A Future Arrived (50 page)

Colin came back from a patrol that had taken them west of the Shetlands to search for the crew of a torpedoed freighter. The gunner-observer had spotted a lifebuoy bobbing in the choppy sea and they had flown low over it, scanning it through binoculars.
S.S. CARMARTHEN CASTLE—SWANSEA
had been clearly seen in black lettering on the white ring. And that had been all. Not a sign of life, only flotsam on the water and wide drifts of oil. And gulls pecking at God knew what terrible garbage beneath the surface of the waves.

He felt tired and depressed as he returned to the hotel that evening with half a dozen other officers who were billeted there. A few of the permanent residents sat in the lobby reading or having before-dinner drinks. Someone rose from one of the deep leather chairs …

“Hi, cowboy.”

“Fat Chap! Jesus H. Christ!” Colin stared at him. “I don't believe it. God
damn
, what the hell are you doing in Scotland?”

“I'm stationed here,” Derek said. He pointed to the boots. “Join the Texas air force?”

“I have an understanding skipper.” He gripped Derek's hand and noticed the two broad rings on the sleeve of his uniform. “A flight lieutenant. You son-of-a-bitch. When did that happen?”

“While I was in hospital.”

“I'm sorry I couldn't get down to London to see you, Derek.”

“That's all right. I was only in for a few days. Kate popped over from Norwich with a basket of plums.”

“Did she? Nice of her.” He scowled at his boots and then brightened, patting Derek on the arm. “Heck, we're wasting time. I'll take a quick wash and we'll head for Inverness.”

Derek had a car and brought Colin up to date as he drove to the ferry. It was nearly nine o'clock, but the sun still lingered, sparkling off the Moray Firth. They got out of the car and stood by the rail and he told of how his squadron had been attached to another at Kentish Hill and that the nine pilots who were left, including himself, had been sent to Turnhouse near Edinburgh to qualify in Spitfires.

“You lucky bastard.”

“I hate to rub it in, old boy, but it is one hell of a kite. Light as a feather and powerful as a train.”

“I'm glad
you're
happy.”

“The job that bad?”

Colin thought about it for a moment. “Not really. I like the guys, especially the skipper. And what we do is important, I guess, but we don't kill Germans. I've dropped a tin can or two but never even damaged a sub as far as I know. One of our mob sank an E-boat off Bergen a few weeks ago. That's about the size of it. How many planes have you shot down?”

“Three confirmed. Two probables.”

“You're an easy man to envy, Fat Chap. Say, how would you like to go out with me tomorrow? I'll show you the wide and empty spaces of the North Sea.”

“I'd like nothing better, but I'll be flying down in the morning. I was on a training flight to Wick but ran into some mag problems on the way back and landed at Dingwell Field … just up the road.”

“Convenient.”

Derek grinned. “That's what I thought as I flew over it. A good place to have the electrical system checked out.”

The pub was in a cobblestoned street near the river and was jammed with RAF and naval officers. A pretty redhead wearing too much makeup brushed up against Colin and gave him a wink as they squeezed their way to the bar.

“Well, hello, Colin,” she said with a Scotch lilt. “Just lettin' you know I'm here.”

“Who was that?” Derek asked.

“Local tart. I don't know her name.”

“She knew yours, old man.”

“Heck, yes. Everyone knows me.”

They took their beers to the least crowded part of the pub and leaned against the wall to drink and talk—not that they had much to talk about, Derek was thinking. They lived in two different worlds and had no “shop” in common. And he seemed to wish to avoid talking about Kate.

“Do you remember Valerie A'Dean-Spender? You met her years ago at Burgate House … a thin, blond kid.”

Colin frowned and shook his head. “Can't say that I do. Why?”

“Oh, just that she's still blond—and totally smashing. I want to marry her.”

Colin's laugh was vaguely uncomfortable. “Marry? Helluva time for something like that.”

“The more abnormal the times, the more normal one should act—or so it seems to me.”

“To each his own.” He took a swallow of beer. “Set a date yet?”

“Unfortunately, there's the slight problem of an existing husband. A Captain Raymond Monnier, currently in a Jerry POW camp.”

“That's tough. Anything you can do about it?”

“Maybe. We have a solicitor working on the problem, a specialist in divorce and annulment cases. In the meantime, she's taking a little house in Watford so we can be together at least once in a while. I'll jot down the address for you in case they ever let you roam out of the Highlands.”

“Not much chance of that.
Leave
isn't a word they use around here.” He watched the redhead. She was talking with one of the navy fliers but glancing past the man at him. He looked away. “Marriage, huh? You sure must have a lot of faith in the future, Fat Chap.”

T
HEY COORDINATED THEIR
takeoffs the next morning. Colin had just cleared the firth, water streaming behind him, when the Spitfire came low over the hills, Derek waggling the wings in greeting. Colin had Sergeant Pilot O'Conner flash a message with the Aldis lamp as Derek throttled back and flew alongside …
NOT … TOO … BAD … FOR … BEGINNER.

Derek waved, then boosted the throttle and roared ahead, climbing at full power. Colin watched the little fighter do a series of graceful barrel rolls and then turn south over Inverness and disappear from view in the haze.

They droned on, hour after hour. Mist across the sea as the cold polar waters met warmer currents. They flew seven hundred miles to the Arctic Circle and then turned slowly southwest a hundred miles off the Norwegian coast, flying low and at slow speed, hoping to catch a U-boat on the surface.

“U-boat to starboard … half a mile!” An excited shout over the intercom. Colin banked to the right, all nerves tense. The sub turned out to be a whale which sounded in fright as they flew over it.

“Sorry, Skip.”

It didn't matter. It happened a hundred times—if not a whale, then a porpoise or a steel oil drum. The gunners looked forward to drums or barrels as they gave them a chance to shoot at something.

A gunner brought thermos jugs of tea from the tiny galley and packets of sandwiches—corned beef and cheese. The menu never varied. Colin munched, drank, yawned, turned the controls over to O'Conner, and walked aft to stretch his legs, thinking of Derek in his Spitfire … Derek and his “smashing blonde.” A little house in Watford. Why not? Did anyone give a damn these days if people lived in sin? He thought with a sharp pang of regret of the stone house in Glen Garry. Kate in his arms and his breath catching in his throat. The girl wiser than he. The infinite wisdom of the heart.

“Object port … two … three miles!”

Colin hurried back to the cockpit and flipped on his intercom. “What have we got?”

“Can't tell, Skip. Something jutting up from the drink. Saw it in a break in the mist … gone now.”

“Could have been a sub crash diving,” O'Conner said.

“Or that whale's pals.”

He banked sharply to the left and then leveled out a few feet above the sea, easing off on the throttles so that their airspeed dropped to less than eighty miles per hour. They seemed to be floating in the mist.

“On the button, Skip! Dead ahead!”

Colin could see it now even without the aid of binoculars. A submarine churning along on the surface at flank speed, diesel exhaust and water vapor rising from the stern. On its merry way from Trondheim to the North Atlantic via the Shetland Passage.

“Not this time, baby,” he murmured. Four small depth charges under the wings. Not the most potent sting, but if they were lucky … if they fell just right … He jigged the plane left. They were coming up astern of the U-boat and he could see two men standing in the open well of the conning tower.

“Fire whenever you want, Burns,” he called down to the front gunner.

The man opened up immediately, tracer skipping ahead of them, flicking across the long, dark hull of the submarine. No better than rifle bullets, Colin thought bitterly. Bounce right off the steel. They needed cannon, something with bite. They skimmed over the sub and O'Conner pulled the handle, sending two depth charges dropping ahead of the speeding boat. Colin shoved the throttles open and pulled back on the control column, turning hard right to come around for another pass. Glancing to the side he could see that the men were no longer on the bridge. Dead? Maybe, maybe not. The boat was turning sharply to avoid the depth charges ahead. The round cylinders sinking, set for fifteen feet. As they passed and began to turn again, one of the charges went off, humping the gray sea upward then exploding into a tower of foam and spray that caused the sub to lurch sideways and bring its sharp bow leaping out of the water like a hooked trout. The waist gun was firing now, tracer slapping all along the boat's gleaming black sides. Waste of ammunition … might as well shoot pellets at it from an air pistol.

“Turning in for another pass,” he shouted.

“Only one charge went off,” O'Conner said. “Goddamn dud!”

“Nobody's perfect, Billy. ‘Try, try again.'”

By the time he had made the turn the U-boat was crash diving, the deck gun already underwater. Going down fast … flooding all tanks. The conning tower under now, only the aerial mast slicing the surface. O'Conner's hand tensed on the bomb release as they roared over it.

“Down your throat, buggers!”

“That's the spirit, Billy,” Colin yelled, the plane lurching upward as the charges fell away.

Both exploded this time, twin towers of white water. They could feel the jolt at three hundred feet as they made a banking turn. As the fountains fell back to the sea, the boat rose ponderously between them and lay wallowing in the churning wake of the explosions, bleeding oil and compressed air.

“We ruptured some tanks, Skip!” Someone over the intercom.

“Down but not out, boys,” Colin said. “Send our position, Sparks. Say we have a U-boat on the surface and in pain.” He glanced at the taut, anxious face of O'Conner. “How long can we stick around, Billy?”

“No more than fifteen minutes, unless we want to row the ship home.”

Men were coming on deck now from the front hatch and running for the gun. Other men were appearing on the conning tower and stripping the cover from the twenty-millimeter cannon.

“Get some of those guys, for chrissakes!”

The front and the starboard machine guns began firing, the noise pulsating through the plane, cordite fumes forming a thin haze in the cockpit. Tracer whipped the length of the sub as they swept past it and they could see two men stagger and fall on its wet deck.

“Keep sending, Sparks,” Colin called to the radioman. “There must be a limey destroyer somewhere in this goddamn ocean.”

He was a mile back of the U-boat and beginning another turn when the German gun crews began firing. They could see the blossom of flame as the powerful deck gun opened up and a split second later the shell exploded in the air a hundred yards to their right. Colin began to bore in, but the twenty-millimeter Oerlikon was firing now, balls of tracer rushing to meet them.

“Screw it,” he said. “Leave 'em to the navy.” He pushed the stick hard forward and dipped toward the sea, cannon shells cracking over them, and pulled up inches above the glassy swells. Full throttle, racing away, the prop wash spewing spray behind them. A brilliant, eye-searing flash of light to one side. The plane rocked, staggering in the blast of the flak shell. There was the hideous shriek of tearing metal.

“God
damn!
” Colin cried, gripping the wheel tightly.

Sergeant Pilot O'Conner bent forward, eyes scanning the instrument panel and its multitude of dials.

“Everything looks okay, Skip.”

Another explosion, far behind them; a savage reflection of scarlet against the mist.

“Anyone … hurt?” Colin asked over the intercom.

The crew reported back. No injuries, but a dozen or more flak holes in the skin. “The old kite's whistlin' like a flute back here, Skip!”

“We did the best we could,” O'Conner said. “Browning guns! Might as well've pissed on it for all the bloody good they did.”

“Yeah,” Colin said. He turned sideways in his seat. “You take over, Billy. Bring her to … ten thousand.”

He stood up and walked slowly aft as O'Conner eased the stick back. The engines sounded out of sync to the sergeant and he adjusted the throttles. As he did so he noticed the jagged little hole in the side of the cockpit and a splattering of blood on Colin's seat. “Burns,” he said over the intercom, “… Clark. Skip's caught one. Get the medical kit … fuckin' hurry!”