And maybe the stork brings babies and tucks them under cabbage leaves, too, Moss thought.
"We have bogies on the lake. Range about seventy, bearing oh-seven-five. I say again, range about seventy, bearing oh-seven-five."
"Roger that," Moss said, and repeated it back. "We'll have a look. Out." He checked a small map, then got on the circuit with the rest of the airplanes he led. After passing on what he'd got from the Y-ranging station, he added, "Sounds like they're somewhere out east of Point Pelee Island. Let's see if we can't catch 'em."
Point Pelee Island lay north of Sandusky. Before the Great War, it had belonged to the province of Ontario. It had been fortified to hell and gone, too; reducing it had cost most of a division. Technically, Moss supposed it still belonged to Ontario. That didn't matter now, though-it was under U.S. management.
When the island came into sight, he led the squadron north around it. Some of the U.S. antiaircraft down there opened up on the fighters anyway. "Knock it off, you stupid sons of bitches!" Moss shouted in the cockpit. The gunners, of course, paid no attention to him. They probably wouldn't have even if he'd been on the wireless with them-how could they be sure he wasn't a Confederate who could put on a Yankee accent?
U.S. guns had already shot at Moss quite often enough to last him several lifetimes. They hadn't hit him yet. He knew of pilots who weren't so lucky. He also knew of pilots who hadn't come home because their own side shot them down.
Nobody got hit here. Someone-Moss couldn't tell who-spoke in his earphones: "I'd like to go down there and strafe those assholes." That had occurred to him, too.
Once past the danger, he peered east. He also looked down to the surface of the lake every now and again. The Confederates would be out hunting freighters. With the rail lines and railroads through Ohio cut, the United States had to do what they could to move things back and forth between East and West. And the Confederates had to do what they could to try to stop the USA.
He hoped he'd find Mules buzzing along in search of ships to dive on. The CSA's Asskickers were formidable if you were underneath them. To a fighter pilot, they might have had shoot me down! painted on their gull wings. They couldn't run fast enough to get away, and they couldn't shoot back well enough to defend themselves.
"There they are-eleven o' clock!" The shout crackled with excitement.
Moss peered a little farther north than he'd been looking. He spotted the sun flashing off cockpit glass, too. "Well, let's go see what we've got," he said. "Stick with your wingmen, keep an eye on your buddies, and good hunting."
His own wingman these days was a stolid squarehead named Martin Rolvaag. He came on the circuit to say, "They don't look like Mules, sir."
"I was thinking the same thing," Moss answered. "Razorbacks, unless I miss my guess." The medium bombers couldn't outrun Wrights, either, but they carried more machine guns than Mules did, and had to be approached with caution. And… "They've got Hound Dogs escorting them."
"They've seen us," Rolvaag said.
Sure enough, the Confederate fighters peeled away from the Razorbacks and sped toward the U.S. airplanes. Their numbers more or less matched those he had. So did their performance. They were a little more nimble, while the Wrights climbed and dove a little better.
Moss didn't want to fight the Hound Dogs. He wanted to punish the Razorbacks. Knocking them out of the sky was the point of the exercise. They could sink the ships the United States had to have. Confederate fighters could shoot up ships, but couldn't send them to the bottom.
But if Moss wanted the Razorbacks, he had to go through the Hound Dogs. The C.S. fighter pilots understood what was what as well as their U.S. counterparts. They were there to make sure the bombers got through.
Elements-lead pilots and their wingmen-were supposed to hold together. So were flights-pairs of elements. And so were squadrons-four flights. In practice, damn near everything went to hell in combat. Lead pilots and wingmen did stick together when they could; you didn't want to be naked and alone out there. Past that, you did what you could and what you had to and worried about it later.
Head-on passes made you pucker. You and the other guy were zooming at each other at seven hundred miles an hour. That didn't leave much time to shoot. And if you both chose to climb or dive at the same instant… The sky was a big place, but not big enough to let two airplanes occupy the same small part of it at the same time.
The Hound Dog coming at Moss started shooting too soon. You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn from half a mile out. That told Moss he was flying against somebody without a whole lot of experience. Anybody who'd done this for a while knew you had to get in close to do damage. Moss waited till the Hound Dog-painted in blobs of brown and green not much different from those on his Wright 27-all but filled the windshield before thumbing the firing button.
He missed anyway. The Hound Dog roared past him and was gone. He swore, but his heart wasn't in it. "Watch my back, Marty," he called to his wingman. "Let's go after the bombers."
"Will do." Nothing fazed Rolvaag. That went a long way toward making him a good pilot all by itself. If he didn't quite have a duelist's reflexes and a duelist's arrogance… That went a long way toward making him a good pilot but not a great one.
His calm answer had to fight its way through the shouts-some wordless, others filled with extravagant obscenity-from the other pilots in the squadron. A flaming fighter tumbled toward the lake far below. Moss couldn't tell if it bore the eagle and crossed swords or the Confederate battle flag. Like the USA and the CSA, their fighter aircraft bore an alarming resemblance to each other.
Bombs rained down from the Razorbacks. The bombers had no target-all they'd kill were fish. But they were faster and less likely to go up in a fireball if they got rid of their ordnance. As soon as they'd done it, they streaked for the deck. In a dive, they were damn near as fast as a fighter.
Damn near, but not quite. Moss picked his target. Once he heeled over into a dive, he stopped worrying about the Hound Dogs. They couldn't catch him from behind. The dorsal and portside machine gunners on the Razorback opened up on him. He respected their tracers, but didn't particularly fear them. They had to aim those single guns by hand. Hits weren't easy.
He, on the other hand, needed only to point his Wright's nose at the Razorback's wing root. The bombers carried fuel in their wings. Confederate self-sealing gas tanks were as good as the ones the USA used, but they weren't perfect. No tanks were. Put enough armor-piercing and incendiary bullets through them and they'd burn, all right.
This one did. Fire licked back from the wing. The portside engine started burning, too. "You nailed his ass!" Rolvaag shouted as the Razorback's pilot lost control and the bomber spiraled down toward the water.
"Yeah," Moss said. As long as he was in his dive, he didn't have to worry about Hound Dogs. Once he came out… Once he came out, he was down here, and they could dive on him.
You traded speed for altitude. To gain speed, you had to give up altitude. That was why fights that started three miles up in the sky often finished just above the ground. To get the altitude back, you had to give up speed. You were vulnerable to the fighters that hadn't dropped so low.
Another bomber plunged down toward Lake Erie. A moment later, so did the U.S. fighter that had shot it down. Moss eyed it, hoping the pilot could get out before it went into the water. No such luck. The squadron leader swore. Another one of the bright, eager youngsters he commanded wouldn't be coming home.
The Hound Dogs were a little slower down to the deck than the U.S. Wrights. Once they got there, though, they got between the U.S. fighters and the fleeing Razorbacks. By then, the Razorbacks were streaking towards occupied Ohio. The Confederates had brought up what seemed like all the antiaircraft in the world. Going after the bombers, especially down low like this, was liable to prove expensive.