African Sky (38 page)

‘All right,' she said. ‘With luck they'll think a low, slow flight by a Harvard is part of the graduation show. You said one bomb will be enough, right?'

‘Yes.'

‘To kill eight hundred men?' She sounded dubious. ‘I know this sarin stuff is deadly, but that's amazing.'

‘The second bomb is a back-up only, in case we are way off target. This agent
is
amazing, Catherine. Just a milligram of sarin will kill a man in less than a minute. The skin will easily absorb it in vapour form. The first symptoms are a runny nose and then difficulty in breathing. Next the victim starts to vomit and then he loses control of his bodily functions. The poison induces convulsions so violent that the victim becomes comatose and can't breathe.'

She said nothing, just stared at the bomb, and then him, in awe.

A far-off drone made them both look skywards. ‘Hell,' she said.

‘Aircraft?'

As a pilot she was used to searching the sky for other aeroplanes. She saw the black dot before he did. ‘Yes, coming from the south, see it?'

‘Should we hide?' he asked.

‘No, if they're onto us we won't get a second chance to take off. Let's go!'

He worried about her last remark but had no time to challenge her. She had assured him that she had covered her trail. Perhaps Felicity had been able to warn someone else of her discovery.

*

‘So why would Catherine kill Felicity?' Pip asked. They had been talking about Catherine's possible motive.

‘There's something I didn't tell you,' he said into the intercom.

‘She tried to contact you on the night of her death,' Pip said.

‘How did you know that?'

‘I checked your comings and goings with the front gate at Kumalo. They told me you'd left the base at some time that night . . .'

‘It was about five in the morning, to collect some illegal fuel for Catherine,' he explained.

‘Yes, I know that now. Anyway, the duty NCO said you'd also had a message to call someone that night and your Corporal Richards confirmed it was Felicity.'

‘I didn't get that message until the morning, until it was too late,' he said. ‘God,' he added, ‘if I'd got it, I might have been able to save her life, and foil Catherine's plot at the same time. I guess the mess steward didn't try to wake me because he thought I'd be passed out – dead drunk. And normally he would have been bloody right.'

After a while Pip said, ‘So it's possible Felicity was not part of the plot, but that she somehow got wind of it.'

‘And Catherine killed her to silence her. I could have saved her, Pip.'

‘What's to say you would have made it in time?'

He shook his head. ‘We're almost there. That's the Deka River below.' He pushed the stick forward and the Harvard started to dive.

Pip felt the aircraft vibrate. ‘Going a bit fast, aren't we?'

‘I want to jump them – take them by surprise if they're still on the ground. Pip! Look down, one o'clock. There's our missing aeroplane!'

Pip craned her head but saw nothing until he lowered the starboard wing a fraction. ‘Got it! Paul, what are you going to do?'

‘No one's supposed to be up here today, Pip. That's got to be Smythe's kite, and whoever's in it, is in it illegally. We're at war, Constable, so I'm going to do the only thing I can.'

Pip gripped the sides of her seat as she felt the angle of their Harvard's dive steepen. Ahead of her she saw Paul pull down the goggles attached to his flying helmet so that they covered his eyes. He
fastened the oxygen mask across his face, presumably so he could use both hands, and she copied him.

‘Hold tight,' he said, ‘this is going to be fast and noisy.'

Below them, Catherine's Harvard trundled down the grass airstrip, gaining speed.

Bryant had to concentrate on everything at once – the target, his airspeed, his altitude. He flicked the switch on the armaments panel to the left of the other gauges to ‘guns'.

Pip felt herself being pushed into the seatback behind her and her stomach churned as Paul flattened out a little. She heard the rattle of the machine-guns and felt the airframe judder.

The Harvard filled the sight in front of him and he thumbed the firing button on the stick again, but in an instant the target was gone. He watched his bullets raise puffs of dirt and grass behind the taxiing aeroplane. ‘Shit!' he said. He hadn't allowed enough deflection in his aim for the speed of Catherine's aircraft and the fall of his bullets.

‘Stay calm, Paul, you can do it,' Pip urged. In truth, she felt absolutely helpless and terrified.

He yanked the stick back into his belly and the Harvard climbed back into the cloudless sky. He kicked the rudder pedal and brought the aircraft around in a steep port turn that he fancied had rivets popping in the wings.

Pip felt nauseated and swallowed repeatedly. She wanted nothing more now than to be back on the ground.

‘Damn, I've lost her,' Bryant said. He had only ever fired an aircraft's guns once, before he was kicked out of fighter-pilot school. On that occasion, the target had been a brightly painted wooden panel laid out in the centre of a field. It wasn't moving, but he, like most first-time gunnery students, had missed it by a mile. He took his hat off to the Brylcream boys in their spitfires. This was no easy job for a bomber pilot.

Pip's head lolled against the right-hand side of the cockpit, and she wiped a string of drool from her lips. A flash of movement against the unending brown bush caught her eyes. ‘There!' she croaked, and the mere act of speaking almost made her throw up.

‘Where?'

‘Below, right, um; two, no, three o'clock.'

‘Good girl!' he said. He rolled the Harvard over on its right side. Pip tore off her oxygen mask and vomited between her knees. Paul sensed what was going on. ‘You'll live,' he said to her. I hope, he prayed silently.

Pip wiped her mouth and streaming eyes, and tried to see over Paul's shoulder.

‘Got you,' Bryant said as the other Harvard filled his gun sight. He aimed ahead of Catherine's aircraft, guessing how much he would have to lead her to compensate for the speed at which she was travelling. He pressed the firing button with his thumb, and the aircraft shuddered.

He held his breath, then cursed again as he saw the glowing tracer rounds sail harmlessly to the right of the other Harvard. Catherine had sensed his next move and jinked hard to the left just in time to save herself. ‘Damn, she's a good flyer,' Bryant said.

Just end it, quickly, Pip thought to herself. She saw a flash of sunlight glint off the other aircraft's cockpit, to their left. ‘She's climbing, Paul,' she forced herself to say.

‘I see her,' he said. He banked to the left to try to follow her, but Catherine had started her turn much earlier. He realised she was turning inside him and, if they both kept on the same course, she would end up behind him. He turned the Harvard on its back and pulled the stick into his stomach. His vision started to grey out as the G-forces drained the blood from his vital organs.

‘Oh, God, noooo!' Pip yelled.

‘Hold on,' he gasped.

Catherine started climbing, but Bryant stayed low and cut his airspeed. Pip revelled in the moment of straight, level flight, but was then instantly alarmed. ‘She's above us, Paul. Aren't we sitting ducks like this?'

‘That's what I want her to think,' he replied. He put the Harvard into a slow, gentle left-hand turn. Ahead of him, in the distance, he saw Isilwane's airstrip. ‘Good,' he said. ‘At least we've kept them from flying south.'

‘Good plan,' Pip said, ‘but look behind us. Here she comes!'

He looked behind and above him and saw Catherine's Harvard enter
a steep dive. He held the stick steady, flying straight and level. He moved his hand over the undercarriage lever.

Pip glanced back over her shoulder and screamed. ‘She's shooting at us, Paul!' The aircraft juddered and there was a noise like ferocious hail on a tin roof as a neat line of holes was suddenly stitched on their port wing. ‘We're hit!'

Bryant was ready for it. He pulled back on the stick, lifting the nose and closed the throttle, slowing their aircraft from a hundred and forty-five to a hundred and twenty knots. The gap between the two aircraft started to narrow. He pulled down on the lever and the Harvard's wheels dropped. The aircraft lurched and bled off even more speed. Pip screamed in his headphones as the nose dropped sickeningly.

Catherine's plane whizzed past them, on the right, close enough for Pip and Paul to see the startled faces of pilot and passenger.

Bryant's left hand flashed across the instruments as he raised the landing gear and opened the throttle again. With his right he pulled the stick into his belly, bringing the nose back up. He was under her now, and slightly behind. Perfect position. He pressed the firing button. He was pretty sure this would be his last burst, so he made it count. He kept his thumb hard down, even after the last of the rounds had left his guns.

‘Hennie, I've been hit!' Catherine wailed. The aircraft slipped violently to the right. ‘I'm bleeding!'

‘Where? How bad is it?'

‘Pretty bloody bad,' she retorted. It hurt like hell, and felt like a hot poker had been rammed into her calf. ‘Left leg. Hard to keep my foot on the rudder pedal.' Tears filled her eyes as she pushed down on the left pedal in order to straighten the aircraft. ‘Can't . . .'

‘You
have
to, Catherine. Take the pain.'

‘Can't go on like this, Hennie. I have to put her down.' As if to ratify her decision, a jet of oil hit the front of the cockpit and was smeared all down the left side. ‘Losing oil pressure now. He must have hit the engine as well. That's it, we're finished.'

His mind raced. The mission was over before it began. Or was it? The other aircraft was still flying. ‘Can you call them up, get them on the radio?'

‘Don't know,' she said. She was too busy fighting her pain and trying to see out of the smeared canopy to answer him. Paul had peeled off. She wondered if he were out of ammunition.

‘Try!' he insisted.

‘All right, all right,' she said. She flicked the radio switch, and said, ‘Harvard nine-zero, nine-zero, this is Harvard eight-seven, eight-seven.'

Reitz spoke on the intercom-only channel. ‘I want you to tell him that you were forced to fly the plane for me, that I'm holding a gun to your head. I'll cut you off halfway through the transmission. I'll fire a shot.'

‘I doubt he'll believe me,' she said.

‘It's our only chance.'

Catherine radioed Paul and, with a genuine sob in her voice thanks to her wound, explained that she had been kidnapped by Reitz and forced to fly him. ‘He killed Flick, too, Paul.'

The transmission ended with a gunshot ringing over the airwaves.

‘What do you make of all that?' Bryant asked.

‘Pure Hollywood,' Pip said dismissively. ‘Look, she's landing now. Gone home to roost.'

They both looked out the right-hand side of the cockpit and saw the stricken Harvard on final approach to the grass runway on Catherine's property. ‘At least they didn't get far,' Pip added.

‘Crikey, she hasn't got her undercart down,' Bryant said. ‘Her hydraulics must be shot.'

They watched in silence as the other aircraft bounced and then skidded down the airstrip on its belly. The propeller dug deep furrows in the turf before stopping, its blades bent backwards.

‘Cockpit's open. She's getting out,' Bryant said.

As they circled, they watched Catherine climb out of the front seat,
leap awkwardly from the wing to the ground, and start to hobble away. ‘She's trying to get away from him,' Bryant said.

Pip wasn't so sure, but then she saw the man emerge from the rear of the cockpit. ‘Looks like he's got a rifle. He's aiming at her!'

Bryant banked hard and dived for the airstrip. It looked indeed like Reitz was drawing a bead on Catherine, who was limping down the length of the airstrip. He lined up on the pair of them and brought the Harvard down until he guessed he was no more than twenty feet above the grass. He had the satisfaction of seeing Reitz dive out of the cockpit, headlong into the dirt, as the hot fumes from his engine's exhaust washed over the Nazi spy.

‘We've got to get down and sort this out,' Bryant said.

‘Can't you radio for some help?' Pip said.

‘I'm the escaped murder suspect, remember?'

‘All right, then put me on. I'll talk to the base and see if they can get a message to Hayes.'

‘No time for that, Pip. It's us or nobody.' He had circled around and now lowered his undercarriage. He checked his fuel, airspeed and trim. ‘Here we go,' he said as the wheels bounced once on the grass, and then settled.

‘Can you see Reitz?' Paul asked Pip over the intercom.

‘I saw him dash into the tree line just as we touched down. Nothing since.'

‘Catherine's wounded. I can see blood on the side of the cockpit. She won't be too much trouble. It's that other bastard I'm worried about,' Bryant said as he applied the brakes. He kept the engine running, in case they needed to get out quickly. ‘Stay put, Pip. I'll go and see what she has to say for herself.'

‘Not bloody likely!' Pip said. ‘You're the only one who can fly this thing. I'm not having you caught in a trap. You stay here and keep the motor running. I'll go see how badly she's hurt. I'll give you the all clear if it looks like Reitz has gone, and then you can switch off.'

He didn't want to put her in any danger, but he couldn't argue with her logic. ‘All right, Constable. I guess we're in your jurisdiction now we're on the ground.'

‘Too bloody right, as you Australians would say.' She undid her safety restraints and climbed out of the cockpit, relieved to be on terra firma again, even if she did stink of sweat and vomit. She wished she had brought a gun with her. She was going to ask Paul for his, when she saw Catherine De Beers pass out, flat on her face. She jumped down off the wing and ran to the wounded woman.