‘I’ve thought about it,’ Yeoman told him. ‘No, thanks.’
Sampson remained unruffled. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’re the type to take things quietly, not yet. In the meantime, good luck in Warambe. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.’
Yeoman shook Sampson’s hand and turned away with a nod, walking across the tarmac to his Hunter. He would be first away, followed by his number two, a quick-witted young Northumbrian named Peter Gibbons. The name had already caused some ribaldry, for the others had promised to introduce the youngster to some of his simian namesakes on their arrival in Africa. Yeoman had picked the young flying officer to be his wingman because Gibbons was not experienced in long-range flying; he had also paired up the others in similar fashion.
Yeoman and Gibbons lined up their Hunters on Dunsfold’s main runway and opened their throttles in unison. The takeoff run was longer than usual, for each aircraft, in addition to its internal fuel, carried two 230-gallon drop tanks on its inboard wing pylons and two 100-gallon tanks on the outboard pylons.
They turned south towards the Channel in a steady climb, going up to thirty thousand feet to clear the busy air lanes, and Yeoman contacted France Military Control to clear their flight to Istres, north-west of Marseille. The Hunters, in fact, carried enough fuel to take them all the way non-stop to El Adem, but Yeoman had deemed it better to retain substantial fuel reserves in case of any sudden diversions.
Yeoman and Gibbons were still at Istres, enjoying what the younger pilot described as a ‘decent cup of coffee’, when the second pair of Hunters arrived, led by Neil Hart. Everything was on schedule. With the fuel uplift complete Yeoman and Gibbons took off again, this time for Luqa on Malta, the scene of so much bitter air fighting in the summer of 1942. The brazen sky over Luqa, and the heat, brought back many memories to Yeoman, most of them unpleasant. But there were sweeter memories too, of a girl named Lucia, who had consoled him for a time after the letters from Julia had stopped coming. He knew now, of course, why they had stopped, but he had never felt any remorse for his brief affair with the Maltese girl. It had been something precious to them both, during the brief weeks it had lasted, and he would never forget it. Neither, he hoped, would she.
From Malta they went on to El Adem. The Libyan airfield was deserted except for some transport aircraft and half a dozen Canberras detached from Cyprus on a bombing exercise. It had not, Yeoman learned, been especially successful, as the commander of the Canberra detachment explained. He looked extremely unhappy.
‘Hit the target right on the nose,’ he said. ‘Beautiful. Then we turned for home and saw the real target. Christ knows what we bombed. I’m expecting hordes of irate Bedouin to come charging over the horizon on their camels at any moment, waving claims for damage to personal property.’
He was clearly inquisitive about the reason for the Hunters’ presence at El Adem, but since Yeoman was his senior by several ranks he did not ask, and Yeoman had no intention of enlightening him. In fact, he was preoccupied with the next stage of the journey, which required careful planning, for the flight would take them over more than a thousand miles of featureless desert until they descended to their next port of call, the French airfield at Fort Lamy.
The eight Hunters rendezvoused at El Adem and the pilots spent the night there, retiring early to bed after a meal. For safety’s sake, the crossing of the Sahara would be made in formation.
They were up before dawn, walking out to their aircraft in freezing desert air that caught at their throats and painted the Hunters’ wings with a thin layer of rime. Yet within ten minutes, as the first pair of fighters thundered down the runway and the sun began to push its rim over the eastern horizon in a blaze of colour, the cold of the night had been dispelled.
Yeoman had seen many a desert dawn, but this was one of the loveliest. Below the Hunters, as they climbed steadily out over Cyrenaica towards their cruising altitude on a true heading of 205 degrees, the desert was a glory of red and brown and purple; the sun a golden ball drifting in a haze of green and violet. Soon, as the sun rose higher, all that would change and the desert would become a featureless sea of ochre, bathed in a stark brazen glare.
Yeoman, always with an eye for detail, looked over to the right, where a series of desert tracks met in junction a few miles from the Hunters’ track. Close to that junction lay the oasis of Bir Hacheim, where the French Foreign Legion had held out for vital days in the face of repeated onslaughts by Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps after the latter had destroyed a British brigade in the fierce tank battles of 1942, and broken the impetus of the German drive towards Egypt.
There were plenty of tracks, clearly visible from the Hunters’ cruising altitude of thirty-five thousand feet, to mark the first hundred and fifty miles of the desert crossing, and clearly-defined wadis, the courses of dried-up rivers, also provided useful visual checks to the Hunters’ progress. The accuracy of their track had been established early in the flight by reference to the radio navigation beacons at El Adem and Benina, but there would be no more radio aids until they got a position fix from the airfield at Largeau, in Chad.
Gradually, the tracks marked on the chart folded on Yeoman’s knee began to peter out, and surface detail disappeared to be replaced by great sand-coloured tracts bearing the ominous words ‘Limit of Reliable Relief Information’. This was the Great Sand Sea, the shifting desert that had swallowed many an aircraft without trace in the years since men had first begun to fly over the desert back in the 1920s.
Yeoman tried to imagine what it must have been like for those early long-distance pioneers, in their stick-and-wire aircraft with engines that were prone to all sorts of malfunction. For them, a forced landing in the desert had meant almost certain death, either from thirst or at the hands of hostile tribesmen. It had taken them days to accomplish the same journey that the Hunters, thirty years on, were taking only a few hours to achieve, spinning their vapour trails six miles above the great vastness at 500 mph.
Yet the huge wilderness was not entirely deserted. The quest for oil, the twentieth century’s life blood, had brought men to these wastes, and their camps lay to left and right of the Hunters’ track; tiny circles on the map bearing such names as Bir Bettafal, Oasis P4 and, cryptically, BP-KCA Rig. The aircraft that flew weekly supplies into these isolated spots were much closer in outline and performance to the pioneers’ machines than were Yeoman’s speeding jets. He wondered, briefly, if the men at the oil camps would hear the distant thunder of the Hunters’ passage, and pause in their tasks to watch the eight arrow-straight contrails, spearing across the sky on their southbound course.
After about an hour’s flying the horizon ahead was broken by ragged mountains. Yeoman knew, without looking at his chart, that this was the Tibesti Range, with peaks rising to eleven thousand feet and more. Libya was behind them now, and the Hunters’ radio navigation equipment, switched to the appropriate frequency, was beginning to pick up faint signals from the homing beacon at Largeau. The signals grew stronger as the minutes went by, and the resultant position fix the pilots were able to obtain confirmed once again that they were on track.
Forty-five minutes later, having established radio contact, the Hunters began a slow descent to Fort Lamy, a former tiny airstrip expanded during the Second World War as a staging post for the vast amount of air traffic flying the trans-African route from the west coast to the Middle East. The runway was barely long enough to accommodate modern jets, but all the Hunters got down safely. Because of the restricted runway, however, they would have to make the last leg of the journey to Warambe with much less than a full load of fuel, otherwise they would never get off the ground.
It was cool at Fort Lamy, much cooler than it had been a thousand miles farther north. Thanks to the Hunters’ dawn departure from El Adem the morning was still young, and the pilots were able to enjoy a second breakfast in the French Air Force officers’ mess. Most of the personnel at Fort Lamy, Yeoman discovered, belonged to th
e Air Wing of the Foreign Legion, units of which were operating in Chad to keep rebellious tribesmen in check. The Legion pilots were fit, tough-looking young men of high intelligence, enjoying the same pay and status as their counterparts in the French Army Air Corps. La Legion Etrangère, Yeoman thought, had come a long way since the days of Beau Geste.
Yeoman’s main concern at Fort Lamy was to check the en route weather to the south. They were, he learned, likely to run through a belt of rain over the mountains, but there was also the comforting news that this ought to be behind them by the time they began their let-down to Warambe. However, Yeoman decided to split up the Hunters into pairs with fifteen-minute intervals once more, to reduce the risk of collision if they encountered really bad weather en route.
The RAF ground crew party who had been dropped at Fort Lamy by a Transport Command Hastings the day before looked a little the worse for wear, and Yeoman suspected that they had been entertained in some style by their French hosts. The Hastings had gone on to Warambe with the last of the ground parties. A word with the NCO in charge of the Fort Lamy party, an elderly flight sergeant, confirmed Yeoman’s suspicions. The NCO, unawed by the fact that a group captain suddenly turned up and started talking to him like an equal, spoke quite frankly and with some astonishment about his drinking experiences with the Legion.
‘There was this sergeant-major, you see, sir; adjutant-chef, the French call ’em. He was the only one in the NCOS’ mess who wasn’t friendly. Nobody seemed to like him very much — not among the older chaps, I mean. Then I found out why. The sergeant-major was actually a Frenchman, and the rest weren’t. Just about every NCO in that room was German. And, d’you know what? Just about every one of ’em between the age of thirty-five and forty had been in the Waffen SS during the war. They were doing their third stint with the
Legion. Daren’t go back to Germany, or they’d be arrested as war criminals. One of them told me there’d been a whole battalion of former SS men serving with the Legion in Indo-China, and that they’d been pulled out because they were too rough with the locals.’
‘What about the sergeant-major, chief?’ Yeoman wanted to know.
The flight sergeant looked puzzled for a moment, as though he had forgotten how the conversation had started, then said, ‘Oh, him. He came swaggering over after a bit and challenged me to a drinking contest, that’s all. It didn’t last very long, because one of the SS blokes slipped something into his drink. He went over as though he’d been poleaxed. Then we all had a bit of a party.’
‘I can well imagine,’ Yeoman said. ‘You’d better pray that the backup Hastings arrives to get you out of here before your French pal wakes up.’ The flight sergeant grinned, deftly put the finishing touches to replacing a panel over the radio compartment of Yeoman’s Hunter, and announced that all eight aircraft were as fit to fly as they would ever be.
‘In that case, chief,’ Yeoman said, ‘We’ll see you in Warambe. Maybe.’ Grinning, he made a significant throat-cutting gesture with his index finger.
Many of the personnel at Fort Lamy turned out to watch the Hunters’ departure. They seldom saw jet aircraft, apart from a few Mistrals — French versions of the elderly de Havilland Vampire, detached from bases in Algeria — because Fort Lamy was used mainly by piston-engined transport and communications machines, and by a few civil aircraft en route to destinations in central or east Africa.
One such aircraft, a twin-engined Cessna 310, stood some distance away from where the Hunters were parked. A man lounged against one of its wings, observing the activity as the Hunters were prepared for flight; a second man sat in the cockpit, its door propped open.
The man in the cockpit smiled in satisfaction. With the aid of his camera’s powerful telephoto lens, he had managed to obtain an excellent shot of the officer who was clearly in command of the Hunter squadron, and of several other pilots too. It was always useful to know one’s enemy. The Colonel would appreciate that.
The two men watched the Hunters take off, each pair of jets swinging south-eastwards towards the Congo and the rain clouds that now trailed in a grey fringe across the Dar Rounga hills. At last, the man in the cockpit leaned forward and tapped the other lightly on the shoulder.
‘We had better go now,’ he said. ‘I want to get across those mountains before the afternoon turbulence sets in. We don’t want to damage our cases of medical supplies, do we?’
The other grinned. He, like his companion, spoke with a South African accent.
‘The Frogs certainly gave them a thorough examination,’ he said. ‘Their faces were a picture when they found out that we really were carrying medical supplies, with official Red Cross certification and all. It obviously never crossed their minds that we might be the contraband. The Boss sure did a good job in arranging our documents.’
Ten minutes later the Cessna taxied out and took off, its ‘mercy flight’ to a destination in the Sudan sealed and approved by the French authorities at Fort Lamy.
For twenty minutes it held a steady eastbound heading. Then, like the Hunters, it too swung southwards in the direction of the Congo.
Chapter Three
THE MAN THEY CALLED THE COLONEL STOOD IN THE DOOR-way of the clumsily-thatched shack on the edge of Kerewata’s airfield and watched the Cessna 310 as it came slanting down to land through a rift in the rainclouds, its wings glinting in a shaft of sunlight. He nodded approvingly as the pilot made a curving, fighter-type approach to the runway and levelled the wings crisply, closing the throttles and dropping the aircraft like a cut flower a few seconds later.
In the aircraft’s cockpit, the pilot obeyed the control tower’s instructions and taxied across the waterlogged surface of the field towards the distant shack. He surveyed his surroundings with distaste.
‘Christ, what a dump,’ he remarked to his companion. ‘No wonder they’re paying us well. But where the hell are the Sabres we’re supposed to fly? The place is deserted.’
The man next to him nudged him. ‘Take another look, man,’ he said, pointing towards the forest that all but surrounded the airfield. It was a few seconds before the pilot spotted what his friend had seen.
At intervals, cave-like recesses had been created in the forest by cutting down undergrowth and smaller trees. The branches of the larger trees wove together overhead, completely concealing from any prying eyes in the air the Sabre jet fighters that were neatly parked in each clearing.
‘Clever,’ the pilot said admiringly. ‘This Colonel bloke seems to know what he’s about. Seemed on the level when he first got in touch with us, and his money was certainly good, but you can never be too sure.’
‘You know,’ the other man said, ‘this place reminds me of some of the fields we operated out of in Korea. Pierced steel planking runway, that sort of thing.’
‘Yeah. Those were the days. Good old No. 2 Squadron, South African Air Force. Wish I’d stayed in.’
‘They threw you out,’ his companion reminded him mildly.
It was true. The pilot, who had been a lieutenant with a promising career ahead of him — knocking down two MiGs in quick succession after No. 2 Squadron had exchanged its ageing Mustangs for Sabres — had been caught out selling government property to the South Koreans and dismissed after a rather unpleasant court martial. Since then he’d been around the world a couple of times, making a lot of money in one spot, losing most of it in the next — but always flying.
He brought the Cessna to a stop close to the shack, turning it into wind before shutting down the engines. The two men climbed down, their feet squelching in sticky mud. They both wrinkled their noses as the smell of the place hit them; a foetid mixture of clay, rotting vegetation and something that was suspiciously reminiscent of an open sewer.
‘Welcome to Kerewata,’ a voice said. It was then that they saw the man standing in the shadowy entrance to the shack. They recognized him at once as the Colonel, the man who had got in touch with them in Johannesburg a matter of weeks earlier.
‘Come inside.’
He shook hands with both of them and they followed him into the hut. It contained a table, several chairs and a shortwave transceiver. Maps were pinned to the walls. The Colonel waved a hand, telling the newcomers to sit down. Once again, they were struck by his voice: sharp and incisive and American, like that of a West Point graduate, but with another slight accent behind it. It was this accent that puzzled the two South Africans, but the Colonel’s identity was no business of theirs and they allowed their curiosity to rest there.
The Colonel did not waste words. ‘Well?’ he said, and they knew exactly what he meant. It was the Cessna’s pilot, whose name was Piet, who spoke.
‘It’s true. The Brits have sent a detachment of Hunters to Warambe. They passed through Fort Lamy while we were there. We counted eight of them. Also he pointed a thumb towards his companion ‘— Jan here got some photographs. Some mug shots of some of the pilots, including the bloke in charge. Thought you might be interested.’
The Colonel nodded. ‘Well done. I did not think that the British would react so quickly. However, it makes no difference. Eight Hunters can be destroyed on the ground, and we have the initiative. They will not make the first move. They will allow themselves to be attacked before they take action. It was always the same with them. And then it will be too late.’
He opened a box on the table, selected a cheroot and lit it, his gaze fixed all the while on Piet, who felt uncomfortable. The Colonel’s eyes were like ice-cold blue splinters. They were the kind that did not tolerate even the thought of disobedience.
‘When is the attack likely to be?’ the question was hazarded by Jan. The piercing gaze shifted to him, and the South African mentally resolved to say ‘sir’ whenever he addressed the Colonel in future.
Hunter Squadron Page 3