Operation Black Key by Kim Hughes

Author:Kim Hughes [Hughes, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2021-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-SIX

Nansen stepped outside once more, binoculars at the ready to watch the Hercules do its stuff for real this time. The wind had dropped slightly and was no longer whistling mournfully around the superstructure. It meant he had a clearer sense of the aircraft’s engine pitch, and it was already at its dive volume. This time the sound of the propellers appeared to envelope the ship. Was it above him? Would it suddenly appear over his head? He wasn’t going to recommend a medal if the idiot took off the stack and masts. Nansen could see the Alpha tender working its way towards the presumed drop zone. As it made its yawing progress, it gave scale to the size of the waves. Nansen wouldn’t want to be jumping into them.

Then the amorphous racket shifted and focused to off the starboard side. The Hercules poked its bulbous front through the cloud more gradually on this run, as if he really had found a set of airbrakes. Nansen used the binoculars to scan the plane as it punched a hole through the clouds, juddered, and then swooped into its last-second recovery, pointing its nose skyward once more.

Nansen scanned the space from which the C-130 had disappeared with engines screaming. Any second now he knew he would see the first two ‘sticks’ of parachutists appear.

The next sound he heard was like twigs snapping. Then a screech of tortured metal. Something emerged from the clouds, but it wasn’t human. For a brief, hopeful fraction of a second he thought the long cylinder with the whirling disc on the top was a large drone. But even before it hit the waves, sending up a perfect circle of white spray that looked like a watery crown, he knew it was no unmanned surveillance machine.

It was an Allison turboprop engine.

The rest of the C-130 followed in a nightmare played out to Nansen in scratchy black and white, as if he was watching some old film footage, like the fiery death of the Hindenburg. Maybe that was some sort of self-protection. This is historic, ancient. Not happening now. The fact that it was real and current kicked in while he studied the doomed plane, which appeared belly first, spinning like a giant metal sycamore seed.

As the entire airframe cleared the clouds, Nansen could see that one of the wings, the one missing the turboprop, had folded up, vertically. The rear cargo door was open, sagging like a boxer’s broken jaw. There was no way any pilot could save the stricken monster.

A cry of anguish came from Nansen’s mouth. He imagined he could hear a matching chorus of dismay, this one a low, collective groan, from below him as unlucky passengers witnessed the terrible scene.

The cargo door caught the water first, was torn off and sent cartwheeling away. Then the Hercules belly-flopped with the sound of a flat hand slapping water, followed by a loud squeal of metal. It settled and wallowed, still afloat, but sinking fast as the rear compartment flooded.

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