Read Chapter 8: THE FALSE CRASH

The plan required Vautrin to die.

Officially, at least.

Luc proposed it in the tone he used to discuss replacing a bearing.

"You fly a routine test. Engine trouble develops over our side. You force-land beyond the ridge where Perrin can arrange a truck. We damage the aircraft afterward enough to support the story. You disappear for one night."

Vautrin stared at him. "You want me to crash my SPAD."

"Force-land."

"A distinction made mostly by mechanics."

"If they believe their sabotage worked, they may expose what they intended to gain."

"And what sabotage will they use?"

"We give them one."

Luc prepared a vulnerability in the fuel system that looked dangerous but was controlled: a secondary line with a hidden shutoff. If someone loosened the obvious union, he could isolate it from the cockpit using a wire routed beside the mixture control.

"That is ugly," Perrin said.

"It is temporary."

"Ugly things are always temporary until they kill someone."

Only Perrin, Vautrin and Luc knew the full plan.

For two nights, nothing changed.

On the third morning, Luc found the marked fuel union disturbed.

The red paint dot no longer aligned.

Someone had loosened it.

He said nothing.

Vautrin took off at ten fifteen.

Luc stood at the field edge watching the SPAD climb south instead of toward patrol sector. At twelve hundred metres, Vautrin opened the compromised line. Fuel pressure dropped. The engine coughed.

To observers below, Number Six began losing altitude.

Vautrin rocked the wings once—the signal.

Then he disappeared behind the ridge.

Twenty minutes later, smoke rose.

Perrin had ignited a petrol-soaked pile of scrap beside the landed aircraft.

A messenger returned shouting that Vautrin had crashed and the machine burned.

Luc made himself look stunned.

It was easier than expected.

Men had practised grief so often that nobody studied its details.

Captain Delorme removed his cap.

Cazeneuve said, "Damn him."

Roche immediately went to the communications room.

Luc noticed.

By afternoon, the official report listed Vautrin missing, presumed dead.

That evening Roche prepared a packet for group headquarters. Luc watched him seal it.

After midnight, the clerk left the farmhouse and walked to the storage barn.

Luc and Perrin followed.

This time Vautrin followed too, wearing a mechanic's coat and a bandage around his forehead from a minor cut during the landing.

At the barn, Savarin himself waited.

"It is done?" he asked.

Cazeneuve answered, "Vautrin is dead."

"And Moreau?"

"Soon."

Luc felt Vautrin tense beside him.

Savarin continued. "Adrien needs four more by July. The ministry demonstration will be in August. We want him flying the new prototype. A young ace from the Cazeneuve family, photographed beside our engine—that has value."

"Four genuine victories cannot be ordered," Cazeneuve said.

"Then do what you have done before."

Roche spoke. "We can transfer two rejected claims from Valette's sector. Adjust witness locations. Delorme will sign."

"And Delorme?" Savarin asked.

Cazeneuve gave a quiet laugh. "Delorme wants group command. He receives it if the statistics remain impressive."

There it was: not one motive, but a system.

Savarin buying prestige. Cazeneuve advancing family interests. Delorme advancing himself. Roche manufacturing records.

And sabotage removing anyone who endangered the arrangement.

Luc reached for the small notebook in his pocket.

A hand clamped over his mouth.

He twisted.

It was Perrin, pointing toward the road.

Headlamps approached.

Military police.

For one hopeful instant Luc thought Vautrin had summoned them.

Then the vehicles stopped beside the hangar, not the barn.

An officer shouted Luc's name.

"Moreau! Luc Moreau! You are under arrest for sabotage resulting in the death of Lieutenant Vautrin!"