Drummond raised his glasses and watched the lean flotilla leader as she steamed from behind the landspit. How clean she looked in the dull light. There were the others following astern. Whiplash, Victor, and slightly further back the heavily laden Whirlpool. Their people would be watching, he thought bitterly. Studying the splinter holes, expecting Waxwing to appear at the end of the fjord.
He said, “Make to Lomond. We are passing within range of battery to starboard. Suggest increased speed, and make smoke.”
He heard the lamp clattering, and turned to see a man throw a bundle over the ship’s side and into the wash.
Sheridan said dully, “A man’s arm. It had to come off.” Drummond turned to watch the other destroyers. A light was blinking back across the water.
“To Warlock, sir. Operation well executed. Rio sign of major enemy unit. Discontinue the action.”
Wingate said quietly, “Well, for Christ’s sake.” Drummond looked at him impassively. “What are you? A bloody expert?”
The navigator leaned against the side, his arm smearing against some drying blood.
“Sorry, sir.”
There was a hollow boom, followed quickly by a bright flash on the starboard bow. Drummond watched the falling curtain of spray. Just to show us they mean business. But they had fired too soon. It gave Rankin time to adjust his defences. Galbraith’s would be more reliable in this case.
“Tell the chief. Make smoke.”
‘Char, sir.’
Owles was staring at him, holding out a great mug of tea. He stooped down and eased off Drummond’s sea boot. It was sodden with blood.
“Can’t ‘ave this, sir.” He shook his head, oblivious to the repeated boom from the shore battery, the choking smoke from both funnels. “Won’t do at all, sir.”
“From Lomond, sir. Increase to maximum speed.”
Drummond massaged his forehead as another heavy shell exploded nearer to the starboard bow. High trajectory. Must be fired from the far side of the island. There was still hope. Not much, but …
He pounded the teak rail with his fist, not seeing Owles’ anxiety as he bandaged the deep cut on his leg, nor Sheridan’s look of despair. Come on, old girl, come on! He heard Wingate’s voice, level and precise as he spoke to the engine room, the responding increase of jerks and rattles as the ship worked steadily up to her full revolutions.
He trained his glasses abeam, wincing as the pain in his leg became a reality. There was Lomond, making a fine sight as she plunged through the spray and spindrift from her own bow wave. He thought of Waxwing, of Archer, the unknown intelligence man, the little Norwegian fishing boat which had tried to help. The Resistance men who had done their part with complete courage and self-sacrifice. Long before those fires abated, or the wrecked midget submarines were salvaged, there would be many people clinging together in their homes. Waiting in dread for the knock on the door. The black uniforms. The agony.
And all the while Beaumont had stayed out of it.
If he lived through the next few days, Drummond was determined of one thing. To discover the truth about Beaumont. Once and for all.
“Both engines full ahead, sir. Course three-three-zero.”
Hillier got to his feet and lurched slowly to the shattered screen. He said, “That was the best cup of tea I’ve ever had in my life.”
The intercom intoned sharply, “Aircraft. Red one-one-oh. Angle of sight two-oh.”
The guns were already swinging round, sniffing at the air.
Drummond bit on his pipe, following the guns with his binoculars. There they were. Like little silver darts above the humps of land.
“Barrage … commence!”
The after guns fired first, joining with Ventnoras she opened fire at extreme range, the little brown puffs of smoke dispersing gently across the planes’ line of flight.
Rankin said, “Six aircraft. 88’s by the look of ‘em.” He had left his switch down. “Well, here we go, my little ones! A doll for the pretty lady who hits the target!”
Drummond looked down as Owles dragged his torn boot into place.
“Thanks for the tea. Now go and get out of sight.”
The rest was lost and forgotten as the other weapons rattled and cracked into life.
Here they come.
Drummond watched the leading aircraft, imagined the pilot between those twin gleaming arcs of his propellers. Like his companions, he would have been sleeping. Safe from the convoys, from the Russian front, from everything.
Now he was up there, flying in deadly earnest.
He thrust the pipe into his pocket and said, “So let’s see what you’re made of!”
13
That Bloody Hell
When they were level with the nearest line of hills, the aircraft swung in two separate arcs, three in each wing of the attack. Drummond watched them warily, noting the way that the leader of the nearest group was waggling his wings, gaining height, with the watery sunlight behind him.
The barrage increased as Lomond and the rest joined. Crump … crump … crump. The sky was dirty with brown puffs of smoke. Rankin had been right. They were Junkers 88’s. Twinengined, and the largest of the German dive-bombers. He was picturing them in his mind as if studying the recognition diagram in the chart room. Two hundred and eighty-five miles an hour, and highly manoeuvrable.
He held his breath as the leader he had been watching put his plane into a steep dive. Even above the roar of fans and the protests from the vibrating bridge structure he heard the rising whine of those engines. Only when the gunfire blotted out all other sound did the aircraft become less real, less hostile.
He imagined the pilot, his whole being screwed in tight concentration on the destroyer which was leaping up into his sights.
The Ventnor needed no additional warning, and was putting up everything she had, even light machine guns, which were making delicate threads of tracer across the German’s wafer outline.
He saw the glint of metal as the bombs tumbled from the plane’s belly, shared the agonising wait until the waterspouts exploded in a ragged line, the end of which was almost alongside the heeling destroyer. He heard the last bang, the telltale clatter of steel as the splinters smashed through Ventnor’s hull plating.
The bomber was already clawing out of her dive, pulling and circling away for her next attack. This time she would use her other bomb load beneath each wing. As it flashed across Warlock’s stern the dive-bomber opened fire with her machine guns. From its bulbous canopy to the extra gun which poked from its curved belly, the tracer rattled viciously, making dancing patterns across the water before clashing over the quarterdeck and beyond.
Wingate yelled, “Here come our three!”
The deck jerked violently as the other bombers screeched into the attack. Every gun was firing with barely a break, the empty shell cases clanging unheeded around the crews’ straddled legs, the automatic weapons cracking more sharply, scraping the inside of the mind as first one and then a second shadow swept right above the ship.
“Hard a-starboard!”
Drummond saw water rising to meet the onrushing ship, felt the body-blow of a bomb bursting close to the hull. More splinters, and somewhere a man screaming like an injured animal.
“A hit! Got the sod!”
The second bomber lifted on its tail, smoke funnelling out of its fuselage where it joined one of the wings. A flash, something black whirling into space, and then the plane fell apart, the pieces splashing in a diagonal trail and almost as far as Lomond.
“Cease firing!”
Drummond ignored the harsh shouts and concentrated on the pelorus sight above the gyro.
“Starboard fifteen.”
He heard the bombers’ engines growling in the distance. Gathering their strength. Licking wounds. “Midships. Steady.”