"Mein Herr! Mein Herr! Das Radio!"
Jesse looked toward the operations shack. Alois, the young man he'd left on radio watch was standing in the door, waving frantically. He broke into a run, clumping over the damp earth, and in seconds was inside the shack, grabbing the microphone from the youth. The instrument had been converted from the public address system in the Grantville grade school gymnasium, while the speakers had come from some teenager's bedroom, but the Americans were used to such jury-rigging by now. It still must have seemed like magic to the German boy who watched from the side. Jesse waited for the next incoming transmission.
"Ox, Ox, this is Eagle Leader with a flight of four. Do you read, Ox? Over."
The sound was faint and full of static. Jesse uselessly fiddled with the receiver volume and squelch switch before answering.
"Ah, Eagle Leader, this is Ox. We have you about three by three. Over."
"Roger, Ox, I have you five by five. Eagle Flight is ten minutes out. Three Gustavs and one Belle. Over."
Jesse could recognize Eagle Leader's voice now. It was Captain Woodsill.
"Roger, Woody, we'll be waiting." He glanced at the windsock outside the unglazed window. "The wind is from the southwest at about ten knots." Another glance at the barometer on the counter. "Set altimeter at three zero zero two. Give us a couple of minutes to clear the field."
Jesse was about to send Alois to find Dev and Ent, when the two brothers burst into the door. Jesse wasted no time.
"Go out there and get those people and wagons off the field. The aircraft are arriving in about eight minutes." The two spun about and raced back outside, yelling as they went.
Minutes later, the field was cleared and Jesse stood in the door of the operations shack, holding the mike and listening to the growing hum of engines.
"Ox, this is Eagle Flight, one minute out. Request permission to land."
Jess took one last look around before answering. "Roger, Eagle Flight is cleared to land."
The four aircraft approached from the south in a tight finger four formation, with the Gustavs in the first three positions and the Belle in four. The formation rapidly grew in size and the sound rose to a powerful multipitched growl as Woodsill brought them overhead and past at about two hundred feet. Alois stared in fascination at the aircraft, mouth agape.
Jesse noted the tightness of the formation with professional approval. The three Gustavs looked very impressive with the thin wooden skin of their low wings and fuselages painted a rich gray-blue with the red, black and gold USE flag toward the tail and large red numbers, 1, 2, 3, painted on their vertical stabilizers. Sun glinted off their greenhouse-style canopies and Jesse suddenly grinned at the ferocious red and white shark mouths painted on the Gustavs' noses. The Belle in the formation looked positively dowdy by comparison.
Jesse murmured, "It's okay, old girl. Don't pay any attention to the youngsters, you still look beautiful to me."
At the end of the field, Woody shook out the formation into line astern and climbed up into a comfortable downwind, still moving north. Trailing fifteen seconds apart, the aircraft followed him into the distance, finally turning one by one back to the field. The machines glided over the demolished orchard, crossed the perimeter fence, set down neatly spaced across the landing zone, and began to taxi toward the hangars.
Jesse let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. By God, they had an airfield.
Chapter 47
Copenhagen
Prince Ulrik stared dubiously at the two dozen or so small vessels lined up next to each other in Copenhagen's harbor. They were typical galley gunboats of the sort called shallops: low-slung, open craft, with a single eighteen-pounder gun pivot-mounted in the bows and ten sweeps on a side. They were no more than fifty or fifty-five feet long, at a guess, with a beam of perhaps fifteen feet, and they looked undeniably . . . fragile.
"I suppose they'll do."
The rising inflection at the end of that sentence turned it into a question. Baldur Norddahl shook his head. "For our purposes here, at any rate. Look at it this way, Your Highness. We only need to go a short distance. Then, either way, it won't matter."
"It would be nice to have enough of a boat to make an escape, Baldur."
The Norwegian hesitated, for a moment, then said, "Ulrik, I doubt very much if we'll have a boat left to make an escape in the first place. I hope you're a good swimmer." For good measure, he added with a grin, "I swim like a seal, myself."
"You would," grunted Ulrik. But he didn't return the grin. The fact that Norddahl had used a personal form of address meant that he was dead serious.