Many Words

They were back on the road twenty minutes later, with Cannon behind the wheel. The road grew worse, and at times, they slowed to walking speed while Burr or di Giacomo scouted ahead with flashlights. As the sun rose, they still hadn’t reached Cairo.

“Beni Suef is ahead,” Masaracchia declared, walking past the cab. “Mind the rut. The paved road starts there.”

Cannon worked the gears, shifting down into first, and the truck crept ahead. The suspension creaked. “How far from there?” he said, sticking his elbow out the window. “I don’t know how much more my clutch leg can take.”

“Seventy miles to Cairo, then a hundred ten to Alexandria. We’ll make about thirty miles per hour if we aren’t delayed.”

“Mid-afternoon,” Cannon mused. “That should be enough time to set up a flight out before night. You have a radio in the city, right?”

“We do.”

Cannon nodded, and Masaracchia joined Burr up ahead. When they reached the beginning of the paved road, Cannon yielded the wheel to Masaracchia, and he and his crew returned to the back of the truck. Oppressive though it was beneath the canvas cover and the desert sun, the shuffle proved wise. Ten minutes past Beni Suef, a truck carrying British soldiers rattled past in the opposite direction.

Cannon’s watch read one a.m. A few minutes earlier, the truck had sputtered to a halt. Cannon stood behind it, looking over a map spread out at the back of the bed. Burr, sitting next to it with her legs hanging over the edge, held a flashlight for him. Abou el Hidir was the last town they’d passed, five or six miles ago.

At the front of the truck, Iseabail had both sides of the hood up and open. “How is it ye dinna have wrenches in yon King’s units in a British truck?” She extricated herself from the engine bay to glower at Masaracchia. “What’s a half-inch in your damned millimeters? Dinnae answer, it’s thirteen. Hand me tha’ wrench. Nae, the box-end, ye gomerel.”

Cannon leaned around the corner of the truckbed. “Is everything all right up there?”

“Tha’s a daft question an’ ye ken it,” Iseabail shot back. “It’s makin’ nae spark. Yon magneto has nae bracket. How d’ye make a truck rust in a bloody desert? It’s a lucky thing I aye ha’ bailing wire handy. Ten minutes. It’ll go a few hundred miles.”

Cannon looked up at Burr. “She’s not happy.”

“Zep’s named Inconstant, captain, not Obvious.”

Sitting in the bed, di Giacomo chuckled, and Cannon blinked, canted his head, and said, “I guess I walked right into that one.”

Burr nodded. “You can’t blame me for swinging at a softball like that.”

“Well, I won’t, at least.”

“Sounds like the same thing to me.”

Double-timing it, Joe reached the hangar before the deck crew had finished moving Lecocq’s Albatross along the overhead rails to the aircraft park. Joe saw a few jagged holes punched through the aluminum skin of the right wing, perilously close to the fuel tanks.

The deck crew brought the Albatross to a stop in a temporary parking space behind one of the Gorcrows—Inconstant‘s twin-engine medium bombers—and propped a ladder up against the boarding door on the left side of the left fuselage. Lecocq tumbled out.

Joe headed that way. Choufeng came down a ladder from the second level of the aircraft park and joined him. “What happened?” said Joe.

“Flak,” Choufeng replied.

“That would be putting it lightly,” added Lecocq. “They had searchlights—the whole nine yards, as you say.” His hands shook as he extracted a cigarette from the packet in his pocket. “As we flew over, they turned the lights on us, and there were tracers everywhere.” He fumbled with a match, dropped it, and tried another. It caught, and he held it to the end of his cigarette. Waving it back and forth until it went out, he continued. “At such a low altitude, I was fortunate I did not take more hits.”

“I’ll say.” Joe looked between Choufeng and Lecocq. “Do you think the boss is still there?”

“I would think the captain is smarter than that,” Lecocq said. Choufeng nodded.

Joe wrapped his hand around his chin and tapped his finger on his cheek. “Me too. Now, either he found a truck, or he’s on the lookout for one. How far from El Balyana to Alexandria? Four hundred miles?”

“Seven hundred kilometers,” said Lecocq.

Joe cocked his head, looking upward as he worked through the math. “Four hundred thirty miles, more like. A day by truck. We’ll run three hours north and wait for the boss to get a signal off.”

The clock in Inconstant‘s map room read just past midnight. Joe stood behind the landing controller, watching two planes on approach through the windows at the back of the gondola. A few hundred feet away, spotlights shone upon the center skyhook as it swayed in the wind. Just a little further off, an Albatross flew toward the skyhook on the landing controller’s instructions.

“Ten yards to contact.”

Joe rubbed at his chin and tapped his foot. Nobody liked night flying—besides Choufeng, who had just landed his Kestrel on the forward hook without so much as a word of help—but Joe had heard nothing from Cannon after Rule Britannia stopped blanketing the airwaves. He hadn’t had much of a choice but to sent a flight to El Balyana to nose around. Choufeng had made it away cleanly, but Marcel Lecocq in the Albatross had taken a few hits.

“Two yards. Up a hair.”

The Albatross nosed into the light. It shouldn’t have been buffetting half as much as it was, and Joe thought he could make out some damage to the rought wing.

Lecocq goosed the throttles, and the Albatross’s arresting hook slammed into the skyhook and clamped shut. The skyhook rocked fore and aft, absorbing the plane’s excess speed, then settled down and began to lift Lecocq into the zeppelin.

“Good job,” Joe said. “Tell the hangar I’m on my way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a Thornycroft, an’ nae even a new one. I was nae more than a wee lass wha didnae know the odds ‘tween a spark plug an’ a radiator cap when they started making these. Like as na’, this lorry’s from 1910.”

“’18,” Masaracchia said, crossing his arms defensively.

“Will it get us to Alexandria?” said Cannon.

“It’s made the trip before. We keep drums of petrol in the back in case of long, unplanned trips. We should be there in less than a day if nothing goes wrong.”

Burr frowned. “I’m not sure I’d put money on that.”

“Do you want to jinx us?” Cannon said. “You and di Giacomo head back to the house and get our things together. Mr. Masaracchia, we’ll take the truck. Let’s get her ready to go.”

Inside of fifteen minutes, they had the truck gassed up, and had fitted the canvas cover to the bed. They stopped at the house to pick up Burr and di Giacomo, and soon, the truck rolled along the north road out of El Balyana.

Cannon, riding in the bed, rapped on the window on the back of the cab. Dozing inside, Iseabail started awake and slid the pane open.

“Where do the roads get better?” said Cannon.

“Near Cairo,” said Masaracchia from behind the wheel. “We’ll be there by noon. Be prepared to take the wheel later.”

“Wake me when it’s time.” Cannon settled in under the blankets they’d taken from the house and closed his eyes.