. . . and a mile away sat a black aircraft, glinting in the sun where the frosts and the winds had stripped its paintwork. I examined it through a small pair of bins that Hudd’s man handed me. Even at that distance, I knew that a part of my job had been completed: I’d seen this patched and cranky old cow before. So, there was Watson’s pot of gold, but where was the bleeding rainbow?
An hour later I sat in her shadow, and whistled ‘Jazz me blues’. The only other sounds were the wind sighing through the grass, and the cries overhead from a few high-circling birds of prey. Hudd called them eagles, but I could see their long necks. They looked like bloody vultures to me, and I reckoned they were sizing us up.
I tell a lie. Frohlich’s old bus was also singing her own sad song; but very quietly. She was probably pleased to see some Anglos again. I picked up on it as we walked towards her from perhaps half a mile away, and oddly it became no louder or clearer as we approached. It was her death song, and its noise level remained level once you were in range: a gentle keening sound of the wind flowing over her surfaces, punctuated by an occasional creak from her flying planes, or her aluminium skin expanding in the heat. After all of this time there was no pressure in her hydraulics, and all of her lines had slackened off, so her elevators and ailerons moved fitfully in the breeze, without proper restraint – just as if she was airborne. I’ll bet the old lady still wanted to fly. She made me want to weep.
Even from a mile away, I could see that Frohlich’s mob had achieved a perfect landing. In places you could still see the fat grooves in the earth made by her huge landing wheels, and smaller doubled tail-wheels. I took Hudd’s man’s pack from him around then, and Hudd took mine. I still don’t know how he dragged a hundred-pound burden and helped me steer his man at the same time. We propped his man up in the shade – against one of those main wheels. It was flat, and the rubber was cracked and perished. It was beginning to settle into the ground, pressed down by its own thirty-ton deadweight.
Hudd gave his man one of the water bottles, then bent down and ruffled his hair.
‘You gonna be OK, mate?’
‘Sure. Give me an hour. Quick recovery times my speciality.’ He actually looked grey, and was still sweating.
‘Charlie ’n me’s gonna walk around an’ have a shufti – see what’s left. You stay here.’
‘Sure. I’ll see it later.’
Hudd began to walk in shadow towards the nose of the great beast, but I knew there was no way in for us there, so I stopped him and turned him round. We walked aft.
As we did I told him, ‘There’s something in the rear turret. I think it’s a body.’
‘I know. I saw it as we marched up. The guns are gone as well. Would they have flown without them?’
‘No. That would have given the game away that they were up to something. We’ll have to check the front turret as well. I think the local tribesmen have probably stripped out the guns and ammunition, so we’ll have to go canny if we meet them. They could now have some decent fire power.’
‘Ye’re starting to think like an Aussie soldier, Charlie boy. I’m proud of you.’ We were at the small rear hatch by now. It was set into the side of the body near the tail, and had rounded corners. If my memory of the type served me well, there should be a short metal ladder we could pull down. Up close, the old girl had lost more of her paint than it first looked – the winter storms had flailed her for eight years after all – and under the relentless sun her flanks were warm; you’d think she was still alive. But appearances, they say, can be deceiving. Like Hudd’s man, for instance; he still looked alive as well. The door wasn’t dogged shut: it was open about an inch. I paused.
Hudd asked, ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I wanted a look at what’s in the tail turret first; and then I was thinking about snakes. This old bugger could be full of them.’
‘OK . . . but don’t worry about the snakes. I haven’t seen one since we got up here on the flat. Less cover for them, I guess. Anyway, if you think about the effort they’d have to make, climbing up the undercarriage before they could get inside, I don’t think it would be worth it. It’s not as if there’s anything here for them.’
By then we’d walked around the tailplane and were peering into the rear gun turret. What was in there had once indeed been a man. He’d also been dead some while. The Plexiglas of the gun turret had clouded over the years, but I could look into his eye sockets through the spaces that his machine guns would have once occupied. He didn’t look back at me.
‘Well?’ Hudd asked.
‘He’s not in flying clothing. I don’t know what the locals wear, but he could be one of them, or someone who came looking for her.’
‘Snakes?’ This was the part of the aircraft closest to the ground.
I scrutinized the floor of the turret. ‘No.’
‘Told yer! They got more sense. Let’s get inside.’
The door creaked as I pushed it open, and we had to wrestle with the ladder. This old bitch did what all large empty aircraft do
