Oath Bound - Book V of The Order of the Air

by Melissa Scott

  “Father Gedeyon?”

  He had moved away, directing villagers toward the water and into the brush, and she hesitated, not wanting to interrupt. She couldn’t start loading until the rest of the wounded were here — she would need to balance the plane, and put the worst wounded where they could be most easily reached — and then there was the question of who else was coming with them… She hoped to hell that had been decided before they left the village; the thought of a panicked stampede, overrunning the pier and risking damage to the Cat’s floats, didn’t bear thinking of.

  “Mrs. Segura?” That was a thin woman in a faded European dress and a broad-brimmed hat, a little boy in her arms and an older girl hovering warily behind her.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Filagot. I’m Tedesse’s wife. He told me I should help you any way I can.”

  Alma gave a sigh of pure relief. That solved her language problem and — she hoped — the problem of who would go with them. “Pleased to meet you. I assume you and your children are coming with you?”

  She nodded, her mouth twisting in a wry smile. “Yes. Understand, I would go with my husband, but — I’m related to the imperial family.”

  Alma nodded, and Filagot shifted the boy on her hip.

  “And there are the children to think of.”

  “Do you know how many children in all?” Alma glanced back at the Cat, where Tiny and Lewis were manhandling the first of the fuel drums down the pier.

  “Ten.”

  Well, one more wouldn’t make that much difference. Alma looked back up the road, at the line of villagers still moving slowly toward the shore. “Thanks. Will you collect the people who are going with us? I’m going to take a look at our stowage plan.”

  “Of course,” Filagot answered, and Alma turned away.

  It was past four in the afternoon by the time they had the wounded safely loaded and could let the rest of the civilians aboard. Filagot produced a vial of morphine to go with the one in the Cat’s first aid kit, and added that two of the other women had also had basic Red Cross training. They were glad to help tend the wounded in flight. Alma accepted gladly, and turned her attention to balancing the plane. There were eleven children all told, ranging in age from a baby in arms to a pair of listless toddlers who legs were swathed in bandages to a girl in her teens with a bandaged arm who still kept a close eye on three younger children, and as Alma arranged them in the engineering compartment and moved their scant baggage into the navigation station, her heart sank. What if it were Dora, or Merilee and Douglas and Jimmy, fleeing their country for an entirely uncertain future? Who would take them in, when no one wanted to admit that their war even existed? She glanced sideways at Filagot, who lifted her chin.

  “My uncle is at the embassy. He will care for us.”

  Alma nodded. “There aren’t nearly enough seats. When we take off, everyone needs to brace themselves, make sure they don’t go sliding around. Especially the children.”

  “I can do that, I think.”

  “Once we’re up, everyone needs to stay still as much as possible. The kids can’t go running to the windows to try and see things.”

  “I will make sure everyone understands,” Filagot said. “I couldn’t help hearing. Are we — how badly are we overloaded?”

  Alma hesitated, but there was no point in lying. “Some. But we’ve got a lot of room for the takeoff, and we’ll burn off fuel as we go. We’ll be all right.”

  “And the Italians?” Filagot’s voice was bleak.

  “I don’t know.” They’d been in contact with Bahir Dar by radio, and Bahir Dar had contacted Khartoum; the good news was that they’d have a beacon to follow to find the Nile, but it was certainly possible that the Italians had picked up the transmission, and could be waiting for the Cat if they chose. Alma shoved the thought aside. “I don’t think they’ll bother.”

  “Let us hope not,” Filagot answered, with a quick smile, and Alma climbed out onto the pier.

  Mitch was waiting by the cat’s nose, a cigarette cupped in his hand, and Tiny and Lewis had just handed over the last of the empty fuel drums to one of Father Gedeyon’s people. Alma waved, and they hurried back down the pier.

  “What’s the verdict?” Mitch asked, once they were in earshot.

  Alma straightened her shoulders. It was her choice, of course: her plane, her call, her idea. “I say we go as soon as we make the final checks. We’ll have almost two hours of light left, and by then with a bit of luck we’ll be able to pick up Khartoum. After that…” She shrugged. “The weather’s supposed to be good all the way to Cairo, just a few high clouds, and with the moon almost full we shouldn’t have any trouble following the Nile. We’ll make Cairo mid-morning, in full daylight.”

  Lewis nodded. “We’re heavy.”

  “I know. But we’ve got fifty miles of lake to get us airborne.”

  Mitch grinned at that, as she’d hoped he would. “Sounds good to me.”

  They finished the walk-around in silence, and Alma and Mitch made their way carefully through the piled baggage to take their seats in the cockpit. At her orders, Lewis fired up the engines, adjusting the cowls to let them warm up thoroughly. On the shore, the villagers had built fires and set up tents while some of the men worked on rafts, but as the engines came to life, most of them straightened, shading their eyes to watch the plane. We ought to stay, Alma thought, but there was nothing useful she could do here. Maybe once she got back to the States she could tell people what was going on, get people to pay attention — except who would listen to her? It had been a long time since the Great Passenger Derby, and this was news nobody wanted to hear.

  “Oil temperature’s at 104,” Lewis said, his voice crackling in her headset, and she put those worries aside. What she could do now, what only she, only they, could do, was get these people safely to Cairo.

  “Confirmed.” The Cat was resting more heavily on the left pontoon, and she adjusted the aileron to compensate.

  “Oil pressure is up,” Lewis said. “Everything looks good here.”

  Mitch said, “Elevators set. Rudder and ailerons, too.”

  Alma tapped the rudder controls, feeling them move smoothly under her feet. “Ok. We’re going.”

  She advanced the throttle to pull away from the pier. The Cat was slow to respond, the hull wallowing through the calm water. She’d never flown the Cat when it was this heavy, and she didn’t like the way it sat down into the lake’s surface, more boat-like than she’d ever felt it. “Engine temps?”

  “All good,” Lewis answered, and she kicked the rudder to point the Cat toward the middle of the lake. At least the balance felt good, the plane resting evenly on the floats now. Ahead, the lake stretched toward the horizon, the sun setting off the right wing. She had all the room in the world, nearly fifty miles before she reached the far shore: if she couldn’t get the Cat airborne by then, it wasn’t going to happen.

  “Automatic rich. Propellers set to 2700.”

  “Fuel set to automatic rich, propellers at 2700,” Lewis answered.

  “Full throttle.”

  Alma felt the engines surge with Lewis’s acknowledgement, and the Cat began to run. Not as fast or as smooth as normal, but moving, the heavy hull plowing through the water. The airspeed was creeping up, forty knots, fifty, fifty-five, but it was taking forever, the Cat charging into the lake’s center. She remembered the islands she had seen on the flight from Bahir Dar — how far out were they? — but the water ahead was empty, smooth as glass. Plenty of time, she told herself, her hands easy on the controls. Seventy knots, seventy-five… In theory, the Cat could lift now, but she could feel its reluctance, the way the water clung to the hull. Eighty knots, and she felt the hull lift just a little, the wings finally catching enough lift. She eased back on the controls, and felt the plane stagger, the nose dropping. She put the controls forward and the Cat slapped back into the water, still moving well enough that there was no reason to abort. She watched the airspeed cl
imb back to eighty and then to eighty-two, and tried again. This time the nose lifted, and the hull finally pulled free of the water.

  They were up, but not steady, the Cat just on the edge of a stall less than a hundred feet above the water. Every nerve screamed to pull back, pull up into a steeper climb, but she knew that would only make things worse. The wheel shuddered in her hands, but the airspeed was rising, the wings catching lift at last. She eased the nose up a hair, and gained fifty feet; another five knots of speed and she gained a hundred. There was an island ahead now, two miles out and growing rapidly larger, but they would clear its trees without trouble.

  She set the Cat into a shallow climb, and banked gently westward. “Tiny. Give me a reciprocal bearing for Bahir Dar.”

  “Yes, ma’am, just one minute.”

  She could feel herself settling into the flight, feel the way she would have to manage weight and trim and load: heavy, yes, heavier than she was supposed to be, but the Cat was handling it like a champ. “It’s a good plane,” she said, to no one in particular, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mitch grin.

  Alma settled the Cat at 9000 feet, on the heading that should bring them northwest toward Khartoum. The sun was on the horizon, a molten, blinding light that filled a third of the canopy. Beneath their wings, the forest was giving way to scrub, and she could already see the first hints of desert toward the north. So far, there had been no sign of any Italian planes, or of anyone at all, just Tiny’s occasional corrections to remind her that they were in fact in contact with anyone outside the cockpit. To the east, the sky was darkening, the brightest stars already visible above the horizon.

  “See anything?” she asked, and Mitch shook his head.

  “All clear so far. It’s getting close enough to sundown that I don’t think they’ll be sending out fighters. At least, I wouldn’t risk it.”

  Alma nodded. She was beginning to think they’d gotten away with it — or, more likely, that the Italians simply didn’t care if they got away. “It’s too late to stop us delivering the guns, and it would look bad if we disappeared. Especially since there are obviously people waiting for us.”

  “Got to keep it looking good for the newspapers,” Mitch said.

  “Yeah.”

  There was nothing more to say. Alma checked her heading again, and the Cat droned westward over the changing landscape. The moon was rising behind the starboard wing, invisible from the cockpit except as a haze of silver light. The sun dipped below the horizon, the light fading to a dull glow and then to nothing, the horizon drowned in the night.

  “How’s the bearing, Tiny?”

  “Fading,” he answered. “But I can still make it out. We’re still good.”

  “Good.” There were clouds ahead, thin shreds at about 15,000 feet, high enough and scattered enough that they wouldn’t make a difference, but beyond them… It was hard to tell, but there might be more solid weather shouldering up from the west. The last forecast from Bahir Dar still promised decent weather the rest of the way to Cairo, but clouds weren’t impossible. She looked up, stretching neck and shoulders, and saw the sky above the canopy ablaze with stars.

  Another hour, and she saw Mitch check his watch, brows drawn into a brief frown before he made himself relax. “We ought to spot the beacon soon,” he said.

  Alma nodded. “Yeah. Tiny, what’s our bearing?”

  “No change, ma’am.”

  Alma glanced at the compass again. Still on target, assuming Tiny had read the bearings right, lining them up properly with the signal from Bahir Dar… Still at 9000 feet, still level, though it was all but impossible to tell where the sky ended and the ground began. Khartoum was out there somewhere, its beacon lit, and from Khartoum they could follow the Nile all the way home.

  “How far do you make it?” she asked.

  “To Khartoum?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  There was a little silence, and a quick flicker of light from a dimmed flashlight as Mitch consulted his clipboard. “About — inside fifty miles.”

  The beacon should be visible at forty, and in this darkness, in clear weather, she’d expect to see it before now. She’d seen beacons in the Midwest at close to a hundred. Surely they hadn’t missed it — they couldn’t have missed it, not with the signal from Bahir Dar to follow.

  Something flashed to the left of the Cat’s nose, a distant spark against the blackness. She stiffened, but said nothing, afraid to speak too soon, and waited for the lights to come around again. She found herself counting seconds, eight, nine, ten, and then it came again, brighter because she knew where to look.

  “Was that —?” Mitch began, and Alma nodded.

  “I’ve got it.” She checked the gyrocompass, adjusted her heading. “Nice job, Tiny. I’ve got the beacon in sight, and we were only ten points off the exact line.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Tiny answered. “Should I try to raise them? I’ve got a frequency.”

  “Go ahead.”

  The Cat bored on into the night, the flash of the beacon growing ever stronger. She was beginning to get a glimpse of darker shadows, the buildings of the city darker than the surrounding desert, and then, miraculously, the glint of silver, moonlight on water, the Nile itself. It was almost as good as a beacon, a silver streak against the dark, leading them safely north to Cairo.

  “Ma’am, I have Khartoum,” Tiny said. “They want to know if we’re going to land tonight.”

  “Put them through to me,” Alma said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A moment later, a faintly British voice sounded in her headphones. “Gilchrist Catalina, this is Khartoum Control.”

  “Khartoum, Gilchrist, we read you.”

  There was a brief, blank silence, and Alma grinned, imagining the radioman dropping his cigarette in surprise, hearing a woman’s voice.

  “Gilchrist, we have you in sight. Do you want to land?”

  “Negative, Khartoum, though I appreciate the offer. We are trying to make Cairo as quickly as possible. We have wounded on board.” She hadn’t planned to say that, either, and was unsurprised to provoke another moment of silence.

  “Understood, Gilchrist. We have the route forecast for Cairo if you want it.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Alma said, and saw Mitch reach for his clipboard.

  “Through noon Cairo time, expecting westerly winds at less than five knots, scattered clouds through midnight with ceiling at 15,000 and visibility 5 or better, then increasing clouds, ceiling 10,000 with visibility 4 to 5 through 6 AM. After 6 AM, expect ceiling 10,000 and visibility 3 to 4, with winds shifting to southwesterly at seven knots.”

  “Got it,” Mitch said, scribbling, and Alma nodded.

  “Roger that, Khartoum. And thanks for the light as well.”

  “Glad to oblige, Gilchrist. Good luck and godspeed.”

  They were over the beacon now. Alma wagged her wings in thanks, and pointed the Cat’s nose along the silver ribbon that was the Nile.

  “Do you want to try to make the cut-off?” Mitch asked. “That’ll get us in sooner.”

  Alma considered, watching the ground unreel beneath the Cat’s nose. In the moonlight, the contrast between desert and the narrow bands of vegetation on either side of the river was stark, a path they couldn’t miss. The moon wouldn’t set until six, and by then the sky would be light enough for them to follow the Nile until sunrise. The tanks were still comfortably full, and the Cat was handling better as they burned off some of the fuel. The weather was as good as they could hope for. “We’ll stay with the Nile. Let’s not take any unnecessary risks.”

  The Nile stretched ahead of them, a dark ribbon against the desert, and Alma kept the Cat’s nose aligned with its curves. At the point where it turned back south and west, she hesitated — so much faster to cut across the top of the loop — but turned with the river. Better not to take the risk, when they had time and fuel to spare. She and Mitch took turns at the controls, and in the early hours of the morning
Tiny took her place so that she could stretch her legs and grab a cup of coffee.

  After the serenity of the cockpit, the crowded compartments were a shock. Some of the passengers were sleeping, the children curled together under shared blankets, the adult women braced uneasily in the few chairs or against the hull of the plane. The wounded were calm, the burned woman moving uneasily in her drugged sleep, mouth opening in moans too soft to hear over the engines’ roar, and one of the Red Cross trainees was bathing the face of the man shot in the chest. Filagot sat against the compartment’s rear frame, apparently asleep, but as Alma watched she opened her eyes and then pushed herself to her feet.

  “How’s it going?” Alma asked, leaning close to speak over the engine noise.

  Filagot shrugged. “Well enough, so far. Lieutenant Jember is running a fever, but I don’t think it’s too bad. Martha… she will be better once we reach Cairo.”

  There wasn’t much they could do for the burns until then, Alma knew. “How’s the morphine holding out?”

  “We’ll be all right,” Filagot said, and managed a smile. “This is more of a chance than I thought we’d have.”

  I only wish it were more. Alma nodded, and turned back to the cockpit.

  They were heading almost due north now, the moon setting off the port wing into thickening clouds. The Nile had widened, strengthened, heading for the sea. She wondered what ruins and temples they were passing in the dark, what stories lay untold. Jerry would know, of course, even in by moonlight at 9000 feet, and she missed his presence suddenly.