Air Bridge

by Hammond Innes

  He flung my hand off. “So she’s got round you, as she got round Randall—as she nearly got round me. She’s just a little tart trading her body for the glorification of the fatherland.”

  I felt a sudden urge to hit him. “Don’t you understand anybody?” I exclaimed through clenched teeth. “She loved her father. Can’t you understand that all she wants is recognition for his work.”

  “Recognition!” He gave a sneering laugh. “It’s Germany she loves. They killed her father, but still it is Germany she thinks of. She offered to be my mistress if I’d allow the Rauch Motoren to manufacture the engines. My engines! The engines Tubby and I had worked on all these years! She traded on my weakness, on the fact that I was alone up here, and if Diana hadn’t come——” He half-shrugged his shoulders as though shaking off something he didn’t like. “Her father has got about as much to do with these engines as you have.”

  “Nevertheless,” I said, “it was his prototype you stole——”

  “Stole! Damn it, man, a country that has gone through what we have on account of the blasted Germans has a right to take what it wants. If Professor Meyer had completed the development of those engines——” He stopped and stared at me angrily. “You bloody fool, Neil. Why waste your sympathy on the girl or her father? She was a good little Nazi till the S.S. took Meyer to Dachau. And Meyer was a Nazi, too.” His lips spread in a thin, bitter smile. “Perhaps you’re not aware that Professor Meyer was one of the men who developed the diesel engine for use in bombers. London is in his debt to the time of many hundreds of tons of bombs. My mother was killed in the blitz of 1940.” He turned away, his shoulders hunched, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and walked across the tarmac to the hangar. I followed slowly, thinking of the tangled pattern of motive that surrounded these engines.

  For over an hour Tubby worked on the engine. Then he checked over the others. It was just on one o’clock when he climbed down and pulled the gantry away. “Okay,” he said. “There’s nothing more I can do.”

  “All right,” Saeton said. “Let’s have a bite of food.” His voice was over-loud as though by speaking like that he could convince us of his confidence. I glanced at the plane. The rain clouds had broken up and she was caught in a gleam of watery sunlight. It was one thing doing ground tests, quite another to commit ourselves to the take-off. But she looked just like any other Tudor. It was difficult to realise, seeing her standing there on the tarmac, that this wasn’t to be a routine flight.

  Saeton had brought a loaf and some cheese and butter up from the quarters. We ate it in the hangar, none of us talking, all of us, I think, very conscious of the emptiness of the place and of the aircraft standing out there on the apron waiting for us. As soon as we’d finished we got into our flying kit and went out to the plane. Saeton insisted we wear our parachutes.

  Once more we sat in the cockpit—Saeton and I in the pilots’ seats, Tubby in the well between us—the engines ticking over. Saeton’s hand reached out for the throttle levers. The engines revved and we moved away across the apron, along the perimeter track and swung on to the runway end, the concrete stretching ahead of us, a broad white path shining wet in the sunlight. “Okay?” Saeton looked at us. His jaw had broadened with the clenching of the muscles. His features looked hard and unsmiling. Only his eyes mirrored the excitement that held him in its grip.

  “Okay,” Tubby said. I nodded. Again Saeton’s hand reached up for the throttle levers, pressing them slowly down with his palm. The four motors roared in unison. The fuselage shuddered violently as the thrust of the props fought the brakes.

  Then he released the brakes and we started forward.

  I won’t pretend I wasn’t nervous—even a little scared. But it was overlaid by the sense of excitement. At the same time it was difficult to realise fully the danger. Viewed from the cockpit all the engines looked ordinary standard models. There was nothing to bring home to us the fact that those inboard engines were the work of our own hands—only the memory, now distant, of the countless hours we’d worked at them in the hangar. In a sense it was nothing more than I’d done hundreds of times before—a routine take-off.

  I tried to concentrate on the dials, but as we gathered speed my eyes strayed to the concrete streaming beneath us, fester and faster, and from thence to the ploughed verge of the runway and to the woods beyond. I caught a glimpse of the quarters through a gap in the trees. It suddenly seemed like home. Would we ever again sit at that trestle table drinking Scotch in celebration of success? Would we again lounge in those hard, uncomfortable chairs talking of a huge freighter fleet and our plans for a constant stream of aircraft tramping the globe? And as these questions appeared in my mind, my stomach suddenly became an empty void as panic hit me. Suppose those pistons I’d worked on when I first arrived were not quite true? Suppose … A whole stream of ugly possibilities flooded through my mind. And what about the engine that had been completed before I arrived? My hands tightened automatically on the control column as I felt the tail lift.

  I glanced at Saeton. His face was tense, his eyes fixed unblinkingly ahead, one hand on the throttles, the other on the control column. I saw his left foot kick at the rudder to counter a sudden swing of the tail. The end of the runway was in sight now. It ran slightly downhill and a bunch of oaks was rushing to meet us. No chance now of pulling up. We were committed to the take-off. The new starboard engine was still running a little rough. The tail swung. Left rudder again. I held my breath. God! He was leaving it late. I should have been watching the rev counters and the airspeed indicator. But instead my eyes were fixed on the trees ahead. They seemed to fill all my vision.

  Then the control column eased back under my tense, clutched hands. The wheels bumped wildly on a torn-up piece of concrete. The starboard motor still sounded rough, the tail swung and the engine notes changed to a quieter drone. We were riding air, smooth, steady, the seat lifting me upwards as the trees slid away below us. Through the side window I saw Membury dropping away to a black circle of plough criss-crossed by the white pattern of runways and circled by the darker line of the perimeter track, the hangars small rectangles that looked like toys. We were airborne and climbing steeply, the full thrust of the motors taking us up in a steady, circling climb.

  I glanced at Saeton. His body had relaxed into the shape of his seat. That was the only sign he gave of relief. “Check undercarriage up,” he shouted to me as he levelled out. I glanced out of the side window. The starboard wheel was up inside the wing casing and I nodded. His eyes remained hard and alert, scanning the instrument panel. Tubby was jotting down notes as he read the dials. Oil Pressure 83—Oil Temp. 68—Coolant Temp. 90—Revs 2300, with the exception of the inboard starboard engine, which read 2270—Vacuum Pressure 4½ ins.—Height 1,500. We cruised around for a bit, checking everything, then we began to climb. Oil Pressure 88—Oil Temp. 77—Coolant Temp. 99—Revs 2850 plus 9—Vacuum Pressure 4½. I glanced at my watch. Rate of climb 1,050 feet a minute.

  At 6,000 Saeton levelled out. “Okay to cut out the other motors?” He glanced down at Tubby, who nodded, his face unsmiling, his eyes almost lost in their creases of fat as he screwed them up against the sun which drove straight in through the windshield. At the same moment I saw the outboard engine slow. The individual blades of the prop became visible as it began to feather. The noise in the cockpit had lessened, so had the vibration. We were flying on our own motors only. Airspeed 175. Height 6,300. Still climbing. Swindon lay below us as we turned east, banking sharply.

  The two motors hummed quietly. Saeton pulled back the control column. The nose of the plane lifted. We were climbing on the two engines only. Six thousand five hundred. Seven thousand. Eight thousand. Rate of climb 400 feet per minute. Half a dozen banking turns, then a long dive to 4,000 and up again. The motors hummed happily. The starboard engine was a shade rough perhaps, and engine revs were a little below those of the port motor. But there was plenty of power there.

  Saeton levelled out. “I c
ould do with a cigarette.” He was grinning happily now, all tension smoothed out of his face. “From now on we can forget all the hours we’ve slaved at those engines. They’re there. They exist. We’ve done what we set out to do.”

  Tubby was smiling, too, his face wreathed in a happy grin. He hummed a little tune.

  We swung south over White Horse Hill. The racing gallops at Lambourne showed like age-old tracks along the downs. Climb, turn, dive—for two hours we flew the circuit of the Marlborough downs. Then at last Saeton said, “Okay. Let’s go back and get some tea. To-morrow we’ll do take-off and landing tests. Then we’ll try her under full load and check petrol consumption.”

  “I want that starboard motor back on bench tests first,” Tubby shouted.

  Saeton nodded vaguely. For him it was all settled. He’d proved the motors. It only remained to get them to the highest pitch of efficiency. “Okay,” he answered. “We’ve plenty of time. I’ll fix airworthiness tests for the latter part of next week.” He eased the control column forward and we slid down towards the rounded brown humps of the downs. Ramsbury airfield slid away beneath us, the Kennet showing like a twisting ribbon of steel in the cold light of the sinking sun. Membury opened out on the hill ahead of us. The two outboard motors started into life.

  “Ready to land?”

  We nodded.

  Saeton looked down through the side window. “There’s a bottle of whisky down there.” He grinned as we peered down at the felted roof of our quarters. “Pity Diana isn’t here to see this.” He said it without thinking. I glanced at Tubby. His face gave no sign that he’d heard. “Better get your undercarriage down,” Tubby said.

  Saeton laughed. “If you think I’m going to prang the thing now, you’re wrong.” His hand reached down and found the undercarriage release switch automatically. He pulled it up and glanced out of his side window. Then he turned quickly, peered down at the lever and jerked at it. In the tenseness of his face I read sudden panic. I turned to my own side window and craning forward, peered back at the line of the wing. “The starboard wheel is down,” I reported.

  Saeton was flicking at the switch. “It’s the port wheel,” he said, staring out of his window. “The bloody thing’s jammed.” I don’t think he was frightened for himself. The panic that showed in his face was for all our achievement that could be set at nought by a crash landing.

  “I told you we ought to check over the plane,” Tubby shouted back, peering forward over the lever.

  “That’s a hell of a lot of use now,” Saeton’s voice rasped through his clenched teeth. “Neil. Take over. Climb to 7,000 whilst we try and sort this bastard out. Tubby, see if she’ll come down on the hand gear.”

  I felt the control column go slack under my hands as he eased himself out of his seat. I took hold of it, at the same time reaching out for the throttle levers. The engines responded to my touch and Membury dropped away from us as I pulled the control column back and climbed under full power, banking steadily. Saeton and Tubby were trying to wind the port wheel down, but the handle seemed to be alternately jamming and running free.

  At 7,000 feet I levelled out. They had the floorboards up and Tubby was head down in the gap. A steady blast of bitterly cold air roared into the cockpit. For an hour I stooged round and round over Membury. And at the end of that hour Tubby straightened up, his face blue with cold and stood there blowing on his fingers. “Well?” Saeton demanded.

  Tubby shook his head. “Nothing we can do,” he said. “The connecting rod is snapped. A fault probably. Anyway, it’s snapped and there’s no way of lowering the port side undercarriage.”

  Saeton didn’t speak for a moment. His face was grey and haggard. “The best we can hope for then is to make a decent pancake landing.” His voice was a flat monotone as though all the weariness of the last few weeks had crowded in on him at this moment. “You’re absolutely sure there’s nothing we can do?” he asked Tubby.

  The other shook his head. “Nothing. The connecting rod has snapped and——”

  “All right. You said that once. I’m not that dense.” He had pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. He handed it to me. I took one and he lit it for me. It was a measure of his acceptance of the facts of the situation. He would never have smoked in the cockpit unless he had abandoned all hope.

  “The light’s fading,” I said. “And we haven’t much gas left.”

  He nodded, drawing in a lungful of smoke.

  “Better make for Upavon,” Tubby shouted. It was an R.A.F. Station and I knew what was in his mind. There would be crash squads there and ambulances.

  “No. We’ll go back to Membury,” Saeton answered. “You two get aft. Have the door of the fuselage open. I’ll take you over the airfield at 3,000 ft. Wind’s easterly, about Force 2. Jump just before I cross the edge of the field.” He climbed back into his seat. “All right, Neil. I’ll take over now.” I felt the pressure of his hands as he gripped the other control column and I let go of mine. Tubby started to protest, but Saeton rounded on him. “For God’s sake do as you’re told. Jump at the edge of the field. No point in more than one of us getting hurt. And as you so tactfully point out, it’s my fault. Of course we should have checked the plane.” Out of the tail of my eye I saw the starboard wheel folding into the wing again.

  “I’m sorry, Bill,” Tubby said. “I didn’t mean——”

  “Don’t argue. Get aft. You, too, Fraser.” His voice was almost vicious in his wretchedness. And then with that quick change of mood: “Good luck, both of you.”

  I had hesitated, half-out out of my seat. His face was set in a grim mask as he stared straight ahead of him, thrusting the control column forward, dipping the nose to a long glide towards the airfield. Tubby jerked his head for me to follow him and disappeared through the door that communicated with the fuselage. “Good luck!” I murmured.

  Saeton’s eyes flicked towards me and he gave a bitter laugh. “I’ve had all the good luck I need,” he snarled. I knew what he meant. Whether he came out of the plane alive or dead, he was finished. For a moment I still hesitated. I had a crazy idea that he might intend to crash the plane straight into the ground.

  “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  “I think I’d better stay,” I said. If I stayed he’d be forced to make an attempt to land.

  He must have sensed what was at the back of my mind, for he suddenly laughed. “You don’t know very much about me, do you, Neil?” The snarl had gone out of his voice. But his eyes remained hard and bitter. “Go on. Get back aft with Tubby, and don’t be a fool. I don’t like heroics.” And then suddenly shouting at me: “Get aft, man. Do you hear? Or have I got to come down there myself and throw you out.” His eyes narrowed. “Ever jumped before?”

  “Once,” I answered, my mind mirroring the memory of that night landing in the woods of Westphalia, hanging in the straps with my parachute caught in a tree and my arm broken.

  “Scared, eh?” The sneer was intentional. I knew that. He was goading me to jump. And yet I reacted. I reacted as he wanted me to because I was scared. I’d always been scared of having to bale out after that one experience. “Of course I’m not scared,” I snapped and turned and moved awkwardly to the fuselage, the weight of my parachute bouncing against my buttocks.

  Tubby already had the door of the fuselage open. The rush of air made it bitterly cold. The plane was turning now over the hangars, losing height rapidly. He didn’t say anything. You haven’t room for anything else in your mind when you are faced with a jump. We caught a glimpse of the quarters, looking very neat and snug in its little patch of trees. I could even make out the hen run at the back with the white dots of two or three fowl. Then we were banking for the run-in. The trees slid away under us. I saw the snaking line of the road coming up from Ramsbury. Then, over Tubby’s shoulder, I made out the edge of the airfield. He glanced at me with a quick, nervous grin, gripped my arm tightly and then, still looking at me, fell outwards into space.

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bsp; I watched his body turn over and over. Saw his hand pull at the release of his parachute. The canopy of nylon blossomed like a flower and his body steadied, swinging rhythmically.

  We were right over the airfield now. My limbs felt cold and stiff. The sweat stood out on my forehead. I heard Saeton scream at me to jump, saw him clambering out of the pilot’s seat. He was going to leave the controls, come aft and throw me out. I closed my eyes quickly, gripped the cold metal of the release lever and fell forward into the howl of the slip-stream. My legs swung over the back of my neck. Opening my eyes I saw the sky, the sun, the horizon coming up the wrong way as though I were in a loop, the airfield rolling under me. Then I jerked at the release; jerked at it again and again in desperate fear that it wouldn’t work.

  Suddenly my shoulders were wrenched from their sockets, the inside of my legs cut by the hard pull of the straps. My legs fell into place. Sky and earth sorted themselves out. I was dangling in space, no wind, no sound—only the fading roar of the plane as it climbed, a black dot over the far side of the airfield. Above me the white cloud of the parachute swung gently, beautifully, the air-hole showing a dark patch of sky. Twisting my head I saw Tubby touch the ground, roll over and over in a perfect drill landing. Then he was scrambling to his feet, pulling in his parachute, legs braced against the drag of it, emptying the air till it lay in an inert white fold at his feet.

  Travelling with the light wind the air was quite still. It was as though I were suspended there over the airfield for all eternity. There seemed to be no movement. Time and space stood still as I dangled like a daylight firework. The drone of the plane had died away. It had vanished as though it had never been. The stillness was all pervading, pleasant, yet rather frightening.

  Though the movement was imperceptible my position gradually altered in relation to the ground. I was gliding steadily along the line of the east-west runway. I tried to work out my angle of drop in relation to the trees bordering the airfield near the quarters. But it was quite impossible to gauge the rate of fall. All I know is that one moment I was dangling up there, apparently motionless, and the next the concrete end of the runway was rushing up to meet me.