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thousand nautical
miles to Formosa. dxlvii
    Falstaff straightened
the collar on his black dinner jacket as he strode into the
Raffles’ saloon bar. dl
    Endnotes dlvi

Illustrations and Maps
     
    Map 1 China Yunnan
Province January 1940 xlii
    Illustration 2:
Caproni Ca.3 resting in the mud on long floats straddled by a pair
of wheels. lxiii
    Illustration 3: The
Customary kiss lxx
    Map 2 China Yunnan
Lakes and Rivers 1940 xci
    Illustration 4: An
idle scribble on the back of one page cxliv
    Illustration 5: Up
into the Snow Storm clxxix
    Illustration 6: The
Burma Range cci
    Illustration 7: The
air was damp as they climbed up to three thousand Feet cdlxiv

Falstaff’s work as a
mercenary pilot fighting against the advance of the brutal Japanese
menace through China is about to come to a woeful end...

 
    Map 1 China Yunnan
Province January 1940

Prologue
    At the controls of the obsolete
Biplane skimming outrageously close to the surface of the flooded
rice paddies, its English pilot brazened it out in the open
cockpit. As behind him, bombs continued to fall on a burning
airfield.
    “Oh, bugger!” Was all he had time
to say, as he swerved to avoid the two Japanese fighters strafing
the remaining aircraft on the ground. The pilot with maverick
nonchalance adjusted his goggles and flicked a silk scarf over his
shoulder as he waved cockily at the fighters behind him.
    “Adios! Sayonara! See ya around
pigeons!”
    His name was John Falstaff Wild.
He was in his late-twenties and cherished flying almost as much as
he did women. Right now, he considered staying in the air more
important. There would be plenty of time for women later once he
was back on terra-firma.
    There was a burst of oily smoke
in front of him, as the sister plane to the one he was flying burst
into flames and pancaked into a paddy field below.
    “Damn it, not Ivan?” He cursed as
the thick plume of smoke and splatter of oil from the stricken
plane hit him.
    “It’s time I scarpered,” He
muttered fearfully. The Russian in the crashed plane had been a
good friend.
    Falstaff himself was flying a
short stubby bodied Polikarpov I15. It was not an easy plane to
fly; it was unforgiving, requiring constant attention. However, on
the other hand, it would respond instantly and be capable of any
number of tricky manoeuvres. When he was learning to fly, some fool
had likened handling an aircraft to handling a woman. Falstaff’s
experience at the time was that women were easy enough to handle,
but when it came down to it, less inclined to tricky
manoeuvres.
    Falstaff was currently flying for
the Chinese Air Force. The Imperial Japanese Army, in the form of a
squadron of bombers, with fighter escort, had unexpectedly appeared
that morning over Falstaff’s beleaguered unit.
    Falstaff had spent half the
previous night at a banquet thrown in honour of their arrival. The
other half he’d spent expressing his gratitude to the mayor’s
daughter by teaching her a few tricky manoeuvres.
    Lack of sleep had inevitably led
to his waking late. When he had awoken, he’d felt more like a
red-eyed moocher, than eagle-eyed Ace. Hangover or not he had a
contract and for £150 a month plus a bounty for each Japanese plane
shot down.
    Falstaff impatiently pushed the
throttles as he glanced around looking for safety. There were
fighters above him closing in. He decided to try to get over the
tree line on the hill to the south.
    Watching him from the hill a
stranger looked on in horror. The smudge of oil and the dirt on the
girl’s hands was out of place. Her coat was a superior woollen
garment with fur edged cuffs and collar. Her pantaloons were of
silk. She ran over the crest of the hill, planted with rows and
rows of tea bushes now naked in the grip of winter. The girl was
lost. Lost and afraid. The land she came from had not known war for
many generations. In spite of that, here she saw the landscape
below being torn apart by ironclad bombs dropped by the huge
bombers above.
    The