Read Online The Mercenaries by John Harris - Free Book Online

Africans flew into a house and Pat joined us.’ She nodded at Fagan, who jumped clumsily to attention and looked heavily charming and sympathetic. Then the other South African killed himself when his motor cut while he was stunting. After that...’
    ‘After that it was Ches,’ Fagan burst in noisily. That seemed to be the end of a perfect day. We came here.’
    Ellie nodded. ‘We kept putting the planes together,’ she said in a flat disinterested voice, ‘but you can’t put a dead man together again.’
    Ira glanced at Kowalski. He had a shrewd idea what their display had been like--no discipline and no maintenance, and backed by even less money than he’d had himself.
    ‘Let’s have a look at the planes,’ he said.
    The two machines, stripped of non-essentials and devoid of guns, were heavily patched and sadly in need of varnish, dope and paint, and Ira saw now that the D7’s cockpit had been enlarged and a second cramped seat fitted behind the pilot’s. Judging by the names scrawled on the fabric inside, it had found its way on to the market via the United States Army Air Force. From the inspection sheets and log books that Ellie produced, the Albatros had had an even more chequered history and had turned up via Roumania, Turkey and Italy.
    ‘Ches got them from a park outside Rome,’ Ellie said in her flat drawl. ‘I guess they’ve been around a bit. They were all there were at our price. The big guys got all the two-seaters. We converted the D7 ourselves but it never flew well with two in it. They were O.K. for putting on a show but not for trips round the airfield.’
    Watched by the gaping coolies, they pulled aside the tarpaulin and Ira climbed into the Fokker’s cockpit, with Ellie standing alongside explaining the controls.
    ‘B.M.W. 3-A engine,’ she said. ‘Six-cylinder in-line. Welded-tubing fuselage. Wings one piece. Spars run from end to end. Makes ‘em strong. She’s got no bad habits and with twenty gallons of gas she’ll stay up for an hour forty-five. The Albatros’s got an increased compression ratio and we’re supposed to get ten horse more than the standard one-twenty but we never do.’
    It was Ellie, not Fagan, who supplied the answers to Ira’s questions, and it seemed to have been Ellie who had run their air display.
    She was still standing on the step, her head inside the cockpit, when Kowalski interrupted and jerked a hand. The Thorneycroft towing the Avro was bumping across the field at an alarming rate, the plane swinging wildly from side to side behind, the crates bouncing about in the rear of the lorry as it roared towards them, followed by a horde of gay scabrous children shrieking in the cloud of dust it raised and with Sammy banging on the hood yelling for the driver to slow down.
    The coolies had risen to their feet at Kowalski’s exclamation and were huddled in a group with their children and the women, staring across the field, their chattering stilled, their jaws hanging, their eyes full of joyful anticipation. Ellie was standing alongside the Fokker as Ira climbed to the ground and she flashed a quick glance at him, as though wondering how he would react.
    The lorry stopped in front of Kowalski and the Chinese driver jumped down.
    ‘Fly machine have got,’ he said with a grin
    Pushing through the crowd, Ira saw at once that one of the Avro’s undercarriage struts was cracked. A wheel was bent also and, through a gash in the fabric, he saw one of the longeron struts was smashed and several control wires snapped.
    Sammy was jumping down from the lorry, almost in tears, his face puffed and bruised.
    ‘That bastard Geary did it, Ira,’ he explained, chattering with rage and dismay. ‘He backed the lorry into it. He was in a hurry and wouldn’t let the Chink do it.’
    Ira peered at him. ‘What happened to your face?’ he demanded.
    ‘Geary. When I told him what he’d done.’
    Ira’s eyes narrowed. ‘Where’s Mr. Bloody Geary now?’ he asked.
    ‘I