Fair enough. Mushroom soup laced with cream and brandy was served. “Signal Mission H.Q. at Ekat,” Tiger Wragge told Lacey. “Tell them to keep the war hot until we get there.”
They were well into the beef stroganoff when the far-off crack of rifle fire stopped all conversation. They looked at Borodin. “Not hunters,” he said. “Nobody hunts in the dark. Nothing to hunt, anyway.”
“I posted a guard,” the adjutant said. “Maybe they saw something.”
He left the Pullman coach and walked along the track to a boxcar with a fixed ladder. He climbed to the roof. Starlight showed the black shapes of two men and a Lewis gun on a tripod, “See anything, sergeant?”
“Bugger-all, sir. Harris thinks he heard something. Black as sin out there.”
Brazier looked. It was impossible to tell where steppe ended and night sky began. There was nothing to focus on.
“Might be some fuckin’ peasant,” the sergeant said softly. “Fucked his brain with fuckin’ vodka, got kicked out by his fuckin’ wife, went and shot his fuckin’ self.”
“Probably fuckin’ missed,” Harris said.
Brazier walked slowly up and down the boxcar roof. His stroganoff was getting cold, all because a drunken nobody couldn’t shoot straight. Then a rifle cracked the night on the other side of the train, the bullet ricocheted off iron and sang as it soared and died in the night. Then another shot. This time Brazier saw the tiny splash of flame. As Harris swung the Lewis, Brazier said: “Watch for the next muzzle-flash and give it a short burst. Four rounds maximum. This could be a long fight.”
He swung down the ladder. Lit windows in all three trains were turning black. He hurried back to The Dregs and met Hackett at the door. “Tell everyone to lie flat,” he said.
Hackett disappeared, shouted orders, came back, “What’s up?” he asked.
“God knows. No moon yet. You could hide two or three battalions out there.” Lewis guns made short statements. “I bet the bastards didn’t expect that,” Brazier said.
“This is your kind of show, Uncle. You’re in command.”
A bullet sighed overhead. High overhead. “Sloppy,” Brazier said. “No discipline. But a random shot can still kill you. I’ll get some rifles sent here.”
“Thanks. We officers can shoot at random too. Might even hit it.”
The adjutant chuckled, a rare sound.
He made his rounds of the trains, talking to the flight sergeants, making sure that all the ground crews were armed. He added four more Lewis guns on top of boxcars. Sporadic shots continued. A couple punctured windows, but there seemed no obvious plan to the firing. Brazier walked to Kenny’s train and found, as he expected, that he could teach its Royal Marines nothing. They welcomed the change in routine. They could fire, reload and fire again so fast that a rifle sounded almost like a light machine gun. All they needed was a target.
In The Dregs everyone was on the floor, including Hackett. He felt restless: annoyed that the evening had been spoiled by a few bad marksmen, God knew how many, a dozen, a thousand? Merlin Squadron could strafe the scruffy bastards to bits in five minutes. If it was daytime. If the Camels could be assembled. If the scruffy bastards would stand and fight, which they probably wouldn’t… That was when he remembered the squadron doctor.
Susan Perry was in her Pullman cabin, sitting on the floor, finishing her supper by candlelight and reading a tattered copy of Horse and Hound.
“Just wanted to check that you’re O.K.,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. Just a few troublemakers. Soon send them packing.”
She ate the last bit and gave him the plate. “In France I worked with surgeons in a Forward Dressing Station,” she said. “Blood up to the elbows and Hun shells dropping like autumn leaves. So this doesn’t worry me.”
“All the same, I think you should be with the pilots.”
“Is there pudding?”
“Um… Treacle tart. Cream.”
“I’m not going to miss out on that.” She got to her feet and picked up a Colt revolver. “Belonged to Colonel Kenny. Don’t worry, it’s loaded.”
“I hope we won’t let any blighter get that close.”
“I’m sure you won’t. This is to fight off randy pilots in the dark.”
“You can trust my chaps.”
“When a man tells a girl she can trust him,” she said, “she knows she can’t trust him.”
They went to The Dregs. “Listen here,” he announced. “There’s a lady present. Mind your manners.”
“God, I hope not,” she said. “I can take war or good manners but I can’t take them both together.”
The night passed slowly. Some of the pilots fell asleep. Hackett organized a system of watches so that two were always awake and alert. The firing lessened but never completely stopped. Brazier would have liked to lead a few volunteers from the ground crews, stealthily patrolling the steppe with blackened faces and sharpened knives, but he knew that such tactics ended with the last war, the one with trenches and no-man’s-land and abundant Huns to be poached. Instead, he made sure that hot cocoa and bully-beef sandwiches were available. The hours drifted by, and just as a tinge of grey began to soften the darkness, the enemy attacked Kenny’s train.
The Marine who was manning the Lewis gun on the roof swung it in a steady, scything action, changed the drum, did it again. Marines at the windows picked off the ghostly shapes that got past the Lewis gun. Brazier, watching from the roof of “B” Flight’s train, said: “They’ll come at us from both sides. Spray the ground on the left. Four-second bursts. Don’t stint the bullets. Where are the grenades?”
He took four grenades, climbed down and walked to the front of the locomotive. There was much shouting and blowing of whistles, and he threw two grenades to left and to right, aiming for the centres of the noise. Brazier had a strong arm. The grenades flew like clay pigeons and exploded like the crack of doom.
When the smoke cleared, the pre-dawn twilight showed attackers running away on both sides of Kenny’s train. The Lewis guns chased them. Some fell.
Brazier walked back to The Dregs. “I think you can safely tell Chef to prepare breakfast,” he told Hackett.
“They weren’t Bolos, were they? Too far south. What did they want?”
“They were rabble,” Brazier said comfortably. “And they wanted what every Russian wants, anything that isn’t nailed down. Given enough time, they’ll steal the nails too.” He patted Hackett’s arm. “This isn’t the Varsity rugger match, squadron leader.” They went into the bar car. Brazier hadn’t felt so satisfied since he watched the lid of Kenny’s coffin being screwed down.
“The bandits have been sent packing,” Hackett told the pilots. “Back to normal again.”
“Congratulations to the adjutant and his men,” Count Borodin said. “As to normal… I wonder if that might be premature.”
“What’s the problem?” Hackett asked. “Fuel dump’s not far. We steam on, grab some coal. Easy.”
Borodin went to a window and tapped his knuckles on the glass. “Double tracks out there. But no train has passed us, going either way, since we left Beketofka. Isn’t that unusual?”
“I smell coffee,” the adjutant said. “Let us examine the situation over the black stimulant. And perhaps also an egg.”
Over coffee, they listened to Borodin. The train drivers, he said, told him that the fuel dump and water tower were in a small town about twenty miles away. He told them its name, and wrote it on a piece of paper.
“You’ve left out the vowels,” Brazier said. He clutched the paper and took a stab at the name, and failed. “Let’s call it Walsall. Near Birmingham. Sounds a bit like Warsaw.”
“That’s in Poland,” Hackett objected.
“Warsaw will do nicely,” Borodin said. “I rather think this Warsaw may be in unfriendly hands.” That might explain the absence of trains. Could the Reds have captured Warsaw? Unlikely. But there were other rogue forces roaming the land. Bands of guerrillas. Hordes of deserters. Warlords’ armies. Why Warsaw? Because trains worth looting would stop there. And maybe a handful of bandits had chanced on Merlin Squadron in the dark, and didn’t know the trains were full of fighting men.