The Destroyers

by Douglas Reeman

  The four guns were swinging round, their hooded crews working their wheels so fast that hands and metal were blurred into one.

  “Shoot!”

  Rankin again. “No! It must be behind those trees!”

  More crashes, and a louder bang which rebounded into the lower hull like a club on an oil drum.

  Hillier called, “Waxwing has been bracketed, sir!” He gasped. “She’s slewing round!”

  Drummond ran across the bridge, his boots crunching on broken glass as he peered through the long trailers of smoke. Waxwing had received more than a straddle. He could see the deadly pattern of splinter holes at the break of her forecastle, the larger smoking puncture right below B gun. The gun was pointing at the sky, its crew strewn around it like old clothes. He saw thin lines of scarlet running down from the dead gun crew, and a single figure dragging itself towards the ladder, its legs ablaze like torches.

  Several of the men on her bridge must have been killed or wounded, too. At the vital moment as she had made to turn after Ventnor. She had charged out of control to run full aground on a hard shoulder, and was even now heeling over, showing her decks, the unmanned torpedo tubes, empty and pointing abeam where they had hit the enemy depot ship.

  “Shoot!”

  “A hit, sir!” The lookout was yelling wildly as a whole line of dark trees burst into flame and another explosion ran down the hillside like molten fire.

  `Too late for Waxwing!” Archer, the man from intelligence, was trying to light a cigarette, but the ship and all else was shaking so badly he looked like the victim of shellshock.

  Drummond saw the small Norwegian fishing boat was already churning towards the grounded destroyer, small figures

  waiting with heaving lines to haul the survivors clear. Poor Lovat. He loved that clapped-out old ship.

  Hillier was shouting into a voice-pipe, one hand over his ear. He said dazedly, “W/T reports that Lomond is remaining outside the fjord, sir! There has been a signal from Admiralty. Moltke is out of Trondheim. Probably left yesterday and heading north.”

  Wingate said, “Jesus! That’s all we need!”

  A bright glare joined with a single explosion, and when Drummond looked again at Waxwing he saw that the fishing boat had been cut in half by a heavy shell, probably from another battery. She was sinking and ablaze, the fires reaching out and spreading along the stranded destroyer.

  Tucker said, “From Ventnor, sir. Am taking off survivors. “

  The deck shook-as Rankin’s guns fired again and yet again. The hillside was covered in smoke and blazing trees, but to seek out and destroy a well-sited shore battery was almost impossible.

  He said, “Half ahead. Take her to the end of the fjord.”

  His mind was cringing, rebelling against the panorama of shellbursts and crackling trees, of bobbing flotsam which parted across Warlock’s stem. All he could understand was that Beaumont had decided to stay out of the fight with the bulk of the flotilla. Because Moltke might be even now steaming round the next headland. And what if she did? Did he think the flotilla could survive against her for more than minutes?

  Lyngstad was shouting, “Just another mile, Captain! You’ll see the fuel dump at the foot of the hillside!”

  Drummond snatched up a handset. “Guns, This is the captain. In a moment you will sight the main target. Keep shooting at it, no matter what.”

  “Understood. “

  Drummond raised his glasses and studied Ventnor as she altered course diagonally above the hidden bar which had caught Lovat’s ship. There was smoke everywhere, but he could see figures floundering against Selkirk’s scrambling nets, others swimming independently amongst corpses in lifejackets and the telltale spurts of machine-gun bullets.

  A great glowing eye glittered in Ventnor’s side and expanded to a longer array of splinter gashes. But every one of her guns was angled towards the land, and she was maintaining rapid fire, despite her inner hurt. More shells exploded near her, hurling up tall waterspouts which seemed to take an age to fall. Each time she was still there, the work going on as before. But there were more splinter holes. Fewer men helping to haul aboard Waxwing’s survivors.

  “Target in sight! Red oh-five. Range oh-two-five.”

  “Shoot!”

  Drummond clung to the screen as flaked paint and rust flew up from the detonations. He could not see the target at all, even with his glasses.

  “Ventnor’s under way again, sir!” A signalman was pointing vaguely into the fog of gunsmoke. “She’s following us!”

  Drummond nodded, his throat raw with shouting and coughing smoke. A stronger eddy of wind cleared a narrow road which ran almost parallel with Warlock’s course, and he saw two trucks and a car blazing fiercely, some uniformed corpses close by, and the bright glitter of automatic fire higher up the hillside.

  Lyngstad seemed satisfied. “Our people are hitting them hard, too!”

  Wingate pushed against him. “Time to alter course, sir.”

  “Yes.” Lyngstad had to drag his eyes from the ambushed patrol. “You steer east now, towards Arnoy Island, there you will alter course once more to the north-west channel, and open water. “

  A tank had appeared on the end of the road and was training its turret towards the hidden Resistance men, when its commander must have sighted the destroyers in the fjord below him. Before he could come to a decision Ventnor’s forward guns opened up on him, hurling the turret one way and the rest of the tank down and down into the deep water below.

  Archer said breathlessly, “Probably the only duel between tank and ship!”

  Drummond felt the Norwegian’s hand gripping his arm like steel. He needed no words, for as Rankin’s second salvo ploughed into the prescribed piece of land the whole bank of green and brown seemed to fall apart in a torrent of blazing fuel.

  Drummond kept his eyes on the spreading wall of fire, but said harshly, “Ask Ventnor if she can maintain full speed.”

  He was thinking of the next part. The dash through the wider fjord and out into open water again.

  “From Ventnor, sir. Just say the word. ” The lights were blinking again like cats’ eyes through the funnelling smoke. “Have recovered eighty survivors. Lovat killed.”

  ” Acknowledge. “

  He looked at Wingate, seeing the deep lines of strain around his eyes and mouth.

  “Now. Take her round.”

  “Port fifteen. Steady. Steer zero-nine-zero.”

  Warlock swayed upright again and headed towards the next blur of land. Hundreds of eyes must have been watching, but apart from a few hurrying soldiers on the nearest spur of headland, there was not a living soul in sight.

  “Steady on zero-nine-zero, sir.”

  Drummond nodded. The stored fuel was still flooding into the calmer water at the head of the fjord. Fuel for Tirpitz and Scharnhorst, for Hitler’s tanks and lorries. The very stuff of the whole war machine.

  Hillier yelled, “Those soldiers, sir! I think there’s a mobile gun-“

  Drummond snatched up the handset. “Guns! Shift target! Mobile gun at Red four-five!”

  Then the world seemed to come apart, like a picture being ripped into meaningless fragments. No noise, and little feeling beyond a great, blanketing pressure.

  Wingate was the first to recover, and tried to drag himself to the voice-pipe. He was speaking aloud, but could hear nothing at all.

  “Bridge- Wheelhouse!” The smoke was getting thicker. Blotting out everything. He could not even breathe. “Send help. Direct hit!”

  Then he rolled over and fell against Archer. He had just time to record that Archer still retained the unlit cigarette in his mouth, even though most of his body below the waist was like pulp. Only then did he fall unconscious.

  Keyes clung to the plot table with all his strength as the bridge rang and trembled to the crash of gunfire. Although he had heard guns before, he had never dreamed it could go on like this.

  No sort of obvious control or objective, jus
t an unending stream of intermingled sounds and voices. From above and below, from pipes and microphones. It was like the worst part of a nightmare, except that here there was no escape, no reprieve.

  The navigator’s yeoman blinked at him through a film of falling paint flakes from the deckhead, his face set in a wild grin.

  “Not like they tell you it’s goin’ to be, is it, sir?” He ooked slightly mad. Desperate.

  Keyes shook his head as the plot table gave a violent shiver and the glass top cracked into several pieces. He groped for the voice-pipe.

  “I’ll tell the bridge it’s out of action.”

  He saw Rigge’s hand on his wrist and heard him say hoarsely, “Leave it, sir! They’ve got enough trouble up top by the sound of it!”

  The heavy canvas curtain which separated the rest of the wheelhouse from the plot table bucked and heaved as if alive and in torment. Keyes could hear the familiar creak of the spokes going this way and that, the occasional jingle of telegraphs as speed was increased or reduced to order. The wheelhouse party said little, and only cursed and gasped as splinters cracked against the sides, or an extra loud explosion burst nearby and seemed to suck every bit of air from their confined, deafening world.

  Keyes tried to think of Georgina, imagined her close against him, her eyes welcoming and a little in awe as he took her in his arms. But it was hard to keep her in his mind, harder to hold on to his wits.

  The coxswain was shouting, “By God, I’ve ‘ad a bloody jugful of this lot!”

  Then came the bang. It seemed to come from right beside the canvas curtain, blasting away reason, overwhelming in its intensity. The whole bridge rocked over as if tearing adrift, and when Keyes opened his eyes he could see nothing, could barely draw breath in the volume of choking smoke.

  He had gone blind! Terror, despair, the need to find help, all swept through him as he rolled over, clawing with his hands until he realised that the blindness was caused by the big curtain. The blast, or whatever it was, had wrapped it round him and Rigge, bundling them in the wheelhouse corner like packages in a shop.

  As he fought it away and staggered to his feet, he could barely stop himself from screaming.

  The light through the steel shutters revealed a mercifully small picture across the fallen bodies, but it was enough to show the great spreading pattern of blood, the way one of the men was glaring at him, pleading in silence, the eyes dying even as he stared at them.

  “Get up, Rigge!”

  He turned, terrified, hearing a disembodied voice calling, “Send help! Direct hit!”

  Then he realised that Rigge was not moving, that his skull had been smashed against the steel side and crushed like an eggshell. One eye was still open, amazed, hostile. The rest was gone in the force of the blast.

  Keyes clung to the shattered plot, retching helplessly, trying to stop from bursting into tears.

  He wanted to call her name, but when he found his voice he said brokenly, “Oh, Mother! Mother, what shall I do?”

  A tattered apparition slipped through the shaft of smoky light and grabbed his arm. It was Mangin, although how he had survived it was impossible to know.

  “Get up top! The bridge is a bloody potmess!” The coxswain seemed to realise that Keyes was on the verge of complete breakdown and added roughly, “Come on, son, jump about. You can manage. I’ll try an’ sort this lot out.”

  A man groaned in the darkness. It was Jevers, pinned beneath a broken locker, but apparently unhurt. He sounded dazed as he croaked, “Christ, ‘Swain, are we done for?”

  “Take the wheel!”

  Mangin stepped deftly above a gaping corpse and peered at the compass. It was intact and ticking quietly amidst the death and despair.

  ” ‘Old ‘er at due east, lad. ” Mangin was already groping for a telephone beside the door. “I’m goin’ to call Jimmy th’ One.”

  Keyes knocked off the clips and staggered over the coaming and into a seemingly blinding sunlight. An Oerlikon. gunner was hanging in his harness, gyrating jerkily as the ship plunged over the water, his face set in its last mask of agony, his shoulders smouldering from the impact of splinters.

  Keyes pulled himself up the ladder, dreading what he might see. Shells exploded nearby, and once he was almost knocked from the ladder by a wall of falling water. It tasted more of cordite than salt.

  He raised himself into the open bridge and peered round through half-slitted eyes, terrified, sick and helpless. He saw a figure moving away from the compass platform and dragging itself towards the voice-pipes. It was the captain.

  Keyes ran to him, his eyes brimming with tears, blind even to the grotesque thing with the unlit cigarette in its mouth, or Hillier face-down on the deck across a bloodied signalman, of Tucker sitting with his back against the flag-locker, his hands interlaced across his stomach and the crimson mess which seemed to defy his fingers in its efforts to reach the deck.

  Keyes sobbed, “Oh, sir! You’re all right!” He peered at his face, searching it as if still unable to accept he was no longer alone. “I came to help … “

  Drummond gripped the voice-pipes, cutting his fingers on the torn brass where a splinter had banged through it like a bullet. He said, “I’m fine, Mid.”

  He slipped one arm round the boy’s shoulder. To test his own legs, to stop Keyes from giving in to his terror. There was pain, but not enough to mean anything fatal.

  Drummond gasped, “Wheelhouse?”

  Keyes nodded. “levers is on the wheel, sir, the coxswain is taking charge.”

  “Good. “

  He tried to think, to react to the dull brown puffs of smoke above the island, the roar of fans as his ship continued her headlong charge.

  Another voice croaked, “Christ, my bloody arm!” Wingate sat up and touched his elbow with a look of stunned surprise. “I’ve broken the bloody thing. ” The sight of Archer, the others sprawled nearby, seemed to change him into a piece of machinery. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he rasped, “Damage control party at the double!” He glared at Keyes, “Go down yourself and tell Number One we may be in trouble!” He forced a grin. “Or I’ll let on to Georgina you wear frilly pyjamas in bed!”

  “But I don’t … ” Keyes seemed to realise what Wingate was trying to do and nodded violently. “I’ll go.” He ducked as more bangs echoed around the hull and steel

  clashed into the bridge like hail.

  One splinter hit Tucker, but he did not change his expression.

  Wingate said thickly, “Poor old Yeo has bought it, sir.”

  “Yes. ” Drummond trained his glasses over the screen, drawing strength from a sense of movement. “Call up the chief. Stand by for full revs if we’re not badly holed.”

  Voices were yelling below the bridge, and he heard axes and hammers as the damage control party blundered into the forecastle.

  Keyes had certainly had a grim blooding, he thought.

  He said, “Check each section.”

  A signalman emerged from somewhere, dabbing blood from his forehead. He gaped at Tucker’s body and said, “I’ll take over, sir.”

  Nobody answered, so he dragged a pile of bunting from the upturned locker and covered the yeoman as best he could.

  “We can turn now, if you wish, Captain.”

  Drummond stared. It was Lyngstad, just as before, with not even a scratch. The Norwegian glanced at Archer without expression.

  “If you follow this side of the fjord you may steer for open sea. I suggest greater speed. The bombers will be alerted by now, even if my people were able to cut the telephone wires to the bases.”

  Drummond nodded, his head throbbing with pain. “The gunfire has eased off a bit.”

  Lyngstad sighed. “There is another battery on Arnoy Island. But if you use smoke you should be safe. The battery is for visitors, not those about to leave.” He said it without a smile Instead he looked at the splinter holes,, the crude splashes of blood against the bridge, and added softly, “Our people will not onl
y have seen your sacrifice. They will have shared it. “

  Rankin’s voice cut through the other sounds. “Cease firing. Check … check … check.”

  The cease-fire gong rattled around the various mountings, and the crews paused to stare at each other, the litter of used shell cases, the wounded who crouched, whimpering quietly while they waited for help to come.

  Wingate held out the handset. “It’s the chief, sir.”

  Drummond turned his back on the others, shutting out their pain, their dumb despair.

  “Captain speaking. “

  “You’re all right then, sir.” Galbraith seemed satisfied. “I’ve got my pumps going, but the intake seems fair enough. I’ve had a report from damage control that the shell exploded just inside the fo’c’sle and then spent itself downwards into the stokers’ messdeck. Bit too close to the fuel tanks for my liking. I gather there’s a fire blazing there, but the lads are having a crack at it now.”

  “Thanks, Chief. ” If only the pain would go from his head. It was blinding him. “I’m glad you’re okay, too.”

  “Aye. A few bruises, and the chief E.R.A.‘s got a nosebleed, but it’s none too bad.”

  “Yes, Chief.” He replaced the handset.

  No point in telling Galbraith there was a long way to go yet, and maybe much worse to endure. He knew without a lecture. He was ‘like that.

  Sheridan pushed his way amongst the damage control party, his sea boots skidding on foam from fire-extinguishers, dripping spray , and a concoction of jam and butter which must have been blasted through one side of the main gallery. It now lay with all the litter of pots and pans, broken crockery and, incongruously, a dazzling bright apron which the cook must have hung to dry.

  Smoke pumped past him, but was thinner than when he had first arrived in response to the coxswain’s call. He glanced quickly at Keyes, who had kept so close to him since he had brought the news that the captain was safe and in control, that he was like his own shadow.

  The sight of Keyes’ white face, his nearness to incoherence and collapse, had made him think the worst. That Drummond was either dead or too badly wounded to retain command. For a few seconds he had been almost too numbed to think in sequence. All his old ideas of command, of some special gift which he had within him, had been lost in the bellow of gunfire, amidst the cries and curses from vague shapes who had rushed past him in the smoke towards the tall column of vapour which had followed that savage shellburst under the bridge.