For Alex, to have spent a couple of days with Leonora again, to have held his new baby son in his arms, to have been there at Virginia Beach when his brother returned from the dead and now to be overseeing the preparations for the greatest carrier-borne aircraft strike in history, was… surreal.
Am I living in a dream; or am I living my dream?
It was hard to tell. Of one thing he was absolutely sure, he had never been more alive.
Chapter 29
Sunday 7th May
Trinity Crossing, Unincorporated District of Northern Texas
Flight Lieutenant Greg Torrance and his ground crew chief, Sergeant Fitter Bill Fielding wiped the sweat and grime out of their eyes as they stepped into the Headquarters Tent.
George Washington’s sparsely furnished lair in the midst of the ever-expanding tented, shack camp, swollen daily by new arrivals, retreating stragglers from the south and west and new recruits from the surrounding hills, was a cool haven from the noon-day sun.
“Forget about trying to get one of the Fleabags ready for a search mission,” the tall Texan said decisively as he rose to his feet to greet his visitors. “You guys look hot, take a pew,” he said, waving at two collapsible canvas camp chairs. He stuck his head outside the open end-flap. “Bring us some coffee please.”
Tea was a beverage they drank back on the East Coast, out here in the wide-open spaces of the West people preferred something with ‘bite’ and a real blast of caffeine.
The big man came back inside and perched on the edge of his desk, something a local carpenter had hammered together from old timber salvaged from around the derelict airfield.
“We ain’t going to waste avgas looking for a damned fool who had the fuel to go on a pointless sightseeing tour but wouldn’t send us a goddamned drop of the stuff!”
Headquarters back in the Delta had requested all units to search for the missing plane – maddeningly, the only remaining serviceable Manitoba ‘heavy lift’ transport aircraft in the South West – which had been commandeered to carry the C-in-C Lieutenant General Sir Roger ‘Chinese’ Forsyth on a ‘grand tour’ of his new command. The aircraft, which in the present dire circumstances, was irreplaceable and had previously been working twenty-four hours a day evacuating wounded men from just behind the fragmented front lines around San Antonio, had, apparently, broadcast a desperate, truncated MAYDAY signal reporting it was under attack from several Spanish scouts south east of the beleaguered city. That was twenty-four hours ago, and nothing had been heard of the aircraft since.
Washington had been out with his Navajo scouts that morning, and been mightily unimpressed upon returning to Trinity Crossing, to be informed of the order to mount an aerial search received GCHQ in New Orleans.
“I’m sending a message to GCHQ reporting that I have no fuel to mount air operations at this time,” he told the two younger men. “I’ve been promoted major general, by the way,” he went on, as if it was of no importance. “Which in time of war gives me the right to make field, brevet promotions of up to two ranks without prior reference to the high command.”
The two CAF men exchanged looks, wondering where this was going. Both men had already acquired no little respect for the ‘old man’, whom all his fellow Texans regarded as the font of all military knowledge and trusted implicitly in all things. Just the news that he was in command at Trinity Crossing was bringing men and boys, not to mention camp followers, women and children in from the surrounding prairie from up to twenty or thirty miles away.
“So, you’re now a Squadron leader, Mister Torrance,” he declared matter-of-factly, and you’re,” he said, nodding to Bill Fielding, “bumped up to Flight Technician, Warrant Officer First Class, Mister Fielding. I apologise if I’m out of date with my CAF terminology but that ought to make you my local Air Force Commander and Maintenance Chief respectively.”
He paused to let that sink in.
“Right,” he went on, “now we’ve got land lines re-established back to the Delta and Caddoport on the Big River to the east, get on the phones and beg, borrow or steal, I don’t care which, some aircraft, spares and fuel. Some ammunition and bombs would be good, too. In the next day or two I hope a couple, maybe a few more, of my old Texas Ranger boys from the old days will be swinging into Trinity Crossing. They’ll be forming patrolling and raiding parties, and hopefully, drilling a little military sense into the people we’re collecting hereabouts.”
Greg Torrance took this in.
“Actually, we’ve syphoned enough fuel from the bottom of tanks and such like to get one of the Fleabags in the air, sir,” he reported.
“How far out can you go and be damned sure you can get back?”
“Fifty, sixty miles…”
At present the two CAF men were it. There were a handful of CAF electricians, artificers and fitters around; but no pilots.
George Washington thought about it.
“I don’t reckon the Spaniards will head up this way. But I need to know if I’m wrong about that. Right now, I’m more interested in knowing if any of our people got out of San Antonio and if they’re heading our way.”
Again, as was his way, he gave his words a moment or two to register.
“Don’t fly farther west or south than fifty miles. Like I say, I don’t think General Santa Anna has any intention of coming this far north. He needs to take San Antonio; that gives him control of the railways and the roads connecting the rest of New England to the borderlands. Up here, he knows the country is bad news for any modern army. The same goes for the Colorado Country and Sonora, that’s why the Army and the CAF went out there for their proving grounds all those years back. But I’d rather know for sure that there isn’t a column coming up that road from San Antonio; far too many people who ought to know better haven’t been making damned sure they know what they’re talking about lately.”
The older man made and held eye contact with the young pilot.
“But no risks. I need you more than I need peace of mind about what that wily little scoundrel Santa Anna is up to. Understood?”
Viciously bitter black coffee arrived in dented tin mess mugs.
“How we getting on with the extension to the strip?” Washington asked Bill Fielding. “I saw the dust from miles away,” he guffawed.
“Not so bad, sir. The new runway is going to have a dip in it but that’s better than having a hump, and anyway we’re only talking about a four or five degree drop over about three hundred feet. We don’t have the diggers to fill up a gap like that and it would take weeks, anyway. One of the new two-engine high-wing transports, like a Manchester Loadmaster could safely put down on what we’ve already completed. The real problem we’ve got is that because of the way the ground gradually falls away to the north, every time we get rains like last week, we’re going to have to check and repair the strip…”
George Washington nodded sympathetically.
“Can’t be helped. The CAF built the strip in the wrong damned place,” he recollected ruefully. “There’s way better ground a few miles north east; and a lot closer to the rail spur, too. Like I say, it can’t be helped. We need to get this field operating. We don’t have the time or the wherewithal to build a new aerodrome up on Indian Heights.”
Bill Fielding thought about this.
“We’ll be through with the heavy lifting extending the runway here in three or four days, sir. I could send the bulldozer, some of the tractors and a work squad north to flatten out a road between here and Indian Heights?”
George Washington raised an eyebrow.
Said nothing.