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

by Alexander Fullerton

  Gimber suggested, “We could try it now, I suppose.”

  Staring at Paul from about a yard away. Lank beard, dull eyes, grey damp skin. If Jane had seen a photograph of him as he looked now she’d have said, No, that’s not Louis … Paul began, “Trouble is, if we give it a go too soon and it doesn’t work—”

  “We’d have used up all the air.”

  “Exactly, Jazz.”

  “So we’d ’ve had it, chum.” Lanchberry said, with apparent equanamity and back into pidgin Arabic, “Malish, Sidi Bish … “ He nodded to Gimber. “Gyppo for ‘best carry on pumping,’ that is. I’d say pump the bastard right out, then try.”

  Paul thought he was right. This was the only hope they had of getting out, and you could only attempt it once. When you started you’d either have her on the surface in a matter of two or three minutes or you’d know you weren’t going to make it at all. So the sensible thing to do would be to continue pumping either until the tank was empty or until the time was just about running out. He told Gimber, “Every pint we get out of her improves the chances. We’ll pump it dry, or until ten to eight.”

  “Isn’t that cutting it a bit fine?”

  He shrugged. “Quarter to, if you like.”

  He was remembering Gimber leaning against the jamb of his cabin door, in the depot ship in Loch Cairnbawn, mumbling drunkenly “If you get back and I don’t …” He told him, “I’ll be your best man yet, Louis. There’s no reason this shouldn’t work. I just don’t want to go off at halfcock.”

  Gimber’s eyes showed fear, suddenly. Before, there’d been anxiety, and perhaps a lack of hope, but now suddenly you could see—sharp apprehension, might be the way to describe it. As if, looking into that kind of distant future at Paul’s invitation, he’d realised it probably did not exist. He blinked, as he looked away. “Good. I’ll hold you to that.”

  “Better clean up a bit, before you pop the question.”

  He’d glanced back, frowning. “You light-headed, or something?”

  “Light conversation. To pass the time, old horse.”

  Brazier cartwheeling, helpless as a leaf in a high wind, in the vortex of that underwater blast …

  Gimber, making an effort to play the game, asked Lanchberry, “Come to my wedding, Jazz?”

  “Yeah.” Lanchberry snorted. “I’ll sit in the back row and laugh.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So ’m I. Laugh me bloody head off.”

  Scharnhorst still shortening cable. Clank, clank, clank …

  “Skipper—if we get her up there—”

  “When we get her up.”

  “Yeah. When we do, and start piling out, Gerry’s going to start shooting—right?”

  “From Scharnhorst, if she’s still there. Yes, I suppose—”

  “Depending on how far we got carried, we wouldn’t be all that far from her, would we?”

  “If she’s weighing, not just shortening-in, she might have buggered off by then. But,” he nodded, “I suppose otherwise they’d get some guns manned pretty quick.”

  “So how about the first man takes out a white flag with him?”

  Paul nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

  It also allowed him to make a point that might otherwise have been difficult.

  “In the locker, Jazz—you’ll find my spare shirt. Pass it to old Louis there—he’ll be first out, and …”

  “Who says so?”

  Gimber looked affronted. Paul said, “I do, as it happens. That’s a good enough reason on its own. But I’ll give you two more—one, you’re nearest to the hatch; two, as you’ve just pointed out, you have a fiancée.”

  “No, I don’t, not …”

  “A potential fiancée. It’s more than I have, or Jazz. Anyway, you’re detailed for it now. Just be sure when the time comes you move like a scalded cat.” Lanchberry found the white shirt and tossed it to Gimber. Paul told him, “Wave it over your head as you climb out, then drop it so the next man,” he looked at Jazz, “can do the same … Pass me the chart, will you?”

  To estimate, if he could find clues that helped, which way and how far they’d been washed, in that explosion. Two hundred and thirty-eight feet being about forty fathoms … And he saw it at once. They’d been shifted southeastward. Soundings there, perhaps seven or eight hundred yards from where they’d started under Scharnhorst, gave thirty-five fathoms to the west and forty-one about a mile east. They were in just under forty here, so interpolating roughly he was reasonably sure X-12 had to be lying about half a mile south of the island’s eastern tip. In fact it was a very small off-lying island, so small it wasn’t even named, about two hundred yards southeast of the tip of Aaroy and with rock shoals in between. East of this islet was the gap through which he’d been planning to get away northward.

  There were twelve fathoms in the channel, but it shelved up to rocks edging the mainland shore. Out here the charted depths varied sharply over quite small distances—eight fathoms, fifty-seven, forty-nine … It did seem certain that this was the only place they could be, bottomed in just on forty fathoms.

  “Here.” He reversed the chart, for the others to see. “When we were under Scharnhorst we were about here. We travelled about seven-fifty yards. See this sounding?”

  After a minute’s close inspection, Gimber agreed. “Not much doubt of it.”

  Jazz shrugged. “Take your word for—”

  Open-mouthed, listening …

  Listening to silence. The clanking had ceased.

  “She’s finished shortening-in, is all.”

  “I guess you’re …”

  It had begun again.

  Paul thought, visualising the scene up there, cable was up-and-down so they stopped, reported it to the bridge, and got the order “Weigh!”

  It was wishful thinking, of course. He wanted Scharnhorst out of it, before he made this attempt to reach the surface, because with no-one up there with guns trained on them there’d be a better chance of one or perhaps two of them surviving. As POWs, of course. He didn’t expect that he himself would survive. He didn’t have either time or inclination to analyse his own feelings, but he was aware of a sense of surprise and relief in not caring all that much. It might be accounted for by his being preoccupied with the hope of getting the boat up there and these two out of her. He had no suicidal tendencies at all, but as the boat’s CO his primary duty, now that no other useful purpose could be achieved, was to save their lives. He’d been well taught, and he’d had not only the recent months of X-craft training but a long and quite intensive period of submarine patrols before that, and awareness of the always-present chances of disaster had caused him to give a lot of thought to the control and direction of his own impulses and reactions. The worst fear of all, as so many had discovered throughout the history of war, was fear of fear, horror at the thought of personal failure in the final emergency; he’d always known this and vaguely recognised it as the main ingredient of those nightmares. The dreams might have helped, even, in a sense rehearsed him for this. Whatever the basis of it, anyway, he was all right; the urge to survive was intact but not predominant.

  The clanking stopped again.

  He saw hope in Gimber’s half-smile. The grounds for it were confirmed then, as the battleship’s screws began to churn. She’d weighed anchor, and was on the move.

  “Nice timing.” Lanchberry glanced at his own watch. “Half past.”

  It was 0731, to be exact. If there’d been a side-cargo under her she’d be moving clear of it now. So that attempt—costing Brazier’s life and their own predicament now—had been futile. But you couldn’t have known and it would have been inexcusable not to have tried. He began, “Quarter of an hour, then—”

  There was a crack like an outsize Christmas cracker being pulled, a puff of blue smoke and a stench of scorched metal. From the ballast pump.

  “Just what we needed.” Gimber muttered it to himself as he pushed the lever to its neutral position and switched off the p
ower connection to the pump. Lanchberry said, “I’ll get a spare.” Spare fuse, he meant. “Get the bloody cover off, will you?” He tossed a screwdriver to Gimber.

  0732. Twenty-eight minutes left, in which to fix this pump, get some more weight out of her, then try to beat the odds. Paul felt half inclined to accept the chances as they were now, get on with it. But in principle the earlier decision had been the right one: every ounce out of that tank now was a step in the right direction.

  The doubt was whether, even if you got it completely pumped out, there’d be enough difference to her buoyancy—or lack of buoyancy—to make it work. Another reason for accepting delay, in fact, might have been reluctance to put it to the test. Knowing that if it failed there’d be nothing left: whereas until you tried it, you did have that small hope.

  Lanchberry was back with his tools and spares. Gimber had unscrewed one bolt, but there were four in the plate that had to be removed. Lanchberry took the screwdriver from him and crouched over the job, hissing between his teeth. The sound of Scharnhorst’s propellers was receding. It was a confused sound, and Paul guessed she might have a tug with her, perhaps to push that long bow round against the tidal stream. He realised that his impulse to attempt surfacing a minute ago had been an undisciplined one: with those enemies on the move the obvious thing to do was to wait, and use the time for pumping.

  Lanchberry dropped the screwdriver. It clanged off the pump’s casing and disappeared under a twisted mass of piping underneath. He grabbed another, took out the last bolt, and prised off the rectangle of metal. Removing the burnt-out fuse now, gingerly muttering “Bloody hot, can’t hardly touch the sod …” Scraping the contacts clean, then pushing in the spare fuse. Like a wheel-change in a motor race, every second counting. Slamming the cover-plate back on and fumbling a bolt into one of the holes: his hands were shaking. Gimber tried to help by putting another bolt in at the same time, but he was in Lanchberry’s way.

  “Christ’s sake …”

  “Sorry.”

  “Too many fucking cooks …” Second bolt: driving it home, teeth bared in a snarl as if he hated it. But glancing up now: “Two’ll hold her. Switch on?”

  Seven thirty-seven. Scharnhorst must have rounded the western end of Aaroy; there was no propeller noise to be heard. Gimber had closed the switch: he moved the lever to its “pump from for’ard” position. The pump started to work on the tank again, a throbbing whine.

  Paul said, “Seven minutes more.”

  The pump’s fuse blew, exactly as before.

  The impulse was to scream. He saw Gimber’s face clench—eyes screwed shut, mouth compressed within the beard. Lanchberry on his knees at the pump again, swearing viciously; Paul getting a grip on his own reeling mind … “It’ll blow again, Jazz. Let’s get her up.”

  It was sheer luck, Scharnhorst departing when she had. Not that her presence would have stopped them surfacing—or trying to … His thoughts were on the mechanics of it now—or rather, the hydrostatics. Picturing and dreading the waste of high-pressure air, his boat’s life-blood pouring out of her as she struggled to get up. Lanchberry suggested, “Have a decko at the chart, so we know which way to swim?”

  “Sure. Here.”

  The mainland coast would be as near as the islet, he thought. Whichever looked to be the closest, he told them, would be the one to make for. It might be a swim of a thousand yards or it could be as little as three hundred; and anyone who succeeded in getting out might be fit to make it, or might not.

  “If they see us when she breaks surface, there’ll be boats out to us. Might not need to do much swimming.”

  You could spin coins till the cows came home, with so many “ifs” around. But the odds were she would be spotted. He remembered seeing small craft in the destroyer anchorage off Leir Botn’s south shore, which was only two miles away, and there’d be a huge disturbance of escaping air to herald the arrival of the boat herself. He was leaning over to point out charted features that were relevant. Eight p.m. was the earliest you’d expect side-charges to go off, and you’d want to be out of the water before it happened, but if there was even as much as three hundred yards to swim you’d end up like the Bomber—like a stunned fish.

  And even that was looking too far ahead. If any of them got as far as facing that problem, they’d have had enormous luck first.

  Lanchberry still clutched the chart in both hands, as if it was a talisman with some power of its own to save his life. Gimber’s eyes, the expression in them, were telling him, We won’t make it. Or that might have been his own thought, Gimber’s intent stare only a search for reassurance. It was the loss of high-pressure air through the holed main ballast tank that worried him most, the probability that with 238 feet to wipe off that clockface she’d use it all, empty the groups of storage bottles long before she came even near it.

  You still had to try. The only alternative would be to sit and do nothing—until eight twenty-five at the very latest. X-12 was saddled with her own inevitable destruction.

  “Are we all set?”

  They both nodded. Lanchberry tossed the chart aside.

  “Group up, full ahead.” Paul flopped into the helmsman’s seat, put his hands on the blowing valves for the two main ballast tanks and looked back over his shoulder at Louis Gimber; he saw him make the field switch and start winding the hand-wheel clockwise to put full battery-power on the main motor. Paul turned back, and wrenched the blows open. Thumping rush of air and its vibration quivering the pipe, the sound of it like sandpaper on steel but drowned now in the speeding of the main motor, its thrumming getting louder as revs built up. He was scared for the rudder as he felt her move, the first lurch.

  “Main motor’s full ahead, grouped up!”

  “Hydroplanes hard a-dive, Louis!”

  “Dive angle” on the planes tilted them so as to force the stern up in order to push the bow downward. There was no chance of the bow turning down, with the for’ard tank blown, but he hoped it might lift her stern up off the rock. The propeller was reasonably well protected, the rudder being abaft it and the rudder’s supports like horizontal guards above it and below; but a lot of her weight would be on that rudder now, on its lower pivot. Noise was increasing: air bubbling from the after tank, a grinding of steel on rock back aft where the danger was, the boat shuddering and rattling from the full power of her screw …

  Seven forty-four.

  If the rudder support collapsed, the screw would crumple, smash itself against the rock, about one second later.

  She’d lifted by a foot or two, then dropped back; there’d been a clanging impact aft. She hadn’t been designed or built to stand this kind of treatment. He was waiting for the next ringing crash from that battered stern—and dreading it, knowing each one could be the last … It hadn’t come, though. Not yet. He was holding his breath, every nerve and muscle taut … Gimber’s report came instead, in a triumphant yell—“Two-twenty feet!”

  But how much air had just eighteen feet of climb used up, he wondered. Admittedly it was something, to have her stern off the bottom. Twenty-five degree angle on her, and she was shaking like something palsied. Number one main ballast indicator light flashed on, telling him the tank was blown right out, empty; he shut the blow. Wishing to God he could shut the other one as well. Her entire store of HP air was gushing out through the stern tank now—maybe giving her a little buoyancy aft as it ripped through.

  “Two hundred feet!”

  Slightly better. Thirty-eight feet off the bottom, and the time, seven forty-five.

  “One-eighty!”

  Rising faster, gaining some upward impetus. He looked back, and saw Gimber had set the planes level now, no “dive” or “rise” angle on them. It was probably the best bet—minimal resistance to the water. One hundred and fifty feet … But the vibration was increasing—she was finding the struggle too much for her. He had his hand on the blow to number three main ballast: the dilemma was whether if he shut it off now he’d slow or even s
top the rise, or whether it would make no difference except to save some air. Then his brain cleared: there’d be no use for HP air after this: either this succeeded or it failed, and if it failed that would be the end. He took his hand off the blow. Gimber reported, yelling to beat the noise, “Hundred and twenty feet!”

  She was half-way to the surface. Ship’s head on 050. It was surprising the gyro hadn’t toppled, with this much angle on her. Not that it mattered. The wheel moved in small jerks this way and that, from the force of the sea against the rudder, and he left it to its own devices. Time now: seven forty-six. Coming close to the hundred foot mark.

  “Jazz!”

  Lanchberry hauled himself up the incline and put his head near Paul’s.

  “When we hit the surface, you open the hatch, push Louis out, then follow him, quick as you can. I’ll be right behind you but for God’s sake don’t wait for me. OK?”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  Lanchberry was tops, he thought. Just as the Bomber had been.

  “Ninety feet!”

  But the flow of air was slowing. He put his hand up to the pipe connection to three main ballast. A minute ago he’d have felt it, the tremble imparted by the rush of air. Now, he felt nothing except the ice-cold wetness of condensation on the pipe. The noise from the stern was also lessening. He glanced round at Lanchberry and Gimber. Lanchberry’s face was set hard, his eyes glaring at the depthgauge: Gimber’s head turned this way.

  “Ninety.”

  Hanging. Holding that depth but making no upward progress. If there was any air still flowing it could only be a dribble.

  Lanchberry grated, “Ninety-one.” His hand came up, pointing accusingly at the gauge—as if it had let him down, as he’d known it would. “Bloody hell …”

  Here it was: the final and—he’d known it, really—inevitable outcome. Ninety-two feet. She’d begun to slip back, stern-first. Slowly, at the moment, but the fact she was sinking instead of rising, despite the motor full ahead grouped up, spelt “curtains.” He’d foreseen it in his imagination, envisaged it, so the event itself now was a replay, the opening stages of a dream he’d had before—another of those nightmares but this time it was real.