The Raiders and the Cross

THE RAIDERS AND THE CROSS Jox McNabb Aviation Thrillers Book Two Patrick Larsimont For my girls, Lily and Melody for whom I do this. Also, my writing gangs — The Thursday Morning Club, the Pencil Pack, the History Quill, the AUB Scribblers, Writing the Past, Cornerstones and my fellow Sapere authors. You are all precious to me. Table of Contents PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE CHAPTER THIRTY CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE EPILOGUE A NOTE TO THE READER ALSO BY PATRICK LARSIMONT PROLOGUE Scotland, Autumn 1990 Melanie McNabb’s grandfather had always been there. The one constant in her life. The anchor against whatever the tempest might throw at her. He was there when her father left and when her mother, her grandfather’s only daughter, unravelled, her drinking making her irrational, inconsistent and frankly terrifying. Not the environment for a timid adolescent to grow up in. He was always there, saying, ‘Don’t worry, my love, I’ll be your top cover. Just look up and you’ll see. I’m always there.’ She didn’t understand what he meant until she was older, but yes, her Grandpa Bang-Bang had always been there, on overwatch throughout her life. Her hero, her eye in the sky. He was gone now and it had taken over a year to get a lid on the grief, containing it where it could do no harm. She’d used that time to learn about his part in the Battle of Britain and had found the remains of his most implacable foe, the Me 110 fighter ace Hauptmann Otto Werner who had so very nearly vanquished him early in the war. She’d uncovered the circumstances that saw young Pilot Officer Jeremy ‘Jox’ McNabb awarded the George Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross, but most intriguing of all, she was on the trail of Alice, the mysterious woman he’d almost been court-martialled for and for whom he’d held a candle throughout his life. She wasn’t Melanie’s grandmother, so who was she and what had become of her? It had taken all of Melanie’s courage to face the prospect of returning to Scotland to tidy up her grandfather’s lodge on the Dundonald Estate in the southern Highlands of Perthshire. She’d been making excuses that it was too far from London, but in truth she was frightened of the ghosts of happier, innocent times and how they might affect her barely contained grief. When she closed her eyes, she was transported to halcyon days playing hide and seek through the verdant fields and woods of the estate. Her task was always to hide and his to find her, but in their version of the game, he would sneak up on her once spotted and give her a delicious fright by roaring, ‘Bang-bang-bang’. Her squeals of delight would see them dissolve with laughter, especially if he’d ‘got her good’. The name had stuck — Grandpa Bang-Bang. The estate belonged to a family of foreign aristocrats. The factor, Angus Dundonald of that ilk, once explained that the land had belonged to his family, but had long since been sold to pay death duties. He told Melanie that his employers had ‘a great debt of honour’ owed to her grandfather and the lodge was gifted to him and his descendants in perpetuity with their eternal gratitude. Angus said he’d only ever met ‘His Lordship’, as he insisted on calling him, half a dozen times during the salmon season, fishing the Isla that bordered the estate. With his advancing years and increasing infirmity, he came less often, but Angus had fond memories of Jox and the laird enjoying whisky-fuelled nights and baying lustily at the moon together. ‘Aye, they were grand old pals,’ he recalled. ‘Close as brothers.’ Melanie was back in this familiar space, so full of treasured memories. It was hard to take the stale metallic tang of ash in the wood burner or the musty mildew in the rooms she’d abandoned for almost two years. Feeling guilty, she drifted forlornly from room to dark room, the melancholy familiarity of everything crushing. It was just the skeleton of the past with all the flesh and sinews of life long gone. Walking up the creaking stairwell, she found dozens of images of her younger self on the wall: pink and windswept on some sunny beach, blonde hair in a bird’s nest and eyes shining with youthful exuberance; proudly holding a baby tooth that had required her grandfather’s string and door trick to shift; an awkward teenager, blushing in her first proper frock, bought for her leaver’s ball from boarding school at St Leonard’s in Fife; and a more confident twenty-something in her graduation gown, posing hand-on-hip for her grandfather’s camera. Each and every chapter of her life was captured and displayed here, and yet so much of Jox’s own life remained a mystery. There were so few pictures of him. Those he allowed were black and white group-shots of men in uniform. As a child, she’d played an early form of ‘Where’s Wally?’ trying to find a young Grandpa Bang-Bang in the sea of faces. The largest picture was over the mantelpiece, a squadron portrait annotated ‘Montrose 1941’. The men were grouped in front of a sleek black Spitfire, its huge propeller and outstretched wings looming over them like a protective mother raptor over her eaglets. The earnest faces of these determined young men had stared at her all her life, always challenging her to do better and be worthy of their sacrifice. She recognised some, like Uncle Pritch for example, but others were unknown. It was her desire to know more of their stories that had driven her interest and eventual studies. She had decoded the nicknames