Santorini. Alistair MacLean
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explosion. It couldn’t have been hit by a missile because we know there are no missile-carrying planes around—even if there were, a heat-seeking missile, the only type that could nail it at that altitude, would have gone for the engines, not the nose cone. It could only have been an up-front internal explosion.’
Talbot nodded, reached for a phone, asked the exchange for the sick bay and was through immediately.
‘Doctor? Would you detail an SBA—with firstaid kit—to stand by the lifeboat.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Sorry, no time to explain. Come on up to the bridge.’ He looked aft through the starboard wing doorway, turned and took the wheel from the helmsman. ‘Take a look, Harrison. A good look.’
Harrison moved out on the starboard wing, had his good look—it took him only a few seconds—returned and took the wheel again.
‘Awful.’ He shook his head. ‘They’re finished, sir, aren’t they?’
‘So I would have thought.’
‘They’re going to miss us by at least a quarter mile. Maybe a half.’ Harrison took another quick look through the doorway. ‘This angle of descent—they should land—rather, hit the sea—a mile, mile and a half ahead. Unless by some fluke they carry on and hit the island. That would be curtains, sir.’
‘It would indeed.’ Talbot looked ahead through the for’ard screens. Thera Island was some four miles distant with Cape Akrotiri lying directly to the north and Mount Elias, the highest point of the island—it was close on 2000 feet—to the north-east. Between them, but about five miles further distant, a tenuous column of bluish smoke, hardly visible against a cloudless sky, hung lazily in the air. This marked the site of Thira Village, the only settlement of any size on the island. ‘But the damage would be limited to the plane. The south-west of the island is barren. I don’t think anyone lives there.’
‘What are we going to do, sir? Stop over the point where it goes down?’
‘Something like that. You can handle it yourself. Or maybe another quarter or half mile further on along the line he was taking. Have to wait and see. Fact is, Harrison, I know no more about it than you do. It may disintegrate on impact or, if it survives that, it may carry on some distance under water. Not for far, I should think—not if its nose has gone. Number One—’ this to Van Gelder ‘—what depths do we have here?’
‘I know the five fathom mark is about half a mile offshore along the south of the island. Beyond that, it shelves pretty steeply. I’ll have to check in the chart-room. At the moment I’d guess we’re in two to three hundred fathoms. A sonar check, sir?’
‘Please.’ Van Gelder left, brushing by Sub-Lieutenant Cousteau as he did. Cousteau, barely in his twenties, was a happy-go-lucky youngster, always eager and willing and a more than competent seaman. Talbot beckoned him out on to the starboard wing.
‘Have you seen it, Henri?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Cousteau’s normal cheerfulness was in marked abeyance. He gazed in unwilling fascination at the blazing, smoking plane, now directly abeam and at an altitude of under a thousand feet. ‘What a damnable, awful thing.’
‘Aye, it’s not nice.’ They had been joined by Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander Andrew Grierson. Grierson was dressed in white shorts and a flowing multi-coloured Hawaiian shirt which he doubtless regarded as the correct dress of the day for the summer Aegean. ‘So this is why you wanted Moss and his first-aid box.’ Moss was the Leading Sick Bay Attendant. ‘I’m thinking maybe I should be going myself.’ Grierson was a West Highland Scot, as was immediately evident from his accent, an accent which he never attempted to conceal for the excellent reason that he saw no earthly reason why he ever should. ‘If there are any survivors, which I consider bloody unlikely, I know something about decompression problems which Moss doesn’t.’
Talbot was conscious of the increased vibration beneath his feet. Harrison had increased speed and was edging a little to the east. Talbot didn’t even give it a second thought: his faith in his senior quartermaster was complete.
‘Sorry, Doctor, but I have more important things for you to do.’ He pointed to the east. ‘Look under the trail of smoke to the plane’s left.’
‘I see it. I should have seen it before. Somebody sinking, for a fiver.’
‘Indeed. Something called the Delos, a private yacht, I should imagine, and, as you say, sinking. Explosion and on fire. Pretty heavily on fire, too, I would think. Burns, injuries.’
‘We live in troubled times,’ Grierson said. Grierson, in fact, lived a singularly carefree and untroubled existence but Talbot thought it was hardly the time to point this out to him.
‘The plane’s silent, sir,’ Cousteau said. ‘The engines have been shut off.’
‘Survivors, you think? I’m afraid not. The explosion may have destroyed the controls in which case, I imagine, the engines shut off automatically.’
‘Disintegrate or dive?’ Grierson said. ‘Daft question. We’ll know all too soon.’
Van Gelder joined them. ‘I make it eighty fathoms here, sir. Sonar says seventy. They’re probably right. Doesn’t matter, it’s shallowing anyway.’
Talbot nodded and said nothing. Nobody said anything, nobody felt like saying anything. The plane, or the source of the dense column of smoke, was now less than a hundred feet above the water. Suddenly, the source of the smoke and flame dipped and then was abruptly extinguished. Even then they failed to catch a glimpse of the plane, it had been immediately engulfed in a fiftyfoot-high curtain of water and spray. There was no sound of impact and certainly no disintegration for when the water and the spray cleared away there was only the empty sea and curiously small waves, little more than ripples, radiating outwards from the point of impact.
Talbot touched Cousteau on the arm. ‘Your cue, Henri. How’s the whaler’s radio?’
‘Tested yesterday, sir. Okay.’
‘If you find anything, anybody, let us know. I have a feeling you won’t need that radio. When we stop, lower away then keep circling around. We should be back in half an hour or so.’ Cousteau left and Talbot turned to Van Gelder. ‘When we stop, tell sonar I want the exact depth.’
Five minutes later the whaler was in the water and moving away from the side of the Ariadne, Talbot rang for full power and headed east.
Van Gelder hung up a phone. ‘Thirty fathoms, sonar says. Give or take a fathom.’
‘Thanks. Doctor?’
‘Hundred and eighty feet,’ Grierson said. ‘I don’t even have to rub my chin over that one. The answer is no. Even if anyone could escape from the fuselage—which I think would be impossible in the first place—they’d die soon after surfacing. Diver’s bends. Burst lungs. They wouldn’t know that they’d have to breathe out all the way up. A trained, fit submariner, possibly with breathing apparatus, might do it. There would be no fit, trained submariners aboard that plane. Question’s academic, anyway. I agree with you, Captain. The only men aboard that plane are dead men.’
Talbot nodded and reached for a phone.
‘Myers? Signal to General Carson. Unidentified four-engined plane crashed in sea two miles south of Cape Akrotiri, Thera Island. 1415 hours. Impossible to determine whether military or civilian. First located altitude 43,000 feet. Apparent cause internal explosion. No further details available at present. No NATO planes reported in vicinity. Have you any information? Sylvester. Send Code B.’
‘Wilco, sir. Where do I send it?’
‘Rome. Wherever he is he’ll have it two minutes later.’
Grierson said: ‘Well, yes, if anyone knows he should.’ Carson was the C-in-C Southern European NATO. He lifted his binoculars and looked at the vertical column of smoke, now no more than four miles to the east. ‘A yacht, as you say, and making quite a bonfire. If there’s