Eagle at Taranto (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  He bent his head to kiss her and she slapped him. She had little experience in slapping faces and judging the force needed. Her right arm was free and her hand came up in a round-arm swing that rocked Jamie’s head on his shoulders.

  He gasped, “For Christ’s sake —!” But he still held her.

  She drew back her arm. “Let me go! Damn you! Let me go!” She hit him again.

  He shoved her away from him so she banged against the wall and she stayed there, glaring at him. He rubbed at the flame-coloured weals on his face, his mouth tight. Then he said quietly, “Now what the hell is all this?”

  “Get out. I didn’t invite you here.”

  “You didn’t —?” Jamie laughed at her. “You’ve been giving me the come-on ever since you got to Alex!”

  There was truth in that — or there had been, in the beginning — and she flushed.

  When she didn’t answer he said, “And these last few days.”

  “No.” That was different. She had just watched him and wondered at how changed he was from the man she remembered — or had imagined?

  “No? You were eager enough. I heard you run to the door.”

  Had she? Yes, but only in the hope that Mark — “Will you go? Please.” But — it was a demand, not a request. “I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

  Jamie watched her shrewdly, “No, you don’t. You were expecting somebody else.”

  “I told you, I don’t have to —”

  “You had that look about you when you opened the door. I thought it was for me.” He took a step towards her, set one hand on the wall by her head and leaned over her. He said, “Mark.”

  Katy demanded, “What about him?”

  He grinned now and did not answer her directly. “You’ve probably gathered that we’re not exactly the best of friends. There’s something about me he doesn’t like and I think he’s a — well, we’ve never got on. Not that we ever saw much of each other,. just the occasional family get-togethers, and he’s a silent type as a rule. But a couple of years ago he got riled over something — never mind what it was — and he called me a flash, skirt-chasing bastard. I didn’t mind the skirt-chasing bit — I’ve always believed there was no sense in wasting time — but the ‘flash’ riled me. I may be many things, but flash I am not. Anyway we had a fight and now he goes his way and I go mine.” Now he answered her original question: “You want to go his way.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “So? What does Mark want? Because now, remembering odd remarks made by Bert, and one or two others, it seems to me you’ve been seeing quite a bit of each other lately.”

  Katy flushed again, “It’s none of your damned business who I see! Now — get — out!”

  Jamie nodded as if he had his answer, but still leaned over her. “I will.” And with mocking solemnity, “Out of your life forever.” He laughed and went on, “As I said, I don’t believe in wasting time and you’ve made it clear I’d be wasting it around here. Getting the brush-off — as I think you’d put it — doesn’t bother me. But Mark might be different.” Jamie was still smiling, but he was very serious now. “So you should be sure how you feel about him. Don’t keep him on a string; play things straight with him.” He paused, thoughtfully. “You’ve seen those Swordfish, the things Mark flies?”

  Katy nodded. She had seen them often, taken note because she knew they were what he flew.

  Jamie said, “Big biplanes, like something left over from the last war. They fly some pretty lethal operations. He doesn’t need to be screwed up on the ground as well.”

  Now he pushed away from the wall and opened the door. He stood there a moment. “I told you Mark and I don’t get on. Neither one of us would like to see the other come to a sticky end though, so think about it.” The door closed behind him.

  Katy felt drained by anger and shock, confused. The horrors of the desert returned, stark pictures, and Jamie’s words tumbled in her head: You were eager...had that look...play straight. She stayed slumped against the wall, face buried in her hands, for long minutes. She was alone among strangers, thousands of miles from home, and needed time to sort out her thoughts and emotions.

  She was not granted that time. The door shook to a double knock. She thought Jamie Dunbar had returned to taunt her and steeled herself to open it. She would not hide; if he wanted a fight she was ready —

  Mark stood outside. His face looked gaunt and his eyes stared but that did not matter. He walked in as of right and she clung to him.

  He talked in the night, when their passion was spent and they lay close in the quiet. He told her about the raid on Bomba, was able to tell her because the danger was blunted now, here. He could talk quietly and she listened, remembered Jamie Dunbar’s words: “They fly some pretty lethal operations.” Bomba had been one of those.

  She did not tell him about the desert. Once he asked, leaning over her, “What have you done to your hair?” He ran his fingers through the soft, short waves, that were jagged-ended as Bert had cut them.

  She answered, “It was too hot. I’ll have it done properly tomorrow.”

  In the morning she cooked him breakfast. They had an intimacy now and yet were self-conscious. He was hurrying at the meal’s end because he had to get back to Dekheila. He picked up his cap and said, “Cheerio!” No promises, but he stooped to kiss her.

  She held him tight then pushed him away, said breathlessly, “Better not start that again.” At the door she suddenly remembered: “I’ll have to go away again for a few days and it may be soon. I’ll let you know beforehand, if I can”

  He paused, “Again? You’ve been away?”

  “Bert and I finally got a movement order. We went into the desert.”

  He stared at her, incredulous, “You mean, among the fighting?”

  “I saw some.”

  “Good God! Why?”

  “It’s my job.” She wouldn’t talk about it, wouldn’t remember.

  Ward said impatiently, “You’re not a war correspondent. You just came along with Bert on this one tour. You told me yourself that as soon as your contract runs out you’ll be going home.”

  Maybe she was here with him now, had spent the night with him, because of her time in the desert. She did not voice this thought, but she had argued the other issue before: “It’s something I said I’d do and I keep my word, right down the line.”

  He knew the destruction wrought by the bombs he dropped. An Italian shell could do that to her. “Taking risks up there and all for a few bloody photographs! You’re not going again. You don’t have to.”

  “Of course I have to! Just the way you have to fly on — on missions.”

  “It’s not the same at all. Can’t you see that?”

  They were nearly shouting now. “No, I can’t! And anyway, it’s my decision, has nothing to do with you! Don’t give me orders! You don’t own me!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  The door slammed behind him. She stood poised, her anger draining away as quickly as it had come, and heard the clatter of his feet on the stairs, going away, gone. She went to the window and watched him walk off along the street with long, fast strides. Then she sat on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap and after a while she cried.

  Much later she saw there was a space in the neat line of prints. The photograph of herself had been taken.

  6 “Fighters!”

  Mark found the airfield at Dekheila boiling with activity. Trucks, tail-boards lowered, were backed up to the hangars and stores sheds. Men hurried back and forth, loading the trucks. He found Tim Rogers, who greeted him with: “Where the hell have you been?” But he was grinning, relieved because he could see Mark was not the same man who had walked out last night, stiff-faced and eyes distant.

  Mark answered amiably, “Alex. You know damn well. What’s going on?”

  “I know you went to Alex and I know I told you there was no flying before noon, but you should have shown up on morning parade. Yo
ur absence was commented on.”

  Mark knew that, too, “Well, I suppose I’ll be logged.” He knew he’d be, but he thought it was worth it.

  Tim, nodding towards the loading, told him, “The Fleet has sailing orders.”

  Two men of the ground crew staggered past, carrying a crate of Swordfish spares between them and cursing its weight.

  Mark said, “Morning. Nice day for it.”

  They laughed, “Morning, sir.” They swung the crate in rhythm at the back of a truck and hurled it up and inside.

  Mark asked Tim: “We’re to escort another convoy to Malta?”

  “Suppose so.” Tim shrugged, “I only know we’re sailing.”

  Mark went to their tent and packed his kit. That took only minutes. While he was in the taxi rolling out along the coast road from Alexandria he had thought he would go in again this night and see Katy — if his duties permitted. His anger had cooled but he still thought she was taking unnecessary risks in going out into the desert. He was a pilot, the risks he took were not unnecessary. But she’d been right — he could not give her orders.

  Now he wondered if she’d also been right when she’d said that going to the desert was her job, as flying was his. Looked at coldly, that was logical. But he could not look at it coldly, because he cared. And now he did not know when he would see her again — if ever.

  That thought stopped him dead, staring out of the tent at the airfield. It had often occurred to him before that he might not return from an operation. But now the possibility existed that he might return and she might not...

  The Victoria transport aircraft wobbled in from Ma’aten Bagush in the afternoon bringing Doug Campbell, rested and clear-headed, Laurel, Hardy and the other fitters, riggers and armourers back from the R.A.F. field. They went on to Alexandria with their stores and kit, to be ferried out to the ship by lighter. Eagle and the Fleet sailed in the night, weighing anchor at three forty in the morning of the thirtieth of August. Mark took off in Ethel with the other Swordfish from Dekheila at first light and they flew out to join Eagle at sea, on course for Malta.

  Katy woke at the distant drone of the engines, ran to the window and watched the big biplanes until they became tiny, then were lost over the rim of the world.

  The Fleet had not in fact sailed only to escort a convoy —though convoy there was and they saw it safely to Malta —but also to make a rendezvous south of Sicily.

  On the morning of the second of September Mark stood with Tim Rogers on the goofer’s platform abaft Eagle’s bridge. Their hands were lifted to shade their eyes as they peered out over a sea that glinted in the glare of the low morning sun.

  Tim said, “She’s big.”

  Mark nodded, “New.”

  They were talking of another aircraft-carrier, H. M. S. Illustrious. She had come, with the battleship Valiant and two A.A. cruisers, Calcutta and Coventry, to join Cunningham’s Fleet. This rendezvous was the main reason for the Fleet’s sailing.

  Tim said, “She’s tough, from what I hear.” Eagle’s flight-deck was steel plating clapped on to her World War I battleship hull, but that of Illustrious was the top of an armoured box built throughout of steel three inches thick.

  “And fast,” added Mark. “She can make thirty knots.” Eagle’s shuddering, flat-out top speed was a bare twenty knots.

  A sleek monoplane raced along the flight-deck of Illustrious, lifted off and climbed swiftly, steeply. “One of her Fulmars,” commented Tim. Illustrious carried a squadron of the fighters besides her two squadrons of Swordfish. “They’ll take some of the weight off our poor bloody Gladiators.” Until now Eagle’s three ageing Gloster Gladiators had provided the only fighter cover for the Fleet when out of range of the R.A.F. bases in Egypt or Malta.

  Mark summed it up: “She’s going to make a difference. And A. B.C. will find work for the two of us.”

  Admiral A. B. Cunningham did. Two days later Mark made his way up to the gale-swept flight-deck of Eagle two hours before dawn. Thirteen Swordfish, Ethel among them, were ranged aft with their engines blatting. Doug Campbell was already aboard, Tim Rogers climbing up. Hardy, the fitter, had swung out of the cockpit and stood on the wing, waiting while Mark put his foot in the first step set in the fuselage and started up.

  Six bombs, 250 pounds each, again hung fat and deadly under Ethel’s wings. All the Swordfish were similarly bombed-up. They were taking off now in order to raid the Italian airfield of Maritsa on the island of Rhodes at dawn. It was not the only dawn raid to be made on Rhodes that morning. Swordfish from Illustrious were to strike the island’s other field at Callato.

  Mark settled in the cockpit as the twin lines of the deck lights came on, stretching away to Eagle’s bow. A green light flashed from the bridge and the first Swordfish rolled forward as the flight-deck officer gestured with his pair of green torches. Mark thought: Thirteen Stringbags? Unlucky? Rubbish. He counted them as they lumbered away along the flight-deck to lift off into the night. One...two...three...four...five—

  “Hell!” As he said it he heard Tim’s anguished cry over the Gosport Tube: “Oh, my God!”

  The fifth Swordfish had skidded, smashed one wing and crashed on its nose on the deck. Its load had broken loose under the impact and the six bombs were sliding and skittering about on the rocking flight-deck.

  Not long before Eagle came to the Mediterranean, a bomb like one of these had exploded in the arming room, killing fifteen men. Such disasters were not forgotten. But now men swarmed unhesitatingly across the deck, hunting down the rolling, lunging monsters, trapping them, wedging them. Armourers carefully removed the detonators and then the bombs were cleared away below.

  Meanwhile another party worked feverishly to lift the crew out of the wrecked aircraft. Then it was shoved by hand yard by yard towards the bow. Laurel and Hardy were there, Laurel already inside the cockpit of the wrecked Swordfish with a screwdriver, removing whatever instruments and parts he could. An armourer in the airgunner’s cockpit handed out the Vickers and its ammunition, the observer’s chartboard, instruments and compass. All of these were precious. They worked in darkness as the wreckage bumped, rocked and slithered along the deck and a howling gale swept in over Eagle’s bow as she steamed into wind at close on twenty knots.

  When they came to the bow the armourer rolled over the side of the cockpit and dropped to the deck. Hardy climbed onto the crumpled wing and grabbed Laurel under the arms. “Come out, you daft bastard! She’s goin’ over!”

  He yanked Laurel out of the cockpit like a cork from a bottle and the pair of them fell to the deck then crawled clear of the legs of the men shoving and straining at the tangled mass of spars and fuselage.

  Laurel stared at it, silhouetted against the night sky. “It looks more like a bloody great bundle of old umbrellas than anything made to fly!” The wreckage disappeared over the edge and the party scattered, running to get clear of the flight-deck.

  The green light flashed again from the bridge and the sixth Swordfish rocked forward, the flight-deck ahead of it now clear for the take-off. Ward looked at his watch: they had lost half an hour through the accident. The blue torches of the flightdeck officer beckoned to Ethel and Ward lined her up then took her charging along the deck between the lines of lights and lifted her off into the darkness.

  Laurel leaned into the wind, back at his station on the after flight-deck, and sucked gashed knuckles, bleeding from his furious work in the smashed dark cockpit with its score of unseen projections to tear the flesh. He and Hardy watched the small blue glow on Ethel’s wings — her formation lights — climb until they were only pinpricks in the night and then they were gone. Another Swordfish flew off and as the thunder of its engine faded Laurel said worriedly, “We lost some time over that crash. Think they’ll be all right?”

  Both men knew the operation was timed for the Swordfish to strike their target at dawn and no later, catching the Italian fighters still on the ground.

  Hardy muttered doubtfully, “Sho
uld be...well, maybe — if they don’t lose any more time.”

  They did lose more time. The wind had veered around and the Swordfish were flying into it. Dawn came well before they sighted Rhodes and it was broad day when they dived on the airfield at Maritsa and dropped their bombs. As Mark circled away he saw two hangars burning, other buildings in flames and belching smoke from one huge blaze that looked like a fuel dump.

  Tim Rogers said, “So far, so good.”

  Mark did not answer. His eyes behind the goggles searched the sky, narrowed against the low sun, looking for enemy aircraft — but seeing none. As the minutes ticked by he began to hope, even believe, that they might have got away with it.

  They were out over the sea when Doug Campbell’s voice cracked harshly: “Fighters!”

  Mark concluded later that the attack from Illustrious had gone in on time, at dawn, and stirred up a hornet’s nest, so that the Fiat C.R.42s were already in the air and hunting as the twelve Swordfish from Eagle turned for home. But such speculations came later. Now there flashed through his mind Tim’s wry question before the raid on Bomba: “Suppose we’re jumped...What do we do?”

  And his own answer: “Duck.” Then he was trying to suit action to the word. He threw Ethel about desperately to try to avoid the streams of tracer that lashed at him from the swooping Fiats. They were biplanes, like the Swordfish, but smaller and stubbier, and nearly twice as fast. Mark saw the Swordfish on his right go down in flames, then a second. The smoke they trailed drew scars across the white-hatched blue of the sea below. It was a beautiful, golden morning.

  Campbell’s Vickers hammered again and again. He stood with legs braced wide, feet on the firing steps set on either side of the cockpit. The extra height gave him a better view and field of fire, but it also exposed most of his upper body. Logically he would have been no safer down in the unarmoured cockpit but he felt horribly naked as the C.R.42s came tearing in, their gun muzzles red with flame. He had seen airgunners who had lost this kind of duel, had helped to lift them out of the cockpit and cleaned it afterwards.