‘Which one?’ Walker grinned again. ‘Oh, the gen about some steel and cement being moved eastwards along the peninsula by barge. Not exactly our style, surely?’
Devane stooped and thrust his head and shoulders beneath the canvas hood above the chart table. He waited, allowing his eyes to become used to the tiny shaded lamp. He could feel Walker watching him, the other men on watch becoming interested.
There it was. The crisscross bearings of an enemy minefield. A ship sunk there, another old wreck marked right on the edge of the field. Walker was right, of course. Cement and steel for gun emplacements were important to the enemy, but Orel’s gunboats and some fighter-bombers might be more useful for the job of sinking the barges.
But if there were some barges on the move. . . . He peered fixedly at his watch, the hands and numerals glowing like tiny eyes. And if they were sunk somewhere inside the minefield it would play merry hell with enemy coastal movements and force them into open waters where Sorokin’s destroyers might have better luck. A handful of E-boats would be at a disadvantage for once, just as Parthian had been when beyond the reach of air cover.
He stood up. ‘Lay off a course, Willy. We’ll head for the south-westerly tip of the minefield, line abreast. Fifteen knots. Tell Buzzard what we’re doing. The rules are the same. We know that anything between us and the land is one of theirs, right?’
Walker took another twist around his neck with the yellow scarf.
‘You’re the boss, sir.’
As the last margin of copper melted into the horizon the two MTBs quivered into life and they turned towards the hidden land, their progress betrayed only by twin lines of choppy foam.
Walker’s young first lieutenant bustled across the bridge and leaned on the chart table, his buttocks and legs protruding from the cover as he laid off the course to contact the enemy coast.
His voice was muffled as he complained, ‘Bloody mines all over the place, Skipper. Is this necessary?’ He had obviously not got used to having the senior officer on the bridge.
Devane said quietly, ‘We’re in the cement business, Number One. You just get us there!’
Walker chuckled. ‘Hard luck, Ernest. I’ll put in a good word for you!’
As his first lieutenant lapsed into embarrassed silence beneath the canvas hood, Walker added softly, ‘He could be right of course, sir. Nasty spot to get jumped if the coastal batteries get a fix on us.’
Devane looked at him calmly. ‘Through the minefield, into the shallows, then along the coast, fast as you like. If you were the Jerry commander, what would you do about it?’
Walker sighed. ‘Whistle up Seeadler. Is that what you want, sir?’
Devane nodded, his mind suddenly very composed. ‘We’ll not get a better chance. But if the bloody barges have gone, or never intended to come anyway, I’ll think again.’
Walker shrugged. ‘What could be fairer?’
They looked at each other as the first lieutenant called, ‘Steer north thirty-five west, sir.’
Devane said, ‘Action stations, Willy. Let’s go and put down some strong foundations!’
He watched the immediate response of men around him and from the guns on either side of the squat bridge.
I have to keep pushing. It’s my purpose for being. Our reason for staying in this damned stretch of sea. The others can doubt my judgement, hate my guts for stirring up the nest again, but I must do it.
He felt his stomach muscles contract as the final reports rattled through voicepipes and wires.
Two MTBs and two more patrolling to the east. Insects stinging the beast into fury and retaliation.
He licked his lips and stared through the dappled screen. But no sentry ever won a war by standing still.
‘Enemy coast to starboard, sir!’
Devane levelled his powerful glasses and strained his eyes above the lively spray from the bows. He felt the boat turn slightly, the matter-of-fact way which the coxswain acknowledged another change of course. It was ridiculous, but he had almost expected to hear Pellegrine’s gruff voice.
Walker stood beside him moving his glasses in a small arc as he searched for the land.
He drawled, ‘I hope you’re right, Ernest. I can’t see a bloody thing!’
Several men chuckled and the boatswain’s mate gave one of the machine-gunners a nudge. A good bunch, Devane thought. They knew each other like friends from way back. And yet a year or so ago some of them had probably been at school. Now they were all veterans. Walker’s own special team.
Devane asked, ‘Buzzard on station?’
Walker grunted. ‘As far as I can tell. I daren’t use R/T or even a lamp. If the coast is only a mile abeam, I think it might make trouble!’
Both boats had earlier cut their speed down to a little more than steerage way. The sounds still seemed deafening, the surge of water along the sleek hull, the occasional smack as the bows lifted and fell on an off-shore roller.
But ashore, with any luck, such noises would be lost in wind and sea, and the average soldier’s total disbelief in anything which floated.
Devane recalled the time that his own boat in the Mediterranean had come almost gun to gun with a German tank. They had been following the North African coastline, searching for supply lighters, landing craft, anything. Instead, as they had moved parallel with two great banks of sand, they had seen it, motionless and obscene. One of the much-vaunted Tigers. And even as the MTB’s cannon and machine-guns had raked its armour like fiery darts the great gun had begun to swivel, the sleeping animal disturbed. One shell from a Tiger would have put paid to the mahogany hull there and then, and with all hands breathing a sigh of relief Devane had speeded out of immediate danger.
A tiny incident, a fragment of war. Something which made all the rest endurable.
There were some who actually enjoyed it. Usually they were beyond help. Maybe Don Richie had been one of those?
Walker said tersely, ‘Starboard lookout reports machinery noises, sir.’ He turned and stared at Devane. ‘I know, he must have ears like a damned bat!’
‘All engines stop. Silent routine. Pass the word to the Chief.’
Everyone froze as the motors sighed away with a final defiant shudder. A few hands moved to restrain clattering signal halliards, and Mecham, the boat’s number one, ducked to catch a pair of parallel rulers as they skidded from their rack.
Devane wedged himself in the forepart of the bridge and turned his head from side to side. They were all doing it, like a group of blind men trying to find their bearings.
‘Got it.’ The first lieutenant jumped lightly on to the gratings. ‘Starboard bow. Low down.’
Walker nodded approvingly. ‘Well done, Ernest. You’re not as stupid as people think.’
Devane ignored the banter. He knew how shallow it was, but how vital it could be. They were all tensed up. They had to restrain themselves, like wolves at the smell of blood.
The coxswain muttered, ‘It’s a pump, sir.’
Walker clapped his first lieutenant on the arm. ‘This must be the place. Machinery, pumps.’ He became very calm just as swiftly. ‘Stand by. Gun action. Tell Leading Seaman Kirk to have his flares ready.’
Devane made himself look away from the muttering noises. Where the hell was Rodger’s Buzzard? No sign of a wash or of a deeper shadow against the dark water. Sweet damn all. He could feel his teeth grinding together, but the fact he was aware of his anxiety helped to steady him.
Lieutenant Ernest Mecham, the number one, said casually, ‘My bet is that they’ll be sitting ducks. The work has to be done in the dark. They’ll not be expecting us to pop up!’
Devane found time to note the change in the young officer’s attitude. All the way over and through the minefield he had barely been able to hide his apprehension. Maybe he had had cause to fear the anchored mine, and even the knowledge that the boats were of too shallow draught to be affected could not hold back some terrible memory.
But now, probably wit
hin range of an ordinary army rifle, he was outwardly relaxed.
Walker had his mouth to the engine-room voicepipe. ‘Ready, Chief? All the lot when I give the word! Home for breakfast!’ He was grinning as he snapped down the cover.
Suddenly Devane found himself wishing he was back in his own boat, with Pellegrine and Ackland, Carroll and cheeky Geordie Pollard. Dundas too, who had had the worst end of the stick in some ways. Who had served with Richie, but had been the one to find him with his brains blown out. Now he was learning all over again with a new senior officer. Yes, he wished he had their faces around him now. Here he was in control, but an outsider, excluded.
A voice said sharply, ‘Boat, sir. Port bow!’
Binoculars and gun muzzles swung quickly on to the rough bearing, and Devane saw a blurred shape, probably end-on and almost lost against the dark backcloth.
The vessel was moving very, very slowly, although it was hard to estimate the true speed when set against the MTB’s crablike drift.
‘Stand by!’ Walker glanced at Devane for confirmation. This was Devane’s show, but the MTB was his command.
Devane blinked to clear his vision. Experience gathered in a thousand encounters was more valuable than mere eyesight. That tell-tale wisp of white froth as the darkened vessel’s engines increased speed, the sudden change of shape as her commander tried to sheer away from the low shadow on the water.
‘Now!’
As the motors roared into life and the boat reeled round in response to the helm, Devane saw the other vessel shining like a boy’s model as the flares burst above it. A trawler, her fishing days long past, and now a small part of the German navy.
‘Open fire!’
Devane clung to the jerking, vibrating bridge as every gun which would bear ripped the darkness apart in a mesh of livid tracer.
Cannon shells speckled over the trawler’s tall bridge like fireflies, turning the wheelhouse into a furnace and lopping off the boat’s thin funnel like a dead tree.
There was a solitary gun mounted in the trawler’s bows, and Devane saw men falling and dying even as they tried to train it round on their attacker.
Searchlights swept over the water, crossed and passed by the trawler. Maybe they would not depress to a target so near to the shore?
Machine-gun fire joined in the clatter of Harrier’s onslaught, and Devane saw short, stabbing bursts from beneath the enemy’s blazing bridge. Somebody had managed to train a Spandau on the onrushing MTB, but it was like trying to stop an elephant with a boat-hook.
‘Hard a-port!’ Devane shouted to Walker above the noise. ‘Barges, Willy! There, coming down the safe channel!’
Round in a tight circle, her guns still hammering the armed trawler until she was burning fiercely from stem to stern, the MTB plunged across her own wake as the three long lighters appeared again in the drifting flares. Astern of them, but unable to offer much assistance, was another trawler, a local escort for the cargo of cement and steel supports.
‘Depth charges!’
‘Steady as you go, Swain! Pass that bastard to port!’
Men ducked and yelped as steel hammered the side of the bridge and whined across the water. Someone was shooting back, and Devane guessed that the burning trawler was making them a fine target.
Walker’s gun crews knew their work well and, as the first lighter was deluged in tracer and half blinded with smoke, depth charges were released within yards of her blunt bows,
The shockwave slammed the MTB like a train, but the lighter was already capsizing as the next set of depth charges were off-loaded near the second deep-laden craft.
Devane turned his head as a hand plucked at his duffle coat, simultaneously the boat’s coxswain gave a sharp cry and buckled to his knees. As the man’s fingers slipped from the spokes the first lieutenant pushed another rating to take over and bring the boat back under control.
Devane turned his gaze to the last of the careering lighters, but his mind still clung to the icy realization that a bullet had passed through his coat and had missed him by an inch.
Walker yelled, ‘Swain’s dead! Fetch Nobby Clark!’
Devane watched the cannon shells exploding savagely along the lighter’s ugly deck and ripping through a small wheelhouse perched right on the stern like a sentry box.
Somebody yelled, ‘Here comes bloody Buzzard!’
A seaman dragging a new belt to the starboard machine-gun gasped between his teeth, ‘Late as bloody usual! ’Alf of ’em come from Chatham, so what can you expect!’
Surprisingly, with the smoke and ear-splitting clatter of automatic weapons, and the gleam of the dead coxswain’s blood below the wheel, they could still manage a laugh.
A depth charge exploded astern, the tall column of water shooting straight up like a geyser. When it fell, the third lighter was still there, pounding along at about six knots, the boxlike hull punctured in a dozen places and a small fire going on her forecastle. But she was afloat, whereas the other two were almost gone, the great weight of their cargo slewing them round in the safe channel while the water seethed with bursting air bubbles and smoke.
Devane tore his eyes from the second armed trawler. She was shooting wildly with her bow gun, but it was too old and slow for such a target.
He shouted, ‘Get after that barge, Willy! One more wreck in the channel should do it!’
With her men frantically reloading and clearing stoppages from their weapons, the MTB went about yet again, her motors labouring and bellowing as they fought against the rough handling.
Devane said, ‘Signal Buzzard to engage that trawler.’
The signalman yelled hoarsely, ‘From Buzzard, sir. Unidentified craft closing from the south!’
Devane looked at Walker. ‘Quicker than I thought.’
Walker nodded grimly, his eyes slitted against the smoke which was streaking back from the MTB’s six-pounder like steam. ‘Here we go then!’
The last pair of depth charges, at minimum settings, almost blew off the lighter’s stern.
Devane could even hear the destruction above the sounds of the motors and gunfire, as one shaft and propeller tore loose and some of the cargo began to fall apart and thunder through the hull.
Walker lowered his glasses. ‘That’s it. They’re abandoning her. Don’t bloody blame ’em!’
A star shell burst far out over the minefield, and Devane guessed that a local artillery battery had been roused. He watched Buzzard tearing across the water, balanced perfectly upon a knife edge of white foam. But the trawler was taking no chances. She was steering away on a diagonal course, which with luck would bring her under the cover of the shore battery.
‘Break off the action, Willy. Signal Buzzard to take station astern of us. We’re getting out.’
‘Buzzard’s acknowledged, sir.’ The signalman sounded dazed. ‘From Buzzard, sir. Am reducing speed. Underwater damage.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Walker’s face glowed as another star shell mushroomed against the clouds.
Devane looked past him. The unidentified craft which Rodger had sighted should be here by now. Or they might see the exploding shells and tracer and imagine the Russians were conducting a commando raid. Either way they might stay out of it.
‘Tell Buzzard to maintain speed while he can.’
Whoooosh. . . . Bang!
A big shell exploded well abeam, hurling a column of spray towards the clouds and leaving a pall of smoke above the water.
Walker grinned. ‘Poor shooting.’
Devane nodded. It should get poorer as the fires and the drifting flares died in the water. No artilleryman could hope to knock out a small MTB except with a miracle.
Walker added, ‘Buzzard’s managing to keep up anyway. Probably collided with a wreck and stove in a few planks.’
Another star shell burst almost directly overhead, the eerie, glacier light mesmerizing them with its power.
Walker snapped, ‘New course, Number One. We’ll head south-east. I don�
�t want to get clobbered now!’
Devane felt the seaman next to him stiffen. ‘Sir! Dead astern!’
Devane pushed past him, his eyes aching from the drifting flare. Two high-explosive shells burst about half a mile away, but had they been alongside Devane knew he would not have cared.
How perfectly the other MTB showed her lines in the hard glare. Almost every detail, from her small mast and tattered ensign to her squat bridge. He could even see the heads of the men behind the low screen.
Between the two boats the sea was like black glass laced with silver, but all Devane saw was the tiny, bobbing dot which lay in direct line with the other boat’s stem.
He shouted, ‘Call up Buzzard on R/T!’ He swung round as Walker ran to see what was happening. ‘Tell them there’s a “drifter” dead ahead of them!’
Feet skidded on the wet gratings and Devane heard the sharp exchange between Walker and his telegraphist. And all the while he kept his eyes on the little glistening dot, fading now as the star-shell merged with some clouds.
Walker snapped, ‘Full ahead! Starboard fifteen!’ His eyes still reflected the dying flare as he said harshly, ‘No sense in risking the boat!’
Then came the explosion. One great searing flash with a red centre, and other vague, more distorted sounds as fuel, ammunition and depth charges detonated as one huge bomb.
Like the flare, the explosion was extinguished with terrible suddenness, snuffed out as if the MTB had never existed. For what seemed like endless moments pathetic fragments of wreckage continued to fall in a great circle, and a few tiny flames burned on the sea itself until they too vanished.
Walker’s boat cruised round the place where Rodger’s first command had hit a drifting mine. But there was not even a life-raft left to mark the place.
The signalman broke the silence, his voice very loud in the bridge. ‘W/T had just spoken with Buzzard, sir.’ He looked over the screen as if he still expected to see their consort following astern. ‘Then it ’appened, sir.’
Walker looked at Devane. ‘Return to base, sir?’
Torpedo Run (1981) Page 23
