landing had not been tight enough for Peter. They had taken two minutes fifty-eight seconds from jump to penetration of the deserted administration block standing forlornly in one of the military zones of Salisbury Plain.
“If they had been holding hostages in here, we’d have arrived just in time to start mopping up the blood,” Peter told his men grimly. “We’ll do it again!
This time they had cut one minute fifty seconds off their time, falling in a tightly steered pattern about the building beating the time of Colin Noble’s No 2 striker team by ten seconds.
To celebrate Peter had scorned the military transports and they had run the five miles to the airstrip, each man in full combat kit and carrying the enormous bundle of his used parachute silk.
The Hercules was waiting to fly them back to base, but it was after dark before they landed and taxied into Thor Command’s security compound at the end of the main runway.
For Peter the temptation to leave the debriefing to Colin Noble had been strong indeed. His driver would have picked up Melissa-Jane at East Croydon Station and she would already be waiting alone in the new cottage, only half a mile from the base gates.
He had not seen her for six weeks, not since he had taken command of Thor, for in all that time he had not allowed himself a single day’s respite. He felt a tickle of guilt now, that he should be allowing himself this indulgence, and so he lingered a few minutes after the briefing to transfer command to Colin Noble.
“Where are you going for the weekend?“Colin demanded.
“She’s taking me to a pop concert tomorrow night The Living
Dead, no less, Peter chuckled. “Seems I haven’t lived until I hear the
Dead.”
“Give M.J. my love, and a kiss Colin told him.
Peter placed high value on his new-found privacy. He had lived most of his adult life in officers” quarters and messes, constantly surrounded by other human beings.
However, this command had given him the opportunity to escape.
The cottage was -only four and a half minutes” drive from the compound but it might have been an island. It had come furnished and at a rental that surprised him pleasantly.
Behind a high hedge of dog rose, off a quiet lane, and set in a sprawling rather unkempt garden, it had become home in a few weeks. He had even been able to unpack his books at last. Books accumulated over twenty years, and stored against such an opportunity. It was a comfort to have them piled around his desk in the small front room or stacked on the tables beside his bed, even though there had been little opportunity to read much of them yet. The new job was a tough one.
Melissa-Jane must have heard the crunch of gravel under the
Rover’s tyres, and she would certainly have been waiting for it. She came running out of the front door into the driveway, directly into the beam of the headlights, and Peter had forgotten how lovely she was. He felt his heart squeezed.
When he stepped out of the car she launched herself at him and clung with both arms around his chest. He held her for a long moment,
neither of them able to speak. She was so slim and warm, her body seeming to throb with life and vitality.
At last he lifted her chin and studied her face. The huge violet eyes swam with happy tears, and she sniffed loudly.
Already she had that oldfashioned English porcelain beauty; there would never be the acne and the agony of puberty for Melissa-jane.
Peter kissed her solemnly on the forehead. “You’ll catch your death, he scolded fondly.
“Oh, Daddy, you are a real fusspot.” She smiled through the tears and on tip-toe she reached up to kiss him full on the mouth.
They ate lasagne and cas sata at an Italian restaurant in Croydon,
and Melissa-Jane did most of the talking. Peter watched and listened,
revelling in her freshness and youth.
It was hard to believe she was not yet fourteen, for physically she was almost fully developed, the breasts under the white turtle-neck sweater no longer merely buds; and she conducted herself like a woman ten years older, only the occasional gleeful giggle betraying her or the lapse as she used some ghastly piece of Roedean slang, - “grotty”
was one of these.
Back at the cottage she made them Ovaltine and they drank it beside the fire, planning every minute of the weekend ahead of them and skirting carefully around the pitfalls, the unwritten taboos of their relationship which centred mostly on “Mother’.
When it was time for bed she came and sat in his lap and traced the lines of his face with her fingertip.
“Do you know who you remind me of?”
“Tell me,“he invited.
“Gary Cooper only much younger, of course,” she added hurriedly.
“Of course,” Peter chuckled. “But where did you ever hear of Gary
Cooper? “They had High Noon as the Sunday movie on telly last week.”
She kissed him again and her lips tasted of sugar and Ovaltine, and her hair smelled sweet and clean.
“How old are you, anyway, Daddy?”
“I’m thirty-nine.”
“That isn’t really so terribly old.” She comforted him uncertainly.
“Sometimes it’s as old as the dinosaurs-” and at that moment the bleeper beside his empty cup began its strident, irritating electronic tone, and Peter felt the slide of dread in his stomach.
Not now, he thought. Not on this day when I have been so long without her.
The bleeper was the. size of a cigarette pack, the globe of its single eye glared redly, insistent as the audio- signal.
Reluctantly Peter picked it up and, with his daughter still in his lap, he switched in the miniature two-way radio and depressed the send button.
“Thor One,“he said.
The reply was tinny and distorted, the set near the limit of its range.
“General Stride, Atlas has ordered condition Alpha.” Another false alarm, Peter thought bitterly. There had been a dozen Alphas in the last month, but why on this night. Alpha was the first stage of alert with the teams embarked and ready for condition Bravo which was the
GO.
“Inform Atlas we are seven minutes from Bravo.” Four and a half of those would be needed for him to reach the compound, and suddenly the decision to rent the cottage was shown up as dangerous self-indulgence.
In four and a half minutes innocent lives can be lost.
“Darling,” he hugged Melissa-Jane swiftly, “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right.” She was stiff and resentful.
“There will be another time soon, I promise.”
“You always promise,” she whispered, but she saw he was no longer listening. He dislodged her and stood up, the heavy jawline clenched and thick dark brows almost meeting above the narrow, straight, aristocratic nose.
“Lock the door when I’m gone, darling. I’ll send the driver for you if it’s Bravo. He will drive you back to Cambridge and I will let your mother know to expect YOU.” He stepped out into the night, still shrugging into his duffle coat, and she listened to the whirl of the starter, the rush of tyres over gravel and the dwindling note of the engine.
The controller in Nairobi tower allowed the British Airways flight from Seychelles to run fifteen seconds past its reporting time. Then he called once, twice and a third time without reply. He switched frequencies to the channels reserved for information, approach, tower and, finally, emergency, on one at least of which 070 should have been maintaining listening watch. There was still no reply.
Speedbird 070 was forty-five seconds past “operations normal”
