The Mercenaries (42 page)

They were staring round for a sign of any wind when they heard the car roaring up the road again and the croak of its klaxon. Kee entered the field going flat out, the front wheels wavering every time they hit a bump. He swung round so fast alongside the De Havilland, they thought he was going to lose control and hit it.

‘They’ve jolly well found us, you know!‘ He was shouting as he fell out of the car. ‘They’re on their way here now. I lost Yen.’

Tsu seemed to realise what had happened and began to run for the De Havilland in the bent-legged waddle of an old man. Ira caught him just as he was about to stick his foot through the fabric of the wing and swung him round with such force that he fell to the ground.

He turned to Kee, his face furious. Tell the old fool he does as I say!‘ he raged. ‘Or we turn him loose for the mob to get him! ‘

Kee jabbered quickly and Tsu shouted back at him. Kee stuck his ground, however, and after a while Tsu calmed down, though Ira noticed that he remained close to the plane.

They packed Madame Tsu and the boy into the rear cockpit of the Avro, the boy still clutching the violin, and Ira shouted instructions to them as Ellie climbed into the pilot’s seat.

’Keep your heads down,’ he yelled, then as Ellie switched on, he swung on the propeller. At first it wouldn’t fire and he prayed that the cold hadn’t affected it. Forcing himself to keep calm, he turned it backwards, the valves gasping and the pistons clonk-clonking slowly as they sucked in fuel. When he tried again, it fired in a cloud of blue smoke.

Madame Tsu was still wearing an old-fashioned European hat clamped on her thick black hair with pins and a scarf. He tried to persuade her to remove it but she either didn’t understand or couldn’t hear and she was sitting there, whitefaced and petrified with fear, as Ira began to pass the packages of jade up to her. After two or three, she began to thrust them back at him.

‘No,’ she said. They are yours! I am giving them to you! For coming! ‘

‘Wait until we’re safe, madame,’ he yelled at her. ‘You might change your mind.’

‘No! Whatever happens, they are yours! There was no one else with the courage to come! Only you! I want you to have them! ‘

He stuffed the packages into the capacious pockets of his flying coat without arguing and dragged away the chocks, then, with Kee and Tong linking arms to heave the propeller, they got the De Havilland started too, and Kee pushed Tsu into the rear cockpit on top of the money boxes. The engines were still warming up when the mob burst out of the mist on to the field. Tong promptly bolted for the trees but Kee stood his ground, his face deathly pale.

‘Go, please, sir,’ he shouted to Ira, his manners still untouched. ‘Go now! ‘

‘For God’s sake,’ Ira said. ‘What about you?’

‘I shall die, sir.’

‘For Tsu? He’s not worth it, Kee. Climb on the wing. I’ll fly you out.’

The mob had streamed across the field now and had stopped about a hundred yards away in a long straggling line across their path, defying them to plough through them. Deafened by the screeching of Tsu from the rear cockpit, Ira felt sick at their courage and at the hatred in their faces.

‘For God’s sake, Kee,’ he yelled. ‘Get on the wing and hang on to a strut! We’ll make it somehow!‘

For a moment, Kee stared at the mob, then he gave Ira a bleak smile and began to walk towards the line of coolies at an oblique angle, shouting in Chinese.

At once, the mob began to curdle and moved towards him in little groups and eddies, and it was only then that Ira realised he was trying to draw them out of the track of the aeroplanes. As he walked, however, one of the coolies lifted his arm and Ira saw he held a revolver, and as Kee stumbled before the heavy bullet and fell, the mob surged over him, beating and smashing and kicking and tearing. Ira saw sticks rising and falling and fragments of clothing flying through the air, then the bloody wreckage which had been Kee was hoisted up on the end of pitchforks, and the baying of the mob became like the howling of wild animals.

Tsu was still screaming and jabbing Ira’s shoulder with his stick, indicating that he should take off, but the mob were still across their path, marshalled by the students into a wide half-circle, defying him to carve his way through them. For a second, he stared at them, his mind stiff with rage and fear, then impulsively, he pulled the throttle back until the engine was idling and climbed out of the cockpit again and, using his fists, pushed and pummelled Tsu off the money boxes. With the old man shrieking his protests, he hoisted one of them out and threw it on the ground. Then he smashed the hasp with his revolver and, carrying it under his arm, staggered like a laden donkey away from the aircraft and flung it down again. Tsu was spluttering with rage as the silver cascade caught the sun.

‘Look!’ Ira yelled, picking up handfuls of the money and tossing it as far as he could from him. ‘Money! Plenchee good joss!’

The baying seemed to stop at once as the coolies realised what he was throwing about the frosted grass, then one end of the human barrier began to melt as they ran for the coins. Even as the line crumbled and broke, Ira bolted back towards the De Havilland. The students were shrieking with rage now as the coolies scattered towards the money, lashing out at them with sticks and carrying poles. A few went down under the blows, but to most of them each of the silver coins that Ira had scattered in the stubble meant a lifetime’s savings, and the instinct for wealth was greater than the newly acquired instinct for hatred. The shining pile of coins disappeared under a swarm of blue-clad bodies that kicked, gouged, fought and screamed as they struggled to get their hands on just one of the precious pieces of metal.

The line had broken into scattered groups now and there was a gap in front of the De Havilland with the length of the field beyond. As he tore the chocks free and scrambled into the cockpit, Ira turned and waved to Ellie and she opened the throttle immediately and began to move forward. In the brief instant as the Avro passed him, he saw Madame Tsu’s hat fly off and her long black hair stream out behind her.

As he fell into his seat, his harness still unfastened, he thrust his own throttle wide open and with a rich roar of exhausts, the De Havilland began to bump with rocking wings after the Avro. A few of the students ran forward and tried futilely to grab the wings and one of them even stepped deliberately into his path, and Ira saw him flung aside in a bloody pulp as the propeller hit him, then the two machines were rising together from the ground, the Avro just in front and above.

The river mist was burning off into wispy veils as they banked low over the end of the field. The De Havilland was still lower and on the inside ready to take up the leading position when the Liberty spluttered and coughed. Ira’s heart stopped with it. Ahead of them the Chang-an-Chieh loomed, bulky and dangerous, and he glanced down and backwards at the field where the coolies had cleared the ground of the coins and were now standing in a circle, shaking their fists. If the engine failed him now, they’d tear him limb from limb.

But the engine picked up again in an uneven beat and he saw the Avro just behind and to the right, beyond his wing-tip.

Ellie raised her hand and waved encouragement, then over the roar of the engine he heard the familiar clack-clack of a machine gun and caught a glimpse of it mounted on a lorry in the roadway near the pagoda, surrounded by soldiers. He glanced quickly up and across at the Avro and Ellie waved again to indicate she was safe, then, almost immediately, he saw the blunt nose dip and spurts of blue smoke as the engine began to falter.

Her head disappeared inside the cockpit at once as she fought with the controls, then he saw a stream of whitish vapour spin out in the wake of the plane and his heart died inside him as he saw a tiny jet of flame under the engine. In numb despair he saw it grow larger, then smoke began to pour from the cockpit. The Avro was wobbling now and he saw Ellie lift her arm again, though it was impossible to tell whether she was waving to him or protecting herself from the growing flames.

For a minute longer the machine wobbled along unevenly, the crimson tongues licking back towards the comma-tail, then a great flare of red, as though a furnace door had been opened, hid both Ellie and her passengers, and the nose dropped and the blazing mass passed so close to the De Havilland, Ira could hear the roaring of the flames.

He watched with a sick futile horror as it curved towards the river in a long slow bank, trailing a swelling arc of dark smoke, then a wing-tip caught one of the upper eaves of the Chang-an-Chieh and the tail swung over in a frightful cartwheel that sent rooftiles flying.

Shocked, he watched the machine hit the ground and carve a line of wreckage through the hovels that lined the river bank, still moving like a Catherine wheel and trailing flying fragments of burning wreckage in its wake, then it hit the burned-out steamer lying on the mud and plunged beyond it into the river in a tremendous gout of water.

9

Ira was waiting with Kowalski on the staging at Pootung when Sammy and the others stepped ashore. Sammy’s eyes lit up at once as he saw him and he ran forward awkwardly, his bandaged arm stiff against his chest.

‘We made it, Ira,’ he said. ‘We made it! ‘

He glanced round him as Ira didn’t respond to his joy, and his face fell. ‘Where’s Ellie?’ he asked.

With Kowalski grave-faced behind him, Ira told him. The anaesthesia of shock had worn off during the journey south. It had all happened so quickly and so unexpectedly just when they seemed to be safe, he still couldn’t believe it. He had turned over Tsosiehn, glancing constantly towards the point beyond his wing, fully expecting to see the Avro there. Unseeingly, he had circled the spot where the aeroplane had gone into the river, praying he would see Ellie’s head come to the surface, but there had been only a burning patch of petrol on the water, a floating fragment of wing, the shattered hovels sprayed with burning petrol, and the coolies running through the streets towards the scene of the crash.

For what seemed ages he had circled over the mud-flats, seeing the faces of the Chinese as they had looked up at him, then Tsu had started yelling and pointing to the east, no sign of grief or compassion on his face.

Dumb, stupefied, and devoid of emotion, still flying the De Havilland instinctively in a cold empty void, Ira had felt bereft of reason and numbed by a sick feeling of guilt, knowing that if he and Sammy hadn’t wanted to go to Tsosiehn it would never have happened. He had circled the river once more but the hovels along the banks were well ablaze by this time, and there had been nothing else--just the tail plane, torn off in the crash, lying on the mud, and that floating wing and the patch of burning petrol on the water.

There had been no point in staying. There had been nothing he could hope to do. Nothing at all. Philippe Tsu would never play his violin round the concert halls of Europe and Madame Tsu would never have the pleasure of seeing his name in lights. And Ellie would never have that home she had wanted so much. She who had feared so often for Ira’s life and gone herself into the cold and darkness and oblivion, and all he seemed able to remember of her were the words she’d once said to him, years before it seemed, when they had been salvaging the De Havilland: ‘I’ll not grow old,’ she’d insisted. ‘I’ll never get the chance.’

Perhaps Sammy had always been right and perhaps she’d known it. Perhaps she and Fagan, branded with the mark of ill luck, had always had the look of doom about them.

He had parted company with Tsu at Siang-Chang where Lao had unloaded the money boxes. Tsu had marched straight from the aeroplane to the waiting car, leaving Lao to deal with the business of payment.

‘I am sorry about the lady,’ Lao had said, but Ira had shrugged off his sympathy.

He had still been trying to explain Ellie’s actions to himself, and he’d wondered several times if she’d made the trip to Tsosiehn in some sort of self-sacrifice for him. It would not have been unlike her.

Lao had still been watching him and, looking up, Ira had been surprised to see sympathy in his eyes.

‘I’ve always trusted you, Major Penaluna,’ he’d continued. ‘Though I know you’ve not always trusted me. I’m going to join General Chiang now. My future’s with a united China, not a defeated warlord, because there’ll be no more Tsus in China now. Our rulers failed us like the Czars failed Russia and we have been surrounded by enemies. Now it will be different. But, though your people will leave, there will always be a place here for you.’

They shook hands, if not with friendship, at least with mutual respect.

Sammy listened silently as Ira finished, then he blew his nose hurriedly, taking a long time over it He had not always got on well with Ellie, but he stared now at Ira’s pitiless face with misery.

‘I think she knew, Sammy,’ Ira said. ‘I think she knew what was going to happen. That’s why she insisted so. She went to meet it deliberately. And it was all our doing. We thought of nothing but the machines.’

Sammy nodded. ‘I don’t suppose you could have stopped her, Ira,’ he said. ‘Any more than you could have stopped Fagan. But she never got much out of this bleddy life, really, did she?’

Ira shrugged. He was brisk and efficient and Sammy could see he was fighting with his emotions.

‘It’s no good bawling, Sammy,’ he said. ‘She was right when she said aeroplanes are dangerous. She was only wrong in thinking it would be me. I did this thing to her, so I’m packing up. I’m going home.’

Sammy’s eyes widened. ‘Ira, we’ve still got an aeroplane worth about a thousand quid and we can buy three new aircraft and a whole godown of spare parts if we want now. Spare engines. Propellers. Something we’ve never had before. We’ve got money in the bank.’

‘
And
the insurance we took out on Ellie when we started,’ Ira said bitterly. ‘But I’m not sure I want anything more to do with aeroplanes.’

Sammy gestured. ‘Ira, I don’t know anybody who knows more about them than you do. You’ve been working on ‘em and flying in ‘em since they were string and wire birdcages. Only the Wright Brothers know more than you. Don’t pack it in now. If it’ll help, leave it for a bit, but don’t give it up.’ He paused. ‘There’s just one other thing,’ he went on. ‘On the way down here I got talking to Jimmy Cheng. He wants you to teach him to fly, like his big brother.’