The White Knight Read Online Free Page A

and Italian fighters, and to everyone’s surprise proved to be more than a match for the Bf-109. As he left the ground, Luke started into a steep climb. Glancing around, he saw the other three were staying right with him. They’re all good pilots orthey’d all be dead, he thought, fully realizing the odds were stacked against them.
    As they climbed rapidly, Luke allowed himself to think about Melosa for just a moment. His engagement had surprised him more than anyone else. He hadn’t been planning to ask her to marry him, but while holding her on that romantic night, it had seemed to be the right move. He knew his odds of living through the war were not great. After all, he had been living on the brink of death for the two years he’d been in Spain. He had seen many of his fellow fliers meet death in gruesome ways and knew that such a fate was always close at hand. At times he wondered if he was crazy or if his idealism had unbalanced his mind. When he first came to Spain, he had done so with high hopes and had joined an international group of pilots, all of them convinced they would win the war.
    Now, however, Luke knew with dead certainty that Franco was going to win this battle, which meant that Hitler would win as well. The futility of such thoughts dulled his senses, and he shook himself to put his mind on the fight before him.
    The planes reached their maximum altitude, and the search began. Luke’s eyes roved constantly, searching for the enemy—not only down below but also above, where the Messerschmitts could operate at a higher ceiling. He also checked the mirror he had mounted to his left. The quickest way to get killed was to let the enemy get behind you. The mirror was an innovation Luke had brought to the Republican air force. Many of the pilots who had rejected the idea were now dead.
    Luke’s squadron flew for half an hour without spotting anything. Then finally Luke spotted a group of black dots below—deadly black dots. He counted six of them and was happy they were not flying in their usual groups of twenty or thirty. “Just right for us,” he muttered, smiling grimly. He waggled his wings to catch the attention of the other fliers, then pointed down. They were close enough he could see the wild excitement on the faces of Nicolai Dubrovskyand Joaquin Varga. Streak edged in close to him, looking as nonchalant as ever. There was little battle madness about Streak Garrison. He was merely an efficient killing machine.
    Luke led the three into a good position, then motioned downward. He threw his plane into a steep dive and concentrated on the six dots far below. They grew larger as his dive took him closer, and he noticed with a thrill of excitement that one of them was painted jet black.
    â€œRitter!” he cried out and his heart beat faster. He was glad he had instructed his pilots to leave Erich Ritter alone.
    The wind whistled like a banshee as the four aircraft fell upon the enemy at top speed. He hoped the other three had picked out different targets, for there was no point in all four of them shooting at the same plane. The Messerschmitts were flying steadily on, but suddenly their formation changed, and one of them swung into a position over Ritter’s plane. Disappointment enveloped Luke, but he shook his head and put his sights dead center on the plane guarding Ritter. I’ll have to kill him to get to Ritter, he thought.
    He pulled the trigger and felt his plane buck as the four machine guns spat out lead. The tracers revealed his fire was slightly behind his target, so he inched the plane up, holding it firmly while his bullets struck the Messerschmitt, doing a dance from the tail to the cockpit. He saw the pilot’s head explode as one or more of the slugs hit him, and the plane veered away and headed for the ground.
    As he banked around in a steep curve, he saw that Streak had downed his plane and was following, and that Nicolai and Joaquin