Go in and Sink!
Page 34
Simeon pushed Cain towards the hatch and then threw himself on the heavy hawser. Once, twice, and then it was free, splashing into _the harbour where Smith and others had died.
He turned and stared towards the bridge and, seemed to grin. Or perhaps it was a grimace, for even as he made to follow Cain he dropped to his knees and then toppled very slowly over the side.
Marshall said hoarsely, `Full astern. We’ll pick up Lambert’s party now.’
He was still staring at the fore casing. The hatch was shut. Only the dead remained.
It did not take long for the breathless marines to leap aboard. The submarine hardly paused as she slid sternfirst past the small jetty where they had first seen the waiting Italians. Lambert was with them, but he had less than half of his men intact.
Marshall’s aching mind registered all these facts, but he felt detached from them. Like a dying man who can hear those about him, yet is incapable of reaching them.
He dragged Warwick to the ladder. `Help those men below. Then clear the deck gun.’ He had to shake him to make him move. `We must finish what we came for.’
`You all right, sir?’ Blythe was crouching beside him, his face ashen in the smoky sunlight.
`Stay with me, Yeoman.’ He watched the stem edging out into the harbour again. `Stem tubes ready.’ He rested his forehead on the sights, watching the boom vessel swimming through the crosswires as if in a mist. `Fire at three second intervals.’
He winced as more metal crashed into the hull, and saw Warwick pulling a wounded marine through the hatch like a sack.
`Now!’
The hull kicked very slightly. He counted the seconds, and felt the second torpedo burst from its tube ‘I hey were now so near to the boom vessel that the explosions came almost together. When the spray and fragments began to fall he saw the ship toppling on to her side in a welter of smoke and flames. She would soon sink, and with her the boom.
When he staggered to the forepart of the bridge again he felt he was the last man alive. He dashed the sweat from his eyes and saw what they had come all this way to destroy. With the freighter leaning at a steep angle on the opposite side of the harbour, the towering wall of concrete, the black cavernous mouth of the bunker stood out as they had on Travis’s neat diagrams.
`Standing by, One to Six, sir.’
Marshall could only whisper a reply, but Blythe shouted, `Bridge to control room! Coming on now!’
Marshall tried again. There was smoke everywhere. Like steam. He saw an armoured car racing down a cliff road. It was like a child’s toy. Even the tiny, spurting flashes from its turret were without threat or reality.
He concentrated on the pier at the entrance of the bunker. A powerful mobile derrick, and beyond some big metal cases. Bombs which would have been in the freighter tomorrow morning, en route for some German airfield.
`Fire One!’
He heard Buck’s voice on the intercom, and imagined him with his stopwatch.
`Carry on firing. Three second intervals.’
He turned to peer astern as the hull continued to back towards the boom. There was no sign of the boom vessel. Just a great patch of oil and bobbing flotsam.
The fourth torpedo had left the tube when the first exploded against the pier. After that it was impossible to tell one from the next, or night from day.
The torpedoes must have touched off some of the stacked bombs, and in an instant a massive explosion rocked the harbour, sending a small tidal wave creaming wildly towards the submarine as if to seek revenge.
The noise went on and on, fading and then mounting again as the piled explosives detonated far inside the bunker and into the hillside itself.
Marshall touched the ache in his side. It was an answer, if he had needed it.
He said slowly, `Tell him neither. His Majesty’s U-boat 192 is rejoining the Fleet.’ He hesitated, thinking of those who had been left behind. `We’ve come this far. I’ll not leave her now.’
`Signal from escort, sir. Congratulations.’
Marshall smiled. ‘Thanks. I think we’ve earned them!’
End