Count Borodin awoke to the sound of rifle fire. The noise came in irregular bursts, like the faraway crackle of burning stubble. Experience told him that the firing was more than a mile away, probably two miles, and the blackness said it was the middle of the night. He closed his eyes and guessed how many men were fighting. Perhaps two battalions. A small battle. The firing grew more intense and then faded and died. He went back to sleep.
At breakfast, the talk was all guesswork. “What d’you think happened, Count?” Jessop said.
“I think you have egg on your chin.”
“I know. I keep it there in case I get peckish later.”
Borodin ordered a pony to be saddled. He visited the staff train, came back and joined a meeting of the C.O. and the flight leaders. “There was a small Red attack during the night,” he said. “Several, simultaneously. All beaten off.”
“Where did they spring from?” Wragge said. “There were no Reds in Orel when we looked. Nobody fired a shot at us.”
“Wise restraint. If they fire at us, we bomb them. So they don’t fire, and we go away.”
“The Huns learned that trick,” Oliphant said. “We bombed their cities at night and at first they were easy to find because when they heard us coming they turned on their searchlights, but then they realized they were advertising themselves so they stopped. Hid in the darkness. Not easy to find a blacked-out town in the middle of Germany. If we found it, of course, their searchlights came on and they chucked all kinds of filth at us.”
“Cunning buggers, Huns,” Dextry said.
“What are you saying?” the C.O. asked. “Orel’s full of Bolos, hiding in back alleys, waiting to do their worst?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Moscow by Christmas,” Borodin said. “That’s all everyone thinks of. Some of Denikin’s people have even picked out the white horses for their triumphant entry.”
“Why not?” Oliphant said. “Denikin’s made mincemeat of the Bolos.”
“Mincemeat, you say. Russians prepare many a hearty meal from mincemeat.”
“So what was last night’s nonsense all about?” Dextry said. “The Bolos made a nuisance of themselves and then went home. Not very heroic.”
“Delaying tactics,” Borodin said. “Spoiled our troops’ sleep.”
“Or maybe it was a last gasp.”
“We’re guessing,” the C.O. said. “What does Denikin want us to do?”
“Ground-strafing,” Borodin said. “Targets of opportunity.”
“So he’s guessing too. Well, let’s get in the air. With any luck, someone will try to kill us.”
Wragge took the whole squadron, four Camels and four Nines.
From two thousand feet, Orel still looked peaceful. Still no burning buildings, no heavy machine guns chucking filth at the sky. No point in strafing something that might be a barracks but was more likely to be a hospital. Proves nothing, Wragge thought, even a hospital might be a hiding place full of Bolos. Or it might be an orphanage, and we’d end up strafing a hundred blond-haired blue-eyed boys and girls. Hard cheese. Teach them not to grow up to be ruthless Bolsheviks. And anyway they’re orphans, nobody would miss them, so nichevo. And we’d vranyo Mission H.Q. and Denikin and say the Camels were returning enemy fire.
But Orel remained a picture of a market town drowsing in the midday sun, and the squadron cruised on, and soon Wragge’s humane and civilized conduct was rewarded by the sight of two armoured trains, north of the town, not moving. Almost at once, the old familiar ink-blots decorated the sky ahead. One burst was close, and he felt rather than heard the rattle of shrapnel pocking his wings as he bucked through the broken air. He looked back and pointed at Oliphant, the Flights separated, and he led the Camels away in a long, shallow sideslip.
We have been here before, Oliphant thought. The Nines had moved wide apart as soon as the shelling began. From this height the armoured trains were very thin, no wider than strips of ribbon. The C.O. would want him to go in low, very low, to improve his bombing chances. That was how the Bolos got Michael Lowe. Oliphant searched the sky, half-hoping for three Spads to appear and give his Nines an excuse to dive hard towards home. No Spads. Black shell bursts marched towards him and forced a decision. A compromise.
He took his Flight down to a thousand feet and put them in line astern. A strong wind kept nudging him to the right. He crabbed to the left and hoped the correction would let his bombs drift onto the target. The old familiar tracer, red and yellow, was pulsing up, searching, racing past. Oh yes, we have been here before.
He bombed the first train, then banked hard to give his gunner a clear shot, and watched his explosions chase each other through the grass. He circled and watched the rest of his Flight have the same bad luck. Well, we tried. Oliphant looked up and saw three Spads arriving from the north. You’re late. What kept you? Pink, with yellow flashes. Did the Reds repaint them every night? Or was there an endless supply? The Nines formed up and made haste for home. Slow haste. The bomber flown by Prod Pedlow and Joe Duncan had been hit. Their machine had lost a wheel, the last three feet of its lower port wing was gone, the rudder was trailing yards of fabric and the engine was streaming black smoke. Pedlow and Duncan waved to show that they were unhurt, but they were losing height and their speed was not much above stalling. The other Nines stayed with them, watched the Spads with one eye, and hoped the C.O. would keep the enemy busy.
Wragge did his best. His plan — to strafe the trains when the last bomb exploded — got scrapped. The Camels climbed hard. The Spads, very cavalier in their bright décor, had seen the Nines and were in a long dive to cut them off. By great good luck, Wragge’s course would meet the Spads halfway. It would be a perfect interception: hammer the enemy broadside while he couldn’t bring his guns to bear. The Spads saw it coming.
When the Camels were just out of gun-range, the enemy suddenly turned away and climbed, turned even more and came at them as nicely as a display at an airshow.
The Camels scattered. The usual madhouse began.
Dextry never flew straight. He saw flashing glimpses of a gaudy fuselage, got few chances to fire and by then he was looking at blue sky until a Spad wandered so close to him that he could smell the stink of its exhausts, and he fired one long burst at the cockpit, one single glorious battering burst and the Spad reared so that he saw the pilot’s arms thrown up as if in surrender. Dextry used the Camel’s escape, a hard right bank, and it was too slow. He flew into the Spad and buried his engine into its cockpit. Now the two aeroplanes were welded into one. The control column impaled itself in his stomach and the gun butts flattened his nose. Dextry knew nothing of this. In the instant when he went from a hundred miles an hour to nothing, the fuel tank behind him tore loose, smashed through his seat and crushed his spine.
The wreckage fell, slowly and awkwardly spinning. It did not burn until it struck the ground. The impact burst the tanks and the flames roared.
The scrap had ended. The other two Spads had gone back where they came from and the three Camel pilots had no appetite for pursuit. They went down and circled the crash until the big guns of the armoured trains chased them away.
They caught up with the Nines, by now down to a few hundred feet. They kept clear and tried to guess whether the broken bomber had enough speed to reach the airfield, and if it had, what sort of landing Pedlow would make on one wheel. They watched it tip sideways, at first gently, as if testing the manoeuvre, and then more boldly, until the wings were vertical and the aeroplane sideslipped hard.
From height, say from fifteen hundred or better yet two thousand feet, with ample space to pull out, the move would have looked smooth, even slick. From a few hundred feet, the best that could be said is that it was a quick death. The force of the crash crumpled the Nine as if it had been made of paper. It burned like paper.