Or Even Eagle Flew Page 8

  “Funny—I was thinking the same thing.” Andy hesitated, then said, “You’re all right, you know? Not ’cause you’re famous or anything, I mean. Because you’re you.”

  “Thanks.” A.E. wondered if she’d ever heard anything she was more grateful for. Her fame was a big part of what had driven George to her; she’d understood that right from the start. Its starting to slip was a big part of why he’d lost interest, too. Being valued for who she was, not what she was, made her happy in a way very different from Andy’s gentle roughness moments before.

  She let him lead the way to the barracks, and went in a couple of minutes after he did. She found her cot and fell asleep with a smile on her face.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She was still smiling when she woke the next morning, but not for long. Two worries darkened her thoughts like storm clouds. The first took care of itself a few days later, when her period came. Getting pregnant at forty-three wasn’t likely, but … Her mind’s eye had been seeing headlines like KNOCKED-UP PILOT DRUMMED OUT OF RAF!

  The second was that Andy Mamedoff might make trouble if she turned him down when he tried his luck again. But he didn’t try again. As far as she could judge from the way he acted, what had happened might as well not have. Maybe it had been just another way to mourn Shorty. Maybe he didn’t want to take any chances with landing Penny Craven. Or maybe he hadn’t thought she was such hot stuff.

  Whatever the reason, he stayed as he’d been since the day they met: cocky, amused and amusing, ironically detached. He didn’t let on that anything out of the ordinary had happened, and neither did she.

  She did try to get some leave so she could go south to visit Amy. When she managed it, she sent a wire saying she’d take the train down the following Tuesday.

  Monday night, she was throwing things into a little suitcase when an answering telegram came back. She opened the envelope and read the message on the flimsy yellow paper. REGRET TO INFORM YOU PILOT OFFICER JOHNSON MISSING, PRESUMED LOST, OVER FRANCE. PLANE SEEN ON FIRE, NO CHUTE. Amy Johnson’s squadron leader’s printed signature followed.

  A.E. stared at the message for two or three minutes. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand it; more that she didn’t want to understand it. She’d pushed Amy toward flying in combat, pushed her harder than she’d felt comfortable going herself. Amy’d got to do it, and she’d paid the full price for being treated like a man.

  Maybe she would have wanted that. Maybe she would have been happier ferrying planes around the British Isles till the war finally ended, if it ever did. She wouldn’t get to make a choice like that now, though. The most A.E. could hope for was that she’d done some more damage before she bought her plot.

  Dully, she got to her feet. Flight Lieutenant Taylor was doing paperwork when he probably should have been grabbing what shuteye he could. A.E. stood in front of the beat-up card table he used for a desk and waited to be noticed. In due course, he looked up. “Yes, Pilot Officer?”

  “Sir, I … I won’t need that leave I asked for after all.” A.E. could hear her own voice shake.

  Bill Taylor raised an eyebrow. “‘Won’t need leave’? What kind of language is that?”

  All A.E. could do was hold out the telegram. “This is Amy Johnson, sir. The pilot. My friend. We’d known each other for years. I was going down to see her. Not much point now, is there?”

  “Amy Johnson? Good God! Yes, of course you’d know each other, wouldn’t you? I’m sorry!” Taylor paused in visible thought. “Don’t you want leave anyway? You could go somewhere and think about something that’s got nothing to do with flying till you come back.”

  “But flying’s the only thing I care about, sir,” A.E. said. “The only people in England who matter to me now—the only ones who’re still alive, I mean—are right here.”

  “We’re a band of brothers,” Taylor said slowly. “You’ve shown a band of brothers can have room in it for a sister as well. And so did Pilot Officer Johnson, no doubt about it.”

  It seemed to A.E. that he gave Amy due respect by using her rank rather than her name. You were born male or female. Rank, you had to earn. Whether the bastards want you to or not, she thought. Managing a salute, she said, “Thank you very much, sir,” and let him get back to it.

  The next morning, she was helping the mechanics work on the Hurricane she flew. The better you took care of your kite, the better it would take care of you. She was greasy to the elbows, with her mind on engine valves and nothing else, when Red Tobin said, “I thought you got yourself leave. God knows you could use some. You stay here more than anybody else, and this isn’t exactly bright lights and big city.”

  That, of course, brought everything flooding back. But Red was as much a friend as Andy, even if they hadn’t lain down together. He was as much a friend as she had over here now that Shorty and Amy were gone. She told him about the wire she’d got.

  He kicked at the grass under his boots. “Ahhhh, hell,” he said. “That’s about as rotten as it gets. If anybody was gonna speak your lingo, she’d be the one.”

  “Yes!” she said, glad he understood, well, most of what she was feeling and also wondering if she was that easy to read for people who didn’t know her so well.

  “You need a shoulder to cry on, I’m around.” He didn’t push it any further than that, but ambled away. In his easygoing, offhand style, he was a gentleman. She wondered why she’d taken so long to notice.

  Shrugging, she leaned back into the Hurricane’s engine compartment and started guddling around in its guts once more. Work brought forgetfulness, or at least it might.

  In April, 71 Squadron moved down to Martlesham Heath in Suffolk. There were bogies there. They chased German bombers and tangled with 109s. Every time A.E. saw one of those small, squared-off fighters, she wondered if the pilot was the one who’d bounced Amy. That she knew she’d never find out didn’t stop the wondering.

  The Eagles moved again in July, to North Weald, just outside of London. They graduated back to Spitfires, too—Spitfire Vs, with two cannon and four machine guns.

  “Now we’re in next week, not last week,” Red Tobin said.

  “About time, too,” Andy added.

  With the better planes, they’d soon start raiding France themselves. Everyone said so, anyhow. The RAF called the cross-Channel shoot-’em-ups Rhubarbs. To A.E., that brought to mind brawls on a baseball diamond. Her fellow pilots laughed, though no one from England would have thought it was funny.

  A couple of Yanks left 71 Squadron to join 121 Squadron, the second outfit full of Eagles. She thought one of them was the man who’d groped her in the Nissen hut in the middle of the night, but she couldn’t prove it. When they threw him his farewell bash, she made sure she stayed sober.

  By the time 71 Squadron did start making Rhubarb raids, fewer German planes were left in France to fight them. Hitler had jumped on Stalin, and he threw all he could into the big fight in the east. It was as if he meant to deal with England later, once Russia was down for the count.

  A.E. didn’t care much. The chance to go after the Nazis and hurt them in land they held felt irresistible to her. They’d caused England so much misery. If they couldn’t keep the RAF from getting some of its own back now, too bad for them.

  The squadron leader understood what his pilots were feeling. All the same, he told them, “Don’t make like a hero unless that’s your only choice. Heroes have a bad habit of not coming back, and we need you to fly more missions against the Jerries. Chances are, they won’t come up against you. If they do, we’ll spot them on radar and warn you by radio. Don’t let them cut you off from England. Steer around them if you can and come home. Have you got that, you goddamn thick-skulls?”

  None of the pilots told him no. A.E. wondered how seriously they took his words, though. She wondered how seriously she took them herself. All the same, she couldn’t help remembering what she’d heard when she first came to 609 Squadron. Most of the men sitting here with you will be dead a yea
r from now. That came much too close to prophecy straight out of the Old Testament.

  She flew her first Rhubarb with Red Tobin a few days later. He flew as leader, she as his wingman. Another English pair crossed the Channel with them. Bit by bit, the RAF was abandoning three-plane vics and squadrons in rigid formation. The Luftwaffe grouping they called the finger-four—two pairs of leaders and wingmen, all watching out for one another—had proved a lot more flexible.

  They zoomed over the Channel in nothing flat. She’d taken much longer to fly that, ah, borrowed Potez from south to north. A year ago now. How was that possible? The only thing that made her believe it was how much she’d learned about the pilot’s art since. Flying the Atlantic, even flying around the world, couldn’t touch combat for teaching you what you needed to know. They couldn’t touch it for killing you off if you didn’t learn, either.

  France. The raiders went in low, just over a thousand feet. Normandy looked like England. The roads were even emptier, though. The only motorized vehicles on them would belong to the Germans.

  Hardly had that crossed A.E.’s mind than she spied four trucks chugging down a country road, all in a line. Next to American Studebakers or Fords, they weren’t big trucks, but they’d have Nazis in them. She pushed the stick forward and stooped on them like a falcon taking field mice.

  Her thumb stabbed the red firing button. A Spitfire’s aerodynamics were so good, you hardly felt the recoil when you opened up. Bits and pieces flew from the trucks as bullets and shells slammed home. Men bailed out and ran for the roadside hedges. One of the trucks caught fire.

  A.E. felt no guilty twinge as she pulled up. One more lesson combat had taught her was that the other guys would kill you if you gave them even a quarter of a chance. The best way to stay alive if you were going to fight at all was to hurt them as much as you could. Some Germans wouldn’t have got out of the trucks. Some might be burning up now.

  Yes? And so? she thought. They’d done worse to England the year before. They still sent raiders over whenever they could. This was what war was all about.

  By the radio chatter in her earphones, the other pilots had also found ways to annoy the Jerries. Red’s voice sounded confident as he said, “Let’s make for the meet-up point and head on home.”

  She acknowledged. So did the men in the other pair. The meet-up point was Goury lighthouse, not far west of Cherbourg. As long as nobody in the Luftwaffe knew that, they were fine.

  Meet up there they did, and then head north across the sea. Even in summer, the water looked cold. A.E. thought of Shorty Keough, and wished she hadn’t.

  After they landed, Red said, “There better be rhubarb pie for dessert tonight, or I’ll know the reason why.”

  “Rhubarb pie?” A.E. didn’t care for it. Then the joke got home. She rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible, Red!”

  Tobin saluted extravagantly. “No, ma’am, just improbable.” They both laughed. Sometimes you could, even in the middle of a war. Sometimes, by God, you had to.

  July slid into August. Andy Mamedoff got promoted to flying officer, the first American fighter jockey to rise a grade. He was going to 133 Squadron, a third outfit full of Yanks, and the plan was for him to lead one of the flights in the new Eagle Squadron.

  When A.E. congratulated him on coming up in the world, he made a face. “Ah, cut the crap, willya?” he said. “We all know it shoulda been you. You’re the best pilot here, and it ain’t close. It woulda been you, I bet, if only—” He didn’t go on, or need to.

  She shrugged. “I can do without the aggravation. You’ll just have to give orders. I’d need to convince another bunch of wild men from Borneo I knew what I was doing before they’d decide maybe they should take me seriously.”

  “It shouldn’t work that way,” Andy said.

  “I know. But it does.” And she would have had the advantage of fame working for her. So would poor Amy if she’d lived long enough to win promotion. It would have been four times as hard for an ordinary woman who also just happened to be a superior officer.

  Even with the advantage of fame, that goddamn French doctor had felt her up. And one of her fellow American pilots had embarked on what would have been a rape if she’d been scared into silence the way he no doubt hoped. A man wouldn’t have had to worry about that kind of crap, either.

  One thing at a time, she told herself. First we whip Hitler. Then we start putting our own house in order. We sure as hell need to.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Andy’s wedding to Penny Craven was in Epping, the next town west of North Weald. The bride looked smashing. Andy looked like a cat about to start licking cream from a pitcher his people had forgotten about.

  After the ceremony, A.E. lined up outside the church with other flyers from the original Eagle Squadron. As the new bride and groom walked between their short rows, Mamedoff tipped her a wink. He turned his head to make sure his new wife didn’t see him doing it, too. A.E. grinned. She had all she could do not to laugh out loud. He was a piece of work, all right.

  The reception was on the meadow behind the home—the mansion, really—of Penny’s father and mother. “So wonderful to meet you, Pilot Officer Earhart,” Penny said. “I’ve admired you since I was a child, of course. And Andy always says such wonderful things about you.”

  “Does he?” A.E. kept her face straight. As far as she was concerned, that came closer to earning her a medal than anything she’d done in the air against the Germans.

  Before the new Mrs. Mamedoff could answer, two Spitfires from 71 Squadron buzzed the reception. They weren’t much above rooftop height, and did a victory roll as they passed overhead. The roar from their motors stopped everything in its tracks. A.E. glanced at the big house’s windows to make sure they hadn’t shivered to sparkling shards.

  “The cheek of those buggers!” someone said when mere human conversation became possible again. “I shall speak to the RAF about this.”

  “You do that, sir,” someone else told him. Before long, A.E. realized the man who’d complained was Epping’s mayor. Maybe the flyers really would wind up in trouble.

  She glanced back to Penny. All the Englishwoman said was, “Do you Yanks do that every time somebody in the squadron gets married?”

  “I don’t know,” A.E. answered. “Andy’s the first one.”

  Penny Craven—no, Penny Mamedoff now—smiled a smile of ownership. A.E. could have told her something about that, but she didn’t. She wanted Andy to be happy. God only knew he’d earned happiness the hard way. She did wonder if Penny knew Andy’s folks ran a restaurant in Massachusetts. She wondered even more if Penny’s father and mother knew. That smile said the new bride was marrying for love, or thought she was. She might not worry so much about money. Her parents would, though.

  “Americans certainly have livened things up since they got here,” Penny said. “We can use some of that, I think.”

  “I’m not the one to tell you whether you can use it or not,” A.E. said. “But you’re right. You’ve sure got it.”

  After a severely abbreviated wartime honeymoon, Andy went off to his new squadron. A.E. caught Red Tobin sending her quizzical looks. “What’s up?” she asked, as usual not beating around the bush.

  “I dunno,” he said. But even he could tell that wouldn’t do. He tried again: “Ain’t nobody left here but us chickens.”

  “Don’t say it like that!” she exclaimed.

  “Sorry,” he answered sheepishly. “You know what I mean, though.”

  “I know how you said it—like we’ll be gone pretty soon, too. Cut that out, you hear?” If A.E. hadn’t had any superstitions like that before, flying in wartime would have given them to her. Too many strange things and too many horrible things happened for you just to shrug them off. She didn’t like thinking she heard the goose walking over her grave.

  A few days later, Red said, “We’ve got another Rhubarb set for tomorrow. You coming with me again?”

  “If I can,” she said.
“When I was flying patrol over the Channel just now, my engine started smoking and trying to cut out. I had to nurse it back here at low power. After I landed, I checked it, but I couldn’t find anything. The mechanics are trying to figure out what’s wrong with it now.”

  “Okay. You sure as heck don’t want to go over France in a kite that might let you down. I’ll talk to one of the guy guys”—he grinned at her—“in case you can’t make it.”

  He flew with a different wingman the next day. The groundcrew still hadn’t made her Spitfire’s Merlin behave. A.E. felt bad about staying behind, but what could you do? No one would question her courage; she’d done more than enough to prove that to the other flyers even if she was a woman. But she wanted to cross the Channel and kick the Germans in the teeth, dammit.

  Eight planes did climb away from North Weald: two finger-fours. They had enough firepower among them to hit the enemy hard if they came across anything juicy. A.E. watched them fly south and wished them luck. She’d see them all again—she hoped she’d see them all again—in two or three hours. She wondered what kind of stories they’d tell.

  She realized something had gone wrong well before the Rhubarb raiders were due back. A corporal on a bicycle came from the radar station to the operations hut as fast as he could pedal. He didn’t waste time on the kickstand when he got there. The bike fell over with a clatter as he dashed inside.

  When he came out, his face was still as white as if he’d seen a ghost. A.E. dogtrotted over to him as he picked up the bicycle. “What happened?” she said. “Something must have.”

  “Aye, ma’am.” He nodded jerkily. He had a northern accent. A.E. had been in England long enough by now to recognize it. “There’s Jerries oop behind t’boys, swarms o’ Jerries. They laid a trap, like, an’ we walked into it.”