The Secret War

16

The hawk and the sparrow

Next morning, to the surprise and distress of the sergeant's aunt, they were up long before dawn. At four o'clock, in the comparative cool which still lasted with darkness, they drove out to the aerodrome.

Valerie made a particularly careful examination of her engine, as she knew that it might prove extremely awkward if they had to make a forced landing before completing their seven hundred mile journey, but by five o'clock they were in the air and heading for Addis Ababa.

They did not notice a great four engined machine that was run out of a hangar and left the Jibuti airfield ten minutes after them. If they had it would have appeared only as a tiny speck in the distance to their rear.

The rising sun seemed to come up all at once out of the ocean behind them. It shattered the brief twilight and painted the hills beyond Jibuti in unbelievably fantastic colours. The white salt mountains, which they had seen in the distance the day before, turned orange, gold, and rose, like a magnificent sunset spread out below. Then the colours faded and hard, brilliant, clear, every feature of the land lay naked in the glare, exposed to another day of blistering sun.

Valerie followed the railway line, a tiny, string like track across the surface of the wild, in which French trains were visible upon it. The express to Addis Ababa still ran only twice a week, although there was a war on, yet freight and fares at scandalously high rates were now bringing fine profits to the railway company. The bi weekly train due out that day which might, or might not, carry Baron Foldvar up into the interior was not scheduled to leave Jibuti until some hours later.

Plantations of cotton and coffee, interspersed with great areas of dense jungle which made the country appear green and fertile, fringed the railway on either side for several miles. At a quarter to six they were over the frontier and above Douelne, the first Abyssinian town, if the little cluster of buildings below them could be dignified by that name.

By seven they were over a place where the railway took a great curve to the south and then swung round. to the north again, almost forming a horseshoe bend. The land in the Bight was a greenish yellow, pockmarked surface looking as though it was pitted with innumerable small craters and, towards its centre, speckled with little dabs of white.

From the map they saw that the place half a mile below them was Diredawa, the most important city on the line between Jibuti and Addis, where it was necessary to leave the train for the great southern metropolis of Harar which lay some twenty five miles to the southeast.

Valerie circled once, bringing her plane down to a thousand feet so that they could get a better view of the town. The few whitish dabs were brick built, tin roofed buildings; the countless pock marks tuculs round, thatched native huts. Patches of blue gum trees were now apparent, tilled fields and, in the middle of the town, some larger buildings; churches and Rases' palaces perhaps. The town had no plan as far as could be seen; no main streets or squares. It just straggled outwards from the denser cluster of hutments grouped round the bigger buildings.

As they flew on again the fertile plain on their left, to the south of the railway, dropped away towards Harar and the fruitful province of Ogaden, while to the north lay a brown, barren land which soon overlapped the line and filled the horizon on both sides as far as they could see.

It was a nightmare country of almost unbelievable desolation. In the far distance range upon range of fiercely jagged mountains pierced the sky. Out of the trackless deserts below rose steep, flat topped kopjes like those seen in the waterless South African Karoo. No single sign of life appeared upon the inhospitable, boulder strewn, volcanic soil. The country might have been created by Satan in a fit of diabolical hate against mankind.

The sun was now making a furnace of the earth and already objects on it were becoming indistinct from the shimmering heat haze that quivered over the sandy wastes. Instinctively, almost, Valerie mounted to a higher altitude.

It was half an hour after passing over Diredawa that Lovelace caught sight of the following plane. At first he hardly took conscious notice of it but it was gaining on them and, as the distance between the planes decreased, something about the lines of the other machine struck him as familiar. Suddenly he realised that it was Zarrif’s.

The knowledge worried him as he dismissed at once the idea of coincidence. Abu Ben Ibrim had admitted that Zirrif had been in Jibuti two days before but said that he had left on the previous morning. Ben Ibrim had lied then. But why? Because something had been said which had given away the fact that they were not really Zarrif’s friends. Zirrif must still have been in Jibuti the previous night then and, having got rid of them by sending them on to Addis, Ben Ibrim had warned him about them. But why was Zirrif following them now? Lovelace felt a sudden chill of apprehension and he told Christopher that it was Zarrif’s plane behind them.

Christopher shrugged. 'What's it matter? As long as Zirrif is on his way to Addis Ababa it's immaterial which of us arrives there first.'

Lovelace said no more. No useful purpose could have been served by doing so now and he endeavoured to conceal his anxiety. Having travelled in Zarrif’s plane he knew that for each trip it was converted from a luxury air liner into a fighter carrying four machineguns. He had a ghastly feeling that those machine guns might be manned at the moment and that Zirrif was following Valerie's plane intent upon its destruction.

They were half way across the long, desolate stretch between Diredawa and Mojjo when Lovelace's fears were confirmed all too fully. The machine guns in their rear suddenly began to stutter.

A cold perspiration broke out on his forehead. They were unharmed; they could not fight. Zirrif meant to shoot them down and finish them once and for all, out there in the desert, where there would be no troublesome witnesses. He gripped Valerie by the shoulder.

`I'm sorry Ben Ibrim's fooled us. Make north towards French Somaliland try and get clear. If you see a good stretch, land, and we'll run for it.'

At the first staccato rattle Valerie had glanced over her shoulder and realised the meaning of it.

`We're done!' she gasped. `Their plane's faster than mine and it's higher. We can't shoot back they'll do us in for certain.' But as she spoke she flung the joystick over and they curved into a sickening dive to the right of the railway.

Zarrif’s plane followed. Lovelace could picture him in his forward cabin, cold and impassive, submitting with bleak resignation to this momentary interruption of his work while his gunmen carried out his orders.

A few hundred feet above the desert Valerie flattened out and zoomed up again; heading north as Lovelace had told her.

The enemy, realising that the manoeuvre was a trick, banked steeply and came roaring after them. The shadows of the two planes, black and clear cut like two huge birds, raced at two hundred miles an hour across the desert.

Valerie was climbing again which caused her to lose pace. The bigger machine swooped suddenly, diving at them with both its forward guns blazing. Valerie flicked her plane over so that it almost turned turtle; righted it again and shot skywards. The two planes seemed to miss each other only by inches but she had escaped the hail of bullets and now had the greater altitude. "

Christopher lurched to his feet, his pistol drawn, his black eyes staring, waiting for a chance to open fire upon their overwhelmingly more powerful enemy,

Lovelace pulled his arm. 'That's no good,' he yelled, 'you couldn't hit them in a month of Sundays. Save your bullets we'll need them if we can only land.'

Both planes were climbing again now; straining for height: Valerie that she might get clear for a breakneck dive to attempt a landing on a patch of even ground she could see ahead, and Zarrif’s pilot so that he might swoop at her again. For three breathless moments there was silence.

Suddenly the attack opened once more. The chatter of the machine guns was louder now. A spate of bullets tore through the fuselage of the smaller plane. Valerie swerved; then dropped like a stone. Christopher was flung off his feet. Lovelace gasped as his heart seemed to rise up into his throat. Yet even in that moment, as they flashed out of the bullet spattered area, he realised what a superb pilot they had in the white faced girl beside him.

Before they knew what was happening she had righted the plane again and was heading north once more. They had dropped a thousand feet but the desert was still over two thousand feet below them.

Zarrif’s plane was after them, heavier but as fast, two streams of bullets zipping from its forward guns.

A control wire snapped with a loud ping as a shot cut through it, a dozen more made a line of punctures in the metal work of the cabin only a few inches behind Christopher's shoulders.

Valerie threw back her head. She was not looking at Christopher but at Lovelace. Her glance held no fear but distress and apology. She had done her best to get clear but it was impossible.

His grimace was meant to be a smile of thanks, admiration, understanding. He nodded once, pulled the rip cord of the emergency exit in the roof of the cabin, and shouted: `Land ! Anywhere ! It's our only chance.'

Next second she had thrown the plane into a spin. Gyrating madly they plunged down, down, down, while the spinning earth rushed up to meet them.

Lovelace held his breath; waiting for the terrific impact which he knew must come before oblivion. Suddenly they came out of the spin and seemed to flash along the surface of the ground at breakneck speed, almost scraping it. There was a frightful jolt; they bounded into the air again with the ground still racing away beneath them until a wing tip caught upon a giant boulder. The plane swerved violently. With the scream of tearing fabric and twisted metal it turned right round, lurched sideways, and came to a standstill.

For a moment they were too dazed to move. Christopher recovered first and began to scramble out through the roof of the cabin. `Come on!' he called, stretching down a hand to grab Valerie's arm. `Come on! They're still shooting at us.'

Lovelace thrust her up and followed her through the aperture. They saw Zarrif’s plane, far above them now, circling in the wide blue sky. Its guns still flashed and a hail of bullets was tearing the left wing of Valerie's machine to pieces.

As they jumped to the ground the fierce heat of the stones struck up to their feet through the soles of their shoes but they did not heed it as they dashed for cover.

Instinctively they headed for a natural arch formed by two big rocks, about a hundred yards away, and flung themselves down beneath it.

For a few moments bullets continued to clatter on the stones about them; then there fell a sudden silence broken only by the drone of the plane above. It grew fainter and Lovelace peered out. The enemy were apparently content with having shot them down; for the plane had turned and was heading away towards Addis Ababa.

He wondered that Zirrif should be satisfied to leave them still alive when, by expending a little more time and ammunition, he could have descended to a closer range and massacred them in spite of their scant cover. Yet they must be thirty, if not fifty, miles now from the railway line and a hundred from a village that contained a white man. They would die of thirst and starvation in that blistering desert before they could cover half such a distance. All the same it was strange that Zirrif should have left them even so slender a chance of life.

Suddenly he saw something move behind a boulder. Through the shimmering heat haze a savage, brown face, surmounted by fuzzy, black hair, was peering at him.

Valerie gave a cry and gripped Christopher's arm. She was looking in a different direction and had seen another. The whole region seemed to come to life and there were scores of dark, shiny faces glaring at them.

Lovelace understood then why Zirrif had left them. He had seen the tribesmen from above. This was Danakil country where whites were first terribly mutilated and then murdered. He had gone on to Addis Ababa, quite satisfied that there was not the slightest chance of their ever troubling him again.

There was only one thing for it, Lovelace knew. He had got to shoot Valerie first and himself afterwards.