun was beginning to disappear behind the pagoda. As the low hum of the Mono became audible towards Tsosiehn the hard knot of apprehension in Ira’s chest melted, and eventually he saw the wide double-strutted wings coming past the Chang-an-Chieh. The Avro bumped down in a clumsy landing that put Ira’s heart in his mouth, and was taxied with Fagan’s usual dangerous aplomb up to the other machines to swing wildly into line, its wing-tips narrowly missing the Fokker’s rudder.

  Immediately, Sammy climbed out and began to take off the engine cowling.

  ‘Bit of busted plumbing,’ he said cheerfully over his shoulder. ‘Fixed it with some tape and a piece of copper tube we got from one of Colonel Tong’s gunners.’

  Ira pushed a Gold Flake packet at them and, as Sammy lit the cigarette with greasy fingers, Fagan gestured melodramatically with the match. ‘We conked,’ he said loudly. ‘Miles from nowhere. Thanks be to God we dodged Kwei’s troops.’

  Sammy put the story in perspective. ‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘Petrol feed. Kee came in a motor bike and sidecar with one of his men, so we left the bloke to guard the bus and went to collect the copper tube from Colonel Tong. We tried to tell him where Kwei’s artillery was.’

  The way Fagan lit his cigarette indicated how unsuccessful they’d been and as he grabbed Ellie’s arm and began to stalk away, Sammy began to laugh.

  ‘There was His Nibs,’ he said. ‘Yelling and screeching and banging away at the map where the guns were, with Kee translating and old Tong with a face like a piece of cold rice pudding, smiling his gold smile and trying to pretend he understood. But he didn’t know a map from a menu and wouldn’t admit he couldn’t read one for fear of losing face. I thought Fagan was going to bust with rage.’

  ‘Any ground fire?’ Ira asked.

  Sammy grinned. ‘Only from Tsu troops. Honest, Ira, this war’s enough to make you weep blood in bucketfuls. The Boy Scouts back home could do better. Fagan says he’s going to have a go with grenades tomorrow and do the job himself.’

  The following morning brought a high wind that raised great clouds of yellow dust and set the birds whirling like scraps of blown paper; and, unable to fly, Fagan fashioned a homemade rack which, with Wang’s assistance, he fastened clumsily underneath the Avro’s fuselage. To it Lawn attached a dozen grenades with looped wires. A further wire was attached to the grenades to remove the firing pins.

  ‘Suppose we don’t pull the right string?’ Sammy asked with a grin.

  As the wind dropped, the Avro took off past Peter Cheng circling solemnly in the Farman; and Ira, sitting in the square coffin fuselage of the Fokker, watched uneasily as it bumped across the ground after him, half-expecting one of Fagan’s home-made bombs to break free and explode under its tail.

  A milky scum of cirrus had drained all the colour from the land and the ground had a
drab neglected ashen look about it, but they found a battery of Kwei’s artillery without difficulty near a group of wood-and-wattle buildings on the edge of a clump of trees, and Fagan immediately slammed the Avro into a steep dive that almost threw Sammy out. A fusillade of shots came up at them at once as they roared along the line of guns, the comma-tail of the Avro wagging, and following close behind, Ira saw Sammy push up his goggles and busy himself with Fagan’s wires and tapes.

  Unfortunately, something seemed to go wrong with the gadget and half the grenades dropped away together, to explode harmlessly in a series of flashes on a hut fifty yards from the target, and as the pieces of wood and wattle whirred away, the argument that had started in the Avro grew furious. Ira smiled as Sammy began to shout and gesticulate in disgust, then as they came round for a second try, he saw him start to beat the side of the machine in frustrated fury as the rest of the grenades dropped away in a second batch long before he was ready.

  As the Avro’s nose lifted, Fagan began to gesture wildly at Sammy, using both hands so that the aeroplane seemed to be flying itself, then pointing to the Lewis gun, he swept round once more, clearly determined to do as much damage as possible. The Lewis rattled briefly but they didn’t appear to hit anything, then, as they banked, Sammy laboriously lifting the gun and its cradle to the opposite side of the cockpit, Fagan saw a team of ponies hauling the end gun away, and the blunt heads lifted in fright as the Avro buzzed over them. Sammy’s Lewis rattled again but neither horses nor men fell, though one of the ponies seemed to have been nicked by a ricochet and started to kick its shafts to pieces.

  As the Avro came round once more, Kwei’s gunners were too busy quietening the frantic animal to take much notice of him and Ira found himself shaking with laughter at Sammy’s desperate attempts to bring the Lewis to bear against Fagan’s clumsy failure to place the Avro on the correct side of the guns. Once again, no damage was done and they flew backwards and forwards for a while, humiliatingly unlethal, until the dusty fields emptied and Ira saw Sammy gesturing and pointing furiously at his empty weapon.

  The argument that had started in the Avro and continued all the way home was still going on when Ira landed, but it was cut short by the arrival of Lao, his solemn face smiling with delight. Fagan, still wearing his leather coat and helmet, gave him a highly colourful and exaggerated account of what had happened and saw him off, swearing to do even better the following day.

  ‘Bombs, me old boisterous boy,’ he insisted earnestly as he closed the door of the car behind Lao. ‘You’ve got to get us those bloody bombs I ordered.’

  He was showing off wildly, watched by a po-faced Sammy, and Ira laughed.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought that one pony shot up the backside was worth the risk,’ he said as Lao left. ‘There aren’t enough aeroplanes or bombs in the whole of China to do the job properly.’

  Fagan’s face was a mixture of anger and frustration, and Sammy grinned, unable any longer to look solemn.

  ‘Aw, come off it, Pat, do,’ he said. ‘Face up to it. On today’s showing, you were probably no good even dropping bags of flour in that air display of yours.’

  Fagan’s simmering fury exploded into an elaborate display of histrionics.

  ‘Ach, the gay one! ‘ he shouted at the top of his voice as he stalked away. ‘The knowing one! The bloody rotten aim of him! Sure, I can do it on me own, then, with the proper tools, and divil a bit of help I’ll ask, either!’

  As the day progressed, however, his failure to inflict any harm began to sit heavily on his shoulders and, as he pulled his flask more frequently from his pocket, his rage changed to frustration and finally to a belief that he had signed up to fly for the wrong army.

  His mood lasted only until the Cooper bombs arrived the following evening, badly packed and looking none too safe, and quivering with excitement, he gingerly picked out the best and with Lawn’s help, fixed them to a rack under the wing of the Fokker. He was obviously itching to get into the air again, an indifferent flier and a worse shot, but with something in his make-up that seemed to need to create mayhem.

  Sammy was standing by the Albatros as he pulled his helmet on the next morning. He was stripping down the cylinders, and dismantling the valve mechanism on the table by the machine, and had flatly insisted that flying with Fagan was a waste of time.

  ‘He gets too bleddy excited,’ he observed.

  He watched Fagan climb into his seat, his expression its usual mixture of indifference, humour and contempt. Ellie stood nearby, hugging her elbows in that odd angular stance she affected, her face expressionless so that it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.

  Sammy lit a paraffin-smeared cigarette and glanced at the bits and pieces of engine laid out on the table, still dripping from the wash he’d given them, then he looked at Ira, his eyes calm as though he’d considered some of the problems of life and come up with a few of the answers.

  ‘I’m glad I’m not Pat Fagan,’ he said sombrely. ‘It’s all right being an intrepid birdman, but he has to be more intrepid than anybody else. The bangs he makes are always a bit louder than anybody else’s and the blood he spills is always a bit redder.’

  His voice was full of scorn as Fagan worked the throttle of the Fokker and the machine swung round spectacularly against the weight of Lawn and the terrified coolies hanging over the tail.

  He replaced his grimy cigarette in his mouth and shrugged. ‘I’ve decided I like engines better than guns,’ he said gravely. ‘When someone moves the prop round and I’m standing up there, listening to the bits move--all the click-click-clicks as them bright little parts slide up against each other--that’s what I think’s exciting.’

  Fagan returned, with his bombs gone and elated enough to fluff his landing so that the machine stood on its nose and wrote off the propeller.

  ‘For Christ’s sake.’ Sammy yelled furiously, dancing with rage. ‘We haven’t got all that many spares. You ought to know your job’s to get the machine down in one piece, not show off for the bleddy pupils!‘

  Fagan gave his mad laugh as he dusted himself down. ‘Ach, up your kilt, you mundane little man,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a soul like a pile of sand. I’m making money. I caught a regiment on the march and if I’d had a full belt of ammo, sure, I could have blown ‘em all to Kingdom Come and back.’

  Ellie’s eyes flickered unhappily, but he grinned, delighted with himself.

  ‘It was like knocking over toy soldiers with a shillelagh,’ he boasted. ‘I shot the colonel off his horse just like a rag doll.’

  Ellie swung away, angular, lean and hostile. ‘I don’t like this goddam killing,’ she said sharply. ‘It isn’t what we came for.’

  As Fagan swung round to argue, Ira bent by the tail of the Fokker and traced with his forefinger a line of torn holes in the fabric of the fuselage.

  ‘See that?’ he asked quietly.

  Fagan stopped abruptly, his shouting cut short, and turned, his face falling. He obviously hadn’t realised he’d been hit.

  ‘What did that?’ he asked.

  ‘Mice,’ Sammy said.

  Fagan stared at the holes for a moment then he gave a hoot of excited laughter and began to shrug them off with a blustery nonchalance that seemed forced.

  ‘Ach,’ he shouted. ‘It’s nothin’ but a few chance shots from a Chink with a Lewis. Divil a bit to worry about.’

  His excitement seemed to be building up, moving him faster and faster like a fly-wheel under its own weight and, sensing that it was getting a little out of control, Ira was half-tempted to ground him for a few days.

  But he was boasting now how much money he was making, taking a pathetic pride in totting it up in front of the unimpressed Ellie, so that he decided in the end to allow him to continue a little longer, feeling partly that somehow they owed Ellie something and partly that, when Fagan was finally satisfied, he’d probably take his fortune and disappear.

  They patched the holes with fabric, dope and glue, and
Fagan took off again with more bombs, climbing steeply past the tower of the pagoda.

  ‘Here we go, boys, into the Valley of Death,’ Sammy said in a flat voice from his trestle alongside the Albatros. ‘One day he’s goin’ to hit that thing.’

  Fagan came back as elated as ever but it was possible now to sense a tenseness in him that hadn’t been there before. There were more bullet-holes in the tailplane and the need to protect the few old machines they possessed seized Ira’s mind.

  ‘For God’s sake, take it easy, Pat,’ he urged. ‘Kwei’s supposed to have new machines from the north, and you’re a bloody sight easier to replace than the Fokker.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Fagan said, lighting a cigarette with awkward fingers. ‘I can look after meself.’

  Ira wasn’t so certain. ‘Tsu won’t mind if you stop one,’ he pointed out. ‘But he’ll mind like hell if he loses a machine. And so will I.’

  Fagan gestured. ‘Hell, what’s Kwei got?’ he demanded. ‘Another Caudron? I can run rings round a Caudron with a Fokker.’

  Sammy looked up from the engine compartment of the Albatros. ‘Cheng told me that old Caudron crashed.’ he warned. ‘He says Kwei’s got some scouts in its place. Chiang got ‘em for him.’

  Fagan’s smiles vanished as they always did when anyone suggested caution, and as he disappeared towards Tsosiehn with Ellie, driving the Crossley fast and dangerously as usual, Sammy stared after him, his eyes puzzled.

  ‘Blowed if I know why he does it, Ira,’ he said. ‘I know he’s scared stiff, and so do you, and so does Ellie. What’s he trying to prove?’

  The following morning, with the last of the bombs on board, Fagan flew off into a thin band of lemon sky that hung in the east like a sword blade. He’d seemed unable to relax and his chatter to Lawn as he’d climbed into the cockpit had been brittle and shallow, as though he were simply trying to avoid thinking.