Omnibus.The.Sea.Witch.2012

by Coonts, Stephen

  At least there were no enemy scouts above. He looked carefully and saw only empty sky.

  He was going fast now, the wires keening, the motor thundering again at full cry, coming down in the right rear quarter of those two planes. The distance closed nicely.

  He fingered the trigger levers inside the round stick handle.

  The victims flew on straight, seemingly oblivious to his ambush.

  At three hundred yards he realized what they were: S.E.5’s.

  He turned to cross behind them. If the pilots had seen him, they gave no indication.

  Perhaps he should have flown alongside, waved. But they would rag him in the mess, say that he thought they were Germans and had come to pot them. All of which would be true and hard to laugh off, so he turned behind them to sneak away.

  He kept the turn in.

  There! Just off the nose! A plane coming in almost head-on.

  He was so surprised he forgot to do anything.

  The enemy pilot shot across almost in front of him, a Fokker D-VII, with a yellow nose and a black Maltese cross on the fuselage behind the pilot.

  Hyde slammed the right wing down, pulled the nose around, used the speed that he still had to come hard around in the high thin air. Unfortunately the S.E. turned slowest to the right—maybe he should have turned left.

  When he got straightened out he was too far behind the Fokker to shoot.

  The enemy pilot roared in after the pair of S.E.’s.

  If only he had been more alert! He could have taken a shot as the enemy scout crossed his nose. Damnation!

  Now the Hun swooped in on the left-most S.E. A slender feather of white smoke poured aft from the German’s nose—he was shooting.

  The S.E.5 seemed to stagger, the wings waggled, then the left wing dropped in a hard turn.

  The Fokker closed relentlessly, its gun going.

  The S.E. went over on its back and the Fokker swerved just enough to miss it, then lowered its nose even more and dove away.

  Paul Hyde kept his nose down, the engine full on.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the S.E.’s nose drop until it was going almost straight down. It couldn’t do that long, he knew, or the wings would come off when the speed got too great.

  He checked the Hun, going for a cloud.

  Brass. The enemy pilot had brass.

  But Hyde was overtaking.

  He looked again for the stricken S.E., and couldn’t find it.

  Only now did the possibility of another Hun following the first occur to him. Guiltily he looked aft, cleared his tail. Nothing. The sky seemed empty.

  He was two hundred yards behind the Fokker now, closing slowly, but closing.

  The Fokker was going for a cloud.

  Suddenly Paul Hyde knew how it was going to be. He was going to get a shot before the enemy pilot reached the safety of the cloud. He moved his thumb over the firing levers, looked through the post and ring sight mounted on the cowling in front of him. The enemy plane was getting larger and larger.

  Without warning the nose of the enemy plane rose sharply, up, up, up.

  Hyde automatically pulled hard on the stick. He was going too fast, knew he couldn’t follow the Fokker into the loop, so he pulled the nose up hard and jabbed the triggers. Both guns hammered out a burst and the Fokker climbed straight up through it.

  Then Hyde was flashing past, going for the cloud. He jammed the nose down just as the cloud swallowed him.

  He throttled back, raised the nose until the altimeter stopped unwinding.

  The S.E.5A had no attitude instruments whatsoever. All Hyde could do was hold the stick and rudder frozen, wait until his plane flew through the cloud to the other side.

  His airspeed was dropping. He could feel the controls growing sloppy. He eased the nose forward a tad. The altimeter began unwinding.

  God, he was high, still above thirteen thousand feet. The altimeter was going down too fast, his speed building relentlessly.

  He pulled back on the stick. To no avail. The altimeter continued to fall. He was in a graveyard spiral, but whether to the right or left he could not tell.

  Panic seized Paul Hyde. He tightened the pressure on the stick, pulled it back farther and farther.

  No. No! Too much of this and he would tear the wings off.

  He had no way of knowing if he was turning left or right. He could guess, of course, and try to right the plane with the stick. If he guessed wrong he would put the S.E. over on its back, the nose would come down, and the plane would accelerate until it shed its wings. If he guessed right, he could indeed bring the plane upright, or nearly so, but it would do him no good unless he could keep it upright in balanced flight—and he had no means to accomplish that feat. All this Hyde knew, so he fought the temptation to move the stick sideways. What he did do was pull back even harder, tighten the turn, increase the G-load.

  Oh, God! Help me! Help me, please!

  Something gave. He felt it break with a jolt that reached him through the seat, heard a sharp sound audible even above the engine noise.

  Eleven thousand feet.

  He kept back pressure on the stick. Instinct required that he do something, and he sensed that if he relaxed back pressure, the plane would accelerate out of control.

  Ten thousand.

  Fabric flapping caught his eye. A strip of fabric was peeling from the underside of the left wing. He looked, and watched the wind peel the strip the width of the wing.

  Nine thousand.

  Before his eyes one of the wing bracing wires failed, broke cleanly in two.

  Eight.

  Another jolt through the seat. Wooden wing compression ribs or longerons or something was breaking under the stress. If a wing spar went, he was a dead man.

  Seven.

  Hyde was having trouble seeing. The G was graying him out. He shook his head, fought against the G-forces, screamed at the top of his lungs, although he wasn’t aware he was screaming.

  Six …

  Five …

  Four …

  And then in an eye-blink he was out of the cloud, spiraling tightly to the left. The ground was several thousand feet below. He raised the left wing, gently lifted the nose. He was so frightened he couldn’t think.

  Below he saw farmland. Squares of green, trees, roads, carts, horses ….

  Was he east or west of the trenches? Think, man, think.

  He was so cold, so scared he wanted to vomit.

  A sunbeam caught his eye. He turned to place the sun on his tail, checked the compass. It was swimming round and round, useless.

  At least two lift wires were broken, a wide strip of fabric flapped behind the upper wing, one of the struts was splintered, and the damn plane flew sideways. Not a lot, but noticeably so. Hyde used right rudder and left stick to keep it level and going west.

  Up ahead, the trenches. Clouds of mud and smoke … artillery!

  The artillery emplacements were impossible to avoid. The guns roared almost in his ear. If a shell hit him, he would never know it; he would be instantly launched into eternity.

  He hunched his shoulders as if he were caught in a cloudburst, waited with nerves taut as steel for the inevitable.

  Then, miraculously, he was past the artillery and out over the trenches, jagged tears in a muddy brown landscape. He saw infantrymen swing their rifles up, saw the flash of the muzzle blasts, felt the tiny jolts of bullets striking the plane. No-man’s-land lay beyond, torn by artillery shells which seemed to be landing randomly. The land was covered with men, British soldiers. Hyde weaved his way through the erupting fistulas of smoke and earth while he waited for a chance shell to smash him from the sky. After a lifetime he flew clear.

  He recognized where he was. The airfield was just ten miles southwest.

  He sweated every mile. Once he thought he felt another jolt of something breaking.

  At least the fog had burned off a bit. Visibility was up to perhaps three miles.

  When he saw the
hangars and tents of the aerodrome, a wave of relief swept over him. With the sun shining over his shoulder onto the instrument panel, Paul Hyde eased the throttle and let the S.E. settle onto the ground. It bounced once. When it touched the second time he pulled the tail skid down into the dirt. When the plane slowed to taxi speed he used the rudder to turn the steerable tail skid, and taxied over in front of the maintenance hangar.

  He was unstrapping, getting ready to climb from the cockpit, when three more bracing wires on the left side snapped and both the left wings sagged toward the ground.

  A maintenance wallah came trotting up as Hyde pulled off his leather helmet and wiped the sweat from his face and hair.

  From twenty feet away the damage was obvious: A strip of fabric was peeled from the lower right wing, too, one of the bracing wires for the tail was broken, at least one of the fuselage stringers behind the cockpit had snapped, the tip of the lower left wing hung only inches above the grass, the plane was peppered with several dozen bullet holes that he had picked up flying over the trenches.

  The horrified M.O. didn’t say anything, merely stood and looked with a forlorn expression on his face.

  Hyde didn’t care. He was still alive! That was something grand and exciting in a subtly glorious way.

  He turned and walked across the field toward the mess. He desperately needed a drink of water.

  “Rough go, old chap,” the major said, eyeing the broken S.E. out the window as the mechanics towed it off the field with a lorry. “What happened?”

  Hyde explained. “Went out of control in the cloud,” he finished lamely.

  “Albert Ball died like that, or so I’ve heard,” the major said. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at Hyde carefully. “Are you fit?”

  “I suppose,” Hyde said, taking a deep breath and setting his jaw just so. He didn’t want the major to think he had the wind up.

  “There’s a push on, I needn’t tell you. Going to have to send you up again. We’ve got to do our bit.”

  “Where’s Mac?”

  “He got off just a few minutes ago. If you hurry you can catch him in this sector here.” The major showed him on the wall chart.

  “I got a short burst into a D-VII just west of the Hun trenches.”

  “Plucky lad you are, Tex. If someone reports one going down, I’ll let you know. Now off with you.”

  The next machine was older and had seen more rough service than the one he had just bent. The engine didn’t seem to have the vigor it should have.

  Paul Hyde coaxed it into the air and turned south. He was passing through five thousand when the engine popped a few times, then windmilled for a second or so before it resumed firing. He pulled the mixture lever full out and frantically worked the fuel pump handle.

  Perhaps he should go back.

  But no. The major would think …

  The engine ran steadily enough now. Perhaps there was just a bit of dirt in the carb, maybe a slug of water in the petrol.

  On he climbed, up into the morning.

  He saw the German two-seater when he was still several thousand feet below it. He had been airborne about an hour and had seen a handful of British machines and several German kites, but they were too far away to stalk. This LVG was weaving around cloud towers at about twelve thousand feet. Hyde let it go over him, then turned to stalk it as he climbed.

  Idly he wondered if that burst he had fired at the German scout earlier this morning had done any damage. Or if it had even struck the Fokker.

  No way of knowing, of course.

  In the past sixteen days he had destroyed two German machines. The first, a two-seater, he’d riddled before the observer finally slumped over.

  Not willing to break off to change the Lewis drum, he’d closed to point-blank range and shot the pilot with the Vickers. The machine went out of control and eventually shed its wings. Before he died the observer put forty-two holes in Hyde’s S.E.

  “As a general rule,” Mac had commented as he looked over the plane when Hyde returned, “it’s not conducive to longevity to let the Huns shoot you about. Sooner or later the blokes are bound to hit something vital. Perhaps you should get under them and shoot upward into their belly. S.E.’s are very good in that regard.”

  “I was trying to do that.”

  Mac pretended that he hadn’t heard. “Shoot the other fellow, Tex,” he advised, “while avoiding getting shot oneself. That’s my motto.”

  Hyde’s second kill was a Fokker scout. Hyde didn’t even realize he had fired a killing shot. He got in a burst as the Fokker dove away after riddling Hyde’s leader, who fell in flames. Apparently Hyde’s burst hit the German pilot, who crashed amid the British artillery behind the trenches. By the time the Tommies got to him he had bled to death.

  It was all very strange, this game of kill or be killed played among the clouds. And here he was playing it again.

  The two-seater this morning was looking for him. The pilot was dropping one wing, then the other, as the two men scanned the sky below. Hyde turned away, put a towering buildup between the two planes as he continued to work his way higher into the atmosphere. The air was bumpy now as the sun heated the earth and it in turn heated the atmosphere. At least the fog was gone. Visibility was six or eight miles here.

  He got a glimpse of the LVG through a gap in the cloud. It was still going in the right direction, about five hundred feet above him.

  When next he saw it, he was at an equal altitude but the Hun was turning. Hyde banked sharply and kept climbing. If possible he would get well above it, then dive and overtake it, settling in beneath to spray it with the Lewis. The Brits assured him this was the best and safest way to kill two-seaters.

  The Hun had turned again when next it loomed into view amid the cloud towers. It was close, within a quarter mile, and slightly below his altitude. He could see the heads of the crew. Fortunately they were looking in the opposite direction.

  Hyde scanned the sky to see what had attracted the Germans’ attention.

  Ah-ha. An S.E. swanning closer. That might be Mac.

  Good old Mac!

  Paul Hyde turned toward the LVG, pushed the nose forward into a gentle dive. His thumb was poised over the trigger levers.

  He came in from the left stern quarter, closing rapidly. With the Hun filling the sight ring, he opened fire with both guns.

  The Vickers spit five or six bullets out before it stopped abruptly. In less than a second the Lewis also ceased firing.

  Holy damn! He backed off the throttle to stop his relative motion toward the enemy.

  He tugged at the bolt of the Vickers. The damn thing was jammed solid. He hammered at it with his hand.

  Now the observer began shooting at him. Streaks of tracer went just over the cockpit.

  Cursing aloud, Hyde turned away.

  He tried to get the Lewis gun to come backwards on the Foster mount. No. The damn thing was stuck!

  Cursing, Hyde unfastened his seat belt, grasped the stick between his knees, and eyed the German, who was a quarter mile away now. The pilot stood up in the cockpit and used both hands to tug at the charging lever. The windblast was terrific, but he was a strong young man.

  The Lewis was also jammed good. Old, inferior, shoddy ammo! What a way to fight a war!

  Perhaps he could get at the bolt better if he took off the magazine drum. He pulled at the spring-loaded catch, tugged fiercely at the drum. It was jammed, too.

  He was working frantically to free the drum when he realized the plane was going over on its back. The right wing was pointing at the earth.

  His lower body fell from the cockpit. He latched onto the ammo drum with a death grip. His back was to the prop, his feet pointed toward the earth.

  If the damned drum comes loose now …

  The rat-tat-tat of a machine gun cut into his consciousness. Hyde heard it, but he had more pressing problems. If he fell forward into the prop, the damn thing would cut him in half.

  He tri
ed to curl his lower body back toward the cockpit. The windblast helped. He had his left foot in and his right almost there when the nose of the plane dipped toward the earth. The S.E. was going into an inverted dive.

  He was screaming again, a scream of pure terror. He was still screaming when the plane passed the vertical and he got both feet inside the cockpit combing. Still screaming when the force of gravity took over and threw him back into the cockpit like a sack of potatoes thrown into a barrel. Still screaming as he pulled the plane out of its dive and looked about wildly for the Hun twoseater, which was far above and flying away.

  He lowered the nose, let the plane dive as he struggled to get his seat belt refastened.

  Praise God, he was still alive.

  Still alive!

  Just then the engine cut out.

  “It’s these bloody cartridges, sir. All swelled up from moisture.” The mechanic, Thatcher, displayed three of the offending brass cylinders in the palm of his hand.

  “They jammed the gun and the drum.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Bad cartridges.”

  “And a dud engine. The damned thing cut in and out on me all the way home. It’s junk. I’m up there risking my neck in a plane with a junk motor that runs only when it wants to. The bloody RFC has to do better, Thatcher.”

  “We’re working on it, sir,” the mech said contritely. He was used to carrying the ills of the world on his thin shoulders. “But what I don’t understand, Mr. Hyde,” he continued, “is how you acquired two bullet holes through the pilot’s seat. Came right through the bottom of the plane and up through the seat. Or vice versa. Don’t see how those two bullets missed you.”

  “It’s quite simple, Thatcher,” Paul Hyde said softly. “Perfectly logical. Obviously I wasn’t sitting in the seat when the bullets went sailing through.”

  Without further explanation he walked toward the mess tent for lunch.

  Mac was already there. “I heard you’ve had an exciting morning, Tex.”

  “Much more excitement and my heart is going to stop dead.”

  “Oh, I doubt it. Heart attacks are rather rare in this part of France.” Mac sipped a glass of red wine. “Lead poisoning and immolation seem much more prevalent.”

  Hyde grunted. The wine looked tempting. One glass wouldn’t hurt, would it?