‘Drop, drop, drop!’ Dunker was yelling to 819 who at two hundred feet was lunging into the attack. The glistening torpedo seemed to float downwards … then Hob saw the splash where it parted the waters.
‘Hob!’ Grog shouted, deafening the earphones as he jabbed at the port window.
Then Hob saw the danger: Brazen’s foxer was directly below the cab. Four faint traces were streaking towards the decoy, four torpedoes in echelon, each packed with HE in its snout.
‘Cut the ball!’ Hob ordered. ‘Hold tight.’ He switched to manual and grabbed the collective. ‘We’re getting out.’
He felt the jolt when Wally fired the explosive cutter. The cab lurched to port, the first torpedo exploding as it homed on to the foxer beneath them. The helicopter was hurled upwards, caught at the edge of the pyramid of heaving water spouting skywards from the surface of the sea.
There was a shattering bang from aft. The tail had gone. Hob wrenched at the cyclic as the cab began gyrating downwards, out of control.
‘Brace … brace … brace…’ he yelled as he stiffened his muscles.
There was a pulverizing shock, thumping the breath from his lungs, as the machine crashed into the undulating swell. Dunker shouted from the back: ‘Wally’s hurt!’ Grog was gasping too: he had been caught trying to get back into his seat, his harness unlocked, as he leaned forwards to manipulate the controls.
Hob, a sharp pain in his back, realized that the cab was not, after all, turning upside down. He had been about to stop the engines and brake the rotors, but the cab was floating and appeared to be taking up a steep bow-up angle.
‘Water’s flooding in at the back,’ Dunker yelled.
‘Abandon!’ Hob yelled. ‘Get Wally out through the rear door.’
Hob felt Grog’s boot on his shoulder as he thrust to escape through the port window.
‘Door’s open,’ Dunker yelled. ‘Wally’s out.’
While Dunker followed the injured aircrewman into the heaving sea, Hob felt two distinct thuds. Then, a split second later, another rumbling explosion clanging against the bottom of the helicopter’s hull. The cab heaved suddenly and wallowed uncontrollably as Brazen’s wash hit her. She was tilting backwards, pitching dangerously, until Hob feared for the rotor tips. He cut both engines and banged the explosive button for the flotation bags. He slipped his harness and was about to bash his elbow against his escape window, when it suddenly dawned on him that the cab was no longer sinking. Miraculously, she was still the right way up. The crew were clear and he was still alive. ‘Panic not, Gamble,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Stay with the aircraft and you’ll be all right.’ He remained in his seat and waited.
Sea King 819 picked up Grog Peterson. 849 recovered the injured Wally and Dunker. Ten minutes later, Hob watched Brazen drifting down towards his stricken chopper. The pain in his back had eased and he climbed out to fix the slings.
The machine was hauled from the water but was kept awash until it could be transferred to Oileus’ big hoists. Balancing abaft the after slings, Hob saw 819 and 849 hovering not far distant and, etched against the horizon, the upperworks of Furious. A bowline flopped across his shoulders and he was soon being hoisted up the sheer side of the wallowing frigate. They helped him across the scuppers and hauled him to his feet. Hob’s back ached and he was trembling with cold.
Someone supported him when he swayed for a moment, staggering against the rolling of the ship. His sodden clothes dripped and a pool of water formed slowly around his flying-boots.
A wardroom steward stepped forward, a shining tray balanced in his hand, his face bland:
‘Ginger ale in your brandy, sir?’
The first lieutenant was waiting for Hob to down the neat spirit.
‘I’ll take you up to the captain.’
He led the way for’d along the iron deck. As they paused by the screen door, Hob paused to glance down again at his helicopter, a feeling of regret sweeping over him as he regarded his bent and twisted machine. He was surprised to see a spurt of white smoke puffing through the windows, followed by an orange glow, and then crimson tongues of flame. In seconds, an intense fire was raging from somewhere inside the stricken cab.
The seamen walked back on the recovery wire and dunked the helicopter back into the sea until the fire had burnt itself out…
After all he had done, the valuable Sea King was out of this war for a long time to come. Helped by the first lieutenant, Hob hauled himself slowly up to Brazen’s bridge to report to her captain. It was then that he remembered he had failed to ditch the pyrotechnics.
Chapter 10
The man in the upper of the four bunks gave a cry, threshed with his legs until the screening curtain quivered, then uttered a long, despairing groan.
‘For Pete’s sake,’ a voice in 4N8 mess blurted in exasperation from the bottom bunk in the dark corner. ‘Belt up, Osgood.’
The dreamer in the top bunk was aware only of a distant cry from somewhere, far distant. He flung himself on to his other side to face the steel bulkhead.
Sweating, he tossed the blanket from him, hearing briefly the background whirr of the fans and the huffing from the louvres in the ventilation trunking. Osgood sighed and tried to resist the images weaving through his tormented sleep…
Gwen’s eyes were glistening marbles, the irises dark and pulsating with terror.
Her brown hair was streaming behind her in the wind, and her mouth was parted as she “gasped for breath. Stumbling, running, but never approaching closer, her hands reached out to him, the long fingers mutilated, the nails torn, oozing blood at the quicks. Behind her, clouds raced before the gales blowing across the Yelverton moors. A high rise tower block jerked suddenly and he watched with horror as a zigzag crack developed, slowly at first, then faster, streaking up the sides of the tower until they reached the top. The monstrous building split wide, both sections toppling outwards. The roof collapsed, then slid, slowly at first, gathering momentum before crashing over the edge of the crumbling edifice. Slowly the two halves opened, curving like the flare in a carrier’s bows; the sides seemed to float downwards in slow motion and as the mass of rubble disintegrated into a billowing mushroom of dirt and dust, he heard Gwen’s voice, small and shrill. Her image. blurred and he couldn’t distinguish her now from the others, multitudes of them, stumbling frenziedly as they ran-but the distance remained the same, never diminishing, though his lungs were bursting as he charged after them. He gasped out loud.
‘… at 1630,’ Osgood heard vaguely, as he surfaced from his nightmare, ‘lower deck will be cleaned in half-an-hour’s time.’
Osgood lay motionless, smelling the staleness of an overcrowded mess; he felt someone thump the side of his bunk.
‘C’mon,’ a voice croaked like a nutmeg grater. ‘You’re not in small ships now, Aircrewman Osgood.’
Osgood recognized the voice: Petty Officer Kotta, their divisional PO, was, as Osgood’s messmates had already warned him, a bastard. 4N8, the leading hands’ overflow mess since the squadron joined, was anathema to the PO. It was out of the way, too full of senior leading hands and other odds and sods. Osgood had sensed the rottenness of the mess from the moment he joined. He wiped the palm of his hand over his sticky face, glad to be free of his nightmare.
‘Old Fury’, as they called her, was somewhere to the west of Land’s End; her ancient engines were pounding away, driving her towards her rendezvous with the convoy — Osgood still had no clear idea of the rendezvous position, though Toastie Cole, the mess cleaner, volunteered that a track chart was displayed on the notice board.