Frigid Fracas Part 10

Joe said unhappily, "The Sovs have obviously decided to put up a howl about the use of aircraft in the West-world."

He s.h.i.+fted his hand on the stick, gently, and the glider which had been sliding along on its single wheel, lifted ever so gently into the air. Joe kept it at an alt.i.tude of about six feet until the lightplane was air-borne.

Freddy growled, "How come the Hungarians have become so important in the Sov-world? I thought it was the Russians who started their whole shooting-match."

Joe said wryly, "That's something some of the early timers like Stalin didn't figure out when they began moving in on their neighbors. They could have learned a lesson from Hollywood about the Hungarians. What was the old saying? _If you've got a Hungarian for a friend, you don't need any enemies._"

Freddy laughed, even as he looked apprehensively over the sailplane's side. He said, "Yeah, or that other one. The Hungarians are the only people who can enter a revolving door behind you and come out in front."

Joe said, "Well, that's what happened to the Russians." He pointed.

"There's the reservation. We'll be cutting from the airplane in a moment now. Listen, were you able to find out who either of General McCord's glider pilots are?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Yeah," Freddy told him. "Both are captains. One named Bob Flaubert and the other Jimmy Hideka."

"Bob Flaubert?" Jeb growled. "He's an artilleryman. We've been in the dill together half a dozen times." Freddy was staring below, trying to understand the terrain from this perspective. While Joe was tripping the lever which let the tow rope drop away from the glider, the Telly reporter said, "Both of them used to fly lightplanes for sport. When you started this new glider angle, they must've seen the possibilities and took it up immediately. But you oughta be able to fly circles around them, they just haven't had the time for experience with planes without motors."

"Bob, eh?" Joe said softly. "He saved my life once. Five minutes later, I saved his."

Freddy looked at him quickly. "Zen!" he complained. "It's no time to be thinking of that. So now you're even with him. And you're both hired mercenaries in a fracas."

"But I've got a gun and he hasn't," Joe growled.

"Good!" Freddy snapped at him.

They had cut away from the lightplane and Joe headed for the area which Cogswell had ordered him particularly to keep scanned. Jack Altshuler was a fox, in combat. His heavy cavalry had more than once swung a fracas.

At the same time, he kept himself alert for the other gliders. It seemed probable, since the enemy forces had two, that they would use them in relays. Which meant, in turn, that it was unlikely Joe would find them both in the air at once. In other words, if he attacked the one, possibly shooting it down, then the other would be warned, would mount a gun of its own, and it would no longer be a matter of shooting a clay pigeon.

Joe turned to mention this over his shoulder to Freddy Soligen, just in time to catch the shadow above and behind him.

"Holy Zen!" he snapped, kicking right rudder, thrusting his stick to the right and forward.

"What the devil!" Freddy protested, looking up from adjusting a lens on his camera.

Three or four thirty-caliber slugs tore holes in their left wing, the rest of the burst missing completely.

Joe dove sharply, gained speed, winged over and reached desperately for alt.i.tude. The other--no, the _others_ were above him. He yelled back at the cameraman, "Put that Chaut-Chaut gun together for me. Be ready to hand me pans of ammo. And if you want blood and gore on that Tellylens of yours, get going!"

It still hadn't got through to the smaller man. "What in devil's going on?"

Joe banked again, grabbing for a current rising along a hill slope, circled, circled, reaching for alt.i.tude before they could get over to him and make another pa.s.s. He snapped bitterly, "Did I say something about poor old Bob Flaubert not having a gun, while I did? Well, poor old Bob's obviously got at least as much fire power as we have.

Freddy, I'm afraid matters have pickled."

The other was startled.

"Do I have to draw a picture?" Joe said. "Look." He pointed to where the other two crafts circled, possibly a hundred meters above and five hundred to the right of them. The other two gliders bore a single pa.s.senger apiece, and were seemingly moving as quietly as were Joe and Freddy, but gliders in motion are deceptive. Joe shot a glance at his rate of climb indicator. He was doing all right at six meters per second, a thousand feet a minute, considering his weight.

Freddy had at last awakened to the fact that they were in combat and even that the enemy had drawn first blood. The wound taken in their wing was not serious, from Joe's viewpoint, but the torn holes in the fabric were obvious. But the little man had not gained his intrepid reputation as a Telly cameraman without cause. He moved fast, both to get the small French machine gun into Joe's hands and to get himself into action as a cameraman.

He snapped, "What's the situation?"

Joe, circling, circling, praying the updraft wouldn't give out on him before it did on the others, on their opposite hill, said, "We weigh too much. Alt.i.tude counts. What've you got back there that can be thrown out?" As he talked, he was shrugging himself out of his leather flying jacket.

"Nothing," Freddy said in anguish. "I cut down my equipment to the barest, like you said."

"You've got extra lenses and stuff, out with them." Joe tossed his coat over the glider's side, began unlacing his shoes. "And all your clothes. Clothes are heavy."

"I need my equipment to get long-range shots, like when one of them crashes!" The little man was scanning the others through his view-finder, even as he argued, and shrugging out of his own jacket.

The updraft gave out and the rate of climb meter began to register a drop. Joe swore and shot a glance at his opponents. Happily, they, too, had lost their currents, both were now heading for him.

Joe clipped out to his companion. "We're not going to be getting shots of them cras.h.i.+ng, unless we lose more weight. Overboard with everything you can possibly afford, Freddy. That's an order."

There was one thing in his favor. He had a year's flying experience, more than six months of it in this very glider. The stick and rudderbar were as though appendages of his body. One flies by the seat of his pants, in a soaring glider, and Joe flew his as though born in it. The others, obviously, were as yet not thoroughly used to engineless craft.

He banked away from them, flying as judiciously as possible, begrudging each foot dropped. He could feel the craft jump lightly each time the cursing Telly reporter jettisoned another article of equipment, his pants, or his shoes.

The others evidently had their guns fix-mounted, to fire straight ahead. Joe wondered, even as he slid away from them, how they managed to escape detection from the Sov-world and Neut-world field observers.

Well, that could be worried about later.

One of them fired at him at too great a range, and then both, realizing that they were dropping alt.i.tude too quickly and that soon Joe would be on their level, turned away and sought a new updraft. As they banked, their faces were clearly discernible. One raised a hand in mocking salute.

"Look at that curd-loving Bob," Joe laughed grudgingly. "Here, let me have that gun."

He steadied the small mitrailleuse on the edge of the c.o.c.kpit, holding the craft's stick between his knees, and squeezed off a burst which rattled through the other's fuselage without apparent damage. The foe glider slid away quickly, losing precious alt.i.tude in the maneuver.

"Ah, ha," Joe said wolfishly. "So now they know we've got a stinger too."

"I got that," Freddy crowed. "I got it perfectly. Listen, we're too high for the boys down below. Get lower so they can get you on lens, Joe. The other Telly teams. Every fracas buff in North America is watching this."

Joe snorted his disgust. "I hope every fracas buff in North America chokes on his trank pills," he snarled. "We're in the dill, Freddy.

Understand? We're too heavy, and there's two of them and one of us. On top of that, those are Maxim guns they've got mounted, not peashooters like this Chaut-Chaut."

"That's your side of it," Freddy said, not unhappily. "I take care of the photography. Get closer, Joe. Get closer."

Joe had found another light updraft and gained a few hundred feet, but so had the others. They circled, circled. His experience balanced their advantage of the lesser weight. Happily, their glide ratios didn't seem to be any better than his own. Had they high performance gliders of forty, or even thirty-five, gliding angle ratios, he would have been lost.

"Nothing else you can toss out?" he growled at Freddy.

"What the Zen!" Freddy muttered nastily. "You want me to jump?"

"That's an idea," Joe growled wolfishly, even as he circled, circled.

"I should have realized when you were giving me your fling about reintroducing aerial warfare, that it wasn't an idea that others couldn't have. It was just as easy for Bob to mount a gun as it was for us. Now we're both being kept from doing reconnaissance by the other and--"

Joe Mauser broke it off in mid-sentence and his face blanched. He shot a quick look downward. All three gliders had climbed considerably, and the terrain below was indistinct.