Passing the longhouse that ran parallel alongside B strip, Carter saw Fenn’s Fokker already up, the two DH.2s lifting, and a fourth plane—Billy’s two-seater Bristol—trundling along close on their tails. Ground control capture was just starting to show planes in flight on his map display, and none of them belonged to Fenn’s second squadron. He was busily shouting nonsense into the radio, demanding that ground crews launch his wingmen, cursing, spitting. There was no effect. By the time Carter and Jack had made their first turn, two squadron was already on its way back to the longhouse.
Roadrunner and Jack Hawker’s plane, Fast Nancy, moved into position above and behind Fenn’s Jackrabbit, snap-rolling to dump speed as the chugging, heavily loaded Aircos struggled to catch up and keep ahead of the much-faster Bristol riding drag position. Forming up, the radio was filled with control chatter, but no one was answering Carter, or Jack, who’d gotten into the shouting, too, threatening the lives of all and sundry and demanding to know why the rest of his squadron members were now enjoying coffee and donuts in the field house rather than being up in the air and on his tail where they belonged. And no one was answering Fenn, who’d started cursing his own pilots for cowardice or dereliction in cruel, soft tones almost drowned out by the more strident voices of protest.
It was Ted who finally answered, calling in on the all-hands channel from the gunner’s seat of the Bristol with Billy Stitches on the stick.
“Come about to course fifteen degrees north-northeast, level at one thousand feet. Two squadron plus five hundred and kindly quit your goddamn whining. Fighters to high cover. Charlie, Stork, make your target a downed Fokker approximately eighteen miles out. Look for the smoke. Bombs away on my mark only.”
Ted paused and, for a second, there was nothing on the radio but the sound of static. He allowed the shock to root in deep before continuing. “Captain Teague, you’re wing leader. I’ll be going in with Billy to inspect the wreck. You and first squadron will cover. Two squadron covers you. Understood?”
The pilots consented with their silence, as if speaking would’ve broken the cheap, stunned solemnity of the moment. It was Fenn who finally ruptured the hush. “Copy, command. Jackrabbit is flight leader. Coming around to fifteen degrees at one thousand short. Flight, follow my lead.”
They turned in formation, stacking up behind and above Jackrabbit, wobbling on the unsteady air, drifting like bad dreams looking for a place to settle.
“So who was it, Ted? Who went in?”
And Ted didn’t answer immediately, as if debating whether to tell the pilots at all. Like it was a state secret or something and not just a matter of them all counting heads in the mess that night and seeing who’d turned up missing-presumed-dead.
There was a moment of quiet, the radios popping and sizzling like bacon frying, the pilots all imagining a different friend or partner mashed up inside the crumpled wreck of a D.VII. Death by fall. Death by flame. Slow death, choked by smoke, seared by an engine fire, bleeding out in the cold, terrible quiet. A quick death, maybe—on impact or by bullet through the heart or head. Infinitely preferable, though the endings all came out the same. Danny Diaz… Who could help but think of that story just then?
“It was Morris,” Ted said. “Morris, goddammit.”
Carter thought how Morris was no friend to Ted—no more than any of the rest of them were—but that they’d bunked together briefly about half a year back after a storm that had blown away some tents and temporarily jumbled up the living arrangements. The two of them, Ted and Morris, had shared an affinity for pinochle that none of the other pilots understood, and they had spent a couple of long weeks waking together, smelling each other’s dirty socks and bad breath and listening to each other snore. That sometimes passed for closeness between men and was damn close to carnal intimacy for a man like Ted.
“Everyone shut up and do their jobs,” Ted said, the spotter’s radio handset held too close to his mouth, fogging the channel with the rattle of his sucking breath. “No more talking. Jackrabbit, you have the lead.”
The crash site was easy to spot by the finger of greasy, black smoke reaching up into the sky. Carter and Jack, Fenn and the two DH.2s went into split circles at one thousand and fifteen hundred while Ted, Billy, and the Bristol went in for a rough field landing close to Morris’s plane, the Delta Doll, drag-assing along a flattish, grassy swath that had probably looked a lot more favorable from the air than from the ground.
From their height, Jack and Carter could see the smudge of troops moving a few miles off. They weren’t yet close, but had most definitely made their way across the river and into Flyboy’s side of the lines.