Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [76]
Anti-aircraft shells burst above the camp, their shadows pulsing like heartbeats on the white earth. A shell exploded in a searing flash above the assembly hall, stunning the air. Dust cascaded from the concrete roof and poured on to Jim’s shoulders. Waving his Latin primer, Jim counted the dozens of shellbursts. Did the Mustang pilots realize that Basie and the American merchant seamen were imprisoned at Lunghua Camp? Whenever they attacked the airfield the fighter pilots hid until the last moment behind the three-storey dormitory blocks, even though this drew Japanese fire on to the camp and had killed several of the prisoners.
But Jim was glad that the Mustangs were so close. His eyes feasted on every rivet in their fuselages, on the gun ports in their wings, on the huge ventral radiators that Jim was sure had been put there for reasons of style alone. Jim admired the Hayates and Zeros of the Japanese, but the Mustang fighters were the Cadillacs of air combat. He was too breathless to shout to the pilots, but he waved his primer at them as they soared past under the canopy of anti-aircraft shells.
The first flights of attacking planes had swept across the airfield. Clearly visible against the apartment houses of the French Concession, they flew towards Shanghai, ready to strafe the dockyards and the Nantao seaplane base. But the anti-aircraft batteries around the runway were still firing into the air. Cat’s cradles of tracer stitched the sky, threads of phosphorus knit and reknit themselves. At their centre was the great pagoda of Lunghua, rising through the smoke that lifted from the burning hangars, its guns throwing out an unbroken flak ceiling.
Jim had never before seen an air attack of such scale. A second wave of Mustangs crossed the paddy fields between Lunghua Camp and the river, followed by a squadron of two-engined fighter-bombers. Three hundred yards to the west of the camp one of the Mustangs dipped its starboard wing towards the ground. Out of control, it slid across the air, and its wing-tip sheared the embankment of a disused canal. The plane cartwheeled across the paddy fields and fell apart in the air. It exploded in a curtain wall of flaming gasoline through which Jim could see the burning figure of the American pilot still strapped to his seat. Riding the incandescent debris of his aircraft, he tore through the trees beyond the perimeter of the camp, a fragment of the sun whose light continued to flare across the surrounding fields.
A second crippled Mustang pulled away from the others in its flight. Trailing a plume of oily smoke, it rose through the anti-aircraft bursts and climbed into the sky. The pilot was trying to escape from the airfield, but as his Mustang began to lose height he rolled the craft on to its back and fell safely from the cockpit. His parachute opened and he dropped steeply to the ground. His burning plane righted itself, towed its black plume in a wavering arc above the empty fields, and then plunged into the river.
The pilot hung alone in the silent sky. His companions sped on towards Shanghai, their silver fuselages lost in the sun-filled windows of the French Concession.