The Beekeeper's Bullet

by Lance Hawvermale

  Ellenor saw the first anti-aircraft gun, its long tube pointed up, a single lantern at its base. It was fifty yards away, thirty yards away, twenty—

  Frantically she grabbed the lever, looked over the side—

  The plane passed over the target and left it behind. Alec threw up a hand in agitation.

  Damn it! Ellenor looked back, but she was too late.

  Alec banked them into a hard turn, slamming her against the fuselage’s interior. She gave a sharp bark of pain. They were coming back around for another pass. She could not miss again.

  The plane leveled out, engine howling. Ellenor could barely make sense of her environment, with the darkness and unbelievable velocity, much less be expected to get her timing correct. But she had to try. She leaned over the side again, and this time when Alec gestured madly at the ground, she was ready. Her eyes focused on the only shape in an otherwise empty expanse. The plane charged toward it, devouring the distance.

  “Three…two…”

  She pulled the lever.

  For the longest time, nothing happened. The plane sped toward its next target, the wind and the propeller too loud to ignore. But then a light appeared behind them, followed by the shockwave, followed by the sound. The ground behind them turned into a lake of fire.

  Alec shouted something that Ellenor hoped was his approval. Too stunned to respond, she shoved the lever back into place, readying the next bomb. Had she actually done it? Her body buzzed so violently her teeth ached.

  Alec held up two fingers, then tipped the right wings up and the left wings down, angling them toward the second of their four targets…

  Something flew directly in front of them.

  Alec jerked the plane off course to avoid a collision, tossing Ellenor hard against her restraining belt. The force of the impact caused her to bite her tongue. She had no idea what was happening, or why. He’d warned her of the shrapnel bursts if one of those big guns was allowed to open fire, but this was a different thing. This had wings.

  A German aircraft had found them.

  ****

  Gustov had nearly given up when the sound of the distant engine shook him to his senses. He assumed that he’d misjudged the distance the fuel would be delivered, and the Rumpler was at least a hundred kilometers away. Or the Englander was nearby but had no intention of flying tonight. Either way, Gustov had rolled the dice and lost. He slumped in the plane’s single seat with his head reclining on his rolled coat, hoping that Mier had brought all the boys home from the day’s patrols. He’d rejoin them tomorrow.

  Then a distinctive cry carried across the void.

  He sat up. Held very still. Listened.

  The aircraft’s engine was far away but coming closer.

  Gustov shouted at his borrowed mechanic, who’d fallen asleep in the summer grass. Even before the idiot had gotten to his feet, Gustov ran through his pre-flight check and struggled into his coat. The mechanic pulled the chocks as Gustov donned his goggles and padded cap. He squeezed his hands into his form-fitting gloves and yelled for the mechanic to engage the prop.

  The Fokker lit up immediately. Gustov opened the throttle, rumbled across the field, and lifted into the air, gathering altitude as quickly as he could without stalling the engine. He was already several crucial minutes behind the Englander, wherever the man was going. The two planes boasted nearly equal top speeds, which meant Gustov would need to rely on wits and raw luck to close the gap.

  As it turned out, there was no gap.

  Gustov could be sure of nothing in the dark. The Rumpler was practically invisible. But for just a few seconds he caught sight of it framed against Metz’s lamps below, and it seemed to be turning, following the outline of the city.

  A second later, a firebomb appeared.

  The explosion startled him so much he nearly swore. The night lit up with flames.

  What the hell?

  The Englander was bombing Metz.

  Gustov kicked the rudder bar hard and dove after the man, cocking his guns as he went.

  ****

  Alec searched frantically for the other plane. He’d avoided a collision by fortune more than skill, the two birds unable to see each other until it was nearly too late. The German response had been almost instantaneous. How had the bastard gotten into the air so quickly?

  He looped Hildegard in wide spirals so as not to create a predictable line. She responded beautifully, graceful even though she weighed over one ton. She bobbed and darted hungrily at the slightest touch of her control wheel. It was like riding a shark through the sea.

  Alec pointed her at the next ground target. He had to trust that his pursuer didn’t know his destination and would be flying randomly in the dark. Alec had barely gotten a look at the enemy’s craft; he knew it was a fighter—but what was it? A rickety old training model kept on hand for emergencies? Or something truly deadly? The thing’s belly had flashed in front of Hildegard’s prop too fast to reveal more.

  The ice moved like medicine through Alec’s veins. Everything felt cold, a sensation that had kept him alive for over a year as a pilot because it numbed his pulse and calmed his breathing. Many times it had turned him into a killer. He guided Hildegard over the rooftops and belfries of Metz, wheels only a few feet from chimneys, turning his head in a constant search of the black sky.

  The second ack-ack appeared.

  Though the 90-millimeter gun was no more than a gray finger pointing upward, Alec’s keen eyes recognized it. Keeping his left hand on the wheel, he waved his right in the air and then pointed like he was stabbing someone, hoping Ellenor was paying attention. They had to destroy these remaining weapons and then get the hell out of here before the German flyer made sense of the dark.

  Alec turned his head: “Do it! Do it now!”

  ****

  Gustov couldn’t see for shit.

  He’d almost rammed into the stolen Rumpler accidentally, narrowly missing, and now he’d lost the damn thing entirely. Fate had deigned to sentence him to a duel on a moonless night, so the only things he saw were the twinkle of innocent windows in the city below. A fire raged to the south.

  Gustov went high.

  The triplane ascended faster than any other bus he’d ever flown. It could climb to a thousand meters in only three minutes. Gustov didn’t need that much height; he needed only to get above his enemy. Once there, he would be able to see the Rumpler framed against the glow of Metz, and then he would fall like a falcon, talons bared.

  ****

  By the time Alec shouted—“Do it! Do it now!”—Ellenor had already pulled the lever. The bomb dropped. She’d been ready, barely able to breathe for the knot in the back of her throat. A direct hit wasn’t necessary, as the explosion’s radius would raze everything in the area.

  She closed her eyes.

  The noise ripped the night apart, sending steel and rocks in every direction. The plane wobbled as the force caught up with it. Ellenor’s stomach swam.

  She put her head over the side just in time to vomit into the air.

  With no time to recover, she swallowed the gunk in her mouth and tried to focus, but a German in a plane was out there somewhere, hunting them. At any moment, she expected his guns to open up and shred her where she sat. What if the fuel tank caught fire and she burned to death? What if Alec were hit first, torn from her hours after he’d whispered his affections in her ear?

  Bashert, Josef said in her mind: destiny.

  “No, thanks,” she replied. She spit the foul taste from her teeth and grabbed the lever.

  ****

  Alec was not flying The Dragon. Had he been screwed into the seat of his cherished S.E.5, oh, how he would have enjoyed this joust. Hildegard wasn’t as lithe, but she was strong, and Alec depended on that strength as he bent her into such a steep left turn that she stood nearly completely on her side in the air, her wings almost vertical, her struts straining, her wires keening.

  Two anti-aircraft guns remained.

  Ale
c leveled the plane, his head sweeping left to right in search of his foe. The German, whoever he was, had vanished. Alec needed to reach the other two targets before the Hun got a fix on them. He asked Hildegard for more speed, and she replied.

  His strategy of flying low had so far succeeded. No doubt the people in the cramped houses below were thinking it a raid. Lights faded as lamps were extinguished. Alarms were probably being sounded and children were being whisked under dining tables to protect them, even though Alec had no intention of harming anyone but the AA crew. He’d studied Sarah’s map and stenciled the position of the guns in his memory. He didn’t need to be able to see them to understand the geometry of their destruction. Hildegard roared closer.

  Alec didn’t realize he was smiling.

  ****

  From high above, Gustov saw his opponent. That was the first step in killing him.

  The second step was getting within range and pouring bullets into him. Without thinking about it, he gave the guns the customary check, just to make sure they’d fire; sometimes the whole rig failed. But a slight squeeze of the trigger mechanism discharged a trio of tracer rounds into the clouds. Satisfied, Gustov reduced speed, angled the nose down, and drove the Fokker into a precipitous dive. He held the stick in both hands, cradling it between his legs, his gaze locked on the Rumpler that was outlined perfectly against the city below.

  It occurred to him that he was about to fire on a German-built plane above a German-inhabited town. Of all the unlikely situations in which he’d found himself since his exploits as an airman began, this was the most radical: gun down a madman and his female partner who’d pilfered a plane in order to bomb a contested city. That sounded like a plot concocted by boys pretending to be pilots, their plane made of a crate on wheels borrowed from their little sister’s pram.

  He shoved the image away and dove toward his enemy’s head.

  ****

  Ellenor gripped the lever so hard the muscles pulsed painfully in her forearm. Her other hand, which had been tied to Alec’s not very long ago, clutched the front of her coat so as to reduce the trembling. She sucked in cold wind, exhaling through her mouth in ragged little grunts. Five days ago, the most daring thing she’d ever done was inspect her hive frames without wearing gloves or a veil, risking a sting. And she’d thought herself brave. Jesus.

  The plane streaked toward the next collection of guns, a cluster of armaments aimed upward, awaiting deployment. Men rushed toward them, soldiers intent on counterattacking. Now that they’d had time to respond, they charged their equipment. As the plane neared, the men gripped handles, threw off safety locks, and swiveled barrels. If even one of them acquired a target and opened fire, Ellenor and Alec would be much too close to the ground to evade the incoming rounds.

  Alec must have realized the same thing, because he increased their speed. Ellenor could hardly breathe in the wind. How could anything manufactured by human hands move so fast? It was like being shackled to a storm.

  Three, two—

  By now she understood the pattern even if she couldn’t explain the physics behind it.

  —one.

  The fireball murdered the gunners below. This time, Ellenor didn’t close her eyes.

  ****

  Bullets tore through Hildegard’s wing.

  Alec swore and banked right, jamming his foot on the rudder bar. Red streaks sliced the air, bullets coated with pyrotechnic gel streaming from the German’s machine guns. Loose fabric fluttered around the half-dozen holes. Alec looked up in time to see the black, cross-like shape of the airplane above him. Seconds later, the German dropped directly behind them.

  Alec almost panicked. He had almost panicked many times when locked in aerial warfare. It was part of the ritual. You went balls first against terror but never crossed its line, giving it the finger as you held fast to your wits. With the calm of a monk, Alec began evasive maneuvers, swinging first left and then dipping slightly and bringing his bird around in a rapid right-hand curve.

  The German followed him and fired again.

  Alec jiggled Hildegard instinctively, taking the rounds in the tail. The bullets thudded into the wood like fists against a barn door.

  “Alec!”

  He heard Ellenor’s scream but could do nothing about it. The German behind him was a sorcerer, clinging fast despite Alec’s efforts to elude him.

  The fourth and final ack-ack battery, flanked by thirty-seven-millimeter flaming onions, waited only a quarter-mile ahead. If Alec was going to be beaten tonight by the German pilot, he would do his best to take those guns with him and clear a path for the French.

  But he didn’t want to lose the girl of his dreams. A heroic death sounded far less appealing than seeing her naked again.

  He laughed and pushed Hildegard even closer to the ground.

  ****

  “He’s insane,” Gustov said when the Englander dropped another ten meters. Soaring over the city, the two planes were so near the slanted rooftops that the Fokker’s wheels nearly scraped the lip of a fireplace flue. Telegraph poles became crucifixes upon which he’d impale himself if he weren’t careful. He worked the stick constantly, hypnotically, making tiny little adjustments that flicked his three wing decks just enough to keep him clear of the obstacles. The Rumpler, twice as large, had somehow tucked itself into a clear channel and moved like a slipstream between the centuries-old buildings.

  A hundred meters back, Gustov fired.

  Tracers squirted out as if from a hose, some of them swatting the Rumpler’s right wing, some of them drilling into a house nearby. Each of his two guns was fed by a five-hundred-round ammunition drum. Always miserly with his ammo, he’d used only ten percent so far, hitting the Rumpler with at least three bursts. None of those, however, had struck anywhere near the fuel supply, the engine, or the pilot. The aircraft was so well engineered that the rest of it could be turned to splinters and it would still find a way to fly on unless one of its vital organs was torched. Gustov needed to get closer. His top speed was virtually the same as that of his enemy, but the Rumpler couldn’t reach full tilt as it jigged and jagged across the top of Metz’s slate shingles. Gustov could catch him only if he stayed high enough to fly straight and fast. Then, when the moment was right and he was directly on top of the man, he’d end it abruptly with a blast from both guns. It would be a pity if Miss Jantz were riding in the observer’s seat.

  He pushed the throttle as full and fast and hard as he was able. Seconds later, he hurtled toward the point of intersection at almost two hundred kilometers an hour, a speed he had reached before only in his dreams.

  ****

  Ellenor knew she would miss the fourth and final target. Too many buildings flashed by. The plane jostled and jolted to avoid them, shaking her apart. Her guts felt stuck to her lungs.

  The bullets that riddled their wing could strike her dead at any moment. She desperately wanted to twist around and look for the plane that chased them, terrified of it, but she couldn’t afford to glance away from her target. Her hand shook so violently that the release lever rattled against its housing no matter how tightly she gripped it. She made a high-pitched sound every time she exhaled, bordering on hyperventilation, but she kept her gaze bolted to that single spot on the ground. It got closer, larger.

  She pulled the lever and immediately recognized her mistake.

  “No!” She clutched the side of the plane and stared at the ground behind them.

  The bomb fell too early. Its steel fins angled it downward and gave it a stabilizing spin. It landed thirty yards from the great wheeled gun, blossoming into a bouquet of flames that did not touch their target.

  She missed.

  In front of her, Alec shook his head.

  Ellenor was about to lean toward him and make a stupid and useless apology, but then the plane whipped forcefully to the left, throwing her into the sidewall and knocking the last of the breath from her body.

  Anger and fear washed over her, lining her goggle
s with tears.

  ****

  Alec saw the German gaining on them. In seconds the man would be close enough to fire. Hildegard could withstand only so much punishment before she fractured, her wooden structure collapsing and sending them to the ground.

  The fourth ack-ack had survived. Shit. Nothing could be done about that now. They’d had a damn good run of luck; it was a miracle they’d gotten three of them. Hopefully he and Ellenor had done enough damage that the Frenchies could manage to avoid getting themselves killed in action when they arrived just before dawn to annihilate the factory. Now all that remained undone was escape.

  Escape, though, was not to be had. He tried it all, every crafty bit of dancing he could coax from his crate, but the German was too fast and too light in the air.

  Alec pulled back on the control wheel, pointing the nose straight at heaven, and then faded to the left and down again, trying in vain to shake the Hun from his tail.

  Too late. The bastard arrived and opened fire.

  Alec flew through a hailstorm of lead. A strut took a slug and cracked. A piece of laminated wood the size of his arm broke free of the lower-right wing and fluttered like a tossed playing card. The engine took two hits—ping! ping!—but amazingly keep churning. Alec did his best to dodge most of the barrage. A lesser pilot would have absorbed so much lead that he would have snapped in half right then and there. Alec bent and twisted his crate in ways it had never moved before, but the iron-hard truth of the matter was that Hildegard was wounded and nearly out of tricks.

  Nearly.

  Alec knew he and Ellenor had one and only one advantage. They could shoot backwards.

  He turned his head and shouted at Ellenor to use the gunner’s mounted weapon. She didn’t hear him.

  “Ellenor!”

  The wind devoured his words. The German ripped off another twenty rounds and then hurtled by, close enough that Alec could identify his plane, even in the dark. It was a Fokker Dreidecker, a devil with three sets of wings.

  “Ellenor!”

  ****

  Ellenor leaned forward as much as she possibly could and screamed: “What?”

  “Shoot that fucker!”