Hunter Squadron

by Robert Jackson

  ‘Soon, my friend,’ the Colonel told him. ‘Very soon indeed, before the British have time to send large numbers of troops to Warambe. Nkrombe’s native army is considerable, but it is poorly trained. Even with the help of volunteers such as ourselves it will be no match for regular British troops.’ The two South Africans noted that he carefully avoided the use of the word ‘mercenaries’. He clearly regarded it as distasteful.

  ‘But sir,’ Piet protested, ‘even if we — Nkrombe’s forces, that is — invade Warambe successfully, who’s to say that the British won’t mount an expeditionary force to recapture the place?’

  The Colonel smiled and exhaled a thin stream of grey smoke. ‘Because it will not be worth their while,’ he explained. ‘You see, the intention is not to invade Warambe and keep it. The intention is to mount a massive raid in strength and destroy the uranium mines. I shall explain later how this is to be done. But the object is to wipe out Warambe’s economy at one stroke. Without the mines and its uranium exports, Warambe will starve. Its people will revert to savagery. No matter what the British do, they will be unable to redress the situation. Fools though they may be at times, they will not pour money and aid into a colony that is no longer of the slightest use to them. Then will be the time for the real invasion, which will be unopposed. The mines will be made to work again; it will take years, but that does not matter. They will be under Nkrombe’s control, and Nkrombe, whatever his faults, has a keen eye to the future.’

  ‘What sort of man is he, this kaffir?’

  The Colonel’s eyes blazed. ‘Do not use that word again!’ His voice was like a razor blade, and Jan flinched. ‘Nkrombe is your master, just as he is mine — for the time being, until our job is done. He is a highly intelligent man, and a very wealthy one. It is the colour of his money, not the colour of his skin, that should concern you!’

  Jan muttered an apology and embarked on a studious examination of one of the wall maps. The Colonel kept his piercing eyes fixed upon him for a moment or two longer, then relaxed.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Pick up your kit from your aircraft and go to your quarters to freshen up. I will send a man to show you where they are, and also the location of the mess hut. You can obtain a meal there at any time; we have a native cook permanently on duty.’ He gave one of his thin smiles. ‘The menu is limited, but wholesome. The cook is part Indian, so I hope you like curry.’

  ‘Sir,’ Jan said, getting over his admonition, ‘when do we get to fly?’

  ‘If the rain holds off, we’ll check you out later this afternoon. The crew room is next door to the mess hut. Meet me there at three o’clock.’

  He bent his head to examine some documents on the table in front of him, ignoring the two South Africans completely. It was as though they no longer existed. A little unnerved by his sudden change in attitude, they rose and went out into the sunlight.

  ‘Bit of a queer bird, that one,’ Jan muttered as they walked towards the Cessna to retrieve their bags. ‘Wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him.’

  Piet agreed. ‘Must be able to fly okay, though,’ he commented, ‘or he wouldn’t have landed this job. Wonder who he really is?’

  Behind them, through the open door of the hut, the Colonel surveyed their retreating backs and smiled to himself. He enjoyed throwing new arrivals off their stride, and had a good idea what was going through their minds at that moment. These two would be all right; he had their records in front of him, and no-one had ever found fault with their flying. However, he would be in a position to judge that for himself, a little later on.

  He leaned back in his chair and lit another cheroot, gazing thoughtfully at the rising cloud of smoke. The two South Africans completed his line-up of twelve pilots. They were a mixed bunch, but good; the best that could be bought under the circumstances, at any rate. They included three Frenchmen, three Americans, a Spaniard, a Belgian and two Germans; all but the Spaniards had seen action at some point in their careers, but the Spaniards were experienced men with several thousand hours’ flying to their credit, and he had no doubt that they would acquit themselves well if it came to a fight.

  He sighed, suddenly remembering the old days with a touch of nostalgia. He had seen hard and bitter times during the Second World War, but nonetheless he would cheerfully have swapped everything to recapture some of them, and to relive the company of some of the comrades who had been swallowed up in the great fighter graveyard over Europe during those years.

  Apart from one short break, he had never stopped flying since then. A succession of flying jobs in the United States had brought him a measure of security, and the chance to save substantial capital, but the call of adventure had proven too strong for him to endure a settled life for long. With his savings secure in a Swiss bank account, he had fought as a mercenary pilot in half a dozen revolutions in Latin America and had established a reputation for himself as a combat leader of high repute — or rather re-established it, for as such he had risen very close to the top of the fighter aces’ gallery of fame during the war.

  There was money — a great deal of money — to be made amid the smouldering fires of foreign wars, and there would always be a place for the mercenary, but mercenaries were no longer just thugs and adventurers. The middle years of the twentieth century had produced a new breed of skilled men who were prepared to sell their expertise to the highest bidder — or, in some cases, because they were prepared to risk their lives for what they considered a just cause in a foreign land. Mercenary pilots had fought on both sides in the Spanish Civil war, and had flown for Finland against the Russian invader in the winter war of 1939-40; more recently, in 1948, they had helped the infant state of Israel to defeat the Arab nations who were threatening her with extinction.

  Those men had flown for an ideal, but in the Colonel’s experience idealists could be dangerous. He had set out to create something much different: a first-rate flying unit composed of men who were prepared to fight and fly and kill because that was their best trade, and they were not content with any other.

  Basing himself in a small and sympathetic Central American country, he had used a slice of his capital to set up what, outwardly, was a legitimate export and import business. It was based on a very simple supply and demand situation. Small nations, some of them in the grip of internal strife or threatened by external forces, needed warplanes. The Colonel undertook to supply them, and if necessary the men to fly them.

  In the main, the aircraft involved had been elderly piston-engined types, mostly American and surplus to military requirements. There had been no shortage of volunteers to fly them, but he had been ruthless in his selection; only the best would do. His fees were high, but so was his reputation; he would not provide second-rate machines or crews. It was a formula that had worked well, and in five years he had become a very wealthy man indeed — but one for whom wealth counted far less than the prospect of action.

  The shipment of ten North American F-86 Sabre jet fighters to the Congo on behalf of his latest customer, Nkrombe, was his most ambitious project so far, and one that promised to pay the highest dividend. He had supplied not only the aircraft and pilots, but ground crews as well, all on a three-year contract. By the time it expired, it was hoped that the first batch of Nkrombe’s own pilots and ground personnel, now under training in Egypt, would have reached operational standard. The Colonel had his doubts about that, but it was none of his business. He would have fulfilled the terms of his contract to the letter.

  Nkrombe could certainly find no fault with the aircraft the Colonel had acquired for him. The swept-wing Sabre jet, which was supersonic in a dive and armed with six 0.5-inch machine-guns, had wrought havoc with its Russian-built MiG-15 adversaries over Korea eight years earlier. In USAF service it had been replaced by the F-100 Super Sabre, and considerable stocks of surplus aircraft had found their way on to the market, for sale to ‘friendly’ countries. The ten machines now in the Congo had originally been purchased, with the Colonel�
��s connivance, by an agent in Mexico for resale to Latin America, but they had never progressed beyond Panama. Dismantled and crated, the Sabres had been shipped across the Atlantic to the Spanish island of Fernando Po, off the west coast of Africa, where they had been re-assembled and air tested; Spanish officials, their pockets bulging with hefty bribes, had obligingly turned a blind eye. From Fernando Po, the Sabres, flying by night and equipped with underwing fuel tanks, had flown to Kerewata in one hop, arriving with the dawn. Their support equipment and munitions had reached Nkrombe’s territory by other, more devious routes.

  The Colonel, through long habit, never ate lunch, preferring several mugs of strong black coffee accompanied by a succession of his evil-smelling cheroots. After dealing with some routine administrative matters, he spent a couple of hours touring the airfield, inspecting the readiness state of the Sabres and chatting with the ground staff. The pilots, with the exception of the two newly-arrived South Africans, were absent, having been given leave to go to Kerewata. It was not much of a place, but it boasted a few sleazy bars and two even sleazier brothels, hangovers from the Belgian colonial days. Most of the pilots and ground personnel were conscious enough of their personal hygiene to avoid the brothels, but those who were not were subjected to stringent medical checks. On the Colonel’s orders, anyone who failed to report a visit to one of the brothels was automatically sentenced to twenty-four hours in the ‘can’, a corrugated metal box that stood in the middle of the airfield. It was just big enough to accommodate a man in a crouching position, and a twenty-four hour spell inside it, enduring extremes of heat and cold, was enough to drive anyone to the verge of insanity. It had not been occupied lately, which was proof enough of its effectiveness.

  At 1445 hours precisely, the Colonel went to the crew room near the control tower. The two South Africans were already there, kitting themselves out in flying overalls and ‘anti-g suits’. These were inflatable girdles that hugged the pilot’s stomach and increased his tolerance to the forces of gravity that were exerted upon his body during high-speed manoeuvres.

  The Colonel nodded to the two men, without speaking, and put on his own flying clothing. Almost immediately, sweat started to trickle down his body, but it would be cool at high altitude. When he had finished, he gave them a short briefing.

  ‘This will be a familiarization flight,’ he told them. ‘After take-off we’ll turn on to 110 degrees and fly as far as the lake, here — ’ he pointed to the feature on a map ‘— and then turn north to follow the river that runs through the forest from the mountains in the uplands region here. The river is the border with Warambe, and I want you to take a good look at it, paying special attention to the location of bridges and the terrain around them on the other side. We will be called upon to carry out air strikes there when the fighting starts, and I want you to memorize the lie of the land. I shall expect you to draw a sketch-map of the whole route when you get back here.’ He gave them some additional information, including radio frequencies, then said, ‘Stick close by me. I don’t want you wandering off and straying over the border. Clear?’ They nodded. ‘All right, then. Let’s go.’

  A jeep took them out to their aircraft and they strapped themselves in, the two South Africans feeling an old familiarity return as they did so, like slipping on a worn and comfortable jacket. Two ground crew stood by each aircraft, and the South Africans noticed that in each case one of the men was a negro, presumably under instruction from his more experienced white counterpart. They seemed efficient, and well able to carry out the tasks in hand.

  With the help of an external power source the Sabres’ J47 turbojets started effortlessly. Taxiing checks were quickly completed, the ground crews removed the chocks and the fighters started to move as the pilots applied a little power. With the Colonel leading, the three aircraft rumbled out of their forest shelters and along the PSP taxiway towards the end of the runway. The latter was too narrow to allow a formation take-off and so the two South Africans held clear while the Colonel pointed the nose of his Sabre towards the clear patch that had been cut through the screen of trees at the far end of the long metal strip. Holding the fighter on its brakes, he opened the throttle to 80 per cent rpm, then released the brakes as power built up and advanced the throttle to the fully open position.

  The Sabre accelerated slowly, and the far end of the runway seemed very close by the time flying speed of 125 knots was reached. Its nose well up, the fighter pounded along the metal surface and then wallowed into the air; a feature of the Sabre was that it never ‘unstuck’ cleanly, but once the Colonel retracted the wheels and flaps it accelerated rapidly.

  He held the fighter down until the airspeed indicator showed 400 knots, then pulled up in a climbing turn, looking back over his shoulder towards the airfield. The second Sabre was just getting airborne and the third was beginning its roll along the runway. The Colonel reduced speed to allow the others to catch up with him and then all three set course eastwards in an immaculate ‘V’ formation, the Colonel noting with satisfaction the professional manner in which the two South Africans tucked themselves in beside his own aircraft.

  There were rainclouds on the northern horizon, but they were a long way off, beyond the mountains, and in the meantime visibility was good. The Sabres climbed to twenty thousand feet and flew on over a dense green carpet of forest, broken here and there by the snake-like trails of fast-flowing streams; the streams themselves were often invisible, their passage marked only by a twisting dark line among the trees.

  The lake that was the Sabres’ first turning-point was clearly visible, a long, L-shaped strip of water that glittered in the sun. From the elbow of the ‘L’, a cascade of water plunged hundreds of feet into a valley and vanished among the forest. The lake was fed by a broad river that wound its way northwards; the Sabres made a gentle left turn and followed it, keeping it off their starboard wingtips. Far ahead of them, the mountains marched in a blue line across the northern horizon.

  The Colonel was looking down at the river, at one of the wooden bridges that spanned it where it narrowed, when something sparkled in the corner of his eye. Raising his eyes, he scanned the sky on the other side of the river. With a skill honed by years of practice, he soon made out the silhouettes of two aircraft, keeping pace with the Sabres a couple of miles away at the same altitude. Even at that distance, there was no mistaking the identity. He pressed the R/T switch.

  ‘We’ve got company,’ he told his companions. ‘Three o’clock, level. They’re Hunters.’

  ‘Shall we take a closer look at ’em, sir?’ The voice was Jan’s.

  ‘No! I told you, your orders are to stay on this side of the river. Keep your eye on them, that’s all.’

  So the British were flying border patrols already, he thought, within hours of their arrival. He had not expected them to be so well organized. Perhaps he should have known better.

  The Hunters escorted the Sabres as far as the northern foothills, as though attached by an invisible thread. Then, suddenly, the British jets turned hard to port, swinging round so that they were directly above the river on a reciprocal course. Their message was quite plain: it said KEEP OUT!

  The Sabres turned too, heading back across country towards Kerewata. The Colonel was in a thoughtful mood throughout the homeward flight. Perhaps it would not be so easy to catch the British unawares, after all. He would have to carry out some revision of his war plan.

  The jet fighters dropped into line astern as Kerewata approached, extending their speed brakes to slow down as they joined the airfield circuit. Making the final turn towards the runway at 140 knots, the pilots reduced the speed to 125 as they brought the aircraft in ‘over the fence’, decelerating by keeping the nose held in the air after the mainwheels touched the PSP to avoid wear on the brakes — a technique the South Africans had used as a matter of routine in Korea.

  They taxied into their shelters and shut down the engines, unstrapping themselves and climbing down from the cockpits. Piet
joined Jan by the latter’s aircraft and nudged him.

  ‘We were wondering about who this chap might be,’ he said, quietly indicating the Colonel, who was talking with one of the ground crew. ‘Well, maybe we can take a guess at his nationality. Take a look at his Sabre.’

  Jan looked, and saw what his companion meant almost at once. Painted just below the Sabre’s cockpit, thinly outlined in white against the dark green camouflage, was an Iron Cross.

  Chapter Four

  THE COMMANDER OF WARAMBE’S SMALL FORCE OF MILITIA, the Warambe Rifles, was an Englishman, although Yeoman was quick to sense that Colonel Henry Hoskins would never have held such an exalted rank had he remained a regular officer in the British Army, which is what he claimed to have been. His uniform boasted a row of campaign ribbons that spoke of war service in the Far East, but Yeoman accepted his tales of fierce action against the Japanese with a pinch of salt. Hoskins looked every inch the administrator, rather than the combat soldier, and that was probably the essence of it.

  He regarded Yeoman over the rim of a glass of pink gin. They were standing in the bar of a small hotel in the township that had sprung up adjacent to the airfield; it served as a mess for officers and senior NCOS of the Rifles, and also for Europeans who were involved in running the uranium mines and organizing the country’s export trade.

  ‘So, old boy,’ Hoskins said, ‘I gather you caught sight of the opposition this afternoon?’

  Yeoman nodded. ‘We saw three Sabres, but they behaved themselves and stayed well clear. Has there been much air activity along the border?’

  Hoskins shook his head. ‘Nothing to speak of. An occasional flight during the past couple of weeks, but nothing to worry about. I don’t think Nkrombe will start any trouble. In fact, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. The Governor seems to have gone off at half-cock.’