B for Buster

by Iain Lawrence

  We tumbled down in a circle of fire, corkscrewing down to the ground. I could see my parachute but couldn’t reach it. I felt Percy struggling in my jacket.

  “Come on. Come on!” cried Lofty.

  In my window the earth went round and round. My ears ached and my arms were chunks of lead. But my head felt light and woozy, and I passed out for a moment. I dreamed that we were flying flat and level, cruising above puffy clouds lit by sparkling stars. Then I woke again to the spinning horror of the kite and shouting of the crew.

  We came out of the dive at a thousand feet, roaring through the smoke of Peenemünde. Our own fire had blown itself out, but someone was crying in the intercom; someone else was babbling. It was Buzz, going on and on, “I told you so! I told you so!”

  We headed home with two engines, with so many holes in the fuselage that I could see the stars right through Buster’s skin. Air blasted through the kite and froze me in my seat. It stank of petrol and cordite and scorched metal.

  “What’s the course?” someone asked. “What’s the course for home?”

  I shivered in my seat, suddenly colder than the air. It was the ghostly voice I’d heard so long ago. “What’s the course for home?” it asked again.

  I knew what the answer would be even before Simon spoke. Then he said, as I knew he would, “Steer two-one-niner.”

  The kite shook as it turned. Buster rattled and shook as it came around to a course that it had always been meant to fly. It seemed as though my ghosts had taken control, and I was so cold and frightened and lonely that I wondered if I was even alive anymore. I might have got the chop in that blast of flak, or we might have spiraled into the ground, and now we were on our way to that terrible place where all the airmen went. Two-one-niner. Was that the course that Donny had steered? Was it the one that everyone had to fly?

  But Lofty’s voice came over the intercom then. Calm and strong, a little bit slurred by the pipe in his teeth, it calmed me in an instant.

  “Sing out,” he said. “Will, are you there?”

  “Yes, Skipper.”

  “Simon?”

  “Okay.”

  He got an answer from everyone. We couldn’t all be dead, I thought, not dead and talking, dead and flying. I tightened my hand around Percy.

  “How much fuel have we got?” asked Lofty. Pop gave him a number, and I heard the pipe clicking in the skipper’s teeth.

  “It should be enough,” said the old guy.

  We straggled home by ourselves, out of the stream and the sense of protection it gave us. The sky was clear and bright all the way to England. The sea was silver, the land a grayish mass of shapes and shadows. Then we crossed the hills with our fuel getting low. And we dropped into fog that Buster never came out of again.

  I listened for bearings on the wireless, but couldn’t even hear static in my headphones. I slammed at the box, then tore the covers off, and I saw the shattered tubes and knew the thing was useless.

  We groped through the clouds, holding to our course, judging by our airspeed when we should find the runway. But it wasn’t where it should have been. We flew five minutes farther, then circled around and circled again, like a pigeon trying to find its way. The fog turned yellow as dawn approached, a greasy, sickly color.

  Pop said, “You’ve got fuel for twenty more minutes, Skipper.”

  We widened the circle and went around again.

  “Kak,” said Lofty. “Can you call the Darkies up?”

  “No, Skipper.” There wasn’t a chance of getting help. “The wireless is U/S.”

  Pop said, “Fifteen minutes, Skipper.”

  “Okay,” said Lofty. “Okay.”

  His intercom clicked off, then on again. “Boys, get your chutes on,” he said.

  I didn’t see that we had any choice except to bail out. I took my chute from the rack, and waited.

  “What about Ratty?” asked Buzz. “His turret’s stuck.”

  “Yeah, what about me?” said Ratty.

  “Don’t sweat,” said Lofty. “I’m staying. You guys get out, and I’ll put the kite down somewhere. Me and Ratty.”

  “And me,” said Buzz.

  “Yeah, me too,” said Simon.

  Pop and Will, they both said they’d stay with Buster. No one was bailing out. “I don’t want to get my boots dirty,” said Will.

  I didn’t know what to do. It was a scary idea to step through the hatch and into the air. But I thought of the White Knight wrecked on the hillside, and I sure didn’t want to stay.

  Percy wasn’t a problem. I had a paper bag to put him in; I had it for just that reason. Tucked inside, with its top crumpled down, he would fall away from the kite and out of the slipstream, then work his way free to fly on his own. I didn’t have to worry about Percy.

  “Pop, how’s the fuel?” asked Lofty. “Kid, if you’re going, you’d better go.”

  It didn’t matter to him what I did; it didn’t matter to anyone. There was nothing shameful about bailing out of a doomed bomber. It was the proper thing to do, and everyone knew it.

  “Skipper, ten more minutes,” said Pop.

  “Okay. Kid, get outta here,” said Lofty.

  My old man had used those same words. He had shouted them at me in one long slur, too many times for me to count. But Lofty said them in a different tone, wanting me to go only because it was safer. I hadn’t thought of my dad in ages, but suddenly I saw him clear as anything, as though his armchair was right in front of me and he was in it, trying to focus his drunken eyes. I wondered what he would say if he had been sitting there, what he would think to see me scared and uncertain. I knew right away; he’d be pleased. His red face would laugh, his blurry eyes glowing with the pleasure of finding he’d always been right. That I was good for nothing. That I cared for no one but myself. That even shadows scared me.

  I lifted my parachute. The buckles tapped against the ones on my harness. I hoisted it up and put it on the rack. “I’m staying,” I said. “We’ll stick together.”

  “Jolly dee,” said Lofty.

  I opened my jacket and let Percy come out. He hopped to my shoulder, up to the window. The fog seemed liquid-thick, flowing round the wingtip, churning through the airscrews.

  “Flaps down ten,” said Lofty. “Landing gear down. Field or forest, here we come.”

  I unfastened one side of my mask. “Where are we?” I whispered to Percy. “Where’s the airfield? Where’s home?”

  He snapped to attention.

  He stiffened; his head came up. His pink feet tightened on my jacket, and the chevrons rippled across his wings as he drew his feathers tight. His eyes staring around with their halos of stars.

  He knew where we were. He knew how to get home. I peered into the splash of his eye-sign and tried to learn what he knew. But he only blinked at me, then pecked my lips.

  “We’re almost on the deck,” said Lofty. “You see anything, Will?”

  “No, Skipper.”

  “Full flaps. Everybody buckle up.”

  I wanted Percy to be inside my jacket. The lining, I thought, would keep him padded if we pranged. But when I reached for him, he hopped away. And again he stood at attention. “What’s the matter?” I asked. And then I knew. I fumbled for my intercom button. I shouted, “Wait! We can still get back.”

  “How?” asked Lofty.

  “Percy can save us.”

  I thought someone would laugh, but the intercom was silent. “If we let him go, he’ll fly straight to the loft,” I said.

  “Yeah, and then what?” asked Lofty. “How’s that going to help?”

  “We’ll get there with him,” I said. “You’ll follow him home.”

  The fog flowed past; the engines droned. I hoped everyone was thinking of the day over Scotland, our first flight in Buster, when Lofty had flown the old crate more slowly than any of us had believed was possible.

  “Can you do it?” asked Will. “Can you follow a bird?”

  Lofty’s pipe clicked on his teeth
. “How fast does he go, Kid?”

  “Seventy miles an hour,” I said. “Maybe more.”

  “You’re nuts,” said Lofty after a moment. “Kak, you’ve lost your mind.” And then the old guy said, “I think it’s worth a try.”

  “You too?” asked Lofty. Then, “Oh, hell. Why not?” He opened the doors to the bomb bays, to slow us down as much as he could. Simon set to work opening the hatch in the floor. I took my paper bag and snapped it open. I put Percy inside, folded the top, and unbuckled myself from my harness.

  “Kid,” said Lofty. “When you let him out, come and help me. Everyone else, watch for the bird.”

  I crouched over the hatch with Simon, and he hauled it up and let it clatter onto the deck. I looked through the hole, down at a solid mass of clouds rushing past. The wind whistled up through the floor, tugging at my clothes. With her nose up, shaking as though from fright, old Buster flew on. Her two engines raced to keep us in the air.

  “Eighty-five knots,” said Lofty.

  “Don’t stall her!” cried Pop.

  “Eighty knots. Okay, Kid. Let him go.”

  I dropped the bag. I thought I’d be able to watch it fall straight into the clouds and see Percy flutter loose. But the instant it left my hand, the bag vanished below the kite, snatched away by the slipstream. I got up so suddenly that I put my leg through the hatch, and fell into the hole. My elbow hit the fuselage, and I jammed up against the metal with the clouds racing past my feet. Simon caught me. He pulled me up, and I staggered to the cockpit. I plugged in beside Lofty.

  Ratty was shouting, “There he goes! Left, Skipper. Left!”

  We wheeled in a turn so sharp that the clouds blurred across the windshield.

  “Where is he?” said Lofty.

  There was no answer. Round we went through a solid sky. I looked to the left and the right, but I couldn’t find Percy.

  “There!” shouted Will. “Twelve o’clock high. Look at him go!”

  I saw him then, through the windshield. Percy was straight ahead and a bit above us, his wings flapping. He was a little black dot in the fog, and in a moment we overtook him. I watched him through the panes of the canopy, until our propwash hit him and rolled him on his side.

  Lofty stomped on the rudder. Pulled at the column. “Throttle back,” he told me. “That one. The middle one.”

  I pulled on the lever, and the kite slewed sideways.

  “On the right,” shouted Buzz. “There he is!”

  Buster rolled the other way.

  “Behind us now,” said Ratty.

  Round we went again, tilted far over. Through the glass, beyond the wingtip, I saw the little bird thrashing through the clouds. He seemed to skid forward across the canopy, right around it and over the windshield. A gray-and-green speck, he was flying like a rocket.

  “Full throttle!” cried Lofty.

  I shoved the levers forward. The wing lifted as we leveled off. Little Percy seemed to sink below it.

  Will shouted, “I see him. To the right! To the right!” he cried as Buster swung around. “Now straight! Now steady, Skipper.”

  Lofty leveled the wings. He put the nose down a bit and cranked up the flaps. He aimed Buster’s nose right where Percy had been. But the pigeon was gone.

  Lofty flew straight and level as we scanned the whole sky, all around and above and below, but no one could see Percy. We droned along, looking up and down, left and right. I stared down the steps to the nose, out through the open hatch, and saw a shadow rush by with the clouds, and then another.

  “Five minutes left on the fuel,” said Pop.

  The clouds were scattering, burning off with the sun. I saw a fence go by, then a tree. And then we crossed the airfield.

  We flew right over the pigeon loft, right across the runway. We roared over Hangar D, so close above it that our wheels nearly touched the curve of the roof. Lofty’s leg straightened on the rudder pedal. “Throttle back,” he told me as we skidded round toward the tower.

  “Home! We’re home,” shouted Will.

  We missed the runway. We missed it by a hundred yards or more, and landed on the taxi strip. Our port wing nearly brushed the noses of the Lancs that were ranged across the grass. Erks and airmen watched us hurtle past, our wing in shreds, our fuselage like the top of a pepper shaker.

  Lofty braked, then turned the kite. I stood beside him in the cockpit as he taxied back, and I saw Sergeant Piper running out to meet us, with his gang of erks behind him.

  We didn’t have to shut the engines down. The first one quit as we rolled into our dispersal, the second a moment later. We rolled to a stop, and the erks came yelling round the tail fins, like a pack of dogs chasing a car. They banged their fists on the fuselage, and pounded on the door until Buzz went down to let them in. Then they swarmed up to the cockpit.

  Sergeant Piper pointed at the wing. “You great clot!” he said to Lofty. “What have you done to my bus?”

  CHAPTER 24

  IT TOOK THE ERKS half an hour to free Ratty from his turret. Buzz looked at him squeezed into the glass ball, laughed, and said, “Just leave him there.” But as soon as the erks were finished, Buzz was the first to help the gunner out. He held little Ratty upright and walked him round through Buster’s shadow to get the kinks from his knees and ankles.

  We all stood together around the old crate, and I was right in the middle of the group. Will held up my arm as though I was a champion fighter. “The Kakabeka Kid!” he said. “The Birdman of Yorkshire!”

  I felt happy and proud, and a bit embarrassed, too.

  Percy hadn’t really saved the kite. But he had tried his best, and maybe that was good enough for the others. They laughed their heads off about the little bird, telling each other how he had looked as he’d flown through the clag with his wings in a blur, how each of them had spotted him. They said it had been a crazy idea to follow a pigeon, that only someone like me could have thought of that. Only the Kakabeka Kid could have done it.

  I wished that Bert was there to see the fuss over his best bird. It made me sad that he hadn’t come out to see us.

  “Okay, chaps,” said Lofty. “Let’s go.”

  We piled aboard the Morris. Even Pop climbed in, taking the passenger seat for himself. Lofty shifted gears and off we went, jiggling on top of the car as it rumbled on the grass. I thought we would go straight to the huts, but Lofty took us across the dispersal and over the runway, straight to the pigeon loft.

  Bert came out to greet us as we skidded to a stop. Percy flew from his shoulder to mine, nuzzling against my cheek. Bert hugged me again, holding me in his bird-smelling grasp, then shook hands with all the others. He said he had lost a year of his life in the time between Percy’s arrival and ours.

  For the first time, the crew showed a real interest in the pigeon. Lofty held out his arm and whistled for the bird to come, but Percy just stayed on my shoulder. Will fetched him a bit of grass, then smiled as Percy’s beak touched his fingers. “He looks like a corporal, eh. Those two stripes on his wings.”

  Bert stood at my left side. He leaned down and whispered—a Bert whisper that everyone heard—“The order’s come, sir.”

  I knew what he meant, and it took my pleasure away. It made me more sorry for Bert than anything.

  “I say, what order’s that?” asked Lofty.

  “I’m to slaughter the birds, Sarge,” said Bert.

  Lofty looked shocked. “All of them?”

  “I’ll send ’ome the ones that I can. But all the others, yes.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Tonight, sir,” said Bert. “Old Fletcher-Dodge ’as got the cook making crusts right now.”

  I was sure that Ratty, at least, would laugh at that news. But the little gunner, barely half the height of Bert, seemed more surprised than anyone. “He’s going to eat our birds?”

  Bert looked down—way, way down. “Not if I can ’elp it, Sarge.” Then he turned to me. “I’m going to make a run for it, sir.”
>
  He took us to the back of the building, where the ancient motorized loft had its bonnet open again. Oily rags were draped on the fenders, Bert’s broken tools scattered around. The loft’s great bins had their doors dropped down, ready for the birds.

  Pop took off his flying jacket. He bunched up the sleeves of his sweater, stepped onto the front bumper, and leaned over the engine.

  “I think I can ’old her together,” said Bert. “Long enough to get me to Scotland, at least.”

  “You’re taking the pigeons?” asked Will.

  “Yes, sir. That’s my scheme, sir.” Bert tugged at his filthy clothes. “I’m giving it a try, sir,” he said to me. “I’m going to take them north, sir, and try to ’ide them in the ’ills.”

  Pop was making the sort of sounds that every mechanic seemed to make, a lot of grunts and groans.

  Just looking at the motorized loft, we could tell the plan didn’t have much hope. It was almost funny to imagine the pigeoneer trying to sneak across England in that thing. It was a huge, rattly house on wheels, a lunatic’s caravan that would be crazier still when it was stuffed with fifty squawking, stinking birds. And there in the cab would be Bert, spotted with droppings, with pigeons perched on his head and his arms.

  “Just let them go,” said Buzz. “Why not, eh?” He looked around, like a schoolteacher in a class full of idiots. “They’re birds, aren’t they? Turn them loose and let ’em fly away.”

  “Wheezy jeezy.” Ratty punched him on the arm. “You let a homing pigeon go, where do you think he heads for?”

  Buzz frowned. He couldn’t figure it out.

  “He thinks they’ll go to Trafalgar Square,” said Ratty with a laugh. “No lie. That’s what he really thinks.”

  A dim understanding showed in Buzz’s eyes.

  I said, “Well, what if they do go there?”

  Bert frowned at me. “Sir, I’m surprised at you.”

  “No. Listen,” I said. “What if we take them there? You and I? We can go tonight.”

  “To London?” said Bert. “To London, sir?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, sir . . . Well . . .” He blinked and muttered, and then he grinned. “Well, why not, sir? I’ve got mates down there. They could get the birds stuck, and—”