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The Merlin Factor. Chapter Thirteen.
Topic Started: Dec 17 2015, 06:22 PM (86 Views)
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The Merlin Factor. Chapter Thirteen.

Death and Deception.


England: Lympne, Sussex, 1940.


"Gawd! Wot a bleedin' mess!"
I soaked into a battered armchair, closed my eyes and tried to unwind the tight-coiled spring of suspense. Two fitters were bustling around my tattered machine trying to make it serviceable enough to handle the trip back to Hornchurch.
I had gaped at it in shocked silence after climbing down from the mangled cockpit, stunned at the perforated wreckage of the fuselage. Incredible it had held together this far. The armor plate had stopped eight or nine hits, and for each one, there was a long, splayed back furrow in the stressed-aluminum skin of the fuselage.
The two men pointed to a nearly severed control cable, whistling at the single, minute strand that held it together. My scalp crawled.
Their ludicrous conversation was mostly about women, except for an occasional obscene reference to the actual job at hand. My eyes felt as if they had been freshly boiled and scrubbed in some amateurish attempt to cleanse them of the recent images scored deep into their tender tissues.

"'Ere, Sergeant?" The more senior of the two was standing over me as I struggled back into the present. I waited.
"Nuffink wrong wiv the petrol, Sergeant. Same as our 'unnert octane, it is. Don't fink yer need any more ter get 'ome."
What was this? I leaned forward.
"The petrol's good?" Hard to believe...
"Jus' like service issue, Sir. Zackly the same, it is."
"Fine. Thank you - ah - Stanley, is it?"
"Stanley, Sir. Very good Sir." He waddled back to the trestle to hammer at the temporary tailskid.

Strange indeed. Hundred octane fuel from a French roadside garage? And I'd started out with half a tank. According to this visually substandard example of service engineering prowess, there was still a half tank. Too strange to consider. Rolls-Royce had never given much thought to fuel-economy when they had drawn up their wonderful engines. Everything sacrificed to raw, greedy horsepower. I'd just flown all the way here on a teacup of petrol and I hadn't been swanning around sightseeing. Full power most of the way. Jacques Merlin was evidently someone very unusual. Very unusual indeed...

"Sergeant Hawken?" A pretty W.A.A.F. was walking towards me smiling. "C.O. would like to see you, Sergeant. Would you follow me please?"
I climbed into the blue-grey Humber and we drove off across the field to the admin. buildings, the woman smiling often and looking much too sweet to be involved in my squalid little air force.
"Looks like you've had quite a time, Sergeant. I've never seen a sorrier looking Spitfire." She paused, gauging my emotional condition, deciding how best to deal with me: "Oh! I've called Squadron Leader Gurney and told him you've dropped in on us. He sounded very glad to hear it. Will you be flying back there today, do you think?" She turned and cocked her head.
"Ah - most likely. I should think so. The fitters have almost finished with the tail. I'll probably get chewed out for making such a mess of it."
I tried to laugh, but my face just wouldn't have it.
"May I ask you a personal question, Sergeant?" I looked at her. Surprised.
"All right..."
"It's just... Well - ah - Squadron Leader Gurney referred to you as `Lace-up'. It seemed such a funny sort of a nickname, I just wondered what it meant."
Hot resentment flushed through me, mixed with acute embarrassment. Damn him! I'd bettered him in combat and he still had to have his horrible little smirks at my expense. Why the hell should he get a name like Danger Man, while I had to endure something as excruciating as `Lace-up'? I looked down at my boots.

"I'm sorry Sergeant. It's none of my business. Please forget I asked you." She looked genuinely concerned for me. Innocent.
"No need to apologize. I'm just not used to it yet. In fact it's the first time I've heard of it. Somebody's stupid idea of a joke, that's all. Not very funny. Not funny at all." I cut myself off before I made it even worse. Damn him!

She pulled up smoothly in front of the red-brick admin. section, smiling one more time for my benefit. I felt grateful, thankful for anything pleasant in what was really an extremely unpleasant life. There weren't that many high points. Nothing you could imagine yourself looking back on with rosy nostalgia. Especially when you knew you weren't going to be alive very much longer. She turned off the motor and produced some knitting, waiting for me to finish my business.

The C.O. offered me a cigarette, which, out of indecision, I accepted, choking and feeling quite dizzy after inhaling the moist, acrid smoke.
"You must be the only pilot in His Majesty's Royal Air Force who doesn't smoke, Sergeant. Don't know how you've managed it. All our boys have to use instruments to find their way out of the mess, the air is so thick!" He laughed, a deep, reassuring, strangely normal laugh. I took another cautious drag and managed to suppress the urge to vomit.
"I was wondering, Sergeant, if you'd seen anything interesting on your little trip over to the continent. It's been a while since anybody has actually landed in France. Any opposition, was there? Much ack-ack?"
He couldn't have seen the state of my machine.
"Didn't see anything unusual, Sir. Nothing to report anyway, except a new type of armored-car. New to me, that is. Nothing much. I blew it up with my cannons. Can't have much armor. It seemed to have a nasty punch, though. Something like those Vierlings they have on their U-boats. Mounted in a turret. Probably twenty millimeter."
"Multiple pom-poms," he muttered, writing a little note in his exercise book. "Was it moving? Have you any idea of the speed it might possess?"
"Not sure, Sir. Maybe thirty miles an hour. Maybe less. Oh, it had tank tracks at the back and wheels at the front. I'm afraid I wasn't exactly studying it with an eye to detail. Too anxious to get off the ground, Sir."
"Oh quite. Absolutely. Anything else? Any fighter activity?"
"Not that I noticed, Sir."
"Thank you, Sergeant." He rubbed his eyes, gave a little sigh and ran stubby fingers through his oily, thinning hair.
"This is usually a job for our `Spy' you understand. Unfortunately, a bomb fell on him this afternoon, and his office is just a big, smoking hole in the ground this evening. He will be sorely missed."
"Sorry to hear that, Sir. Very sorry indeed."
We looked at each other, wanting to say the kind of things you want to say about something like this. Instead, we honored our uniforms and official capacities, pretending that such daily occurrences had no effect on us.
"Flying back this evening, are you, Sergeant?" He turned to watch a flight of Hurricanes thunder across the grass, off on some random patrol.
"I expect so, Sir. My machine seems fit enough. Looks a lot worse than it is. It's not far."
"Quite." He cleared his throat. "Good luck, my boy. Drop in any time. Always happy to see new faces."
I returned his salute, about-faced and marched from the stuffy little room, melting into a tired slouch as soon as I had cleared the vicinity.
Funny old coot. He looked like he should be at home wearing slippers and peeling potatoes. Or something. He probably had a cat. A scruffy-looking tom. It often seemed like that, these days. All these countless thousands upon thousands of uniformed men with their different ranks and faces. All pretending they were tough and hard. Maybe they were tough and hard. You never knew. Could some rabid stranger from across the Channel really transform a whole population of friendly, shortsighted, balding, hammer-toed civilians into a steely-eyed gang of professional killers? Or was it all just a big, convincingly-staged sham?

*****

"I wouldn't go lookin' fer no trouble if I was you, Sergeant. Your kite's a flyin' junkyard, it is. We done our best, but the old bird's a bit bent, like. The skid'll 'old up fer a landin' or two, but yer'll want it done right as soon as poss. Sir."
The smirking L.A.C. saluted in a greasy parody of the official custom, leaving a grimy smear across his forehead.
"Stanley, you look a mess." I burst out laughing. God, it felt good. "Thank-you..."
I spluttered and tried again, torn by the humor in this clown.
"Thank-you both for your supreme expertise."
As I climbed into the cockpit, I heard him muttering to his accomplice:
"...all bleedin' barmy!"
It only made it funnier.


The night was coming down as I lifted into the air once more, squeezed down behind the still-broken canopy.
There was smoke in the air - a flat strata of it - up at around two thousand feet, and although I knew it wasn't, I imagined it to be the chimney smoke of thousands of cozy firesides around which sat thousands of smiling people. Peaceful people. People who didn't ever wonder if this sunset might be their very last.

*****

"'Ere 'e is! Our resident shade! Ay-oop, Johnny! Yer've missed yer supper, mate. Bleedin' lovely it was. Bangers yer needed a bayonet to slice up, an' a dollop of mashed plaster."
A little cheer went around the smoky hut as tired bodies tried to stand and then thought better of it.
"Evenin' all. Had a wee spot of bother over in France. The new management has simply ruined it for the tourist trade."
I climbed on a handy table and lay down.
"So we 'eard. Imagine one uv 'is Majesty's 'ighly trained perfeshonals gettin' lost then! Bet yer'll get a rocket from Danger Man. Serve yer bloody right too!"
"Anybody seen Fred?" Every last vibration died away. That awful, viscous, ice-cold silence that could only mean one thing. I sighed. Closed my eyes. Slowly shook my head from side to side. The room span. The silence continued. I wrenched my body upright.
"How?"
Cottington, the carrot-haired Canadian Pilot Officer, started sobbing in the corner of the room. Slowly he levered himself up, knocking his stamp collection to the floor and shuffled over.
"I - I saw him. I - ah - I..."
I put my hand up, silencing him. His face was a mask of guilt and horror.
"All right, Georgie. All right. I don't want to hear it. I'm sorry."
He shivered, turned like a somnambulist and crept back to his chair.
"Dan in his office?" Several white faces nodded.

*****

"Sir."
I stood in the doorway waving aside the blue clouds of evil-smelling smoke and waited for him to look up from his reports and pencils. He looked another year older.
"Thought it was you, Johnny. Time for an engine change, I do believe. Sounded like a bloody traction-engine chattering over t'fence. 'Ow's the bodywork?"
"I need another kite, Sir. Busted this one."
He growled. "Think they grow on bloody trees do you?"
"I haven't a clue where they grow, Sir. But if you want me to fly, I want a new one."
He looked up sharply. "Don't you take that tone with me, Sergeant. I won't have it, d'you hear?"
The lunatic in me threw me aside, spat on his palms and took over:
"I'd thank you to never use the term `Lace-up' again, Sir."
He stood up, face reddening. We stared at each other.
"'Ave a care, Sergeant. I'm not in a very good mood."
I stepped forward until there was no more room, lowering my voice into a grating snarl that frightened even me.
"Let me put it another way, Sir. You ever use that term again and I'll kick your fucking head in, Sir."
He boiled over. Trembling. Flexing his muscular hands, trying to decide what to do. He took a deep breath:
"Had a bad day, Sergeant?"
"I've had better, Sir."
He sat down. Smoothing his ruffled feathers.
"Hear about Fred, then?" He raised his eyebrows.
"Is he dead, Sir?"
"I bloody well 'ope so. He was tryin' to 'elp Cottin'ton. Yellin' at him over the air. 'ad 'is mike on when some 109 flamed 'im. Half them soppy W.A.A.F. controllers at Ops. fainted on the spot." He rubbed his eyes.
"Not a nice sound, the sound a man makes when 'e's bein' roasted alive. Not nice at all."
The lunatic in me washed his hands of it and walked away, trembling, leaving me soft and shrunken. Sick and tired.
"How nice of you to tell me, Sir."
"Would you rather 'ave not known?"
I stared at him.
"I said thank-you, Sir."
"Mmm. Bishop bought it too. Gone. Vanished. Didn't see him go down did you?"
I suddenly wanted to cry. At the sheer bloody waste of it all.
"Ah... Yes. I saw his machine go by me on its way down, Sir. Bishop wasn't in it though. Thing blew up just below me. Never saw a 'chute or a dinghy. Nothing at all..."
"Well. He might show up yet; as is his custom."
He stared at me. I stared back. Dead stares.
We both knew Bishop would never be seen again in this life. He'd been incredibly lucky to have lasted the few days he had. The look of doom always had been written all over his pink little face.
Dan grabbed the letter he had been writing, screwed it up and hurled it at the wall.
"Don't suppose you're a budding writer are you, Johnny?"
"That's not quite my line, Sir."
"No. Nor mine. Their dear mothers are going to be right bleedin' chuffed. `Dear Mrs. Fred. So sorry but your lovely lad 'as just gone an' got 'imself barbecued in the line o' duty.' Followed by `Dear Mrs. Bishop. So terribly fuckin' sorry, but we seem to have misplaced your chubby little son!' Jesus! Anyway. 'ow did you like your nice new Mark 2 then? I mean before it became an 'eap of useless junk."
"Nice kite, Sir. Nice to have the cannons. More power I reckon. It might be repairable... I'm sorry I busted it, Sir."
"Don't worry, Johnny-boy. We'll be sendin' our uncle Adolf a nice fuckin' bill one o' these days. You mark my words. Better go an' 'ave a chat with Jasper at maintenance. He'll fix you up. We got another two in this afternoon. Take your pick."
He lifted his pen - one of those ridiculous pens that had a naked woman inside a glass tube that became either visible or invisible, depending on which way you held it - and stared unseeingly at a new sheet of paper, dismissing me.
"Thank you, Sir."
I turned and left him to his sad little room.

*****

It sometimes made me cringe, the things she said over the telephone. The probability of some nosey telephone operator listening in was very high, and though she knew it herself, knew no constraints in her vivid description of what she had done, what she was doing now, and exactly how she was doing it.
The urgent pressure of her corset would hug me tight, erotically emphasizing her every word. She often thought to mention it, often asked me how it made me feel and I would do my best to answer. I would listen, shocked but excited, breathing erratically, answering her most intimate questions, trying to ask my own, flushed and faint...

"Johnny? How nice to hear your voice, dear! I was beginning to wonder...
You did? Oh, Johnny! How marvellous!
...But you're fine now? Thank God.
...To France? My goodness! My poor little darling...
Poor thing...
Have you missed me? Of course I've missed you, dear. Of course I have. You know how I hate to sleep alone. Do you know what I did? I wore my boots to bed...
Yes I did. And the really tight corset... the one you like. Yes. And those lovely long gloves...
Oh, Johnny! You're awful! Yes. Yes I did! And do you know, I imagined I was doing it with you, instead of on my own...
Yes...
Oh, let me see...
at least a half an hour...
Will you?
Of course...
Of course, dear Johnny...
All right..."

*****

I lay in the dark, hands clasped tight behind my head, remembering the rich, warm comfort of her voice. So many women of her age were fat, careless ruins of the flowers they had been in their youth. Harsh voiced, rasping inhibitors of any manifestation of male enthusiasm. Not her. Definitely not her.
I shifted my position to relieve the discomfort of my swelling loins, trying and failing to resist the urge to feel myself. Just the thought of her was enough to do this to me. The incomplete mental rendering of the amateur artist, concerned only with the most interesting details. Overlooking the rest. She swam around somewhere between my ears, locked in the pip of my imaginary gunsight; out of range but closing...
I maneuvered, minute adjustments to stick and throttle, safety off. There. There! Centered on her magenta-tinted labia, those intriguingly long, heavy lips that hung moist, ready, ever eager...
Hairless, lately. Smooth and warm. Salty-sweet. The ultimate, deadly, unavoidable man-trap of her sex.

I was almost silent, lips pressed hard shut, unaware that I had not breathed in minutes. Her lethal, stiletto-pointed heels click-clacked through my brain, louder and louder, closer and closer, the warm, pendent weight of her magnificent breasts suffocating me, filling my mouth, ensuring my obedience...

It helped me to sleep. Helped scrub away the tainted rot of reality. Everybody did it. Nobody admitted it. You couldn't. There were a lot of things you couldn't do. Weren't allowed to, by either spoken or unspoken law. But often, all too often, you found yourself doing things that you never thought you would. Like going off, day after day, as if you were on some enthusiastic trip to a neighboring school to do battle on the football field. Only these days, you went off on some freezing, sound-filled outing, high into the sky to try to maim and kill total strangers, or else to become maimed or killed yourself. And you did it day after day. On and on and on. Until...

She walked up to, on to, into and finally, over me, squeezing out my fluids to spread like syrup into the stiff, white sheets, glancing coolly down in that special, superior way, before turning on her impossibly high-heels and striding swiftly away.

Sometime later, Bishop showed up, too. Suddenly there, looking as earnest as ever, eager to talk...
"Which way do you break, Johnny? I mean, like when the Hun's coming at you, head-on. Which way do you break?"
I stared at him, wishing he would go away. Which way did I break? What the fuck kind of stupid question was that?
"Piss off, Bishop." I said, regretting it instantly. His mouth dropped open, hurt and off-balance.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Bishop. Sorry," I said, feeling awful. "But it's like... Well, what I mean is... Who fucking cares which way I break? You don't know which way until you do it. Do you?"
He looked at me like a sad dog. Eager for more, but expecting only more pain...
"Just break, that's all," I said. "Fast. Don't dilly-dally around. Pull all the G's you can. Keep your eyes on him. No matter what."
I studied him with new interest.
"Aren't you dead?" I asked.
"You should have talked to me yesterday," he said. "I asked you which way to break yesterday, and you just looked at me. You just looked at me and said nothing. There were so many things I needed to know, Johnny. So many things! And now it's too late..."
And I sobbed and trembled, tangled up in the sheets like a beached fish in a net. Gasping in unendurable pain. And Fred joined Bishop, the both of them staring expressionlessly at me.
"Don't waste yer fuckin' time, Bishop," he said. "I asked him to 'ave a beer with me the other night. Same thing. Too fuckin' busy with 'is prick to care. Fuck 'im!"
"Fuck 'im!"
They slowly lost substance as I pleaded silently for them not to. And I would never forget their faces. Faces I would never, ever, see again. Expressionless. Uncaring. The faces of the newly-dead. Gone. And guilt settled over me like poison gas. With labored breath and tortured thoughts, I wandered, lost, through all the endless canyons of the dark.

Sometime during the night, I was wrenched into disoriented wakefulness by the avalanche of noise accompanying the high-speed passage of an intruder over the station. Not a shot was fired by the dozing defense. Not a bomb was dropped. It might never have happened at all, but for the self-conscious references to it in the mess the following morning - a grey, pre-dawn morning - by hang-eyed, shuffling pilots, old before their time.

I sat alone, draped like a half-full sack of potatoes, half in, half out of a deck-chair, hoping the sun would never rise. Bishop intruded again.
"How close do you get, Johnny? I mean, before you shoot?"
I turned away, only to see Fred, sneering at me. I longed for the friendship I had always taken for granted. Yearned for it. Now that I would never have it again. Now that it was too late.
"Come on, Johnny," he sneered. "Spare a few minutes for yer old mate? Let's go down to the King's Skull. Right?"
I ground my teeth and waited. Waited for the dawn I hoped would never come. Alone with the guilt, and the sorrow, and the ghosts...

The ghosts of the early morning.

*****

"There yer go, Sir. Lovely kite. Me an' the boys bin up all night making 'er nice, like. Engine's smooth as silk. Good luck, Sir."
"Thank you, Corporal. Thank your crew too, would you?"

I lowered myself into the new Spitfire, wondering how many it was now. Three? Four? Funny how you could lose track of something like that. Frightening. I no longer even took note of the tail numbers, stenciled on the matte aluminum underneath the elevators. The seat felt strange, different; although every seat in every machine was exactly the same.
"How many times do you pump the primer?" Bishop asked.
"We need you, old boy," said Bob.
"Fuck 'im," said Fred.
"Your death, eet ees a good theeng," said Jacques Merlin. "Nevair fear, Johnny. You mus' nevair fear..."

I shivered. Frozen. God it was cold! Even inside my Irvine jacket, my teeth chattered and banged together. How cold would it be up there? I stared upwards into the coming day. Stared off into forever. Fell into the sky...

One by one, engines burst into life along the perimeter, invisible but for brief wind-whipped skeins of blue smoke rising and scattering from the red-brick blast-pens. I primed and cleared, holding my breath as my own brand-new Merlin spewed out its oily morning-breath, like some phlegm-coughing early-riser, before settling down into smooth, tuneful song.

Harsh, crackling instructions were already flowing through the voice coils of my headphones as I pulled on the familiar, sweat-stained leather helmet, calling for the usual battle-climb to whatever angels it was today on whatever vector. At least it wasn't a scramble. There was even time to get comfortable inside the cockpit before committing oneself to the sky.

It was important to get comfortable, but not important enough to take the time, very often, to actually do it. I wondered, briefly, how many of us had died simply because they had been uncomfortable at some critical moment, lacking that last fraction of a percentage of concentration that was often all that separated the living from the dead. The quick and the dead. Either you were quick or you were dead. You couldn't really expect to be comfortable as well...

Dangerous Danny's aircraft nosed out of its pen, shuttling round on its tailwheel to point downwind, swiftly followed by one after the other. I grimaced as Georgie's Spitfire thundered out dragging a trolley-acc behind it, still plugged in, and pursued by a little group of waving, gesticulating ground-crew.
...ksshk..."Tower to blue three, tower to blue three, would you mind leaving the ground equipment on the ground, over"...
The Spitfire slowed, prop milling as the Canadian became aware of the situation. I imagined him flushed and embarrassed, his big ears bright red, feeling like a fool. I knew how he felt. He would much rather be sitting in some comfortable chair, late at night, collecting stamps. Listening to music on the wireless. His ideas about flying had turned out to be vastly different from the reality. And his reality would never be the same again, now. Not after hearing Fred burning and screaming on his last, long fall.

The big prop. accelerated into invisibility again and he was on his way, losing only seconds.
...ksshk..."Leader to flights, everybody here?"...
The other two leaders acknowledged. I was the last. Yellow was my new charge...
"Yellow section rolling, Leader"...
..."And a one, a two, a one, two, three, four"...
Giggles and snickers from whoever still had his mike on. It was one of those little things that made our Danny-boy so popular. Nobody exactly liked him - he was an absolute rotter - but somehow, he still commanded respect and instant obedience. Competence. A willingness to bend, ever so slightly, the myriad rules and King's Reg's that otherwise made service life such a crashing bore. I took a deep breath. Opened her up. Closed the hood; it slid wonderfully smoothly, quite unlike the usual stiff, sticking jerkiness. Nice machine, this, I thought, listening critically to the strong, clear baritone-boom of the Merlin and checking again for any sloppiness in the flight controls. Faster and faster, only one aircraft behind me, my own number two abreast. This was the magic moment: the final, fleeting seconds where the aircraft stopped being a sports car and suddenly became a bird. Lift. A light and airy thing. A forceful, playful, sometimes deadly thing that got under your wings and made them do strange, unnatural things. Carrying you up into the skies, higher and higher, upwards until there was no more lift, in those ice-cold, airless places where not even Nazis could go.
What a waste, I whispered, checking quickly to see if my mike was off. What a stupid, tragic bloody waste. Such gorgeous, heart-rendingly wondrous machines these were. Spray-painted into drab matte ugliness. Weighed down with weapons and death. Amazon princesses chained and beaten and worked into their graves one after the other. What a waste...

We climbed up to thirty-two thousand, right up to the limit of where we could go, masks strapped tight to our frozen faces, rime ice sheeting our canopies before we were recalled. For some reason or another the raid had turned back to its French bases and here we were, all dressed up and nowhere to go.

A visible ripple passed through the squadron at the news. A slack wobbling of wings as the reprieve was understood. In a wide, graceful arc, the eleven speeding fighters banked around, settled on the reciprocal and began their long descent.

I didn't mind. Not a bit. It wasn't often you were able to cruise through friendly skies en-masse with nothing on the controllers' plot to ruin your day. I switched into automatic, giving control of the aircraft to my sheepskinned body while my mind ventured northwards, seeking Marion. Auntie. The word made me happy, and at the same time made me sad. Not sad. Not exactly. But - well - less than I might be...

My woman. But not my woman. It wasn't that way. I was hers, more than she was mine. She was the leader and I, I was just her little boy. It was humiliating. I sighed as my sex grew into a tight, uncomfortable bulge. Why was it that this - this humiliation, loving though it was - aroused me so much? Aroused me to the exclusion of all else. The rest of the squadron, if they had them at all, had women that were around the same age as themselves. Or so it seemed. I knew they looked askance at my liaison with Marion. Knew too that they were jealous. Jealous, but at the same time, scornful. How had I got myself into this? I shook my head, little strangled noises slipping past my tight-shut teeth, the unconscious sounds of unaware embarrassment, as I tried to remember how it had begun. No. It was gone. I had so few memories beyond the shallow heat of this sun-glaring cockpit. Perhaps if I asked Marion. She would tell me, I was sure. Why did she treat me the way she did? Had I really asked her to? I couldn't imagine I had. Or had she eased me into this strange sexual production on her own initiative? Did I really like to be disciplined like a naughty little boy? Why? Somehow, the sheer thrill it undeniably gave me was coming to be not enough to balance against the growing feeling of humiliation that, although exciting in itself, was gnawing at me more and more often. Why, she...

My tortured reverie was alarmingly interrupted by the sudden, harsh crackle of the R/T:
..."Keyboard to Drum, Keyboard calling Drum, are you receiving? Over"...kshhkk...
..."Drum receiving, go ahead Keyboard, over"...pop...
..."Keyboard to Drum, we have new trade for you, vector oh- seven-seven, steady angels two-two. Fifty plus. Liner. Copy?"...
..."Roger Keyboard. Vector oh-seven-seven, angels two-two, over"...kshhkk...
..."All right Drum, follow me. Liner. Out"...

Damn! I had almost believed it would be a no-show. Not a bloody chance. Liner. I nudged the throttle once more, not to maximum, this time. Something was up. Strange. This was the first interception I'd seen where we were not screaming toward the enemy at full boost. Here we were, just cruising along, nice and easy. No hurry. Cakewalk. A droplet of perspiration rolled down from my helmet, paused at my mask and rolled down to plop dead-center on my firing-thumb. I stared at it, searching for some meaning, imagining what it might symbolize, other than the fact that I was going to, once again, be firing my guns in anger.

*****

"Squawk!" said the crow, and then made space.
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