Twelve Seconds to Live (2002)

by Reeman, Douglas

  Lincoln said abruptly, ‘It would save time, that’s a point. One pair of eyes might miss something. You never know.’

  Again, he was reasoning with himself.

  They walked on, the trees reaching out as if to enfold them, the torn parachute whipping out in the wind.

  The ‘beast’ was half-buried in earth, glinting dully, although much of the long, cylinder-like shape was coated with exhaust from the aircraft which had released it.

  Downie watched as Lincoln got down on his knees beside it. The pile of sleepers was about thirty yards away. They might just as well be on the moon.

  He opened the pack and laid it flat on the ground. His lips moved, as if he were speaking to himself, possibly checking each instrument, refreshing a memory, some past incident perhaps.

  Downie had been this close to a mine at this stage only once before; Sewell had suffered an injured wrist earlier, when part of a roof had fallen on him. Together they had disarmed the mine. One very like this, about nine feet long. Magnetic. Like the small device they had dealt with at Bridport. Safe enough if . . .‘I think you should use the spare magnet, sir.’

  Lincoln had the callipers in one hand, his other on the mine, holding his stethoscope in place. Kneeling, his head back as he took several deep breaths, he reminded Downie of an athlete about to spring forward into a race.

  Downie saw his wrist straighten. Taking the strain. It was almost over. The keeping ring would hold until the fuse was withdrawn. Clive Sewell had done it several times. The worst part was . . .

  It was like hearing someone scream. That had been months ago. This mine had been dropped only last night.

  He said, ‘There’s paint, just by your knee, sir!’

  Lincoln tried to turn and almost lost his balance.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? If you don’t know how to behave––’ He seemed to take control of himself. ‘What paint, for Christ’s sake?’

  Downie lifted the second magnet from his pack. ‘Another fuse, sir, I think.’

  It was essential to move, he did not know why. He scraped his fingers across a painted sign on the side of the mine. His heart was pounding wildly, choking him, so that he could barely breathe. He felt a fingernail split, vaguely heard Lincoln snap something at him.

  But his own voice was suddenly very steady. ‘There’s another fuse here, sir.’ It made him want to smile, even laugh. Sir. O.L.Q.s. ‘It’s sealed with something.’

  Lincoln put both palms on the mine and said thickly, ‘A booby-trap, the cunning bastards!’

  How long they stayed like that he never knew, with the wind shaking the bare branches overhead, and somewhere, in another world, Downie heard a blackbird singing.

  Using both sets of callipers, they removed the booby-trap first, and then the main fuse. Very slowly, until it was free and away from its hidden slot. Otherwise, it would still have been waiting for the sappers to come and remove the mine to somewhere safe. Just one movement, an inch or less. That was all it would have taken.

  Or if an all clear had been given and an express had thundered past: the effect would have been horrific.

  Downie picked up the tools, something automatic, but the routine always helped.

  Had it been dark they might never have seen the crude disguise on the second fuse.

  It happened. You only heard about it afterwards.

  He saw Lincoln on his knees, away from the mine, retching and vomiting into the wet grass.

  Then he threw back his head and shouted, ‘Now! I hope you’re bloody satisfied!’

  Downie wanted to help, to do something. The soldiers would be coming; they would expect some sort of signal. He swallowed. Or an explosion.

  When he spoke again Lincoln sounded very calm, as he had been when they met.

  ‘Sorry about that.’ He did not offer an explanation. Would Downie even believe he had been shouting at his father? ‘I’d like it if we could work together. As a team.’

  Downie reached out to help him to his feet. A near thing. Lincoln had momentarily cracked. It could happen again.

  But the past could not come back.

  He picked up his pack. ‘I think we’ll manage, sir!’

  The sappers could handle the rest of it, and soon everything would start moving again.

  And we are alive. It was enough. Until the next time.

  8

  Narrow Seas

  Lieutenant Chris Foley wedged his body into a corner of the ML’s open bridge and felt the sea mist clinging to his face and eyelashes. The cold was bitter and penetrating, and the towel wrapped around his neck was sodden; when he moved too quickly he felt droplets of water touch his skin like ice.

  But for the mist it would be daylight, or as good as. He peered at the compass, something he tried not to do too often. Everyone was on edge; it was more fog than mist, and in the Channel you had to expect anything.

  South seventy West. Somebody stamped his seaboot on the wet planking to restore the circulation, and Foley heard at least two voices simultaneously curse the unfortunate culprit into silence.

  Fog was an enemy, fog was a friend. Fog was fog.

  ML366 could have been completely alone, sealed off from the whole world. He listened to the steady murmur of the engines, pictured the hull lifting and pitching in the offshore current. Heading back to base, another thankless task completed.

  They were not alone. The same two motor launches were ahead and to seaward. Between them was their ponderous charge, a tank landing craft which was being escorted to the inlet, probably to end up as another wreck after further experiments and exercises had been carried out.

  There were also two minesweepers, sturdy wooden vessels, listed as non-magnetic sweepers. It was just as well, he had thought, as the cumbersome LCT had broken down twice with engine failure, and the sweepers had been able to offer a tow until repairs were carried out.

  They had made their rendezvous off the Isle of Wight where the relieved escort, which had included three powerfully armed motor gunboats, had headed gratefully up the Solent and into Portsmouth. They had earned it. The LCT had been met and escorted out of Sheerness, down and around the North Foreland and into the Dover Strait itself. A lot of sailors feared it; all of them hated it. With the enemy and the notorious Channel guns just a few miles away, and aircraft and E-Boats at any time to contend with, the Narrow Seas had claimed too many victims to be taken for granted.

  Foley wiped the lenses of his binoculars with a piece of tissue, but that too was damp and useless. He pictured the chart in his mind. The Needles, like gaunt sentinels in the mist, were well astern now, the Channel opening out for the next leg, south-west to Durlston Head. He felt his lips crack into a smile. It would be Dorset again, the right county at least.

  In the North Sea it had always been busy and dangerous, but he had never felt so restricted, hemmed in, as in the narrow seas of the Channel. There had been fast runs across to the Dutch coast, and sometimes further north to rendezvous with vessels trying to escape from Denmark, refugees, people who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Frightened, desperate; he often wondered what had happened to some of them. What might have happened in England if the worst had come about.

  ‘Listen.’

  Nobody answered. It was the dull, tuneless clang of a bell. A wreck buoy. There were too many to count any more. Clang, clang, clang. As if some withered hand was still tugging a rope.

  Dougie Bass murmured, ‘Starboard bow, sir.’

  It passed slowly down the starboard side, a faint dab of green against the enclosing mist. In daylight you could see them marking every channel. Ships which had gone down, torpedoed or bombed, or rammed by accident in the tight-ranked convoys hurrying through the night without lights, and relying for the most part on the merchantman’s own style of matchbox navigation.

  The coastline was also marked by forlorn mastheads and sometimes the rusting upperworks of ships which had tried to beach themselves and so avoid blocking the vit
al swept channels. On the east coast it was the same, but there at least you felt you had the chance to hit back, to pursue and cut off the escaping attackers before they could reach their bases.

  Foley stared abeam. Here, they had only spitting distance to run.

  He wondered how Tony Brock was controlling his temper, up there ahead of their slow-moving little group. He had had plenty to say when the orders were delivered. There was no glamour or excitement this time; it wasn’t even worth having one of his well-known war correspondents along for the ride.

  ‘Think I’ve got nothing better to do, do they? I’ll crack a few heads when I find out whose bean-brained idea this was!’

  The other boat was Dick Claridge’s 401, somewhere on the port bow of the group. A good skipper, and well liked, still remembering his men who had been killed on the last venture across the Channel.

  A shadow loomed up beside him. It was Allison.

  ‘You said to relieve you, sir.’ Even in the poor light his oilskin shone like black glass. As if it had been pouring with rain, or they had been speeding through this same offshore current.

  ‘Just for a minute, Toby. I want to check the chart again.’

  It was strange, but he no longer questioned it. Allison was new, but he was capable. More to the point, he cared. Even the longer serving hands had accepted the change. In a small company like this there would always be the hardened piss-takers. He smiled to himself. Even for Old Chris.

  It took him a few seconds to recover his bearings once he was below. Even the smells were different, the galley shut and empty, without the everlasting aromas of cocoa, grease and tinned sausages. The W/T office lit by an orange glow, the operator’s shoulders hunched over the panel, headphones glinting faintly as he turned to watch him pass. Bush was a good hand, and they were losing him soon. Going on a course for advancement, which he richly deserved. Like some of the others before him, Foley had almost had to threaten him to make him accept the chance of promotion.

  He switched on a light by the wardroom table and peered at the chart. It was sometimes safer to keep it here, and avoid spilling light into the bridge in a sudden emergency.

  He checked his notes again, and the date. It was October, and he had circled it with care.

  He had received a letter from Margot Lovatt. At first he had thought it was bad news, or that somebody was writing to warn him off.

  It was neither. She had asked someone to write for her. Her wrist, she had been told, was still too badly sprained to put to the test. Perhaps it was the girl in the other bed, who had covered her eyes and pretended not to hear what they had been saying, before the doctor had cut short Foley’s visit.

  You will know by now that I have been moved to a different hospital. I sent word through my quarters officer. I didn’t want you to think . . . She had told the writer to cross out the next piece. I am feeling a lot better, but quite bruised. I have been worried about you. I think you know why. When you can get the time, I’d so like to see you again.

  She had scribbled her name beneath it, injury or not.

  Foley leaned both palms on the table, feeling the engines’ beat, the ceaseless quiver of the hull, like extensions to his own mind and body.

  He closed his eyes tightly. After all this time, was it getting to him? They always said there was a limit. What is mine?

  He glanced at the other cabin, where her cap was locked in a drawer.

  How could it be? And if it was not this boat, it would be another.

  He straightened up and strode towards the ladder.

  The telegraphist named Bush called after him, ‘All quiet, sir!’ But it went unheard.

  He saw Allison swing towards him as he climbed into the bridge.

  ‘Tell the hands to stand to, Number One.’ He waited until he had spoken to the boatswain’s mate and then said, ‘When I leave you in charge, that means in command, for as long as it takes, d’you hear me?’

  He grasped his oilskin and urged him to the side. ‘See that glow down there in the trough? The fog’s clearing! We’ll be stark naked in minutes!’

  Allison answered quietly, ‘I’m sorry, sir, I thought . . .’

  He stared down as Foley grasped his arm. ‘No, Toby. I’m the one to be sorry. Try and forget what I said.’ He moved to the forepart of the bridge and watched the compass glow. Fainter now, and he could see the slender barrel of the three-pounder pointing like a finger, the remainder of the forecastle still cut off in darkness. As if it had been shot away.

  Allison had moved and was speaking with the boatswain’s mate, whispering. Foley wiped his face with his hands. Probably thinks his skipper’s going round the bend.

  ‘Closed up, sir.’

  Foley raised his glasses again. The fog seemed paler, but showed no sign of moving. Like that time in the North Sea, the sea suddenly clear, hard and bright like metal. The clatter of cannon fire. Men falling, dying. Wood splinters and blood.

  He heard himself say, ‘Another wreck buoy coming up any minute.’ Nobody spoke.

  He thought of her letter, dictated to someone to make him know and understand. Perhaps she had seen what he had so carefully overlooked. That the boat, his little command, was his life. All he had. It would be only right to tell her, before it damaged her in some way.

  ‘Wreck buoy, green four-five, sir.’ That was Signalman Chitty, in his other role with the machine-guns.

  Bass eased the spokes and said, ‘The old Latchmere. Was mined a year back, and then sank in a few fathoms. Full of scrap iron, she was.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Still is. They’ll never bother to shift the old girl now!’

  Foley let the glasses drop to his chest. What he said was true. Like folklore; Bass had not even been in the Channel when it had happened. The wreck had become a feature, something on which you could obtain a running fix at low water if you had gone off course. Ships large or lucky enough to be fitted with radar could use the wreck’s rusty upperworks and rely on their instruments. You never questioned it.

  He reached out and gripped the voicepipes to steady himself as the hull dipped into another trough. Like an ice-cold hand on the skin. The breath of someone invisible, right beside you.

  You never questioned it.

  ‘All engines stop!’ It seemed to take an eternity before the sound and vibration died away. It probably took three seconds.

  Foley pushed across the bridge, wiping his face again, as if to clear his vision. There was nothing. It must be worse than he had imagined. Nothing. And all the while Tony Brock was forging ahead with the others. Oblivious. He would be merciless.

  Not even a dismal bell this time. Too well known. Too permanent.

  Allison was pressed beside him. Wanting to know, but perhaps still smarting from the unfair outburst.

  Foley said, ‘The channel widens here. The last chance for a surprise attack. If the shore radar gets a fix, it will only show a faint blip. The old Latchmere.’ He hurried on, afraid to stop, but unable to convince himself. ‘I was doing a mine-laying run on the other side, a year or so ago. Watching for a kraut convoy, thinking we were to seaward of it. Like Dick Claridge is doing right now. I think there’s one of them waiting to cut across our stern.’ He gripped his glasses until his fingers throbbed. The sea was clearer now, hardly a swell to ruffle the surface. Another blurred patch of green: the wreck buoy. Nothing.

  Chitty said, ‘Oil on the surface, sir.’ Calm, matter-of-fact.

  Another commented, ‘From the wreck, mate.’

  Bass snapped, ‘She was coal-fired, mate!’

  Foley took two strides and saw the three-pounder gun crew peering up at him. He made a chopping motion with his fist, and saw the gunlayer swing back to his sights.

  The air was even colder on his skin. At any moment the fog would begin to move, if not lift.

  ‘Stand by!’ He did not even think of Shannon down there with his engines and dials. He would be ready. He had to be.

  He could see the whole of the forecastle now, the guar
drails laid flat to allow the gun full movement.

  Still no sign of the other vessels. Brock or one of the others must soon realize that Tailend Charlie had vanished astern.

  Allison thought the same. ‘One of them’s pulling back, sir.’

  Foley stiffened. ‘No, Toby. Listen.’

  Bass cleared his throat, and swore as Chitty tugged the cocking lever of his twin Brownings. It seemed loud enough to rouse the old freighter’s crew.

  First it was no more than a frothing sound, then with an ever-mounting roar of power the other vessel’s engines shattered the stillness.

  The bow wave, mounting even as they watched, was a great moustache of spray against the sea and fog, a sharp-edged wave rolling across the water as the hull heeled over in response.

  Allison had heard it only twice before, when he had been serving as a midshipman in an old destroyer, and the last time, when they had stopped in this boat to pick up the dead airman.

  The enemy had already increased speed, the three big Daimler-Benz engines joining as one, drowning out all thought as the E-Boat smashed through the sea.

  Any second now, and the guns would open fire. At this range . . . Foley slammed his fist on the voicepipes. ‘Full ahead! Port fifteen!’ He jabbed at the button by his hip. ‘Follow him round!’

  It was impossible. A madness. But the E-Boat had not seen them. So intent on a kill, her commander had overlooked the possibility of an extra escort. Foley tried to empty his mind of everything else, but the thought persisted. Why should an experienced E-Boat commander wait on the mere offchance of catching this or any other small group of ships?

  The gunfire had started. Green and scarlet tracer lifting and ripping down, interwoven and deadly. The heavier bark of the enemy’s cannon, the staccato rattle of lighter weapons, while the fog lifted and writhed in a wild panorama of battle. Here and there a hull would show itself in exploding shellfire, or a patch of sea open up as a fast-moving bow wave fanned out to reveal the speed and fury of the attack.

  ‘Open fire!’

  The three-pounder responded immediately, the shells tracking and following the E-Boat’s rising wash. Hits, damage, impossible to tell. Brock’s ML was heading through the scattered formation, loud-hailer blaring, signal lamp flashing, men frantically reloading magazines and ammunition belts, ready for another attack.