‘And don’t forget that they’re camouflaged – their clothes are brown and floppy, even their horses blend into the terrain,’ said James. ‘Their hearing is acute. They’ll hear you coming miles away and have plenty of time to hide themselves. It’s a wild goose chase!’
‘At least there won’t be any opposition from the air,’ said Joe, ‘but what about sniping from the ground? Any fear of that?’
‘There’s always fear of that,’ said Fred with a quick look at Hugh.
‘Thought I was in for some trouble on the way over,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Came up over the Bazar Valley. Didn’t realize it was miles out of your search area so I was keeping an eye peeled on the way. Twenty miles back over Afridi territory I thought I’d spotted a smudge of smoke in the sky. Here,’ he pointed at the map. ‘Rather high and no sign on the ground. Dispersing fire? I diverted to get a closer look but then I caught a flash of sunlight on metal. Looked like the start of a helio signal to me but then I remembered where I was and thought, “Rifle barrel. Bloody hell! Afridis are up!” I did a few acrobatics and went on my way. No shots.’
‘Well, if that’s all clear,’ said Fred, rolling up the map, ‘we’ll be off. Coming, Joe? Hugh, old son, we’ll relieve you of your hats and goggles and stuff.’
Ten minutes later Joe was sitting nervously in the rear seat of the plane, which had been turned on its axis, watching as Fred with total confidence, enthusiasm even, fiddled with the controls, interminably carrying out checks. At last he was satisfied. ‘Switches off!’ he called to the flight sergeant standing by the propeller. Tommy Edwards swung the big blade of the propeller.
‘Contact, sir!’ he shouted back.
‘Contact!’
The twelve cylinder Rolls Royce engine, hardly cooled, fired up reassuringly at the first attempt. Fred waited, listening to the note and checking again the dials in front of him. He raised his hands above his head to signal for the chocks to be pulled away and two Scouts standing by obliged. He took a firm grip of the throttle and began to move slowly forward over the football pitch. Tommy saluted, rather unnecessarily Joe thought, to indicate that the sky was clear and the plane started forward, gathering speed. Fred pulled the joystick back and the machine swept gracefully up into the air.
Joe touched the folded sheet of paper tucked into his belt. Hugh had held it out to him the moment before he climbed into the plane. ‘Better have this with you, sir,’ he had said without emphasis. ‘We all carry one. Just in case.’
Joe had run an eye over the short script. In English and in Urdu the document declared that a very large amount of money would be handed by His Majesty’s Government to any person returning the bearer safe and sound. The better the condition of the airman, the larger the amount of money, it added. ‘More arithmetic on the frontier!’ Joe thought. He began to calculate the value of Fred’s experience and training, to say nothing of his own, adding on the cost of the aircraft and converting the sum into rupees in an effort to distract his mind from the terror he always felt when he left the safety of the ground. He checked his revolver. He familiarized himself with the two Lewis machine guns mounted to hand in the rear cockpit. There might be men in these hills who could not read either English or Urdu. Another problem was that the scheme of rewarding the tribesmen for delivering chaps back to base instead of killing them had given them an unexpected source of revenue and now any plane that flew overhead was seen as a legitimate target, a cash bonanza for the village. The number of planes lost in the ensuing turkey shoot had actually increased. As James said – how could you ever disentangle cause and effect in this country?
He looked at the man who now held his life in his hands. The jaunty tilt of Fred’s head told him that he, at least, was relishing the situation and Joe wondered again about the emotions, the compulsions even, that drove him. The skill and pleasure he showed in controlling this infernal flying machine were obviously high on the list and soon Fred’s confident handling of the noisy, bucking brute began to soothe Joe’s nerves. He thought perhaps he might relax so far as to release the two-handed grip on his seat with which he had unconsciously and futilely been attempting to keep the plane aloft.
Queasily, Joe looked over the side at the hills fought over so passionately for so many centuries. They had so little to offer and this was never more apparent than from a thousand feet up. Brown, barren, repellent, comfortless, he thought. In the distance green river valleys chequered with sugar cane fields and orchards only served to point up the desolation of the Tribal Territories. No wonder the inhabitants of this wilderness had made their living from raiding. Zan, zar, zamin – women, gold and land, and only available to those who were prepared to acquire a gun and use it to exact what they wanted.