Battlecruiser (1997)

by Reeman, Douglas

  He pressed the switch. ‘Orlando, ahoy!’ He saw faces peering across at him and felt something brush against his elbow. It was his cap, which he must have left on the chart table. The young signalman who had offered it gave a sheepish grin and withdrew.

  Sherbrooke tugged the cap onto his hair. He should have remembered it himself. The sign of authority. Perhaps, of salvation.

  ‘This is the Captain!’ His voice, hard and metallic, bounced back across the water. ‘I am coming alongside, starboard side to. Are your pumps still working?’

  The other captain’s voice answered, ‘Aye, sir. For the moment. ’Tis Number Four hold.’

  Sherbrooke watched as Reliant fell further astern, until the bridge was directly opposite the leaping flames. It was too far to feel a sensation of heat: he knew that. But he felt it, with, perhaps, more than his skin.

  He called, ‘Tell the Commander to begin!’

  The long hoses bucked and then spouted water, curving columns which felt their way toward the other ship.

  He could heard Rhodes speaking to the wheelhouse. Macallan, the coxswain, would be depending on each direct order, unable as he was to see the nearness of danger.

  Closer, closer, until Sherbrooke could see the extent of the damage, a huge hole in the main deck caused by the explosion. Anyone down there would have been killed.

  He switched on the other microphone and saw men peering up at him.

  ‘Boarding parties, up forrard!’ He saw them begin to move, as if to some remote control. The sheer of Reliant’s starboard bow was so close to the other ship that the water between the two hulls was churning in trapped torment.

  The hoses were finding their mark, scattering flames, dousing equipment and upperworks, swinging back again as more blazes broke out elsewhere.

  Stagg was suddenly beside him, hands in his reefer pockets, his fine cap tilted over in the Beatty style.

  ‘I didn’t call you, Guy. I could see you were busy.’ His eyes glowed in a fresh outbreak of fire, untroubled, and without pity. ‘Our Canadian should get a good view.’ He grinned fiercely. ‘Go easy, Guy, or the poor chap won’t have any ship to come back to!’

  The men around them heard him, and laughed, despite the other ship, the suffering, the danger to themselves. The Old Man isn’t bothered, and the admiral obviously doesn’t give a monkey’s, so why should we?

  ‘First party’s across, sir!’ Rhodes was peering through the screens, bunching his fist as if to urge them on.

  Sherbrooke saw the seamen running and skidding on Orlando’s unfamiliar decks as other hoses doused them to protect them from the heat. Some of the troops were moving as well, N.C.O.s in bush hats yelling above the din as they dragged smouldering planking and hatch covers to the opposite side.

  Stagg snatched some binoculars from a flag locker and peered toward the smoke.

  ‘My God, Frazier’s over there with them!’ He sounded astonished, angry. ‘I’ll not have my senior officers behaving like first-year subbies!’

  Sherbrooke watched Frazier’s cap among a squad of seamen who were squirting foam through an open hatch, demonstrating by his mere presence that he was with them, of them, and all the sweat and training had been worthwhile. He wondered if Frazier’s wife had ever pictured him like this. He doubted it.

  There was another muffled explosion, and more figures blundered down into the hold, which must now be awash with water from the hoses. Minutes later, the first casualties were carried up, some held firmly while dressings were applied, burns covered, others hitting out, unable to comprehend what was happening. There were several who lay where they had been dropped, discarded. He had never become accustomed to it, not even when the hard men joked about the casual brutality of war.

  Lieutenant Frost shouted, ‘They’re winning, sir!’ He waved his cap in the air and yelled, ‘Come on, Reliants! Let’s be having you!’

  The yeoman gave a grim smile, and one of his signalmen made a circling gesture with his finger to his forehead.

  There were more hoses on Reliant’s forecastle now. Some of her side would be scorched and blistered, not so far from the splinter holes and dockyard repairs. Stagg would not be pleased if it meant another delay in what he perceived to be his mission.

  The Orlando’s loud-hailer echoed against the bridge. ‘Fire under control! Fifteen casualties.’ The speaker broke off, and shaded his eyes as if staring across the smoky water. ‘Thank you, Reliant! God bless you!’

  Sherbrooke could hear cheers from the soldiers: even the Aussies were impressed.

  Stagg sniffed at the smoke. ‘I’d like to speak to Frazier when he comes aboard, Guy.’

  Sherbrooke said quietly, ‘My job, I think, sir. But I believe he was right.’

  Stagg gave him a piercing stare. ‘Very well, you deal.’ The fierce grin reappeared. ‘After all, we’d be in real bother if we lost a troopship, eh?’ The grin disappeared, like a dropped mask. ‘We can always get another commander!’

  Sherbrooke watched him stride away, pausing to speak with a messenger, a youth who gaped at his admiral with awe. He never stopped performing, he thought. Maybe he could not.

  He said, ‘Tell the T/S to report progress, Pilot. We’ll stand by for another hour and then recover our boarding parties. They did well.’

  The navigating officer nodded. ‘I thought so, sir.’ As Sherbrooke crossed to the opposite side, he added under his breath, ‘So did you, my son!’

  He thought of the corpses he had seen laid out on the other ship’s deck. At least Beveridge, the God-bosun, would have something to keep him busy.

  He sighed. You shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke, they always said.

  9

  Your Decision

  Dick Rayner banked the Walrus slightly and stared down at the sea. In the harsh glare there was little sign of motion, just power and depth, reaching away from horizon to horizon.

  He said, ‘Time to turn back soon, Eddy. The ship won’t want to hang around too long.’

  Buck said dryly, ‘That has a familiar ring to it!’

  Rayner glanced at his instruments, his ear automatically tuning in to the engine. They were flying north-west, at some four thousand five hundred feet You got your best out of the Shagbat like that. She could manage one hundred and thirty knots under these conditions, with a following wind anyway.

  It had been a temptation to loiter in the area with the convoy when the fire had broken out aboard one of the troopers, but Rayner had learned the danger and the folly of being distracted by something, no matter how impressive, if there was nothing he could do to assist.

  ‘Any juice left?’

  Buck shook his head. ‘The other two gannets have scoffed it!’

  Rayner licked his lips. His mouth was like dust. He rarely drank anything but juice, despite what the Chief had said about the mess prices, except that night when the two Scottish cops had persuaded the barman to part with some genuine malt.

  That was something else he had discovered in Britain. Scotch whisky had vanished from all the pubs. Gone, for the duration of the war. For export, he wondered? He had noticed that senior officers seemed to have no difficulty in obtaining it.

  But if you asked for it in an ordinary pub, they would probably think you were a German spy who’d just dropped by parachute, or that you’d been in prison since the outbreak of war. He thought of the girl, Andrea, nearly choking on it when she’d been given a full glass. What was she doing right now? Who was she with?

  He sensed that Buck was pointedly studying the pad strapped to his leg.

  He said, ‘O.K., I’m turning back. Don’t you ever think of anything but your belly?’

  Buck was staring out now, his eyes narrowed against the glare.

  ‘Ship! Port bow!’

  Rayner frowned. ‘Use the glasses. Come on, get the lead out!’

  Buck raised them carefully and peered through the smeared perspex. ‘Freighter. Hold on, she’s got a flag painted on the side.’
r />   Morgan had climbed up behind them with another pair of binoculars.

  ‘Red and yellow. She’s a Spaniard, a bloody neutral.’

  Buck grinned. ‘Is that what Wales should be?’

  Rayner glanced at his gauges again. ‘Better take a look.’ Even neutrals took a risk every time they ventured into the combat areas.

  He guided the Walrus into a slow, controlled descent, until they could see their own shadow flashing across the undulating water like a twin.

  It was an untidy vessel, and there were men working on deck, some of whom looked up and waved as they turned across her bows and flew down the opposite side.

  The ship’s name was painted on a large canvas awning, Cabo Fradera. Probably for the benefit of nosy bastards like us, Rayner thought.

  Then something clicked. ‘That’s the one that reported being fired on by a raider! Never learn, do they?’

  It was rare for the Germans to interfere with Spanish vessels; they had too much in common. Churchill had called it ‘one-sided neutrality’ in one of his fiery broadcasts.

  Hardie, the other member of their little crew, said, ‘They were ditchin’ their gash, sloppy buggers!’

  Rayner eased the stick over. The small figures working on the freighter’s deck had been covering something with another piece of canvas, he imagined to protect it from the sun. For only a second, it had registered. ‘Look at her stern!’

  Buck sounded startled. ‘I can’t see anything, Skip! What is it?’

  The ‘gash’ being dropped over the stern; the canvas which had almost covered something. Metal tracks, like narrow railway lines.

  He exclaimed, ‘She’s laying mines, for Christ’s sake! Rob, call up the ship! We’re getting out, fast!’

  He felt the engine responding loudly and saw the sea’s glistening face slide away like the side of a steep hill.

  His mind was almost too full to cope. Laying mines, and the launching rails had been empty. The Spaniard had dropped the lot. They were not for mooring. The ocean was too deep in this area; he had checked it on Rhodes’s chart before they had taken off. Three thousand fathoms. They would stay on the surface, drifters, uncontrolled and mindless, and lethal to the unwary. He tried to swallow, to get the words out to Morgan.

  ‘Mines, Rob! Tell the ship!’

  There might be dozens of them, hundreds, for all he knew. Or he might be making a bloody fool of himself. But if he was right . . . He heard the splutter of static and wondered if they would be able to make contact. The Spaniard might have been laying the mines for hours, or ever since their reported encounter with the raider.

  Reliant had to know.

  He did not feel the explosion. It was more like being lifted violently, and then dropped again. There was foul-tasting smoke in the aircraft, and for another instant Rayner imagined they were on fire. But the smoke was thinning even as he struggled with the controls, and stared with shocked disbelief at the jagged holes, feeling the inrush of cold air. They had been hit. And with the realization came the pain, like a hot iron in his side, probing and burning, and making him throw off his goggles as if he were choking. Buck was holding him, staring into his face while he dragged at the leather flying jacket.

  Rayner gasped, ‘You know the course, Eddy? Hold her on it!’

  ‘I can manage, O.K.?’ He withdrew his hand and saw the blood.

  Rob Morgan, one-time milkman in Cardiff, was back again. He looked pale, transfigured, in some way. ‘The radio’s smashed.’

  Buck said, ‘How’s Jim?’ He put his arm round Rayner’s shoulders and held him upright. Morgan’s brief shake of the head said it all. ‘Up to us then, Rob. Here, give me a hand. Get a dressing.’ He darted a glance at the compass and altimeter. The old Shagbat was flying herself. He wanted to laugh, or cry. But he knew he would not be able to stop.

  Rayner blinked, hard. ‘How long, Eddy?’

  ‘Half an hour. Don’t worry. I’ve got her.’

  Rayner let his head drop back. That long? How could it be? It had only just happened. Flak. He should have known. Guessed.

  He had felt his trousers filling with the blood running into his groin, thick blood. He bit back the pain. Obscene. But there was a dressing on the wound now. How had they managed to do that?

  Morgan said, ‘Convoy in sight, Skipper.’ There was neither relief nor emotion. He was beyond both.

  Rayner tried to move. ‘What about Jim?’ The Walrus was turning, losing height. As it did so, the sunlight lanced through the splinter holes and passed slowly across the other seaman’s open eyes, but they did not close to it, or blink.

  Rayner said, ‘Aldis. Call them up . . .’ His voice was little more than a whisper.

  I have to get them down. I must. It was only when he felt Buck’s grip tighten that he realized he had spoken aloud.

  ‘Hold me up. Watch the flaps . . . nice and steady.’ If the depth charges exploded, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Vaguely, he heard the clack-clack of the Aldis lamp, and Morgan’s voice.

  ‘They’ve seen it!’

  It was not even possible to know if they were badly damaged. They would have to ditch, and wait to be picked up. Or left, like the Germans in their Arado. Tit for tat . . .

  He said quietly, ‘See that girl for me, will you, Eddy? Tell her I would have written.’

  Then they hit the water, and Buck felt spray spitting through some of the holes.

  Rayner might be dying, but Buck watched his gloved, bloody hand retaining control as if it alone was alive. He stared at the sea as it corkscrewed up and down, tossing the little flying boat like a leaf on a millrace, and held the bloodied hand in his own as the engine coughed and shuddered into silence.

  ‘We’re down! You did it, you crazy bugger!’

  Morgan said, ‘Reliant has to send somebody.’ It was getting to him now.

  Rayner murmured, ‘She’ll come. You’ll see.’ And then he passed out.

  Buck tried to wipe his friend’s face with his one clean handkerchief, but his fingers were shaking so badly that he gave up the attempt.

  ‘You tell her yourself,’ he said, and afterwards he convinced himself that he saw Rayner’s lips curve in a faint smile.

  Lieutenant-Commander Clive Rhodes lowered his glasses, and watched more smouldering debris being manhandled and levered over the Orlando’s side, Reliant’s seamen working easily with the Australian soldiers, as if they had been doing it for years.

  He heard the captain speaking to the transmitting station on one of the bridge telephones, obtaining a clear picture of any damage sustained when the two big hulls had touched one another. It made Rhodes sweat just to think of it. Reliant was of thirty-two thousand tons displacement, and the old cargo liner had not been built with that sort of ship-handling in mind. And yet Sherbrooke had conned his ship so close that her great flared bow had hidden the men who had been waiting to assist the boarding parties. One error of judgment, one freak gust of wind at the moment of impact, and it could have been a disaster. He had handled her like a destroyer, or, perhaps, like the ship he had once commanded.

  Sherbrooke joined him, and said, ‘We will recover our people now. Orlando’s master seems to have everything in hand.’

  Rhodes remarked, ‘I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been here.’

  Sherbrooke looked at him, or through him, his eyes distant, as if he were reliving it.

  Then he smiled. ‘I did have a few doubts myself, Pilot.’

  ‘Aircraft! Green four-five! Angle of sight three-zero! Approach angle zero!’

  Across the gunnery speaker they heard Evershed’s voice, clipped and tense, as if he had been waiting for it.

  ‘Follow Director!’

  But it was Bob Yorke, the yeoman of signals, who grasped the situation. Snatching up the long, outdated telescope which he preferred to any pair of binoculars, he hurried on to the bridge wing, his lips moving silently as he found and held the slow-moving flying boat in the lens. Sherbrooke thrust
his hand into his pocket and clenched his fingers around his pipe as the Walrus’s kite-like outline dipped towards the searing water, as if it could no longer stay airborne.

  Yorke did not even blink in the glare. ‘From Walrus, sir.’ He frowned, unused to the slow, hesitant flashes. ‘Have sighted minelayer to the north-west. Mines on convoy route.’

  Somebody said in a whisper, ‘Poor bastard’s been hit.’

  Rhodes was watching the flying boat also, much closer now to the sea. It must have been tricked into getting too near the minelayer, whatever she was.

  Sherbrooke said, ‘Signal, Yeoman. Make to commodore. Convoy will alter course in succession. Steer two-five-zero. Then find a flare to shake up the lookouts.’

  Rhodes waited by the wheelhouse voicepipe, missing nothing.

  Sherbrooke added curtly, ‘And call up Captain (D) and tell him what’s happening.’

  Stagg’s telephone came to life and a signalman reached for it.

  Sherbrooke said, ‘Wait.’

  ‘All acknowledged, sir!’

  A quick glance at the clock. How many minutes? ‘Execute!’

  Sherbrooke strode out on to the wing and seized the loud-hailer.

  ‘Orlando, ahoy! Boarding parties will remain on board!’

  He watched the troopships wheeling round after their commodore, with a kind of ponderous dignity.

  Somebody gave a nervous laugh. ‘That’ll get the Bloke on the hop! He’ll think we’re leaving him behind!’

  There was a muffled bang, which touched Reliant’s hull like a nudge.

  Sherbrooke watched the tall waterspout rise directly alongside the light cruiser’s bows. It seemed to take an age to cascade down, and then there was smoke. No flash, but as Diligent thrust out of the falling spray he could see that she was already slowing down, her curving wake dropping rapidly until finally she was stopped altogether.

  Sherbrooke observed her coldly. ‘Half speed ahead both engines. Steady on course . . .’ He hesitated, and looked over at Rhodes. ‘Where’s the Walrus, Pilot?’