The Mercenaries

by John Harris

  ‘Sammy,’ Ira said. ‘I think perhaps we’ve turned the corner.’

  For three days Ira took off four times a day, cruising at fifteen thousand feet, waiting for a sign of Tong’s shells, and he had just begun to think that his scheme was not going to work when he saw a puff ball of smoke to the east, white against the evening purple of the land. Immediately he went into a long slow dive, his eyes staring towards the shrouded earth.

  Pushing up his goggles to see better, he peered beyond the windscreen, feeling the cool autumn wind burn his face and flatten his cheeks, but it was too late in the evening and the camouflage of the land hid Kwei’s machine.

  As he banked towards Tsosiehn, he suddenly realised how weary he was becoming and how badly he needed a rest. Flying could be a tiring business and he had been at it solidly now for over a fortnight, the rattle of the wind and the drumming of the motor beating at his nerve-ends. And in their efforts to keep the old machines flying there had not even been a pause when he’d been down on the ground.

  Three days later, still brooding and grim, he jumped as he saw the puff of smoke again, where one of Tong’s shells exploded below him, but once more the light was bad and he found nothing. The following day, however, he at last saw the flash of wings against the ground, though Kwei’s plane was already streaking for home and too far away to be identified.

  When he landed, tired and unshaven and edgy, he started up the Crossley and went to question Colonel Tong and beg him not to lose heart. The gold smile was thin, however, and not very warm.

  ‘The Colonel is worried,’ Kee said. ‘He cannot continue to have one gun from each battery pointing in the air. He has not the ammunition and Kwei’s troops trouble him.’

  Ira gestured. ‘Tell him to keep trying just a little longer.’ The following evening, with the first darkening rain clouds of autumn beginning to appear along the horizon, Ira saw the shell bursts and the flash of wings again, and this time, he dropped in a steep dive, hoping to get below the other aeroplane so he could see it against the sky. Another puff of smoke appeared over the loop of the river where it curved towards Hwai-Yang and he saw the flash of the sun on the underside of an aeroplane’s wings.

  For the first time he saw Kwei’s aircraft and the hair on the backs of his hands began to prickle with anticipation. It was an old De Havilland Four bomber, a machine long out of date but sturdy and powerful and still being used all over the world for transport. It was banking slowly over one of Tsu’s villages and Ira saw the flash as the bomb landed among the houses. The pilot clearly hadn’t seen him, and lazily, catching the late sun that peered through tumultuous clouds, the De Havilland levelled off.

  Ira put the Fokker into a climb again towards the east in an attempt to get between the De Havilland and its base, his heart in his mouth, all the old excitement of the stalk gripping him. He saw the De Havilland bank again and the flash of another bomb in the huddle of buildings, then it levelled off once more and swung in a wide loop east. Kwei’s supplies were clearly as sparse as Tsu’s and he wondered if his foreign advisers were having as much difficulty in keeping their old machines flying as General Tsu’s were.

  The De Havilland was heading directly east now and Ira put the Fokker into a long curving dive towards it. The De Havilland grew larger and larger in front of him, then the observer saw the Fokker descending and as he hammered on the fuselage behind the pilot and pointed, the big machine turned abruptly towards the west. Swinging in a tight bank behind it, Ira saw the observer’s guns jerk round and he climbed at once, wires singing, heading to the east and banking for another dive. The other pilot saw him coming again and swung further west in the direction of a village called Hakau, and it dawned on Ira that if he could continue with these manoeuvres there was a chance of forcing the De Havilland down in friendly territory where they might salvage something worth having.

  Several times he repeated the manoeuvre and several times the De Havilland swung west, turning east again every time the Fokker banked away. But the Fokker’s turns were tighter than the De Havilland’s and with every manoeuvre it drifted lower and farther from its base until it was possible even to see the Chang-an-Chieh Pagoda, misty and blue, sticking out of the night haze near the river, its tower tinted with vermilion.

  The Kwei pilot seemed to wake up to his danger at last, and put the machine into a long turn east, and this time, as the Fokker came down, he merely fishtailed from side to side, making no attempt to swing away. Ira cocked his guns which, so far, he hadn’t attempted to fire, and pulled the Fokker round in a tight bank. Then he dived below the tail of the De Havilland and came up underneath. As the two-seater swung wildly, he saw the observer close in front of him, his mouth open and the flashes of yellow flame as he dragged his gun round to bear. He was a young Chinese and to Ira’s surprise he looked exactly like Peter Cheng.

  As the Fokker’s Spandaus clattered briefly, he slid out of sight inside the cockpit and the large brown biplane, instead of turning again, went into a slow glide towards the west. Roaring up in a climb, Ira banked, watching. There was no sign of the observer now, and the pilot, his head down, seemed to be struggling inside the cockpit with his controls. Slowly the big machine made another turn, working round to the east, but Ira was there to meet him. Then, banking steeply, he saw that the pilot was hanging in his harness, one arm limply over the side of the fuselage and, as he watched, the helmeted head sagged further into the cockpit until it vanished from sight. The limp arm disappeared and the De Havilland dropped lower in a long looping curve towards Hakau, its flapping rudder gleaming redly in the lowering sun.

  It was only a few feet above the ground now and dropping fast, then one of the wing-tips caught the end of a line of trees and the machine swung just as the wheels touched the ground. The port wings flailed the air wildly for a moment, and clods of earth and fragments of wood were thrown up, then it came to a stop, its engine steaming, on the edge of a field near a stream, a wheel bouncing high into the air, dropping, bouncing again, and finally disappearing from sight among the bushes.

  A feeling of enormous lassitude came over Ira as he pulled the Fokker up into a climb, his eyes on the crashed De Havilland. The Kwei crew had been poor and it had been almost too easy.

  He was just banking slowly towards the west when a flash of crimson flame caught the corner of his eye. For one terrifying moment he thought the Fokker had been hit and was on fire, then a shadow flashed across his face and he instinctively wrenched the machine to his right in a tight turn. At once he heard the clatter of guns and saw fabric on his lower plane tear away with a crack near the wing root and flutter in strips. Then he saw a small aeroplane streak past him, the blood-red sun flashing on its varnished wings as it did a steep climbing turn behind him and stood on its tail to gain height.

  Camels! His mouth dry as chalk, he dragged back on the control stick then he saw a second machine swinging towards him in a slow bank, brilliant red in the sun against the dark bank of cloud.

  Camels! The fast little planes from Russia that Cheng had talked about! The British had shipped several squadrons of them to the Don Basin to help the White Army in the Civil War there in 1919 and Chiang K’ai-Shek had obviously got hold of some of them for Kwei. Heaven alone knew from what God-forsaken aircraft park they’d come but, despite their age, they looked clean and smart with polished cowlings reflecting the glow of the sun.

  Probably the best fighter the British had ever put into service before the end of the war, they were as quick as a squirrel and could climb at three thousand feet a minute. Flying at a hundred and ten miles an hour, they could change direction like a bat and, landing fast, with their short body and big radial engine, they terrified more pupils with their crab-wise take-off than any other machine.

  As he turned, Ira looked about him hurriedly, his head moving nervously from side to side. The sky seemed to be filled only with towering mountains of purple and blood-red, then he saw the first Camel above him, swinging in a small swift
shadow against the dark gateway of a crimson castle. The second one, still in its wide turn, was away on his left and slightly below, blurred against the purple mistiness of the ground.

  His first instinct was to bolt for home--he had never been a believer in fighting against odds, and had stayed alive through a hundred fights when better pilots and better shots had died because they didn’t know when to run away--then he realised that the second of his two enemies was not as good as the first and that it might be possible to do it some damage.

  The first Camel was banking steeply above him now, black-purple against the light, its wings and spars outlined with fire, and glancing up, Ira saw its nose fall as it came down, trying to get into position behind him. He allowed it to close up, then he snatched the Fokker abruptly to the left, wires howling, the earth revolving beneath him like a flat plate. It was harder for the Camel to turn to the left because of the torque from its big engine, and he saw it shoot underneath him in a flash of vermilion, the fabric rippling along the fuselage.

  His manoeuvre had carried him up to the second Camel and he saw the pilot’s head swing round in a panic blur of a white face and glinting goggles. He didn’t seem to know what to do, and Ira guessed he was another half-trained Chinese boy like Tsai, and that General Kwei had had no more compunction at sending him into the air than General Tsu had had. For a second the Camel flew steadily on its wide turn and Ira hadn’t the heart to press the triggers. Again the first Camel flashed past him and as he swung again to the left he found himself beam-on to the second Camel, which was diving across his course, presenting its belly towards him, so close he could see a patch on the fabric near the Kwei insignia and the streaks of oil on the engine cowling.

  Momentarily, he thought it was the first and more dangerous Camel, and as his finger jabbed at the trigger, the guns shook and the cartridge cases flew against the guards. The Camel continued its dive, the sun glinting redly on the white insignias, then as it moved into an unsteady turn he realised he must have hit it. As he pulled the Fokker up, the blood draining from his sagging cheeks, he saw the port elevator tear away and the upper wing begin to shed fabric, then the turn became a dive and the Camel dropped like a stone out of the sun into the shadows, the dive finally crossing the vertical so that it was in an upside-down loop as it crashed into the side of a farm with a tremendous explosion like a shell burst. There was a vast flare of flame among the trees that sent out smaller jets in every direction, then it died into a dozen scattered little flickers of light against the dark pattern of the ground.

  The pilot of the first Camel had pulled up above the Fokker, circling, as though wondering what to do, and the few moments of hesitation gave Ira a chance to gain precious height. Then the Kwei pilot flung his machine round and came at him head-on.

  He was clearly no hastily trained Chinese but a man of courage and skill, and Ira saw flickers of light behind the propeller and a bullet clanked on the Fokker’s radiator and sent splinters jumping from the centre section. It was the Camel that pulled aside on the moment of impact, however, and Ira heard the high hissing crackle of the Le Rhone even above his own engine and saw the big blue-painted markings flash past over his head. He caught a brief glimpse of dark oil streaks and a faint momentary rainbow as the sun caught the oil spray from the engine, then the Camel, with incredible manoeuvrability, had whipped round and was behind him.

  For a second, as he wrenched the Fokker left in a tight bank, he saw splinters fly again and waited for the bullets to tear into his back, but the Camel had disappeared again and for a moment he lost him in the sun. He glanced round and down and received the iron glare full in his eyes, then he saw the Camel again just below him, and he could see into the cockpit and the pilot staring up at him, his goggles two red eyes in the sun, his face picking up pink highlights from the glow. He was so close, Ira felt he could have leaned out and thrown a spanner at him, and he was suddenly sickened by the stupidity of the situation--two men trying to kill each other in a struggle that concerned neither of them.

  The Camel was swimming sideways on a converging course now, in a pink glow that came through the purple clouds, and Ira threw the Fokker over vertically to come round behind it, the machine shuddering with its speed.

  ‘For God’s sake, go away,’ he was yelling.

  But the Camel pilot was whipping his machine round again in the tight turns of a deadly game of ring-a-roses, firing whenever he came within reach. From time to time Ira felt taps on the Fokker and he grew angry at the other’s persistence and tired because the Fokker was a heavy machine to throw about the sky. For a long time the two aeroplanes circled, tiny flashing butterflies in a crimson sky to the startled soldiers below who forgot to shoot at each other in the excitement.

  Then the Camel pilot, frustrated by Ira’s tight turns, heaved his machine in the other direction, knowing the Camel turned better to the right. As its nose came round and they came together, it swam past almost beam-on to Ira, but at the last moment he couldn’t bring himself to fire and, still shouting angrily, he heaved on the joystick to break off the fight. For a second the Camel filled the whole horizon, then, as it disappeared beneath him, he felt a jarr and realised they must have touched. As the Fokker swung in a bank, he couldn’t see the Camel and he thought it had broken off the fight, too, then he caught a glimpse of the other machine moving down below him in a long slow curve, its right upper wing-tip collapsed and shedding fragments of wood and fabric.

  Looking round him in alarm for signs of damage to his own machine, Ira realised he must have taken the shock of the collision on his wheels, but the Camel was moving awkwardly now, more of its wing collapsed, the pilot struggling over the controls. Then fabric began to peel off and the wing collapsed altogether, folding back with a snap that he heard even above the roar of his engine, and the Camel went into a flat spiral, spinning round and round, a fragment of wing fluttering down behind like a dead leaf, into the growing darkness of the land

  It seemed to recover at the last moment, but as its wheels touched, the sound wing came up and the nose dug in and the tail rose. One of the blades of the propeller flew into the air in an erratic arc, then the machine cartwheeled across the field, scattering wreckage as it went, until it came to rest in a clump of trees, one of the wings and part of the tail bouncing after it through the trees into the next field before they came to a stop.

  For a moment, Ira stared down, shocked, exhausted and drained of emotion, then he drew a deep shuddering breath and stared round him at the sky. The clouds had closed over the sun at last and the brilliant blood-red glow had gone, leaving only a pale pinkness and. beyond it, the rising purple of night He was alone, a minute living thing, in the infinite profundity of the heavens.

  It was partly weariness, partly reaction, but there seemed to be no strength in his arms as he pulled at the joystick to lift the nose of the aeroplane towards Yaochow, turning her slowly, looking for damage, and as he swung towards the west in a long slow bank that was like a valedictory salute, he knew it would soon be dark and that there could be no more killing.

  Sammy was waiting on the airfield with Ellie when he returned. He came in low out of a darkening sky, and as the Fokker settled and the wheels touched, one of them buckled and collapsed. The nose went down and the propeller flew to pieces as it caught the ground, then, slewing wildly and throwing up the dust, the machine skidded sideways across the field, the wires twanging, the struts groaning and squeaking, a spray of dried grass clippings flying into the air, then it dug in its nose, rocked back to its tail, and came to a stop.

  Sammy was alongside in a second, a shadowy figure throwing off the harness straps.

  Ira’s voice came wearily as he eased himself out of the cockpit, one hand on a centre section strut. ‘It’s all right, Sammy,’ he said. ‘She’s not going to burn.’

  ‘Ira!’ Sammy’s voice was cracked with concern. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m all right.’

  Sammy jumped down an
d stared at the wrecked machine. The fabric was slashed and the inspection panels were pierced by bullets.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Lor’, the bleddy thing’s full of holes.’

  Ira lifted himself in the seat as Ellie’s face appeared behind Sammy’s, shocked and shaken and white.

  ‘I bumped into Kwei’s air force at last,’ he said.

  6

  The Hong Kong gin tasted like petrol and the cigarettes burned his tongue. Ira sat on the camp-bed in the office, his body limp, his hands hanging, his oil-soaked flying coat still round his shoulders In the yellow glow of the single light bulb, his face was grimy from the guns and he felt as drained of energy by the concentrated violence of the fight as if he’d run a ten-mile race.

  ‘Three,’ he said wonderingly. ‘Three! Within ten minutes! It never happened to me even during the war.’

  Sammy grinned. ‘Thank God you’re all right,’ he crowed. The Fokker’ll mend. We’ve got Heloïse hoisting her up now and I’ve looked her over. One of the tyres was burst. Must have been a bullet or the collision. We’ve only to get a spare prop from Shanghai and we can rig up the rest all right. We’ve still got two good aeroplanes and the Maurice Farman.’

  Ira dropped his cigarette almost as though it had grown too heavy to hold, and ground it out with his heel.

  ‘Sammy,’ he said wonderingly, ‘what is it that makes one man stay alive and another die?’ ‘Skill,’ Sammy said.

  Ira shook his head. ‘No. Not skill. That pilot was good. The luck wasn’t with him. Why did his machine break up, and not mine? If he’d been above instead of below it would have been me over there by the river among all that wreckage.’ He grinned suddenly, his eyes alert through the weariness as his mind, always concerned with the problem of spares and maintenance, snatched at a ray of hope.

  ‘Sammy,’ he said. ‘We ought to look at that wreckage. There might be something worth salvaging.’