Page 19 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm (An Isaac Bell Adventure #15)
They ended up making six such runs in the staff car, and by the time the last of the soldiers wounded in the German raid had been safely transported, the car’s seats were sticky with blood and the interior was thick with its coppery scent.
An orderly at the hospital gave them a galvanized pail with a weak solution of water and carbolic acid to clean up the mess.
Nearby, Royal Engineers had erected dormitory-style buildings to house the pilots, bunkhouses for the enlisted men, and several open-fronted hangars so mechanics could work on the planes with some protection from the elements.
Arriving at the base, Bell was immediately struck by the aircraft lined up between the hangars and the runway.
He recognized several from magazine articles he’d read back in the States, but others were unknown to him, especially a big two-person observation plane armed with a Vickers positioned to fire through the propeller and a Lewis gun on a Scarff ring mount for the observer station behind the pilot’s cockpit.
The driver left Bell outside the barn after grabbing his leather bag from the staff car’s trunk.
The afternoon was warm and the sky nearly cloudless, making this as peaceful a moment as Bell could recall.
He was even too far away to hear the incessant pounding of the artillery guns.
A breeze made the tensioning wires on the nearby biplanes keen like an opera diva holding an impossibly long note.
The interior of the barn was a bit dim because there were so few windows, and while the manure smell had been erased with a thorough cleaning, it still had a scent of dried grass and loamy earth.
To Bell’s right was a mess hall/recreation area with an upright piano against one wall and a beautifully crafted mahogany bar large enough for six stools.
He guessed there was a story behind both items being hauled out here to the base.
He also imagined both followed the squadron whenever they moved.
A couple of pilots lounged on the mismatched sofas and club chairs clustered around a low table that looked like it had come from the same venue as the bar.
The men didn’t look up from the newspapers they were reading or the game of chess two were playing.
Mounted on the wall opposite the room’s entrance was the top right wing of a German fighter plane.
It was painted a mottled green with its distinctive Maltese cross done in gold-bordered black.
The canvas wing showed at least a dozen bullet holes, testament to how it found its way here.
Partition walls had been erected by the engineers on the other side of the barn to create several offices off a central hallway.
One was for a flight lieutenant named Baskers and another for the squadron leader, Geoffrey Crabbe.
Bell heard two men in that office talking casually.
He waited for a lull and knocked on the door.
“Come,” a voice called from inside.
The office was spartan and had no ceiling so that light from the barn’s high windows reached it.
Behind a desk was a moppy-haired teenage boy wearing a proper Royal Flying Corps uniform.
His upper lip had the barest shadow of a blond mustache.
An older officer with a pipe clamped between yellowed teeth sat on one of the two chairs facing the desk.
“Help you?” the older man asked.
“I’m looking for Captain Crabbe,” Bell said, realizing the teen boy wasn’t quite as young as he thought and that he had three pins on each shoulder designating him a captain. “And I believe that I’ve found him.”
“Indeed you have,” the young airman said with a toothy smile. “And if I’m any judge of accents, you’re the Yank Uncle Winston said to expect.”
“Isaac Bell,” the detective said and crossed the room to shake Crabbe’s hand as the pilot got to his feet.
“Geoff Crabbe. This is our adjutant, Lieutenant Horatio Baskers. Everyone calls him Uncle. Though you’re not much younger than he is, so I suppose calling him Cousin is more appropriate for you.”
Bell was still a little off because Fleming and Churchill’s friend was so young.
It must have shown on his face because once they’d all sat down and Baskers had relit his pipe, Crabbe said, “I know what you’re thinking.
I’m too young to have served in the Queen’s Own Oxfordshires with Val and Uncle Winston.
Well, first, he’s not really my uncle, but he is great friends with my father. ”
“Lord Chelmsford,” the adjutant added quickly.
“Yes, yes, Uncle,” Crabbe said dismissively at the unnecessary, in his opinion, mention of his father’s peerage.
“Mr. Bell doesn’t care. It was Winston who got me my commission when I turned eighteen and had me posted to the Queen’s Own.
He and Val were reservists by then. I only stayed with them for a short time before catching the flying bug.
And I know I look like I’m still eighteen, but I am actually twenty-four. ”
Bell finally caught the anomaly that had confounded him upon meeting Crabbe. He did have a boyish face, but he had a veteran’s eyes, eyes not unlike Sergeant Everly’s—eyes too young to have seen the things they already had.
“To further muddy the waters of my presence,” the aviator went on, “a typical squadron is commanded by a major and I am a mere captain. Our last CO, Major Fairley, went a bit dotty in the head and tried to off himself by running into a spinning propeller. We await either a replacement from home or my promotion, both of which I dread in equal measures.”
Crabbe pulled three shot glasses from a desk drawer along with a bottle of amber liquid. As he poured he asked, “Winston was rather vague in his telegraph, Mr. Bell. What is it you’re here for exactly?”
While explaining his credentials and the presidential fact-finding mission to the squadron commander and his adjutant, Bell took a sip of what turned out to be rough country brandy that went down as smoothly as ground glass and hit the belly like a blast from one of those German flamethrowers.
He had always had a strong stomach, especially for alcohol, but this stuff blew out his breath in an explosive whoosh.
Baskers’s eyebrow went up as he sipped his with the wariness of a mouse eyeing a cat.
Crabbe gulped his like it was cold water on a hot day and offered a refill before topping off his glass once again.
Bell concluded by telling Crabbe that he was a pilot himself with nearly five hundred hours of flying time on a dozen different planes.
“No doubt every one incident-free,” Crabbe said.
“Hardly,” Bell said, grinning, “but I managed to walk away from every landing, so I have that going for me.”
“I wrecked my plane so badly on my first solo landing, they had to cut me out of the cockpit,” the young Englishman admitted. “Great times, eh?”
“If we have time, I’ll tell you about me jumping from a plane’s wing onto a moving truck in pursuit of some criminals.”
Back came that toothy grin. “I think you’re our kind of crazy, Mr. Bell.”
“Isaac.”
“Isaac,” Crabbe said and saluted him with a now thrice-filled glass. “However, I can’t lend you one of our planes. Regulations and all that. Simply can’t be done.”
“I wasn’t even going to suggest it,” Bell told him. “Since I don’t know the terrain here, I’d likely end up miles behind the German lines or halfway to Paris before I realized it.”
“Oh,” Crabbe said, mildly surprised. “Most visitors we get here are pains in my arse. Aren’t you refreshing.
Tell you what, we’ve got dusk patrol in a little bit and then we bed down for the night.
Dawn patrol is as it sounds, at dawn, and not conducive to fact-finding and President assuaging.
I’ll send you up with one of the lads an hour after we get back.
Shouldn’t take more than an hour of flying time to get a lay of the land and sneak a peek at where our intrepid artillery is turning good French mud into even better French mud. ”
“That works for me,” Bell told him.
“Excellent. Uncle, find Isaac a bunk for the night, give him the penny tour, and make sure he doesn’t wander onto the runway while we’re taking off.”
Baskers stood, his fifty-year-old knees crackling like dry leaves.
“Mr. Bell, come with me, please.” He led Bell out of the barn and ambled toward the pilots’ housing units.
He had a noticeable limp, but didn’t use a cane.
“First week in France,” he said without being asked.
“I was a reservist in a support role, typist for a brigade commander actually, when a cannon being test-fired caused a horse to bolt.
Nag bowled me over and broke my leg so bad the sawbones had to… well, saw my bones.
“I wanted to stay in and do my part, so they promoted me once I’d healed. I got assigned to babysit a bunch of post-teen boys who happen to know how to fly aeroplanes, first with the 53rd and now with this lot of rambunctious puppies.”
“The couple I saw back in the barn do look young,” Bell commented.
“Attrition keeps the average low. Old hands like Captain Crabbe and a few of the others are the exception. Most newly arrived pilots last just a couple weeks here.”
“But there’s no shortage of volunteers?”
“None. There are so many wanting to fly that the training back home gets shortened every couple of months to accommodate more pilots. Here we are, sir.”
Baskers opened the door to one of the cabin-sized rooms in a long, hastily constructed building with a dozen such units.
He closed it just as quickly. Bell caught a glimpse of a footlocker at the end of the bed, some clothes hanging in a cubby closet, and a few personal items on a small writing desk.
“Sorry about that. McAllister went down a couple of days ago. I thought his batman would have cleared out his stuff by now. I need to have a word with him. No matter. We have others.”