Page 25 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“I don’t think he has a choice. Our humanity is at stake on these fields, and we need to find a way to claw it back.”
“Are you satisfied, then? I can get you on a train back to Le Havre within an hour. You can be in London by dinner.”
Bell gave the offer careful consideration. He hadn’t been prepared to be thrown into the middle of a battle on his fact-finding tour for President Wilson nor was he expected to be. He was here as an observer, nothing more. He was tired, cold, and hungry, and he already knew what he was going to tell the President, but he didn’t consider his mission complete until he’d achieved his goals. One was to see daily life in the trenches, for which he’d gotten a lot more than he’d bargained for, the second was to observe a large section of the front from the air.
He’d seen the war from an individual soldier’s point of view. He wanted, needed, he believed, to see the vastness of it all and how the front stretched for endless miles. To accomplish that he had to see it from the cockpit of a plane ten thousand feet in the air.
At last, he said, “As much as I’d like to accept, I can’t give Wilson my opinion until I’ve completed my mission. It would be like makingan arrest without first gathering all the evidence. Just because I know someone is guilty of a crime doesn’t mean I can prove it in court. I have to stay on this investigation, and to do that I need to head to the airfield Mr. Churchill mentioned.”
Fleming nodded soberly. “I would have doubted my ability to read men if you’d said otherwise.” He fished a creased piece of paper from an inside jacket pocket. “Give this to Wing Commander Crabbe when you reach the airfield. It lays out your mission and gives Winston’s blessing. Sorry things got a little hotter around here than anticipated, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing after all. We need you Yanks, or this bloody thing will still be on when my sons are old enough to fight it.”
Bell shook Valentine Fleming’s hand. “Good luck, Major. To you and all of your men.”
“Thank you. You too.” Fleming then directed a corporal to escort Bell back to the rear encampment to get his bag, and when he was rested to drive him to the headquarters of the 22nd Aero Squadron.[*]
Skip Notes
* (Author’s note: Valentine Fleming, father of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, died in an artillery barrage roughly two months after the events depicted in this book. He was thirty-five.)
13
Bell didn’t arrive at the22nd Squadron until late afternoon the next day. He’d slept far harder and deeper than he’d expected as a result of the adrenaline dissolving out of his system. After a meal of tinned meat, stale bread, and weak tea, he’d headed out with a driver. On their way to the airfield, they passed wagons being used as ambulances to transport wounded men from the battlefield triage areas to a hospital ten miles back from the line. Bell ordered his driver to stop and they jammed into the staff car four men whose injuries weren’t so severe they had to remain flat on a stretcher.
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.
The 22nd Squadron was deployed fifteen miles north of Valentine Fleming’s sector and seven miles behind the main trench lines. It had once been a working farm and some crops still grew wild on the edges of the grass runway. The original farmhouse had been reduced to ruins during the constant back-and-forth artillery barrages, attacks, and counterattacks. However, the large stone barn fifty yards away had been built as stoutly as any modern fortification and had only lost part of its roof and its window glass. Once sheets of tin had been nailed in place to patch the holes and glazers repaired the wooden frames, it had become the squadron’s HQ.
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. ToBell’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 pinson 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.”
