Between The Hunters And The Hunted

by Steven Wilson

  Out there, directly in line with Firedancer’s bow, was a pool of bright stars reflected in the gentle black swells. Red stars. Tiny red stars. Around them the sea turned to white froth. Red stars. Hardy, in his dream, looked at them curiously, and thought to himself, how strange that the stars are red.

  Firedancer bore down on the pool of red stars and above all the other sounds of the night; Hardy heard the screams of the men that his ship was about to crush. Red lights on kapok vests; red, the color of blood. Arms thrashing at the water; men trying to get away from the speeding destroyer. From her hull. From her screws.

  The Second Night. Fourteen ships out of a thirty-two-ship convoy, sunk.

  Hardy sipped tea and watched the activity on the gray waters of Scapa Flow. The black flag had just been run up and a gun fired to recall Firedancer’s liberty party to the ship from Kirkwall and Stromness. As Land reported this to Hardy, Hardy just nodded.

  “Number One,” he said as Land was about to make his way to the wardroom to shake off this hateful Scottish cold. “Do you think a man’s life is defined by a single incident?”

  Hardy felt Land behind him, and sensed that his number one was taken aback by the question and was struggling with an answer.

  “Never mind,” Hardy said, feeling stupid and vulnerable for asking such an outlandish question. “Go about your business.”

  Torps Baird stood on deck near the number-one torpedo mount and drew easily on a Churchman’s. There were two PR MK II mounts aboard Firedancer, each bearing four tubes, with a funnel and searchlight platform between them. They could be fired from the bridge or from the mounts themselves, but they had to be swung into position by a hand crank. They carried the MK IX twenty-one-inch torpedoes with a maximum range of nearly fifteen thousand yards. In their blunt noses rested over seven hundred pounds of TNT. They were propelled from their tubes by compressed air pressurized to 3,100 pounds per square inch.

  Seaman Blessing joined him.

  “Got your fill then?” Baird said. “Straight Rush is a seaman’s treat, but after we’ve been out awhile it’ll be bully beef soaked in Alley Sloper’s Sauce.”

  “I’m still hungry,” Blessing said apologetically.

  “Lord love a duck!” Baird said. “Where do you put it all, you little scupper? I’d be ashamed of myself, I would, if I ate like you and then complained I hadn’t had enough to eat. Many’s a time I’ve had nothing but a packet of Woodbines and kippers. Do you see across the way?”

  “What ship is that?” Blessing said.

  “Prince of Wales, Seaman. Isn’t she the lady? Bismarck or not, she keeps a trim line.”

  “Who’s that behind her? A cruiser?”

  Baird looked at Blessing in disgust. “‘Behind’! And I suppose that we’re standing on the floor? That’s Prometheus astern of Prince of Wales. She’s a Diddo-class cruiser. Sir Whittlesey Martin commanding. He and our very own Captain Hardy have a history.”

  “A history?”

  “Fire and ice. If they ever got along that well. It’s been like that since they came out of Dartmouth together.”

  “Why?”

  Baird flipped the spent cigarette over the side. “It’s a mystery. But I’m the man to ask about everything and anything, aren’t I?”

  “About the captain, you mean?” Blessing said.

  “Him and his chum over there. Martin has family and position and poor Georgie had nobody to vouch for him. Opposites in every way except one.” He let the comment hang in anticipation of Blessing’s question.

  “What was that?”

  “Ambition, Boy Seaman,” Baird said, satisfied that Blessing had sense enough to pick up the cue. “Blind ambition. They were at each other’s throats in Dartmouth, so people say, and they didn’t stop once they got out. Our captain and Sir Whittlesey have been at it tooth and claw, and Georgie always one step behind.”

  “I didn’t know,” Blessing said, amazed.

  “It’s the Lord’s truth,” Baird said. “Ambition fuels their fires, blind ambition. There’s them that let themselves be consumed by ambition, Boy Seaman, worshiping the rewards that such brings them like them false idols that you read about in the Bible.”

  “What false idols?”

  “Them that you read about,” Baird said cryptically, “in the Bible.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now, blokes like you and me, we keep ambition safely tucked away. We go about life one day at a time, taking what it gives us. And happy we are with what we receive. We don’t get greedy about it, you see. That’s what ambition really is—greed. It just sounds better when a chap says that he has ambition.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose right, Boy Seaman. The problem with captains and ambition is this: sometimes they see only what they want, not what they’re meant to have, you see. So off they go, driving their ship and crew, ambition dangling fame or fortune in front of their nose like that donkey and his carrot. Greedier they get and faster they go until common sense and propriety are forgotten. Sir Whittlesey and Captain George Hardy, Royal Navy, are the same sort when it comes to ambition. But there’s always a piper to pay, isn’t there?”

  “There is?” Blessing said.

  “There is, and it’s the poor sailors who pay it. Out goes Prometheus and Firedancer into the North Atlantic, with their captains afire with ambition. Mark my words, at some time or another, disaster will befall one of them—someone will have to pay the piper.” Baird waited while Blessing digested the words and placed his own value on them before continuing. “They don’t give a hang about us, do they? Let ten or twelve of us buy it, make it a hundred for conversation’s sake, and they hardly notice. Impervious they are, hard-boiled and soaked in bile. I’ve seen it, lad. When Jack catches one, the high and mighty on the bridge don’t feel a thing.”

  “How do you know so much?”

  “Twenty-eight years in the Royal Navy, lad. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open and you’ll do the same. Officers talk as if we seamen weren’t about to hear them—bloody insolent beasts. Stripes on a man’s sleeve don’t give him the right to command a ship or to command the respect of those that serve. I know as much as some and more than others. ‘It is upon the navy under the providence of God that the safety, honor, and welfare of this realm do chiefly depend.’”

  “Who said that?”

  “King Charles’s preambles to the Articles of War, lad. Carved in letters as tall as a man over the arch that leads to Dartmouth. Truer words were never spoken, but half the bastards on any bridge of His Majesty’s ships probably don’t know it.” Baird noticed a troubled look cross Blessing’s face. “What is it, lad? Need the blue water cure?”

  “When we were out with the convoy,” Blessing said reluctantly, “I was so frightened I hardly knew what to do.”

  “Is that what’s troubling you? Never give it a thought. That’s what training is for, so that a man doesn’t have to think.”

  “Were you frightened?”

  “Me? Not a bit of it. But you see, lad, I’ve been at this awhile. Give yourself another ride or two on the trolley and it’ll become second nature to you. I give you my word. Just follow Old Sandy.”

  “Will we ever get to use these things?” Blessing said, nodding toward the torpedoes slumbering in their tubes.

  “Use them? Use them? Why, Boy Seaman, guns is good enough for some, but for me I’d rather get close enough to look the enemy in the face before I send them to hell. Here. When Andrews was all wooden ships and sails you had to draw alongside your enemy to kill him. Man to man. Understand? Along comes the big guns and now all of the humanity’s gone out of the killing. Stand off twenty miles and let some bloke buried deep in the ship’s guts tell you where to aim and when to fire. No humanity, like I said. Get me close enough and I can thread the eye of a needle with these Mark IXs. Whoosh! Off they go like the very devil himself is after them, and when they hit … Oh! When they hit, many a Jerry’s tour is extended.”

  �
�But guns—”

  “Guns! You mean those 4.5s scattered about Firedancer? Decoration, boy, just decoration. All they do is irritate the enemy. Keep them off balance until we can get close enough to slip one of these up their bunghole. Neatly done too. Listen, lad, Firedancer’s fast and nimble and even in the hands of those salt horses on the bridge she’ll give a good account of herself.” Baird was relieved to see Blessing smile. “That’s it, lad. Keep the spirits up. Do your duty and one day you’ll be torps just like me.”

  “I’d like that very much,” Blessing said shyly.

  “Well, lad,” Baird said, “don’t put a rush on it. I don’t have a needle through me nose yet. Now, hop to and get the other blokes from the torpedo shop and we’ll give oakum to the torps before Lord Nelson comes snooping about and finds us deficient. I’d take duty on a trawler before I let Number Two carry the day. Go on, lad.”

  Chapter 11

  Above the Kattegat, 24 July 1941

  Cole marveled at how quiet the crew of N-for-Nancy was, and how they went about their business as if it were an everyday occurrence to fly into danger. It was an everyday occurrence, he reminded himself, and he was one of the men who sent N-for-Nancy and her fragile crew into harm’s way. He looked out of one of the seven fuselage windows that ran along each side of the aircraft and saw an endless night sky peppered with stars. No storms, the Meteorological Operations division at the base had told them, news that was greeted with a mixture of emotions by the crew. No thunderheads to hide in, no low banks of clouds to run for if things got … difficult—“No place to hide, King,” Bunny had said as he made notes in his flight log. “Could be dicey all the way round.” He slapped his flight log closed and said: “Still up for it, I suppose?”

  “Yeah,” Cole had said, but he noticed a strange tingling running through his body and he realized that it was anxiety. This was his first time in combat.

  He heard the Boulton-Paul turret rotate behind him as Johnny swept the skies for enemy aircraft. Bunny had warned the gunner twice about humming into the intercom. “I can’t tell if it’s squelch or your own filthy humming, Johnny.”

  “It helps steady my nerves, Skipper,” Johnny had said.

  “For Christ’s sake bring a flask next time. Anything but your tuneless humming.”

  Cole had had second thoughts about going to Leka Island when he saw the Hudson MK IV. She was a patchwork quilt of repairs and he knew that even brand-new she looked less like a warplane than the commercial aircraft she was. The addition of the ungainly turret that protruded like some obnoxious growth just forward of the twin-boom tail didn’t help her lines any. Well, he said to himself ruefully, you asked for it.

  Cole saw Prentice make his way back along the fuselage.

  “Skipper wants you up front,” he said. As they made their way forward, Prentice stopped him. “These are the beam guns,” he said, pointing to the .303 machine guns projecting from small openings on either side of the aircraft. “If we get jumped, you’re to take one and I’ll take the other. Have you ever fired one of these before?”

  “I used to shoot skeet,” Cole said.

  “Oh,” Prentice said, a look of disappointment crossing his face. “Well, it’s much like skeet except a bit faster and the clay pigeons shoot back. Come on. Skipper’s waiting.”

  When Cole got to the cockpit, Bunny said, “Pull that jump seat down. It’s where the second pilot sits if I buy it.” Cole did as he was ordered and found himself in a slightly lower position than Bunny, nearly blocking the tunnel to the bomb-aimer/navigator’s compartment in the nose. A row of dials filled the instrument panel in front of him and an array of throttles and knobs blossomed out of a central instrument console at Bunny’s right.

  “I don’t suppose you know how to fly, do you, King?”

  “No,” Cole said, “and I’ve never fired a machine gun before.”

  “My God, is there anything you can do?”

  “I’m a pretty good dancer.”

  Bunny shot him a glance and shook his head. “What have I gotten myself into?”

  “I was just asking myself the same thing.”

  “Tell me that you at least believe in good luck,” Bunny said.

  “Sorry,” Cole said. “You struck out there, too.”

  “My God. A heathen. Here.” He reached inside his coveralls and pulled out the stuffed rabbit. “See this? This is what gets me back to base. When it gets rough, I give her three squeezes. Works every time.” He jammed it back into his pocket.

  Cole gazed out the windshield into the star-studded blackness. “How much trouble is this clear sky going to cause us?”

  “A bit,” Bunny said.

  “What about getting down on the deck?”

  “Getting down is a lark, old boy. It’s the getting back up that gives me the shivers.”

  “Can you do it? I’ve got to get close to that island.”

  “You’ll get close. As bloody close as I can manage it without getting us killed. One pass for flares, one pass on the deck. And then we run for Mother. Jerry’s seen us come over several times at high altitude, in daylight. My guess is the flak guns are sighted and shells fused for between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand feet, so by the time they react, we’ll be halfway home. Unless of course he’s got the bloody thing ringed with low-altitude stuff and then that’s a different matter.”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course. Jerry fighters will come tearing after us as soon as the alarm is raised, but I’m counting on the element of surprise to throw them off a bit. Now, King, you must answer a question for me.”

  “Okay.”

  “What do you expect to find?”

  “A battleship,” Cole said. “Or an aircraft carrier.” He watched as Bunny nodded. “You don’t seem impressed.”

  “I’m a man who’s not easily impressed,” he said, but then he turned to Cole. “A bloody battleship? You mean another Tirpitz or Bismarck? How on earth did you come up with that idea?”

  “The size and shape of the mysterious island. It has the relative dimensions of a capital ship. I think that the Germans may even have built themselves an aircraft carrier and they’ve got it hidden out here. The more I think about it, the more my money’s on a battleship.”

  “Just one? Doesn’t seem sporting of them to build just one for our chaps to sink,” Bunny said.

  “I’ve always been impressed by bravado.”

  “I doubt they could build a battleship like that and slip it past us,” Bunny said. “Even if they exiled it to this cheery place.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s nothing or the hulk of a vessel nowhere near completion. It could be a false alarm. But every time you fly near it, all hell breaks loose,” Cole said. “That’s got to mean something.”

  “Too right about that.”

  “Well,” Cole said, “if it means that much to them, it means that much to us.”

  “Bunny?” Peter called on the intercom. “Sixty miles out.”

  “Can you see anything from there?” Bunny asked Cole.

  “No.”

  “Go back up to the Astrodome. That’ll give you a good view of everything. But when I shout, hop down to the beam guns.”

  Cole climbed into the fuselage and situated himself in the Astrodome position, staring at the stars through the clear Plexiglas bubble. It was almost peaceful here, despite the roar of the engines. The white stars glided by overhead, in the distance the sea was black and nearly invisible, and there was nothing to tell him where the horizon lay. It was a far cry from his old classrooms and the bored students who listened to him drone on about the Compromise of 1850 and the Dred Scott Decision. He was alone with his war, his place—with no one to intrude or interfere. “You’re a dilettante, Cole,” he remembered being told, and thought, under the guileless stars that looked down on him: what is a dilettante except an artist in search of an art form?

  He felt N-for-Nancy slowly change direction and he saw the airplane’s nos
e dip. Bunny’s scratchy voice came to him through the intercom.

  “All right, King, we’re going down. One go-round on the flares at about fifteen hundred feet. Then we swing round and come down on the deck. Look closely because we won’t be coming back.”

  “You bet,” Cole said. He laughed at himself. His palms were sweating and his tongue seemed too large for his mouth, and his heart beat rapidly, tellingly, through his flight suit. Was it fear or exhilaration? he asked himself; and then he reverted to the scholar by trying to define the difference between the two under these circumstances—or was it an intellectual exercise that he was devising simply to remain calm? He finally resorted to telling himself to shut the fuck up. The mental gymnastics were over.

  They were descending faster now, at a much steeper angle, and Cole could see a black shape ahead that blotted out the stars: Leka Island, lifeless and ominous in the night. He felt N-for-Nancy bank to the left, saw her right wingtip slowly rise as he steadied himself.

  Searchlights came on. They began to sweep the sky, trying to trap N-for-Nancy in their long silver tentacles.

  Nobody said anything about searchlights, Cole thought. This is a surprise.

  “Fancy a little illumination?” Bunny said over the intercom.

  “No,” Cole said.

  “Mustn’t take them too seriously now, King. They’re looking up for us. If they look down for us, it’s a different story.”

  “How much farther?”

  “Six or seven minutes, old boy. We’re just reaching two thousand feet now. Prentice will chuck the flares out of the bomb bay. We turn around and drop down to two hundred.”

  “Is that low enough?” Cole asked.

  There was dead silence for a moment. “I say, King. Are you mad? Nancy’s wingspan is just over sixty-five feet. If we have to turn sharply we’ll eat up a good one-third of that two hundred feet. This isn’t an exact science, old chum. One little mistake and no one goes home.”