Eagle at Taranto (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  She woke again to the drumming of the rain, turned over — then was still, listening. The drumming was close but there was a more distant sound, faint under the rain but only too familiar now. It was the flat crackle of small-arms fire, rifles. And she recognised the rattle of a machine-gun.

  It stopped.

  Had she been dreaming of the desert and imagined she’d heard it? She knew she had not. She was naked in the bed but pulled her underclothes out from under the pillow and carried them with her in one hand, the torch in the other as she crossed to the wall. She tapped on it with the base of the torch.

  Bert’s voice came, muffled, from the next room: “Whassa-matter?”

  “I heard firing.”

  “Firing?” A pause, then: “Are you sure?” Bert was always reluctant to get out of bed.

  “Certain. Get dressed.” Katy was nearly ready, dressing rapidly by the light of the torch laid on the bed. She pulled on socks and boots, laced them, snatched up her trenchcoat and the torch and left the room.

  In the kitchen the fire was black and dead. She looked at het watch, saw it was a minute to six then switched off the torch and crossed to the grey square of the window. It was still dark outside but she could see the falling rain. Bert and Kristos came into the kitchen, both dressed and carrying torches, Kristos with his pistol belted around his waist. It was he who opened the door and led the way outside. The three of them stood before the house, shoulders hunched under the rain, staring down towards where the road lay hidden in darkness. The low grinding of engines came to them faintly and Bert said, “Trucks.” And: “You’re sure about the firing?” Then, before she could answer, he suggested to Kristos, “An exercise? Or some platoon testing weapons?”

  Kristos answered, “I don’t think so.”

  Light glowed in the house behind them and spilled out of the open door. Constantine stood in the kitchen, wearing a nightshirt buttoned up to his skinny neck and holding a lamp above his head as he peered at them. Kristos called softly, angrily to him and Katy guessed he said: “Put that light out!” But the old man would not take orders from a stranger in his own house, argued and demanded an explanation. Kristos had to go in, take the lamp from him and extinguish it. He spoke a few words firmly to the old man then rejoined the other two. “I told him to dress. I’m going down to the road to look.”

  Bert said, “We’ll tag along.”

  “Stay behind, please. Thirty — forty metres, no lights.” Kristos started down the track and Katy saw him unfasten the holster and take out his pistol. They gave him the lead he’d asked for and then followed. He went slowly, cautiously, halting often to listen and peer into the night.

  So also did Bert and Katy. The grind of engines in low gear came clearly now — and voices, but still only distantly.

  Then one voice yelled closer, challenging. Kristos stopped. There was a double spurt of flame as his pistol fired twice and the crack! — crack! of it hammered at their ears. The flashes blinded them for a second, then they saw him running back and he shouted, “The Italians!”

  The night was slashed with flame in a dozen places and the crashes of the fusillade deafened them. Kristos flung his arms wide, his head jerked back and he fell face down in a rain puddle, the water splashing high. Bert stood staring but Katy snatched at his arm and shouted, “Get down!”

  They sprawled in the mud and there was more firing until a blast on a whistle cut it short. Bert gasped, “The creek! Get in there for cover!” They crawled towards it through the mud, almost blind as a rifle fired again then a voice bawled angrily. Bert said, “This way.” He turned and lunged forward, disappeared from Katy’s sight.

  She heard the slither then the splash and called softly, “Bert?” But there was no answer. She edged forward, found the lip where the ground fell steeply to the stream, saw it glinting silver below her. She lowered herself’ over, feet first, felt rocks under her boots and water freezing around her legs, found Bert head down in the stream, drowning in it.

  She stooped and hauled him out, her arms around his middle so he hung over them like washing, a dragging weight. Straining and gasping with the effort, she floundered along the side of the stream with him like that for a few yards until the bank retreated and there was a space where she could lay him down clear of the water. She heard him coughing and retching then, and thought, Thank God! But Bert did not reply when she spoke to him.

  He had to have help. She thought she could hear movement on the track and remembered the wild volleys. But Bert might die without the aid she could not give. He had fallen on his head, she did not know what injuries he might have suffered and he was not a young man. He had said to her wrily, “Nice night for a walk in the rain.”

  She stood up and shook out her short, blonde hair so the soldiers might see that she was a woman. She held her left hand open above her head, the right holding the torch away from her body but down level with her waist. She switched the torch on so it glared up at her face and shouted blindly again and again, “Americano! Americano!” She did not know the Italian for “surrender”.

  A rifle flamed, then another. She heard the burring crack! as a shot passed close. Then the torch was smashed from her hand, she fell back and the darkness wrapped her round like a shroud.

  Ferrers told Mark, “Breakfast as soon as you’re ready for it.” He set the cup of tea down on the bedside table. “A fine day, but the news is bad. The Italians jumped the gun. Mussolini issued that ultimatum as a pure formality and his army crossed the border at five-thirty this morning, half an hour before the ultimatum ran out.” He sucked in his breath, angry. “On the other hand, although they’ve met little resistance, they are only advancing slowly. The few troops along the border are making a fighting retreat but it’s the weather up there that’s slowing the Italians down to a crawl. It’s appalling. Mussolini couldn’t have chosen a worse time.”

  The consul paused at the door and now he smiled. “I saved the good news. First: I rang the hospital. Your friend Rogers had a good night, his ankle is not broken and he should make a good recovery. I also telephoned the American embassy in Athens a few minutes ago. The army officer the Greeks sent along with your friends phoned in from the frontier yesterday afternoon and said they were starting back. So they’re well out of it. I thought you’d like to know.”

  Ferrers went out to the kitchen, slipped an arm around his wife’s waist and told her, “He’s looking fit as a fiddle, in spite of all he’s been- through. What it is to be young.”

  She smiled at him. She thought Ward a well set-up young man, not handsome, but if it had been left to her she would have found him a fine girl long ago.

  Mark wondered how Katy was, what she was doing. He could picture her clearly. But she was bound for her home in the States and in a day or two he was going back to Eagle —and JUDGMENT.

  He was certain of that.

  3 Countdown: Then There Were...

  Mark did not go to the U.S. Embassy. Ferrers drove him to Athens where a Royal Air Force transport aircraft returning to Egypt, found room for him. He waited a week in Alexandria until Eagle returned from operations in the Aegean. He rejoined her then, and was made welcome in the wardroom: “Good God! Look who’s here!” “Talk about the bad penny turning up.”

  “Where’s Tim Rogers?”

  He told them his story but only sketched in the escape: “— when it got dark we pinched a boat. “Later he asked, “Any word on Taranto? I didn’t hear any news in Greece.”

  “We had to put it off, old boy. Illustrious had a fire in her hangar and five of her Swordfish finished up as burnt-out wrecks. Some of the others were saturated by the overhead salt-water sprays they had to use to put the fire out. It took days to repair the damage, strip the Swordfish right down then dry ‘em, clean ‘em and put ‘em back together. Bad luck.”

  Postponed. Mark thought that was the correct word. Not cancelled. When the moon and the weather were right then the attack would go in. And soon.

  He l
eft the wardroom and descended to the cavernous hangar with its harsh light. Hardy’s wide figure sat, like Humpty Dumpty on his wall, on a staging as he worked on the engine of a Swordfish. Doug Campbell, hands dug in the pockets of his shorts, stood below the staging, talking up at Hardy. He turned, broke off in mid-sentence as Mark came up, and said delightedly, “Here’s Mr. Ward!”

  Hardy swung down to land lightly on the deck while the skinny figure of Laurel squirmed out from under the tailplane and hurried to join them. Laurel did the talking, of course: “Lord love us! Can’t believe it! Doug was just telling us you’d come aboard, sir. What the hell happened to you? When you didn’t come back that morning we thought, well, all right, they’ve been overdue before, but then —”

  Mark let him run on as Hardy nodded and Doug Campbell laughed. They were genuinely pleased to see him and he was touched. The fitter and rigger eyed him from head to foot as they had always scrutinised Ethel when he landed her on. He supposed they were looking for holes, or bits of him missing, and he grinned.

  Campbell, tired of waiting for Laurel to run out of breath, broke in, “What about Mr. Rogers, sir?”

  That got silence, and they watched Mark, serious now.

  He reassured them: “He did something to his ankle in the crash, and collected a few bumps and scrapes, but they told me he’d be as good as new. I expect he’ll be in hospital for a bit, though, and we won’t see him for a while.”

  “What crash, sir?”

  So then he had to tell his watered-down story all over again. When he finished, Laurel said, “Well, you do see life.”

  Mark changed the subject: “They told me in the wardroom there’d been some excitement aboard Illustrious.”

  Laurel nodded vigorously. “Ah! The fire. Nasty, that, but it might have been a lot worse.”

  Hardy said slowly, “I think we’ve got trouble of our own. Remember early last month When the Eyeties bombed us and near missed us?”

  Mark nodded. Eagle had been escorting a Malta convoy. Laurel muttered, “Cured my constipation, that did.” Hardy said, “Seems those near misses shook the old girl up and now our fuel system’s falling apart.”

  Lower deck gossip was confirmed later that day. Eagle needed extensive work in the dockyard and it would be a week or more before she was fit for operations again. Mark thought the delay made no difference; he had a growing feeling of bleak inevitability. He laughed and joked with the others in the wardroom, played the piano. But the feeling was there. The tunnel was closing in.

  When leave ashore was granted he climbed down into the liberty boat with a crowd of brother officers, had a drink at the Cecil and a meal at Pastroudi’s. It did not seem the same and at first he told himself this was because he had always had Tim Rogers for company on his runs ashore. Then he thought, with brutal honesty, that was nonsense. He was trying to fool himself and failing. The truth was — Katy had gone. To hell with it.

  Because of his feeling of inevitability he was not surprised when, after he had been two days back aboard, Ollie Patch, who had led the Flight in the attack on Bomba, said at breakfast, “We’re sending five Swordfish to Illustrious, plus crews.” Mark knew why, knew also that he would be one of the pilots. In the forenoon he stood on the flight-deck and watched the Swordfish slung over the side by the big crane aft of the bridge and ‘lowered to the lighters waiting below, to be ferried across to the other big, new carrier.

  He went down to his cabin before lunch and as he opened the door saw a trousered and shirt-sleeved figure, the face hidden by a book, sprawled on the bunk that had been occupied by Tim Rogers. Mark thought, They’ve shoved some replacement in already and never said a word to me. Bloody cheek! Then Tim put down the book and Mark stared at him, said quietly, “Oh, it’s you.”

  Tim sniffed. “I’m glad your eyes are all right, seeing as you’re flying.”

  Mark was very glad to see him. “What are you doing here?”

  “They passed me fit and I said I wanted to fly with you. They thought, as we’d been together a bit now, that might be a good idea.”

  Mark reflected that Tim could have kept his mouth shut, stayed ashore and missed this big one. But he’d volunteered — to fly with Mark Ward again. “Just when I thought I might get an observer who knew which end of the chart was up. Did the doctor say you were fit to drink?”

  Tim swung his legs off the bunk and stood up. “In moderation.”

  “With me paying, it will be. Come on.”

  In the forenoon of the next day they crossed to Illustrious with the other chosen aircrews, fitters and riggers. At eleven thirty-six hours she slipped and proceeded astern of Warspite.

  There would be Eagles at Taranto.

  Before his first patrol from Illustrious Mark went down with Tim Rogers to the huge but crowded hangar-deck to look over and check the Swordfish he had been given. Laurel and Hardy were working on it and the rigger said, “Looks all right, don’t she, sir? We reckon she’s a good ‘un. Right?” Hardy grunted agreement and Laurel rattled on, “What’re you going to call her, sir?”

  Mark had not thought about this, but did not need to: “Ethel.”

  Laurel pursed his lips doubtfully. “You don’t reckon that might be unlucky, after what happened?”

  Mark glanced at Tim. “Well, we’re here.”

  Laurel shrugged. But he knew that Ward could be a deep bloke, and while he’d not been talkative before he was even quieter now. “If you say so sir.”

  Mark said shortly, firmly, “Ethel.”

  Illustrious and the Mediterranean Fleet sailed as part of a complex operation, MB8, to cover the passage of four convoys and culminating in JUDGMENT, the attack on Taranto. One convoy was to Malta from Alexandria, the second in the reverse direction. A third carried supplies to Greece from Egypt and the fourth consisted of empty ships on the return journey. Whenever convoys sailed the Fleet had to be at sea in case the Italians came out from Taranto. The enemy presence in force there bedevilled all Cunningham’s operations and that was the reason for JUDGMENT.

  The air attack was timed for the night of the eleventh. With the Swordfish transferred from Eagle, Illustrious carried a striking force of twenty-four. Then one suffered engine failure and crashed into the sea on the ninth, another on the tenth. In the forenoon of the eleventh Mark was climbing to the flight-deck when Tim Rogers shouted from above him, “Keith and Going have ditched!”

  Mark ran up the last ladder and out onto the deck. He stood by Tim and stared out but there was nothing to see. The Swordfish had crashed twenty miles away, far over the horizon and Tim had simply repeated the report passed down by word of mouth from the bridge. But they both stood there, waiting, anxious, until they heard that Gloucester, a cruiser escort, had picked up pilot and observer. There had been no airgunner aboard.

  Mark went down to the hangar-deck to look at Ethel, and passed on the news, good and bad. Laurel muttered, “Something bloody funny goin’ on. Three down in three days. It makes you wonder if there’s a jinx on this flaming operation. Fire in the hangar, then Eagle has to drop out, and now this.”

  Mark grinned at him, “Balls. No jinx. There’s something wrong but we’ll find it.”

  They did: pollution in one of the fuel tanks in the hangar, possibly breeding from the time of the fire and the drenching with sea-water. The fungus inside looked like spaghetti. That tank was shut off and the fuel system of every Swordfish dismantled and cleaned.

  Mark took no part in that labour of detection and correction but he had spoken with inner conviction. He knew that JUDGMENT would go on, with twenty-one Swordfish, or even less, if necessary. Illustrious had orders to leave the main Fleet on the afternoon of the eleventh of November and steam with her escorts to a position twenty miles west of the island of Cephalonia. She was to fly off her strike force at eight that evening.

  Briefing.

  The wardroom was crowded with pilots, observers and other officers, lounging in chairs or propping up the bulkhead. Illustrious wa
s a big ship but she was full to overflowing. There were cabins for only a few of Eagle’s air crews. Mark, like the rest, kept his kit in the cabin of one of Illustrious’ pilots and slept on a camp bed out on the open-sided quarter-deck.

  Sleeping in a passage below decks would have meant people bumping into him as they passed. The quarter-deck was breezy but the flight-deck covered him overhead.

  Now he leaned against a table in the wardroom, long legs crossed, dark eyes sombre and intent under thick brows. Tim sat by him at the table, notebook before him, pencil in hand. The big claspknife lay on the table. When Mark returned it to him Tim had looked at it but taken the knife without asking how Mark had used it.

  The Observer Commander, Beale, was on his feet and they listened to him. The attack...it would be made in two waves, the first flying-off at eight in the evening, the second an hour later. Mark was in the second wave, which meant an extra hour of waiting. Courses to be flown...position of the ship when they returned — Mark thought, If and watched Tim busily scribbling notes. Enemy defences...240 anti-aircraft guns sited around the harbour and a lot more heavy machine-guns. Add to them the guns of the fleet, six battleships, nine cruisers, forty-eight destroyers...Tim Rogers had stopped writing and pulled a face at Mark, who tried to grin.

  Barrage balloons...balloons?

  Mark peered at the reconnaissance photographs with the others: beautiful clear prints. They showed the ships — and the white blips of the barrage balloons spread across the harbour. The wire cables that tethered them to the pontoons formed a steel fence. The Swordfish would have to fly through it.

  Dinner. An awful excitement he could feel like a shiver, a sense that tonight they might make history. This attack by the Swordfish was being attempted because it had to be. Nobody knew if it could be done. Aircraft had sunk ships before, at sea, in port, by day and at night, but could they attack a great fleet in a heavily defended port — and hurt it? Sink some or even one of the ships? Could any of those aircraft penetrate the massed defences? And if some did, how many of them would escape? You could expect casualties to be heavy, even in a surprise attack, but this night there would be no surprise. Italian sound-locating equipment would pick up the Swordfish long before they were in gun range.