A Trail of Fire Page 2

  On fire, but terrified of bailing out into a sky filled with smoke, bullets, and random explosions, he’d ridden his burning plane down, both of them screaming as they fell out of the sky, Dolly I’s metal skin so hot it had seared his left forearm through his jacket, his right foot squelching in the blood that filled his boot as he stamped the rudder pedal. Made it, though, and had been on the sick and hurt list for two months. He still limped very noticeably, but he didn’t regret his smashed patella; he’d had his second month’s sick leave at home – and wee Roger had come along nine months later.

  He smiled broadly at the thought of his lad, and Randall smiled back in involuntary response.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘You’re all right to fly a long mission, then?’

  Jerry shrugged. ‘How long can it be in a Spitfire? Unless you’ve thought up a way to refuel in the air.’ He’d meant that as a joke, and was further disconcerted to see Randall’s lips purse a little, as though thinking whether to tell him they had.

  ‘It is a Spitfire ye mean me to fly?’ he asked, suddenly uncertain. Christ, what if it was one of the experimental birds they heard about now and again? His skin prickled with a combination of fear and excitement. But Randall nodded.

  ‘Oh, yes, certainly. Nothing else is manoeuvrable enough, and there may be a good bit of ducking and dodging. What we’ve done is to take a Spitfire II, remove one pair of wing-guns, and refit it with a pair of cameras.’

  ‘One pair?’

  Again that slight pursing of lips before Randall replied.

  ‘You might need the second pair of guns.’

  ‘Oh. Aye. Well, then . . .’

  The immediate notion, as Randall explained it, was for Jerry to go to Northumberland, where he’d spend two weeks being trained in the use of the wing-cameras, taking pictures of selected bits of landscape at different altitudes. And where he’d work with a support team who were meant to be trained in keeping the cameras functioning in bad weather. They’d teach him how to get the film out without ruining it, just in case he had to. After which . . .

  ‘I can’t tell you yet exactly where you’ll be going,’ Randall had said. His manner through the conversation had been intent, but friendly, joking now and then. Now all trace of joviality had vanished; he was dead serious. ‘Eastern Europe is all I can say just now.’

  Jerry felt his inside hollow out a little and took a deep breath to fill the empty space. He could say no. But he’d signed up to be an RAF flier, and that’s what he was.

  ‘Aye, right. Will I— maybe see my wife once, before I go, then?’

  Randall’s face softened a little at that, and Jerry saw the Captain’s thumb touch his own gold wedding ring in reflex.

  ‘I think that can be arranged.’

  Marjorie MacKenzie – Dolly to her husband – opened the blackout curtains. No more than an inch . . . well, two inches. It wouldn’t matter; the inside of the little flat was dark as the inside of a coal-scuttle. London outside was equally dark; she knew the curtains were open only because she felt the cold glass of the window through the narrow crack. She leaned close, breathing on the glass, and felt the moisture of her breath condense, cool near her face. Couldn’t see the mist, but felt the squeak of her fingertip on the glass as she quickly drew a small heart there, the letter J inside.

  It faded at once, of course, but that didn’t matter; the charm would be there when the light came in, invisible but there, standing between her husband and the sky.

  When the light came, it would fall just so, across his pillow. She’d see his sleeping face in the light: the jackstraw hair, the fading bruise on his temple, the deep-set eyes, closed in innocence. He looked so young, asleep. Almost as young as he really was. Only twenty-two; too young to have such lines in his face. She touched the corner of her mouth, but couldn’t feel the crease the mirror showed her – her mouth was swollen, tender, and the ball of her thumb ran across her lower lip, lightly, to and fro.

  What else, what else? What more could she do for him? He’d left her with something of himself. Perhaps there would be another baby – something he gave her, but something she gave him, as well. Another baby. Another child to raise alone?

  ‘Even so,’ she whispered, her mouth tightening, face raw from hours of stubbled kissing; neither of them had been able to wait for him to shave. ‘Even so.’

  At least he’d got to see Roger. Hold his little boy – and have said little boy sick up milk all down the back of his shirt. Jerry’d yelped in surprise, but hadn’t let her take Roger back; he’d held his son and petted him until the wee mannie fell asleep, only then laying him down in his basket and stripping off the stained shirt before coming to her.

  It was cold in the room, and she hugged herself. She was wearing nothing but Jerry’s string vest – he thought she looked erotic in it, ‘lewd,’ he said, approving, his Highland accent making the word sound really dirty – and the thought made her smile. The thin cotton clung to her breasts, true enough, and her nipples poked out something scandalous, if only from the chill.

  She wanted to go crawl in next to him, longing for his warmth, longing to keep touching him for as long as they had. He’d need to go at eight, to catch the train back; it would barely be light then. Some puritanical impulse of denial kept her hovering there, though, cold and wakeful in the dark. She felt as though if she denied herself, her desire, offered that denial as sacrifice, it would strengthen the magic, help to keep him safe and bring him back. God knew what a minister would say to that bit of superstition, and her tingling mouth twisted in self-mockery. And doubt.

  Still, she sat in the dark, waiting for the cold blue light of the dawn that would take him.

  Baby Roger put an end to her dithering, though; babies did. He rustled in his basket, making the little waking-up grunts that presaged an outraged roar at the discovery of a wet nappy and an empty stomach, and she hurried across the tiny room to his basket, breasts swinging heavy, already letting down her milk. She wanted to keep him from waking Jerry, but stubbed her toe on the spindly chair, and sent it over with a bang.

  There was an explosion of bedclothes as Jerry sprang up with a loud ‘FUCK!’ that drowned her own muffled ‘damn!’ and Roger topped them both with a shriek like an air-raid siren. Like clockwork, old Mrs Munns in the next flat thumped indignantly on the thin wall.

  Jerry’s naked shape crossed the room in a bound. He pounded furiously on the partition with his fist, making the wallboard quiver and boom like a drum. He paused, fist still raised, waiting. Roger had stopped screeching, impressed by the racket.

  Dead silence from the other side of the wall, and Marjorie pressed her mouth against Roger’s round little head to muffle her giggling. He smelled of baby-scent and fresh pee, and she cuddled him like a large hot-water bottle, his immediate warmth and need making her notions of watching over her men in the lonely cold seem silly.

  Jerry gave a satisfied grunt and came across to her.

  ‘Ha,’ he said, and kissed her.

  ‘What d’ye think you are?’ she whispered, leaning into him. ‘A gorilla?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he whispered back, taking her hand and pressing it against him. ‘Want to see my banana?’

  ‘Dzien dobry.’

  Jerry halted in the act of lowering himself into a chair, and stared at a smiling Frank Randall.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ he said. ‘Like that, is it? Niech sie pan odpierdoli.’ It meant, ‘Fuck off, sir,’ in formal Polish, and Randall, taken by surprise, broke out laughing.

  ‘Like that,’ he agreed. He had a wodge of papers with him, official forms, all sorts, the bumf as the pilots called it – Jerry recognised the one you signed that named who your pension went to, and the one about what to do with your body if there was one and anyone had time to bother. He’d done all that when he signed up, but they made you do it again, if you went on special service. He ignored the forms, though, eyes fixed instead on the maps Randall had brought.

  ‘And here’s me thinkin’ you and
Malan picked me for my bonny face,’ he drawled, exaggerating his accent. He sat and leaned back, affecting casualness. ‘It is Poland, then?’ So it hadn’t been coincidence, after all – or only the coincidence of Dolly’s mishap sending him into the building early. In a way, that was comforting; it wasn’t the bloody Hand of Fate tapping him on the shoulder by puncturing the fuel line. The Hand of Fate had been in it a good bit earlier, putting him in Green flight with Andrzej Kolodziewicz.

  Andrzej was a real guid yin, a good friend. He’d copped it a month before, spiralling up away from a Messerschmitt. Maybe he’d been blinded by the sun, maybe just looking over the wrong shoulder. Left wing shot to hell, and he’d spiralled right back down and into the ground. Jerry hadn’t seen the crash, but he’d heard about it. And got drunk on vodka with Andrzej’s brother after.

  ‘Poland,’ Randall agreed. ‘Malan says you can carry on a conversation in Polish. That true?’

  ‘I can order a drink, start a fight, or ask directions. Any of that of use?’

  ‘The last one might be,’ Randall said, very dry. ‘But we’ll hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  The MI6 agent had pushed aside the forms, and unrolled the maps. Despite himself, Jerry leaned forward, drawn as by a magnet. They were official maps, but with markings made by hand – circles, X’s.

  ‘It’s like this,’ Randall said, flattening the maps with both hands. ‘The Nazis have had labour camps in Poland for the last two years, but it’s not common knowledge among the public, either home or abroad. It would be very helpful to the war effort if it were common knowledge. Not just the camps’ existence, but the kind of thing that goes on there.’ A shadow crossed the dark, lean face – anger, Jerry thought, intrigued. Apparently, Mr MI6 knew what kind of thing went on there, and he wondered how.

  ‘If we want it widely known and widely talked about – and we do – we need documentary evidence,’ Randall said matter-of-factly. ‘Photographs.’

  There’d be four of them, he said, four Spitfire pilots. A flight – but they wouldn’t fly together. Each one of them would have a specific target, geographically separate, but all to be hit on the same day.

  ‘The camps are guarded, but not with anti-aircraft ordnance. There are towers, though; machine-guns.’ And Jerry didn’t need telling that a machine-gun was just as effective in someone’s hands as it was from an enemy plane. To take the sort of pictures Randall wanted would mean coming in low – low enough to risk being shot from the towers. His only advantage would be the benefit of surprise; the guards might spot him, but they wouldn’t be expecting him to come diving out of the sky for a low pass just above the camp.

  ‘Don’t try for more than one pass, unless the cameras malfunction. Better to have fewer pictures than none at all.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He’d reverted to ‘sir’, as Group Captain Malan was present at the meeting, silent but listening intently. Got to keep up appearances.

  ‘Here’s the list of the targets you’ll practise on in Northumberland. Get as close as you think reasonable, without risking—’ Randall’s face did change at that, breaking into a wry smile. ‘Get as close as you can manage with a chance of coming back, all right? The cameras may be worth even more than you are.’

  That got a faint chuckle from Malan. Pilots – especially trained pilots – were valuable. The RAF had plenty of planes now, but nowhere near enough pilots to fly them.

  He’d be taught to use the wing-cameras and to unload the film safely. If he was shot down but was still alive and the plane didn’t burn, he was to get the film out and try to get it back over the border.

  ‘Hence the Polish.’ Randall ran a hand through his hair, and gave Jerry a crooked smile. ‘If you have to walk out, you may need to ask directions.’ They had two Polish-speaking pilots, he said – one Pole and a Hungarian who’d volunteered, and an Englishman with a few words of the language, like Jerry.

  ‘And it is a volunteer mission, let me reiterate.’

  ‘Aye, I know,’ Jerry said irritably. ‘Said I’d go, didn’t I? Sir.’

  ‘You did.’ Randall looked at him for a moment, dark eyes unreadable, then lowered his gaze to the maps again. ‘Thanks,’ he said softly.

  The canopy snicked shut over his head. It was a dank, damp Northumberland day, and his breath condensed on the inside of the Perspex hood within seconds. He leaned forward to wipe it away, emitting a sharp yelp as several strands of his hair were ripped out. He’d forgotten to duck. Again. He shoved the canopy release with a muttered oath and the light brown strands caught in the seam where the Perspex closed flew away, caught up by the wind. He closed the canopy again, crouching, and waiting for the signal for take-off.

  The signalman wig-wagged him and he turned up the throttle, feeling the plane begin to move.

  He touched his pocket automatically, whispering, ‘Love you, Dolly,’ under his breath. Everyone had his little ritual, those last few moments before take-off. For Jerry MacKenzie, it was his wife’s face and his lucky stone that usually settled the worms in his belly. She’d found it in a rocky hill on the Isle of Lewis, where they’d spent their brief honeymoon – a rough sapphire, she said, very rare.

  ‘Like you,’ he’d said, and kissed her.

  No need for worms just the now, but it wasn’t a ritual if you only did it sometimes, was it? And even if it wasn’t going to be combat today, he’d need to be paying attention.

  He went up in slow circles, getting the feel of the new plane, sniffing to get her scent. He wished they’d let him fly Dolly II, her seat stained with his sweat, the familiar dent in the console where he’d slammed his fist in exultation at a kill – but they’d already modified this one with the wing-cameras and the latest thing in night-sights. It didn’t do to get attached to the planes, anyway; they were almost as fragile as the men flying them, though the parts could be reused.

  No matter; he’d sneaked out to the hangar the evening before and done a quick rag-doll on the nose to make it his. He’d know Dolly III well enough by the time they went into Poland.

  He dived, pulled up sharp, and did Dutch rolls for a bit, wigwagging through the cloud-layer, then complete rolls and Immelmanns, all the while reciting Malan’s Rules to focus his mind and keep from getting air-sick.

  The Rules were posted in every RAF barracks now: the Ten Commandments, the fliers called them – and not as a joke.

  TEN OF MY RULES FOR AIR FIGHTING, the poster said in bold black type. Jerry knew them by heart.

  ‘Wait until you see the whites of his eyes,’ he chanted under his breath. ‘Fire short bursts of one to two seconds only when your sights are definitely “ON”.’ He glanced at his sights, suffering a moment’s disorientation. The camera wizard had relocated them. Shite.

  ‘Whilst shooting think of nothing else, brace the whole of your body: have both hands on the stick: concentrate on your ring sight.’ Well, away to fuck, then. The buttons that operated the camera weren’t on the stick; they were on a box connected to a wire that ran out the window; the box itself was strapped to his knee. He’d be bloody looking out the window anyway, not using sights – unless things went wrong and he had to use the guns. In which case . . .

  ‘Always keep a sharp lookout. “Keep your finger out.” ’ Aye, right, that one was still good.

  ‘Height gives you the initiative.’ Not in this case. He’d be flying low, under the radar, and not be looking for a fight. Always the chance one might find him, though. If any German craft found him flying solo in Poland, his best chance was likely to head straight for the sun and fall in. That thought made him smile.

  ‘Always turn and face the attack.’ He snorted and flexed his bad knee, which ached with the cold. Aye, if you saw it coming in time.

  ‘Make your decisions promptly. It is better to act quickly even though your tactics are not the best.’ He’d learnt that one fast. His body often was moving before his brain had even notified his consciousness that he’d seen something. Nothing to see just now, nor did he
expect to, but he kept looking by reflex.

  ‘Never fly straight and level for more than 30 seconds in the combat area.’ Definitely out. Straight and level was just what he was going to have to do. And slowly.

  ‘When diving to attack always leave a proportion of your formation above to act as a top guard.’ Irrelevant; he wouldn’t have a formation – and that was a thought that gave him the cold grue. He’d be completely alone; no help coming if he got into bother.

  ‘INITIATIVE, AGGRESSION, AIR DISCIPLINE, and TEAM WORK are words that MEAN something in Air Fighting.’ Yeah, they did. What meant something in reconnaissance? Stealth, Speed, and Bloody Good Luck, more like. He took a deep breath, and dived, shouting the last of the Ten Commandments so it echoed in his Perspex shell.

  ‘Go in quickly – Punch hard – GET OUT!’

  ‘Rubber-necking,’ they called it, but Jerry usually ended a day’s flying feeling as though he’d been cast in concrete from the shoulder-blades up. He bent his head forward now, ferociously massaging the base of his skull to ease the growing ache. He’d been practising since dawn, and it was nearly tea-time. Ball-bearings, set, for the use of pilots, one, he thought. Ought to add that to the standard equipment list. He shook his head like a wet dog, hunched his shoulders, groaning, then resumed the sector-by-sector scan of the sky around him that every pilot did religiously, three hundred and sixty degrees, every moment in the air. All the live ones, anyway.

  Dolly’d given him a white silk scarf as a parting present. He didn’t know how she’d managed the money for it and she wouldn’t let him ask, just settled it round his neck inside his flight jacket. Somebody’d told her the Spitfire pilots all wore them, to save the constant collar-chafing, and she meant him to have one. It felt nice, he’d admit that. Made him think of her touch when she’d put it on him. He pushed the thought hastily aside; the last thing he could afford to do was start thinking about his wife, if he ever hoped to get back to her. And he did mean to get back to her.