Chapter 27

Warm Work

The night passed peacefully. Ginger woke Biggles at the end of his stint with nothing to report then turned in. He slept undisturbed until Biggles shook him by the shoulder the following morning. Light was streaming into the cabin and Smyth was preparing a scratch meal from the remaining supplies.

Ginger stretched, yawning. "What are our Nazi visitors doing?" he enquired.

"They've got their campfire going and are cooking sausages by the look of it," returned Algy, who was by the window.

"I hope they're not going to be too long before they move on," murmured Biggles. "I don't want to be hanging around here any longer than I have to. If von Stalhein has found out the professor has gone, this is soon going to be a very unhealthy locality."

"I think you're right," said Algy tersely from his vantage point. "It looks as though we've got more visitors."

There was a general rush to find somewhere to see what was happening. Out of the trees at the far end marched a band of uniformed Wehrmacht troops. The officer in charge halted his column at the camp and proceeded to hold a conversation with one of the Hitler Youth, marked out by his fancy lanyard as having some sort of authority.

What was said could not be heard, but the watchers could surmise by their gestures and demeanour that the soldiers wanted to know if the campers had seen anything unusual in the vicinity.

With a sigh of relief, the answer appeared to be in the negative, because the soldiers formed up and marched off in the direction of the road.

"Phew! That was close," breathed Algy.

"Don't speak too soon," Biggles warned him. "If they find any tracks leading here, we could still be in trouble."

Algy looked at him sharply. "It was dark, we're bound to have made some," he observed. "Let's hope they think our boy scouts have been out for a march," he added soberly.

Anxiously they watched as their unwelcome neighbours broke camp. After what seemed an age they formed up into their columns and began to move out. There was still no sign of the soldiers returning and Algy began to hope that their luck might hold.

Biggles opened the door and stood outside the aircraft, listening intently. Only birdsong disturbed the silence.

"Quick," he urged, "let's get the camouflage off and line the aeroplane up for take-off. We can't afford to waste a second."

Smyth, Algy, Biggles and Ginger tore away the branches and hastily rolled the aircraft out into the clearing. The engines were primed and they had just got aboard when Ginger spotted a movement at the edge of the wood. Before he could say anything a shout rang out and more figures emerged.

"That's torn it," muttered Biggles as the propeller swished round and the engine coughed into life, quickly followed by its companion on the other side.

With no time to run the engines up, he pushed the throttles open and the aeroplane began to move.

Agonisingly slowly it trundled across the uneven sward. Ginger could see the soldiers, alerted by the Hitler Youth, spreading out behind them. His heart missed a beat as the cold engines coughed then picked up and ran smoothly. The aircraft was moving faster now, but still nowhere near flying speed. He saw the soldiers take aim and heard the report of their rifles. Bullets whizzed past like angry hornets, but nothing hit the Cormorant. At last the tail lifted and the rumble of the wheels ceased. They had made it! Just as he was congratulating himself on their escape, there was a ripping sound and a bullet hole appeared in the port wing. Ginger watched in horror as the tear appeared in the fabric. He was only too well aware that air pressure could cause the wing to 'balloon' and rip the fabric off, with fatal results.

He kept his eyes glued to the spot as he waited for the tear to lengthen and seal their fate, but although the edges fluttered, they showed no signs of disastrous parting.

He made his way forward and informed Biggles, who was sitting grim-faced at the controls, keeping the aircraft at tree-top height in an attempt to put as much distance between himself and the army as possible.

"I suppose we got off lightly," he commented, "but it's going to make getting over the Alps a bit tricky. It's affecting the lift on that wing and we've a fair load on board. You'd better tell Smyth to shove all the stores overboard. The less we have to carry, the better."

Ginger went back and passed on the message. He watched the crates tumble through the air to burst open on the fields below. Some farmer was going to have a surprise when he came to move his cattle, he thought.

The aircraft responded more positively once the cargo had gone and Biggles expressed himself satisfied with the performance. The foothills of the Alps loomed ahead, their tops engulfed in cloud. Biggles headed for a pass, knowing his best chance of success lay in weaving his way through the peaks rather than trying to fly over them.

"Fighters six o'clock high!" warned Algy as they entered the narrow defile.

Biggles glanced over his shoulder and his mouth set in a grim line. "They might think we're a sitting duck, but they're at as much as a disadvantage as we are," he observed. "They'll only have one quick pass and they'll have to be careful or they'll hit the deck. They can only attack one at a time or they risk colliding with each other."

He kept half an eye on his opponent as he hugged the contours of the pass. When the leading enemy pilot made his move, Biggles waited until the last second before applying rudder and sending his craft skidding towards the rising ground. The bullets flashed past his wing tip and the attacking aircraft barely cleared the top of the ridge ahead.

His companions had clearly been unnerved by their leader's narrow brush with the mountainside. Their passes were hesitant, too far away and the pilots opened fire long before they were in range.

"The wingmen are inexperienced," grunted Biggles, as he kept his aircraft sliding round the sky, "but the leader knows his stuff. He's the one we've got to worry about."

Time and again the German machines thought they had the Cormorant in their sights, only to find that their bullets sliced through thin air. Biggles and Algy exchanged humourless smiles. "Quite like old times, isn't it?" commented Algy as Biggles flicked the machine on its wing and hauled it between the lowering hills.

The leader was clearly getting frustrated by his inability to bring down the defenceless machine. He came screaming down, guns blazing. Spurts of rock flew from the ground feet from their wingtip. Biggles held his course, with just enough sideslip to spoil the German's aim. The fighter, a sleek metal monoplane with a square cockpit, flashed past. Algy could see the pilot struggling to pull out as the mountain filled his vision.

As Algy watched, fascinated by the struggle, the enemy machine began to respond, but before it could clear the high ground, its wingtip touched, with the inevitable result. The machine cart wheeled and exploded in a ball of flame as it smashed into the rock wall of the canyon.

Biggles grunted in satisfaction. "That'll teach him!" he muttered laconically.

"It'll certainly stop him laughing in church," agreed Algy. "His pals seem to have had enough, anyway," he continued. "It looks as though they're shutting up shop."

The remaining fighters pulled up and wheeled away. Biggles kept his eyes alert for danger in case it was a ruse, but it seemed that they had no stomach for a fight once their leader was gone and when at last the Cormorant emerged into Swiss airspace, the chance of shooting it down without an international incident disappeared.

"You'd better see how our passengers are," suggested Biggles. "I don't suppose they appreciated the aerobatics."

Algy got up and made his way towards the cabin. "They'd have appreciated it a whole lot less if we'd spread ourselves all over the mountainside!" he observed cynically as he prepared to duck through the narrow doorway.