Eagle at Taranto (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  Mark waggled Ethel’s wings gently and Tim, responding to that signal, plugged into the tube, “Yes?”

  “Give Campbell a nudge, just in case.” The airgunner would be keeping a listening watch on the wireless but he needed to be warned that they would be attacking soon.

  Tim said, “Done that. He’s ready.”

  The after cockpits were really one long cockpit divided laterally by a low bulkhead. Doug Campbell stood at the rear now, manning the Vickers machine-gun. The gun was housed in the fuselage above the wireless. He looked out over its breech and barrel, past the rudder that was offset at a slight angle — Campbell tersely described it as “soddin’ cock-eyed” — to offset the effect of the slipstream that tended to pull the Swordfish off course. His eyes searched the night sky that was clear and moonlit. He could remember a girl he’d taken out on a night just like this...But it was bloody cold now as the ninety-knot wind roared around him. Things would warm up soon, though.

  He glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw Rogers moving bulkily, awkwardly in the dim orange glow of the observer’s cockpit. Campbell could have guessed what Rogers was doing now without looking; all three had learned the quirks and habits of the others. The observer was carefully stowing away his chartboard, navigational instruments and any other loose gear. What did Mark call it? “Doing his housework.” Campbell grinned and returned to his lookout.

  Time was running down now and the Swordfish were still descending. The final approach would be low and going in over the sea. Mark, peering past the blur of the propeller, thought he saw — Tim beat him to it: “Enemy coast ahead!”

  There was something more substantial than just darkness where the silver sea ended, a blacker irregular line running between sea and sky. The Swordfish were still in their shallow dive and the needle of Mark’s altimeter was ticking back around the face of the instrument. It read 500 feet when Tim said, “Ships! Six to a dozen.”

  Mark saw only the thicker shadows on the sea, did not separate one from another or count them. He concentrated on his flying, eased Ethel out of the dive and held her steady and straight, forty to fifty feet above the waves. The moon lit the sea and cast the flitting shadows of the nine Swordfish in distorted crosses on the wrinkled surface.

  Now he could see and pick out one ship from another inside the harbour opening ahead. There was one biggish freighter, three — no, four smaller vessels — and that was a destroyer. He saw the searchlights glow aboard her as the arcs heated, and then become two beams of white light that jerked about the sky above him. They meandered nervously for a few seconds, then one of them snapped down and lit a Swordfish away to Mark’s right, slipped off it then returned and held it in the beam.

  A rash of little prickling flames spread around and across the harbour as if someone had set light to a chain of fireworks. The guns had opened up. Light glared in Ward’s eyes as the second searchlight beam jerked down towards the sea and found him. He turned Ethel to the right, curling away out of the beam, then immediately back to the left so he passed from light to dark then through the light again and finally into darkness.

  He had slipped the beam. It had tried to follow his first turn and was hunting again away to his right. He could see only one other Swordfish, ahead and to port and affording him plenty of room. The rest of the sky was a mad pattern of yellow bursts of shells, balls of smoke and strings of slow, curving tracer from machine-guns.

  He was forty feet up, airspeed 125 knots, holding her straight and steady. He saw the bursts of the flak before him, felt Ethel shudder as she ran through the turbulence and he threw her sideways again to get her out of it.

  The destroyer lay off to port. Height was now only about thirty feet. 120 knots. Ease to port a touch to bring her into the torpedo sight — there. Hold her with the right hand, the left hand on the firing button down by the throttle. Now.

  Tim: “— gone!”

  Mark banked Ethel tightly to starboard, his head turning as he looked for other Swordfish, but he saw none. Then the flak found them again with flashes, bursts, smoke, the shuddering — and this time a jarring as if someone was kicking Ethel’s tender, canvas sides. He jerked her about, weaving, but holding her low over the sea and heading out into the night.

  They were clear of the flak. He could still see some of it in his mirror but the yellow splashes and the red tracer beads were falling astern.

  Tim’s voice cracked in his ears: “A hit! And there’s another!”

  Mark asked thickly, still shaking in the aftermath of the flak, “Ours?”

  “Our destroyer. It might have been our torpedo but there were two or three of us having a go at her.”

  “Were there?”

  “Didn’t you see them?” Tim sounded incredulous.

  .”No.” Mark’s eyes had been focused on the destroyer in the sight.

  “Good God! And you’re supposed to be driving this thing.”

  Silence for a moment, then Mark said, “Stringbag to star-board.” He eased Ethel over to close the other Swordfish.

  Tim said, “The others are coming out now. I can see four — five.” That was seven all right. Tim went on, “The flak was nasty. The second lot — I thought they’d got us. I can see a few holes but nothing seems to have fallen off.”

  “Everything’s working.” Then Mark asked, “How’s Campbell?”

  “Fine. He got in some shooting.”

  Doug Campbell had emptied a magazine on the ships and the guns, was loading another now.

  The squadron, all nine of them, met out at sea, settled into formation and flew home. They landed at Sidi Barrani an hour before the dawn. As Mark cut the engine and the propeller gave its last kick then was still, he thought it could well have been a sort of rehearsal for an attack on Taranto. That also, when it came, if it ever came, would be a night torpedo strike. But there the resemblance ended. Tobruk was not one of the most heavily defended ports in the world. Taranto was.

  His legs felt stiff and cramped, colder than was usual, even after a night-flight, as he climbed out of the cockpit and down to the sand of the airstrip. There he found out why. There were several holes in Ethel big enough to shove his fist into and two were on either side of his cockpit. Unofficial ventilation. He could see straight through from one side to the other. Something hard, lethal and the size of a cricket ball had smashed through the cockpit within inches of his legs, little more than a foot from his stomach and groin. He remembered the jarring, when it felt as though someone was beating Ethel with a hammer.

  Tim said, “We had a close one, then.”

  Mark shrugged it off: “Close ones don’t count.”

  As they walked over to the mess the thought came to him that the attack had not been at all like the tunnel. There were flak and glaring searchlights blinding him, then the destroyer stretching wide and black, clean-cut against the night. But no narrowing walls. And no dark ending.

  It was cold on the Sidi Barrani strip in this last hour before dawn and a wind drove the sand to scour his face. He took comfort in the thought of Katy. She’d given him her phone number. And she’d said, “Maybe.”

  When the squadron returned to Dekheila he telephoned the girl and that night took her to dinner at Pastroudi’s. During the next week, whenever he could get leave and a lift or a taxi into Alex, he saw Katy. It might be for an afternoon or an evening or just an hour or so. They played golf, badly, at the Sporting Club, swam in the Mediterranean or lay on the beach, played tennis, danced.

  Mark flew several operations but said nothing of them. He talked a great deal of Ethel, Tim Rogers and the rest of his little team. Katy recognised that they were important to him. He drew her out to talk of her home and her life in America, her hopes and ambition as a photographer. And he told her about the songs he wrote for Danny Soloman, his flying in the days of peace and the first Ethel.

  Once they almost literally ran into a sailor and two airmen piling riotously out of a bar. Doug Campbell, Laurel and Hardy side-stepped to
avoid a collision with the girl, threw up salutes at Ward and made off. But they’d taken a good look at Katy and she’d seen it, now asked, “Anyone you know?” Mark told her and she said, “They seemed a bunch of nice guys.”

  Mark grinned, “They are, but it’s a good job you can’t hear what they’re saying about you.” He’d heard them talking of women before.

  Katy laughed because she thought she could guess. And if she couldn’t it didn’t matter. She found she was laughing a lot, enjoying herself.

  At the end of that week Mark telephoned to say he could get into Alexandria for an hour and so, in the evening, they sat in the bar of the Cecil. Jamie Dunbar was also there, escorting the same rangy beauty. Katy studied him pensively. He was not as she remembered him. After a while Jamie rose and murmured to the woman with his head close to hers, his hand around her waist. Then he crossed the floor, heading for their table.

  Katy said quickly, “No trouble, please!”

  Mark shrugged. “I won’t start it.”

  Jamie now walked without the stick and with only a suggestion of a limp. He smiled down at Katy. “Thought I’d pop over and say ‘Cheerio’. I’m off to Cairo tomorrow to be passed fit for duty.”

  Katy asked, “You have to see the doctors there?”

  “That’s right.” Though not for some days. But Pamela’s husband had gone back to Palestine and Jamie thought it was about time, too. He asked, “Have you any messages for your friend Keller?”

  Katy shook her head, smiling. “No. When I talk to him on the phone he comes through hopping mad because he can’t get up-country. Soothing words from me only make him worse.”

  Jamie said thoughtfully, “I remember now; he did mention that. I might be able to see a chap or two, pull some strings...Well, see you again.” He walked away.

  Katy turned her head and found Mark watching her. He left early.

  She slept badly that night, restless. In the morning she looked down to the harbour and saw that the Fleet, and Eagle, had sailed in the night.

  It was a long week later that she woke in the dawn to the drone of aircraft engines. That sound, familiar to her now, sent her running to the window, barefoot in her nightdress. She lifted a hand against the low morning sun that hurt her eyes and watched the squadrons of Swordfish winging in from the sea. After breakfast she waited for the telephone to ring.

  In the evening they sat in the Cecil again but it was not the same. They had reached an awkward stage and there was an uncertainty between them, a tension. Tim Rogers had just taken his leave, too tactful, after chatting for a half-hour.

  Katy made conversation: “I feel a fraud.”

  Mark asked, “Why?”

  “Drawing my money as a war photographer when all I do is laze around here.”

  “Is Bert Keller complaining?”

  “No. I confessed my guilt feelings to him on the phone the other day. He said,” and she made her voice gravelly: “‘Listen, baby, in this game you earn your money when the action breaks. You’re sittin’ around in Alex? So what am I doin’? Sittin’ around in Cairo. Just take it easy, baby, and keep your camera dry.’“

  Mark laughed. “That sounds like Keller. So how do you spend your days — reading good books?”

  “I take some pictures, local colour, just to keep my hand in. One or two are pretty good, though I do say it myself.”

  “How do you get them developed?”

  “I can fix up a darkroom.”

  “Clever girl.”

  “I’m a professional.” But she wondered, was she a professional like Bert? She had yet to learn and was not eager to find out.

  Mark asked, “Got any pictures of yourself?”

  Katy eyed him warily, “Why?”

  “I’d like one.” Mark grinned. “Did you ever see a painting called September Morn?”

  Katy said drily, “Yes, and no.”

  “What do you mean, ‘yes and no’?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen it, and no, you aren’t getting one. As I recall, the lady in that picture ran a risk of catching pneumonia.”

  Mark walked her back to her apartment and left her at the door. Katy did not invite him in and he did not ask. He had the feeling that would still be a bad mistake.

  Katy thought how she could have gone back to Cairo. Jamie Dunbar was there now. But she had not gone, and did not want to.

  Mark shared a taxi with Tim and two other aircrew, bouncing along the coast road to Dekheila. In the tent they shared, Tim said, “That’s a cracking girl you’ve got there.”

  Had he got her? Mark sat on his camp bed and pulled off his shoes. No, he hadn’t. He said, “I thought you were promised to another.” Tim wrote to his fiancée in England at least once a week.

  “Can still judge form, old boy.”

  They turned in. The wind fluttered the sides of the tent, blew in sand and the smell of the sea.

  Tim said yawning, “There’s rumour of a move.”

  “Where?”

  “Up the road. Nearer the sharp end.”

  Mark said ironically, “Thanks very much. Good night.” How much time did he have? How much did they all have?

  *

  Jamie woke to the shaking of his shoulder and saw Pamela’s startled face pale above his in the gloom, her hair falling around him. She whispered, “Someone’s come in!”

  Jamie said huskily, “What?”

  “Someone just came in the front door! I heard it open and close! It must be Harry!”

  “Blast!” Jamie slid out of the bed, grabbed his clothes from a chair and padded naked to the French windows. He could hear footsteps on the stairs. Pamela was stooping, breasts swinging, to pick up her nightdress from the floor. He paused for a second to watch appreciatively, then stepped out through the curtains to the balcony.

  He shivered in the cold, put down his clothes then began to dress quickly. There was no moon and this side of the house stood in shadow but there was enough light for him to see. He heard an opening door and then voices in the room behind him. Pamela’s sleepily: “Darling! I wasn’t expecting you!”

  Jamie thought, Too bloody true. You’re supposed to be with your regiment in Palestine. Dammit, you only went back to it two weeks ago. Couldn’t you stay put and do some work for a bit? You’re a waste of the taxpayer’s money.

  He heard shoes thump one at a time to the carpet and Harry saying in that bray of his: “The colonel sent me back to attend a conference. He didn’t want to come himself. Bit of luck, what? I say, I can’t find my hanger.”

  Jamie muttered to himself, “Stick your clothes on the chair, old man, as I did.” Then as he found his socks were missing: “No, don’t!” They would be on the chair. He dragged his shoes onto his bare feet and heard Harry say, “Hah! Found it.

  Jamie was ready. He peered at the garden below. There was no way to climb down but it wasn’t much of a drop. He swung his legs over the rail of the balcony and thought, Harry’s won a pair of socks, anyway. He heard the creak of the bed, And that’s not all. Busy night for Pamela. There would be questions asked in the house about those socks but Pamela would think of an answer. She always did.

  Now he hung by his hands, legs dangling. Well, it had been good while it lasted but now it was time to go. He let himself fall. There was soft earth below and only one rock but his right foot landed on that and pain lanced up his leg from his recently healed knee. He climbed to his feet and limped away through the garden, swearing softly, “Of all the bloody luck.”

  Katy did not see Mark for some days but that had happened before and she told herself there was no need to worry. Then he telephoned her apartment one evening. “I’m in Alex for a couple of hours. Would you like dinner at Pastroudi’s?”

  “O.K. Thank you. Where have you been?”

  “Oh, flying or on stand-by.” He always dismissed his absences thus.

  Katy chuckled into the telephone: “That sounds like: Sorry, dear, I’ve been working late at the office.”

  “Something l
ike that.”

  “You’re sure you haven’t another woman out there?”

  “Half a dozen, but all brunettes. A change is as good as a rest, you know.”

  And they exchanged repartee like that over dinner while he thought that they were playing a game, and he might not have much time. There would be another convoy to escort to Malta soon, or the threatened move nearer the front, many more operations if— when — the Italians invaded Egypt. And if their Fleet came out at the same time? He could not wait much longer.

  Katy’s thoughts and feelings were not clear. She had come to Egypt looking and hoping for Jamie. She had not found the Jamie she remembered, but her memory of him from two years ago was vague and unreal. Now she sensed Mark’s mood and as they got up from the table she wondered what she should do. Couldn’t that decision wait? Because she was not ready to make it and there was always tomorrow, the next day and the next. She would wait.

  The war would not. She checked. Mark took her arm then and she changed her mind. But at the door they met Bert with — amazingly, wasn’t he supposed to be in Cairo? — Jamie Dunbar.

  Katy whispered, “Mark, please!”

  “Yes, I know, no trouble.” Mark growled it, then under his breath: “You picked a hell of a time to visit, Bert.” But he said aloud, to Katy, “I’ll be seeing you.” He took one last look at her, then walked away.

  Katy called after him, “Take care!” She had never said that before and now it came so softly that he did not hear. He passed the two men with a smile and a word of greeting for Bert, a curt nod at Jamie, then was gone.

  Katy said, eyes on the door, but speaking to Jamie, “You’re limping again. Didn’t they return you to duty?”

  Jamie grimaced. “They did. Mounting was all right but I fell getting off.”

  Katy said, puzzled, “I thought you were infantry?”

  Bert burst in, impatiently, “Listen! It’s an ill wind — Jamie’s got us a movement order. We’re going to the desert.”