Venom Squadron

by Robert Jackson

  Somehow, he managed to land the Lockheed at his home base. He was only just in time. When they pulled him from the cockpit, shock and loss of blood had rendered him unconscious.

  As a doctor bent over him, he regained his senses sufficiently to utter just two words: ‘Under attack.’ It was enough. Within thirty minutes, the grim-faced chiefs of staff of Muramshir’s armed forces were holding a council of war.

  Chapter Five

  On Wednesday morning, two days later, Yeoman received an urgent signal to report to Headquarters, Middle East Air Force at Nicosia, bringing his two squadron commanders with him. They made the forty-mile trip in a borrowed Avro Anson communications aircraft, with Yeoman and Wells sitting behind the dual controls on the flight deck and Dalton back in the cabin, chatting to a couple of army officers who had thumbed a lift.

  Yeoman had no idea why he was being summoned. The situation in the Canal Zone was giving little cause for alarm; it seemed to be well under control. Twenty-four hours after the air drops, British and French commandos had landed on the beaches at Port Said and Port Fuad, supported by tanks, and by the following morning these reinforcements and the paratroops were pushing southwards along the causeway from Port Said towards El Cap, twenty-five miles away. Egyptian resistance had often been fierce, but under pressure from the United Nations a ceasefire was being negotiated, and it looked as though an end to the fighting might soon be in sight. The Venom wing had played no part in this phase of Operation Musketeer, air support having been provided by the carrier task force.

  Nevertheless, as Yeoman approached Nicosia, he saw that there appeared to be no let-up in the intensity of operations as far as the transport squadrons were concerned. A fleet of troopships carrying the British 3rd Division was en route for Egypt, but would not arrive before Friday, 10 November, and in the meantime the airborne and commando forces had to be supplied constantly. It was fifteen minutes before the Anson was able to land, the pilot having been ordered to hold clear while a stream of Hastings transports took off.

  On the ground, Yeoman threaded his way through the lines of parked Hastings and Valettas and brought the Anson to a halt near the control tower, following the directions of a marshaller. A few minutes later, the three RAF officers were being driven away from the flight line in a gleaming staff car, an immaculate RAF police corporal behind the wheel. It came to a smooth halt outside HQMEAF’S intelligence section.

  An armed police sergeant stood on guard at the entrance. He saluted, then meticulously inspected the identity cards of Yeoman and the two squadron leaders before ushering them through the doorway, where he handed them over to yet another policeman. The latter conducted them along a series of corridors until they came to an office door. The policeman knocked and went inside; the others heard him click his polished heels as he came to attention, and utter a few low words. A moment later he was back, holding the door open while they filed through.

  There was only one man in the room, seated behind the desk. He was wearing civilian clothes, but Yeoman saluted him automatically and the other officers followed suit, sensing that he must be a person of some importance.

  Yeoman felt himself go hot and cold. He was conscious of nothing but the face of the man before him, the man who now rose slowly to his feet, his hand outstretched. The face was more lined now, the hair that topped it much greyer, than when he had last seen it.

  It was a face which, to Yeoman, had come to mean danger and death.

  ‘Do come in, Yeoman, and sit down. These officers, I take it, are Squadron Leaders Wells and Dalton?’

  Yeoman pulled himself together with an effort, and took the proffered hand. The brief clasp was firm and cool.

  ‘Yes, sir. Gentlemen, this is Air Commodore Sampson. We are old … acquaintances.’

  Sampson detected the slight hesitation and smiled. ‘Just plain Sampson these days, Yeoman,’ he said. ‘How long has it been since we last met?’

  Yeoman was aware that Sampson knew perfectly well how long it had been. Nevertheless, he said, ‘Twelve years, sir. 1944. When we — ’

  His voice trailed away and Sampson nodded slowly, finishing the sentence for him. ‘When your Mosquitoes had to do a number of unpleasant jobs, and suffered heavy losses in the process, in carrying out my orders. Or rather, orders passed on by me on behalf of certain others.’

  Sampson looked at Yeoman levelly. Even now, there were certain things Yeoman did not know about those operations. How the Mosquitoes had been ordered to attack targets connected with Germany’s race to produce an atomic bomb — and how Yeoman’s squadron had almost killed a key Special Operations Executive agent, an American woman who had made contact with several German atomic scientists who no longer wished to work for Nazi Germany. She, and they, had miraculously escaped from a house in the little German village of Berge, pulverized by the bombs of Yeoman’s Mosquitoes only hours later.

  The name of that woman, now, was Julia Yeoman.

  Sampson sat back suddenly and folded his arms. ‘Well, Yeoman. Civilian or not, it may come as no surprise to you that I still have a part to play in a certain organization. And I must tell you straight away that we have another job for you to do.’

  Yeoman felt his heart drop into his shoes. Thinking of Julia, his family, he suddenly remembered his age: thirty-six years old, an age when most men were safe and secure in some profession or other, and enjoying weekend outings with their families. He made no comment, waiting to see what was coming next, but his heart thumped uncomfortably.

  Sampson stretched out a finger and pressed the buzzer of a desk-top intercom. A metallic voice answered his call, and he instructed it to bring some tea.

  ‘Oh,’ he added, as if it were an afterthought, ‘and send in Colonel Al-Saleh, would you?’

  A few moments later, the door opened and a man entered the room. He wore a crumpled khaki uniform and an Arab headdress, and his face was a picture of inner pain and weariness. He badly needed a shave.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Sampson, ‘allow me to introduce Colonel Ibrahim Al-Saleh, principal military aide to the Sultan of Muramshir.’

  The colonel shook hands with each of the RAF officers, giving a small, courteous bow as he did so, and lowered himself into the chair indicated by Sampson. When he spoke, Yeoman noticed that it was with a slight American accent.

  ‘Please forgive my appearance, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I have not slept for two days, since my country came under attack. It has all been so — ’

  Sampson held up a polite hand, interrupting him. ‘Perhaps, Colonel, since time is vitally important, we had better start at the beginning.’ He turned to address Yeoman.

  ‘You are familiar with the Sultanate of Muramshir, I take it?’ Yeoman stretched his mind to recall the geography of the Persian Gulf area, and nodded.

  ‘I know of it, of course,’ he said, ‘although I’ve never been there. Haven’t we got some kind of treaty with the Sultan?’

  ‘That’s right. Muramshir is a developing country, and one of our companies — a joint Anglo-American venture — has the oil concessions there. It’s only recently that oil was discovered in that particular area, and in return for working the oilfield we have a pact to defend Muramshiri territory in the event of outside aggression.’

  Sampson paused briefly and looked sideways at Al-Saleh, who was in danger of nodding off to sleep, then continued: ‘Well, that aggression has come. Forty-eight hours ago, paratroop and commando forces from the neighbouring state of Khorat launched a surprise attack on Muramshir and seized the oil installations some 250 miles in the interior. By the following morning, they had been reinforced by an armoured column. They were able to accomplish all this, it seems, without any opposition. Colonel?’

  Al-Saleh sat upright in his chair with a start and passed a hand wearily over his eyes. ‘It is true,’ he told them. ‘The Khoratis attacked our border posts in the night and annihilated the defenders before they could send out any warning by radio. After that, seizure of the oilfi
eld must have been a relatively simple operation.’

  The colonel spread his hands wide, then continued: ‘The surprise was so complete that it was many hours before we could assemble a fighting force to engage the enemy. It reached the oilfield yesterday, at dawn, and was met in the open desert by Khorati tanks.’ He bowed his head and his voice became scarcely more than a whisper. ‘Our armour consisted only of a few scout cars; the Khoratis had Russian T-34 tanks. The outcome was inevitable. Our force was routed, with terrible losses. By this time, we had already sent a plea for help to the government of the United Kingdom, and I was instructed by the Sultan to fly here, to Cyprus, via Iran and Turkey to find out what form that help might take.’ Al-Saleh was almost in tears. ‘My poor country is in danger of extinction, gentlemen,’ he whispered. ‘We beg you to do what you can.’

  Sampson cleared his throat, as though embarrassed to witness the depth of the colonel’s feelings. It was Yeoman who broke the silence.

  ‘Do we know why the Khoratis have launched this invasion?’ He wanted to know.

  ‘The reason, on the surface at least, appears to be that Muramshir has oil and they do not,’ Sampson answered. ‘However, we know for a fact that there is much more to the story than that.’

  He placed his fingertips together, and his eyes took on the hard look that Yeoman had seen years before.

  ‘A few days ago,’ he continued, ‘we sent out a PR Canberra to investigate rumours of a large build-up of Soviet equipment in Khorat. We know that two large airfields, capable of operating the latest Soviet combat aircraft, have been under construction. Anyhow, the Canberra failed to return. We sent out another one twenty-four hours later, and that failed to return too.’

  He reached out for a large buff envelope that lay on his desk, and extracted some photographs from it, handing them to Yeoman. They had obviously been taken in daylight, and showed detail with astonishing clarity. There were three or four shots of an air field, and Yeoman recognized the aircraft on it as Russian MiG-15s. Other photographs depicted a second airfield under construction, concentrations of armoured vehicles, and several installations which Yeoman took to be radar.

  ‘We asked our American friends in Turkey if they could help,’ Sampson explained, ‘and this is what they came up with. They did quite a good job, don’t you think?’

  ‘If we lost two Canberras, presumably at night, how did the Americans manage to get away with this in daylight?’ Yeoman asked.

  ‘Because the photographs were taken from an altitude of seventy thousand feet,’ Sampson told him matter-of-factly.

  The information did not immediately sink in. ‘I see,’ Yeoman said, musing over the prints. Then, suddenly, he stared at Sampson in amazement.

  ‘Did you say seventy thousand feet?’

  The other nodded. ‘That’s right. The Americans have a new reconnaissance aircraft which can fly that high, and probably higher. It’s so secret they won’t talk about it, but apparently it’s been fully operational for several months. Anyway, the information it brought back confirmed our suspicions. The problem, you see, has been that we’ve had no contact whatsoever with Khorat since the military coup, so it’s been almost impossible to get intelligence out of the country.’

  He leaned forward and tapped one of the prints Yeoman had laid back on the desk top. ‘There’s something else,’ he continued. ‘I want you to look at this photograph again.’

  Yeoman picked it up. It was one of the shots of the operational airfield.

  ‘Never mind the field itself,’ Sampson told him. ‘Look in the desert area, about a mile from the perimeter, and you’ll see half a dozen dark circles situated at regular intervals.’

  Yeoman peered at them. They were easy to spot, looking like black pennies laid on the face of the desert. Each one had a slightly brighter object at its centre, and there was a hut of some sort close by.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked.

  Sampson pursed his lips before answering. ‘We think they are surface-to-air missiles of Soviet design. A preliminary analysis indicates that they may be comparable to the American Nike Ajax, which recently came into service around key sites in the USA. If this is so, they are likely to have a range of something like twenty miles and a speed of Mach 2. The adjacent buildings, we believe, may house the radar tracking system for each weapon.’

  ‘I didn’t know the Russians had anything like this,’ Yeoman commented, passing the photograph to Wells.

  ‘Neither did we,’ said Sampson. ‘It’s rather alarming, because if these weapons are in production it means that the Russians now have the capability to knock down any strategic bomber the West possesses.’

  ‘Do you think that these missiles accounted for the two missing Canberras, sir?’ Dalton enquired.

  ‘It’s highly probable,’ Sampson admitted. ‘The MiGs shown on the photos are not night-fighters; they might have been able to get one Canberra by pure luck, but not two in quick succession.’

  ‘I still don’t see why the Russians should choose to place their latest missiles around an airfield in Khorat,’ Yeoman said.

  ‘I was coming to that. The only possible reason is that the weapons are not yet fully operational, and the Russians want to test them under combat conditions, as nearly as possible. It’s all part of a big jigsaw puzzle, a sort of intelligence nightmare which we are only just beginning to piece together.’

  Sampson opened a folder and looked at its contents. ‘Let me explain what I mean,’ he went on. ‘Here are just a few of the intelligence indications which have come in since the start of Operation Musketeer.’ He detailed them emphasizing each point with a jab of his index finger.

  ‘One. Since 2 November, there have been reports of a massive build-up of Soviet arms in Syria. The CCFO — that’s the Commandant en Chef des Forces Françaises d’Orient — was informed by GHQ in Paris that the Syrian Government had declared a state of emergency and that foreign aircraft were forbidden to fly over Syria until further notice. A second report states that Soviet freighters have since unloaded a hundred tanks and a hundred artillery pieces at the Syrian port of Latakia.

  ‘Two. At 1422 hours on 6 November, a signal reached Allied Command here in Cyprus from NATO Supreme Command in Europe that Soviet jet traffic, apparently heading for Syria or a destination farther south — that is my own emphasis — had been detected overflying Turkish air space at high altitude. The Turkish Air Force was placed on full alert.

  ‘Three. At 1500 hours yesterday the French Defence Department received intelligence that six Russian submarines had been sighted on the approaches to Alexandria, and forty minutes later an urgent signal arrived at Episkopi from London stating that the Soviet Union might be preparing to enter the Middle East arena using force. Our fleet commanders have been warned to prepare their warships for possible defensive and offensive action against Soviet aircraft and warships. Will that do to be going on with?’

  ‘Good God.’ Yeoman had a sudden vision of Julia and the children, at the moment secure in their comfortable married quarter at Rheinbrücken. He shuddered to think of their fate, if the Middle East operation flared into all-out war and Soviet tanks burst into western Europe.

  Sampson seemed to sense what his thoughts were.

  ‘Let me hasten to add,’ he said, ‘that we are quite convinced the Russians are bluffing. They are far too preoccupied with the situation in Hungary to risk an all-out confrontation with the West. Their present military movements are designed to shift attention away from the Hungarian business.’ He paused, his brow wrinkled thoughtfully, then went on: ‘However, there is one area where they may be trying to provoke a conflict on a limited scale, to see what our reaction will be.’

  ‘Muramshir.’ It was a statement, rather than a question, from Yeoman. Sampson nodded.

  ‘Yes. The Russians are not really interested in Muramshir’s oil, but they have given their backing to General Orabi, who is Khorat’s military dictator. The fellow doesn’t realize that he’s no more
than a pawn in the overall plan. The Russians want bases in the Persian Gulf — bases that will give them an outlet to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. The establishment of Soviet-dominated bases in Syria is aimed at pushing down to the Gulf from the landward side; they’ll bring pressure to bear on Iraq, next, and once they have a foothold there their northern access route to the Gulf will be all sewn up.’

  He turned once more to the weary Colonel Al-Saleh, who appeared to have revived a little.

  ‘Colonel, you have seen the situation at first hand. What do you think will happen next?’

  Al-Saleh shrugged. ‘It is hard to say. The Khoratis seem content, for the time being at least, to consolidate their positions around the oilfield. I do not think they will push southwards and try to occupy the whole country yet — although, God knows, they could do it easily enough.’

  Sampson nodded in agreement. ‘Exactly. So, why are the Khoratis not driving south in a bid to exploit their success? Because someone has told them to stay put, that’s why. And I’m prepared to bet that the someone is a high-ranking Soviet adviser who is pulling the strings up Orabi’s back.’

  ‘It looks, then, as though they are going to sit tight and wait to see what we’ll do,’ Yeoman commented.

  ‘That seems to be the general idea. If we intervene against Khorat on Muramshir’s behalf, it will give the Russians a pretext to come in on the Khorati side “in the interests of stablizing the situation in the Gulf”, as they would no doubt glibly phrase it. On the other hand, if we do nothing but express sympathy, it will mean handing Muramshir to the Khoratis — and therefore to the Russians — on a plate. So we’ll end up with a big Soviet military presence right in the middle of the Gulf area, with Kuwait to the north, Muscat and Oman to the south, Iran to the east and Saudi Arabia to the west. It’ll be a readymade springboard for more rapid expansion.’