Look to the Wolves

by Look to the Wolves (retail) (epub)

  The position was in fact more serious than the sergeant’s light-hearted manner had suggested it might be. He’d given Bob the gist of it, and details were filled in by Sam Scott a few minutes later. Scott had been looking out for him, came to meet him as he crossed the marshalling yard, and gave him the basics of the situation in about one minute flat. Budyonny’s cavalry were thought to be not more than forty-eight hours away – but possibly less – B Flight’s personnel – about ninety men in all – had been issued with rifles, and a 24-hour guard was being maintained with a system of very light warnings from posts outside the town.

  ‘Stuck here, you see. Can’t move without an engine – and orders of some kind.’

  ‘What about using your aircraft to spot the cavalry before it gets here? Bomb them, or—’

  ‘Might come to that. Might well. Mind you, they’ve only off-loaded two Camels and a DH9A so far. Over there – see, where—’

  ‘Your sergeant told me. Using that big shed as a hangar.’

  ‘Right. And Marcus Kinkead with Tommy Burns-

  Thompson did a recce over the Red lines yesterday. Brought their Camels back full of holes – ground fire, rifles and machine-guns. So, as we have no authority to conduct offensive operations here, we’re all grounded now. Pending Ray Collishaw’s return that is. But of course, if it came to the worst – or best, depending on how you look at it – couldn’t just bloody well sit and take it, could we…’ He grabbed Bob’s arm. ‘Come on over, anyhow, meet the boys. There’s lunch, too, you’ll be glad to hear. Hey – I should’ve asked, did you get anything on your nurse-girls?’

  ‘Yes, but –’ he didn’t move: needing to have it clear before they joined the others – ‘does this mean there’ll be no air-search for the letuchka?’

  ‘Couldn’t say. Have to work on it, Cowan. If you did get something?’

  * * *

  Marcus Kinkead was a British edition of Sam Scott. More precise and serious in his manner – which in the circumstances was hardly surprising – but otherwise very much the same type. Bob shook hands with him, then with a whole crowd of others: ‘Tommy’ Burns-Thompson – a captain with the ribbon of the DFC on his tunic – and two other Camel pilots – Daley and Fulford – before abandoning the effort to memorize names, as another dozen beribboned pilots crowded into the compartment, bringing with them a stream of jokes all on the theme of the Royal Navy steaming to their rescue. Hadn’t he brought a tug with him? That’s what we want, a bloody tug!

  After a while Kinkead drove most of them out, so that he, Bob and Scott had room to eat lunch, which was a beef stew out of cans. They had plenty of canned food with them, Kinkead mentioned; if they were besieged here they could hold out for weeks, as far as rations were concerned. Water might become a problem… Scott said, nodding towards Bob, ‘This splendid fellow arrived with a bottle of single malt in his bag. Davies and I didn’t have a doubt of him, from that moment on.’

  ‘Clever of you, Cowan.’ Kinkead nodded approval. ‘Same principle as a missionary bringing coloured beads to cannibals. What?’ He added, ‘You’ve come to rescue a brace of ex-governesses, Scott tells me.’

  ‘And I have a lead now on where their field hospital may be.’ He pointed over towards the station. ‘Saw the quack there. He was in a letuchka himself not long ago, and – well, cutting a long story short, he knows where number seven was at that time, and made a deduction as to where it probably is now.’ He asked Scott, ‘Got your map handy?’

  ‘Here.’ Kinkead had his with him, and unfolded it. ‘Mind you, that quack as you call him is not the most reliable of informants.’

  ‘I know what you mean. Poor devil.’

  ‘But you believe him on this, do you? All right. Long as he was making sense. What do I look for?’

  ‘Railway line running south-east from Poltava?’

  ‘That’s – some way…’

  ‘And south-west of Kharkov – places called Konstantinograd, Petrovka and Karlovka.’

  ‘Got ’em – all three. Sou’-sou’-west of Kharkov. Petrovka’s not on that railway. Other two are, though.’ He glanced up. And your letuchka?’

  ‘Somewhere in that area – according to our friend. How far, roughly?’

  ‘At a guess, a hundred miles. But hang on…’

  He used the stem of his pipe, measuring from the tip of the mouthpiece and marking the distance along it with his thumbnail, then applying it to the scale at the bottom of the map.

  ‘Yes. A hundred miles, near enough. That’s to Konstantinograd, which is roughly the mid-point. Here, see for yourself.’

  Bob turned it so Scott could also study it. Accepting, meanwhile, the offer of a mug of coffee. Aware of how vague his information was – the geographical location by the drunken doctor for one thing, and even if one could rely on that, whether the letuchka or individual members of its staff would still be in the field at all.

  He glanced up at Kinkead. ‘Scott said you’re not doing any flying at the moment.’

  ‘I was telling him – ’Scott was filling his pipe – ‘that you and Tommy ran into some unpleasantness over the Red lines.’

  ‘We did indeed.’ Kinkead nodded. ‘But the crucial thing is no decision’s been taken about involving ourselves here. I rather doubt we will, tell you the truth. My guess is that when Ray gets back we’ll be loading those three crates back on, and – skedaddling.’

  ‘If you have an engine to skedaddle you by then.’

  ‘Well – we must have, Sam!’

  ‘Hope springs eternal… But meanwhile, since we’re stuck here – and it’s a good cause, I’d say – would it be beyond the bounds of permissibility to use the Nine for a recce of that area?’

  ‘Oh, Lord…’ He’d frowned. Explaining, then – ‘I only had that crate made ready in case the General might want to be taken up. To see the lie of the land – if there’s still any question at all of deploying, when he gets back. And as you know, it’s the only Nine we have with us. Brought it for exactly that sort of contingency. And Holman knows about it. So—’

  ‘He’s not here now. Highly unlikely to be here before tomorrow. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Lap of the Gods, old man. But in any case—’

  ‘I’d gladly fly it, Marcus.’ Scott held a match to the bowl of his pipe. Sucking… ‘If you had no objection.’

  He had the pipe going. Kinkead watching him, saying nothing. Showing nothing, either. He had the sort of face and manner that tended not to. Scott added, dropping the match-end on his plate, ‘Hundred miles. Say fifty, fifty-five minutes. Half an hour over the target area. Say two and a half hours total, there and back. Probably less. So – if I take off within the next hour, say, I’m back on the ground here before dark, easy.’ He paused. Then: ‘What d’you say, old bean?’

  ‘I – really don’t know, Sam.’

  Scott pointed the pipe-stem at him. ‘Not talking about any kind of offensive action, you know. I can’t see why you’d object, tell you the truth. Doubt if Ray would, if he was with us. Matter of accommodating the Navy here – and maybe saving two young girls’ skins?’

  ‘That’s partly what bothers me.’ Kinkead looked at Bob. ‘Suppose we did find your letuchka for you. Then you’d want to get to wherever it is, wouldn’t you? There’s no rail link from here towards Poltava, you know. You’d have to go right down to Debaltsevo, to start with. All very well if you had a week or so in hand – and if the letuchka remained rooted to that spot, waiting for you – and if there are trains running west from Debaltsevo by that time – or even now, for that matter… And, mind you, if the Reds aren’t between you and the other place by then. If I was General Budyonny I’d have their guts for garters if they weren’t, I can tell you… Look at the map, you’ll see what I mean.’

  He’d turned it around again. Bob knowing before he even glanced at it that he was right. What he’d half expected in the first place: and the conclusion so obvious it didn’t need putting into words – if you couldn’t get
there, get to them, why bother to locate them?

  There was a pinch of salt in the wound, too. If he was right about the Bolshevik cavalry – as he probably was – and those girls still were there…

  Sickening.

  ‘Cowan.’ Scott broke the silence. ‘Have you ever – er – been up?’

  ‘Up?’ Staring back at him. ‘God’s sake – no…’

  Scott explained to Kinkead, ‘I’d take him along, see. Don’t need an observer – he’ll observe for me. If we find his letuchka I’ll put down as close as I can get. He’ll then hoof it, tell the young ladies, “They want you home, kindly take the next train to Novorossisk.” Give ’em each a hug and a kiss, back to the crate, we take off – and that’s it. All right with you, Marcus?’

  ‘You’ll have been on the ground an hour or two. That’s after you’ve found it. Doubling the duration you were talking about to start with.’

  ‘Not necessarily, at all!’

  ‘You could write your message and drop it to them – if the letuchka’s there. Give ’em that instruction and say if Miss H and Miss Y are present and will comply with this, please wave a – I don’t know–’

  ‘Pair of bloomers.’

  Kinkead’s tight-lipped smile… ‘Right. Please wave a pair of red bloomers.’

  ‘Red?’

  ‘Oh—’

  ‘Say pink. All young girls nowadays wear—’

  Bob cut in: ‘I’d much sooner be landed, so I could talk to them. Couldn’t you leave me, come back in the morning?’

  Scott shook his head. ‘By morning, things could be very different – here and there.’

  Kinkead agreed. ‘Rule that out, definitely.’

  Scott’s eyes smiled. Catching the implication – as Bob did – that the rest of it was clearly not ruled out. He checked the time on his wristwatch. ‘Chances are we’ll find ground flat enough to land on quite close to them. They wouldn’t’ve set up shop on some bloody mountain peak, would they. Ten minutes on the ground, Marcus.’ He added to Bob, ‘We’ve all put crates down on just about every kind of terrain you can imagine. Sometimes because we’ve had no option – engines conked out, that sort of thing. It’s what we have big wheels for. Anyhow – what d’you say, Marcus, old top?’

  ‘Suppose after you take off we get Ray back – and an engine – with orders to head south while the going’s good. If we had to wait two or three hours for you—’

  ‘In anything like those circumstances, don’t wait.’

  ‘The way I see it –’ Kinkead spoke slowly, as if thinking his thoughts aloud – ‘trying to see it objectively, mind you, as an outsider would, or in retrospect – it seems to me that to take that risk on the off-chance of contacting two young ladies who may or may not—’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Bob cut in again. ‘I should have explained – this isn’t just some jaunt I dreamed up on my own. You may not have realized – for instance, they sent me from Sevastopol to Taganrog in a destroyer – it was due to sail for the Bosporus, and the naval staff turned it around just so I’d have a chance of getting up here in time by landing at Taganrog. Naval staff meaning Rear-Admiral (Black Sea). Then again, my immediate chief is the Staff Officer (Intelligence) to C-in-C Mediterranean – Admiral Gough-Calthorpe. I think even your General Holman’s subordinate to him. But in any case the strings are being pulled in London. So one gathered… But having got this far now, unless I have your help – well, as you just pointed out, I can’t get any farther.’

  ‘What d’you say now, Marcus?’

  Kinkead took a long breath… ‘I suppose – taking your word for all that, Cowan – well, naturally, goes without saying – and if you’ll swear to be back on the ground here before dark, Sam—’

  ‘Good man. Damn good.’ Scott nodded to him, then looked at Bob. ‘Your first flight, by God…’ He checked the time again. ‘Need to look slippy now, don’t we. Can we have that crate fuelled right away, please?’

  * * *

  The bomber had been rolled out on to the waste ground beside the marshalling yard – a section of fencing having been removed for access and a pole set up with a windsock on it. Mechanics were checking over the machine’s engine and filling its tank with petrol. It looked about twice the size of the stubby, blunt-nosed Camel that stood near it. Both were lashed down against the wind, with ropes secured to iron pegs that must have been sledge-hammered into the frozen ground. They were both biplanes, of course, the DH9 particularly high-winged, taller than he’d expected – with massive-looking struts, two pairs each side, as well as shorter ones in the middle rooted on the fuselage. About thirty feet long, he guessed: and the wing-span nearer fifty.

  The original De Havilland 9s had been under-powered, Scott had told him. These 9a’s had been re-designed at the

  Westland Aircraft Works in Somerset, their fuselages strengthened to take a more powerful, American-made engine called a Liberty.

  ‘You’ll fly as you’re dressed now, will you? Except you’ll wear a helmet… Want to know how to use that Lewis gun, in case of need?’

  ‘Think we might have need?’

  ‘Who knows… Get up there, I’ll show you.’

  He’d been in the cockpit already, trying it out for size, while he’d been waiting for Scott to change into his flying gear. Meanwhile subduing a kind of disbelief that this could possibly be happening – while watching ground-staff patching bullet-holes in that Camel, and the start of the fuelling of this so-called Nine. He’d also chatted to the airmen, with the aim of filling in some of the huge gaps in his own awareness of what was going on. Learning for instance that the reason this trip had to be made in the DH9 wasn’t only that a Camel was a single-seater, but that the fighter’s range was extremely limited. A leading airman by name of Jamieson had told him, ‘Can’t ’ardly cross the bloody road in them things.’

  ‘But they’re very successful fighters, aren’t they?’

  ‘The best, sir. Nothing to touch ’em, in a dogfight. Long as the pilot knows ’is onions, that is. They kill learners, them buggers do. Kill ’em in bloody droves.’

  At least, he wasn’t going in a Camel. He climbed up into the DH9’s cockpit, and slid in, bulky in his greatcoat. There were two cockpits, of course, the pilot’s in front and this rear one for the observer. The pilot had a forward-firing Vickers machine-gun on the port side of the fuselage, while the observer had this Lewis behind him.

  Scott told him from the step, leaning over, ‘Called a Scarff ring, this mounting. So – unclamp the gun now – that’s the way. Swings nice and easy, see. And elevate – depress… Ever fire a Lewis?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A few times.’

  ‘Fine, I don’t need to teach you. We’ll have a full pan on it, and a spare. You’ll notice, though, it’s impossible to train it where you might shoot the tail off – or me in the back of the head, for that matter.’

  ‘Could make for a problem when it came to landing.’

  ‘You can see that, can you? Didn’t make you a Commissar for nothing, did they… But don’t worry, we won’t be going near any front lines, like those boys did.’ A nod towards the Camel; then he reached into the cockpit. ‘Helmet. Communications tubes attached, see. This one’s to your ears, and this your voice-tube – leads to my ears. Now, when you want to point out something on the ground – or in the air, for that matter – do it by clock-face reference. Nose of the crate being twelve o’clock.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘One other thing I have to bother you with – apart from the navigation, the flight-plan we’ll go over in a minute – it’s important you should know the start-up routine. See, if we do land, back of beyond there, you’re going to have to swing the prop for me. So… Simple enough – I’m in my cockpit there, and the first thing is to have the carburettor full of gas. We call it “sucking in” and we do it by winding the prop around. I check the switch is off, throttle’s shut, and you – you’re on the ground there – you give the prop five or six complete turns. That floods the carb. T
hen, I set my throttle – just a mite above “slow idle” – and you feel for compression and report “Contact”, I switch on and call back to you “Contact”, and you give the prop a good hard swing. There’s a way to do it without getting your head knocked off.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘We’ll show you, don’t worry. But – suppose the engine doesn’t fire. Sometimes doesn’t, on the first swing. What we do is – well, if the engine’s cold like it is now, we go through the sucking-in routine a second time, then try again. Should fire then, all right. But if it’s warm – as it will be, after an hour or more’s flying – I call out “Still on”, you get the compression – yell “Contact” – and again I repeat “Contact” – and you swing again.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I’ll have them demonstrate the swinging technique.

  Then you can do it on your own, start us up when we’re ready… But now come on down, we’ll take a look at where we’re going.’

  ‘Right. But –’ he hesitated. Then: ‘Look, there is one thing…’

  The major had begun climbing down; he stopped now. ‘I’d have raised this before – before we left Kinkead. I didn’t want to – you know, push my luck, as it were. Or look gift-horses in the mouth.’

  ‘We don’t have a lot of time to waste, you know.’

  ‘No. Sorry. Thing is, having to tell these girls to get on a train, and so on. When you came up with this idea – well, the answer to the insuperable problem, marvellous… But – second thoughts – there may not be a train. A lot of the lines will have been blown up, for instance – so that doctor said. So what I’m really telling ’em is “Start walking” – all right, to some place within their reach where I could meet them, perhaps, but—’