A Good Clean Fight Read Free

then.”
    They returned to the first row of fighters. Davis and Harris were sitting on the ground, back-to-back, eating some chocolate they had found in a cockpit. “Any luck?” Davis asked.
    Dunn said: “Two dozen planes in all.”
    â€œAnd a sentry,” Davis said. “Harris found a sentry.”
    â€œThat’s that, then,” Dunn said. “Home for cocoa.”
    â€œWhat’s the rush?” Lampard asked. “I’ve still got some bombs left.”
    The others were shrugging on their rucksacks, ready to go. Lampard took his rucksack off.
    â€œLook, sir: we’ve done the job,” Davis said. “Let’s not push our luck.”
    â€œWouldn’t dream of it, sergeant.” Lampard was counting his bombs. “Two. Anybody else got any leftovers?”
    â€œThis place is going to be hopping mad in twenty minutes, Jack,” Dunn said.
    â€œI should hope so. Well?”
    â€œOne here,” Pocock said reluctantly.
    â€œI’ve got a couple I was saving to leave in the gap,” Davis said.
    â€œThat makes five. Let’s see if we can find some nice big hangars and blow ’em up.”
    â€œThere isn’t time, Jack.”
    â€œThen we’d better hurry.” Lampard set off, half-running and half-striding, and the others scrambled to follow before they lost him in the gloom. “This is fucking lunacy,” Davis whispered. Dunn grunted: he knew he needed all his breath to match Lampard’s pace.
    Lampard hustled them along for about two minutes, gradually slowed to a walk and finally stopped. “There,” he said. A fine sliver of light appeared, no more than a hairline crack in the blackness. Dunn marveled at Lampard’s night vision while he despaired of his judgment. Light meant people. “Onward,” Lampard murmured.
    It was a hangar, a steel shell as big as a bank. Davis pressed his ear against the side. Sometimes a muttering of voices could be heard, and the faint click of metal on metal. “Occupied,” he whispered. Lampard led the patrol around the corner. The sliver of light came from an ill-fitting blackout around a huge sliding door. Lampard peered in, but saw only a pile of paint tins. Using the tips of his fingers, he felt his way across the sliding door until he found a small hinged door set into it, and grunted with satisfaction: hangars were much the same the whole world over. Dunn was beside him, tapping his luminous watch. “Fifteen minutes to detonation,” Dunn whispered. Lampard took a deep breath. The air tasted sweet and exhilarating, delicately laced by some aromatic desert herb. Before his mind made the decision, his fingers had turned the handle. It opened inwards, as he knew it would. He knew everything, and the knowledge made him smile with delight. The enemy was there to be beaten. All it took was nerve and Lampard had nerve galore.
    He sneaked a glance around the blackout curtain hanginginside the door and saw bright lights over broken aircraft and deep shadow elsewhere. Lovely. He slipped off his rucksack and primed all the bombs with fifteen-minute fuses. He put three in his tunic, took a bomb in each hand and strolled into the shadows. His rubber soles made no sound on the concrete. For a long moment he watched Germans in white overalls doing things to the guts of the engines of two 109s. In another area, men were fitting a new propeller. They seemed relaxed and happy in their work. He strolled on and came across an aircraft with no wings or wheels, supported on wooden trestles. He left a bomb in its naked engine. Nearby was a stack of wooden crates, each stenciled with MB and a serial number. MB had to mean Mercedes-Benz. He found a gap in the stack and left two bombs deep in the middle. Someone shouted a challenge. Lampard ducked and stopped breathing.
Now we fight!
he thought; but the shout went on and on and became the opening phrase of a snatch of opera. Other men