Dogfighters: Under the Hill by Alex Beecroft

Author:Alex Beecroft
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2012-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chris flew low, hugging the ground. It was highly unlikely that any of the local air-traffic radar stations would pick him up—the Mosquito’s wooden construction made it less likely to detect. But low flying minimised that risk even further, as well as reducing the chance of collision with something shuttling along the unknown network of commercial flights stacked up through the stratosphere above him. It also allowed him to see where he was going—to navigate by landmarks as he’d done in the old days. And just as importantly, it was more fun this way. If this was his last flight, it might as well be a good one. If it wasn’t—if by some strange miracle he survived—then the repercussions from a joyride in a stolen plane were likely to be the least of his problems.

So he gave the memory of those Spitfire boys with their arrogance a thorough thrashing, turning side on to scrape through below Cottingly aqueduct and giving the poachers in the fields the fright of their lives.

Perhaps it was one of them who phoned up to report him or perhaps he had simply crossed into the range of Manchester Airport’s more powerful radar, but he had just begun to recognise the shapes of the Peaks below when the radio burst into life, cutting through the band-saw throb of the engines.

“Unidentified aircraft, you have no clearance to be in this airspace. Identify yourself.”

Chris opened his mouth and shut it again, knowing that there was nothing he could say. The line of the Bakewell road peeled off from the motorway below him, and he altered course to follow it.

“Unidentified aircraft, respond.” Even through the sound of his own engines, he could hear the higher, more machinelike drone of something on his tail. In seconds they had idled up on either side of him, two Eurofighter Typhoons, having some trouble in going as slowly as he.

“Let me shoot them down.” That was Occe, who hadn’t seemed to have registered that he was flying in a famously unarmed bomber.

“What with?” he asked, just as Tolly—wireless operator—spoke directly to the pursuing pilots, giving the call sign for good old V for Victor.

“Boys, we’re not…” Ah! And now he could see the field in the distance, the standing stones looking almost yellow in the light of the big bone moon.

The pilot in the lead Typhoon had swung his plane close enough so he could have stepped from his wing onto Chris’s. His face was clear as day, shadowed eyes grim beneath his helmet shield. “You’ll accompany us back to base and surrender your vehicle. If you fail to comply, we are authorised to shoot you down.”

“I can get him from here.” Red joined the call to be allowed to use his beloved guns. Chris wriggled in his seat, looked over his shoulder, and just for moment in the dark thought that he saw the main spar of a Lanc behind him and the body behind it receding into the distance like a corridor. Swallowing, he looked out of the cockpit and saw wider wings, four engines outlined in cobweb light.

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