Patiently, Lydecker studied the mission rotas and the catapult launch schedules, waiting for the day when Pfitz was to be first in line.
It was a bright, windy afternoon that day on the Yankee Station. The mission was close support on some hostile ville on the Cambodian border. Pfitz was in a good mood. He had just heard that he was getting a new Phantom the day after tomorrow. First in the flight, he was towed into position on the catapult and waited with his canopy up for the Chester B. to get up steam and turn into the wind. He saw the rescue helicopters take off and assume their positions a hundred yards out from the sides of the carrier. Pfitz looked at the catapult crew hunched against the rush of wind with their thick goggles and macrocephalic helmets. He saw the thin figure of that shithead Lydecker staring up at him, the wire launch bridle dangling from his hand. Little bastard. He began to feel uncomfortable at the insistent way Lydecker was looking at him. He seemed to remember seeing too much of the little creep around lately. He’d have to kick his butt in when he got back, get the S.O.B, to keep his distance. He hauled down his canopy as he heard the crackle of instructions in his earphones preparing him for takeoff and the Rose Train’s thirty-fifth mission. As he ran through the final cockpit checks he noticed the hunched, beetling figure of Lydecker scuttling up to the nose wheel to secure the catapult bridle. As he moved out of his vision, Pfitz reflected that he’d never really taught the little shit a proper lesson; he should have had him transferred right away.
Lydecker paused for a moment at the nose of the Crusader, out of Pfitz’s line of sight, buffeted by the rush of wind. For an instant he rested his gloved hand on the side of the plane and felt it shuddering from the power of its engine. His ear-muffles dampened all noise to a muted seashell roar. Then he crouched down and fitted both ends of the cables to the shackles on the nose wheel, looping the middle over the protruding shark’s fin of the towing block. He knelt at the front of the plane for a second as if in supplication. And then, making sure his body obscured the view of the catapult officer, he swiftly withdrew the heavy beer can from his jacket and slotted it neatly into the recessed track, like a stubby bolt in a crossbow, just in front of the towing block.
Pfitz should have an unimpeded, normal takeoff until the towing block reached the end of the catapult track. Then there would be a slight but vital check to the momentum imparted by the tons of steam pressure driving the block, as it obliterated the solid can, jamming its clear run to the end of the track. It would be a slight, almost unnoticeable impediment but, Lydecker had calculated, a crucial one.
Lydecker ran back to his station and waved okay to the catapult officer, who barely acknowledged Lydecker’s signal. It was just one launch among hundreds he had supervised, another routine mission. Nothing would happen. You were remote on the Yankee Station, the battles were elsewhere, over the horizon. Nobody attacked you and you never saw the people you atomized, shattered and burned.
Lydecker saw Pfitz lock into full afterburn. The catapult officer swept his arm forward. The seaman across the deck punched the black rubber button on the console and the catapult’s release sent the Crusader blasting down the track.
Only Lydecker observed the tiny explosion as the towing block ploughed through the can, grinding it into the end of the track. A minute, inconsequential impact. But the effect on Pfitz’s Crusader was dramatic. Instead of being thrown up at an angle into the skies, the plane was flung down a shallow slope into the sea some two hundred yards in front and to the left of the carrier. It was over in a couple of seconds. With a huge gout of spray, the Crusader was flipped into the sea, salt water flooding into the gaping intake, the screaming jets plunging the fully loaded aircraft deep under the surface.
There were shouts of alarm from the deck, but everything happened too quickly. Within moments they passed the spot where Pfitz had gone down; bubbling crazy water, a slick of oil, and men claimed to see the pale shape of the Crusader slipping ever deeper beneath the green surface of the sea.
Pfitz never came up and there was no further trace of the plane. The end of the catapult was found to be slightly warped and scarred, and the accident was put down to yet another malfunction. The day’s mission was aborted while the mechanism was taken apart.
Lydecker stood on the edge of the deck and looked out to where the rescue helicopters futilely hovered above the oil slick. Groups of men stood about and talked of the accident. Lydecker’s heart was racing and his eyes were bright. Pfitz and his napalm somewhere at the bottom of the South China Sea. He felt good. No, he felt magnificent. He wanted to bite the stars.
Histoire Vache
“So you are still a virgin,” Pierre-Etienne said triumphantly, stubbing out his cigarette.
It had to come out, Eric thought. They had been talking earnestly about sex all afternoon. Under cross-examination Eric had mentioned an older girl-cousin called Jean and suggestively introduced the notion of a seaside holiday and a sand dune picnic à deux. He had tried to keep the details vague, but conversations of this sort remorselessly turned towards the specific and Pierre-Etienne and Momo (Maurice) had been unsparing in their search for the truth. They had really pinned him down this time. Yes or no, they demanded; did you or didn’t you?
“I don’t believe it,” Momo said. “You never?”
Eric shook his head, trying to smile away his blush. They were sitting at a café in the main square of Villers-Bocage. It was market day and the place was full of livestock and people. Momentarily Eric’s attention was distracted by the sight of a red-faced farmer in the typical knee-length Normandy blouson, energetically tugging on the tail of a cow as if he were trying to wrench it out by the roots. Eric winced.
He looked back at his two companions. Pierre-Etienne was the same age as he; last Easter he’d spent two weeks in England at Eric’s home. Momo was Pierre-Etienne’s brother, a little older — nearly seventeen — plump and trying to grow a moustache. Eric didn’t like him that much; his air of amused tolerance towards the two younger boys was extremely irritating. Momo had a girlfriend of sorts, Eric knew, but he’d never seen Pierre-Etienne with one.
Eric sipped his Diabolo-menthe. He adored the chill green drink, clear and clinking with ice cubes. It was the best thing about France, he decided. He’d never learn the language, he was sure, and as far as he was concerned it wasn’t worth the last two weeks of his summer holiday. Pierre-Etienne’s father was the director of the Villers-Bocage abattoir, and as a result of his job the family ate meat for every meal; every sort and cut imaginable: pork, veal, beef, kidneys, heart, brains, revolting spongy tripe, lamb, oxtails, trotters, fatty purple sausages, all of it pink and undercooked and oozing with blood. Eric was returning directly to school in three days and he sometimes found himself longing for shepherd’s pie or a thick Bisto stew.
“But surely you’re one — a virgin — too?” he said to Pierre-Etienne in half-hearted counter-attack.
“Of course not.” Pierre-Etienne looked offended.
“But you don’t have a girl-friend,” Eric said. “How could you?”