‘I am told, Mademoiselle Corrine,’ de Billancourt said, when he finally roused himself, no doubt aided by alcohol, ‘you will go out tonight with stretcher parties to look for anyone still alive?’
‘I have to.’
‘Very dangerous, I think, and very brave.’
‘She doesn’t have to,’ Jardine said, ‘she chooses to.’
‘Maybe I misnamed you: Doc Savage wouldn’t hesitate to keep me company, especially him being a medical man.’
‘Give that a rest, will you?’
‘You should black up if you’re going out, miss,’ Vince said. ‘There’s not likely to be a lot of light tonight, what with the cloud cover that’s come over, but they will be putting up star shells.’
‘It’s bad for my complexion, Vince.’
‘A bullet’s worse.’
‘What the hell do you care, Jardine?’
‘Odd as it seems, idiot, I do, but don’t think it’s because you’re a female, not that it’s certain.’
‘Anybody suggested you go to charm school, buster?’
‘God help me if you ever went to one.’
‘Ah!’ de Billancourt sighed, with a wry and irritating smile, ‘it is sad when friends fall out, is it not?’
‘At least I have you for a friend, Henri.’
‘Maybe we should get out of here, Vince,’ Jardine sighed. ‘There are some Italians whose company I prefer.’
‘Those shitty bastards!’ she responded angrily, before realising what she had said. ‘Sorry, Vince.’
‘No offence taken, miss, but I’m a bit like the guv here. I wish you would put a sock in it.’
Her reaction was a startled ‘Oh!’ — clearly, being put down by Vince mattered.
Seeing Jardine grinning, Vince added, ‘An’ that goes for you too, guv. It would be much better if you just admitted you fancied her and stopped all the bollocks.’
In the embarrassed silence that followed, the Frenchman, who had now drunk a fair amount of whisky, became more animated, his dancing eyes searching the surrounding faces: Alverson’s grin, Vince’s irritation and the crabbed looks being exchanged between Jardine and the girl. A sort of dawning seemed to appear in his expression, for Vince’s words did not need to be clearly understood in an atmosphere so crackling with obvious tension. Finally he spoke, looking directly at Cal Jardine.
‘When my aircraft is repaired, which it will be by tomorrow, Ras Kassa has asked me to do a reconnaissance sweep again.’
‘So?’
‘Mon ami, I do not have an observer and I need someone trained to fire my Vickers.’
Then de Billancourt came out with a full smile, for the first time that night, and aimed it right at Corrie Littleton, while Jardine heard himself saying, ‘You found one.’
Everyone knew what had just happened: a gauntlet had just been thrown down and Tyler Alverson was not the only one to speak. ‘Game on, boys.’ Vince Castellano was the other. ‘They’ll be bloody well jousting next.’
‘Have I missed something?’ Corrie Littleton asked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The aircraft mechanics, a mixed bag of Frenchmen, Germans and Ethiopians, had travelled down from de Billancourt’s airfield as soon as they were alerted to the need for repairs, bringing with them on a flatbed truck a complete set of spares, a generator and arc lights by which they could work, as well as a drum of fuel.
The Potez, which was not as badly damaged as first appeared, was serviceable again before dawn, the holes in the canvas covered, several broken struts, a wheel and damaged instruments replaced, the whole covered in a camouflaged sheet before the prospect of a dawn raid by Italian fighters.
Even if that did not materialise, they had to wait till mid-morning to take off on a less-than-perfect strip: it required a party of warriors to clear away a number of rocks. Initially, once airborne, de Billancourt turned south, wishing to test out the repairs before heading for enemy airspace.
There would be standing patrols of Italian fighters up and flying, but, even as numerous as they were, they had a lot of sky to cover along a potential front line stretching hundreds of miles, while a good proportion of their strength had to be diverted to the Somali border, the scene of another hard-fought battle in which the peasant army was pushing back the Italians who had invaded.
Aeroplanes are noisy: you can hear them coming from a long way off and the higher they are, the easier it is to both hear and spot them. The ground-skimming tactic that de Billancourt employed once he did turn north was to avoid a too-rapid alert of an Italian defence line that would have been stood to at first light and kept there in anticipation of another assault, while his relative speed was another safeguard.
At low altitude the aircraft would come upon the Blackshirt infantry unsighted and at speed, cutting down their ability to react. So low were they that Jardine reckoned a pair of scissors would be handy — he could have cut some enemy hair, and it was possible the undercart took off some steel helmets. But it did protect them from ground fire, which was wild and inaccurate. From above and in open country, de Billancourt was relying on his camouflage and the hope that any Italian fighters were at distance enough to make him invisible against the broken ground below.
Ras Kassa wanted to know if the Italians were moving forces to face him on the Ethiopian left wing, which led Jardine to suspect, though he had not been told, that things were not progressing as hoped in the main assault further east, and no doubt the counterpart commander of the right wing was asking the same question.
Without metalled roads in very rough country, the Italians would only move in daylight over that which their engineers had provided — a dusty bulldozed track that would not survive the rains when they came — with the added safety of their air superiority to protect them. Even then they could not do so quickly; any build-up should be evident, which would obviate the need to remain over enemy air space for a long period.
The column was not immediately visible but the dust they were sending up was plain for miles, rising on the warm air currents, especially as the Potez was still flying frighteningly low, skimming through slight depressions to stay hidden and near to touching the scrub-covered ground in more open areas. Jardine spent as much time looking at the mounds he was sure de Billancourt was going to plough into as he did searching the sky for enemy fighters, thinking the risk from the former was probably greater than from the latter: the fixed undercarriage was often so close to the earth he feared it might be ripped off by an unseen boulder or tree.
For all his concerns, it was the only safe way to fly and had to be accepted: altitude increased danger, and it takes more than sharp eyes from above to spot a camouflaged aircraft against a same-coloured backdrop over up to a mile — it takes luck. Also, if de Billancourt was an arrogant bastard and a daredevil sod, he was also a damned-good pilot, so Jardine concentrated on keeping his breakfast coffee in his gut as the Potez jinked, rose, swooped and occasionally dropped at a rate that left his stomach under his chin.
The Frenchman was making for the billowing dust, even though that would likewise be visible to, and might attract the attention of, Italian pilots, working on the assumption of there being so few Ethiopian planes they were a rare problem on the front lines and non-existent behind them. So, unless a radio message had been sent from the point of crossing to say that one had entered this particular rear area, it was not something the enemy would expect or look out for with too much zeal.
After a last check of the sky, Jardine got himself into position to use his Vickers; he had no need to be told what was required: having been on the receiving end of aerial gunfire he knew what the pilot would do. Through the dust de Billancourt could now see a line of ten trucks making their way along a rough roadway created by their engineers to get supplies up to the front-line forces. Unprotected on the assumption such a thing was seen as unnecessary, they paid the price as he banked to fly up their line.