Read Chapter 1: THE SOUND BEFORE DAWN

The first thing Luc Moreau learned at the aerodrome was that an airplane did not wake like a motorcar.

A motorcar coughed. It complained. A bad carburettor announced itself with a stutter and a backfire, a loose tappet with a tick, a cracked hose with steam and indignation. Cars belonged to roads and gutters and men who could stop, swear, and push them home.

An aeroplane woke like an artillery shell deciding whether to explode.

At half past five on the morning of 12 April 1917, Luc stood beside a canvas hangar east of Reims and watched a mechanic swing the propeller of a SPAD S.VII. The Hispano-Suiza caught on the third turn. Eight cylinders found their rhythm, the propeller vanished into a pale disc, and the whole machine strained against its chocks as though insulted by the earth.

Luc felt the vibration in his ribs.

"Pretty, isn't she?" said Sergeant Jules Perrin.

Luc looked at the oil streaks beneath the cowling, the wire stays trembling in the propwash, and the linen patched along the starboard lower wing.

"She's leaking."

Perrin laughed. He was a compact man with a red moustache and the permanent squint of someone who distrusted both officers and sunlight. "You came from automobiles, yes?"

"Third Army motor repair park. Before that, my father's garage in Vénissieux."

"Then forget beauty. Up here, if it leaks in the same place every morning, we call that character."

A flight sergeant waved. The pilot opened the throttle. Mud sprayed behind the wheels. The SPAD rolled across the field, tail lifting, then rose into the grey dawn toward a sky already stained by artillery smoke.

Luc watched until it became a dark splinter.

He had been transferred because somebody at headquarters had noticed a report about a staff car he had kept running after its magneto casing cracked. Luc had fabricated a clamp from a lamp bracket and a strip cut from a German mess tin. The repair had lasted two hundred kilometres. Three weeks later he had received orders to report to Escadrille N.127, though the squadron had recently begun receiving SPADs and nobody seemed certain whether the old N for Nieuport still mattered.

"Your papers say fitter, second class," Perrin said. "Your hands say mechanic. We will see which is true."

They crossed the field. Dawn showed what darkness concealed: tents half sunk in chalky mud, fuel drums under camouflage netting, a line of battered Nieuports, six newer SPADs, and a cemetery beyond the western hedge with wooden crosses leaning at different angles.

The guns never stopped. Sometimes they merged into one continuous growl. Sometimes individual detonations rolled across the plain.

"That one is yours," Perrin said.

He pointed to a SPAD with a white number 6 painted on its fuselage. A black swallow was marked beneath the cockpit.

Luc walked around it slowly. The starboard tyre was worn. The tail skid had been reinforced twice. One inspection panel had screws from three different manufacturers. The machine smelled of castor oil, petrol, damp fabric and hot metal.

"Pilot?"

"Lieutenant Henri Vautrin. Eleven confirmed victories, three probable, two citations, one broken nose, and no patience."

"Does he crash often?"

"Only when the Germans help."

A voice behind them said, "I prefer to call it landing with emphasis."

The man approaching was younger than Luc expected. Perhaps twenty-six. Tall, dark-haired, narrow-faced. He wore a leather flying coat open over his uniform and carried his gloves in one hand. His left eyebrow was divided by a white scar.

Perrin straightened. Luc did the same, half a second late.

"Moreau?" Vautrin asked.

"Yes, Lieutenant."

"You worked on racing cars."

"Touring cars, delivery vans, taxis, one racing Delage that belonged to a dentist who drove like an artilleryman."

"Can you make my engine give me another ten horsepower?"

"No."

Perrin stared at him.

Vautrin's mouth moved slightly. "An honest mechanic. Headquarters has made a mistake."

Luc stepped closer to the SPAD. "I can make sure you lose fewer of the horses you already have."

That earned him a real smile.

Vautrin handed him a small notebook. It contained complaints written after each sortie: rough running above three thousand metres; oil mist on goggles after steep dives; gun vibration; left rudder pedal stiff in cold weather.

"The former mechanic said all machines do these things," Vautrin said.

"Do they?"

"He was transferred yesterday."

Perrin looked away.

Luc noticed.

"Why?"

"He asked the captain," Vautrin said, "and the captain said because he was needed elsewhere."

The lieutenant walked toward the mess tent. Before he had taken ten steps, an orderly ran from squadron headquarters shouting his name.

Vautrin listened, swore, and returned at once.

"Patrol in twenty minutes."

Luc opened the engine panel. He checked plugs, lines, fittings. The aircraft had flown the previous afternoon. According to the maintenance card, it had been inspected after landing and again before dawn.

He touched the fuel line where it passed behind the engine bearer.

The union nut moved beneath his fingers.

Not much. A fraction.

Enough.

Luc tightened it, then stopped.

"Sergeant. Who inspected this at four?"

Perrin checked the card. "Besson. Good man. Why?"

"Fuel union was loose."

"Vibration."

"Maybe."

Luc bent closer. There was a pale scratch across one face of the brass nut. Fresh metal showed beneath the grime.

A spanner had touched it recently.

He looked at the signature on the card. Besson.

Then at his own clean hands, which were already beginning to smell of aviation fuel.

"Lieutenant," Luc called.

Vautrin turned.

Luc considered telling him. Instead he said, "Give me five more minutes."

The guns rolled in the east.

Above them, somewhere beyond the clouds, an engine note rose sharply and then vanished.