“Upstairs as usual. On guard duty.”
Oliphant looked at the raindrops hurrying down the window. “We’ll make one run and hare for home,” he said. “And if any Nine gets shot down by Denikin’s idiots I shall be very cross.”
An hour later they were all in the air, the Nines leading the Camels, everyone just skimming the cloud base. The battle lines were obvious, despite the rain: the flash and smoke of many artillery pieces, the massing of troops behind what were probably fords in the river, cavalry lurking, shell craters appearing in a burst of smoke: it was the same on either side of the river. This was the biggest clash of arms the squadron had seen since Tsaritsyn. As the Nines crossed the river, Oliphant took his Flight up into the cloud.
Wragge cruised on. The cloud base was far more ragged than it seemed from the ground, and the Camels buffeted through these thick tatters. Ground fire contributed a scattering of hopeful ink-blots but the guns couldn’t find the height and they soon gave up. Windscreens were opaque with rain and the pilots didn’t even bother with goggles. All that mattered was the steady, friendly roar of a Le Rhône rotary.
Wragge kept an eye on the time. After two minutes, as planned, the Nines reappeared, widely scattered as he knew they must be. They flew a wide half-circle while they formed up in line astern. Oliphant began the long dive towards the Red positions. The Nine was a heavy biplane and heavily loaded with bombs. Weight and height combined to build speed to its maximum. Oliphant hoped it would see his Flight safely home.
The Camels watched. No Red aircraft were in sight. Not surprising. How could the enemy know exactly when the Nines would raid? But gunners on the ground, heavy-machine-gunners, light artillery, had ample time to see the line of Nines, flying fast but getting lower, and just as Oliphant knew they would, they chucked all kinds of filth at him.
His head was out in the stinging gale of rain, his eyes clenched to slits, trying not to blink as he searched for big guns worth bombing. He saw a battery off to his left just as it fired, and he jinked the Nines to correct their approach. He dropped his whole load in one thankful happy high-explosive goodbye and enjoyed his bomber’s little leap of relief, and zigzagged out of this madhouse.
Wragge waited until all the Nines had bombed and he climbed into the cloud.
It was mysterious stuff, grey and gloomy, seemingly shapeless but populated with swirls and gusts that made an aeroplane drop or bounce or swerve. Some pilots hated cloud, refused to believe their instruments, feared that the cloud would never end, panicked and dived to escape. Sometimes they fell into clean air upside-down and hit a hilltop before they could recover their wits. Wragge knew that trust was the only way to beat cloud. Trust the instruments, trust the altimeter, trust the fact that he’d done it before and it worked. He ignored his senses and his Camel burst into a dazzling world of sun and an outrageous amount of blue sky.
Jessop and Borodin followed, nowhere near him. They came together and searched the sky. Empty. They were at three thousand five hundred. Wragge took them up until he knew their propellers were clawing at the air, just short of ten thousand feet above an earth lost below cloud so white and so widespread that it defeated the eyes.
They settled down to watch and to wait. They flew around a large invisible box: every five minutes Wragge turned them ninety degrees to the left, which meant that every twenty minutes they ended where they had begun, two miles high and alone in an immensity of air.
Jessop didn’t like it. He was cold, his neck ached, he got bored easily even on patrols where you could see the ground, so this nothingness in every direction made time pass awfully slowly. He made a bored face at Borodin, and Borodin smiled back and gave a jolly wave. Jessop scowled. What had bloody Borodin got to be so bloody happy about?
Borodin asked himself that question. It was a very long time since he had experienced happiness. Now, out of the blue — literally so, he was surrounded by the blue — a small rush of happiness had surprised him. Perhaps it was caused by a sense of escape. When he was on earth, nothing raised his spirits. His country was tearing itself apart, and both sides deserved to lose. Up here he was free from Russia and its suicidal folly. Not for long. Enjoy it while you can.
Wragge changed course. Five minutes. Changed course. Five minutes. He began to worry about fuel. Also about winds. Impossible to know whether there was a wind at this height and if so, where was it blowing them? Over Bolshevik territory? They might face a long slog home. Run out of fuel, forced landing, captured by Reds, no morphine phial, no goolie chit, prospects grim. He checked his fuel gauge again and when he looked up Jessop had closed in and was pointing down.
Wragge searched and found nothing and searched again and saw a tiny pencilled mark on the cloud. It moved. It wasn’t one mark, it was three. He used his binoculars. Three hulking great machines, twin-engined, must be bombers, could it be true? Why not, Britain had them, Germany bombed London with them, why shouldn’t the Reds have a few? What a gift. What a bonanza. What a jamboree.
The Camels lost height, spiralling down, checking their speed, keeping themselves between the sun and the target. It was still a fast descent: five thousand feet in as many minutes. The air was thicker, breathing was easier, the rotaries had more oxygen and made more power. And now Wragge saw four bombers, not three, each looking twice as big as a Nine. They flew in pairs, one behind the other. Monsters. Juggernauts. Twin streams of exhaust smoke were pumped out by their twin engines. How big a crew could a beast like this carry? How many guns? Wragge had a sudden fear that his clever plan might not work. Too late now. Should have thought of that earlier.
The bombers had ploughed on. He led the Camels in a dive, full power, if the wings fell off that was tough luck, and they burst through the broken air left behind by all those twin engines. Wragge held the dive and the shapes of the bombers were shrinking. The moment Wragge pulled out, Jessop and Borodin pulled out too, climbed as he climbed. They were clamped in their seats by centrifugal force, vision slightly grey but that passed as the climb became vertical and Holy Moses, the trick worked. The Camel pilots were looking at the shapes, black against the sun, of four Bolo bombers marching to their doom.
Or perhaps not.
Three Camels at the point of stall could hit only what they aimed at. Changing direction to find a new target was not possible. And the bombers were widespread.
Jessop saw an engine and he fired his twin Vickers into it until flame and smoke blotted everything. Borodin saw a tail unit, wide, with double rudders, and he pounded it until it fell to pieces. Wragge was the lucky one. A nose slid into his view and he fired and kept firing as the rest of the fuselage followed and he stopped only when his Camel fell off its stall. By then enemy gunners in the fourth bomber had found the Camels, highly vulnerable as they hung in the sky. Wragge felt the jolt of bullets ripping into his machine. That had not been part of his plan.
In seconds the firing ended, the bombers moved on, the Camels fell towards cloud and safety. They came out of the cloud base and saw three bombers crash and burn and make spectacular explosions. All had fallen on the White side of the river. Wragge wondered whether that was good or not. To be a soldier in the winning army and have an enemy bomber drop on you would be a rotten way to die.
Oh, well. Nichevo. The Camels flew home.
All the aircraft needed to be worked on. Holes patched, spars replaced. A Nine needed a new oil pump, a Camel had a wonky wheel. Wragge gave his crews the rest of the day off. It was still only mid-morning.
The rain had passed and the countryside looked fresh. “I’m going fishing,” Borodin said to Susan Perry. “It’s rather a long way. We could take a couple of ponies.” She was helping Sergeant Stevens clean up after the morning sick parade.