Page 26 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
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 wenton, “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 onceI’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.”
Two doors down, Baskers opened up another room. It was empty and smelled faintly of naphthalene and gun oil. As Bell stepped across the threshold and looked at the bare mattress with a bundle of sheets and blankets ready for use, he wondered how many deceased airmen had called this room home, if only for a short while. Baskers grabbed a folded towel off the pile of bedding. “There’s a bath at the end of the building to the right, I’ll have the bed made by the time you’re done cleaning up.”
“Best offer I’ve had all day. I had half a helmet of tepid water to rinse with this morning.” Bell pulled his dopp kit and his last pairsof clean drawers and socks from his bag and headed out to find the bathroom.
He was back in his room twenty minutes later, the skin of his face tight from a straight-razor shave, his mustache neatly combed out, and his hair slicked back with a touch of a custom pomade Marion had made for him at a Fifth Avenue apothecary. His jacket had been hung over the back of the chair and he noted Baskers had sponged it clean.
The adjutant was sitting on a ladder-back chair leaning against the side of the barn, his hat pulled low and soft whispers of snoring coming with each breath. When Bell got closer he noticed the man’s eyes darting like mad behind his closed lids. Like nearly everyone he’d met since his arrival in France, Baskers, too, was haunted by demons called up from hell on these battlefields.
Bell knew and understood that the decision to join the war in Europe was Wilson’s alone, but he couldn’t help feeling that his report put some of that burden on his shoulders, too. He would not claim any responsibility per se, but he was the type of man to accept the consequences of his actions, and for this mission they were the most dire he could ever imagine.
Baskers harrumphed awake and lowered his chair back to its four legs. “If you don’t mind my saying, you clean up like a proper gentleman, Mr. Bell.”
“That was my first shower in days,” Bell remarked before adding, “I have great respect for those soldiers stuck in the trenches.”
