Flying the Storm

23.





Convoy

Aiden’s mother was preparing food in the kitchen. The smell of browned beef and onions drifted through to him, making his mouth water. He was sitting on the small couch in the living room, pushing bullets into his pistol magazine. Six-seven-eight-... The eighth was difficult. The spring seemed to fight against him, becoming unusually stiff, but eventually the bullet clicked into place. The ninth bullet was easier, slipping in with little resistance.

Then he heard the front door slam. His father was back. Aiden felt a jolt, and the ninth bullet jumped from the magazine, landed on the floor and rolled under the couch. No matter, he had more in his pocket. He pushed another into the magazine, but the same thing happened. It went in with no problem, but as soon as he let go it jumped right out again. And again and again.

Eight will have to do. He stood up from the couch and slipped the magazine into the pistol, chambering a round with the slide. His father came into the living room now, a hulk of a man, hard muscle carrying a growing gut, salt-and-pepper hair thinning on top.

Aiden could smell the alcohol already. It smelled like ‘nol, but more sour and masking an undertone of stale sweat.

“Step aside, boy,” growled his father. The words were slurred.

“No, athair,” said Aiden, his voice shaking a little. His father always made him feel small. “Not this time.”

The brute lunged drunkenly at him. Aiden ducked beneath the huge arms and ran to the door. His father twisted around, his face a sculpture of rage. He barrelled towards the door.

Aiden slipped outside, running to the garden and the woodshed. The grass was long, unkempt. The woodshed was crumbling and rotten, and he hid behind it. He could hear the thumping footsteps of his father crossing the grass. His father said no words, just grunted as he ran.

His father came round the woodshed, giving a throaty growl as he spotted Aiden there.

He stopped when he saw the pistol pointed at him.

Aiden, emboldened, stepped forward slowly, driving his fuming father before him. Aiden smiled grimly. “Not this time,” he said.

His father laughed, a harsh, grating sound that made Aiden feel small again.

“Stupid boy,” he laughed. “Eight is not enough.”

Aiden’s resolve wavered. Eight was all he had. The ninth wouldn’t go in.

“Stupid boy,” growled the man Aiden called father, the laughter gone as quick as it had come. He lunged for Aiden suddenly.

Aiden shut his eyes and pulled the trigger. Again and again and again. The pistol barked until it was empty and smoking. Eyes open, he saw the sprawled form of his father in the long grass, blood pumping from the eight holes.

Then, awfully, the corpse sat up.

Its face was gory ruin, its eyes burst and bleeding. And yet, it opened its mouth. It opened its mouth to speak.

“Jura,” it said, clearly despite the blood that choked it. “Jura.”

Somebody was shaking Aiden gently.

“Jura.”

He opened his eyes. The dream faded from memory, like they always did.

The merchant’s daughter was standing over him, her grubby, inquisitive face showing the hint of a smile. She might have been pretty, Aiden groggily supposed, if you took the time to scrape the layer of trail dust and axle grease from her face.

But perhaps a grimy appearance was a form of camouflage among the male-dominated retinue of the caravan, where attention may have been undesirable or even downright dangerous. Certainly, the old merchant seemed not to mind that his sixteen year old daughter chose to wash her face rarely.

“You are awake, Jura,” she said. “Come and eat.”

Jura. It was a nickname that would take some getting used to. After Aiden had explained that he was a Scot, the old merchant’s eyes had lit up and he had produced a tattered old bottle of Scotch whisky, the label of which was just legible as Jura. It was a bottle kept in a nook in the wagon for very special occasions, such as when sealing a particularly delicate deal, or, as it turned out, when a native of the bottle’s distant country of origin seeks passage on your convoy and they have paid with an entire vehicle to do so. The dead Armenian’s car belonged to the old merchant now, used by the scouts who ran the road ahead of the convoy.

Aiden slipped down from his nook atop some crates in the back of the wagon, stretching. He touched his wounded arm and marvelled at the lack of pain. The Armenian’s car had also bought him access to all the medical supplies he could want. The merchant’s daughter, Ileana, watched him.

“Come,” she said. “Food is outside.”

Aiden followed her along the narrow aisle in the crates, through the cramped cabin and out the door of the big vehicle, where he joined the old merchant, Malkasar, by a remarkably civilised set table. The merchant’s daughter unwrapped a large loaf of bread - her hands looked a lot cleaner than her face - while Malkasar himself sat by the folding table, drinking a glass of what smelled like ouzo.

The makeshift dining room had been set up on a grassy paddock by the old highway: the caravan had stopped for the evening meal, the vehicles arranged in a wide semicircle, while the scouts drove ahead into the hills that marked the end of Armenia and the beginning of Georgia.

The caravan had passed this way only three days before, on its way to Stepanavan, but the road through the hills was known to be prone to bandits, so a check had to be made that the way was still clear: no roadblocks, no ambushes. The scouts knew what to look for, and they never drove much further than a few kilometres from the main convoy, staying in radio range. Even for nimble vehicles like the scouts’, the going was slow here. The road was a wartime relic, unrepaired and treacherous, considered by many to be more dangerous than the bandits to the unwary.

“Raki?” offered Malkasar, brandishing the bottle.

Aiden politely turned it down.

“You will at least take bread and oil with us?” said the old merchant. It was hard to say where he was from. His accent, like many well-travelled traders, was a diverse mix of everywhere he’d ever been.

“Thanks,” said Aiden, and took a seat at the little table. Ileana broke the bread and passed chunks to Malkasar and Aiden. She uncorked a bottle of olive oil, dribbled some on her piece, and wolfed it down. Malkasar, on the other hand, reached forward and lifted the lid of a bowl of purple olives.

“The perks of trading with the Greeks,” he said. Aiden knew the crates in the big wagon and some of the other vehicles were full of oil, olives and wine. “These will fetch a fine price in Tbilisi,” continued Malkasar, spitting an olive stone onto the grass.

Aiden agreed silently, his mouth full of bread and olive oil.

“With no delays,” continued Malkasar, “we should be in Tbilisi in two days.”

This was good. Slower than Aiden would have liked, but still good. If Fredrick had flown there - Aiden now reckoned that it was fairly likely - then he would have to get the Iolaire repaired. With the size of holes it was sporting, and the usual work ethic of air dock engineers, Aiden estimated it would take at least a few days to fix. He hoped he could catch him before the stupid bastard went looking.

“Where do you go after that?” Aiden asked, looking around at the other members of the caravan sitting by their vehicles, smoking, eating and drinking. Malkasar was an old and experienced trader, so it had been no trouble to form his own caravan. Over the years, other merchants had flocked to join him, hoping to benefit from the old man’s expertise and knowledge of the markets. He employed the dozen or so scouts and caravan guards, and charged willing merchants a fee to travel under his protection. Aiden thought it was a fairly cushty set-up.


“After that, I return to Poti on the Black Sea coast, where I will meet my son’s ship. He gives me good prices,” said Malkasar. With somewhat chubby fingers he carefully took a piece of bread and drenched it in olive oil. “This trip into Armenia has been vaguely profitable, but I do not think I will be repeating it anytime soon. There are better prospects to the north of the Caucasus at the moment, and even some high-margin trading to be found in Dagestan – if one is brave enough to try.”

Aiden took this in. When he found Fredrick, maybe they could head north instead of east. Maybe it would be a nice relief from the heat. Then again, that would involve dealing with Russians. Russians like Oleg Koikov.

“I have noticed you are armed,” said Malkasar suddenly.

Aiden stopped mid-bite. He looked at the old merchant, who was dabbing his bushy moustache with a napkin. Aiden had thought the pistol was quite well concealed in his baggy trousers.

“Do you know how to use it?” Malkasar asked.

“I have used it, yes,” said Aiden.

“What about other weapons? Are you proficient with anything else?”

“I’m the tail-gunner on a mercantile aircraft. Twelve-point-seven millimetre.”

“You have used it?” pressed Malkasar. The old man was insistent.

“Yes...” said Aiden, suspicious.

“Interesting,” said Malkasar. “If you are looking for work, I could use another caravan guard.”

“Thanks, but-”

“I’m hoping to expand, you see. Forget this nonsense with other private merchants,” he waved vaguely around himself, “there is more money to be found in simply hiring drivers and guards, and buying more vehicles. More room for my goods, more room for profit.”

“I’m afraid I already have a job,” said Aiden. “More than that – I part-own the aircraft.”

“Once a flyer, always a flyer, I suppose,” said Malkasar. He shook his head sadly. “If you ever change your mind, you should be able to find me.”

Aiden nodded in thanks. Though he had declined the offer, he was beginning to wonder if maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea, especially if he couldn’t find Fredrick. There were worse places to hide from the Gilgamesh. He couldn’t help himself: he was curious.

“Just out of interest, how much would the job pay?” he asked.

Malkasar smiled. “It is a percentage agreement. You would have a share of the profits from trade. That is, a share of the money left after running costs and purchased goods have been deducted.”

Aiden nodded, a little disappointed with the lack of figures.

Malkasar clearly saw this, and continued. “On average, when running foodstuffs in the Caucasus with my three wagons, I can expect a profit of around a quarter-kilogram of gold equivalent per run. I can usually make one such run per week. From this, around half is divided between the guards, drivers and scouts, varied according to seniority.”

Aiden frowned as he did the maths. Say twelve staff: that was just over four percent each. Four percent of a quarter kilogram of gold was ten grams. Ten grams of gold per week. Now that was a decent wage. That would keep a man in almost as much drink and as many women as he could take, if he was so inclined.

With the Iolaire, it was very much feast or famine. They’d only been at it for a couple of years, so they didn’t have the experience that Malkasar had to consistently turn a profit. And now, with the only port they’d really got the hang of out of bounds, they’d more or less have to start over. They didn’t rightly have a clue how the eastern markets worked, when Aiden thought about it. In their haste to get away from the Gilgamesh, and with everything else that had happened, they hadn’t had time to think it over, to plan ahead.

“You see, my friend! Wheels still have some advantages over wings,” said Malkasar, taking another sizeable chunk of bread. He chuckled into his moustache as he watched Aiden’s expression.

It was true. With a full fuel load, the Iolaire could only really haul ten or eleven tonnes of cargo – Malkasar’s wagons could probably total over a hundred tonnes. Though the aircraft could travel faster and therefore theoretically make more runs in a given time, this wasn’t practically how it worked. More runs meant more fuel expenses, more airframe and engine wear; any parts that couldn’t be beaten into shape in a backstreet forge were expensive. There was also a considerable turnaround time for an aircraft: unloading, refuelling, reloading and, if you were as disorganised as Fredrick and Aiden, shopping around for new cargo to haul. It did work, and work well, for some people. People who had the process down and the markets figured. But the crew of the Iolaire wasn’t quite there yet. And neither were they likely to be there in the near future, thanks to the events at Sevastopol.

Aiden was pushing oil around on his plate with a sodden piece of bread, lost in thought. Maybe mercenary work was just the best way to make money with an aircraft. It was a conclusion he had been trying to avoid, ever since he’d seen hiring posters pinned to the noticeboard at Pivdenna docks months before. Looking for pilots, gunners, engineers and aircraft owners to join the Black Sea Corps, effectively an air force-for-hire, specialising in shipping protection and feud resolution. At best, it was morally dubious, but as Aiden had passed the sign countless times after barely scraping even, it had become more and more attractive.

It wasn’t long after that the Gilgamesh rolled in like an angry thundercloud over the Crimea, and violently put an end to such ventures. With it hanging in the sky above, there was suddenly no such thing as small-time piracy. By controlling the Crimea, it controlled the Black Sea. Its reach was long.

“What would be expected of me?” asked Aiden.

“To protect the caravan, of course. Vehicle maintenance while on the road, peace-keeping between the various private merchants. If you have the right skills, scouting ahead of the convoy. It might sound like a lot, but if you watch my men you won’t see too much activity. I pay them so that they are there when they are needed. Other than that, I only ask that they stay alert.”

It was sounding like a better and better deal. It would mean giving up flying, though. Maybe even selling his half of the Iolaire. Not only that, but Fredrick and him were close friends now. It’d be hard to break that up.

“I don’t suppose you’d have much use for a crewed mercantile aircraft?” ventured Aiden hopefully. “We’re a little out of work at the moment. Prefer to stay away from the Black Sea if possible.”

Malkasar laughed heartily at that. “I won’t ask why you’d rather stay away,” he said, still chuckling, “but I will think on it. Nothing springs to mind immediately though, so don’t count on it.”

Ileana had been sitting watching the exchange. Finished eating, she stood up brusquely and climbed back into the wagon. Aiden watched her go.

“Any other children?” he asked.

“I mentioned my son, he owns a merchant ship on the Black Sea. He is the eldest, obviously. Ileana is with me because she wants to learn the trade. There are no others that I am aware of.” Malkasar snorted quietly. “My wife lives in Bucharest. I keep her rich and fat, and she leaves me alone. It is a good arrangement.”

Aiden smiled at that. Malkasar seemed to find favourable deals in all walks of life. Aiden sensed he could learn a lot from the old man.


They sat in amiable silence for a few moments, before Ileana opened the door to the wagon and spoke to her father in a language Aiden didn’t understand. Malkasar replied and waved her back into the cab.

“Good,” he said. “The scouts have reported in. No obstacles, the way into the hills is clear. A two-hour haul and we’ll stop for the night.”

Malkasar stood and a helper thus far unseen came to clear away the table. The merchant turned to his followers and shouted. “We leave in five minutes! Be ready or be left behind!”

People all around the semi-circle of vehicles stood and stretched, stubbed out cigarettes and quickly finished meals. Doors and bonnets slammed, engines started. The smell of ‘nol filled the air. The lead vehicle, a four-by-four carrying a trio of caravan guards, left the semi-circle first and took its position on the crumbling highway. It had a heavy machine gun mounted on a ring on its roof, manned by one of the guards. He lifted the lid of his ammo box, seemed satisfied with what he saw, and cranked a round into the chamber.

To Aiden, standing in the middle of it all, it didn’t feel like a trading caravan preparing to move. It felt like they were going into battle.