The Mercenaries (43 page)

The grim expression on Ira’s face melted. Kowalski touched his arm. ‘There are hundreds waiting to learn, Ira,’ he pointed out. ‘Hundreds of guys. Chinese, Indians, God knows what, who’re beginning to realise that flying’s the future.’

‘You can’t just pack it all in and go and open a fag shop or something,’ Sammy went on, struggling for words. ‘It’s a bit like being a priest, Ira. You’ve got something to give ‘em and they want it. You couldn’t turn your back on ‘em any more than a priest could.’

Ira was silent for a moment. He’d seen the R.A.F. attaché the day before to arrange spares and petrol for the De Havilland. He was a man Ira had known in France and he’d been on the point of going home.

‘Better you than the Chinks,’ he’d said as he’d taken Ira’s list. ‘We’re completely re-equipped at home, anyway. We’ve got a Gloster now that’ll do two hundred and forty miles an hour and the Yanks have a new Curtiss that’ll do more than that. You could get whole planes at knock-down prices, if you wanted ‘em, never mind spares.’

He’d managed a stiff smile. ‘Heard about that scrap of yours over Tsosiehn, old boy,’ he’d said. ‘That’s one you’ll not get a medal for.’

‘Curiously enough,’ Ira had said, ‘I did.’

The R.A.F. man had made no more comment than a raised eyebrow. ‘Just keep mum about the spares,’ he warned. ‘It’s getting bloody rough out here and they’ll be recognising Chiang as the government before long. And then what you did up there’ll be classed as anti-British. Those bloody lunatics in the House of Commons’ll be calling you a mercenary.’

Ira frowned, blinking suddenly. He could see Peter and Jimmy Cheng and about a dozen Wangs unloading the baggage and, just beyond them, on the staging, their crates of spares. After the way they’d fought to keep their machines flying it would have been ridiculous to stop now.

‘Sammy,’ he said, ‘I saw the R.A.F. attaché here. He said they’d call us mercenaries back home now. I never thought of it that way, did you?’

Sammy frowned. It didn’t seem to be worth worrying about to him.

‘I suppose he was right, though,’ Ira went on. ‘But what he ought to have said was “misfits”. That’s what we are, Sammy. We shan’t fit into an orderly way of life until aeroplanes are part of it, too.’

Sammy was looking hopeful suddenly.

‘We will start that carrying company, Sammy,’ Ira continued. ‘We’ll get it going, and we’ll make a damn’ good job of it, too.’

Sammy drew a deep breath and grinned at Kowalski. ‘I’m glad, Ira,’ he said with sincerity. ‘Honest I am. Not for me or the others. For you. You’d be such a bloody waste at anything else.’

Ira managed a smile. ‘I wouldn’t know how to do anything else, really, Sammy,’ he said. ‘So I might as well go into this and make it safe. Ellie said that it’d be the ones who came afterwards who got the benefit of the things we’d risked. So let’s make it that way. Let’s make it the best and safest there is.’

He drew a deep breath. There was still a frozen spot near his heart that would take a long time to heal, but he felt better with the need to do something. Work would make him forget. He slapped Sammy on the shoulder.

‘Let’s get those spares ashore, Sammy,’ he said. ‘And then we’ll nose around to buy a couple of new aircraft.’