Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 03

by The Golden Spaniard

  “What do you think I was learning from that sergeant?”

  “All right, all right. Never mind him. I’m flying this machine and you’re listening to me now. You’re to turn over all the odd-numbered levers before you touch the evens. Tail first, head next, tail again, head again, and just as soon as you can pick a suitable spot after I’ve given you the O.K. All odd numbers first, remember, and snap ’em out one after the other as quick as you know how.”

  “My dear chap, that’s just what the sergeant taught me. My only concern now is to know if we’re coming alive out of this or not. For God’s sake get on with your own job. The sooner we start the better.”

  Rex gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder. “Well, here’s luck to us both,” he said and turned away to climb the ladder to the upper deck.

  “Yes, good luck to both of us,” he heard Richard call after him, and settling himself in the pilot’s seat he adjusted the earphones of the wireless over his head. Four minutes later they were off.

  Chapter Thirty – The Break for Home

  The airfield seemed to be snatched away from below them. The figures on it were waving and their mouths were open, but Richard could not hear the cheering. One of the six fighter planes had had trouble in taking off; it ran a couple of hundred yards and stopped. The factory buildings, hangars and huts shrank away; the individuals in the crowd merged into a mass. Rex had turned east over Valmojado; the town looked like a set of child’s bricks from their rapidly increasing height.

  Richard thought of the many dreary days and exciting moments he had spent there. He wondered if he would ever see the little town again. He felt that he must certainly pay it a visit just to renew his acquaintance with those scenes of his adventures when the Spanish War was over. But would he live to see the end of it? Would he live out that afternoon? That was what mattered. If he could come safely through the next three hours his days of danger in Spain would be over. He would be with Marie-Lou to-night and know the heavenly prospect of sailing with her for home.

  The toy town was well behind their tail now. He could no longer distinguish human figures on the road to Aranjuez. They must be up to about 3,000 feet. A wisp of mist floated below them like a trail of smoke. It obscured a good portion of the patchwork quilt of fields. Next minute the earth had disappeared. They were in the clouds.

  They continued to climb. Richard swallowed hard to clear his ears and they popped a little. Five minutes later the plane came out above the cloud layer. It spread below them like a polar landscape of humped and broken snow with low mountain ranges in the distance. Although Richard had flown a great deal he had never lost the joy of that sudden break from the gloomy greyness of a winter’s day into the brilliant summer sun that shines, irrespective of seasons, above the heavy blankets of grey cloud.

  A huge, black bird with rigid wings was gliding at the same swift speed just below them. As they mounted higher it rapidly decreased in size and into the field of view came five much smaller black birds clustered round it like fledglings flying with a parent. All six were the dense black shadows cast by the flight of planes on the white clouds below. A few more moments and they were only a cluster of dots soon lost in the billowing undulations of the lifeless cloudscape.

  They soared on, higher and higher, until the clouds were only a smooth sheet of opaque greyness thousands of feet beneath them. Richard stood up to look through the porthole; he could see four of the other planes and knew that the fifth must be flying with them, slightly higher, at an angle from which he could not glimpse it. His head felt very light and he judged they must be up to 15,000 feet. They were still climbing, but after a few moments his head felt easier and he knew that Rex must have released some oxygen.

  The great plane banked, turned northward, entered the rarified cloud layer, passed through it and came out in the upper air 20,000 feet above the earth. The heating apparatus of the plane kept it at a reasonable temperature although it was considerably colder. Outside Richard knew that it must be freezing; snow and ice were forming on the windows. The fighters that were accompanying them were a mixed bag as the Nationalists were using any types they could get hold of, and one of them, an old Spanish Regular Air Force machine, dropped out of sight unable to make the climb, but Richard had located the one he had not been able to see before. It was flying far out on their left, so they still had four protector-jailors in their company.

  He wondered anxiously just how unpleasant the men in those planes would make themselves if Rex failed to shake them all off before he made his break for the South. The Germans would certainly attempt to force the Flying Sow down and, since they dreaded her as a future danger to themselves, would probably be extremely glad of an excuse to smash her up altogether once they realized that her volunteer crew was endeavouring to double-cross them.

  Rex banked again, sooner than Richard expected; evidently they were not going as far north as Rex had said he intended to. Up in the control-room Rex chuckled to himself as the voice of Fritz von Auerbach came to him through the headphones. “Off your course. Adjust to N.N.W. for further ten miles before turning.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rex said into the curved mouthpiece strapped on to his chest. “I know what I’m up to,” and he kept the plane headed N.W.

  For some little time they held that course and Richard suspected that they were making for the Guadarrama mountains. Suddenly they began to come down again, through the thin upper layer of cloud, through the thousands of feet of bright clear space, down, down, down towards the limitless, snow-like cloud-fields that cloaked the earth from sight.

  Von Auerbach was now worried. “What’s wrong?” he kept asking Rex. “What’s wrong? Keep her up! Stop diving! Donnerweter, stop diving!” but Rex ignored him and continued to plunge downward.

  Immediately they started to descend Richard had resumed his post by the bombing apparatus. The clouds seemed to be rushing up to meet them; the black bird shadows appeared again, growing swiftly larger. Suddenly he saw an uneven ridge of white in the greyness ahead. For a second he thought it was a separate cloudbank, but with a tightening of the heart he realized that it was the jagged snowclad peaks of the Guadarramas, and that Rex seemed to be diving straight at them.

  “Stop diving! You’ll crash! You’ll crash!” bawled von Auerbach, and two Spaniards chipped in ordering and imploring Rex to stop, turn, ascend, so that his earphones became a din of conflicting voices. With his left hand he switched off the wireless.

  The accompanying planes split their formation before they reached the cloud level, two zooming upward and the others swerving sharply to the right and left. Rex chuckled as he plunged downward into it. He was taking a big risk. The main peaks were still two miles or more distant, but many lesser ones were concealed in the sea of cloud and nothing could save the Flying Sow if she hit one.

  He had to penetrate the cloud far enough to be able to turn without being seen from above. The second he had done so he flattened out, banked steeply and brought the plane right round in a full half-circle until she was headed south-east, dead towards Madrid. Richard stared down through the bombing sights holding his breath and knowing they might crash into a hidden peak at any second. Just as the turn was completed the grey mist parted for a moment and through the gap he glimpsed black rock partially covered with snow only two hundred feet beneath him. A minute passed that seemed an hour and they were three miles farther from the mountains; that danger, at least, was over.

  For ten minutes they flew on blind through the cloud bank, then Rex dived again. With his amazing air-sense he had judged it marvellously; as they shot out of the mist Madrid lay clear below them. In a flash the plane was back in the clouds again. It turned north-east and Rex’s shout came clearly through the voice pipe: “Ready, Richard. On the next dip let ’em go.”

  As they came clear of the clouds once more Richard saw they had passed Madrid and were diving straight for its three-mile-distant village suburb Hortaleza. They were on the far side of the
city from the line of battle and immediately below them lay a criss-cross pattern of ploughed fields. Without waiting a second he jammed down the bomb releases; tail-head, tail-head, just as Rex had told him. As he watched, the great bombs streaked away behind them. In the almost sound-proof plane it was impossible to hear them detonate, but as each one hit the earth he saw the flash and a balloon of smoke appear. The bursts seemed very small for such huge projectiles, but with no previous experience of bombing from three thousand feet it was impossible to judge them.

  He had only let ten go when Rex’s voice came again, “Now, now! Damn you! What the hell are you waiting for?”

  “I’m at it, man,” Richard yelled back, and with frantic haste he turned over the remaining ten odd-numbered levers so as to clear half the bombs before they reached the village.

  An anti-aircraft gun opened from below. Richard’s first knowledge of it was when he saw a series of white, feathery puffballs suddenly appear a few hundred yards under and behind their tail. Rex zoomed up into the clouds again and the remainder of the bursts were hidden. He flattened out, banked steeply, set a course due south and switched over to ‘George,’ the gyroscopic control. Next moment he came storming down the ladder to Richard.

  “What the hell’s the game? Why didn’t you let those blasted bombs go when I gave the word? D’you want to get us both killed? We may be now I’ve got to circle round Madrid and come down again.”

  Richard smiled up at him. “What’s wrong, old boy? Does it matter where you pitch the bally things as long as it’s not on people? I thought you’d unload them in the Guadarramas. Why bother about doing it near Madrid?”

  “It’s not that, you chump!” Rex roared. “We can’t let ’em go without seeing where they go to and I wanted to climb now—get clear away while the going’s good.”

  “Climb, then, if you want to. I got rid of all I could.” Richard pointed to the levers. “Half of them have gone, anyway.”

  Rex stared down in surprise and a slow smile lit his face as he saw that all the odd-numbered levers were turned over. “You did drop ’em, then. Good for you. I’m sorry, but I thought you’d mucked it.”

  “What about the rest?”

  “Don’t want to come down again now the ‘archies’ have opened,” Rex frowned. “Besides, one of those planes may spot us.”

  “We can’t let them go blind. How about waiting till we reach the sea?”

  “That’s it. Fine! With half the load gone I reckon I’ll be able to manage.” With a quick nod Rex shot up the ladder to the control-room again.

  Richard smiled and lit himself a cigarette. If they could keep clear of their friends and foes the danger was over now.

  The plane tilted again and soared up through the grey wreaths of mist. Rex’s call came down the voice-pipe. “Come up here and do observer.”

  Mounting to the cockpit, Richard settled himself beside Rex and stared out through the impenetrable murk. As they flashed into daylight both of them glanced swiftly round. Some miles to the west a plane was moving above the cloud-banks. It was Fritz von Auerbach and he turned in their direction the second he saw them.

  Rex put her nose down, altered course to south-east and they raced through the clouds again. Ten minutes later he shot earthwards to see where they were. Richard grabbed his arm. The German had turned and come down too, apparently guessing their direction. Owing to his superior speed he had passed them, but his observer spotted the Flying Sow directly she plunged out of the clouds and von Auerbach flipped round to meet her. He was a little below them and away to their right front.

  Suddenly there was a rapid rat-tat-tat on the opposite side of the plane. Richard leapt from his seat and dashed half-way down the ladder. A line of holes showed in the framework, curving up from the lower deck to the aftermost porthole. The hammering came again and a spray of bullets smacked through the ports.

  Turning, Richard ran back to the cockpit. He stared anxiously towards the east and saw the plane from which the bullets had come; it was a Russian chaser.

  Rex seized the emergency boost to give the helpless Flying Sow her last ounce of speed. At the second Richard caught sight of the Russian he swerved south a little. It seemed as if the three planes were about to rush together in one terrific crash but next moment Rex zoomed upward while the Russian continued dead ahead.

  Richard gave a whoop of joy. “He’s seen von Auerbach. Thank God old Fritz was after us.”

  Von Auerbach had seen the Russian too. The pro-Nationalist and pro-Government fighters were hurtling towards each other, decreasing their distance by 600 miles an hour. Both planes suddenly streaked skywards in a flashing curve, each airman seeking to gain height over his enemy. The Flying Sow lifted sharply again and disappeared in the friendly clouds, leaving the Communist and the Nazi to fight it out.

  Rex turned south once more. When next they came down to check their position he managed to identify the provincial town of Valdepenas some distance to the right. Nearly half their journey to the sea was accomplished. Soon afterwards they entered the mountainous country of the Sierra Morena. It was very bumpy and tricky flying but, with the aid of the map, Rex safely negotiated the passes. At half-past five they sighted Granada, and the domes of its famous Moorish Palace, the Alhambra, which dominated the wide plain, were just discernible in the failing light of the winter afternoon. The town had been in the hands of the Nationalists for months and, as the Flying Sow was carrying Nationalist markings, there was no fear of other Russian fighters coming up to chase her.

  Granada was only thirty-five miles from the sea but the huge jagged heights of the Sierra Nevada bulked to the east of the city and spurs of the range ran to its south, cutting it off from the coast. Rex banked and turned west following the valley of the Genii. Farther on, the river curved south to empty itself in the sea at Malaga. Leaving it ten miles inland, Rex passed north of the Sierra de Mijas for about half its length, found a pass and headed through it for the sea.

  The mountain chain ran parallel with the coast and about six miles from it, forming the north-western front of the Government-held Malaga pocket, but the entire sector was dormant and no signs could be seen of the widely scattered pickets which composed the opposing forces.

  Richard identified the bay he had chosen as their destination, although owing to their lateness, occasioned by the necessity of throwing off their escort, visibility was rapidly decreasing. When they had passed the mountains he could just make out an old monastery which, perched upon a high cliff about a mile inland, dominated the coast road for a considerable distance in both directions.

  The setting sun was now behind the mountains and for a few anxious moments they scanned the dusk-obscured sea; then, almost simultaneously, they sighted the Golden Gull lying quietly outside the bay just at the three-mile limit. Her single, squat funnel and low, graceful lines identified her beyond question. Rex was heading straight for her when Richard said, “The rest of the bombs! They may go off if we hit the water before we’ve unloaded them.”

  Rex shrugged. “Let ’em down in the sea. Any place’ll do.”

  “No,” said Richard. “There’s not a soul about here and having taken the trouble to learn a bit about bombing I’d like to see just how good a bomber I am. Run me round the curve of the bay about thirty feet out from the present tide-line. It would be fun to see if they fall just where I think they’re going to.”

  “O.K.,” Rex agreed. “Have it your own way.” As they circled and came back over the villa on the headland where Richard had stayed a few nights with friends years before, he dived down to the lower deck and flung himself flat beside the bombing sights.

  The Flying Sow rushed towards the beach and sailed gracefully along it only about four hundred feet above the water. One after another Richard flung the rest of the release levers over. The bombs streamed out under her tail and he saw them plunging down into the sea, a line of splashes in the twilight parallel with the sand and no more than fifty feet out from the edge
of the water.

  There was no smoke this time, nor the huge fountains of water one might have expected. As the bombs disappeared each of them sent up a kind of frothy bulge in the sea which broke the fine of wavelets, but the Flying Sow behaved most strangely. From the moment the first bomb left her she bounced jerkily up as though released by a series of springs.

  Rex swore. Down below Richard slammed over lever after lever until the last of the second batch of twenty bombs was gone and the plane zoomed up over the opposite headland.

  Turning out to sea, Rex began to call the Golden Gull on his wireless. He had not dared to do so before in case his signals should be picked up by Nationalist or Government air bases. Again and again he sent out: “S.O.S.—Lower boat—S.O.S.—Lower boat,” as he circled round the yacht.

  Marie-Lou had been keeping a sharp look-out beside her captain on the bridge. She had seen the great plane appear over the mountains, a black silhouette against the glow of the sunset, but having expected Richard to come off in a small boat she hardly dared to hope that such an air monster could possibly have been secured by him for his escape from Spain. The wireless operator’s assistant ran from the radio-room waving the first message. All the crew knew why the yacht was waiting there and the man’s face told her his good tidings. Captain Sanderson smiled at her and signalled the coxwain, standing by ready on the deck below to pipe a boat away. Within two minutes it was in the water; manned by twice the number of eager hands that were needed, but the smiling captain let them go.

  The Mediterranean was blue-green and gentle in the violet light. Rex brought the Flying Sow down on to it a mile astern of the yacht and a little to her leeward side. Richard had opened the sliding hatch of the emergency exit above the control chamber and stood on the ladder, half in half out of it, the rushing wind tearing past as though it would strip his clothes from his body.