The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6

by Alexander Fullerton

  It would be an extraordinary moment, getting there. Being there inside, with those enormous enemy ships in reach. Other enemies too, no doubt. He couldn’t guess, now, how he’d feel—mainly excited or mainly terrified. And in any case you had to get there first.

  Eaton murmured, “I’d have liked a shot at the Beast.”

  “The Beast” was said to be Winston Churchill’s name for the Tirpitz. Churchill was personally very keen to see her put out of action. The Germans, taking a different view, had nicknamed her “the Queen of the North.”

  Nobody had ever given Lützow a pet name. She’d been laid-down in 1931 as the Deutschland. “Pocket battleship” was a meaningless term: effectively she was an exceptionally powerful heavy cruiser.

  “I’ll be back.” Paul slid out from behind the table. “Have to tell Louis.”

  Gimber said, “So you’re the third eleven.”

  “Thanks. How’s the boat, Louis?”

  “Christ. What a question.”

  “I mean electrics and mechanics—defects, if any.”

  “One or two little things. Had a leak on the periscope gland, was the latest. We took it down, and I’ve just put it together again. Seems OK, at the moment, but I’ll watch it. Trigger did a job on the compressor—but I told you about that. Most of the little things have been electrical, caused by the damp. Which is the worst—no, belay that, second worst thing’s the damp.”

  “Seasick, still?”

  “Ozzie is. He’s really bad.”

  “Well.” Paul hesitated. “I suppose one of us might take over—if he’s really sick, and we could make a transfer. I’d ask MacGregor, if …”

  “Wait. I’ll ask Ozzie.”

  He heard Gimber and Steep talking—thin, distant voices. Then Gimber was back on the line.

  “Ozzie says he’ll stick it out, thanks all the same. Says he’s getting over it. He doesn’t look like it, and every few minutes he doesn’t sound like it, either. Tries to puke, but all he can do is make revolting noises … But we’d better accept his word for it—the aim is for you lot to be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when the day dawns, isn’t it.”

  “Meanwhile you and Trigger are sharing all the work?”

  “Most of it. But we can handle it.”

  “All right. But let me know if …”

  “Yeah, yeah. Paul, what I would ask for is a call from you every fifteen minutes. Possible?”

  “Well, of course it’s possible, but …” He thought, Must be worse than he’s admitted. He asked, “You mean, in case the tow parts?”

  “Or in case Trigger and I both pass out. But we’ve parted tows before this, haven’t we, I mean it can happen, and being trimmed heavy for’ard as we do have to be now.”

  “Yes, I’m with you.”

  “It might be nice for you to know we were still with you. Every quarter-hour?”

  “All right. I’ll set it up.”

  “Very kind.”

  “Is that sarcasm?”

  “Could’ve been … Question now, though—where are we? How far to the target area?”

  “We’re a hundred and twenty miles west of the Lofotens. About three hundred and twenty miles to go.”

  “So we’ve covered about seven hundred already … Afford to slow down a bit, couldn’t we?”

  “Not really, Louis.”

  If he’d been in better shape he wouldn’t have suggested it, Paul thought. You had to remember how desperately uncomfortable—and unnerving, at times—it must be, down there. He heard Gimber argue, “But three hundred miles at ten knots—”

  “Louis, it won’t be ten knots for more than another day or so—day and a half, say. Towing ships are to make the last part of the passage dived, remember?”

  Dived, Setter would make-good three or four knots, not ten. The lapse of memory was extraordinary, and it showed how right the planners had been to decide on having separate crews for passage and for action. The passage men would be mentally and physically exhausted by the time they reached the Norwegian coast. Paul reminded Gimber—appreciating the enormous strain he was under at this moment, and that his mind was already clouded to some extent—“Besides which, old horse, we can’t risk falling astern of schedule. The last-quarter moon’s on the twentieth, which is the day we start in, and if we didn’t take advantage of that waning moon—”

  “Paul.”

  “Huh?”

  “Teach your grandmother?”

  They’d need some moonlight for the passage of the outer fjords, after getting across the minefield, and also a high tide to take them safely over the moored mines. Those were the basic essentials for the kick-off, and such conditions would prevail in the few days starting on 20 September.

  Gimber had hung up the telephone, muttering angrily to himself. Trigger Towne asked him, “Problems, skipper?”

  X-12 bouncing, jerking, her porpoising movement three-dimensional and with sharp, sudden angles in it now.

  “They’ll make contact every fifteen minutes. Bit of a bloody nuisance, but—well …” He knew Towne hadn’t heard him. You got sick of asking for repetitions, when someone didn’t shout loud enough over the constant noise. He yelled, “I’ll take her now.”

  “If you want.” Towne hadn’t moved, didn’t seem to be about to move.

  “You’ve been on at least three hours, Trigger.”

  “So what?”

  Gimber tapped him on the shoulder. “Change round. Get your fat head down.”

  “Nah.” There was no point trying to sleep, when you knew the Benzedrine wouldn’t let you. You needed the pills in order to stay awake, and sleeplessness was the price of it. In any case, there was plenty of work to be done, and only the two of them to do it. He shouted, easing himself off the first lieutenant’s seat, “Job or two first.” Turning, coming face to face with Louis Gimber: Towne’s face bearded, sunken-eyed, the eyes inside there bright and glaring, crazy-looking. He kept one hand on the hydroplane control wheel until Gimber had reached to it: then they were sliding around and past each other, each needing a spare hand for steadying himself against the bucking motion of the craft. Trim would have gone to pot, with two men’s weights shifting around like this and no immediate adjustment, but the trim was all to hell anyway, bow-heavy and entirely dependent on the tow’s drag. Towne bawled, “You’re looking better, skipper. Like a corpse half warmed-up. Hour ago you looked like one on the slab.”

  “Charmed!”

  “It’s me old-world courtesy got me where I am … Take a shufti at the Sub, should I?”

  “No. Let him sleep it off.”

  Rest was probably the best medicine for Ozzie. Until he’d passed out he’d been as bad as he had yesterday—retching, groaning … He’d slept, finally, because the effects of the Benzedrine had worn off; Gimber had suspected the pills might have been making his sickness worse, and he’d told him to stop using them. The drawback was that he and Towne were now entirely reliant on them, since they had all the watch-keeping and maintenance chores to share between them.

  “W and D pump motor,” Towne was crouching behind Gimber, yelling into his ear, “claims me attention, like. Want to compensate?”

  To work on that pump in the wet-and-dry compartment meant a big shift of weight, one that would make her even heavier for’ard than she was already. As things were now, you had not only extra ballast in the bow trim-tank, but also Ozzie Steep in the fore-end. Some heaviness for’ard was necessary, to reduce the boat’s tendency to dance like a cork in a waterfall, but if you overdid it you’d be increasing the strain on the Manilla rope to such an extent that it was almost bound to break. Then the weighted bow would drag her down—plummeting, as likely as not very difficult to stop in time. There was a vicious circle in this hydrostatic problem, too: the deeper a submarine dives the heavier she becomes, and even in normal circumstances you had to be alert to this, ready to pump ballast out as depth increased. With the bow-heavy trim, circumstances were a long way from normal and a lot more danger
ous.

  Gimber had two other things in mind, when he thought about it. One, that his own reactions and Towne’s might not be as fast as they should have been, now, and two, that X-12 had something like ten thousand feet of water between her and the ocean floor—which would make for a long, long dive.

  He nodded to the ERA “Right!”

  Left hand on the pump lever. Glancing round, seeing Towne move to wait amidships, under the dome. Gimber pulled the lever aft: visualising the valves opening and then the pump motor starting; then he was counting, with his eyes on the bubble in the fore-and-aft spirit-level, while seawater flowed through the trimline from the bow tank to the stern one.

  Enough … He pushed the lever back to its central position, neutral. This movement would first have stopped the pump, then shut the valves. They had to be shut, obviously, or water would be sloshing through from one tank to the other as the midget plunged around. Then you’d have had no control over her at all. Gimber turned his head, saw Towne already crawling into the W and D, dragging a bag of tools.

  X-11, in tow of HM Submarine Scourge, surfaced at noon for her routine period of ventilation. The sea was rough: standing on the midget’s casing was like riding a surf-board. But Tom Messinger, X-11’s passage-crew skipper, was enjoying the fresh air too much to give a damn about getting soaking wet in freezing Norwegian Sea. (Not quite freezing: but bloody cold.) The hatch was shut, of course—if it hadn’t been the boat would have filled and sunk within about two minutes—and the induction trunk raised, Messinger with a rope’s end securing himself to it and his arms wrapped round it too: there was an enormous expanse of wildly tossing sea around him, and if you were washed off you knew you’d have no hope of being seen alive again. The pounding Gardner diesel was sucking air throatily down the pipe and through the boat, filling her with fresh, clean air in place of the putrid fog they’d been breathing for the last few hours.

  Two hundred yards ahead, Scourge had reduced speed to five knots: she was still towing, because the diesel was running at its lowest revs, entirely for air-change purposes. Messinger’s watery view of Scourge was end-on— swaying bridge and periscope standards, two lookouts in black silhouette, sea heaping white, the submarine’s after casing alternately engulfed in the white mound of it then rising shiny-black as her forepart plunged. That after casing was a lot higher out of the water than this midget’s casing: the seas sweeping over X-11 were waist-high, at times. He shouted aloud— addressing only himself, sea, sky and the cutting wind—“This is a hell of a way to get around!” Then laughed—crazy, happy, which left no doubt you had to be pretty far gone—filling his lungs with the air, revelling in daylight and the brilliant seascape under scudding grey. Enjoying too the fact of being part of this truly extraordinary adventure—three men in a boat and the boat a tiny, highly-explosive one at that, and seven other identical rigs out there, each as solitary-feeling as this one. To starboard and ten miles away there’d be X-12 with Setter, while to port the line-up was Sceptre with X-10, Thrasher with X-5, Stubborn and X-7, Sea Nymph and X-8, Syrtis and X-9, Truculent and X-6. Spread like chariots in a race, in distant line-abreast advancing east-northeastward …

  But it was time to go down now, so that Scourge could increase to ten knots again. Joy faded at the prospect of return to cramped confinement, the continuous banging around and the steadily deteriorating air. Messinger shouted down the induction pipe, “Stop the Gardner. Tell Scourge we’re about to dive. Shut off for diving.”

  A last look round: and another at Scourge, where Dan Vicary, Johnny McKie, Toby Maguire and Tommo Brind were lolling in the lap of luxury. Comparatively speaking … Messinger had got the rope off the induction pipe and was holding on with one arm locked round it; he was giving Hillcrest time to pass that message by telephone and Charlie Amor a moment to shut the induction pipe’s hull-valve. It was only the action of a moment—a lever-operated valve on the port side at shoulder-level to the helmsman, he had only to stretch out and yank it shut. He’d have done it by this time. Messinger lowered the pipe on its hinged base, crouching and holding to the casing itself with one hand while he forced it right down, horizontal. The pipe’s top end was sealed by a flap-valve which tripped shut when the pipe was fully lowered—as it was now, flat to the deck. And the diesel had stopped. Crouching, still hanging on with one hand, using the other to open the hatch at a time when she’d risen to a wave and was well clear of the water: Messinger slid in feet-first and fast, pulled the lid shut again over his wet head and forced the central hand-wheel round so that the securing dogs engaged under steel lips around the rim.

  “Sixty feet.”

  Water running off him puddled on the deck boards. Bony Hillcrest, on the first lieutenant’s seat, repeated the order and swung the hydroplane control wheel to “dive”; Amor had opened the main vents and she was already going down. He’d been as sick as a dog, day before yesterday, but he was all right now; they’d all been under the weather for a time.

  Forty-five feet. Fifty …

  Hillcrest was holding the dive-angle on her. Messinger would have been easing it by now, starting to level her. But he didn’t want to seem to be breathing over the shoulder of a number one who knew his job as well as Bony did.

  He’d begun to take the angle off now, anyway.

  Messinger noticed that the bubble was still well aft. In other words, his boat still had a pronounced bow-down angle on her. Of course, Hillcrest would have put some extra weight in her bow, but—

  Telephone. Messinger reached for it.

  “Yup? That you, Dan?”

  The Springbok’s voice assured him, “It’s not Adolf Hitler. Might be, if you didn’t have an unlisted number … You all happy there?”

  “Could be happier. Say if we’d brought some bints along.”

  He meant girls. Mediterranean service had injected a lot of Arabic into the language. Vicary said, “I’ll make that point to FOSM, man, suggestion for the next op … Call you in an hour, ay?”

  “Don’t you mean half an hour?”

  “Oh, ya, half—”

  “Dan, I meant so they’d cook hot meals for us.”

  He hung up. He’d been watching the depthgauge all the time, and she was at seventy feet now with a three-degree bow-down angle. He said, “Let’s have her at sixty, Bony.”

  They called Hillcrest “Bony” because he was supposed to look like Napoleon. Messinger saw him ease the trim-pump lever aft, to suck some weight out of the bow tank. Just as he was doing it the tow-rope snatched upwards so violently that it felt as if she’d hit a rock. Her bow shot up: if Messinger hadn’t been holding on he’d have gone flying. Everything happening in one second, as if in one movement, connected parts of the same event: Hillcrest falling sideways against the lever, pushing it forward—he was on top of it, Messinger frantic in the effort to pull him up, only too well aware that ballast was flowing into that bow tank now. Bowdown, diving. Seventy-five feet—eighty, angle and rate of dive increasing. Hillcrest had got himself off the pump lever: he pulled it to neutral and then aft, to the pump-from-for’ard position. Messinger shouted, “Blow number one main ballast!” He should have ordered this before, but he’d been preoccupied with Bony’s predicament. The needle was swinging past the one hundred mark: she was steeply bow-down and accelerating in her dive. One-twenty; one-forty …

  Blowing. Charlie Amor had wrenched open the high-pressure blow to number one main ballast. But it wasn’t making any difference—yet. One hundred and sixty feet. One-seventy-five. Hillcrest shouted at Amor, “Blow one and three!” Amor agleam with sweat, teeth bared in a snarl as he twisted open the other HP blow. You couldn’t blow the midships main ballast tank, number two; it didn’t have an HP airline to it. One and three were blowing all the stored air gushing to them from the bottles, but—incredibly—it was having no effect at all. Two hundred feet: she was nose-down, diving very fast indeed. Hillcrest turning to stare at Messinger, face contorted: “Christ, skipper …”

  Messinger s
aw it. He flung himself towards the half-dazed ERA’s blowing-panel. He screamed, “Main vents!”

  Too bloody late. Knowing it, there and then, in those seconds before perdition. Main vents were still open from the act of diving and all that air had been blowing straight out into the sea.

  A bunch of Setter and X-12 officers were playing poker dice, the variety of the game known as Double Cameroon, that evening, when Brazier took his turn to go along and make the routine telephone-call. When he came back, squeezing his large frame on to the bench, he said, “Louis’s complaining he can’t get any work done when we interrupt him every few minutes. He wants to make it half-hourly again.”

  “Fine. But that was his own idea … Now there’s the high straight I needed …”

  Gimber must be feeling better about things, he concluded. Seasickness on top of all the other discomforts would be fairly shattering to morale. He wished the weather would ease a little.

  After supper, a signal from Stubborn was picked up and decoded. She was reporting having come across X-8 loose and wandering, having parted her tow from Sea Nymph earlier in the day. Stubborn gave the midget’s position, course and speed, so that FOSM could arrange for Sea Nymph to rendezvous with her and re-establish the tow.

  “Darned lucky finding her.” MacGregor was turning in. “Odds against must’ve been in thousands.”

  “And I wouldn’t like to be in Jack Smart’s wet socks.” Paul scooped up the dice. Smart was X-8’s passage-crew CO. “A whole night on the surface, in this sea?”

  At midnight there was another urgent signal. X-11’s tow had parted, and Scourge had reversed course in the hope of finding her.

  Nobody made any comment. But you couldn’t rest easily, either, after that. It was all too obvious that X-11 might not have had X-8’s luck. Luck, or skill, or whatever combination of the two you’d need, in whatever the circumstances might have been … Paul went to the wireless office to call X-12, and it was a relief to hear Gimber’s voice over the wire, even though the tone of it was peevish.