Back in the late 1950s, the Royal Navy had wanted a new, jet-powered low-level naval bomber to take on the menace of the USSR’s Sverdlov-class cruisers. The job went out to tender, depending on acceptance of the submitted design. The Blackburn Aircraft Company offered the Buccaneer, and a limited order was placed. She first flew in 1962, almost as a stopgap warplane. She was still combat flying against Saddam Hussein in 1991, but over land for the Royal Air Force.
At the time of her birth, the Blackburn Company was on short commons, reduced to making metal bread bins. With hindsight, the Bucc was a product of near genius. She was never pretty; but she was tough and adaptable. And reliable, with two Rolls-Royce Spey engines that never failed.
For months, Major Mendoza had used her as a midair interceptor, knocking seventeen cocaine carriers out of the sky and sending twenty tons of the white powder to the ocean floor. But when Mendoza turned onto his low, sea-skimming attack run, the veteran Bucc reverted to what she had always been. She was a ship killer.
At ei
ght hundred yards, he jammed his thumb on the Fire button and watched a raking line of 30mm AP cannon shells stream toward the bow of the Hae Shin. Before he lifted his thumb, hauled back and howled over the tramp steamer, he had seen the shells tear out her bow.
The tramp stopped dead in the water as she ran into a wall of ocean thundering into her forward holds. Then small figures were running for the lifeboat, ripping off the canvas cover. The Buccaneer rose and turned in another long arc as the pilot gazed out through the top of his canopy at the victim below.
The second strike was from the stern. Major Mendoza hoped the engineer had got out of the engine room; it was right in his sights. The second stream of cannon shells tore open the stern, taking rudder, propellers, two prop shafts and the engine and turning them into scrap.
The figures on deck had the lifeboat in the sea and were tumbling into it. Circling at 3,000 feet, the flier could see the Hae Shin was sinking by both stem and stern. Certain that she was gone and that the Prins Willem would pick up the crew, Major Mendoza turned for Barbados. Then the first of his Speys, having flown on vapor for the second run, flamed out.
A glance at the fuel gauges revealed the second engine was also running on vapor. He used his last few pounds of gas to climb, and when the second Spey died he had clawed the Bucc up to 8,000 feet. The silence, as always after a flameout, was eerie. He could see the island ahead of him, but out of reach. No glide was ever going to be stretched that far.
Below his nose was a small white feather on the water, the V wake of a tiny fisherman. He dived toward it, converting height to speed, raced across the staring faces at 1,000 feet, then hauled back, converting speed to height, pulled the ejector seat handle and blew out straight through the canopy.
Messrs. Martin and Baker knew their stuff. The seat took him up and away from the dying bomber. A pressure-operated trigger tumbled him out of the steel seat, which fell harmlessly to the water, and left him dangling in the warm sunshine under his parachute. Minutes later he was being hauled, coughing and spluttering, onto the aft deck of a Bertram Moppie.
Two miles away, a geyser of white foam erupted from the sea as the Buccaneer plunged nose first into the Atlantic. The pilot lay between three dead wahoos and a sailfish, as the two American charter fishermen leaned over him.
“You okay, buddy?” asked one.
“Yes, thank you. Fine. I need to call a man in the Bahamas.”
“No problem,” said the elderly sportsman, as if naval bomber pilots were always dropping out of the sky on him. “Use my cell.”
Major Mendoza was arrested in Bridgetown. An official from the American Embassy secured his release by sundown and brought a change of clothes. The Barbadian authorities accepted a tale to the effect that a training flight from a U.S. carrier far out at sea had suffered a catastrophic engine failure, and the flier, although a Brazilian, was on secondment to the U.S. Navy. The diplomat, himself puzzled by his order, knew it was nonsense, but they are trained to lie convincingly. Barbados was content to let the Brazilian fly home the next day.
EPILOGUE
THE MODEST COMPACT TRUNDLED INTO THE SMALL TOWN of Pennington, New Jersey, and its driver stared around at the landmarks of his home, which he had not seen for so long.
South of the junction marking the center of town, he passed the Civil War-vintage white clapboard house with the shingle of “Mr. Calvin Dexter, Attorney-at-Law.” It looked neglected, but he knew he would enjoy fixing it back up and seeing if he still had a practice left.
At the junction of Main Street and West Delaware Avenue, the heart of Pennington, he toyed between a strong black coffee at the Cup of Joe café, or something more at Vito’s Pizza. Then he noticed the new food mart and recalled he would need provisions for his home on Chesapeake Drive. He parked the car, bought from a lot close to where he had landed at Newark Airport, and entered the mart.
He filled a whole shopping cart and ended up at the checkout. There was a lad there, probably a student working his way through college as he had once done.
“Anything else, sir?”
“That reminds me,” said Dexter. “I could do with some sodas.”
“Right across there in the cold case. We have a special offer on Coke.”
Dexter thought it over.
“Maybe some other time.”
IT WAS the parish priest at St. Mary’s on South Royal Street who raised the alarm. He was sure his parishioner was in Alexandria because he had seen the man’s housekeeper Maisie with a cartful of shopping. Yet he had missed two Masses, which he never did. So after morning service the priest walked the few hundred yards to the elegant old house at the junction of South Lee and South Fairfax streets.
To his surprise, the gate to the walled garden, although seemingly closed as ever, opened with a light push. That was odd. Mr. Devereaux always answered on the intercom and pressed a buzzer inside to release the catch.
The priest walked up the pink brick path to find the front door also open. He went pale and crossed himself when he saw poor Maisie, who had never harmed anyone, sprawled on the hallway tiles, a neat bullet hole drilled through her heart.
He was about to use his cell phone to call 911 for help when he saw the study door was also open. He approached in fear and trembling to peer around the jamb.