Read Online The Madagaskar Plan by Guy Saville - Free Book Online Page A

which he and Eleanor had lived together.
    He was gliding with her in water as warm as amniotic fluid, below them a fathomless indigo black. A splash, a laugh … and they were lying naked next to each other in the mud, the sun filling their skin with light. He counted the freckles around her nose, which were as tiny as banana seeds. This was all he craved: this peace. If she hadn’t chosen Burton, if she hadn’t left Hochburg and been murdered, he would have watched the Nazis raise their edifice in Africa with indifference.
    He took her hand, felt it so vividly: each silky finger, the creases of the palm. He traced his thumb along the life line till it came to an abrupt halt—
    “Oberstgruppenführer!”
    A roaring sound.
    Hochburg dragged himself from the banks of the river. He rarely dreamed of her anymore and wished he could sink into the moment. His heart wrenched to let go of her hand …
    “Oberstgruppenführer!” It was the gunner at the rear of the aircraft.
    There was a flash of aluminum and olive-green paint.
    “It’s a Meteor,” said the copilot. He strained in his harness to identify the plane in front. The cockpit bucked in the wake of its jet engines. “British markings. RAF.”
    Fenris was yelping.
    Hochburg reached behind to soothe the dog. “Are there any others?” he asked the gunner.
    “Sky’s clear.”
    The Meteor was banking, ready to circle round.
    “We can’t outrun it,” said the copilot.
    “It’s coming back!” shouted the gunner. “What should we do?”
    The Meteor slowed till it was tailing them from above. A hundred meters of sky separated the two aircraft.
    Hochburg shook off the last of his dream. “Is it armed?”
    “Four guns.”
    “No British planes should be up here.” Hochburg took hold of the controls and eased back on the speed. “We give it the air ahead,” he said to the gunner. “If it returns for another pass, blow it from the sky.”
    “But, Oberstgruppenführer—”
    “Or would you rather it be us?”
    The Meteor overtook them. Banked sharply again.
    “He’s coming around. Five hundred meters. No sign of engaging.”
    “You have your orders.”
    “Five hundred,” counted the gunner. “Four. Three…” He fired, blasting the British jet.
    Hochburg’s seat rocked. The Meteor streaked over, blinding them with smoke. As it cleared, he watched the plane plummet toward the grasslands below. The cockpit vanished; seconds later, the white poppy of a parachute appeared.
    Suddenly the air around them was electrified with bullets.
    The copilot slammed the stick forward, sending them into a dive. The propellers screamed.
    The gunner was yelling into his mouthpiece: “There’s another plane!”
    A second Meteor whooshed overhead.
    Hochburg caught a band of red and green on its fuselage: the Mozambique Air Force. Numbering twenty aircraft, it was considered more a vanity project than a threat, though recently Hochburg had seen intelligence reports that the British were training its pilots. So far Mozambique, Portugal’s other African colony, had stayed out of the war and not supported Angola.
    The gunner pursued the Mozambican jet. Clipped its tail wing. Then it vanished from view as it arced back through the clouds for a second run at them.
    The Focke-Wulf was level again, the movement so abrupt that Hochburg’s head bounced off the cockpit glass.
    “Give me the controls,” he said to the copilot and forced them into a steep climb.
    More tracer fire flickered past.
    “We’ll stall,” said the copilot.
    They were rising almost vertically now, the whole structure of the plane shuddering. The sky above was bleached of color.
    “Is it in range?” Hochburg asked the gunner.
    “He’s following. Four, five seconds to contact.”
    “Get ready,” said Hochburg, straightening them out.
    He drove the lever forward.
    They dived—a lurching, bowel-flattening sensation—and in an instant were level with the belly of the Meteor. The rat-tat-tat of their