Strike from the Sea (1978)

by Reeman, Douglas

  She said, ‘I had better be leaving, if you could arrange it.’ She brushed past him and then just as swiftly turned her face upwards and kissed him on the mouth. ‘Don’t hold me. I’m not made of stone, any more than you are.’ Then she was gone.

  Quinton appeared on deck and said, ‘Mr Torrance has passed out, sir. He won, by the way. Christie and Arthur Deacon are on their backs. Phew, what a drinker!’

  ‘Call away the boat, Number One. We’ll get them off to their hotel. She’ll be worried about her little girl. There might be an air raid.’

  A door banged open and laughing shapes spilled over the deck, bathed in light from the deckhouse.

  From across the water the guardboat’s loud-hailer roared, ‘Darken ship there! What the hell are you doing?’

  Quinton said, ‘She’s got a child, then?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked away. ‘Better get these characters over the side and away before something embarrassing happens.’

  Halliday came out of the darkness as Ainslie walked aft to the accommodation ladder.

  Quinton nodded. ‘Good party, Chief?’

  Halliday sighed. ‘If you like that kind of thing. One or two folk will have sore heads in the morning, I’m thinking.’

  Quinton watched Ainslie’s pale figure shaking hands here and there, helping Forster and some seamen prevent the guests from falling into the water.

  Halliday asked, ‘Skipper okay?’

  ‘Not sure.’ Quinton looked at the engineer thoughtfully. He was one of the very few men he would confide in. ‘I think that last job had a crook effect on him. He’s been at it too long without a break.’ He thought of the girl in the long black dress who had walked past him. Just what Ainslie needed. But she was bloody well spliced already, and to that drunk.

  A girl shrieked with laughter, and Quinton saw the flame-coloured dress moving amongst the people in the boat like a spirit. Forster had made his claim with that one. Quinton smiled bleakly. She would have him for breakfast.

  Ainslie stood back from the rail, his hand in the air as the boat swerved away into the darkness. The party was over, and when he searched his mind for regrets he discovered only a kind of elation.

  Forster lurched along the deck and groaned, ‘There’s one of them still aboard, sir. He was sitting flaked-out in the heads. We’ll have to recall the boat.’

  But Ainslie walked past him without hearing a word.

  9

  Victim

  ‘SURFACE!’

  After hours of altering course and depth on their tortuous approach towards the coast, the sudden activity of breaking surface seemed all the louder. Ainslie heaved open the upper hatch, shutting his eyes against the splatter of salt water while he groped for handholds and tried to keep his binoculars dry at the same time.

  As usual after being submerged, the air seemed headier, the smells more pronounced. He ran to the fore part of the bridge, just in time to see an arrowhead of white foam as the bows surged above water.

  Some fleecy clouds moving across the stars, a sliver of moon like a piece of shell, even less impressive than it had looked in the periscope. As his eyesight grew accustomed to the darkness he saw the water close alongside, molten glass, breaking occasionally along the saddle tanks, or leaving fiery tendrils of phosphorescence to mark their slow approach.

  With practised ease the lookouts and machine-gunners took up their positions, with only an occasional grunt or clink of steel to show that anything was happening.

  Ainslie moved his glasses slowly across the screen, breathing deeply to steady his nerves.

  He heard the yeoman of signals checking that the voice-pipes were open, and that the bridge was again in contact with the control room.

  Lieutenant Ridgway clambered on to the bridge and waited for Ainslie to notice him.

  ‘Asdic reports all quiet, sir. Nothing about.’ He concealed his feeling about losing his torpedoes very well.

  ‘Good. Tell the Chief to switch to main engines and begin charging batteries.’

  He returned to the screen, the thick glass still dripping with salt water.

  Halliday must have been waiting for the order. The diesels were connected now, drumming throatily through the water, shaking the conning tower in a regular vibration.

  An hour should do it. The last run-in, the hard bit. It was best not to contemplate the hull below his feet, crammed with every sort of ammunition you could think of.

  He wondered momentarily what his mixed company thought about it, of their rapidly changing role. Cottier, the French officer, was asking to come to the bridge, as he always did when surfaced, to check the communications systems. It was strange to think of him and Lucas and their handful of Free French sailors ending up in Soufrière like this. There were no longer any clear margins to the war. They were vague and obscure, like the invisible coastline they were heading for.

  According to the best information available, the enemy were still advancing, but at a slower pace. Whether this was due to stiffening resistance or to lack of support, it was hard to say, but the Japanese advanced units were within three hundred miles of Singapore itself. It still sounded a lot when you thought of England and the Channel. But there were no white cliffs of Dover across the Johore Strait.

  ‘Steady on two-seven-zero, sir.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Ainslie stared into the darkness, feeling the lazy rise and roll of the bows. He could just discern the two long guns pointing forward as they cut across the bow wave like tusks.

  Farrant and his crews were in their turret. The gunnery officer would be even more full of himself now, knowing he was the submarine’s only defence.

  ‘Time to turn, sir.’

  Ainslie peered at the luminous dial of his watch, feeling the drifting spray plastering his hair across his forehead.

  ‘Carry on.’

  Quinton and Forster were in charge down there. They were more than capable.

  The alteration was so slight it barely registered. But that was how it had to be, this way and that, a whole series of dog’s legs all the way to the inlet. If it were daylight the sea would appear placid and friendly, but the charts said otherwise. Sudden shallows and spits of hard sand, little islets no bigger than rocks which ran off in either direction below the surface in long barriers of craggy teeth.

  Forster, leaning over his gently vibrating table, a pencil gripped between his teeth, was thinking much on those lines as he rechecked his calculations and made another neat cross on the chart.

  Stooping, or leaning forward in their steel seats, the other members of the control room team were apart from Forster’s domain, and his sense of isolation was made stronger by that other unwinding world on his chart and plot.

  It was one of the reasons he liked his work. It gave him responsibility for the whole boat, probably even more than the first lieutenant, who was after all an extension of the skipper’s ultimate command.

  ‘Seven fathoms, sir.’

  Forster glanced at Quinton who was in his customary place between the helmsman and the raised periscope. He shared the latter with Christie, the seaplane pilot, who had been told by the skipper to understudy just about everybody but the chief engineer.

  He thought suddenly of the girl in his arms when he had visited her just prior to sailing. Another advantage of being the navigating officer, he could usually drum up an excuse for getting ashore when others could not.

  God, widow she might be, and he had been unable to put it completely from his thoughts, but she had left him in little doubt of her willingness to –

  Forster looked up, startled, his head cracking against a deckhead pipe.

  ‘What? Repeat that!’

  He was not usually so abrupt, and it brought an edge of resentment to the rating’s voice as he repeated, ‘Seven fathoms, sir.’

  Forster snatched his parallel rulers and ran them across the chart. It could not be. It showed ten fathoms on the chart. A drop of sweat splashed across his wrist as he w
orked to clear his racing thoughts.

  The course to steer was two-eight-five exactly.

  Quinton’s shadow moved over the chart space and he asked calmly, ‘Trouble, Pilot?’

  ‘No. Not really. The bottom round here must have changed since this chart was corrected, although . . .’

  Quinton stared from the calculations to the gyro repeater above the coxswain’s head.

  ‘What the bloody hell!’ Quinton spoke in a fierce whisper. ‘Look, man! We’re five degrees off course!’

  Forster looked from the chart to Quinton’s angry face and stammered, ‘He must have misunderstood, Number One.’

  Quinton strode to the opposite side. ‘Misunderstood, my flaming arse! I heard the order myself. You said to steer two-eight-zero.’ He stood by the coxswain and added, ‘Alter course, Swain. Steer two-eight-five.’ He returned to the chart space, his dark features working dangerously. ‘Will that do it?’

  Forster peered at the chart. ‘It should. But the bottom is so confused hereabouts.’ He broke off, his mind refusing to accept his mistake. He heard Quinton speaking to the bridge, his voice clipped.

  ‘Captain, sir. First lieutenant speaking. We were five degrees off course. I reckon about four minutes.’ There was a pause and he added, ‘Yes, It was my fault.’ He half turned to glance at Forster. ‘I should have watched.’

  ‘Slow ahead both engines.’ The repeated order broke some of the tension.

  By his panel Halliday watched the flickering lights and dials, but he was thinking of Quinton’s words and of the words Ainslie must have left unsaid.

  Dead slow. He could picture the beast. Like a great whale, a blind one now if Forster had made a cock-up of it. Halliday saw his petty officer tapping a gauge with an oily finger, sensed his satisfaction that all was well.

  It must have been the party, he thought. Forster must have been thinking about that girl. Halliday felt his anger rising. The bloody young fool.

  From his vantage point above the conning tower Ainslie shut Quinton’s voice from his thoughts as Menzies called, ‘Light flashing, sir! Starboard bow!’

  Ainslie nodded, lowering his head again to check the time. Perfect, in spite of everything.

  He asked, ‘Is it the correct signal, Yeo?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Menzies’ Scots accent became more pronounced when he was excited. ‘Just like the wee man said.’

  Ainslie wiped his face. Spray or sweat he was not certain. ‘Acknowledge. Then ask Commander Critchley to come up, will you?’

  Critchley’s ability to relax was almost unnerving. He could sleep, curtained off in one of the bunks, as if he were in a country inn. He had explained that he would only be in the way if he hung about the control room, and ‘if the boat sinks I don’t even know which way to run!’ He would be missed by almost everyone aboard when he returned to Britain.

  The seaman at the voice-pipes reported, ‘Four fathoms, sir.’

  Ainslie replied, ‘Just right.’

  It was stupid, of course. In daylight the submarine would loom above her reflection, impossible to miss. But he had to watch every word as it left his mouth. The man at the voice-pipes, should he even sense doubt or anxiety, might be just the one to panic, to jam the hatch as the boat dived. Not that she could dive here. If they were bombed, they could stand on the tower and periscope standards and not even get their feet wet!

  The messenger said, ‘Commander Critchley coming up, sir.’

  Ainslie trained his glasses towards the shore. He thought he could see it. A black barrier beneath the stars. The inlet must be in direct line ahead.

  He tried to imagine the sort of men who had been waiting and watching for Soufrière’s arrival. They would have been told by radio, but hardly anyone in the armed services ever took much notice of assurances from higher up.

  He heard Critchley’s voice, echoing strangely in the conning tower.

  Then, as his head appeared over the rim of the hatch he felt himself losing his balance, as if he was being sucked forward by some invisible force.

  Ainslie half fell the rest of the way to the voice-pipes, hearing the startled voices below, Quinton’s curt orders to restore control.

  Ainslie said, ‘Stop engines!’

  Critchley asked quietly, ‘What’s happened?’

  Ainslie waited for Quinton to come to the voice-pipes. ‘We’re aground.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Asdic has just reported a sudden shelving. Another few yards and we’d have passed clean and away.’ Even he could not disguise his bitterness. ‘It was that fault earlier.’

  ‘Never mind that now. Clear the fore-ends. Get all hands aft. I’m going to try and work her free with the main engines.’

  In his mind he could see it all, as if the words were painted a mile high. The falling tide. The sudden, stark reality of being aground. But errors happened all the time. Just one flaw, a small mistake, and . . .

  ‘Control room to captain. All spare hands aft, sir, excluding turret crews.’

  ‘Those, too. I’m not planning a war at the moment.’

  Menzies muttered, ‘They need a few more Scots down there, sir. We canna manage it all.’

  Ainslie stared at him and then said, ‘Thanks, Yeo. That was just right.’

  Critchley touched the yeoman’s arm. ‘Well done.’ He had sensed Ainslie’s sudden anxiety and felt it as clearly as a change of direction.

  ‘Slow astern together.’

  Ainslie climbed up to the starboard side and peered aft at the sudden commotion of thrashing foam. If the enemy had but one patrol boat and its commander was half blind he could not fail to detect Soufrière now.

  ‘Full astern port.’

  He pictured Halliday’s taciturn face at his panel. The violent wrench of one engine against another was not the best way to treat machinery. But it was that or something much worse.

  Someone gave a muffled cheer.

  ‘She’s coming off, sir.’

  Ainslie brushed past the other vague figures as he ran to the gyro repeater. ‘Stop both engines!’ His mind was throbbing with effort. ‘Yeoman. Call up the soldiers again.’ He heard Menzies suck his teeth. ‘I must get a fix. We could be anywhere.’

  He felt the submarine sliding noiselessly astern on her momentum, the water lapping and gurgling along the saddle tanks.

  The clack-clack-clack of Menzies’ signal lamp sounded like guns firing in the stillness. Fortunately, the army must have been expecting trouble and they replied at once, the small light low down near the water like a faint yellow eye.

  Got it. But if there was another sand-bar. . . . Ainslie groped for the voice-pipe. ‘Slow ahead together. Steer two-seven-six.’

  The hull had swung right round to the reverse thrust. Without the signal light from the shore it would be like heading blind into a brick wall.

  He waited for his breathing to steady. But his lips and throat were like dust.

  ‘Tell the first lieutenant to have the turret manned again. Same routine as before.’

  Twenty minutes later Soufrière made fast to the remains of a rickety pier, having been led the last few yards by two soldiers in a rubber dinghy.

  Ainslie watched the shadowy figures emerging from the deeper darkness, reaching out to receive heaving lines, or leaping bodily on to the saddle tank nearest the pier to lend a hand.

  ‘Ring off main engines. Open the forward hatch. Turn the hands to.’

  Ainslie heard Petty Officer Voysey shouting instructions to the men on the pier, and was thankful to see some of his sailors leaping ashore to make the springs and breast ropes fast to whatever was available. A gruff voice was answering from the pier, and Ainslie thought for an instant it was Torpedoman Sawle. It was so Cockney he could have stepped straight out of Whitechapel market.

  Quinton came on to the bridge. ‘All secure, sir. Chief’s checking his valves and pumps to make sure nothing got silted up when we grounded.’ He stood aside as more hurrying figures came through the hatch and scrambled down the
outside of the conning tower to join those from the forward hatch.

  Ridgway said, ‘Army type coming up, sir.’

  It was a young captain, who seemed rather at a loss now that the submarine had actually arrived.

  Ainslie shook his hand and said, ‘We’ve brought everything but the kitchen sink. Just get your lighter alongside and we’ll get started.’

  The soldier stared with disbelief at the seamen, who with their petty officers looked in danger of falling from the crowded casing into the water.

  He said, ‘That’s just it, sir. We were shot up yesterday by fighter-bombers. We lost most of the pier and all the available boats. My CO has had to put half our strength six miles up the coast road to reinforce the battalion there.’ He spread his hands and added apologetically, ‘I’ve got two platoons standing to, and the HQ platoon resting.’

  Ainslie said quietly, ‘Do you still want these supplies?’

  Just for an instant the young army officer showed the strain he was under. He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair as he said. ‘The battalion on our left withdrew yesterday. They’re all to hell. They were no match for this in the first place. Clerks and cooks, all the odds and sods left over from the first assault.’ He seemed to realize what Ainslie had asked and said grimly, ‘With them it’s a matter of time. Without them we might as well chuck it in right now.’

  Quinton whispered, ‘We’ll never do it before daylight, sir. We need derricks, even sheer-legs would be better than nothing. And we need the men to get the stuff unloaded and hidden ashore.’

  Ainslie looked past him. Quinton was right. In just a few hours it was impossible to unload such a tightly stowed cargo.

  He said to the soldier, ‘Get every man you can spare.’ He turned to Quinton. ‘Tell Farrant to rig tackles on his two eight-inch guns. We’ll use the power on the turret so that it acts as a double derrick.’

  He saw a red glow flicker across the sky and die almost as quickly. The war was going on somewhere.