Piece of Cake (82 page)

Steele-Stebbing returned the lavatory to its place, unhooked the rope and drove away.

Cattermole kicked open the door and staggered out. He was still holding up his trousers. Every part of him was spattered and dripping. He swore in a kind of frenzied, almost hysterical monotone until his voice cracked under the strain.

“My goodness, you are in a filthy mood, Moggy,” Patterson said.

Cattermole advanced, mopping his face with the newspaper, still swearing.

“After you with the
Telegraph
,” Fitzgerald said to him. Then the smell began to reach them and they got up and backed away.

“Beat it, Moggy,” CH3 said. “Go and get cleaned up, and make it snappy. We're on standby, remember.”

“Where is he?” Cattermole shouted. “I'll kill the bastard, I'll break his bloody neck, I'll kick his guts in—”

“You touch him and I'll put my boot in your balls,” CH3 said. “Now amscray and take a shower.”

“Where is he? I want to know where the little sod is.” Muck dripped into Cattermole's mouth and he spat, furiously.

“You so much as lay a finger on him,” Barton said, “and I'll chop you into catsmeat. Now go!”

“Sunday school,” Cattermole sneered. “Bloody boy scouts.” He stood and glared, his head twitching with rage.

A fire-truck arrived. “Mr. Steele-Stebbing said you might need us, sir,” the driver said.

“Hose down that officer,” Barton ordered. “Don't let him get away.”

An airman already had the nozzle in his hands. At first Cattermole tried to run but they drove alongside, increased the water-pressure and knocked him down with the jet. In the end he plodded to the clubhouse, taking off his clothes as he went, while the firecrew blasted him clean.

He came back ten minutes later, wearing a mechanic's spare overalls. Steele-Stebbing was sitting, reading a book. He did not look up, but as Cattermole went past he murmured, “
Très chic
.” There was one empty deckchair. Cattermole dropped into it with unnecessary violence. The deckchair collapsed. The squadron fell about laughing. Cattermole lay on his back and shut his eyes. He was in a perfect mood to kill somebody. Two minutes later the scramble klaxon went off.

For once Snowball had got it absolutely right. He had put Hornet squadron up at the right time and the right height and now they reached Dover just as the Stukas came parading over the Channel.

Barton stopped counting at thirty. They looked predatory, with their heavy spatted undercarriage and bent wings. He remembered the day in France when he had been shot down and had taken shelter while a flock of Stukas dive-bombed a nearby battery of guns: the almost-vertical dive, the screaming siren, the appalling accuracy, each bomb planted smack on target while the Stukas climbed away with a sort of smug nothing-to-it indifference that made Barton hate them more than the big bombers. The soldiers
became very bitter against the Air Force for not protecting them against Stukas, and Barton could understand why. When you were on the ground, every plunging Stuka seemed to be out to kill you, personally. After a while, it was more than even experienced troops could take. Mention of the word alone was enough to make them run and hide. The Stuka wasn't so much a plane as a flying execution squad. Now Barton looked forward gleefully to hacking the bastards out of the sky. He actually licked his lips. And Hornet squadron could gorge themselves on the Stukas because arriving now, high above, dead on cue, was a squadron of Spits from Biggin Hill to take on the escort of 109's.

He crossed above the raid, turned and led the Hurricanes down from the sun—not that the enemy would be surprised but the glare might dazzle the rear-gunners. Each section picked its target. The Stukas plowed on. Barton chose a nice clean-looking one on the left and watched its lumpy angularity wobble about inside his reflector sight, growing fast until, as the wingtips reached the sight-bars, he touched the gun-button. Bullets had been spurting from the single gun in the rear cockpit but a flood of fire from Barton's eight Brownings swamped it. The Stuka exploded. He soared away. Easy as that. He twisted his neck and saw two more Stukas falling, a third on fire, Hurricanes breaking away on all sides. Steele-Stebbing was faithfully watching his tail. “Red Two: you lead, I'll cover,” he called. They swapped places as they turned, Barton throttling back and swinging wide to lose speed, but he was surprised by Steele-Stebbing's eagerness to attack and he had to chase hard to catch him. The man was too eager. He slammed into the formation from the left stern quarter, missed with his first burst, played ducks-and-drakes across half a dozen Stukas and sheered away right, going faster than ever. The R/T was crowded with claims, questions, triumphs. Barton waited for a pause and called: “Slow down, Red Two! Take it easy!” He saw Steele-Stebbing swerve toward a crippled Stuka and nearly collide with a Hurricane that was also chasing it. The two fighters merged, crossed, split, fled. Barton couldn't tell which was which. He hesitated. Both planes lost themselves in the whirl of battle. He pulled clear and took a long look up-sun. High above, Spits and 109's lunged and darted like a cloud of gnats excited by sunshine. A couple of smoke-smears made twisted scribbles on the sky, then
seemed to get bored and trailed down to earth. A bunch of 109's broke away and dived toward the Stukas. Barton called a warning: “Bandits above!”

The words reached Fitzgerald but he heard nothing: blood was pounding in his ears, partly from excitement, partly from violent maneuvering. His first attack had swept him ahead of the raid, back toward Dover Harbour. The ack-ack barrage made the air boil with destruction. Fitz tucked the stick into the pit of his stomach and opened the throttle wide. At the top of his loop he rolled over and was blessed with a vision of paradise.

Despite their losses the Stukas were still pressing on with their attack. The first three had just tipped over. Now, committed to a straight, unvarying dive, slowed by flaps and airbrakes, they were wonderfully vulnerable. Fitz took his pick. The middle one. He had never been so confident of a kill. The Hurricane's nose sank. The falling Stuka sat in his sights, perfectly centered. It magnified easily and beautifully, as if he had been working a microscope. He eased the nose a fraction steeper still and made the image rise. One-length deflection. Fire. A swarm of flames, leaping away from his wings. Blast of chattering guns. Sudden raging blaze, red ringed with yellow, so brilliant he blinked, and then the eruption heaved him on his way. Bits of Stuka stung the Hurricane, hunks of debris spun past it, but today Fitz knew he was immortal.

He climbed like a god and put a burst into somebody's belly as he sheered through the raid. Still the enemy came, rank upon rank. Fitz stall-turned out of his climb and fell behind a Stuka just as it was entering its dive. The German pilot saw him, flinched away from the tracer, pushed his machine to the vertical and then pushed it beyond. Fitz could not compete with that. He pulled out and broke away. But it seemed that the Stuka was not made to recover from a dive beyond the vertical. Fitz saw this one bury itself in Dover Harbour with an almighty splash, and he rejoiced. Then the 109's came down and the fun was over.

It took Skull half an hour to get the combat reports sorted out. The racket in the crewroom was continuous; the atmosphere bordered on the hysterical. Nobody could keep still; everyone laughed, shouted across the room, gulped their mugs of tea, waved, grinned, kicked the furniture.

“Knocked the buggers down like flies!” Patterson's excitement
was so intense he was almost stuttering. “What, Mother? Just like fucking flies! Eh?”

“Wizard, Pip, wizard … You! you rotten bastard!” Cox aimed a quivering finger at Steele-Stebbing. “Nearly bloody hit me!” Cox's eyes were popping with fear and glee.

“You pinched my Hun,” Steele-Stebbing accused. “Balls!” Cox shouted. Macfarlane thrust between them. “Did you see him?” he gabbled. “See him go up?
Whoosh
! Did you see him, Pip?” Macfarlane's hands were carving the air. Patterson nodded. Everyone seemed to be nodding. “
Whoosh!
One burst … He just …
Whoosh
!”

“Mine went
bang
!” Cattermole told them.

“Crash-wallop!” Brook said. “What a picnic! What a terrific picnic! I mean …” Flash Gordon was standing on a chair and singing: “Our name is Hornet squadron, no bloody good are we …”

“Know what it proves, Fanny?” Fitz said. “They can't bloody fly without wings!” Barton roared with laughter. He grabbed CH3's arms and made them flap: tea sprayed everywhere. “They can't fly without bloody wings, can they, you mad bloody Yank?” Skull shook the drops off his notebook and wiped his face. “You were saying?” he reminded CH3, but Cattermole had claimed him. “Mine went
bang
!” Cattermole declaimed. “How did yours go?”

“
Ka-pow
!” CH3 threw his half-empty mug in the air. “
Zap
!” Cattermole caught the mug and threw it at Gordon, who batted it at Cox, and then they all began chucking their mugs at each other and the de-briefing collapsed in a welter of tea-stains and broken china.

In the end Skull managed to get some sort of tally. It came to nine definite Stuka kills and five probables, plus a dozen damaged. The scrap with the 109's had ended abruptly when everyone ran out of ammunition and two 109's collided. Generously, Fanny said that Dover ack-ack could claim them. The only casualty was Quirk, who had taken a small shell splinter in the right buttock. “Does it hurt?” Cox asked. “Don't know,” Quirk said. “Haven't asked it.” They found that hilarious.

An hour later, reaction had set in.

It took different forms with different men. Weariness overtook Macfarlane, Patterson and Brook. They fell asleep, and not even engine-tests disturbed them. Steele-Stebbing was unable to stop
talking; he and Fitzgerald went over the Great Stuka Shoot again and again. The others were incurably restless. They strolled around dispersal, whistling, kicking at dandelion heads, throwing stones at birds.

Skull found Barton and CH3 sitting in the branches of an apple-tree. “What are you doing up there?” he asked.

“What does it look as if we're doing?” Barton threw an apple at him.

“We're waiting for the tide to go out,” CH3 said.

Skull looked at his watch. “It hasn't come in yet.”

“I know that,” Barton said. “But we'll be first in the queue when it does.”

“Yes, of course. Silly of me … I have a message from Baggy Bletchley. He says good show.”

“That's jolly nice of him. Tell him it was a piece of cake.”

“There's also a signal from Group that Nim Renouf has been found.”

“Yes?”

“That's all it says, but I'm checking. And finally, I'm afraid I've had to revise some of the recent claims of enemy aircraft destroyed.”

“What?” Barton swung down from the tree. “You've what?”

“Yesterday Moggy claimed a Heinkel 111 definitely destroyed and you, CH3, claimed a Messerschmitt 110 definitely destroyed.”

“That's right.” CH3 hung by his arms and dropped.

“Well, I've been comparing my reports with those of Sector and Group Intelligence, and also with those made by other units in action yesterday. The fact of the matter is that no German aircraft crashed in the area of your interception at the relevant time yesterday.”

“Don't be bloody silly, Skull,” Barton said.

“Go back and look again,” CH3 told him.

“There were plenty of observers on the ground,” Skull said. “Did you actually see your 110 crash?”

“No, of course not. The scrap was at fifteen thousand feet and I had better things to do. What a dumb question.”

“So they all flew back to Germany, did they?” Barton asked. “I mean to say, we murdered the buggers but they all lived happily ever after. Is that right?”

“Enemy aircraft from that particular raid
were
destroyed,” Skull
said. CH3 said: “You bet your sweet ass they were.” Skull looked at his clipboard and said, “But not at that location, and not necessarily as a consequence of your attacks alone. For example … The raid continued north and a Spitfire squadron from Hornchurch intercepted it. Their claims—”

“They've pinched my kill!” CH3 exclaimed. “Those Hornchurch bums have … Jesus! What a swindle.”

“It's certainly possible that aircraft damaged by you or by Moggy were later finished off by another unit. What seems quite certain is that the initial attack by this squadron did
not
result in such destruction, and in the light of that evidence the claims of kills must, I'm afraid, be revoked.”

“God speed the plow.” Barton picked up an apple and hurled it with all his strength. “There ain't no justice. There simply ain't.”

“It follows that the probables claimed by Fitz and Bing must also be reconsidered.”

“Why don't you go on leave, Skull?” CH3 said. “This squadron was doing fine until you stuck your oar in.”

“I'm afraid I haven't finished.” Barton groaned and turned away. “This morning's patrol by Blue and Green Sections,” Skull went on, “resulted in Fitz and Pip each claiming a Messerschmitt 109 destroyed. Again, no such crash was reported.”

“There was ten-tenths cloud, for Pete's sake!” CH3 said. “In any case, the whole schemozzle happened out at sea. How the hell—”

“With respect,” Skull said firmly. “The cloud was quite high and observers on the coast with telescopes saw much of the action. The coastguard, for instance, saw a Hurricane fall into the sea, presumably Renouf's. But they saw no other aircraft crash. What they, and other observers, did see was four Me-109's heading south.”

“Oh, shut up, Skull,” Barton said. “You make me tired.”

“So we're all bloody liars, are we?” CH3 asked.