The Lost Flying Boat (32 page)

I handed in the message. ‘Who are they?'

He let the paper drop. ‘A rival company. They want the stuff too. Who wouldn't? I thought we would beat them to it by a few days. But you can't win every leg on the chart.'

‘You knew we'd bump into them?'

‘I supposed there was a chance.'

‘It seems we're trapped.'

He was grey at the face. ‘I wouldn't say so. The sum of the probability of errors has usually managed to avoid the fickle finger of fate – at least in my experience. So get back to your box of tricks, and leave the cogitations to me.'

The pennant showed little wind, and the sky had the markings of a fine morning. We had a sufficient stretch of water to get airborne, despite our perilous overload, but the latter part of our long runway ended in a minefield. To avoid this by going around the headland into the western fjord for take-off, where there were no mines, would bring us against the armed ship still in the process of persuading the
Difda
to heave-to. We would be blown to pieces by mines or blasted by shell-fire. Either way would mean an enormous fireball when several thousand gallons of high octane spirit exploded. And yet the enemy would not fire once it was realized that we carried the gold. Again, Bennett had them nailed, but we had to get airborne because if they caught us on the water they would force us into surrender. Five of us would be no match for them, and the gold would be theirs. Fate's finger was never more fickle than at that moment.

Bennett called from the top of the steps that he wanted to see Rose for a navigation briefing. The dinghy had been hauled aboard, and I helped Nash rope it down. Sweat poured from him after the effort. He wiped his chest with a rag and stood up to reach his shirt which lay across one of the boxes. ‘I haven't seen him, sir.'

‘Then where the devil is he?'

‘He was in the tail, at stand-to.'

‘Get him.' He went back into his room.

There was no crawling on your belly to reach a thimble-sized turret – as at the end of a bomber. The flying boat had a cat-walk and you could go in comfort. The door was half open, Rose slumped over the guns inside. Sleep was our only escape, and I hesitated to wake him. The strain of going out on a limb, forever forward and with no prospect of return, had shagged us utterly. All the same, I reached forward and gripped his shoulder.

An inch of tongue protruded from between his teeth. He fell to one side and grinned at me. Getting the turret door open, I pulled him free. The Smith and Wesson clattered. Accustomed to pinpointing the stars, he had made no mistake in finding his heart. I felt more dead for a few moments than he could ever be. The vast scar which we thought he had learned to live with looked as if he had merely slept awhile with his face against the corrugations of a heavily embroidered cushion. In another half hour, if he had been alive, all marks would have disappeared.

An explosion of cannonfire must have hidden the sound of his last star sight. The heavenly body came down to the horizon. Flak got him, I told myself. He's been killed in action as we all might be, so shed no tears while there's work to be done. Who wants a memorial service that you can't take part in? I put the gun, wet with Rose's blood, into my jacket and made my way back to the flight deck.

16

Bennett reasoned – if you could call it that – that the dead were dead. Fair enough. Old times would not return. If you mourned the dead by letting them disrupt your life, new and better days would never come. Even so, Nash said, I thought the skipper had had it when I told him. He asked for an apple, but there were none left. He had to chew on something else. Shouted he was surrounded by desertion, treachery and incompetence – as he lit a cigar. There would be a Court of Enquiry when we got back. Count on it. He would notify all concerned, taking care to record illegal absences, accidental deaths, deficiencies in property, oaths taken and not kept. Separate courts would be convened to account for sub-headings yet to be defined. Nothing would be left out to prevent the court from putting together the true state of affairs. If I didn't know the skipper, said Nash, I'd have thought he was off his rocker.

In the meantime, Mr Nash, there's work to be done. The late navigator perished in the highest traditions of the Service. Bring his effects to me so that I can put them in a special box. As soon as practicable the next of kin of those men lost must be informed, and you may be sure I shall write proper letters of condolence, explaining how they died doing their duty while on active service. As there is no time to inter Flying Officer Rose on land we shall do it now, since we have to shed unnecessary cargo in order to get away. Find a weight to help him under the water.

It was action stations, and we prepared to cast off. A message was halfway through when I got back to the radio: … ‘HEMMED IN COVE STOP LIFEBOAT HIT STOP YOUR CHAP KILLED SLEEPING IN STOP TWO OTHERS DOWN WAIT WAIT WAIT.'

Bennett carried out pre-flight checks: controls free and fuel cocks off while the exactors were bled. Should I tell him about Armatage? He's had it, Skipper. A shell struck the lifeboat and gave their ship a coat of paint. He couldn't escape the net of God Almighty. Nor would I talk to Nash, or let lack of moral fibre take me over.

Vibrations from the port outer brought back life, and a willingness to do the utmost. Not to question showed pure health: stiff upper lip and press on regardless. The sound of propellers beating the air beyond the portholes set us breathing freely in our separate corners. The starboard outer roared its music up as if to push the cliffs further apart and reach the rest of the world so that even the deaf would hear. Bennett signalled Nash in the bows to slip our moorings. Outers and inners were run up in pairs, and we moved from the shore.

‘BOARDING PARTY ON US STOP SHIP GOING SOUTH TO YOU.'

I passed the chit to Bennett who, involved in the complications of take-off, relayed the info over the intercom. Nash responded from the tail, blood still wet. ‘Who forgot to swab the turret, then?'

Bennett was calm. ‘We'll turn the cape, and take off as they come towards us.'

‘Mind their gun, Skipper.'

‘Will do.'

‘As we pass over their heads we'll rake their decks.'

‘Good show, Nash.'

‘We've been in hotter spots, Skipper.'

‘You there, Appleyard?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘See what you can do from the front turret.'

‘I'll shoot 'em with shit.'

‘Sparks?'

‘Skipper?'

‘What's going on?'

Atmospherics raged like the noise of a forest fire. ‘I'm listening.'

‘Roger-dodger.'

‘Hi-di-hi,' said Nash.

‘Ho-di-ho,' Bennett said.

We taxied towards the water-runway of the straits. The
Difda
operator sent: ‘NOTHING TO BE DONE STOP CHEERIO QRU QRT.' I tapped ‘GOOD LUCK' – thinking it deserved to be our turn next but hoping for no such downfall. He pounded SOS three times, then screwed his key onto a continuous note so that anyone with a mind for rescue could home in on the bearing. After a few seconds his penny-whistle stopped.

The tail banged into a trough as we picked up speed. An odd chop shook the aircraft, and the subtle but deadly winds of dawn were set for a rampage. Bennett slowed his taxi-ing, and I felt a steady washboard grating under the hull. A blade of weak sun lit the nose of the south-pointing promontory. The water was speckled white towards our turning point, faint breakers creaming both shores. The low hill where we had buried Wilcox was outlined.

Maybe Bennett waved goodbye. ‘What news, Sparks?'

We turned to starboard, under the lee of the cape. ‘Sounds like they got aboard and signed him off. Smashed his gear. They're coming for us.'

‘Press on remorseless,' Nash said.

‘Remorseless it is.'

A pale grey glacier rose between the flanks of two basaltic mountains, a broken expanse of other glaciers beyond, in places pink, and merging into a semicircle of cloud. Crevasses, ice ridges, solidified waterfalls stretched to the south as far as we could see. ‘Better than the view from Boston Stump,' Nash said. ‘It was worth coming this far for!'

The sea was calm, straits widening. Engines on full power muffled the bang and drowned the whistling shell which preceded a waterspout in front. The earphone-lead enabled me to look out and see a ship coming from behind an indentation of the western coast.

‘Two miles,' Appleyard said, ‘and it ain't made of cardboard.'

‘Nor is that 88-millimetre screwed on the deck,' Nash told him. ‘And I've just got the last clue.'

‘What is it?' I asked.

‘Perseverance – it must be.'

‘Congratulations,' said Bennett. ‘We're back on form.'

Another shell exploded so close that a wall of water swept the canopy. ‘Third one has it, Skipper.'

I was flung at the navigating table while Bennett did as tight a circle as he dared without smashing the port float, the hull in a cloud of shooting spray. I grabbed the radio handle as if to wrench it from the fitting.

‘They should be put on a charge for dumb insolence,' said Appleyard. ‘They're trying to drown us.'

‘Kilroy was here,' said Nash. A shell exploded to port. ‘Give 'em the figure of eight, Skipper. We can take it.'

‘Get on your radio, Sparks, and tell them that if we go up in flames, everything on board will sink to the bottom.'

He turned to starboard, and another half circle took us so close we could no longer be seen by the ship's gunners. Bennett hurled back up the straits, and when he drew level with our old mooring place and saw the way clear for five miles ahead, let all engines have full throttle and began moving for take-off.

During these manoeuvres it had been impossible to send his signal, but when on the straight I was about to do so he told me to scrub it.

‘Prepare for take-off.'

‘Minefield starts at four thousand yards,' said Nash.

‘Give or take the odd furlong,' Appleyard added.

‘Fact noted,' Bennett said.

‘Is our new address to be Carnage Cottage, then, or the “Old Bull and Bush”?'

Rather than give up the gold, he would kill us and send it to the bottom. Morse from the
Nemesis
(or whatever name the other ship had) was fast, but so faulty in rhythm that it was difficult to tell dots from dashes, though the message was unmistakable. ‘WE HAVE YOU CORNERED STOP SURRENDER HEAVE TO.'

They knew we were hellbent for a minefield, but I told them to get stuffed as we flogged up speed – tactically flexible, and versatile unto death.

‘Salt water for breakfast,' Nash said.

‘On toast,' laughed Appleyard.

Expecting flak from above and below, we trusted Bennett to get us clear. He saw no reason not to proceed, and sped by the cliffs. But there was no lift, meaning we'd get through the minefield only to crash into the hill blocking the end of the channel. The same text from the
Nemesis
was repeated, demanding capitulation. They imagined us skulking behind the headland, contemplating the damage they had caused, and debating what to do next while we adjusted our reading glasses. ‘We'll get up,' said Nash. ‘We aren't in a bloody railway carriage, and that's a fact.'

We seemed to be travelling between the sleeve of the cliffs forever, pounding forward too slowly for our ominous weight. There was little wind to help. No one spoke. For better or worse, Bennett's fight was ours and we left him to it, sat tight and prayed to get airborne without suddenly ceasing to exist. I looked out of the porthole to see, if only for a second, the nipple or big apple of a mine that would demob us for good and take us into a dream impossible to wake from. Supposition as to life after death watered my fear while we went through a zone marked on the chart as dangerous, and I wondered whether they were as thickly sown as eyes in a plate of sago, or as thinly as balls on a wet-day bowling green.

The
Nemesis
wouldn't follow, and that was certain, but with a long-range gun it didn't need to, though the dilemma of boarding was for them to crack. Their ship had not yet turned the final headland to watch either our spectacular fireball demise, or see us wiggle our tail as we lifted into the wide blue yonder. Bennett was too much locked in his fight to wonder about the seaplanes. Every rivet spar and panel vibrated as if, should we put on another knot of speed, we'd come to pieces.

The shakes diminished, but the hull scraped against the carborundum wheel of the water which seemed intent on grinding us down to the extinction of a wafer. In spite of the universal thrust, our boat was dead if it couldn't lift – and so were we. Disintegration beamed on us, but a hummed tune came through the intercom and while I mulled on an end to our history, I recognized words which I joined in though only under my breath so as not to break our luck. Why that song rang out I'll never know, nor who was the instigator, but in that couple of minutes I loved it for melting the wax of menace from us all.

Perhaps it was a case of spiritual buffoonery carried to its greatest extent, considering our crucial situation, but the words took me out of this perilous fjord and back to the palm-beach coast of Malaya where our staging post had been, and I heard again Peter Dawson's voice booming from a loudspeaker nailed halfway up a tree, singing ‘The Road to Mandalay'. And now we were mocking it blind with tears in our eyes, but singing all the same as if it were a hymn.

‘On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flying fishes play …'

and we were one of those fishes, about to lift off for longer than any flier of the deep sea could, which no one in the history of the world would be able to gainsay, our great flying boat ascending, its twin along the surface of the blue water accompanying as if to see us safe into the air, when we would say goodbye because we'd no longer be either visible or necessary to each other, and so slide apart. We sang as if China really was across the bay, and Bennett would get us there and beyond to a safety of his own devising.