Dust On the Sea by Douglas Reeman Read Free Book Online Page B

knew?
    Gaillard watched a white-coated messman pouring the wine. The bottle was misted over, ice-cold.
    He said casually, ‘By the way, they’re giving me a gong. I put you in for one, you know. Maybe next time.’
    Not long afterwards, they were called to board the Dakota again. As they walked out into the hard sunlight, Blackwood glanced back at the huddled white buildings, wondering if she was there.
    The same pilot was waiting for them, apparently untroubled by the prospect of the next leg of the flight. He merely remarked, ‘Wizard show, chaps, bang on time!’
    Blackwood looked once more over his shoulder.
    It was nice meeting you.
    He followed Gaillard to their seats and fastened his belt for take-off.
No foul-ups
, Gaillard had said.
    He braced himself as the plane rolled forward, knowing that Gibraltar offered one of the most hair-raising departures any passenger would ever experience. He could feel her hand on his sleeve.
    They were airborne, the wingtip appearing only inches away from the Rock. Gibraltar, the only battle honour ever displayed on the Royals’ cap badge.
    It was nice meeting you.
    From a window in the small, commandeered house, which had once belonged to a Spanish trader, she watched the Dakota lift hesitantly above the mass of anchored shipping, until the reflected glare made her move back into the shadow of a blind.
    She would freshen up and change. She unbuttoned her blouse and allowed it to fall over her bare shoulder, then she looked at her reflection in a mirror and turned her shoulder to the light again, studying the ugly weals on her skin; some would turn into bruises before they healed. She touched the shoulder with her chin, remembering the marine’s concern, and her own immediate caution. Always there; it was something still hard to learn, to take for granted.
    And yet, for only a few moments, it had been easy to imagine herself with him.
    She stared at the marks on her body. The instructors had told her that the impact of landing with a parachute was like jumping from a twelve-foot wall. The top of a house, more likely. They had not told her to expect these injuries left by the harness.
    She buttoned her blouse again and crossed to the window. The sky was empty.
    She thought suddenly of her brother; his name was Mike, too. Had been . . .
    She tried to push it from her mind. And the man who had loved her. So brief, so desperate; it was hard to believe she was that same woman. They were both dead. Both pilots, they had been shot down within four months of one another. Bought it, their friends would have called it, not from indifference, or because they had become too hardened by war to care. They dared not speak otherwiseof death . . . she had seen it in their faces often enough. As she had seen it in the marine officer’s face.
Mike.
    She held out both hands and studied them. She had almost expected to see them shaking.
    Surprisingly, she smiled. No fear, then. That would come. Again, she thought of the young captain called Blackwood. Doing what he must, out of a sense of duty, or because of tradition? She remembered the grey-green eyes, when she had spoken of his father.
We loved him very much.
So simply said.
    She shook herself, angry, disturbed that she could be seeking escape, contemplating it, when there was so little time left, for either of them.
    She watched as a fighter lifted away from the airstrip, the air cringing to its powerful engine. She followed it until her eyes watered in the glare.
    â€˜Mike.’ The sound of her own voice startled her, because she did not know whom she meant.

3
Operation ‘Lucifer
’
    In the relentless glare of early morning the protected waters of Alexandria harbour shone like blue steel. Like Gibraltar, the place was packed with warships and transports of every size and description, hard-worked destroyers and even some battered corvettes transferred from that other war in the Atlantic, as