Tamar Read Online Free Page B

audible inside the shed.
    Two hours later the farmworker and the doctor were semi-rigid with cold and numbed by noise, so they were startled when they looked up and saw Flight Sergeant McKay leaning over them, supporting himself on the steel ribs of the plane.
    “We’re about to cross the Dutch coast. The skipper will start to bank and weave to avoid antiaircraft fire in about five minutes. You’ll get chucked about a bit. Try not to puke, okay?”
    They nodded, dumb.
    McKay leaned closer. “Did Lennon give you a spot of whisky apiece? Aye, I thought so. He pays for it out of his own pocket, you know. Now would be a good time to take it. I’ll be back in a while. All right?”
    They nodded again. McKay went away and the plane began to lose height. Bubbles of pain formed inside Tamar’s ears. Then the world began to rock and buck and tilt.
    Some time later McKay came back, paler in the face, followed by a crew member the agents hadn’t seen before. The containers, metal cylinders the size of corpses, were stuffed with guns, ammunition, medical supplies, radios, explosives, food, and money. The two airmen began to free them from their fastenings and slide them along the parachute line towards the hatch. The sound of the engines wavered, and the plane tilted, then straightened. The two RAF men hauled the hatch door open; working very fast, they shoved five containers out into the howling dark.
    Almost immediately the Stirling banked steeply. Dart and Tamar, strapped into their seats, were tipped backwards at a forty-five-degree angle. Whisky-flavoured vomit rose in Tamar’s throat, and he forced it back down. The plane levelled, then banked again; Tamar and Dart lurched forwards. Tamar felt that his guts had come loose from their moorings. His breath came out of his lungs in ragged gasps. Seeing his terror, Dart reached across and gripped him by the forearm.
    Then McKay was signalling urgently. The two agents unclipped their belts and stumbled across the jolting steel floor. McKay hooked their chutes to the line and checked the clasps. The sixth container went out, then Tamar was at the hatch. The inrush of air sucked the breath out of him. He gaped at McKay, who was holding up his right hand with the fingers outstretched:
wait
. The hand closed. Then one finger lifted, then two, then three. McKay’s mouth formed words that Tamar could not hear.
    Then he was where nothing could be felt or heard other than the dwindling sound that might have been the plane or his own screaming. Drowning, he tried to swim, but he had forgotten how. He thought he saw below him a pale eye reflected in broken glass. Then something that might have been God grabbed him by the collar.
    Dart heard McKay shout, “Go, Tamar, and good luck!”
    Then he was himself braced at the hatch, and next he was free of everything. Like Jonah, he had been in the belly of the beast for a long time, and now this was beautiful. It was not like falling. He stretched out his arms, and the air ran through his fingers like water. He was almost disappointed when the jerk came and he heard the unfolding bang of the parachute.
    He looked down and saw his legs swinging out of control above a swaying world of dark and complicated mirrors. He saw, too, Tamar’s chute sink like a jellyfish into the water of a deep well, then shrivel and fade. At almost the same moment, he realized that the black scribbles that divided the mirrors below him were trees with hard fingers waiting to seize him. He began to haul desperately at the lines of his parachute.
    Tamar had not been able to drift clear of the surface of the water that rushed up to meet him. He was already fumbling with the harness release when he felt the cold shock of contact; he was terrified the chute would drag him under. He was thigh deep before he felt something more or less solid — a mass of sludge and submerged branches — beneath his feet. With a moan of relief he got free of the chute and saw it settle onto