Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [206]
Other small craft were pushing out into the burning sea, heedless of danger, looking for survivors. All the flying boats sank within minutes.
Tyndall and Ahmed had grabbed a dinghy pulled up on the shore and pushed out into the pall of smoke and fumes. Ahmed rowed with all his strength as Tyndall shouted instructions. They dragged two women and a young girl into the dinghy. Then another woman was dragged over the side, coughing and still clinging onto her drowned baby. A badly injured man was next.
‘There’s a head to starboard, Ahmed.’
‘No can take more, tuan. We sink. We come back.’
Willing hands helped pull survivors from the boat and Ahmed and Tyndall turned back into the nightmare on the bay.
Despairingly they heard the Zeros turning for another attack. They only attacked the aircraft, ignoring the rescuers, the spectators on the wharf and the town. But tracer bullets were slicing in every direction. Ahmed pulled as hard as he could at the oars. He caught Tyndall’s eye and Tyndall gave him a swift smile of encouragement.
‘Want me to take over, Ahmed?’
Ahmed shook his head and returned the smile, then suddenly he slumped forward with a cry.
‘My god, Ahmed, You’re hit!’ Tyndall reached for him, seeing the blood already seeping across his white shirt. He lay him down and took over the oars, turning for shore, stroking as powerfully as he could. He kept his eyes on Ahmed’s face, willing his loyal companion not to die. ‘Hang on, old friend, we’re getting there. It’s not going to bloody well end like this. It can’t.’
An oar struck the muddy bottom and Tyndall leaped over the side and reached for Ahmed.
Olivia was frantically running along the shore trying to see into the fumes and pall of smoke that blurred the sun. The noise of the gunfire, cracking and burning, the shouts and screams, had seared into her soul. ‘John … Ahmed … ’ she cried. It seemed an eternity had passed since she was standing in the sun on the wharf but it had been less than fifteen minutes.
Then, miraculously, like some apparition, through the drifting smoke she saw the tall figure of her beloved Tyndall wading from the bay, with Ahmed in his arms.
A pain stabbed at Olivia. ‘Oh, Ahmed … ’ In the next second her world spun and in slow motion she saw Tyndall’s head jerk upwards, his knees bend, and he sank down into the mud. His body made one effort to rise, to lift Ahmed, but then he pitched forward and both of them lay in the mud at the water’s edge.
By the time she got to them, they were both dead.
Olivia sat in the mud, Tyndall’s head on her lap, stroking his hair with one hand, her other hand resting on Ahmed’s shoulder, oblivious to the chaos about her.
The Zeros swooped from the bay to the aerodrome and destroyed what planes remained on the ground. The opposing force from the Volunteer Defence Corps fired their .303 rifles in anger and frustration but were no match for the Zeros which now jettisoned their long-range fuel tanks. But a Dutch submachine gunner who had been repairing his gun at the aerodrome workshop emptied his ammunition at the departing Japanese and scored a hit.
Glancing over his shoulder, the Japanese pilot saw the disabled Zero spin out of control and reflected that one loss was a small price to pay for the honour they had done the Emperor.
Their mission accomplished, the Zeros turned and set a course for Timor and their base at the town of Koepang, where divers had been recruited for the Broome pearling industry since the late 1800s.
But Takeo Yoshikuri was uncharacteristically slow in joining the formation. Instead he took a long curving sweep over Broome and looked with intense curiosity at the rather shabby and sprawling little town. He had heard so much about it but couldn’t see anything that helped him understand the attraction it still had for his father, who had worked there for so much