Groundcrew men had already removed the canvas covers from the Martin one-deckers: U.S. copies of a German design. Also copied from the Fokker monoplane was the interrupter gear that let a forward-facing machine gun fire through the spinning propeller without shooting it off and sending the machine down in a long, helpless glide…or that let the machine gun shoot through the prop most of the time, anyhow.
Clumsily, Moss climbed into the cockpit. A couple of bullet holes in the side of the fuselage from his most recent encounter with an enemy aeroplane had been neatly patched. The machine could take punishment. Had the bullets torn through his soft, vulnerable flesh, he would have spent much longer in the shop.
He nodded to a mechanic standing by the propeller. The fellow, his breath smoking in the cold morning air, spun the two-bladed wooden prop. After a couple of tries, the engine caught. Moss studied his instruments. He had plenty of gas and oil, and the pumps for both seemed to be working well. He tapped his compass to make sure the needle hadn't frozen to its case.
When he was satisfied, he waved. The airstrip was full of the growl of motors turning over. Dud Dudley looked around to make sure everyone in his flight had a functioning machine, then taxied across the field-ruts through gray-brown dead grass. Moss followed, watching his ground speed. He pulled back on the joystick, lifting the fighting scout's nose. The aeroplane bounced a couple of more times. After the second bounce, it didn't come down.
He climbed as quickly as he could, going into formation behind his flight leader and to his left. Zach Whitby held the same place relative to him as he did to Dudley. On the right, Tom Innis flew alone.
Down in the trenches, men huddled against cold and mud and frost. The line ran from southeast to northwest between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Behind it, on land the United States had had to fight to win, everything had been wrecked by stubborn Canadian and British defense and equally stubborn American attacks. On the other side, the terrain still showed what a fine country this was.
Machine guns spat fire at the aeroplanes from the enemy's trenches. That was futile; machine-gun bullets reached only a couple of thousand feet, and the Martin single-deckers flew a good deal higher. But soon Canadian and British Archibald-or Archie, as he was more familiarly known-would start putting antiaircraft shells all around them. A lucky hit could bring down an aeroplane. Moss knew that, as he knew of a thousand other ways he could die up here. He did his best to forget what he knew.
Dud Dudley wagged his wings to draw the flight's attention. He pointed to the south. The enemy was in the air, too. There, buzzing along contentedly, as if without a care in the world, was a Canadian-or perhaps a British-two-seater, an old Avro no longer fit for front-line combat but still good enough to take a photographer over the American lines to see what he could see.
As Moss swung into a turn toward the enemy reconnaissance aircraft, he glanced in the rearview mirror, then up and back over his shoulder. Were scouts lurking up there, waiting to pounce when the Americans attacked the Avro? Keeping an eye peeled for such was really Zach Whitby's job, but you didn't get to go back to the officers' lounge and have more drinks if you took too seriously the notion that you didn't have to worry about something because someone else would.
On flew the Avro, straight as if on a string. That meant the observer was taking his pictures, and the pilot, a brave man, wouldn't spoil them even if he was under attack. Moss knew what that took, since he'd piloted observation aircraft himself. He prepared to make the enemy pay for his courage.
He'd just fired his first burst when tracers streaked past him-not from the Avro, but from behind. Zach Whitby's fighting scout tumbled out of the sky, not in any controlled maneuver but diving steeply, a dead man at the controls, flame licking back from the engine. Sure as hell, the Canucks had had a surprise waiting.
Moss threw his own aeroplane into a tight rolling turn to the right. He was more maneuverable than the two-seater on his tail, but the biplane kept after him, firing straight ahead. That wasn't right-the enemy wasn't supposed to have an interrupter gear yet. And they didn't, but this enterprising chap had mounted two machine guns on his lower wing planes, outside the arc of the propeller. He couldn't reload them in flight, but while they had ammo he was dangerous any way you looked at him.
Then, all at once, he wasn't. Tom Innis knocked him down as neatly as he and his chums had ambushed Whitby. Then Innis and Dudley teamed up against one of the other aeroplanes, which caught fire and fell like a dead leaf.
Moss' own turn brought him close to the decoy observation aircraft. The observer, done with photos now, blazed away at him from a ring-mounted machine gun. He fired a burst that made the observer clutch at himself and slumped the pilot over his joystick, dead or unconscious. If he was unconscious, he would die soon; his weight on the stick sent the aeroplane nosing toward the ground.
Jonathan Moss looked around for more foes. He found none. The last enemy two-seater had streaked away, and had gained enough of a lead while the Americans were otherwise engaged to make sure it would not be caught.
Got no guts, Moss thought with weary anger. But for himself and Dudley and Innis, the sky was clear of aircraft. He turned the nose of his Martin toward the aerodrome. Wonder what they'll find us to fill the fourth cot in the tent. With Whitby dead, he knew he should have felt more, but for the life of him that was all his weary brain would muster.
Rain drummed down on the big canvas refugee tent. Here and there, it came through the canvas and made little puddles on the cold ground. One of the puddles was right in front of Anne Colleton's cot. Unless she thought about it, she stepped right into the puddle when she got down.
A couple of little wood-burning stoves in the open space in the middle of the tent glowed red, holding the worst of the chill at bay. One of the women who made the dreary place her home looked at a watch and said, "Five minutes to twelve."
A couple of women and girls murmured excitedly. Anne knew her own face remained stony. Who cared whether 1916 was only five minutes away? The one thing for which she could hope from the year to come was that it would be better than the one that was dying. She did not see how it could possibly be worse, but what did that prove? She was no longer so confident as she had been that she had such a good grasp on what might lie ahead.
"Come on," said the woman with the watch-her name was Melissa. "Let's sing 'Auld Lang Syne.'"
Some of the women did begin to sing: softly, so as not to disturb those who had gone to sleep instead of staying up to see in the new year. Off in the distance, artillery rumbled, throwing shells at the territory still proclaimed to be the Congaree Socialist Republic, the territory that, shrunken though it was in the fighting of late, still included Marshlands.
Before the Red revolt, Anne could not have told that distant artillery from distant thunder, nor the crack of a Springfield from that of a Tredegar. She'd learned a lot, these past few weeks, and would have given a lot to unlearn it.
Melissa looked across the tent at her. "You're not singing, Miss Colleton," she said, her voice full of shrill complaint. She was plump and homely, and her hair must have stolen its golden sheen from a bottle, because the part of it closest to her head had grown out mouse-brown.
"That's right. I'm not singing," Anne replied. Take it or leave it, her tone said. She did not feel like being sociable. Unlike most of the women in the tent, unlike their male kin in other tents, she could have escaped the refugee camp any time she chose. But she could not make herself move any farther from Marshlands than she had to. She had food of a sort, shelter of a sort, clothing of a sort. Yes, she'd been used to better, but she was discovering better, while pleasant, was less than necessary. Here she would stay, till the rebellion collapsed-or till she strangled Melissa, which might come first.