He couldn’t sleep. The adventures of the morning were too fresh. To get so close to death and somehow survive seared each subsequent moment on the brain. The way people moved, every word they said, the way something looked, all of it took on enormous significance.
His hands still trembled from this morning.
The worst moment was when the plane rolled over with him hanging onto the Lewis drum. If that thing had come off …
Well, he would have had a long fall.
He lay in bed listening to the hum of engines and the noises of the enlisted men banging on machinery and wondered how it would have felt, falling, falling, falling, down toward the waiting earth and certain death.
He was dangling from the ammo drum, nothing but clouds and haze below his shoetops and his fingers slipping, when someone shook him.
“Mr. Hyde, sir! Mr. Hyde! They want you in Ops.” The batman didn’t leave until Hyde had his feet on the floor.
Four-thirty in the afternoon. He had been asleep almost three hours. He splashed some water on his face, then left the room and closed the door behind him.
Three pilots stood in front of the major’s desk: MacDonald, Cook, and one of the new men, Fitzgerald or Fitzhugh or something like that. Hyde joined them.
“HQ wants us to attack the enemy troops advancing to reinforce their line,” the major explained. “Nigel, you’ll lead.” He stepped over to the wall chart and pointed out the roads he wanted the planes to hit.
MacDonald’s face was white when he stepped from the room into the daylight. “There must be two divisions on those roads marching for the front,” he whispered to Paul Hyde. “I saw them earlier this afternoon. The roads are black with them. This is murder.”
“I wouldn’t quite call it that,” Hyde replied. “The damned Huns will be shooting back with a great deal of vigor.”
“The bloody Huns are going to murder us. We don’t stand a chance.” Sweat ran down Mac’s face. “God, I’m sick of this,” he muttered.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Fitzgerald said. He was right behind the two.
“I’ve used up all my luck,” Nigel Cook said dryly. He had followed Fitzgerald through the door. “Come on, lads. Nobody lives forever. Let’s go kill some bloody Huns.”
Hyde snorted. Cook could act a good show on occasion. “This morning, Nigel, did you see that Fokker before he gunned Cotswold-Smith?”
Nigel Cook’s face froze. His eyes flicked in Hyde’s direction, then he looked forward. He walked stiffly toward the planes, which the mechanics had already started.
“Why did you ask him that?” Mac demanded.
“Everybody’s a damned hero.”
“You bloody fool,” Mac thundered. “Nothing is going to bring that puppy back. You hear? Nothing! Cook has to live with it. Don’t you understand anything?”
Mac stalked away, the new man trailing along uncertainly in his wake.
Hyde glanced at his watch. He had a few minutes. He sat down on the bench by the door of the Ops hut and lit a cigarette. The smoke tasted delicious.
One more hop today. If he lived through that, the seventeenth day was history. He had beaten the odds. Tomorrow he could worry about tomorrow.
Filthy Huns. This next little go was going to be bad. The S.E.’s were going to be ducks in the shooting gallery.
He would live or he wouldn’t. That was the truth of it.
He remembered his family, his parents and his sister. As he puffed on the cigarette he recalled how they looked, what they said the last time he saw them.
His hands were still trembling.
* * *
Nigel Cook led them across the lines at fifty feet. Hyde was on Cook’s wing, the new man on Mac’s. The plan was for Cook and Hyde to shoot up everything on the left side of the road, Mac and Fitz to shoot up the right. When the Lewis drum was empty, they would climb and change ammo drums, then select another road.
Each plane had four bombs under the wings that the pilot could release by pulling on a wire. With a lot of practice, a man might get so he could drop the things accurately, but to do it at two hundred feet with a hundred bullets a second coming your way was more than most men had in them. Hyde hated the things. If a bullet hit one as it hung on your wing, it would blow the wing in half. He planned to drop his at the very first opportunity, and whispered to the new man to do likewise.
Fitzwater his name was, or something like that. He looked pasty when Hyde shook his hand and wished him luck.
Hyde’s plane this evening was running well. Motor seemed tight, the controls well-rigged, the guns properly cleaned and lubricated.
What else is there?
“The M.O. asked that you try to bring this bus back more or less intact, Mr. Hyde,” the linesman said saucily. “He said you’ve been using them up rather freely of late.”
Hyde didn’t even bother to answer that blather.
Flashes from the German trenches — the scummy people were already popping away ….
The clouds were lower and darker than they had been this morning. Perhaps it would rain tonight.
The four S.E.’s crossed above the trenches and headed for a supply depot that the major had marked on the map.
A bullet shattered the altimeter on the panel. Slivers from the glass face stuck in the glove of Hyde’s left hand. He used his right to brush and pull the slivers out. Specks of blood appeared on the glove.
Several lorries ahead, some tents and boxes piled about. That must be the dump. Hyde gripped the bomb release wire. Cook and the others were shooting at the lorries, but Hyde didn’t bother. He flew directly toward the dump and toggled the bombs off. He checked to ensure they had fallen off the racks, but he didn’t look back to see where they hit. He didn’t care.
Tiny jolts came to him through the seat and stick. Those were bullets striking the aircraft, bullets fired by the men he saw just a few feet below the plane blazing away with rifles.
Fortunately most of the airplane was fabric and offered little resistance to steel projectiles. The frame was wood, however, and bullets would smash and break it. Then there was the motor and fuel lines and the fuel tank, a steel container mounted on the center of gravity in front of the pilot, under the Vickers gun. Bullets could do horrible damage to fuel tanks and engines.
And there was the petrol in the fuel tank.
Of course the whole airplane was covered with dope, a highly flammable chemical that pulled the fabric drumhead tight. The smallest fire would ignite the whole plane, make it blaze like a torch.
A truck loomed on the road ahead, amid the running men. Dipping the nose a trifle, Hyde lined the thing up with the bead and ring sight and let fly with the machine guns. He put in a long burst, saw the flashes as the bullets struck the metal. He ceased fire and pulled up just enough to let his wheels miss the top of the truck.
Gray-clad figures were everywhere, lying on the ground and running and kneeling and shooting. He pushed the triggers and kicked the rudder back and forth to spray his bullets around.
He heard the Lewis stop and knew it must be out of shells. He waited until Cook raised his nose and followed him up in a loose formation. Only when well away from the ground did he pull the gun back on the Foster mount so that he could get at the drum. It came off easily enough. He put it in the storage bin and lifted another drum into place with both hands while he flew the plane with his knees.
Fumbling, straining to hold the heavy drum against the windblast, he got the thing seated, worked the bolt to chamber a round, then pushed the gun back up the rail until it locked. All this while he maneuvered the stick with his knees to stay in Cook’s vicinity. Cook was similarly engaged changing his Lewis drum, so his plane was also flying erratically.
After the gun was reloaded Hyde looked around for Mac and Fitz-something. They were a mile or so to the left, under a gloomy cloud, descending onto another road.
He would stay with Nigel, who was going to fly back over the supply dump again! The blithering fool.
More fire from the ground, machine guns this time — the muzzle flashes were unmistakable. If Cook wasn’t careful the Germans were going to be shooting Big Bertha at him.
A hatful of bullets stitched Hyde’s right wing, broke one of the bracing wires. Hyde wiggled the plane instinctively, then settled down to slaughter troops on the road ahead.
He opened fire. Walked the bullets into a mass of men and saw them fall, shot down a solitary grey figure in a coal-scuttle helmet who was shooting at him, toppled a team of horses pulling a wagon, gunned men lying in a ditch ….
A bullet burned the back of his hand, furrowed a gouge through the glove, and flesh and blood welled up.
Cook flew lower and lower, his guns going steadily. Hyde saw him out of the corner of his eye as he picked his own targets from the mass of men and horses and lorries on the road ahead.
His face felt hot. He ignored it for a few seconds, then paid attention. Hot. Droplets of a hot liquid.
The radiator was holed. He was losing water from the radiator.
And he was again out of ammo for the Lewis. He had another drum, so without waiting for Cook, he pulled up and soared away from the fray.
The Germans opened up with a flak gun. The bursts were so close the plane shook. He got the empty ammo drum off the gun, tossed it over the side. Got a fresh drum up and the gun ready.
As he turned to descend, he saw Cook’s plane go into the ground. One second it was skimming the earth, the gun going nicely, then it was trailing a streak of flame. An eye-blink later the plane touched the earth and came apart in a welling smear of fire and smoke.
There were enemy troops everywhere he looked. Paul Hyde picked a concentration ahead and opened fire.
The hot water from the radiator was soaking him. There wasn’t enough of it to scald him, just enough to get him wet.
Wiggling the rudder, holding the trigger down, Hyde shot at everything he saw. The Vickers ceased firing. Out of ammo, probably.
When the Lewis jammed he instinctively turned for the trenches. The water was hotter now, so it was coming out of the radiator in more volume. The needle on the water temp gauge on the panel was pegged right. The engine was going to seize in a moment.
And his feet were wet. Hyde looked down. Liquid running along the floorboards, toward the rear of the plane. A lot of liquid. His shoes and socks were soaked.
Water?
Sweet Jesus, it must be petrol. There must be bullet holes in the tank! He flew with his right hand while he worked the fuel pump with his left.
When he crossed the German trenches the motor started knocking. A cylinder wasn’t firing — he could hear and feel the knocking. Backfires from the exhaust pipe. And some Hun was blasting away at him with a machine gun.
A violent vibration swept through the plane, then another.
The last enemy trench was behind. Ahead he could see the British trenches. At least this time he wasn’t going to cross in the middle of an artillery barrage.
He crossed the trenches twenty feet in the air, the engine knocking loudly and vibrating as if it were going to jump off the mount.
He didn’t have much speed left. He tried to hold the nose up and couldn’t.
The wheels hit something and he bounced. Pulled the stick back into his lap and cut the switch. The noise stopped as the ship slowed and settled.
It bounced once more, then the landing gear assembly tore off and the fuselage slid along the mud and smacked over a shell hole and came, finally, to rest.
Paul Hyde was out and running before the plane stopped moving.
He was gone about seventy feet when fuel vapor found the hot metal parts of the engine and burst into flame. The whuff of the whole ship lighting off pushed Hyde forward on his face.
He lay there in the cold mud gripping the earth with both hands.
Finally he turned over in the slime and looked up at the evening sky.
Two Tommies found him there.
“Are you injured, sir?” they demanded, running their hands over him, feeling his body for wounds or broken bones.
He tried to answer and couldn’t.
One of them held Hyde’s head in his hands and looked straight into his eyes.
“It’s all right, laddie,” he said. “You’re safe. You can stop screaming now.”
Al-Jihad
ONE
Julie Giraud was crazy as hell. I knew that for an absolute fact, so I was contemplating what a real damned fool I was to get mixed up in her crazy scheme when I drove the Humvee and trailer into the belly of the V-22 Osprey and tied them down.
I quickly checked the stuff in the Humvee’s trailer, made sure it was secure, then walked out of the Osprey and across the dark concrete ramp. Lights shining down from the peak of the hangar reflected in puddles of rainwater. The rain had stopped just at dusk, an hour or so ago.
I was the only human in sight amid the tiltrotor Os-preys parked on that vast mat. They looked like medium-sized transports except that they had an engine on each wingtip, and the engines were pointed straight up. Atop each engine was a thirty-eight-foot, three-bladed rotor. The engines were mounted on swivels that allowed them to be tilted from the vertical to the horizontal, giving the Ospreys the ability to take off and land like helicopters and then fly along in winged flight like the turboprop transports they really were.
I stopped by the door into the hangar and looked around again, just to make sure, then I opened the door and went inside.
The corridor was lit, but empty. My footsteps made a dull noise on the tile floor. I took the second right, into a ready room.
The duty officer was standing by the desk strapping a belt and holster to her waist. She was wearing a flight suit and black flying boots. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bun. She glanced at me. “Ready?”
“Where are all the security guards?”
“Watching a training film. They thought it was unusual to send everyone, but I insisted.”
“I sure as hell hope they don’t get suspicious.”
She picked up her flight bag, took a last look around, and glanced at her watch. Then she grinned at me. “Let’s go get ‘em.”
That was Julie Giraud, and as I have said, she was crazy as hell.
Me, I was just greedy. Three million dollars was a lot of kale, enough to keep me in beer and pretzels for the next hundred and ninety years. I followed this ding-a-ling bloodthirsty female along the hallway and through the puddles on the ramp to the waiting Osprey. Julie didn’t run — she strode purposefully. If she was nervous or having second thoughts about committing the four dozen felonies we had planned for the next ten minutes, she sure didn’t show it.
The worst thing I had ever done up to that point in my years on this planet was cheat a little on my income tax — no more than average, though — and here I was about to become a co-conspirator in enough crimes to keep a grand jury busy for a year. I felt like a condemned man on his way to the gallows, but the thought of all those smackers kept me marching along behind ol’ crazy Julie.
We boarded the plane through the cargo door, and I closed it behind us.
Julie took three or four minutes to check our cargo, leaving nothing to chance. I watched her with grudging respect — crazy or not, she looked like a pro to me, and at my age I damn well didn’t want to go tilting at windmills with an amateur.
When she finished her inspection, she led the way forward to the cockpit. She got into the left seat, her hands flew over the buttons and levers, arranging everything to her satisfaction. As I strapped myself into the right seat, she cranked the left engine. The RPMs came up nicely. The right engine was next.
As the radios warmed up, she quickly ran through the checklist, scanned gauges, and set up computer displays. I wasn’t a pilot; everything I knew about the V-22 tiltrotor Osprey came from Julie, who wasn’t given to long-winded explanations. If was almost as if every word she said cost her money.
While she did her pilot thing, I sat there l
ooking out the windows, nervous as a cat on crack, trying to spot the platoon of FBI agents who were probably closing in to arrest us right that very minute. I didn’t see anyone, of course: The parking mat of the air force base was as deserted as a nudist colony in January.
About that time Julie snapped on the aircraft’s exterior lights, which made weird reflections on the other aircraft parked nearby, and the landing lights, powerful spotlights that shone on the concrete in front of us.
She called Ground Control on the radio. They gave her a clearance to a base in southern Germany, which she copied and read back flawlessly.
We weren’t going to southern Germany, I knew, even if the air traffic controllers didn’t. Julie released the brakes, and almost as if by magic, the Osprey began moving, taxiing along the concrete. She turned to pick up a taxiway, moving slowly, sedately, while she set up the computer displays on the instrument panel in front of her. There were two multifunction displays in front of me, too, and she leaned across to punch up the displays she wanted. I just watched. All this time we were rolling slowly along the endless taxiways lined with blue lights, across at least one runway, taxiing, taxiing … A rabbit ran across in front of us, through the beam of the taxi light.
Finally Julie stopped and spoke to the tower, which cleared us for takeoff.
“Are you ready?” she asked me curtly.
“For prison, hell, or what?”
She ignored that comment, which just slipped out. I was sitting there wondering how well I was going to adjust to institutional life.
She taxied onto the runway, lined up the plane, then advanced the power lever with her left hand. I could hear the engines winding up, feel the power of the giant rotors tearing at the air, trying to lift this twenty-eight-ton beast from the earth’s grasp.
The Osprey rolled forward on the runway, slowly at first, and when it was going a little faster than a man could run, lifted majestically into the air.
The Sea Witch Page 10
