At least, for a few more minutes…
There was a near impenetrable smoky haze across much of the anchorage; so much for the meteorologists promise of a lovely clear morning!
And then he saw it.
The same Mainz class cruiser that was supposed to be tidily moored alongside the German wharf in the inner bay, meekly, unknowingly awaiting her fate.
Instead, she was in the main channel, heading for the open sea.
And…
She was shooting at the Dominicans!
Alex realised instantly that the haze was the cruiser making smoke.
He kicked the rudder pedals, and without consciously thinking about it began to climb into a wide circle over where, hidden in the murk, the German Concession lay.
The cruiser’s forward turret spat fire to the right; moments later her aft guns blazed away at targets to the left as the ship began to turn to the north for the final run for the open sea. There was a fire somewhere near the ship’s bow, another amidships, belching black smoke and even as he snapped his eyes away for a lightning check of his cockpit instrumentation, he saw at least two shells smash into the ship as countless near misses threw up a sudden forest of water spouts around her stern.
There was oil streaking the water in her wake and she was steaming very, very slowly… before the haze hid her from view.
All this he saw, parsed using a fraction of his mental capacities as he flew the Goshawk, weighing odds, intuitively joining-up the pieces of the jigsaw. In the heat of battle a thing was usually what it seemed to be. When the bullets were flying all around one, the time for artifice, clever stratagems and slights of hand were over.
He opened the command channel.
“BAD BOY ONE TO NAUGHTY CHILDREN!”
He paused.
“BAD BOY ONE TO NAUGHTY CHILDREN!”
Another pause.
This needed to be succinct; unambiguous.
“HERE THIS! HERE THIS! ONE MAINZ CLASS CRUISER ATTEMPTING TO ESCAPE, REPEAT, ESCAPE FROM THE PORT. THIS SHIP IS CURRENTLY ENGAGING SHORE TARGETS. DO NOT ATTACK THIS SHIP. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ENGAGE THIS SHIP. ALL OTHER OPERATIONS WILL PROCEED AS PLANNED. TALLY HO! TALLY HO! BAD BOY ONE OUT!”
He waited for his Squadron Commanders to tersely confirm receipt of his orders, each snapping back an affirmative, their call sign and calling a terse ‘OUT’ in the designated sequence so they did not jam each other’s transmits.
Alex switched to the Princess Royal’s circuit.
He guessed that if the German cruiser did not sink in the main channel first, she would reach the sea within the next twenty minutes. In which event he would leave her to the ‘big boys’ out at sea.
“Roger to that, Bad Boy One,” a laconic voice confirmed, “we’ll deal with her when we’ve got a moment. Out.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind Alex recollected that the Task Force Commander had mentioned the need for a secondary ‘gunfire support plan’ just in case the gun line’s objectives had to be modified during Operation East Wind.
There were plenty of targets around San Juan Bay…
Alex had climbed back up to about eight thousand feet when the first Sea Eagles began to swoop onto the dockyards on San Juan Island. Other Sea Eagles, torpedoes slung under their bellies raced in from the east, squashing down low over the inner bay, their fish splashing into the water heading for the merchantmen and small warships moored to the north and alongside the naval and civilian piers.
High overhead a flock of Goshawks patrolled; others would already be strafing the aerodrome to the east.
Alex banked his Goshawk, and tried to establish if the German cruiser was still under its own steam. To his surprise it was almost at the neck of the bay and nobody seemed to be shooting at it now.
He forgot about the ship.
The dockyards were rapidly disappearing under billowing clouds of smoke and dust, there were new, very big fires burning along the shore of the bay. To the east great eruptions pocked the crowded city streets and plaza to the south east.
Time was telescoping.
Huge explosions walked across the western edge of the inner bay where, presumably, the port and headquarters of the German Concession lay.
Although here and there tracer climbed aimlessly through the clouds of destruction, to all intents the defenders had stopped fighting back.
There were no Dominican scouts struggling for altitude to distract the carrier-borne air fleet.
The enemy had been caught with his pants proverbially, around his ankles!
It was pure murder even before Alex summoned the bulk of his thus far, unengaged Goshawks of the high cover squadron, to fall upon the now defenceless airfield to the east of the burning city.
Far out at sea the livid flash of either the Princess Royal’s or the Indefatigable’s broadsides lit the now fast-brightening northern horizon.
Pure bloody murder…
Chapter 37
Monday 8th May
Viano do Castelo, Portugal
“Alonso has to make some phone calls,” Henrietta De L’Isle murmured, blushing deeply as she entered the small, private dining room where Melody, with Pedro on her lap happily spreading butter, egg and breadcrumbs over himself and his other ‘Mama’, were breakfasting.
On mornings such as this Melody could not stop herself feeling just a little bit… maternal. That was nice, every now and again but she knew it would soon get old if she had to do it every day. It had been fun despatching Henrietta to her fate yesterday evening, and when neither her friend or Alonso had appeared for dinner last night, she had known that ‘the big gamble’ had paid off.
That was fine.
Better than ‘fine’, in fact; and she had had Pedro to herself. Granted, it had seemed a little odd bathing him without Hen in the bath, too. Later, reading to him in patient, indulgent Castilian from one of the books of nursery rhymes Hen had acquired in her absence had been blissful. The boy had listened with rapt fascination, and slept like a little angel in her arms all night.
Henrietta had reported that his nightmares were going away.
That too, was good.
And as for the flush of guilty embarrassment on her friend’s face when she finally made an appearance that morning, well, that had been exquisite.
There was nothing like knowing a plan had come together like a dream!
That was not to say that Melody had not experienced a brief pang of selfish, somewhat adolescent angst in acknowledging the new reality of their lives. In the future, she and Henrietta would be friends first, not lovers, or at least, that was what she had reconciled herself to; that being the worst-case scenario, etcetera.
Henrietta was wearing a cotton frock which reflected her sunny mood, and that revealed her shoulders and arms and a discreet suggestion of cleavage.
She kissed the top of Pedro’s head, and then Melody’s cheek, her lips touching the side of her mouth, and lingering a moment.
“Did you sleep well, dear?” Melody asked mischievously.
“Eventually,” Henrietta giggled.
Melody waited expectantly.
“It was completely lovely, actually,” the younger woman confessed, avoiding Melody’s gaze.
“And?”
Henrietta’s expression was, momentarily, confused.
“Oh,” she sighed, recognition dawning. “Er, that’s what one of the telephone calls is about. Alonso’s mother’s engagement ring is in a deposit box in a vault in a bank in Lisbon. He’s getting one of his arms men to bring it here.”