The Maltese Defence

by Simon Brading

  Drummond was supposed to have orbited the airfield and joined with his element on the far side, but in his enthusiasm he had flown straight in to launch his rockets without even dropping to the deck first.

  Gwen held her breath as she watched the lone Spitsteam dip towards the line of buildings, but before he could launch his rockets, the anti-aircraft batteries finally woke up and fired at the only aircraft left over the airfield.

  The young Naval pilot didn’t stood a chance and what was left of his Spitsteam dropped from the air like a rock to hit the grass of the airfield near the perimeter fence and disappeared in a huge ball of flame as his live rockets exploded.

  Gwen stared at the fireball, mesmerised by the beauty and horror of it. She thought she heard gasps from the other pilots but couldn’t be sure that it hadn’t been her.

  ‘Focus, Badgers! Come on! Round two! Let’s get those fighters! Turning now.’ Abby’s calm voice brought the shocked pilots’ attention back to the job at hand.

  Gwen tore her eyes away from the spectacle and saw that her wingmate had begun to swing back towards the airfield. She flung Excalibur on her wing to follow and increased throttle to catch up.

  ‘Still with me, Two?’

  ‘Yes, Leader. Sorry.’

  Metal streamed into the sky from the anti-aircraft guns as the Misfits came in from all directions for their second attack. Tracer rounds reached out for Gwen and she kicked her rudder, seeking to throw off the gunner. It was the oldest trick in the book and she grinned with satisfaction when the deadly fire slewed, seeking to follow her non-existent turn. By the time it started to track back she was past the gun and her own were chattering.

  Fighters broke apart in her sights, pieces flying off them as if they were made of paper, as she walked her cannon fire from one to another, but then she was too close and it was time to worry about the Prussian weapons again.

  ‘Leader, Three here. I’m hit.’

  Gwen’s body twitched violently as she heard Kitty’s calm report and she barely caught Excalibur before she nosed into the trees. She kept half an eye on Abby, staying with her while they made random evasive manoeuvres, but dedicated most of her efforts to searching for Kitty’s Spitsteam. The aircraft was easily identifiable due to the red, white and blue stripes the American had painted on it, diagonally from the tip to the tail, but she couldn’t find it anywhere and panic began to set in.

  ‘Report, Three.’

  ‘I’ve lost rudder control and my elevators feel sluggish. I can barely turn, Leader.’

  ‘Get home, then, Three.’

  ‘Roger, Leader, breaking off now.’

  ‘Good luck, Three. Four, escort her, please.’

  ‘Aye aye, Leader.’

  Gwen sighed in relief; if Kitty couldn’t make it home she would have said so.

  ‘One more run, please, Badgers,’ said Abby. ‘Let’s make it a good one.’

  Gwen followed Abby round in a hard turn, her wingtip almost brushing the tops of a row of cypress trees planted around a rather lovely villa. She got a glimpse of a Prussian officer in a green uniform standing on the lawn, shading his eyes to look up at her, and half a dozen near-naked men lounging around a pool, before they were once again hidden from view and she grinned as she levelled off behind Dragon.

  For this run she and the other wingmen would fall back behind their leaders, then mop up anything they missed so Gwen moved her stick and pedals back and forth randomly, swinging wide to allow Abby’s yellow aircraft to get half a mile or so ahead of her.

  Anti-aircraft fire started up again just as the smoking wreckage of the Prussian base came into sight. The hangars were all but destroyed and a couple of the other support buildings had also taken damage, but there were a few aircraft left, seemingly relatively intact.

  ‘Two, do you see the pair on the left?’

  ‘Roger, Leader, I see them.’

  ‘Good. They’re mine, go find your own.’

  Abby flew over the perimeter fence and dropped until Dragon’s airscrew was throwing up dust and grass with the wind of its passage. Being so low meant she was forced to fly straight and level, because any roll at all would put her wingtip into the ground, but it didn’t matter because it also made it absolutely impossible for the Prussian guns to target her.

  Gwen chuckled. ‘Showoff.’

  She shook her head, then looked along the long line of fighters, trying to find the best use for her final run. It was hard to decide; most of the forty or so aircraft were so beaten about that it was hard to imagine them ever flying again, but she could always put a few holes in them, just to make sure.

  She was just lining up on a trio of MU9’s near the ones Abby was going for when she saw him.

  Hans Gruber.

  He was one of several officers who had just emerged from the back of one of the smaller buildings and were running towards a waiting autocar, but there was no mistaking him; not only had Gwen, to her shame, seen his movies far too many times, but he was also wearing a very distinctive black uniform, which, as far as she knew, was unique in the Prussian armed forces.

  She had no memory of making a course change, but suddenly, Excalibur was pointing directly at the running figure and her world narrowed until it became just her and him. She usually hated firing at men, had nightmares of the effect that her guns had on their soft bodies in fact, but she found that she had no such qualms about Gruber. Her finger curled around the trigger of her guns and gradually began to put pressure on it as she approached firing range - she didn’t want to jerk it and spoil her aim; a single man was a hard enough target to hit at the best of times.

  Gruber reached the autocar and pushed another officer bodily out of the way so that he could get in, but then he paused as if sensing something and spun in place to look directly at her.

  The look of sheer terror on his face as he recognised his doom approaching was delightful and Gwen savoured every moment as she closed to within five hundred yards and took up the rest of the slack in the trigger.

  Excalibur shuddered as four powerful cannons and six machine-guns flared in the corner of her eyes, perceptibly slowing with the recoil. Lines of fire reached out from her wings and huge clods of earth flew as Gwen walked death towards the autocar and its intended passenger, just as Abby had shown her.

  A huge impact threw Gwen sideways, putting off her aim, and she fought for control as Excalibur lurched, only just preventing the machine from nosing into the ground. The white face of a petrified, but very much alive Gruber flashed past, almost close enough to slap and she shouted out her rage as she put Excalibur into a maximum-rate turn, recklessly brushing the treetops with her wingtip. However, by the time she was able to look back at where Gruber had been the autocar was gone and so was the leader of the Crimson Barons.

  She snarled and slammed Excalibur onto her other wing and headed directly away from the airfield, racing to catch up with Abby.

  She pulled up on Dragon’s wing and found a grinning Abby looking across at her.

  ‘Find something interesting to fire at, Two?’

  Gwen took a deep breath, calming herself and letting go of her frustration before answering. ‘Only if you can call Hans Gruber interesting, Leader.’

  There was a pause as Abby stared at her, her mouth working but no sound coming out. Eventually the older woman swallowed with some effort and coughed before speaking. ‘Repeat that, please, Two; I don’t think I heard you right.’

  ‘I spotted Hans Gruber and decided to get a little payback, Leader. Any objections?’

  ‘Please tell me you got him!’

  Gwen was surprised when she heard Bruce’s voice, but quickly realised that Abby must have switched them over to the squadron frequency so that everybody could hear.

  ‘Unfortunately not, Nine, but not for lack of trying, believe me.’

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘I think I might have made him wet himself, though, if that’s any consolation.’

  ‘That’ll do me,
Two. Good job!’

  Gwen landed at Hal Far and taxied to the top of the ramp, lining up behind Dragon. She smiled at Giuseppe, who had come running to meet her with the rest of her fitters, men and women who she was only just getting to know. He smiled back, but then his gaze strayed to the fuselage behind her and his eyes widened in horror. ‘What have they done to my beautiful bird?’

  Gwen finished shutting down, then undid her straps and leaned out of the cockpit, curious as to what had him so upset.

  She didn’t have to look very far. There was a gigantic hole, fully two feet wide, in her fuselage, through which she could see the interior of her aircraft. It had impacted just behind the cockpit, missing her by all of eighteen inches, and had to have been what had knocked off her aim and saved Gruber.

  The young Maltese man clambered up onto the wing and peered through the hole. ‘What did this? This is too big for a single anti-aircraft round.’

  Gwen climbed out of the cockpit and joined him. The hole was clean and perfectly round, as if the Duralumin were merely a piece of paper being prepared for filing, and she could see all the way through it to the blue sky.

  ‘I think it’s from an ack-ack gun. I’m fairly sure they have a minimum altitude they can be set to explode, but they must have been using them anyway.’

  Giuseppe grumbled, looking unhappy. He stroked Excalibur soothingly. ‘We’ll fix you up, don’t worry.’

  Gwen nodded at him. ‘Thank you.’

  Dragon had now disappeared down into the hangar and the controller was waving Excalibur forward so Gwen clambered back into the cockpit to cover the brakes while the hangar entry team manhandled the aircraft down the ramp.

  As soon as her eyes adjusted to the relative darkness she gazed around the hangar, searching for the two Spitsteams that had left the fight early, but could find no trace of them. She jumped down to the ground and headed towards the communications room, wanting to ask if they were in contact with the two pilots, but changed direction when she spotted Dot Campbell speaking to Abby in front of Dragon.

  The two of them looked up as she approached and she stumbled to a halt when she saw the expressions on their faces - a worrying mixture of regret and sympathy.

  ‘What is it? Where’s Kitty?’

  Gwen’s breath caught in her throat as she looked back and forth between them and warm darkness suddenly began to envelope her. Her legs turned to jelly beneath her and she felt herself going down, but then strong hands gripped her under the arms and she was half-carried to a crate of parts and sat down. Something was thrust into her hand, accompanied by a voice telling her to drink and she did so automatically before realising that it wasn’t water, but a hip flask filled with rum. She coughed, gasping for air, but the shock cleared her vision and she lifted her head to find Scarlet kneeling in front of her.

  She nodded her thanks and handed back the flask then looked past her to Campbell.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She’s alive.’

  ‘But?’

  Campbell grimaced. ‘But she had to bail out over the sea. She deployed her glidewings and managed to get close to a fishing boat. Farrier loitered long enough to make sure she was safely aboard, but she reports that the boat was Sicilian, not Maltese.’

  ‘So, she’s a prisoner of war.’

  ‘Probably.’ Campbell nodded. ‘Don’t worry, though, I’ll contact the Italians, see what we can do about a trade - we’ve shot down quite a few of their pilots and we’ll get Kitty back, even if we have to hand them all over.’

  Gwen nodded, a spark of hope igniting within her, but she couldn’t help but wonder if Abby had told Campbell about Gruber being on the base yet; knowing him, Kitty was probably already on her way to Bertha.

  The damage to Excalibur was more extensive than it had seemed at first glance. The aircraft had been twisted by the impact and some of the frames had bent, meaning that repairs wouldn’t just be a matter of patching up the holes, but would require the aircraft to be partially dismantled which would take a lot longer.

  Unsurprisingly, with her mind on Kitty, Gwen didn’t really feel like flying, but when the noon raid came over she did her duty and jumped into a spare Spitsteam to take to the skies with the rest of the Misfits.

  The loss of fully half of their escorts had affected the bomber crews and they were far more timid than they had ever been.

  The nine Misfit aircraft intercepted the incoming raid half-way between Sicily and Malta. The red and gold Italian machines dumped their entire loads and turned tail as soon as they spotted them, diving away for their bases, but it took the loss of almost a dozen of their bombers to persuade the Prussians that it might be for the best if they didn’t press their luck. They eventually dropped their bombs into the sea, less than ten miles from the Maltese coast and performed an orderly, if hasty, retreat.

  They didn’t bother coming back that afternoon.

  As soon as she landed from the noon raid, Gwen went in search of Sky Commodore Campbell.

  She found her in her office, staring at her radio receiver, a half-eaten bacon sandwich on her desk, along with a stone-cold and forgotten mug of tea. She didn’t seem to have heard Gwen’s knock and didn’t look up, even when she was standing right in front of her.

  Campbell was looking tired, far more than she ever had in Muscovy, even at the height of the fighting around Murmansk, even when the situation had been at its most desperate. Her hair, which had still been mostly black when she had been Gwen’s station commander at Didchurch, was now almost entirely grey and the frown lines on her forehead were more deeply marked than ever.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Yes?’ Campbell looked up and for a moment her eyes were empty and unseeing, but then they cleared and she smiled, albeit weakly. ‘Oh, Gwen, sorry, I was miles away. I don’t have much for you, I’m afraid; nobody seems to know where Kitty is.’

  Gwen frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been in touch with the commander of the Italian forces on Sicily. He was very friendly, but after a long conversation in which he invited me to his villa in Tuscany and flirted with me several times he told me that he couldn’t help and that he would put me through to the admiral in charge of the naval forces. The admiral made me wait for fifteen minutes while he had someone ring around the ports before finally telling me that they had no reports of any prisoners being handed over to the authorities. He told me he would contact the civil authorities who run the police and local prisons and would have the Governor of Sicily ring me back when they had any news. That was...’ Campbell looked at the antique aviator’s chronograph that she habitually wore on her wrist, ‘bloody hell, almost an hour ago.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Not very much, actually. Just that the Italians are doing what the Italians do best - a lot of talking and very little working. I’m sure Kitty will turn up sooner or later. Maybe the fishing boat is still out at sea, or maybe it’s from a remote village and it’ll take time for someone to collect her. There could be any number of reasons why nobody knows where she is.’

  ‘Do you think Gruber’s got her?’

  Campbell shook her head. ‘No. The Italians would know if that were the case. I don’t think they’re going to hand her over to him, either; I’ve told them we’re willing to exchange some of their officers for her. They’ll hold onto her.’

  Gwen frowned, not particularly convinced; Gruber seemed to have a habit of getting whatever he wanted and he would definitely want Kitty if he found out about her. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I’m sure they will. Anyway, right now there’s nothing else you can do, so leave it with me, don’t worry too much about her and try to keep your mind on your flying; you want to be alive when she comes home, right?’

  Gwen grimaced; the woman must have been listening in to the radio chatter in the control room and had undoubtedly heard Abby scolding her more than a few times for stupid mistakes she’d made in the attack on the bombers. She�
��d been distracted, thinking about Kitty instead of paying full attention to what was going on around her and had been as much a danger to her wingmate as she had been to the Prussians.

  ‘That would be nice, yes.’ She did her best to give the woman a smile, but she just couldn’t. Campbell did slightly better, but it was a politician’s smile and not entirely convincing.

  ‘Good. Then off you toddle. If I have any news I’ll come and find you. I promise.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Gwen nodded and left the woman to her thoughts.

  There was no word on Kitty’s whereabouts that day, though, and it wasn’t until mid-morning of the next that Campbell got a call saying that the aviator had been found.

  She was waiting on the airfield when the Misfits came back from the morning sortie and as soon as Gwen saw the broad smile on the woman’s face she sighed in relief, letting go of the breath that she seemed to have been holding for twenty-four hours.

  Before she’d even shut Excalibur down, Campbell was up on the wing and crouched down beside her. ‘The Legione Aerea have Kitty and that’s the best thing that could have happened to her; the Italian Army or Navy might not have been interested in an exchange, but they definitely will be and I’ll do what I can to make it happen.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Gwen smiled at her. ‘How long do you think it’ll take?’

  ‘Sorry, but I have no idea. These things take time even in the best of circumstances. You’ll just have to be patient, I’m afraid.’

  Campbell squeezed Gwen’s shoulder, then made her way back off the wing.

  Gwen looked down at her instrument panel, where she had taped a photograph of Kitty, one of the ones that the photographer from The Times, Mr Jones, had taken in Muscovy. She reached out to stroke it gently. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, darling.’

  Chapter 13

  Tanya crept down the hall and snuck into Scarlet’s bedroom half an hour before midnight.

  The Irishwoman came awake instantly when she put a hand over her mouth and her eyes flared open, but to Tanya’s surprise, she didn’t cry out or struggle, instead her eyes just flicked downwards to take in the dark clothing the Muscovite was wearing before she nodded in understanding.