Douglas Reeman - In Danger's Hour

‘I – I don’t understand, sir!’

‘Don’t try, old son.’ He recalled his words to the Canadian major in Sicily when Ransome had run to the stretcher. ‘Just pray!’

He lined up the flap with the fuse, tightened his spanner around it and then stared at the low clouds.

Twelve seconds. He put his weight on it. Nothing happened at first, then it scraped away from its new paint and began to turn.

He gasped, it’s under the flap, Stinky.’ He let the lamp fall into the sea by his boot, which had now filled with icy water. Another turn, and another. How much time would he have to know what was happening?

He shouted, ‘It’s here, under the flap. I’m doing it now.’ He inserted the callipers and began to turn. Suppose Foulerton had seen it too, and this was the real booby-trap.

He yelled, ‘Well, it’s too bloody late now, you bastards!’

The fuse slid into his fingers, and the sudden silence seemed to probe his ears like fingers. He returned to the original ring and inserted the callipers. Inside the gap there was the second fuse, now made harmless by his discovery. But for some warning instinct the mine would have exploded at the first or second turn of the keeping ring.

He heard Wakeford calling, ‘Are you all right, sir? Please answer me!’

He bent over against the mine and gasped into the telephone, ‘Come and get me out of this! I – I can’t move!’ He vomited over the telephone and hurled it into the water.

Men were running through the water towards him, then someone put his arm round his waist and a voice shouted, ‘Here, lend a hand! The poor bastard’s done his bit for the night!’

Then there was Wakeford on the Chesil Beach, although Sherwood did not remember how he got there. It was no longer empty, but dark figures ran and bustled in all directions.

Commander Bliss reached out and took his hand. It was like a piece of ice.

Bliss said, ‘I wondered what you chaps did. Now that I know, I’d still like to be told how you do it! That was a bloody brave thing you just did.’

Sherwood tried to speak, but nothing made sense. He was shaking so badly he knew he would have fallen but for the others holding him. The Wren driver wrapping a rug over his shoulders, laughing and sobbing at the same time, the vice-admiral thumping the beach with a walking-stick and booming, ‘Well, how about that, eh?’

Wakeford whispered, ‘What is it, sir?’

‘Just get me away from here. Somewhere I can use a telephone.’ Then he fainted.

Bliss said, ‘Call up Rob Roy. Tell her captain. He wanted to be told at once, though we were all expecting it would be tomorrow.’ He glanced up at the clouds as the wind whipped his coat against his legs. ‘Then it would have been too late, I fear.’

He watched some soldiers carrying Sherwood up the beach towards the road.

‘I don’t know how many of those damnable things that lieutenant has made safe, but I swear to God, that one will be his last He looked out at the black water as if expecting to see it lying, there, as evil and as patient as ever, but there was only the faint gleam where Sherwood had lost one of his lamps in the water, and the sigh of a tide on the turn.

When Wakeford returned to the car he found Sherwood sitting in the back, the rug still around his shoulders, his face hidden in his hands.

The Wren whispered, ‘He was just sick again.’

Sherwood looked up; in the darkness his eyes were like holes.

‘Telephone?’

‘D’you think you should, sir?’

‘Please.’ His voice was very small. ‘Help me.’

They found a telephone at the police station where the news of the mine had obviously been a lively topic since it had been dropped by an enemy aircraft one night earlier. The German pilot had probably jettisioned it because he was caught in a barrage, or being pursued by night fighters. They would never know.

Tomorrow the sappers would haul the mine from the sea and then it would be the boffins’ chance to examine it.

Sherwood found himself in a small office with pictures on the wall of wanted criminals and missing persons.

Wakeford got the number for him, handed him the telephone and then withdrew. He tried to smile at him, to offer some encouragement, but all he could think about was the sound of Sherwood’s voice on the field telephone, like a man staring at the rope or a firing squad.

Sherwood heard her voice immediately.

She said huskily, ‘Somehow I knew you would phone. I had to wait. To be sure. Tell me what to do.’

Sherwood tried to clear his mind. ‘I want to see you. Now. I—I need to—’

She said quickly, ‘Where are you? I’ll come at once.’

He tried to laugh. ‘The police have offered to drive me, you see.’

She said, i shall be here, waiting. Don’t do anything, just come.’

But Sherwood could not reply this time. His defences had linally broken down.

Ian Ransome stamped his feet on the stone flags to restore the circulation and watched the snow falling steadily from a dull grey afternoon sky.

Every so often he turned and looked at the massive abbey and the groups of people who were making their way towards it.

Many of them were in the uniforms of all three services; in fact they outnumbered the civilians. Some were accompanied by girl-friends, others walked purposefully and alone. There was no saluting although the ranks varied from army privates to at least one group-captain from the local air station.

Eve had chosen this place where they would meet for the first time since Rob Roy had entered the dockyard. That had been three days ago, with only their brief, sometimes anxious telephone calls to sustain them.

There was a concert being held at the abbey, musicians from Plymouth and some surrounding towns, plus a few in uniform. She had remembered that he enjoyed classical music, and had bought tickets for this one performance.

It was not just that. She had told him on the last telephone call, she wanted them to meet on their own ground. Perhaps she meant away from her usual surroundings, even her father? He had answered Ransome’s calls twice and had been outwardly friendly, and yet Ransome felt his reserve; he was careful not to display too much warmth.

He glanced at his watch and saw the snow clinging to his sleeve. He thought of Sherwood, what Cusack had said when he had gone to see him.

The astute Irish doctor had described finding him in the care of the young woman to whom he had gone directly after the incident with the mine.

‘Before he never felt fear, y’see, because he no longer cared about living. He thought that his life, in its deepest sense, was finished, with only some driving force keeping him going, a determination to hit back at the enemy in a field he knew better than most.’ He had shrugged and downed another glass of Ransome’s Scotch. ‘Then everything changed. He and this woman found one another, though that part was left suitably vague for my benefit, I suspect. Philip Sherwood did explain how it hit him when he was working on the mine. He thought of dying, and for the first time since his life had been smashed to pieces, he wanted, no, needed to live.’

Thank God Sherwood was not required for duty. He wanted to come back to Rob Roy, but Ransome knew inwardly that he was finished with his lonely encounters with mines and whatever the enemy could dream up, forever. Perhaps in his strange, distant fashion he wanted to share his change of fortune with the only people he really liked.

He heard a door closing behind him and felt a start of anxiety, maybe she had changed her mind? Or she had been prevented from coming? A small bus rolled to a stop with slush dripping from its sides, and suddenly she was there, running towards him, her arms outstretched, oblivious to the other passengers and the grinning bus driver.