The Mercenaries

by John Harris

‘Get a job.’

  ‘What doing?’

  Her voice broke as she spoke and the way she looked at him, curiously waif-like for a moment, tore at his heart. He was at a loss what to reply.

  ‘Flying’s the only thing I can do,’ she pointed out. The only thing I’ve ever done. And who’d offer me a job flying--a woman?’

  ‘I would.’ Ira was being honest. Whatever her faults, she could fly an aeroplane.

  She shrugged. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You. I’ll go to Shanghai and I’ll draw the dough. I’ll make it over to us.’

  Ira had just been lighting another cigarette from the old one and he lifted his eyes, staring.

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Yeah. Why not? You. Me. Sammy. With Eddie to look after the business end. This outfit. One day when Tsu’s paid us off, maybe we’ll be able to buy back the ships and start that air carrying company you’ve always fancied.’

  ‘If Tsu’s defeated,’ Ira said bluntly, ‘they’ll be ours for the taking. And it may not be too long. I wouldn’t give you a bent Chinese dollar for his alliance with General Choy.’

  She shrugged. ‘O.K., then. The dough’ll be ours as capital. Does the idea appeal to you?’

  Ira puffed at his cigarette for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It appeals. It’d appeal to Sammy, too, I know.’ She gave a shaky smile and he realised he’d never seen her smile much since he’d known her.

  ‘When Ches was killed,’ she said gently, ‘Pat was good to me. He cheered me up, because that came easy to him. We drank a lot together and made love. Everybody needs love, even widows.’

  She paused. ‘I guess he was as lousy at that, though, as he was at everything else,’ she went on slowly. ‘Most of the time he just made me want to weep.’ She glanced up at Ira. There wasn’t much to him, Ira, but you never find these things out till too late, I guess, and by then he needed me and I was stuck with him. You know what he used to say. “I don’t know whether I inherited the airplanes with Ellie, or Ellie with the airplanes.” ‘

  Ira tossed his cigarette away, waiting. She seemed in the mood for exposing her soul.

  ‘I’ll go to Shanghai,’ she said. ‘But I’ll come right back. I’ll be part of the outfit. I’ll draw a wage and do as I’m told.’ She managed a twisted smile that was heartbreaking in its loneliness. ‘I guess, like Pat, you’ve inherited me with the airplanes now.’

  Until the Fan-Ling arrived on its voyage downstream, Ellie insisted on carrying on the training, and while Sammy and Ira worked on the damaged Fokker, she got Lieutenant Tsai off on his first solo. It was not as successful as that of Cheng, who was now flying circuits that were growing steadily more confident, but at least it meant that the thing for which they’d come to China was beginning at last to pay dividends. Ira’s spares had finally turned up and Cheng and Tsai were growing daily more expert, while two other pupils, Lieutenants Sung and Yen, were now also approaching the point of flying alone.

  Wang and Sammy patched up the Fokker while Cheng and Tsai continued their slow circuits in the Albatros, and Ira took it up at last to test the guns. He placed a group of empty drums at the end of the field and, for some time, dived on them, firing until he was satisfied. Then he put the machine into a steep climb and flew along an old canal where the patches of water reflected the sky.

  At ten thousand feet, the view was immense. To the east he could see the drift of blue smoke from where Tsu had his lines. Alongside him, the linen rippling along the wings and bellying slightly in the suction above them, made him realise how fragile the machine was and how tremendous was the power of flight. What he was sitting in was nothing more than a bracing of quivering wires, wood and linen bolted to a three-ply and linen body, yet on a day like this of blue, pink and crystal, it enabled him to see for fifty miles in any direction.

  This was what aeroplanes were for, he thought, not the destruction of human beings down on the earth. In this uplifting loneliness of the profound sky, flying became a different thing, the gift of the angels. Down near the ground, it was reduced to the level to which humanity reduced all its greatest boons.

  He made up his mind suddenly. The sooner the killing was over and they were gone, the better. What was it Kowalski had said? Get all you can out of it, but make sure you’ve left a line of retreat open to the coast. Perhaps Fagan had been right to grab with both hands while it lasted

  When he landed, Sammy was waiting for him, his fingers grimy with oil, and Ira stood by the machine, his helmet and goggles in his hand.

  ‘I didn’t come out here to go to war, Sammy,’ he said slowly, ‘but since Fagan contracted us into Tsu’s army, let’s take on Kwei’s air force and get some of that money out of Tsu so we can get out and start up on our own again. With Ellie’s insurance and what we’ve earned, we’ll have capital.’

  Sammy nodded, his eyes enthusiastic. ‘Sounds fine to me, Ira,’ he said.

  ‘You and Mei-Mei can set up home.’

  Sammy’s enthusiasm died unexpectedly. ‘She’s got to be able to speak enough English to say “I will” first,’ he said. ‘And she don’t seem to catch on that quick, Ira.’

  Ira paused, then he slapped his gloves against his leg. ‘We’ll start as soon as the Fokker’s ready,’ he said.

  By the time they saw Ellie off on the steamer, the resentment that had quietened the city after the machine gunning of the students had begun to fade a little and it was beginning to come to noisy life again. Ellie, too, had recovered quickly from Fagan’s death and was full of plans and ideas.

  ‘I’ll get Eddie to set up the details,’ she said as she waited by the gangway, somehow a little plainer and less striking in a cheap cotton dress instead of her usual breeches and shirt. ‘We’ll have somewhere to put our dough then.’

  She seemed so enthusiastic, even Sammy warmed to her. ‘What’ll we call ourselves?’ she asked.

  ‘Penaluna, Fagan and Shapiro,’ Sammy said immediately.

  Her laugh still had an edge on it but it was growing less forced every day. ‘Sounds like an attorney’s office,’ she said.

  Sammy grinned. ‘Always did fancy having me name on a hangar wall.’

  She pecked him on the cheek and picked up the old leather coat which was the only protection against the weather she seemed to possess. ‘Keep ‘em flying, Sammy,’ she said.

  Her kiss for Ira was on the mouth and it suddenly dawned on him it was more than a mere friendly gesture.

  ‘You’re a good guy, Ira,’ she said quietly.

  They waited through the usual ceremony of fire-crackers and gongs until the huge three-decker was in midstream. Ellie was near the stern, still waving, fragile somehow in her cheap dress and with the old leather coat and the threadbare suitcase holding her few possessions.

  Ira watched her for a while, his thoughts busy. There was more to Ellie than he’d believed. He’d imagined her hard-boiled, toughened by living out of suitcases since she was a child, making her home in tents and hotels and any shabby hut on the corner of a flying field as she’d followed first her father, then Chester Putnam and then Fagan. Behind the stiff unrelenting facade she’d built in front of her, however, there was a gentler Ellie, a warmer womanly Ellie with a soft curving mouth whom not many people were privileged to see.

  Sammy was studying his face, and he turned away abruptly, sensing that Sammy knew what he was thinking.

  ‘Let’s get on with the job,’ he said shortly.

  The news from the east and south wasn’t good. The long-projected Kuomintang advance to the north was well under way at last. News travelled slowly in China but they had learned that Chiang had fifty thousand men under his command and that Changsha had fallen already and the Chiang troops had reached the border of Hupeh, hundreds of miles to the north of Canton. None of the northern warlords seemed to be co-operating with each other against them yet; although they’d long since realised their only hope was in a unified movement against the Canton troops, their greed and the mutual suspicion that exis
ted between them prevented them from trusting each other, and nobody seemed to be siding with Tsu as had been promised. In spite of his alliance. General Choy seemed to be leaving the river flank wide open, and Tsu’s attempt to stand along the ridge of hills near Wu-kang had been a failure, and Kwei’s less corrupt organisation and better backing had forced him to give up two or three villages nearer to Tsosiehn.

  The Chiang flags began to appear again, and there was another parade along the bund, this time with buglers, determinedly offkey and flat, and coolies screeching and cheering in unison and chanting the Sun Yat-Sen slogans they’d been taught by the students.

  There was no shooting this time, because the students had outposts down the streets and by the time the Tsu soldiers came clanking up with their machine gun the crowd had dispersed, and nothing much was done in the way of reprisal, except that two elderly half-witted coolies later appeared on the bund, their hands tied behind them, and knelt down to be shot in the back of the head by a scruffy-looking Tsu sergeant with a big German revolver that threw them a yard forward on to their faces.

  Tsu’s hold on Tsosiehn was still shaky and only a big victory could save him. Lao appeared on the airfield again.

  ‘We have paid for action,’ he said. ‘We are prepared to pay again for action.’

  Ira grinned at him. ‘Colonel Lao,’ he said. ‘You’re going to get so much damned action, it’ll break the bank. Tell General Tsu to get his money boxes open. I’m after some of that gold he carries around. No cheques. No Tsu money. Shanghai, Mexican or American dollars only.’

  He took off fast and lifted the Fokker in a steep turn past the Chang-an-Chieh towards the east. Almost as soon as he had passed over Tsu’s encampments, he saw a regiment of soldiers moving west towards Tsosiehn and he roared down towards them, his eyes narrow, his face grim, his guns clack-clacking, smoke and the smell of cordite streaking back. He saw the line crumple as men dived for the ditches, and a colonel waving his sword in fury at the aeroplane leapt from the saddle and bolted for safety. Twice he climbed into the sky, waiting for the column to re-form, then fell down in a steep dive with his guns shaking and saw the column disperse and finally begin to straggle back towards Hwai-Yang.

  As he roared up. a third time, he saw a group of carts heading towards Wukang and he circled, high in the air, anxious not to draw attention to himself until he’d established that they were Kwei soldiers carrying ammunition or supplies. Faces turned up towards him as he roared down from the rear and he saw the drivers whipping the trotting ponies into a gallop, the waggons rolling and bouncing along the uneven road behind them. As the guns clattered, the ponies pulling the first cart went over, and the vehicle, under its own momentum, piled on top of them in a terrible heap of kicking legs and scattered boxes. The second waggon, rattling along close behind, swerved and overturned, wheels spinning, and the third crashed into that in a tangle of crippled animals and cursing men.

  Back at Tsosiehn, he climbed from the machine and lit a cigarette without speaking. Sammy watched him, saying nothing, wiping the oil off the engine with a rag.

  ‘All right, Ira?’ he asked quietly after a while.

  Ira studied his cigarette, his face expressionless, then he nodded. ‘All right, Sammy,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t go and break your neck, Ira.’

  Ira’s grim mood persisted. ‘Would it matter much, Sammy?’ he asked.

  Sammy frowned and blinked quickly. ‘It would to me,’ he said hotly.

  Ira looked up. Sammy was staring at him, his face serious.

  ‘Would it, Sammy?’

  ‘You know bleddy well it would,’ Sammy blurted out.

  Ira grinned unexpectedly. ‘I didn’t know you cared, Sammy,’ he said. ‘Give us a kiss.’

  Sammy stared at him, startled, then he took a swing at him with the oily rag and the tenseness passed.

  ‘I’m going to write out a report, Sammy,’ Ira said as he began to walk to the office, his arm over Sammy’s shoulder. ‘You can take it over to Lao and bring the money back with you. And while I’m doing that, let’s have the machine refuelled and rearmed and I’ll get off again. I’ll take Cheng this time. He’s good enough now and it’ll give him confidence. He can sit up above and watch. He’ll have to do it himself before long.’

  The Fokker took off again, with the Albatros trailing doubtfully behind, and as soon as they had passed Tsu’s villages, machine gun fire came up at them. Signalling to Cheng to stay where he was out of range, Ira went down in a shallow dive. Beyond the exhaust manifold and the blur of the propeller, he could see a speckled group of unidentifiable moving objects among the buildings changing to soldiers blazing away at him with rifles, then he caught sight of a machine gun among the ruins and banked towards it. Bullets came up at him and he climbed away, skidding and turning for a better look, gravity driving the seat against his back and draining the blood from his cheeks.

  He spotted a second machine gun on a house with a green roof and decided to approach from the opposite side where the trees at the end of the village would hide him. Climbing away, keeping his eyes on the house with the green roof, he banked beyond the village and came roaring back from the east. Almost at once, it seemed, the machine gun was ahead of him with the frightened gunners turning to stare over their shoulders. He dipped the nose in a steep dive and pressed the trigger. Tiles flew into the air in splinters and the gun swung slowly on its own, untended, then almost at once he saw the first gun again, alongside what appeared to be a pigsty.

  The Kwei soldiers were changing the ammunition pan but as they saw him coming they slammed it home and swung the gun round and he saw the yellow flashes at the muzzle. Diving more steeply, he pressed the trigger with one hand and with the other lifted the nose slightly to bring his sights to bear. It was quicker to aim a moving gun than to manoeuvre an aeroplane and tracers flashed past his head and he saw splinters fly off the centre section struts. As he fired, he saw dust filling the pigsty and chips flying off the stone wall, and men in dark green uniforms diving for shelter.

  He picked up Cheng above the village and they turned west towards Tsosiehn, shooting up a group of sampans loaded with Kwei soldiers who were crossing the river. There was no sign of General Choy’s troops and he dived repeatedly, flattening the reeds and stirring the surface of the water with his fire until the sampans were empty or overturned and the Kwei soldiers were hidden in the swampy marshland under a circling cloud of scared white birds.

  At Tsosiehn, Lao was waiting on the airfield for them with Kee. Ira jumped down from the plane, his face marked below his goggles where the burnt cordite had blown back on him.

  “Tell Tsu he’ll be paying out again tonight,’ he said.

  Lao’s face was unsmiling. ‘General Tsu is grateful,’ he said. ‘He is pleased that the illustrious British airmen are doing so well. However . . .’ He paused and Ira looked up sharply.

  Lao seemed to be searching for words and even managed to look faintly apologetic. ‘General Tsu feels the time has now come,’ he continued slowly, ‘when his own airmen should take part in the fighting. He requests, therefore, that you should return to instructing and that his machines should be placed at the disposal of his best pupils.’

  Ira stared at him for a second and glanced at Cheng. Then he shrugged and gave a short bark of laughter. Paying out was beginning to hurt already.

  ‘O.K.,’ he said crisply. ‘I’ll get Cheng and Tsai on it at once, and God help ‘em both.’

  5

  Cheng’s first offensive patrol was an undistinguished affair in which neither he nor Tsai seemed to know what to do. Cheng was a little scared of the speedy Fokker after the old box-kite Farman and Tsai in the Albatros seemed to have the greatest difficulty even in keeping station.

  Ira followed them in the Avro, trying to give them confidence but now cynically indifferent to whether Tsu’s plans succeeded or not. It hadn’t taken long for the Baptist General--Pride of the Missionaries and Warlord of the South-West-
-to back out of his agreements when money was involved. He clearly wasn’t in the fighting for any patriotic motive and if he could save a few hundred silver dollars by risking the neck of an inexperienced boy instead of an old hand blooded ten years before in a bigger war he was going to.

  At Ningyan. where Kwei’s troops were making life miserable for the peasants, Cheng went down in a steep dive, Tsai following in a wavering glide behind. There seemed to be no machine-gun fire coming up at them but Cheng didn’t appear to be doing much damage either. He killed a horse in a cart but it appeared to belong to a peasant and not to Kwei’s army, and Tsai, with his single Lewis on the upper wing, was able to do no more than fly a wavering line backwards and forwards above him.

  From then on, with Ira pouring out his experience and advice every morning for no other reason than to give the two boys enough confidence to stay alive, three uncertain patrols a day were flown. Judging by the number of times Lao arrived on the field in a fury, however, nothing much seemed to be achieved.

  ‘Mistah Ira,’ Cheng said in an agony of frustration in his halting English, ‘I cannot do this. Eyeh, I do not know how!‘

  Ira, however, was suddenly surprisingly happy. The war seemed to have slipped back again into the serio-comic situation of both sides being apparently as lacking in initiative as each other.

  Over the whole of China the warlords were trailing disease and terror from valley to valley in campaigns that were as farcical as they were barbarous, colourful bizarre brigands with few standards of human decency and a great gift for being unconsciously funny, living joyfully in their great mansions with their concubines and eunuchs and their extorted wealth, adding land to their already great estates and serving their country only when they killed each other off. The cities reeked of the opium they encouraged, and with cholera, dysentery, syphilis and trachoma going unchecked, industry was almost non-existent. But these tragedies were China’s and the uncertain manoeuvrings along the borders of Tsu’s province hardly touched the Europeans at Yaochow.