George Washington's Ghost

It did not matter if ‘our’ land cruisers were better than ‘theirs’; they had hundreds of the bloody things and we had a couple of dozen. They had a dozen infantry divisions – albeit advancing at the speed of a mule or a horse – and we had more or less, three understrength brigades, say the equivalent of about ten or eleven under-strength battalions of riflemen, watching over a thousand miles of desert and mountainous border.

Tellingly, in the air, nobody had planned for an attack by hundreds of modern aircraft flown by men who obviously knew exactly what they were doing!

And as for the Navy…

At sea, well… where the fuck had the Navy been when Mexican and Cuban Marines, and several brigades of blood-sucking Dominican Inquisitor-warriors had come ashore at Corpus Christie and Lavaca Bay and once they had over run the ineffectual militia garrisons, systematically slaughtered all

the men and boys, and raped all the women and girls?

Bill Fielding flinched involuntarily as the next Mexican ranging shot whistled overhead and detonated somewhere in the vicinity of the old 1960s tanker farm.

Everything had gone to Hell in a handcart.

There was nothing he could do about that.

Right now, the bastards were still firing ranging shots from their positions in the burning town of Big Springs, targeting – thus far without success – the runway from which what was left of the CAF in the South West had been fighting, unavailingly, to stem the inexorable advance of the invaders.

About twenty aircraft had managed to get away in the last couple of days. They said San Antonio was not yet encircled, although that was probably just a matter of time. Beyond San Antonio only the desert and the prairie, was going to slow the enemy down…

Bill Fielding wiped the sweat and grime off his face with a filthy rag.

He slammed shut the cowling above his head.

He held up his right hand, making an ‘O’ with his thumb and forefinger.

Simultaneously, the man behind him on the battery cart flicked the switch and put a jolt of current into the alternator of the starter motor of Acting Flight Lieutenant Greg Torrance’s Goshawk’s 1,260 horsepower Gloucester-Royce radial engine. There was a bang, then another and suddenly the four-and-a-half-ton aircraft was vibrating like it was in a storm.

Bill stepped back, staggering away from the blurred circle of the scout’s propeller. The man at the battery cart had not waited for orders and sprinted for the safety of the nearest slit trench.

Bill had sent the rest of his crew away in the last lorry, the other man was one of the farmer militiamen who had turned up at the field, initially demanding to be flown out, and then just to be fed. He had given Bill a black look when he ordered him to sit at the cart but hit the switch when the time came.

Weekend soldiers cost the exchequer a pittance; the trouble was, they could not fight their way out of a paper bag in a war like this. Bill would have felt sorry for the man had he not already seen too many better men die.

The pilot was hanging half out of the cockpit.

He was yelling at Bill.

“Kick the fucking chocks away and get up here pronto, man!”

Bill Fielding blinked, uncomprehendingly.

“Quick, get in behind me before those bastards find the range with those big guns in the town!”

The scout was rumbling, rolling in a cloud of dust towards the runway as the first full salvo of four 75-millimetre rounds screamed overhead and fell among the blast berms where the planes that could not be saved were already burning. Everything which could not be moved had been heaped onto those flames in the last few hours, and a pall of acrid black smoke hung over the ruined airfield.

Bill Fielding swung his leg over the cockpit combing as the Goshawk bumped savagely over the edge of an old half-repaired bomb crater, which even though he was half-in, half-out almost launched him into thin air. A moment later he grabbed the back of the pilot’s seat and poured his lean, hungry frame into the narrow space.

“Hang on, old man!” Greg Torrance bawled before his voice was drowned out. He kicked the brakes, lined up the scout with the end of the runway and pushed the throttle up to and through the gate.

The pilot made no attempt to pull back the cockpit hood.

Bill was deafened, aware only of the thunder of the engine and the hurricane backwash of the Goshawk’s giant three-bladed propeller.

The scout was picking up speed, bounding down the mile-long dirt strip.

Geysers of smoke and dirt erupted in the near distance. Bill shut his eyes. The aircraft shuddered; seemed to stop for a split second.

Then flipped jarringly to the left.

This is it!

Bill had contemplated getting back on better terms with his maker in recent days; but he had been too busy, not yet got around to it. Possibly, he suspected, he ought to have made time to atone. Now, well, it was too late…

He waited for one of the wing tips to dig into the West Texan dirt, and for the Goshawk to cartwheel to its fiery death.