Free A Good Clean Fight by Derek Robinson Page B

driver. “That’s where he faded out.”
    *   *   *
    The pilot switched off the engine before the Storch had rolled to a halt. Already the desert heat was hammering at the cockpit and Schramm was sweating hard. Part of this was panic. “That was a very stupid thing to do,” he said. “What if we can’t get it to start again?”
    â€œIf I have to crawl over this wreck,” said the pilot, “I would prefer not to do it behind a prop that is throwing desert at me like a small sandstorm.” He opened the door and stepped down. “Don’t touch anything,” he called. “It might be booby-trapped.”
    Schramm slid his side window back and felt the desert breathe its heat at him. He hated it for wanting to bake him to death and hated it even more for being such a faceless murderer. There was nothing out there to focus his hatred on. Everything to see and nothing to look at. Just a trembling blur of sand. After a while Schramm realized that his head was doing the trembling and he closed his eyes. Slashes of purple and scarlet flickered and merged, vanished and popped back. His imagination repositioned him high in the sky, looking down on himself, a speck inside a bigger speck lost in a flat wilderness that didn’t give a damn for either of them.
    When the pilot climbed in and shook him awake he was sunk in such a deep fatigue that the man’s words meant little. “Trouble with the elevator. Maybe a pulley’s jammed somewhere and trapped a cable, I don’t know. All I know is the elevator won’t elevate us. Also the engine hasn’t been giving full power. I found a cracked fuel line, which means dust and dirt got in, so now we’ve got dirty fuel. I told you this wreck was a wreck.”
    â€œYes,” said Schramm, and felt pleased with his achievement.
    â€œIf they’ve got any brains in Barce they’ll come looking for us.”
    â€œI’m the brains in Barce,” Schramm said.
    The pilot sighed. “I think I’ll have a little sleep,” he said;but instead he put his head out of the cockpit. “Hear that?” he asked. Schramm held his breath and listened. Beyond the thump of his own pulse he heard the low mumble of engines.
    â€œNothing in sight on this side,” the pilot said. All the cockiness had left his voice. Schramm squinted at the haze, much thinner now, saw nothing and said nothing. The pilot heaved himself across the cockpit and got his head out of the other window.
    Five seconds later he dropped back into his seat. “The trucks we were chasing seem to have found us,” he said. Already he was priming the engine, setting the throttle, thumbing the starter.
    The Storch was still hot: she fired instantly, dirty fuel or not. Within thirty yards she was flying. The pilot got her ten feet off the ground and failed to make her climb an inch higher. “Any idea how fast they can go?” he asked. Schramm took too long thinking. “Never mind,” the pilot said. “We’ll soon know.”
    *   *   *
    Lampard led the patrol at a brisk, bumpy twenty miles an hour through a shallow depression and around a patch of rocks, and stopped. Before he could raise his binoculars he saw the Storch, half a mile to his right, just as it left the ground. “Tally-ho!” he shouted. “After the bastard!” But his driver had already seen it and Lampard’s words were lost in the bellow of the engine. The jeep jumped away from its own dust.
    The rest of the patrol joined in the chase with more or less enthusiasm. Mike Dunn, in the armed truck, urged his driver on. He knew the contest was absurd: any plane could outrun a truck, never mind out-climb it, but where Lampard led, Dunn followed: simple as that. Sergeant Davis, in the other armed jeep, did the same. In the wirelesstruck Tony Waterman left it to his driver to decide the pace. Waterman’s job was to