The Russian Resistance

by Simon Brading

  Owen glowered at her. ‘It’s Llewellyn and I’m fairly sure even the English know how to spell that.’

  Derek smiled at him mildly. ‘Not the way you pronounce it they don’t. Although we could always just tell them your name is Sheepish; I’m pretty sure they can spell that.’

  The Misfits had stopped laughing by the time Abby got out of the autocar, but she could still tell that something had been going on. She gave them a puzzled look but didn’t comment and just stood waiting for her passenger to join her.

  The new pilot turned out to be a slim woman in her early twenties, with dark hair done neatly up in a bun under her day uniform top hat. She marched to Abby’s side and put her kitbag on the floor, then snapped smartly to attention.

  ‘As you were, Aviator Sergeant.’ Abby’s wince was barely perceptible, but the Misfits didn’t miss it and there were a few exchanged glances and raised eyebrows as the woman relaxed only slightly to stand at parade rest.

  ‘Boys and girls, meet Chastity Arrowsmith. She will be joining us on a temporary basis, to be made permanent after our mission if she proves good enough.’ Abby looked at the woman. ‘Which, if her report is to be believed, she will.’

  The woman, Chastity, nodded. ‘I won’t let you down, ma’am.’

  Again, there was a minute twitch from Abby, only noticeable to the Misfits, who knew her well, and which spoke volumes about her opinion of the new pilot’s stiffly formal behaviour.

  ‘Alright then, I think the best thing to do is get into the air. Do you feel like meeting your new aircraft?’

  For the first time the woman showed a hint of emotion, a slight upward turn of her lips that almost approximated a smile and there was the barest touch of enthusiasm in her voice as she replied. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Good.’ Abby jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the ready room. ‘There’s a dressing room inside, go get your flightsuit on - we have time for a flight before lunch.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The woman picked up her kitbag and threw it on her shoulder before drawing herself up to attention again. She executed a smart quarter turn to the right and marched a couple of paces - a perfect parade manoeuvre - then fell out and hurried into the ready room.

  The Misfits were already dressed from a training flight that morning, so they stayed where they were and watched her go, then turned to throw sceptical looks at their leader, who had wandered over to join them.

  Abby shrugged. ‘So, she’s a bit military. I’m sure she’ll lighten up after a few pints. Give her a chance - at least see how she flies first before judging her.’

  There was a soft rattling sound from behind them and they turned, just catching a glimpse of the rear wheels of Lady Penelope’s wheelchair, disappearing around the back of the ready room towards the perimeter road where she must have left her autocar. She had obviously been silently watching them from the shadows under the eaves where they hadn’t been able to see her.

  The pilots looked at each other, their hearts breaking. Nobody said anything, there was no need to; they all know how their friend must be feeling, seeing her replacement arrive and knowing that she was one step further away from the squadron she loved.

  Lady Penelope was much healthier and had almost fully gotten over the shock of the loss of so much blood and the amputations. Aside from her doctors, she had been working with a man, Nicholas Park, who the Misfits suspected was a therapist of some kind, and she had become a lot stronger. She no longer needed her husband to push her everywhere which meant she had been free to visit the design shed whenever she wanted, but hadn’t been able to work the long hours that the other designers had and so had acted more as a consultant, popping in whenever the designs were being discussed.

  She had also been smiling a lot more the last week or so, but the pilots knew that deep down inside she couldn’t be happy cut off from the sky, none of them would be, and the few trips that she’d been on in the Lekker with Wendy were not a substitute for the freedom of flying her own aircraft.

  Fortunately, they weren’t left alone with such depressing thoughts for too long, because the woman reappeared after only a couple of minutes, dressed in a standard issue RAC flightsuit and helmet, and joined them on the grass.

  Abby nodded at her, then addressed the whole group. ‘First off, with Penelope leaving us we have to change the battle order of B flight. Derek is now B flight leader, Badger Five. Kitty will stay on his wing and will become Badger Six. Mac, congratulations, you’re now Badger Seven, leading the second section and Chastity, you’re on his wing as Badger Eight.’

  She looked at the pilots one by one, making sure they understood, before continuing. ‘Right then, since this is our first time in the air together for a while, we’ll run through some basic squadron manoeuvres, both for ourselves and to get our new pilot used to working with us. Then we’ll have a few practice dogfights with the sections of each flight going up against each other, and we’ll finish off by running some interceptions on Wendy in the Lekker.’ She looked at Wendy. ‘It would be good if you could do that for us until we leave, actually. If you don’t mind taking some time off causing explosions.’

  The big woman grinned. ‘I don’t mind at all. The army boys are getting a bit fed up with me blowing bloody great holes in targets their tanks can barely scratch anyway. It’ll give their egos a chance to heal a bit.’ Wendy had appropriated the Lekker as her own and had bolted racks to its wings so that she could use it as a testbed for her weapons. When she wasn’t working on Dreadnought, she could be found flying around over the army’s firing range.

  Abby smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’ She turned to face the rest of C flight’s pilots. ‘As for you three, Charles, Owen, observation duty as always and Scarlet, you’re free to carry out your own exercises as you see fit. Any questions?’

  There were none so Abby continued. ‘Mac, give Chastity a quick walk around of her aircraft before we take off, please, just to familiarise her with her new machine, but don’t worry too much about her; she’s had experience on twin-spring fighters.’

  ‘Nae problem, Abby. Come on, you.’ Mac motioned for Chastity to follow him and began to speak to her as they walked towards the aircraft, followed closely by the other pilots.

  For a long time the Misfits had barely had a chance to think or even feel, spending all of their waking hours working themselves almost to the point of exhaustion, apart from short breaks to eat, but with the fighters finished, they were at last able to set aside their extra duties as mechanics and designers and had room to breathe. They also had energy left at the end of the day to socialise and, more importantly, at least for Mac and Bruce, to drink.

  In the evenings, while the service personnel enjoyed themselves in the fully stocked mess on the base or caught up on their sleep, the pilots retired to the sitting room in the mansion to listen to Abby telling the journalist how she had recruited the pilots. Those hours spent sitting in the overstuffed armchairs and sofas in front of a roaring fire which banished the cool of the autumn nights, quickly became the highlight of the day for them and brought them even closer together than they had been before. It also allowed Chastity to learn a bit more about what she was getting herself in for and served to introduce her to the kind of behaviour that was more normal for the squadron. As Abby had predicted, she had slowly begun to lose her stiff military bearing and even started calling the pilots by their first names instead of “sir” and “ma’am.”

  Most of the Misfits had been recruited in relatively conventional ways, like Owen, who had approached Abby when he’d finished his radar project with the government, or Lady Penelope, who Abby had met previously and personally asked to join, or Charles, Derek, Bruce and Monty, who had been recommended by the newly appointed Sir Douglas Pewtall.

  Other stories were a bit more interesting.

  Wendy had been languishing in a Defence Ministry think tank, developing conventional weapons, having her decidedly unconventional ideas ignored and Abby had i
nitially approached her just to provide interesting weapons for the squadron. However, when they got into talking and the big woman revealed her plans for a combination bomber and gun platform, Abby had leapt on the idea and immediately secured the funds from the Emperor.

  Abby had found Kitty in France after the American had fled Spain in Hawk, the only survivor of the foreign pilots who had gone to fight for freedom in the Iberian Civil War.

  Curiously enough, Abby had spotted Scarlet in a newsreel at the cinema, during a light-hearted segment which showed the “Irish Sheep Herder” who used an aircraft instead of a dog.

  It was the story that Abby told of how she had recruited Mac that had them alternately on the edges of their seats with excitement and rolling around in laughter, though.

  Scotland 1937

  William “Mad Mac” MacShane wasn’t really mad, he just liked people to think he was.

  Abby knew that, but she was still nervous when she flew Butterfly up to the west of Scotland and landed in a field just outside Taynuilt, the tiny town where Mac had his workshop. There was nobody to meet her as she would have expected if she had landed at a proper airfield, mostly because there wasn’t a proper airfield to be had - the nearest airfield was actually in Oban, ten miles away, which was where she would have to go to get her spring rewound if Mac couldn’t do it, or wouldn’t for some reason. Mac himself had his workshop right on the loch, Loch Etive, and used it to land his aircraft, which were all float aircraft.

  It was about a mile from the field to his workshop, along a dirt road through the woods, but she hadn’t made it more than a hundred yards before an ancient buggy, not much more than four wheels, two seats and an engine, came bouncing towards her down the road.

  It screeched to a halt, causing her to skip to the side out of its way when its squealing brakes stopped functioning for a few seconds, and sat idling noisily, the engine making ominous popping noises and leaking steam from its joints.

  The driver glared at her over the steering wheel. He was in his early thirties wearing goggles and a battered brown leather flying helmet from under which poked an unruly mop of shockingly ginger hair. He was filthy, his hands, his overalls and his face, where they weren’t protected by the goggles, all covered in grease. ‘Whaddya want?’ He growled at her, his words barely intelligible.

  Abby smiled in the face of his hostility. ‘William MacShane?’

  ‘Aye.’ The man said cautiously. ‘Who’s askin’?’

  ‘My name is Abigail Lennox, I’m from...’

  ‘Lennox?’ The man interrupted with another growl. ‘As in Lennox Aviation?’ He grunted and waved a hand at her dismissively. ‘Be gone withya! I’ve told yer once and I’ll tell yer again - I’m not selling to some bloody Sassenach company, no matter how good the offer or good their aircraft.’

  ‘I’m not here about...’

  He ignored her and stood up to peer over her shoulder towards Butterfly. ‘That’s a nice machine, though, I wouldn’t mind tekkin a wee looksie at her afore yer go.’

  He didn’t wait for her to answer before sitting back down and slamming the buggy into gear, making an awful crunching noise, then lurching forwards, sending Abby scrambling to get out of his way once more.

  She rolled her eyes and took a deep breath, searching for patience, before jogging after the man.

  When she caught up with him he was already running his hands, wiped “clean” on a rag in his pocket, over the aircraft, grinning and muttering happily to himself. ‘Verra nice, verra nice...’ He eyed her as she approached. ‘It’s not one o’ yer da’s, though, is it?’

  Abby shook her head. ‘No, it’s one of mine.’

  Mac grunted. ‘It’s good.’ He continued his inspection while he spoke to her. ‘I was sorry to hear about yer da. He was a good man was Clifford, but as I told him back in thirty-five, I’m not selling to anyone. Not even to Lennox.’

  ‘I understand that, but I’m not here to buy your company. I don’t even own Lennox Aviation anymore; we sold to Hawking.’

  ‘Hawking?!?’ Mac almost spat the word at her, and she blinked in shock. ‘Hell’s bells, what did ye go and do a stupid thing like that fer? Have ye seen their bloody Harridan? I’ve never seen a more boring aircraft! Yer da mus’ be spinnin’ in his grave!’

  He stormed away, heading back to his buggy.

  She followed on his heels, not wanting to lose him. ‘I sold Lennox because I was given something more important to do.’

  He rounded on her angrily. ‘What could possibly be more important than honouring yer father’s legacy?’

  Abby met his angry stare without flinching and spoke quietly, her words barely audible over the chugging of the steam buggy. ‘The Emperor himself charged me with forming a squadron of elite pilots to counter the Prussian threat. I want to make sure that Britain survives long enough to honour the legacy of everyone who lives in this country, not just my father.’

  Mac stared at her and for a long moment Abby thought he was still going to storm away, but then he deflated with a sigh. ‘Aye. It’s coming ter that, isn’t it?’

  ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘And ye want me to join this new squadron?’

  ‘You as well as your fastest and best aircraft.’

  He squinted at her suspiciously. ‘Ye promise I won’t ever have to fly a bloody Harridan?’

  Abby laughed. ‘I promise! That would defeat the whole object of the squadron.’

  ‘And yer going to be leading this, what, “band of merry men” or something equally British?’

  ‘Misfit Squadron, actually. And yes, I’ll be leading it.’

  ‘Misfits... I quite like that.’ He grinned. ‘But I’m not going to join up unless ye do one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Mac pointed at Butterfly. ‘Prove to me ye can fly that thing; I’m not following a worse pilot than me!’

  Abby grinned. ‘Can’t say fairer than that, I suppose. Have you got something to rewind her with?’

  Mac did of course have a rewinding machine for his own aircraft, one that he had hand-built himself, and he took Abby to his workshop in the buggy to fetch it.

  It proved to be as bone-shattering and hair-raising a ride as she’d feared it would be; unlike the driver’s seat, the passenger seat was just bare metal and unpadded and, despite the brakes being unreliable at best, Mac drove fully in accordance with his nickname.

  His workshop turned out to be a series of low, wooden huts, five of which were hangars, sitting directly on the waterfront with ramps leading down into the water. The sixth and largest, his actual workshop, was set back from them and there was also a small, but well-built bungalow a little further along the road among the trees where the man obviously lived.

  The five hangars were identical, open-fronted and backed, allowing Abby a brief view of the machines housed within as Mac zoomed past. They were of all types, all shapes and all colours. The only thing that they had in common were the floats underneath them that permitted them to launch from the placid Loch.

  Mac saw her craning her neck to try to get a better look and smiled. ‘Dinna fash yerself; yer’ll get a better look later. If ye can fly as good as yer aircraft looks, that is.’

  He backed up to a small lean-to behind the main workshop and when he hopped out to hook a small trailer to the back of the buggy Abby groaned; she had hoped that the winding machine would be in another vehicle, one that was a bit more comfortable.

  Once the trailer was secured, Mac climbed back in and they started back towards Butterfly, going just as fast and wildly, even with the extra weight and unwieldiness of the machine.

  Half an hour later Abby was back in the air and circling over the Loch at a thousand feet. She shifted in her seat and winced; it felt like she had bruised something, which meant that it was going to be a very long, very uncomfortable flight back to Norfolk. She was seriously considering stopping off somewhere for the night - she was going to have to rewind somewhere anyway, so she
might as well get a bit of a rest.

  The state of her posterior was completely put out of her mind, though, when below her an aircraft slid slowly down the ramp from its hangar and splashed into the Loch. She frowned slightly; it was a single spring aircraft with straight wings that looked like tongue depressors and a stubby body - it didn’t look anything special and she wondered if she had somehow been wrong about Mac’s talent, or whether perhaps he’d lost his creative edge after retiring from the Schnitzel Cup competitions.

  She watched as the aircraft moved forwards, gliding smoothly across the water towards the open Loch, then, without stopping, it turned into the wind and accelerated and in only a few seconds the white trails from its floats disappeared as it got airborne.

  Abby had given Mac her radio frequency and the headset built into her helmet crackled as his voice filled the airwaves. ‘Alrighty, then. Here’s the rules. Ye follow me wherever I go. If ye get more than a quarter of a mile behind, ye lose. If ye get more than fifty feet above me, ye lose. If ye can’t take the heat, ye lose. If ye crash, ye lose. Weeeell... That last one’s a wee bit obvious, but I just thought it would be nice to let ye know anyway.’

  His laughter filled her ears and she couldn’t help but chuckle along with him, even though she was becoming increasingly worried about what he was getting her into and how mad he was going to turn out to be in the end.

  ‘Fall in behind me, then, and let’s do this!’

  Mac led her into the hills and valleys to the north of his workshop. At first, he took it easy, undoubtedly assessing the capabilities of her aircraft, but when he had done that, the gloves came off and he increased speed at the same time as he decreased height.

  What followed was an exhilarating and often terrifying flight of almost two hundred miles through the Highlands of Scotland. Mac obviously knew the terrain, or at least the route they were taking, like the back of his hand. He knew exactly how fast he could go down each valley and how late he could pull up before crashing into the hills or mountains at the end of them, he knew the air currents and the thermals and used them to his advantage, testing to see whether Abby was good enough to spot what he was doing, and he skimmed the Lochs and fields low enough to scare the sheep. And he did it all while laughing he head off with the excitement of it.