Twelve Seconds to Live (2002) (6 page)

Was I one of those?

Magnetic mines, growing more sophisticated and treacherous with every passing month, ruled their lives. The training done, there was always the first incident, the beast.

A driving force, obsessive; Masters could feel it now, and wondered how he had survived, let alone found himself guiding others on the same dangerous course.

It had become personal. His mind, his ears, his fingers not only against the weapon but a human being, somewhere, who had designed and set the beast into motion. A living
thing
, an entity.

It was behind him now. It must be. For others, if not merely for himself.

There were faces he did not know, yet. Ones who asked,
The new boss, what’s he like?
A man you could trust your life to? Or just another stranger? He touched the scar. No wonder the girl had been watching him in the driving mirror. Her eyes might have been saying,
Why him, and not you?

He strode to the window and dragged the screen aside. It was still dark, but he could discern the curve of the hill and, he thought, the ragged line of trees.

And there were a lot of faces missing. Too many . . .
Inexperienced, over-eager, careless. In most cases you could never know, unless by some last desperate call over the intercom. And even then . . .

He thought of Critchley again, the abandoned uniform. Like a reproach. He had scanned a brief report, the discovery of the mine, a petty officer’s statement, how he had been surprised that such a senior officer had been sent to deal with the incident. The driver, who had described how he was told to take cover at the very beginning. Rear-Admiral Fawcett had pencilled in an aside to explain that Critchley had been at a meeting when he had been informed of the mine. An officer of the nearest Render Mines Safe group had been delayed in a car accident. Critchley must have acted on impulse. To
showthem . . .
Masters could hear him saying it.

He leaned forward and felt the cold air through the glass. From this height he could see beyond the hill to a harder, darker line beyond. The sea.

He heard someone moving about downstairs. Coker, the P.O. steward.
Long service. Three badges.
As mixed a collection of people as you could discover anywhere, to be welded together, to use all their experience in protecting and saving others, part of the ultimate weapon for victory.

It’s up to you.

He heard footsteps on the stairs, and the clink of crockery, and looked at the sea again.

Me, and a few thousand others.

He smiled, surprised that it came so easily, after so long.

He was back.

David Masters had been about to leave for Portland when the call had come through. At dawn that day there had been an air raid alert, common enough even when some of them proved to be false. Masters had heard the staccato bark of gunfire while he had been sitting on the edge of the bed in the room with its damp wallpaper. Not close, and it had not lasted for long.

Captain Hubert Chavasse, who commanded the establishment at Chaldon St Mary, had been wary about it.

‘You were going to Portland anyway. Rear-Admiral Fawcett will be on the phone before another hour passes, I’ve no doubt about that, so perhaps you could let
me
know what’s going on!’

Chavasse was a precise, if impatient, officer of the old school, abrasive when he considered it necessary. The inlet was littered with hoists and machinery, and surrounded by makeshift huts for the ratings, further disfigured by hastily built air raid shelters for these
occasional hit-and-run attacks. But to him it was
a naval establishment
, and in his eyes it would stand against any other.

It had been a solitary plane, spotted flying in from the Channel, low over the water, then climbing and turning above one of the beaches near the road to Weymouth and the Bill. No bombs had been dropped, and there had been no reports of mines being laid in or around the bay.

By a twist of fate the aircraft had been caught out by one of the army’s local mobile batteries, which had been formed to deal with similar individual attacks. The plane had been shot down. The army was dealing with it.

Until the telephone call. Portland had sent a mine disposal team; the admiral had thought it necessary.

Chavasse had said, ‘Just take a look, Masters.’ He rarely used first names. ‘No chances, right? Can’t afford to lose
you
at this stage!’ His short, barking laugh had followed Masters out to the waiting car.

It had taken more than an hour to cover only a couple of miles; the road had been jammed with service vehicles which seemed to reach as far as the eye could see. Impatient military policemen, redcaps, on foot or motor cycles, were somehow managing to turn the traffic round on the narrow road and divert it through Dorchester.

An air attack now and half the transport in southern England would be wiped out, Masters thought.

He was not the only passenger. Paymaster Lieutenant-Commander Brayshaw was also going to Portland on a mission for Captain Chavasse. He was the captain’s secretary, and probably knew more about the organization,
the efficiency or weaknesses of the establishment, than anyone else. Quiet and easy to talk to, he was doubtless just what Chavasse needed. Masters suspected he had been sent along to make sure that things remained under control.

The car, the same big Wolseley, jerked to a halt, the tyres embedded in the roadside mud.

‘Up there, sir. I can see the turn-off.’

It was even the same driver, cap tilted forward, hair black against her collar. Masters had heard that she had applied for a transfer to Plymouth, where she had originally been stationed, the day after his arrival. Five days ago. She was still here.

Another redcap appeared and waved them around the last bend in the road where a barrier had been erected, and while other cars and lorries headed away for the diversion, the Wolseley was suddenly alone. Brayshaw wound down a window and peered at the sky. It was completely clear and blue, no vapour trails to betray aircraft, only the distant line of barrage balloons towards Weymouth, like basking whales in the hard sunlight.

He shut the window and shivered. ‘The old stable door policy, I see.’ Then, ‘What do you expect to find when we get there, David?’

Masters had heard him asking questions in the makeshift wardroom. Not mere empty curiosity; he was genuinely interested. Perhaps the white cloth that separated the stripes of gold lace on his sleeve also separated him from the ones who went out to risk, and often to die.

Masters watched the road curving again beyond the windscreen, the way her gloved hands controlled the
wheel; one who was used to driving. Strange if you thought about it. It took so long to train drivers when there were more essential trades to learn that they were always asking for people who had already learned to drive, in that other world before the war. The leading Wren was one of them. He smiled to himself. He was not.

He considered Brayshaw’s question and waited for the face to form in his mind: Lieutenant Clive Sewell, who seemed too old for his rank, and must have scraped through all the objections to achieve it. A serious, intelligent face, thinning hair, and a careful, deceptively hesitant manner of going about his work. He looked like a schoolmaster, which in fact he had been before joining the navy and volunteering for the misleadingly named Land Incident Section almost as soon as he had passed out of
King Alfred
as another Wavy Navy officer.

They had met several times, had even completed part of the mine warfare training at Roedean together. A man you could trust with your life.

He replied, ‘The plane might be a minelayer. A Junkers 188. Not used as such normally, but you never know. Clive Sewell will have a pretty good idea. Otherwise it would all have been tidied up by now.’

He saw the driver’s hair catch on her collar as she turned slightly. Listening? Or keeping her distance? She had applied for a transfer back to Plymouth, a base where she would be too busy to remember. To blame.

Brayshaw straightened his back and exclaimed, ‘Here they are!’ He seemed genuinely excited, free, for an hour or so, from Admiralty Fleet Orders, signals on
every subject, inspections and official functions, and Chavasse’s daily routine eccentricities, of which apparently there were many.

Another group of khaki figures and two parked jeeps, and, further along, a field ambulance, the red crosses very stark in the sunshine. Like blood.

There were also blue uniforms. Something of a relief.

Brayshaw said, ‘May not take too long, eh?’ He saw Masters’ hand move to the scar on his face. He knew quite a lot about Lieutenant-Commander David Masters: how he had turned his back on the sea and had thrown himself into the private, deadly world of mine disposal, becoming one of
Vernon
’s leading authorities before arriving in Dorset. Dedicated, and yet something more. A man who would be attractive to women, although he had heard nothing about that.

Masters said, ‘Here comes somebody who’ll know.’ He had not heard Brayshaw; he had been recalling Fawcett’s comment. The mine was cheap to produce: it caused costly delays. It would certainly play hell with the exercise at Portland which he had been invited to observe. The admiral would be livid.

He studied the figure by the roadside as the car rolled to a halt. Tall and square, with a strong, weathered face, he wore no oilskin or protective clothing over his reefer jacket, as if he were oblivious to the bitter air. Short grey hair beneath his cap, and medals from another war. He carried the single thin stripe of a warrant officer on his sleeve, a Gunner (T) from the Portland team. Another old sweat. What might have happened without them?

The man saluted, fingers very straight to his peak, as if on parade. Chavasse would have approved.

He said, ‘Bird, sir. I got the message that you were comin’. Managed to keep the gawkers away.’ Clipped, formal. Efficient. In the navy anybody named Bird was always called Dicky. Masters could not imagine anyone who would dare with this formidable gunner.

He climbed out of the car and glanced around. A stone wall, and another big field beyond. It could have been anywhere.

Bird said, ‘I’ll show you, sir.’ He pushed open a gate and indicated some deep mud. ‘Watch yer step, sir.’

Masters turned and looked back. The sea in the background, the car with one door hanging open. Brayshaw had gone round to sit beside the driver, perhaps to get a better view.

A few of the soldiers were tossing stones at a tree stump in some sort of contest. Eager to go, bored with it. Only the quietly throbbing ambulance was a reminder.

He was still surprised that he could walk and climb without becoming breathless, or checked by the pain in his back, like those first months after he had left hospital.

Bird watched him grimly. ‘Over there, sir. Follow that line of bushes.’

Masters studied the side of the field and took out his binoculars. A slight adjustment, and the scene seemed to leap at him. He took another breath and looked again. The aircraft must have been partially under control when it had plunged out of the dawn sky. The field must have appeared safe, and a desperate, perhaps injured pilot did
not have much choice; the hedge would slow if not halt his landing. It was clear enough now in broad daylight. The last barricade of hedgerow was piled up and over a thick stone wall, an old building or barn, its crumbling beams just visible. But the wall was solid, had likely been here for a century or more.

The aircraft had been torn apart, but had not caught fire. Only the tail section looked undamaged, the swastika holding the light as if still unvanquished.

Bird said quietly, ‘Mr. Sewell’s over there now, sir.’ Masters felt his eyes. ‘Knows you well, ’e tells me.’

Masters nodded, lowering the binoculars to allow his mind to settle.

‘Does he have his rating with him?’

‘Aye, sir. There’s a deep ditch over there, by the far gate. He’s in there, intercom in use. Should be safe enough if . . .’ He did not continue.

‘I’ll crawl over and have a word with him.’ He saw the gunner’s sudden concern, could almost hear what his orders had been on the subject. He added, ‘The intercom, that’s all.’

The gunner almost smiled. ‘I should ’ave said, sir. One of the Jerries is, or was, still alive in that lot. But Mr. Sewell thought it best to keep things as quiet as possible, until . . .’

Masters saw the pensive, schoolmaster’s face in his mind again. It was what he would think. And all this time they had been stuck in crawling traffic. He stood up and said, ‘Stay here, Mr. Bird. If I duck out of sight, you hit the dirt, right?’

Bird studied him again, impassively. ‘Be right ’ere, sir.’

Masters walked deeper into the field. There was a fold across it which he had not noticed in the binoculars. It was deeply scarred, with fragments of metal flung on either side to mark where the aircraft had struck and rebounded for the last and fatal impact.

Two, perhaps three times he dropped to his knees, ready to cover his head and ears with his arms, but there was only silence, and the light breeze in the bushes. He wondered what the admiral would say if he eventually turned up with his uniform covered in mud. He stopped it right there. If you could joke about it, you were over the edge.

He waited, and then out of nowhere he heard someone speak.

‘Got it, sir. I’ve put it all down!’

The ditch was a good choice; he was on top of it without even seeing it, or the upturned face only feet away. He put a warning finger to his lips and then lowered himself down beside the rating, Sewell’s assistant.
All those other times.
The assistant was dressed in seaman’s rig, a torpedoman’s badge on one sleeve. Masters knew he had been with Sewell for some time, and yet he looked more like a boy than a man. He was kneeling on an oilskin, his cap nearby on his tool pack, and he wore a headset with speaker attached, something Sewell must have invented for the job. The usual intercom lay nearby, humming softly.