Read Chapter 14: CLEAN FIELD

The fire was not enemy shelling.

Three hangars burned.

A fuel truck had exploded near the aircraft line. Men fought the flames with sand because water spread the petrol.

Luc jumped from the truck before it stopped.

"Number Six?"

Perrin pointed. "Gone with Vautrin, remember?"

Luc had forgotten his own lie.

Several other SPADs were burning. Adrien Cazeneuve's aircraft was among them.

Adrien himself stood near the infirmary, alive and furious.

"Someone opened the fuel dump valve," he shouted. "Then lit the drainage trench."

Captain Delorme was missing.

So was Armand Cazeneuve.

Bellon had been struck unconscious in his quarters. His packet of copied evidence had vanished.

Roche's official records, moved during relocation, were destroyed.

The conspiracy was erasing itself.

Luc dragged Fournier from the truck and showed him to Bellon's deputy. The man stared as if unsure whether arresting a civilian contractor required permission from the moon.

"Guard him," Luc said. "If he disappears, Captain Bellon will have you imprisoned."

It was a bluff, but rank spoken confidently often functioned like rank possessed.

Vautrin remained hidden in the truck until dusk. His existence was their strongest surprise.

They found Armand Cazeneuve just before sunset.

He had not fled. He was in a ruined chapel near the old field, sitting beside the altar with a pistol in his lap.

Adrien was with him.

"Delorme has gone to group headquarters," Armand said. "He will say Roche and Fournier ran a criminal scheme. He will say I discovered it and panicked."

"Will that work?" Luc asked.

"If Savarin's friends support him, perhaps."

Vautrin stepped from the shadows.

Adrien made the sign of the cross.

Armand simply stared.

"Henri."

"You should look happier."

"I am trying to decide whether I have lost my mind."

"Later. We need your testimony now."

Armand looked at Luc. "You told him?"

"Everything."

"Then he knows what I did to Fabre."

"Yes," Vautrin said.

The two pilots faced each other across the chapel.

Luc expected anger. Instead Vautrin looked tired.

"Why?"

Armand gave the same explanations: family, career, fear, the belief that he was only causing an abort, not death.

Vautrin listened.

"Fabre taught me to fly in formation," he said. "He gave me his spare gloves when mine froze. You loosened his controls because you feared embarrassment."

Armand lowered his head.

"Yes."

"Then say it where others can hear."

"And be shot?"

"Possibly."

Adrien spoke for the first time. "If he testifies, I testify too."

Armand turned sharply. "No."

"My victories were falsified. I knew after the second claim. I said nothing."

"You are twenty-two."

"That did not stop you using me."

The words struck harder than any accusation from Luc.

Armand closed his eyes.

When he opened them, the decision was made.

"Very well."

They would leave before dawn for army aviation headquarters with Bellon, Fournier, Roche, both Cazeneuves and the ledgers.

But when they returned to the cellar where Roche had been held, they found Perrin's cousin unconscious and the door open.

Roche was gone.

On the floor lay a single brass cartridge case.

Perrin picked it up.

"He had help."

Luc knew where Roche would go.

Not Paris.

Not Savarin.

Delorme.

A clerk whose records could convict everyone needed the one commander still able to protect him.