He managed it for nearly six minutes before a gentle fizz marked the permanent end of communications.
“Mid Upper, Skipper.”
“Go ahead, Rolf.”
Pienaar was too excited and relieved for all the formalities.
“I can see land, manne, Straight ahead. Ireland.”
Crozier strained his eyes and then saw for himself.
‘Ireland. Thank fuck’
Grabbing charts of the Irish coast, Erasmus moved into the palace and looked for landmarks as the forbidding coastline grew clearer. The absence of land to the far west helped greatly.
Looking up and looking down, Erasmus spoke the obvious.
“Fuck man, we only just caught the edge of Ireland. We could have been flying all the way to the Equator.”
‘Or not’, both men thought, knowing they would have crash landed in the Atlantic and never been heard of again,
“Pilot. Crew. I’m going to drop the old girl down soon and we’ll sail her into the coast. Don’t want to take risks with her temperatures.”
A worrying whine from the port outer engine emphasised the decision.
“Aidan is working on our position. We’ll find a place to moor up, somewhere sheltered. Then we can decide if we fancy internment or whether we wanna to get back in this war.”
The Sunderland dropped closer to the water and made a textbook landing on the light swell.
The starboard wing tank was virtually empty, which meant the external fire died quickly but the remaining engine started to misfire, as it could not draw a steady supply of fuel.
‘A close run thing that.’
Rafer Crozier, Arsey to his friends, was surprised at how calmly he handled all that the damaged bird could throw at him.
Still engrossed in his map, Aidan tapped a section, drawing Crozier’s attention to the headland.
“Go port side of the headland for sure, more protected from the Atlantic, Rafer.”
That made sense.
Momentum and the remaining full power engine was all he needed to nurse NS-X in close to shore, round the headland, seeking a suitable place to drop anchor.
Keeping a suitable distance from the starboard shoreline, Crozier ignored the first inlet, rounding a two hundred metre peninsular and deciding it was as good a spot as any.
He suddenly realised that he had not organised the anchor party.
“Pilot. Magic. Pilot, VDB. Stand by anchors.”
Both men had prepared themselves and not intended to criticise the man who had saved them, sunk the Russian sub, and avenged their comrades.
Crozier cut his switches, allowing the last vestiges of forward momentum to bring him to perfect position.
“Away forward, away aft.”
Both anchors bit and the wounded aircraft lay safely at rest in the lee of the small peninsular.
Crozier closed his eyes and prayed, giving his God full thanks for the mercy and grace he had shown his son that day.
Pienaar arrived with a thermos of coffee and poured Arsey a full measure.
The warm beverage tasted like nectar to the exhausted and wounded man, lifting his spirit as only simple pleasures following extremes of terror and fear can.
“Right then, Aidan. Where are we?”
“Right on the money as it happens. We’re a short dinghy ride from civilisation, and I can smell the Guinness already.”
The three laughed, aware that sounds of movement meant that Malan and possibly even Van der Blumme were making their way up to the palace.
“And what’s the name of this oasis of pleasure?”
Erasmus squinted and confirmed the facts, affecting an upper class English accent.
“Well, if I’m right about where we are, yonder lies the fair Irish hamlet of Glenlara and a welcome fit for heroes.”
Their eyes were drawn in the direction he was pointing and they could already see men dragging three boats down a ramp leading to the water’s edge.
It was as well that they could not hear.
“English bastards! Not a man, Seamus, not a fucking man.”
His number two, Seamus Brown, had already sprinted away, joining the throng of IRA volunteers at the boats.
Reynolds had been christened Judas but no one called him that. Patrick, his second name, was favourite unless seeking a fight and an early grave.
Judas Patrick Reynolds had seen combat on the streets and hillsides of Spain during the Civil War and had revelled in its nastiness. He brought the lessons he learned home and subsequently acquired a reputation within IRA circles as an extremist, in every sense of the word.
Standing out in a group of extremists meant that Reynolds was marked for either an early grave or higher things.
Powerful men believed that the latter was most appropriate and a brief period of posturing and murder commenced.
But he had survived the internal squabbling that left fourteen families grieving, which culminated with his former unit commander on the wrong end of a shotgun. The hierarchy decided that enough was enough and they pulled the ‘rabid dog’ back into the fold by giving him leadership of the unit he had so recently made leaderless.
Judas Reynolds commanded the IRA Battalion based in County Mayo, a grand title for less than two hundred men, although most of them were to hand right now.
From his vantage point in the little school house, he could see the damaged British Sunderland and a handful of men waving from the now open hatch.
Turning to his companion, he reassured the worried man.
“This is no problem, Captain. We’ll dispose of the aircraft and crew down the coast. No attention’ll be drawn to our nest.”
He turned to the imposing man in the dark blue uniform.
“Trust me, Ilya.”
Trusting a man whose life had been spent in deception and treachery did not come easy to Captain-Lieutenant Ilya Nazarbayev, Commander of Special Action Force 27, Soviet Naval Marines.
However, he had little choice.
“Word for word, that’s what it said?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“OK, thank you, Sergeant. Dismissed.”
Squadron Leader Benjamin Viljoen was trying to remain detached, but it was difficult with his brother listed amongst the overdue.
He re-read the message chit, desperately seeking something that he knew was not there.
‘Both pilots down… Crozier flying… Type XXI submarine probably sunk… heading due south… position roughly thirty miles north of mainland Ireland.’
Viljoen moved to the Operations Centre to organise the morning’s rescue efforts. Confirmation that NS-X’s had sunk the submarine was received right on 1700hrs, but did not lessen the anguish and pain he felt. Only seeing Dagga again would do that.
The room was full of tension, heightened by the low lighting, the crackle of an open fire, and the fug of pipe smoke.
The only occupants eyed each other adversarialy, testing each other’s resolve, seeking out weakness and preparing to pounce on an unguarded moment.
The man in uniform leant forward, eyes boring into those of his companion as he made a small adjustment to the positions.
“Check.”
As he let go of the piece, Colonel Dan Bryan knew that something was wrong, for the man opposite permitted a smug look to replace the previous stoic expression.
Richard Hayes, Director of the National Library of Ireland, in whose office the two men were enjoying their usual game of chess, shook his head slowly.
“Some people never learn, you know.”
Bryan’s eyes sought the truth on the chequered battlefield as Hayes almost caressed a Knight before removing the Colonel’s checking Bishop.