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blinding him, and one of his ailerons had come loose, forcing him to lean hard on the opposite rudder pedal in order to keep the nose up.
    To the RAF, the monkey’s codename was Ack-Ack Macaque. He’d had another name once, back in the mists of his pre-sentience, but now he couldn’t remember what it might have been. Nor did he care. Behind him, his assailants lay smashed and tangled in the smoking, splintered wreckage of their aircraft. Behind them, the Allies were caught in a long and bloody battle to reclaim Europe from the Nazi hordes. Steam-driven British tanks ground towards Paris like tracked battleships, their multiple turrets duelling with the fearsome heat rays of the insect-like German tripods which bestrode the French countryside, laying waste to every town and village in their path.
    Ahead, through the gun sights and bullet-proof glass of the windshield, the monkey could see the gleam of England’s chalky cliffs. Below his wings, the hard, ceramic-blue waters of the English Channel.
    Almost home .
    He saw pill boxes and machine gun nests on the beach at the foot of the cliff. Lines of white surf broke against the sand, and the cliff towered above him: an immovable wall of white rock, at least three hundred feet in height. He glanced down at his dashboard and tapped the altimeter. The dial wasn’t working. He let out an animal screech. His leathery hands hauled back on the stick. The engine spluttered, threatening to stall. The propeller hacked at the sky.
    Come on, come on!
    The nose rose with aching slowness. For a second, he wasn’t sure if he would make it. For an agonising second, the plane seemed to hang in the air—
    Then the cliff’s grassy lip dropped away beneath his wings, and he saw the Kent countryside spread before him like a chequered blanket. He took his right hand off the stick, and scratched at the patch covering his left eye socket.
    “Crap.”
    That had been way too close.
    A couple of miles inland, through the engine smoke, he caught sight of the aerodrome, and his heart surged.
    “Ack-Ack Macaque to Home Tower. Ack-Ack Macaque to Home Tower. I’m coming in hot. Better have the fire crews standing by. Over.”
    He let the nose drop again, trading his hard-won altitude for a little additional speed, until his wheels almost brushed the tops of the hedgerows lining the fields.
    “Roger that, Ack-Ack Macaque. Standing by. Good luck and we’ll see you on the ground.”
    He cleared the first hedge, scattering a herd of dairy cows; and then the second. A skeletal tree snatched at the tip of his starboard wing. The aerodrome’s perimeter fence appeared. He pulled back just enough to clear it, and the airfield yawned open like the arms of an anxious parent, ready to catch him.
    The Spitfire’s wheels squeaked as they hit the concrete. The stick juddered in his hand.
    Somehow, he kept the nose straight.
     
     
    T HE DYING S PIT finally bumped to a halt at the far end of the field and the engine burst into flames. By the time the fire crews reached it, the plane wasn’t worth saving. Ammunition popped and sputtered in the flames. Paint blistered.
    They found Ack-Ack Macaque sitting on the grass at the edge of the runway, with his flying goggles loose around his neck.
    “I need a drink,” he said, so they gave him a ride back to the Officers’ Mess.
    The Mess was housed in a canvas marquee at the end of a row of semi-cylindrical steel Nissen huts. When he pushed through the khaki flap that served as its door, the crowd inside fell silent. People stopped talking and playing cards. Everyone turned to look at him: a monkey in a greasy flight suit, with a leather patch over one eye and a chromium-plated revolver on each hip. Pipe smoke curled above their heads. Their faces were amused and curious, and he didn’t recognise any of them. They were all new recruits. They had moustaches and slicked-back hair, and they wore brand new flying jackets over crisp RAF uniforms. Ignoring them, he