Culdrose was still miles ahead but his bleeper was sounding in his pocket. He put his foot down: he would be late for the briefing if he didn’t shift a bit — He couldn’t help thinking about Allie, three months pregnant now; that made the birth due this October, didn’t it? And he grinned stupidly as he turned down to the town and Penzance.
Allie’s face, beloved above all others — nothing particularly beautiful in a conventional way, but unique with her elf-like, elusive charm: the tiny pointed chin and the hazel eyes in her pale, serene face contrasted with her black hair and clearly reflected her character.
Hob Gamble still had a grin on his face as he slammed his car door and hurried into 814’s block. The briefing had already begun and the senior pilot’s scowl was not the most welcoming. The rest of the crew were already in their flying gear.
‘I’ll repeat the weather for you, Lieutenant Gamble,’ the senior pilot said. Hob jotted down the details: deteriorating, but vis. ought to be holding for an hour or two, if fog did not clamp down when the warm air stream crossed the Atlantic coast. ‘We’ve had to bring your Sea King forward as the standby SAR, Hob, because things are getting out of hand a bit.’
Gamble nodded: they’d rather have something to do than wait for the First Sea Lord’s inspection which was disrupting flying training this forenoon. The duty Wessex was already out on search-and-rescue and Wessex 779 was standing by to pick up the First Sea Lord from Redruth.
‘That’s all,’ the senior pilot concluded. ‘You can start your pre-flight checks and drills as soon as you’ve manned your aircraft.’
Hob hurried down to the changing-room, where he put on his flying and survival gear, his crew lounging around him, their bone domes in their hands. Hob listened in silence to his crew: the second pilot, a young sub training for front-line; the observer, a trained SAR diver but still not front-line; and Hermann, the ginger-haired, burly West German aircrewman on loan through Nato.
Hob moved out on to the tarmac. They followed him, strapping their helmets as they approached the huge helicopter, ten tons of complicated machinery and electronics with its twin Rolls-Royce Gnome engines. Hob gave his customary visual check: the naval blue paint of the cab gleamed in the fitful April sunlight, the number 827 and the snarling tiger’s head of 814 Squadron showed starkly on the side of the fuselage. The yellow tenders stood clear to the side where the engineers were waiting — with over three hundred technicians to keep these helos in the air, Hob never felt uneasy about the quality of maintenance a factor which did concern the flyers. There was a rocklike thoroughness about the air engineering department.
They climbed on board, strapped in and went through their pre-take-off checks.
Hob allowed the sub to do the work.
‘All ready in the back?’ Hob was asking the observer and aircrewman, when the sub chipped in:
‘The whanger’s going, Hob. Scramble!’
The duty coastguard officer in the crewroom had received a report from Black Head that a child with a dog in an inflatable canoe were in difficulties off Hyrlas Rock.
The brief details came in as Hob lifted 827 swiftly, swooping left across the airfield. As he climbed to two hundred feet, the emerald green of the turf dividing the concrete runways of the airfield began to merge with the haphazard fields of Cornwall. A map reference of the incident was passed to the observer, and then Hob was heading for Goonhilly which was already showing up to the south-east. Normally, the Kilcobben Cove lifeboat under the Lizard would have been called, but the Black Head coastguard had already alerted Culdrose that minutes would count. The child was being blown into the confused water off the point, where the tidal stream was running hard.
‘There it is!’
The sub had spotted the craft, a blue and red object bobbing in the breaking seas between Hyrlas Rock and the cliffs of the black islet encircled by the swirling, frothing seas. Hob began to take 827 down into the hover.
‘All ready in the back.’ Hermann croaked through the intercom: ‘Opening the door.’
The drill continued, the results of months of training in automatic response to emergency, each man concentrating on his own task. Hob was watching the cliff, one eye on his lateral drift, the other on his heading.
‘Twenty feet,’ the sub called.
The observer had left his seat to man the winch. Hermann was already in the sling and was sitting on the lip of the door.
‘Right two … back one … steady…’
The crisp directions from the observer conned Hob directly above the casualty, while Hermann was lowered on the wire. Hob kept his eyes fixed on his marks ahead, his fingers caressing the collective. The sub in the second pilot’s seat was doing well, calmly monitoring the readings.
‘Up three … that’s good … steady … steady.’
Hob could only guess at what was going on twenty feet below in those galloping waves; with each minute, 827 was drifting down upon the outlying islet. Hob would have to lift her soon or the blades would be at risk. These two-hundred-foot winch wires were good news, providing he could plumb the casualty.
‘Hooked on.’ The observer could not conceal the tension in his voice.
‘Hoisting.’
It seemed ages before they rumpled the pathetic little figure over the lip of the door. From the terse snippets through the intercom, Hob heard that the observer was giving the girl expelled air resuscitation.
‘She’s alive, but only just,’ the observer reported a few minutes later. ‘Her puppy’s still in the canoe.’
Hob was tense, watching the jagged needles of the rock-face creeping nearer. A cloud of gulls shivered against the ironstone, their squawking protestations inaudible from where Hob sat immobile inside his perspex cockpit. All depended upon the speed of the winchman, and the relative value of a puppy’s life against Ł2 1/2 millions’ worth of chopper and five lives.
‘Go to the back,’ Hob said to the second pilot. ‘I’ve got her.’ Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed the sub unsnapping his harness, then picking his way though the maze of sensitive controls as if he was tiptoeing across red-hot needles. Half a minute later, the observer was crouching over his unconscious patient, while the sub lowered Hermann; less than a minute, and the puppy was recovered. The blade tips seemed to be scraping the tufts of sea pinks which sprinkled the gull colony. The observer shouted, hurting Hob’s ears: ‘That’s it, Hob. Both inboard. Shutting the door.’
Hob Gamble eased the cab to seaward, saw the darker blue of the deeper water gliding beneath his feet. He gently pulled her up to fifty feet, then waited for them in the back to sort themselves out and the second pilot to regain his seat.
As soon as the observer had given a heading Sea King 827 was on her way, forging ahead at 120 knots across the rolling countryside towards Truro.
Apart from the stereotyped drill for conversation, Hob silently coaxed the Sea King to her limits, the machine canted forwards to thrust up Carrick Roads towards the narrowing banks of the River Fal. Then came the rounded, dark woods lapping the muddy banks; the creeks and the fields — and, at last, the buildings of Treliske hospital appeared suddenly in front of him.
He touched down 827 with more of a jolt than usual. The waiting stretchermen took the child away quickly, clamping an oxygen mask over the tiny, blue face.
‘Back to base, Hob,’ the observer reported. ‘We’re wanted on the VIP spot by 1125: you’d better get a shift on.’