Eagle at Taranto (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  He yanked the empty drum from the Vickers and dropped it to the cockpit floor, snatched the spare drum from where it was clipped below the cockpit coaming and fitted it on the Vickers. He was sweating and swearing, tossed around like a spoon shaken in a cup as Ward threw Ethel about the sky, but his fingers were quick and did not fumble, carrying out a drill practised to the point of automation. He cocked the gun and fired as a C.R.42 floated into the ring sight and saw it haul away. Then there was another —

  Tim Rogers could do nothing but hold tight as the Swordfish sideslipped, dived, banked, climbed, hung on the prop near to stalling then fell away so that the streams of enemy tracer lashed the empty air. He could not even take his parachute from its stowage at the front of the cockpit and clip it to his harness.

  He knew he was going to die, that the overstretched luck of Ethel’s crew was at last running out — the Swordfish could never escape the C.R.42s that were flying rings around it. Ward’s aerobatics had saved him more times in the last few minutes than Tim could count but sooner or later, inevitably, they would be hit, hosed with raking bursts, shot to pieces.

  So he clung on and waited for the finish as Campbell’s Vickers rattled behind him and Ethel swooped and soared. A frozen witness of the fight, suddenly he saw there were no C. R.42s near them. The Vickers stopped firing and then Ethel was flying straight and level. There were two enemy planes in the distance, attacking another Swordfish but then one of them, too, turned away. The second fired another burst, climbed and circled once, then followed the first. Tim peered round in the cockpit, past Campbell, and saw specks far behind them that were the other Italian fighters, heading for home. He realised they must have run out of ammunition.

  The crew’s luck was still holding — just.

  Mark flew on with the other Swordfish that had survived. He circled with them over Eagle as she steamed into wind inside her screen of escorting destroyers. He banked to port when it came to his turn and took Ethel in over the round-down, flying carefully, watching the batsman. He made a good landing.

  After debriefing he went down to the hangar-deck and found Ethel, her wings folded, Laurel and Hardy working around her, examining her from end to end. Laurel turned as Ward approached and shook his head incredulously. “She’s clean as a whistle, sir. Not a mark on her. Most of the others have holes all over them, but not her.”

  Mark shrugged. “All due to clean-living; or the devil looking after his own.”

  Laurel laughed. “Not for me to say which, sir.” Then sympathetically: “Bad do, sir?”

  There were spaces on the hangar-deck now. Mark took a deep breath. The air of the hangar was tinged with the smell of oil and the dope the riggers used on the fabric of the Swordfish. “Yes. We plastered the airfield all right, but coming back wasn’t so good.” He thought, Oh, very cool, very casual. Their voices echoed in the steel cave. Suddenly he was reminded that the stairwells of the Royal College of Music had echoed just like that. But the College was a long way off now, and not just in distance. So were the song publishers in Denmark Street. He had not written a phrase of music in months.

  And almost as if reading Ward’s mind, Laurel said, “We’ve heard they’ve bombed London again. They’re raiding it every day and night, now.”

  “Yes.” Hitler was trying to blast London into ruins and surrender. Mark had friends and relatives there, as had these men. What comfort could he offer them? He watched them working, steadily, carefully, and thought: None. It was they who comforted him.

  He went to the wardroom for breakfast and told Tim, “Laurel and Hardy have been all over the old girl. They can’t find a scratch on her.”

  Tim stared at him, “I don’t believe it.”

  “Fact.” Mark helped himself to coffee.

  “Some bits must have fallen off from the way you tossed her about up there.”

  “Don’t be bloody rude. That was evasive action.”

  They ate in silence for a time, then Tim said, “We don’t want too many mornings like that.”

  “No.”

  They had lost four Swordfish, shot down, and the men who flew in them. Friends: men they knew, had laughed and joked with. Mark remembered them as good men, the pilots among them better than himself, more experienced.

  He was getting deeper into the tunnel with its narrowing walls. Eagle was no longer the only carrier in the Eastern Mediterranean. Previously an attack mounted by Eagle alone would have meant her sailing dangerously close to the Italian mainland and the bombers based there. Now Illustrious had brought out overload tanks that nearly doubled the range of all the Swordfish. An attack on Taranto could now be mounted by the carriers while still two-hundred miles away.

  Not only was such an attack theoretically possible now; it was also daily growing more desirable. Cunningham could not go on indefinitely looking back over his shoulder for the Italian Fleet. He had to neutralise the threat they posed and if they would not come out of harbour, then...

  7 Invasion

  Eagle returned with the Fleet to Alexandria and while she lay in the harbour Mark was at Dekheila with the other air crew. He flew every day and it was a week before he managed to get a lift into Alexandria and then only for an hour in the middle of the day. He went to Katy’s apartment and stood outside for a full minute but there was no answer to his knocking, only silence behind the closed face of the door. He decided with a sense of relief that she was out; he had not been sure how to say what must be said.

  He ran quickly down the stairs but slowed in the noonday heat of the street. The truck that brought him in had dropped him at the Cecil Hotel and would pick him up there. He looked at his watch and then went into the cool dimness of the bar. He had time for a drink.

  He was halfway through the beer when there was a step behind him and Jamie Dunbar stood at his side.

  Mark said, “Are you still here?”

  “I might say the same only I know you’ve been busy.” Jamie lifted a finger, signalling for a beer. “As it happens I’m just passing through on my way to the sharp end.”

  Ward looked at him, noted the neat but faded khaki drill shirt and corduroy trousers. “You mean you’re actually going to earn your money? Hard luck.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. You meet some nice people up there.” Mark thought of Tim, Campbell, Laurel and Hardy. “True.”

  Jamie sipped at his beer. “Seems they’re going to need us all.”

  Mark said, “That I can believe.” He knew that the Italian Fleet lay in wait at Taranto and Mussolini’s army was massing in Libya.

  Jamie asked, “Visiting your American poppet?” Then he held up a hand as Mark stiffened. “All right! I think she’s a fine girl and you’re a lucky man.”

  Mark eyed Jamie, who met his glare, then: “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I came in to call the whole thing off. But she’s out. Or away.”

  “Well, well. I thought —” Jamie hastily lifted the hand again. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Still, I think you’re making a mistake. But I suppose you have your reasons.”

  They lifted their glasses and drank together. They were alone at the bar. They were kin. They might not meet again for months, or years, or — Mark said, “I’ve had one or two narrow squeaks and it looks as though my luck may be running out.”

  “Ah. Luck has that habit. I won’t insult you by suggesting that you’re getting windy.”

  Mark shook his head. “No more than anybody else. I’ve had my nasty moments, but the rest of the time I believe it’ll happen to the other feller.” He paused, then amended: “Well, most of the time.”

  Jamie nodded agreement, “I’ve made my will.”

  “Go on.” Mark stared at him, then grinned, “The female beneficiaries should make quite a list.”

  “Ha!” Jamie gave a snort. “Very funny. But remember that activity takes two. And besides, maybe I’ve made some mistakes, but I’ve heard more than one whispe
r about you. They travel around the family.”

  “Such as?”

  “When you turned all noble over that girl and tried to knock my head off.” Jamie fingered the scar over his eye.

  “Ah!” Mark’s lips twitched, “Well, that wasn’t quite the way it looked. In fact it was her boyfriend I knew, and he was out of the country working for his firm, so I just stood in for him. But the truth is, the whole thing was probably just an excuse. I’ve not seen you very often, but when I have you’ve always been so bloody sure of yourself. Superior. So just for once I thought I’d belt you — take the smirk off your face.”

  Jamie chuckled. “Robbie Burns had something to say about seeing ourselves as others see us. Now me, I always thought you were bad-tempered, bloody-minded, sullen — and that you had it in for me.”

  “I did. Because —”

  Jamie said drily, “Yes, I know. We’re back where we started.”

  Mark said tentatively, voicing a strange thought, one he was unsure of: “Maybe — we’re too much alike.”

  Jamie pulled a face. “That’s not very nice for either of us, but there could be something in it. However, harking back and just to tidy things up, you might as well know that the girl didn’t exactly need all that much seducing. She gave me the biggest come-on this side of Picadilly Circus.” He broke off, then: “You don’t seem surprised?”

  Mark was grinning. “No. A bit after that, she married the boyfriend’s boss. Did very well for herself. Now she has a town house and a whacking big mansion in the depths of Surrey.”

  Jamie said ruefully, “And she’s not sitting on the edge of the desert waiting for a truck to take her up the line.”

  They roared with laughter.

  Jamie wiped his eyes and looked at his watch, “Mine should be along in a minute.”

  “And mine.”

  They lifted their glasses and Jamie said, “We might do this again, sometime.” Mark did not answer and Jamie looked at him, saw him lost in thought, face set. Jamie said quietly, “You’re a hard man.”

  “Me!” Mark was jerked out of his thoughts of other men he had thought to meet again, who had not returned from Rhodes.

  Jamie nodded, “I’ve seen it in some men. They didn’t kill by pushing a button or ordering a barrage. They did it with the butt, or the bayonet — or their bare hands. They didn’t enjoy it but they didn’t hate it either. Killing just didn’t bother them, was just something they did, like walking or breathing. I can see that in you.”

  Mark laughed. Jamie didn’t really know him.

  “All right,” said Jamie, and grinned. “Forget it.” But Mark would see, he thought, when the time came.

  Mark said, “But as for doing this again — good idea. Next time we’re both in Alex. Cheerio.”

  “Cheerio.”

  They drained their glasses and walked out together to the trucks.

  Katy slept that night at Mersa Matruh, a white-walled village by the sea, with a railway station and scattered palms rooted in parched earth. Bert had cajoled another movement order out of Headquarters in Cairo and they were bound for the front at Sollum. Jamie was not with them: Bert had been told that Captain Dunbar was back with his battalion. Instead they had as escorting officer a youth of nineteen, a very new second-lieutenant with an engaging, white-toothed smile. He said his name was Hartington-Smythe: “But the chaps call me Harry.”

  Bert said, “O.K. Lootenant. Harry it is.”

  Katy felt ten years older than the fresh-faced Harry, who was smitten and could not take his eyes off her.

  On the second day out of Alexandria they drove on from Mersa to Buq-Buq in the two eight-hundredweight trucks. Harry, his driver and wireless operator were in the first. Bert and Katy followed, driven by Powell as before. The road was a good, metalled surface as far as Sidi Barrani but after that was no better than a track through the desert. Powell drove off to the right of the lead truck, so avoiding the dust cloud it threw up but they still collected their own layer of sand and Powell muttered under his breath, cursing it.

  Bert and Katy, squeezed together in the front of the truck beside Powell, bounced and swayed in rhythm with its motion. Bert shouted above the engine’s grinding and the creaking of the suspension: “The Nazis are bombing the hell out of London!”

  Katy, clinging on, answered automatically, “I know! I guess it must be pretty awful!”

  Her indifference must have shown. Bert glanced at her quizzically, “Yeah? Try to imagine them bombing Manhattan.”

  That was different. She knew Manhattan and could picture it under attack. Katy shivered, even in the heat of the day.

  Buq-Buq was just a map reference. There was no building, only a depression in the flat emptiness of the desert in which a few trucks were scattered, camouflaged, with slit trenches dug alongside each truck in case of attack from the air. This was a battalion headquarters and Bert went with Hartington-Smythe to seek information. Meanwhile the drivers brewed tea over their petrol can stoves.

  Bert returned and told Katy, “They say there’s been a lot more air activity, Italian bombing raids and fighter sweeps, but otherwise the front is quiet.” He thrashed a hand at the flies whirling above his mug of tea, then worked a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth, thumbing his lighter into flame pale in the glare of the sun. “Up to now it’s been a phony war out here —” He paused. Katy thought there had been nothing phony about the dead at the fort. Bert blew smoke at the flies then finished sombrely, “— But a war like that blew wide open in France not so long ago.”

  And now Hitler’s soldiers lounged on the boulevards of Paris.

  In the evening they came to a village and Bert murmured, “I’ve seen some one-horse dumps in my time —” He surveyed the prospect sardonically.

  There was a customs post, a group of small, white stone houses and a short jetty poking out into the blue water of the bay. That was all. Then Bert checked, whistled softly, impressed, and went on: “— but, boy! That is some table-top!” Beyond the houses a cliff rose steeply to a high plateau that ran southwards, away into the desert to be lost in distance.

  Katy leaned over Bert to peer out through the dusty wind-screen at the cliff. It was as if the coastal plain along which they had driven had fractured along a sharp edge and dropped to leave the plateau high above them. Katy’s eyes came slowly down again to the houses. “We were aiming for Sollum. This is it?”

  Bert shook his head. “This has to be the bottom half of Sollum. I guess we want the top half.” He pointed to the cliff-top and Katy saw that the road ran on past the little houses then wound up the cliff right over the sea.

  “Wow!” She sat back as Powell drove through lower Sollum. Men of the Royal Engineers worked among the houses and along the road.

  Bert said, “They’re laying mines.”

  Powell changed down then drove the eight-hundredweight cautiously up the steep and winding road in the gathering dusk. Katy muttered, looking out and down the drop outside the offside wheels, “If it’s dark when we come down, I’ll walk.”

  Bert chuckled, “I’ll go along with that.”

  Then the road ran level again and the plateau opened before them. Here was upper Sollum and Katy said drily, “This isn’t exactly a boom town, either.” In the twilight they could see the loom of a barracks, white and without a light — empty. Nearby was an airstrip, the desert cleared of rocks, straight and flat with a wind-sock flapping from a mast. There were no aircraft.

  Bert muttered, “Home, sweet home.”

  The trucks halted in the rear of the barracks and a hundred yards or more away. The young officer climbed down, came back to the second truck and told Bert: “I’m going forward to tell the chaps holding the line in front that we’re here. You may as well bed down. We might have to move at first light.”

  Bert asked, “Who are the guys out front of us?”

  Harry was smiling admiringly at Katy and turned reluctantly back to Bert, “We’ve a pla
toon of Coldstreams up here, dug in just forward of the barracks.”

  “The map shows a place called Musaid —” Bert pointed inland along the plateau, now clothed in darkness, “— over there, right?”

  Hartington-Smythe nodded, “Just a few miles south. It’s only another old Egyptian barracks, empty, like this one. We pulled our chaps out of there days ago. You’ll see it in the morning.” He smiled again at Katy then walked away into the gloom.

  The two drivers shook out the camouflage nets and draped them over the trucks. When that was done Katy crept in under the net beside their truck and unrolled her sleeping-bag. She spread her overcoat on top of it, both for the extra warmth and to be handy in the morning. Her sweater she rolled around her camera to use as a pillow, then wriggled into the bag. Bert worked into his own bag beside her but sat with his back propped against the rear wheel of the truck, staring through the net at the dark sky. He was silent for a time. They could hear the murmur of voices as the two drivers and the wireless-operator drew lots for the order in which each should patrol as sentry, two hours at a time throughout the night. Then the voices died and there was only the faint scuff of the sentry’s boots in the dust, the whisper of the wind and the slap of the truck canopies as the wind beat the canvas against the steel frames.

  Bert said thoughtfully, “There’s just one platoon, thirty men at most, out there in front of us.” His head turned to Katy and she saw the pale blur of his face. He went on: “Remember what I told you after our last trip into the desert? Well, between you and me, it looks like I was right. From what I’m told, what I’ve seen, the British are in real trouble. Wavell’s army is outgunned and outnumbered five to one. He’s bluffing. There’s precious little between the Italians and the Suez Canal.”

  Bert shifted restlessly. “Then there’s the sea. The Italian Fleet is still as big a threat as ever. Cunningham hasn’t been able to touch it.” He wriggled down into his bag, turned over to sleep but muttered worriedly, “It doesn’t look good. No, sir.”

  Katy stared up at the stars, heard the young officer return from the line and exchange a few words with the sentry, then bed down by his truck. She listened to the silence, a brooding quiet, thinking over what Bert had said. This day that was ending was the twelfth of September. There were only two months of her contract left to run.