The Mercenaries

by John Harris

  She paused, then she threw her cigarette away. ‘Don’t fly it, Ira,’ she said.

  He was struggling into the old castor-oil-smelling leather coat, his face grim and unhappy. ‘I’ve got to fly it, Ellie,’ he said. ‘Someone’s got to fly it, and the first time it’s got to be me.’

  She shuddered again. ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered. They say these D.H.s burn when they crash.’

  He didn’t find it hard to understand her fear, but he was quite unable to share it. They had built the machine carefully and there was no reason why it shouldn’t fly.

  ‘Ellie, I’m not going to crash her,’ he pointed out gently. ‘I’d trust my judgment and Sammy’s skill anywhere.’

  She shook her head, stubborn and miserable. ‘I’m just scared, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen it happen before.’

  He began to fasten the coat. ‘I’ll be all right, Ellie,’ he said quietly. ‘In an hour it’ll be all over.’

  She looked up quickly and he realised the double meaning that could be attached to his words.

  ‘Stop worrying, Ellie,’ he begged. The machine’s sound. The engine’s sound. There’s no reason why anything should go wrong.’

  She allowed him to put his arms round her. ‘It’s something I feel, I guess,’ she said ‘Something I can’t explain. I’m suddenly scared of airplanes.’

  ‘Why, Ellie? I know my job.’

  ‘So did Ches Putnam.’ Her eyes were tragic. ‘And there’s not that much goddam luck in the world.’

  ‘Ellie, aeroplanes are getting better every year. We’ve only just started. These are great days for flying.’

  ‘Are they?’ She stared at her feet, her mouth bitter. ‘For every guy who gets anywhere in this game, there are a dozen who get smashed up or burned to death. For every good airplane there’s a bundle of bloodied wreckage. We’re still building by rule of thumb and we still fly by the seat of our pants, and pre-flight checks are a plonk on the wires and a kick at the wheels. It’s the folk who’ll come afterwards who’ll benefit. They’re the ones who’ll live.’

  He was silent, aware that what she said was no more and no less than the truth. Their planes were old and had been repaired and rebuilt too many times and, because he knew it, he began to lose his temper.

  ‘Damn it, Ellie, I’m not going to kill myself! It’s a good aeroplane! ‘

  She whirled on him, her eyes blazing. ‘I don’t need aeroplanes,’ she said. ‘It’s kids I need.’ She stared at him for a second then her face crumpled and she began to cry. ‘I want to get married, Ira,’ she whispered.

  He put his arms round her again. ‘To me?’

  Her head came up, her eyes bright and challenging. ‘Who the hell else, you dope? I want your kids. I want to cook your meals and keep your home tidy. For God’s sake, I want to grow old knowing I can put my hand out in the dark and feel you there. I’ve lived out of a suitcase with a bunch of guys on an airfield so goddam much I’ve forgotten I’ve got all the instincts a woman usually has. There’ve been times, in fact, when I thought I hadn’t got them at all. But I have, Ira, I have, and I’m scared. I’m scared I’ll grow old and never hear a voice in the next room that’ll tell me I’m not alone.’

  He held her against him and gave her his handkerchief.

  ‘Ellie, it’s a sound machine. The best we’ve got, I reckon.’

  He could feel her quivering tension and the tears that dropped on his hands, then she moved away from him restlessly. ‘Ira’--she reached for another cigarette for something to do with her fluttering fingers--’let Sammy do this. We’ve only had a few weeks together and I know it can’t go on.’

  For a while, he stood staring at her. Her words had shaken him because he’d been too long used to the old tough Ellie who gave nothing and expected nothing, and it had more than once come as a shock to see her weak and feminine, wanting all the warm comforting things that were instinctive with other women.

  ‘I know how you feel, Ellie,’ he explained. ‘But this thing’s got to be done and Sammy can’t do it. I’ll be down in an hour.’

  She whirled on him, furious. ‘You’ll kill your goddam self!’ she said harshly.

  He paused in the doorway, trying to think of some way to calm her, but he couldn’t, and in the end he decided to let it go.

  Sammy had finished filling the tank with petrol and was checking the oil when he arrived. ‘She’s yours,’ he said, giving him a quizzical look, as though he were wondering what had taken place inside the barn.

  Ira climbed into the cockpit, and Sammy pulled the propeller through its turns to suck fuel into the cylinders, then, linking arms with Cheng, he heaved against the pressure.

  The engine roared and the propeller became a circle of light against the wintry sun. For a while Ira worked the throttle, feeling the shudder of power through the fragile fuselage, then with the coolies hanging on to the wings and tail, he turned her, throttled back, and went carefully through all the pre-flight cockpit checks.

  For a while, he taxied the De Havilland about the field, lifting her once or twice from the ground, to get the feel of her, then, satisfied, he faced her into wind. He paused for a second, thinking about what Ellie had once said--’It was always the other guy’--then he pushed the thought from his head abruptly, and thrust the throttle wide open. As the engine roared, the machine rolled forward, the long wings dipping and swaying, their tips quivering, as he moved over the uneven ground.

  As he gathered speed, he moved the stick forward and the tail came up. For a moment, he kept her there, holding his breath, then he cautiously pulled back on the stick and the rumbling beneath him stopped. The De Havilland was airborne.

  He let her gather speed then he eased the stick back further, and she began to lift over the trees and the river, climbing with all the power and thrust of the great engine. She laboured a little from the small field but, at five hundred feet, he did a climbing turn round the Chang-an-Chieh and at a thousand he levelled off, trying to get the engine into a steady rhythm. The machine felt safe under his hands, though her gliding angle was steep and she flew left wing low. He banked her and put her into a climb and levelled off at ten thousand feet, the big propeller beating. Below him, as far as he could see there was a level plain of white cloud, sparkling in the sun, alabaster castles and snowy rainbowed valleys, with here and there gaps through which he could see the brown of the earth. The light was brilliant and came from every direction at once so that the immense sky was a crystal-clear bowl of blue, where the sun was brighter than anybody on the earth ever saw it. As high as this, with only the drumming, sighing and creaking of the aeroplane, and the smell of oil and exhaust for company, he could feel his spirit surge with elation.

  The distance he could see was enormous. Below him was China, varied as a mosaic of silks where it showed through the cloud, an ancient land with the imprint of generations of patient peasants on it. Whatever floods, famines, plagues or wars came, they went on working their tiny plots and raising their families, always on the verge of starvation but always staying alive.

  He sailed along for some time, his face frozen by the propeller blast but forgetting the tragedy that was taking place across the broad earth below him. He found cloud fortresses and sailed round them, trailing the vapour from his wing tips, throwing his shadow against the mistiness and sweeping in and out of the towers of swelling whiteness and among the pearl and oyster shadows.

  Eventually, he became aware of how cold he was. His nose was dripping and his left foot felt numb, and he huddled lower out of the blast and began to stamp his feet. Then, throttling back, he pushed the nose down, circling towards the earth, and finding a gap in the clouds he descended through it, saw the river and began to fly east along it. He soon saw Hwai-Yang and movement to the east of the city drew him to a line of troops, led by officers on shaggy ponies and followed by a string of ox-carts and guns.

  Out of curiosity, he went down low and saw at once that they could never belong to Tsu.
They were smart in green uniforms and, instead of teapots and parasols and umbrellas, they carried the red flags of the Kuomintang with their blue squares and the white sun insignia. They seemed to be mostly of student age and even included girls, and he noticed that, at the sight of the aeroplane, they didn’t stop and point, but continued to march stolidly westwards. Only when he flew along the column did groups of them step to the roadside and start firing at him--not in sporadic bursts that could do no harm but in volleys directed by their officers. A strip of fabric on the wing near the outer strut began to flap and he turned away west, picked up the loop of the river that contained Tsosiehn and, from it, taking a line past the pagoda, picked out the field at Yaochow.

  A few minutes later he was bumping along the grass and Sammy and Ellie were running towards him with Lawn and Wang and the Chengs, followed by a long string of grinning coolies.

  As he switched off and jumped clear, Ellie flung her arms round him, her eyes full of tears.

  ‘Thank God I was wrong, Ira,’ she said as he pushed back his helmet. ‘I’m sorry for what I said. No woman’s got the right to stop a man just because he’s doing what happens to be dangerous.’

  Sammy was waiting by the wing-tip, his face sombre with pride. ‘She’s beautiful, Ira,’ he said solemnly. ‘Beautiful! She climbs like a homesick angel. We got three aeroplanes now, and two of ‘em are transports. We can convert that rear cockpit to carry goods and she’ll lift anything. She’s built for lifting weights.’ Ira nodded, delighted by the De Havilland’s performance, but still worried by what he’d seen along the river, and even as they talked, he saw De Sa’s old Model-T Ford bumping across the field towards them. The storekeeper had a black eye and blood on his shirt, and his swarthy face was sick-looking.

  ‘You must take me down-river to Loshih,’ he said at once.

  Ellie’s face went white and she began to light a cigarette quickly.

  ‘Kwei is coming,’ De Sa went on. ‘I am told also that Chiang heads for Shanghai and is willing to fight for it if necessary. It is the end, Major Penaluna. The students tell me my coolies are no longer allowed to work for me. They will come to see you soon. A month from now you’ll have no coolies either. Tsosiehn is Tsu’s city and Tsu is finished.’

  5

  Tsu, it seemed, had reached the end of his crooked road. On the way south to Loshih, they flew over troops massing in the valleys and on the road that came up from Canton, orderly regiments very different from Tsu’s straggling rabble, squadrons of cavalry and strings of artillery and lorries, every group with its own banner. By the time Ira had returned to Yaochow, Hwai-Yang had fallen again and Tsu’s army was evaporating. His only ally, General Choy, had finally abandoned him and thrown in his lot with Chiang, and the mob was in control.

  No one was certain where Tsu was. His motor cavalcade had left Hwai-Yang in a hurry with Tsu, Lao and his wife and son, and had vanished into the hills on the way to Tsosiehn and had not been seen since, and it was said that Kwei troops were across his path. Europeans in Tsosiehn were already busy barricading their houses because his disappearance meant that his army would go on the rampage for loot. Hungry and angry and lacking in discipline, they would splinter into small units, murdering and raping and stealing.

  It was already growing dangerous to go into the city. Chiang agents were preaching hatred everywhere and mobs of students had established themselves in the Chang-an-Chieh and were patrolling the streets with their slogans and their bugle bands, ready to attack any foreigner or any Chinese who was unwise enough to work for him. The British gunboat was said to be coming back to take away everybody who wanted to go to the coast and the streets were full of Tsu’s useless banknotes and the Chinese merchants had put up the shutters and hired junks to take them down-river to Siang-Chang. Tsosiehn would be the next place to fall.

  There were Kuomintang flags everywhere now. Every one of the junks that bobbed six deep along the bund wore one and a huge red and blue banner floated over the shabby hotel that had once been used by European businessmen. The ancient walls had sprouted a rash of virulent propaganda sheets, urging the people to support Chiang and throw out the foreign devils, and rewards were being offered for Tsu or any of his family.

  Lawn was growing daily more nervous and unreliable. His woman had been beaten up by the students and had left him and he had had his bag packed for a fortnight. Half the time now he was stupid with drink.

  ‘I’m getting out of ‘ere,’ he kept saying. ‘This is no bloody place for a civilised bloke! ‘

  But he never quite summoned up the courage. He needed Ira and the others as much as they needed him, because the wall newspapers were blaming the deaths of Chinese peasants in Hunan on the Europeans and it wasn’t safe to move about alone.

  They only went near the town now to buy food. All the unions had joined together into a single movement against the Europeans, and the student parades along the river, all the way from Kenli to Loshih, and Hwai-Yang to Tsosiehn, had become cocksure and noisy, with cartoons showing white sailors murdering Chinese women and children with bayonets, and placards claiming fantastic numbers slaughtered by machine guns in the Yangtze Gorges. Landlords, rent collectors and Chinese Christians were being shot up-country and the trickle of missionaries to the coast grew broader and stronger.

  In Tsosiehn, the agitators were openly distributing pamphlets of the writings of Sun Yat-Sen, and it had been safer for some time for everyone to sleep at the field and eat beans and bully beef out of tins than go into the city for meals. The generator was already on the lorry ready to leave and they were using lamps with wicks in bean oil that Wang had made.

  In his bones, Ira felt there would be a visit from the mob before long, and he had long since transported all their petrol from the godowns along the river to the field, and erected a sign, oriental air carriers, in English and Chinese, on the road alongside in the hope that it would discourage the looters.

  Feverishly, while Sammy worked to perfect the De Havilland, they began to pack crates and boxes with everything worth taking. If they were to operate as a private concern, they couldn’t afford to leave any of their sparse stores behind.

  One evening, aeroplanes appeared over the city--new De Havilland Nines with tapered snouts, the sun picking out the blue markings with Chiang’s sunrays on them. A few bombs were dropped but most of them fell either in the river or in the paddy fields at the far side, and nothing was damaged and no one hurt, but, for safety, they decided to disperse the machines at once and finally to drain the petrol tanks.

  Two nights later, the De Havillands came again, just before dark, and this time they ignored the town and roared across the field at Yaochow. They came low over the trees, their bullets bouncing up from the hard earth, their bombs going off in flashes across the field, so that they all had to dive for the ditch, clawing frantically at the frozen ground.

  ‘If they touch my aeroplanes,’ Sammy was yelling bitterly, ‘I’ll kill the bastards!‘

  As the sound of engines died away, they scrambled to their feet and ran to where the aircraft were parked, Sammy in the lead, the coolies trailing along behind. They were still running when the last of the planes came over, an American Curtiss, its engine missing badly so that it had fallen behind the others. As it appeared over the trees, so low they felt the backlash of the propeller, Ira flung himself at Ellie and dragged her to the ground. One of the coolies near them went over like a shot rabbit, end over end over end, until he stopped, sprawling face-down in the dust, and Ira saw the bullets ricochetting round the Avro as the Curtiss banked.

  The Chiang plane vanished as suddenly as it had come, leaving holes in all the machines but no serious damage, and they buried the dead coolie at the edge of the field, hacking a hole from the hard earth with picks, and left him with his friends wailing and burning joss sticks over the grave. They were still patching the planes and packing the last of their equipment when darkness came, and it was only as they stopped to eat that they noticed the
coolies had gone. One minute they were there alongside them, moving among the tents, carrying spares and tools and cans of oil, then the next there was utter silence. Where there had always been the high yelling of Chinese argument, now there was nothing except shadows and the hollow sound of their own voices bouncing back at them from the tent walls, and scared looks on the faces of the Wangs and the two Chengs.

  They finished loading the lorries and stuffed what they could aboard the De Havilland, then they snatched a hurried meal of corned beef and coffee and lay down to wait for morning. Over Tsosiehn there was a glow in the sky that silhouetted the tower of the pagoda, and Peter Cheng, who had sneaked into the city on a bicycle, came back to say that the mob had set fire to De Sa’s store again and that the gunboat had returned at last and was gathering rafts and sampans to ferry Europeans out to the ship.

  Afraid to go to sleep and half-dozing in his blanket in tent against the lorry, with Ellie huddled in his arms, Ira could feel no other sensation but relief that it was all over. The enthusiasm for their projected air carrying company had gone, and all their happiness with it, in the hatred of the Chinese. They seemed not to have had their clothes off for days, and he was longing for sleep, but it was bitterly cold and had started to rain, and in addition to having a mind busy with all the things he had to remember, he knew it had now become unsafe to sleep. Then the rain changed to sleet and flurries of snow, and within an hour everything was coated with a patchy white, the wings of the aeroplanes like grey gashes across the black sky.

  There was a feeling of defeat in the air and he was overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness. Tomorrow, they’d be on their way to Nanching, well to the south and off the route of the armies, and from there even further, and he couldn’t wait to put it all behind him. At least their future was secure because his back was against a suitcase containing Shanghai and American dollars, and they could afford to pay off all their outstanding debts and still be in business with a little capital behind them.