The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set
Page 69
The first pair of ships cruised through the breakwaters and Bryan overflew them. The bastions of Valletta’s southern flank rippled with movement as the gathered residents of the battered city waved arms and flags to greet the supply ships.
Bryan banked around the harbour showing his blue underside and flashing its roundels as he swept over the crowds and headed out to sea to cover the other cargo ship’s approach.
Wednesday, 25 March 1942
A grey blanket of low cloud smothered the island and the surrounding sea, processing unbroken to the north-west and confining the defending aircraft to their pens on the ground. The distant drone of high-level engines came and went as small groups of raiders bombed through the clouds, chancing their best guess at where the harbour and its cargo-bearing vessels might lay.
Bryan stood gazing across the runways, shoulders hunched against the stiff breeze and the ambience of chilly gloom that the cloud cover cast across the field.
Copeland strode along the perimeter past him. ‘Fancy a jaunt?’ he called. ‘I’m taking a truck across to Grand Harbour to see if I can track down some spares. I might try to divert something for the mess as well.’
Bryan cast another glance at the gelatinous clouds and hurried after the squadron leader.
Copeland climbed into a battered RAF truck and Bryan swung into the passenger seat beside him. The engine started with a bronchial cough and the truck lurched away through the gates.
‘Only two of the four made it through, then?’ Bryan asked.
‘There’s a third anchored off Marsaxlokk,’ Copeland replied. ‘It’s taken damage to its engine rooms. So, Lord knows what they plan to do with her. The fourth was sunk by dive-bombers fifty miles out.’
‘It’s not a good enough score, is it?’
Copeland shrugged. ‘It’s a high price. But at least half of the supplies are safe. We’ll take a look from the north side and try to work out which docks they’re using for unloading.’
The truck jolted into Valletta and turned onto Lascaris Wharf. They drove past two destroyers docked against the wall. Once beyond the grey bulk of the warships, their view of the harbour opened out and Copeland slowed down and pulled over.
‘What on earth is happening?’ he breathed.
‘Sweet Fanny Adams, by the looks of things,’ Bryan muttered, reaching inside his jacket for his cigarettes.
The two merchant vessels sat anchored in line astern in the centre of Grand Harbour. They both sat low in the water, still bearing the full weight of their cargoes. No boats moved around them and no one worked on their decks. The ships looked abandoned.
‘What madness is this?’ Copeland’s voice resonated with shock and disbelief. ‘Where are the bloody stevedores?’
He crashed the truck into reverse, pulled a ragged three-point turn and roared back the way they had come.
****
Copeland sat at the trestle desk, the intelligence officer stood to one side looking down at his shoes and Bryan sat on the hard, wooden chair in front of the desk, rolling a cigarette around in his fingertips as he listened to the telephone conversation.
‘Well whose responsibility is it?’ Copeland’s brow furrowed with his frustration. ‘I flew cover for those ships as they came in. That was two days ago, and I’d bet my grandmother’s life that not a single stick has been unloaded from them.’
He listened to the voice on the other end of the line, his expression growing darker by the second.
‘That’s as maybe, but here’s what you don’t understand.’ Copeland switched the handset to his other ear and jabbed a paper on the desk with his finger as he spoke. ‘My intelligence officer has just given me a weather report which predicts clearing skies tomorrow. Sixty miles away there are hundreds of German aircraft, with practically unlimited supplies of bombs, whose commanders are probably reading a similar weather report. And’ – his voice dropped a tone – ‘I have five serviceable Spitfires to send up against them.’ Copeland listened in silence to the reply, the distant voice spilling unintelligibly from the receiver like the buzz of an unconcerned insect.
‘Five,’ he repeated, ‘because the spares I need are still on those ships.’
The buzzing insect returned, but Copeland held the handset away from his head, gave it a final sidelong look of contempt and dropped it into its cradle.
‘Apparently one of the ships is full of ammunition; if it blows, it will destroy large parts of Valletta and the docks,’ he said. ‘Best get an early night, gentlemen. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.’
Thursday, 26 March 1942
A group of twelve pilots stood or sat between the small stone buildings that served as their readiness station. The milky dawn back-lit the clouds’ moribund grey and the minutes ticked into hours under their obfuscating protection, accompanied by the fidgeting and coughs of the men smoking nervously under the sagging camouflage netting.
At last, the edges of the grey blanket frayed and alabaster shafts of light punctured the pearly ceiling. Bryan glanced at his watch; twenty minutes to ten. He turned to gaze at the telephone sitting in its cradle. The orderly at the table followed his look and jumped as the bell jangled into life. The man recovered himself and snatched the handset up halfway through the second ring. Bryan watched him and wondered idly why orderlies always nodded in silence as they listened to disembodied instructions.
The man let the handset drop away from his ear, clutching it protectively to his chest as he took a deep breath. ‘Large raid building over Sicily. Scramble, all aircraft.’
Bryan loped down the slope after Copeland, Ben and two other pilots trotted with him. The reserve pilots watched them go, a nauseous mix of envy and relief jumbled in their faces.
Engines barked into life ahead of the running men, swirling grit into the air as they arrived at their fighters. They pulled on parachute packs and clambered into cockpits. Minutes later, they taxied onto the runway and, one by one, clawed their way into the air, banking south-east to gain altitude down the island’s backbone.
The clouds tore and tattered like sullied snow melting on a corrugated roof, exposing long fingers of pale blue sky between their receding edges as they lost their form to the wind. The Spitfires climbed through the remnants and Bryan looked down behind his starboard wing, evaluating a movement against the dun landscape.
‘Falcon Three to Falcon Leader,’ he called, ‘Hurricanes climbing to join us from Hal Far. I count six.’
The friendly fighters lagged below as the Spitfire formation soared across Marsaxlokk Bay, its waters empty of vessels. They skirted the point and flew out over the sea. Banking north, they held their climb and skirted the coast. The Hurricanes cut inside them and climbed onto their landward side as the accreted formation overflew the lonely, anchored merchant ship.
‘Fighter Control to Falcon and Horseshoe aircraft, Sixty-plus bandits north of Gozo, angels twelve, heading towards Grand Harbour. Good luck.’
The Hurricanes levelled out, but the Spitfires continued slightly nose-up, seeking to reduce their disadvantage against higher escort fighters. Banking around the bulging bay-notched heel of the island, they dropped into a north-west vector along the straight cliff-edged coast, heading towards the mouth of the harbours. As they flew past the breakwaters, Bryan glanced left, over the rugged outlines of the pugnacious Hurricanes running alongside, down the harbour’s narrow length and its docks. He caught a fleeting glimpse of barges and small boats flocking around the cargo ships sitting squat in the centre of the channel, nets on cranes swinging over the water, a snapshot of desperate activity, then the angle closed and he turned away to focus on the sky ahead where tiny shapes were gathering like flies over a carcass.
‘Falcon Leader to Falcon Aircraft, bandits dead ahead. Avoid the escort as long as you can, we need to stop the bombers. Individual targets. Tally-ho!’
The insectoid swarm separated into three formations, a heavier mass of twin-engine bombers bore down on the docks with a group of s
ingle-engine aircraft close on their starboard side, and more escorts high above on their port quarter.
Bryan eased his nose down towards the oncoming bombers, eased off his safety catch and watched the black shapes expand into the predatory silhouettes of Junkers 88s. Slightly below him, ahead and on either side of his nose, Hurricanes flashed into the enemy formation spraying un-aimed tracer fire through the ranks of raiders. Aircraft bucked to evade the storm, one rearing into Bryan’s flightpath, huge and alien. An instinctive stab on the firing button put one or two shells through the wing that flashed over his canopy, reverberating the Perspex with a vicious bang as the Spitfire wallowed through the cyclonic vortex of the larger craft’s slipstream.
Clear of the bombers, Bryan hauled into a left turn, craning his neck to check for hostile escorts. Over the harbour, the explosive puffs of the anti-aircraft barrage colonised the void with drifting smoke. Black canisters detached from the bombers cascading towards the water and its milling small craft, while the smaller enemy planes dropped from the sky, one by one.
Bryan watched bewildered for a moment before the machines’ crooked, bent-wing profile registered. ‘Stukas,’ he mumbled to himself.
He kicked on a touch more rudder and side-slipped down to get closer to the dive-bombers, gritting his teeth as he dipped his nose into the thick of the barrage. A Stuka, ahead of him, dropped nose-down towards the ships. Bryan eased back on his throttle, dropped into a shallower dive and wallowed back and forth, setting his jaw against the random explosions that peppered his path. A concussion hit the underside of his fuselage as the Stuka’s bomb-load detonated below. Bryan eased back another notch, muscles tensed against blast or collision.
Wide and dark-green with creased wings, its blocky fixed undercarriage poking down like old-man’s trousers, the Stuka pulled up right in front of him, filling his windshield. A round, pale face, open-mouthed in shock and fear peered at him from the rear of the canopy as the gunner fumbled to bring his barrel to bear, then everything dissolved into unfocussed blur under the vibration of the Spitfire’s twin cannons. The dive-bomber yawed sideways under the impacts, flipped over and dropped away towards the water.
Bryan rammed the throttle forward, careening over the docks through the columns of swirling smoke that rose from shattered machines and burning barges. A JU88 careered across his front, a Hurricane close on its tail. The bomber flew through a sudden column of tracer spiralling up from a moored destroyer. Flame belched from the raider’s fuselage and it dropped away. The Hurricane banked starboard, dragging its wingtip through the stream of bullets, shedding fragments of wing panelling as it curved away. Bryan pulled an opposite turn, standing his fighter on its port wing, sliding past the spout of ordnance unscathed and accelerating out towards the sea.
Crashing into clear air and crossing the coast, Bryan scanned the sky above. The main bomber force had wheeled out to sea and was heading north in regrouped formations. He held his turn to start a pursuit, climbing towards the receding raiders. Immediately a pair of 109s, from the group circling high above the bombers, dropped into a dive towards him, flashing over him without firing. Bryan pulled into a sharp bank to follow them, obliged to cover his own tail. The Germans zoomed up into a curving climb, using the speed from their dive to recoup their altitude. Bryan completed his circle and climbed once more towards the distant bombers. Two more 109s dropped from the high defensive gaggle, sweeping past him at speed. Once again, Bryan pulled into a defensive turn, faithfully performing his steps in this predictable, cagey dance. But this time he watched the 109s curve away while he continued south, down the coast, making his escape from this dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.
Banking over the cliffs and striking inland he looked out over his wing to the broiling, fiery chaos that engulfed the docks, mirrored by leaping flames that spouted along the southern wharfs of Valletta and from several vessels moored against them. He closed his weary eyes against the destruction for a moment, but its colour still burned through his eyelids.
****
Bryan leaned his elbows on the railing of Xara’s roof terrace and gazed out towards Valletta. The sunset in the west, dropping into the sea behind Mdina, was matched and now outstripped by the crimson glow that settled in the east over Grand Harbour and the surrounding area. An ominous shard of brightness sat in the middle of the vibrant red dome, flickering with dread portent like an angry dragon’s tongue.
The door opened, and Ben elbowed his way through carrying two steaming mugs.
‘Last of the tea,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d appreciate the wet.’
Bryan grunted acknowledgement and reached out for the proffered mug. The movement caused the stink of his own rancid sweat to sting his nostrils.
Ben pulled up a chair next to him. ‘How many did you fly today?’
‘Three,’ Bryan murmured. ‘You?’
‘Only two.’ Ben took a sip of his tea. ‘Bloody air filter packed up. I was lucky to get it down in one piece.’
They gazed in silence at the blazing harbour for a long moment.
‘Does this mean we’ve lost?’ Ben asked.
‘Unless you count starving to death as some sort of moral victory.’
‘Do you think we’ll surrender, then?’
Bryan swigged his tea, his face lost for a moment in the tendrils of steam. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t hang onto a bloody empire by surrendering. And, if this war is about anything, it’s about that.’
Chapter 17
Sunday, 29 March 1942
Bryan stood on the edge of the wharf with Valletta at his back. Smoke swirled and drifted above his head, drying his teeth and grating in his throat. The two merchant ships and the destroyers that had been their shepherds lay sunken in the shallow water, wavelets lapping through their gunwales, their superstructures blasted, like abandoned buildings in a ghost town. Across the water, smouldering warehouses in the docks wheezed thin trails of soot that rose to thicken the overcast. A small wooden boat traversed the water, the sound of its stuttering outboard echoed from the bastion walls and clattered back on itself. It approached the closest cargo ship and a man onboard stood to survey the larger vessel with binoculars. Bryan watched its progress until it was lost from sight behind the sunken hulk.
An old man walked slowly towards him along the wharf from the seaward end. His long coat hung loose on his diminished frame, the dirt-grimed fabric flapped over stained trousers and a filthy white shirt. His gait was slow and careful, like a man who had lost his walking stick, or denied he ever needed one. He shuffled closer and stopped, standing shoulder to shoulder with Bryan. The old man lifted his chin and surveyed the ruined harbour with watery eyes.
‘These are terrible times, my friend.’ His voice rattled with a bronchial undertone. ‘Today is the first Sunday I have not been to church.’
Bryan pulled out his cigarettes. The man accepted his offer and Bryan cupped a lighted match before the old man’s face. He drew deeply on the smoke and two short coughs wracked his chest like explosive exhalations from a dusty cave. He looked at the cigarette between his fingers as a pawnbroker looks at someone else’s heirloom.
‘Because God has turned his back on us…’ His voice trailed off as he swept his gaze across the devastation. ‘The British should go home,’ he said, then looked into Bryan’s face and smiled. ‘You should go home, young man. Without God on our side we’re lost. You shouldn’t waste your life on us.’
‘You want us to leave Malta to the Germans and the Italians?’ Bryan lit a smoke for himself as the man considered the question with pursed lips.
‘Perhaps it would be better to let them in rather than oblige them to kick down the door.’ The man took another draw on his cigarette, holding the smoke for a few seconds before wheezing it out from between his yellowed teeth. ‘What good is Malta when Malta is no more?’
Somewhere across the harbour a wall collapsed with a distant rushing sound, like a breaking wave heard from the top of a cliff.
‘Where will you go?’ Bryan asked.
The old man flicked his cigarette out into the water. ‘Maybe I should go to church,’ he said. ‘Perhaps God will turn his face back to me.’ He squeezed Bryan’s shoulder in farewell as he shuffled away behind him.
The boat emerged from behind the sunken vessel, navigating carefully around its stern. The man on the deck lowered his binoculars, turned to his companion and pointed at some detail on the wrecked ship. Bryan flicked his cigarette in an arc to land next to the old man’s and together they floated with the tide.
Bryan crossed the road, heading up the slope into the city. The narrow lane funnelled the smoky haze from smouldering docks. Gaps in the tall façade framed the collapsed walls that sat now as heaps of rubble that splayed out across the road, forcing him to clamber over their broken stones.
Bryan trudged across the city’s peninsula. Further north, away from the harbour, the density of destruction reduced, but still he passed a dozen or more families searching through the wreckage of their homes to salvage the debris of their lives. They paused in their labour to watch him stumble through the ragged scree that duned across his path.
He came to the corner of Bakery Street, bastioned by the bulk of Saint Augustine Church. The lilting sound of the singing congregation seeped through the closed doors. He listened for a moment, then walked on, dog-legging onto Mint Street and climbing the hill to Hastings Gardens. A half-guilty rush of relief swelled his chest as he arrived on Windmill Street to find its buildings undamaged. He sauntered along the edge of the gardens, grateful for the fresher air looping in from the waters of Marsamxett. The empty plinth stood solid and resolute and Bryan approached to sit and rest on its steps.