Marine B SBS

by Ian Blake

  He glanced at his watch and swore. The pencil fuse was either not going to work or had been retarded by the cold and he began calculating how long he could wait. The speedboat was only just making headway and the offshore breeze helping to hold it back, but it was still creeping closer to the harbour.

  He’d give it ten seconds and he began counting under his breath. ‘Seven ... six ... five ...’

  There was a huge bang to the right of him as the two limpet mines ripped the launch apart and flames lit up the night sky. The sound of the explosions reverberated on to the island and back out to sea again.

  Immediately, several searchlights were switched on, a klaxon cranked itself up and then began to wail, and parachute flares blossomed in the night sky. He hadn’t reckoned on those.

  Tiller pulled steadily on the throttle wire until it had reached its maximum extent and felt the boat leap into life under him. It was still running true. He wound the wire around the cleat, hit the catch that released the flutterboard, and felt himself sliding backwards down the speedboat’s reverse sheer counter.

  The flutterboard took most of the impact on to the water, but the wash from the speedboat hit him full in the face and made him splutter and gasp. Then, using both his arms in a butterfly stroke and kicking hard with his feet, he began moving the board sideways as fast as he could. He concentrated on getting a rhythm going, but the board kept jagging into the water and slowing him down, though he did not dare abandon it.

  He was vaguely aware that some guns had begun firing and more than once a searchlight lit up the sea around him before moving on. But the loudest noise was the rasping sound of his breath as he strained to move the board through the water and the slap of the water on his face, and when the explosion came the water in his ears made it seem a million miles away.

  It would, he knew, take the shock from the explosion about thirty seconds to reach him and he felt the primeval instinct for survival flood adrenalin through his body. With every muscle he strained to move the flutterboard faster, but when it came the shock wave merely lifted the flutterboard slightly from the surface of the water.

  Tiller stopped swimming, lowered his body into the water and just hung on to the flutterboard with his hands. To his surprise he was further to the left of the harbour than he had thought possible and supposed there must be an inshore current running counter to the main one further out.

  The harbour entrance was behind him now and he could not see if the speedboat had hit its target. What he could see by the beams of the searchlights sweeping across the harbour was a rising column of smoke and a lurid glow where the destroyers were moored. He felt a great elation surge through him.

  Suddenly he could hear voices borne to him by the offshore breeze and a torch was flashed from the end of the pier. Instinctively, he sank lower into the water. He could see now that it was not a torch but some kind of portable searchlight, small but powerful. Its operator began scanning the water around the end of the pier while another German soldier shouted instructions at him. A third held a rifle or sub-machine-gun at the ready.

  The current was slowly carrying him sideways, away from the pier, but he was still well within the range of the searchlight. He allowed the flutterboard to drift away from him, let the air out of his rubber stole, and began to swim slowly towards the left-hand pier of Akandia harbour. But he kept glancing over his shoulder and when the searchlight began sweeping towards him he would sink gently under the water.

  Once the soldier in charge started shouting and the soldier with the gun opened fire. Tiller could tell from its rapid, distinctive sound that he was using a Schmeisser. He thought that perhaps they had seen his flutterboard, but he couldn’t tell for sure.

  The outline of the pier and the soldiers remained quite distinct because of the fire in the harbour beyond it, but after a few minutes Tiller knew he was out of range of the searchlight and concentrated on what lay ahead of him.

  It looked as if he was about halfway across Akandia harbour and swimming straight for the end of the harbour’s left-hand pier. On the far side of the pier Barnesworth would be lying up in the cockle.

  But if the Germans were sending search parties on to the end of each pier, Tiller realized, he would either have to swim well out to sea before approaching the other side or swim right up to the pier and move round it right under the feet of the search party. He remembered Tasler saying that anyone searching for someone often failed to look under their noses, so he chose the latter option and hoped Tasler was right.

  Despite the kapok lining of his suit he was starting to feel the cold. He began swimming slightly to the right so that he would reach the pier about fifty yards before the end of it. As he approached he heard a vehicle draw up and more shouting. Three or four figures began running along the pier. He trod water and once they had passed him swam strongly until he reached the pier.

  It was made of stone and it took him a moment to find a good handhold. He kept his head low in the water and looked around him. The wall of the pier was about thirty feet high and rose vertically from the water. Inshore of him were wharves. Most of these were deserted except for one or two caiques. On the seaward side there was just the sheer face of the stone pier at the end of which he could just see the glass revolving top of an unlit lighthouse.

  Luckily, the end of the pier seemed to have a stone lip on it which made it more difficult for anyone looking down to see what was underneath at sea level. Cautiously he began pulling himself along the stone wall with his hands, stopping every few yards to look and listen.

  As he approached the end of the pier a searchlight on it began playing on the surrounding water. At first it flicked here and there, but then began to quarter the area methodically. When Tiller noticed that even when fully depressed it could not shine within a hundred feet of the pier he pressed on as quickly as he dared.

  He reached the end of the pier and began alternatively swimming under water and just floating on the surface head down, propelling himself slowly forward by pushing with his hands on the stone wall beneath the surface. Once the slop of the water on the pier tore his grip from the stonework and he felt himself being drawn seawards by an undertow. It took a lot of control not to look up but instead to turn his body back towards the pier until he felt the stonework again.

  He allowed his body to sink and then he turned on his back and surfaced. Staring up at the end of the pier, he saw two helmeted heads leaning over the lip of the end of the pier and looking directly down at him. He froze, his left hand grasping a piece of protruding stone below the water.

  He thought for a terrible moment that his blackened face might have been washed clean and the men were wondering what the pale, oval shape below them might be.

  He could not hear them, but he could see the glow of two cigarettes. Then one butt spiralled its way down towards him and fizzed out in the water next to his head. Then the other arced out and fell some yards away, and the two smokers disappeared.

  He sank down again, turned over, and began to feel his way along the outside of the pier. He had agreed with Barnesworth that it would be impossible to say exactly where the cockle should lie up as they had no means of knowing what, if any, shelter there would be for it.

  It looked at first as if there was none, but then he saw that a narrow wooden jetty ran alongside the wall. It was supported on the seaward side by wooden piles and was about ten feet above the water. He supposed it was for a ship waiting for a berth on the inner side of the pier. It looked an ideal hiding-place and he approached it quickly, anxious now to get out of the water, which was chilling him to the marrow.

  Under the jetty he could not see anything. He thought of calling out but decided the risk was too great. He felt his way along, but he could not see the cockle, and his heart sank when he saw he had almost reached the far end of the jetty. Billy had obviously not made it. Perhaps he had been caught or, more likely, lost his way.

  Tiller came to the last diagonal wooden support for th
e jetty floor above him and heaved himself partly out of the water so that he could lean on it and consider his options. It would be impossible to swim to the MAS boat. If exhaustion didn’t get him the cold would. He could wait in the hope that Barnesworth would turn up or the MAS boat might conceivably come and search for him. Or he could try and find some sort of boat and make his escape that way.

  He was just deciding that the last option seemed to be the most practicable when he felt something cold and hard pressed up against the base of his skull, and an arm snake round his throat.

  ‘Du bist ein Tiger, bitte?’ a voice said quietly in his ear.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Billy,’ Tiller croaked.

  Barnesworth’s arm relaxed from around Tiller’s throat and he returned his pistol to its holster.

  ‘Just had to make sure, Tiger,’ he whispered. ‘You’ve stirred up a fucking hornets’ nest, I can tell you.’

  ‘Did I hit the bleeders?’ Tiller asked eagerly.

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’ said Barnesworth. ‘I’ve been clinging to the arse side of this jetty for the last forty minutes. You took your time, mate. Let’s go.’

  He swung from one support to another and then lowered himself gently into the front cockpit of the cockle, which lay right under the stone wall. Tiller followed him in the water and climbed into the rear cockpit from the craft’s stern. He reached for the flask still attached to his belt, took a good swig of brandy, and passed it to Barnesworth.

  ‘What now?’ he whispered in Barnesworth’s ear. ‘Do we wait for things to quieten down, or what?’

  Barnesworth turned and held up his arm with his luminous watch on his wrist turned towards his companion.

  ‘No time,’ he whispered back. ‘The sky’s clear now and the moon is due up in an hour. With any luck, they’ll be concentrating their searches around the harbour, not in this direction. Let’s go.’

  Using single paddles they emerged cautiously from under the jetty and when they had ensured the coast was clear put as much water as they could between the pier and themselves by steering eastwards.

  When the darkness had swallowed up the pier they stopped to turn their single paddles into doubles. Searchlights were still playing on the water outside the port and something still seemed to be on fire in Emborikos harbour. However, they did not linger, but paddled on a course of 160 degrees by the compass as fast as they could.

  The cold that Tiller had felt was now replaced by a warm glow and a feeling of intense exhilaration, and he dug his paddles into the water with zest. After an hour they could see ahead of them the promontory off which the MAS boat would be waiting for them.

  When they were abeam of the headland they turned due east and began signalling out to sea with the shaded torch, and after half an hour they saw the outline of the MAS boat on their starboard side. They stopped paddling and guided it to them with the torch, and minutes later eager hands were hauling them aboard.

  11

  ‘I want to put you up for the DCM,’ Maygan said enthusiastically. ‘If you hadn’t made it back, I’d have had a crack at getting you a posthumous VC.’

  ‘It was a damned good try, Tiger,’ Larssen said.

  ‘Thanks, skipper,’ said Tiller wearily. His sleep had been continually interrupted throughout the day by the Stukas which had started systematically grinding the port into rubble. The Germans had guessed from where the raid had been mounted and were exacting what retribution they could.

  He had also just heard from Larssen that the Germans, who had been taking over the smaller islands one by one, had moved nearer to Simi by overrunning Piscopi. Tiller hated to think what might have happened to Giovanni and his Mafia there.

  ‘What do you think went wrong, skipper?’

  ‘Wrong?’ Larssen queried. ‘I’d hardly call it that. You blew half the bloody quay away.’

  ‘But missed the destroyers,’ said Tiller quietly. He had always known there must have been only a small chance of success, but the disappointment he felt was sharp.

  ‘But according to photo recce they haven’t moved,’ said Maygan. ‘You may have stopped them from sailing. They could be damaged in some way.’

  ‘The lads did an incredible job on that speedboat,’ said Tiller. ‘Everything worked. I can’t understand it. The boat was running absolutely true.’

  ‘A bit of flotsam in the harbour probably,’ said Larssen. ‘The boat only needed to touch something floating in the water to make it deviate from its course. It’s bad luck, but there you are.’

  ‘What now, skipper?’

  Larssen rubbed his stubble. ‘Beirut’s just informed us that the navy’s trying to get enough ships together to take the garrison off Samos. It looks as if the Krauts are going to try and land there soon. Beirut wants to know what we’re going to do because our friend the Flag Officer Levant and Eastern Mediterranean is not going to risk any more ships to rescue the garrison if there are two destroyers on the loose. The odds against them would be stacked much too high. So if we fail, 5000 troops on Samos go into the bag.’

  A silence fell while this review of the situation was assimilated.

  ‘What a fuck-up,’ said Tiller eventually. ‘Whose idea was this mission, anyway?’

  ‘Ours not to reason why, Tiger,’ Larssen said.

  ‘Ours just to do and die,’ Maygan finished off the famous couplet with relish.

  ‘On the positive side Cairo has agreed to increase the number of photo-recce flights over the port of Rhodes,’ said Larssen. ‘The Germans have nothing that can touch the Lightning, so it can operate with impunity. Also, my guess is – and it’s only a guess – that Cairo is now giving higher priority to deciphering Kriegsmarine signals between Athens and Rhodes. Certainly the time-lag between transmission and us receiving the deciphers has decreased dramatically.’

  The esoteric world of signals intelligence, run from a building in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, was way above the heads of anyone present. Nevertheless, enough was known by any alert officer serving in the Middle East for Maygan to suck in his breath and say: ‘Jesus! If they’re doing that they’re pulling out all the stops.’

  ‘I think a lot is riding on all this,’ said Larssen. ‘Much more than the loss of a few destroyers and 5000 men. Don’t ask me what it is because I don’t know. It’s just an impression I get and it’s getting stronger.’

  Above them there was the crump of bombs exploding and dust from the cellar roof cascaded down on them. Larssen shook it off the chart that was opened in front of him and said: ‘So when the destroyers sail what course will they take? Andrew?’

  ‘If I were them I’d take the shortest course consistent with safety,’ said Maygan, following his suggested route on the chart with his forefinger. ‘Which means passing Simi and sailing between Piscopi and Nisiros and then passing the western end of Kos. That’s about 120 miles. Even steaming at reduced speed, they could do that in a night without trouble. That’s the safest and quickest route.’

  Larssen nodded his agreement. ‘So how close will they come to Simi?’

  Maygan bent over the chart and used a pencil and parallel rulers to draw the destroyers’ most likely course from Rhodes. He then stretched the two points of his compass between the course and Simi and measured off the distance from the side of the chart.

  ‘It depends. If they head for the western end of Kos the most direct route would take them between Simi and Seskli. Seskli is that small island off Simi’s southern coast.’

  ‘Would they do that?’

  Maygan shook his head. ‘Unlikely. Not at night. They’d leave Seskli to starboard, though by how much it’s impossible to say. The water’s deep there so they could pass close by it if they wanted to. I’d say they’d come within a few miles of Simi. Perhaps only a mile from Seskli.’

  ‘And how long would it take them to get there from Rhodes?’

  ‘It shouldn’t take them more than a couple of hours at the outside.’

  ‘Two hours! Is th
at all?’

  ‘’Fraid so. If we want to mount some kind of attack on them as they pass Seskli, we’d have to go and wait for them by the island.’

  ‘We’ve got nothing to mount an attack on them with,’ protested Tiller. ‘The speedboat’s gone, the launch has gone. We can’t use the caique as we’ll need that if we have to attack the destroyers at Leros.’

  ‘There’s the MAS boat,’ said Maygan.

  ‘But that’s only got its twin Bredas and a machine-gun,’ Larssen pointed out. ‘That won’t stop them. Anyway, it’s hardly got any fuel left.’

  ‘If it’s going to attack them off Seskli, it won’t need much, will it?’ said Maygan quietly. Larssen looked at Maygan hard and drummed his fingers on the upturned wooden crate which was acting as a table. ‘What you’re suggesting is that ... ’

  ‘It rams one of them,’ Maygan said. ‘It’s not going to be any use to us without fuel. It’s an outside chance but one we shouldn’t miss.’

  ‘It’s a viable option?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Maygan. ‘The MAS boat could run rings round the destroyers and neither of them is particularly big. Thousand-tonners, aren’t they. If you hit one of them in the right place, in the engine space, say, you’d certainly cripple it.’

  ‘And who’s going to man the MAS boat?’ Kristos asked.

  ‘We will, of course,’ said Larssen briskly. ‘You couldn’t expect the Eyeties to do it. Why should they?’

  ‘Balbao may not like having his command taken from him,’ Maygan suggested.

  Larssen stood up, buckled on his belt and pistol holster and said briskly: ‘Too bad. He won’t have any choice, will he? Let’s go and pay him a visit.’

  Balbao seemed more amused than annoyed when Larssen told him what he proposed to do. He could see that the SBS party had no alternative to using the desperate methods they were proposing, but tried to persuade them there was no way they could put them into action.