Seek Out and Destroy (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

‘Sir!’

  ‘Mr. Gallina! Take Mr. Menzies and his party ashore!’

  ‘Yes, signore!’

  ‘Mr. Menzies! Get a move on!’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir! Leading Seaman Buckley!’

  Pagani eased the wheel over as Smith dropped into the cockpit beside him. The boat pulled smoothly away from the side of the drifter, slipped around her stem and headed back to the dockyard.

  At Devereux’s office he found only the night clerk on duty and obtained from him the latest intelligence on Trieste. There were a number of photographs taken from an aircraft that had flown a reconnaissance that morning. There was also an updated map of the harbour. The photographs were sharp and clear, they and the map showed the new boom defences — and Salzburg. She was unmistakable. There was no ship to match her in Trieste, or elsewhere in the Adriatic for that matter. Smith smiled wryly as he wondered what Devereux would say when he learned Smith had taken up the proffered intelligence. He returned to Hercules.

  As Pagani’s boat closed the drifter he saw smoke rising in a thick black column from her funnel as Geordie Hogg got up steam. Smith climbed aboard to see Fred Archbold in the wheelhouse, head already poked out of the open window, pipe stuck in his mouth and smoke wisping as he hastily sucked on it. The anchor party stood ready on the fo’c’sle and Smith ordered, ‘Weigh!’ As he climbed the ladder to the wheelhouse on top of the superstructure the steam capstan hammered and the cable clanked in.

  When he entered the wheelhouse the last of the tobacco smoke was blowing away, drawn out of the open window by the breeze. Fred Archbold’s pipe was still between his teeth but now innocently tamped with a plug of newspaper. The hail came up from the fo’c’sle, a voice lifted above the captain’s clamour: ‘Anchor’s aweigh!’

  Smith said, ‘Half ahead! Port ten!’

  Fred Archbold reached out to the engine-room telegraph and rang down ‘Half ahead’. He said, ‘Port ten, sir.’ And put the wheel over as the screw turned and Hercules gained steerage way. The drifter headed for the island of Certosa just over a quarter-mile away. There Smith inspected and signed for a barge loaded with shells

  and charges, saw its tarpaulin securely lashed down and the tow passed to it from Hercules. They headed away from Certosa on a course for the Porto di Lido and the open sea but once night hid them from watching eyes on Certosa, Hercules turned at Smith’s order and headed for San Elena.

  As they approached the point of the island they could see the little huddle of craft lying there. Smith ordered, ‘Stop her!’ As the way came off the drifter the MAS boats ahead of her moved, one of them hauling clear of the others and towing a barge similar to that already astern of Hercules, but narrower and a little lower in the water. Zacco’s boat was doing the towing and Smith watched as its barge was made fast astern on the first. Meanwhile Gallina’s boat slid alongside and the men that crowded her deck swarmed aboard Hercules, Menzies, Buckley, Davies and the rest.

  Menzies reported breathlessly to the wheelhouse, ‘Look’s jolly good, doesn’t she, sir?’

  Smith grunted, eyes on the tow and Zacco’s tall figure in the cockpit of the MAS.

  Menzies went on, ‘Lombardo deserves most of the credit, sir. He’s very quick with tools and full of ideas for saving time. Quick on the uptake, too.’ He paused a moment, thoughtful. ‘He seemed a bit bad-tempered at first. But after he’d been working with Buckley and Davies a bit I heard him laugh and from then on he worked like a demon.’

  Smith grinned to himself. He could imagine the exchanges between Buckley and Lombardo; the two of them ‘got along’ as Lombardo would put it. That was why Smith sent Buckley with the working party; it was asking a lot for the diminutive Menzies, junior officer or no, to impress his authority on Lombardo and also fire his zeal.

  Now Zacco’s hand was lifted and his MAS eased away from the barges, left them drifting astern of Hercules, the tow slack. Smith ordered, ‘Half ahead.’ Hercules got under way and the tow straightened, the two barges jerked forward then followed obediently one behind the other after the drifter. ‘Port ten..’

  Hercules headed for the Porto di Lido, the gateway to the sea. Zacco’s MAS surged past to take station ahead of her and the other two boats fell into line following the barges.

  Balestra appeared in the wheelhouse. Like Menzies he was breathless. He was also apprehensive. He had discarded the boiler-suit and now wore his naval uniform as a tenente. He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘This’— he jerked his head at the barges astern — ‘it means you did not get orders, sir?’

  ‘I have orders,’ Smith answered absently, ‘but not through Devereux or from your people.’

  ‘I see.’ Balestra swallowed. ‘If the guard-boat sees what we’ve done she will stop us and send us back under guard —’

  But Smith was peering out to starboard as the look-out called, ‘Yacht on the starboard bow!’ It was the Sybil, no canvas hoisted but headed seaward under the power of her auxiliary engine.

  Smith poked his head out of the wheelhouse and as the drifter hauled up to pass Sybil he saw Helen Blair standing in the well of the yacht, her cap hanging down to her ankles but its hood thrown back. He could not make out her face in the darkness but knew the straight, slender figure.

  One of the seamen was at the tiller. Smith hailed the yacht, ‘Where are you bound?’

  The girl’s voice came clear, ‘North up the coast to the rear of the line.’

  ‘I’m taking ammunition to a battery at Porto Margherita. You can come along with us.’

  ‘Very well. Thank you.’

  Smith did not think it a good idea for this girl to go to Porto Margherita with the Italians still retreating but he could not stop her and suspected he would get a dusty answer if he tried. So he might as well wring what advantage from it that he could. ‘Take station on the starboard beam of the smaller barge until we’re outside, then fall in astern of her!’

  ‘Understood.’

  Smith watched the yacht drop back until level with the second and smaller barge. There Sybil stayed, keeping easy station. With Hercules at half ahead they were only making four knots, little faster than a walking pace. He stepped back into the wheelhouse. Zacco’s boat was now entering the narrow neck between the two arms of the Porto di Lido and Hercules followed close astern of her. Ahead of them and to starboard was anchored the guard-boat, an old torpedo-boat. A few muffled figures stood on the wing of her bridge and Smith heard faintly the hails exchanged between the guard-boat and Zacco in the MAS. He could not make out the words and would not have understood them if he did, but he knew Zacco was answering that Hercules was bound for Porto Margherita with ammunition.

  The MAS was past. Now the guard-boat lay abeam of the drifter and Smith was aware of the scrutiny Hercules was receiving from the guard-boat. That was all right. But now for it…

  He pushed out of the door at the back of the wheelhouse and peered astern past the funnel. He saw the first barge, loaded with ammunition, pass the torpedo-boat. Then almost lost in the darkness, the second barge, with the yacht alongside it and partly screening it. On the guard-boat they were waving; recognising the Contessa, and he saw her lift a hand. Then yacht and barge were past and he felt Hercules lift to the open sea. That sea would make short work of the flimsy timber and canvas Lombardo and the others erected around the sides of Balestra’s Flying-Fish to make her look a little more like a barge, but that did not matter now. The disguise had worked for long enough.

  He ordered, ‘Port five... Steer six-oh degrees.’

  Balestra let out a sigh and shot at Smith a glance that held awed respect and more than a tinge of worry. There would be hell to pay over this.

  Davies sat at the mess table in the cramped quarters he shared with the rest of the crew of Hercules’s six-inch gun. The mess was sixteen feet long by fourteen, narrowing towards the stern to eight feet. The deck trembled with the steady beat of the propeller shaft turning right below them. Ten of them lived in that crowded
mess, littered with sea boots and festooned with oilskins, and now Buckley had come to join them. A leather cushioned bench ran like a horseshoe around the table and below the bunks set one above the other. Buckley would sleep on the bench. Now he sat by Davies and they sipped from mugs of stewed tea turned from black to khaki by a glutinous spoonful of condensed milk.

  Davies said thoughtfully, ‘This feller Smith — does he do this sort of thing a lot?’

  ‘What sort o’ thing?’

  ‘Taking a boat without orders and smuggling her past the guard-boat.’

  ‘He doesn’t make a habit of it, no.’ Buckley sipped tea. ‘But he pinched a monitor not long ago.’

  ‘Gerraway! Where?’

  ‘Out o’ Dunkerque Roads. Part of the Dover Patrol. Supposed to be laid up in the dockyard, she was.’

  Davies peered at him. ‘Is that a fact?’ And when Buckley nodded: ‘What happened?’

  ‘The monitor got shot to hell. Smith should ha’ been decorated but he wasn’t.’

  ‘Ah!’ Now Davies remembered. ‘That monitor.’ And that Smith. ‘He’ll bear watching.’

  Buckley said cheerfully, ‘I do it all the time. The bastard’s putting years on me.’

  ‘Good bloke?’

  ‘The best.’

  Davies asked, ‘How do you reckon this lot’ll finish up?’

  Buckley wasn’t cheerful now. ‘God knows.’ He jerked his head at the stern and the barges out there in the night. ‘Whether that contraption works or not, there’ll be skin an’ hair flying. Getting in will be bad enough. But getting out?’

  They sat in thoughtful silence as Hercules plodded northward.

  7. The Marines

  It was midnight when they closed the shore in pitch darkness, flurries of rain driving in on the wind. By dead reckoning they were off Porto San Margherita and Pietro Zacco confirmed this when he brought his MAS alongside. Hercules anchored because there was little more than a fathom of water at Porto San Margherita and she would have taken the ground if she tried to enter. The barges were hauled up alongside the drifter and Davies and his men, Balestra and his engineer, Enzo, climbed aboard the Flying-Fish, then the tow was shifted to Zacco’s MAS and he turned his boat’s head towards the shore. Smith and Buckley went with him.

  Smith looked over his shoulder and saw the yacht Sybil coming in astern of the barges, then he faced forward. The mouth of the Livenza river was opening ahead of them and Porto San Margherita was a scattering of houses along its banks. South of it was marsh while a mile or so north lay the town of Caorle. And further to the north was the front line, marked by flashes of gunfire. The sound that had been a murmur when they left Venice was now a steady rumbling and it was close here. Smith thought uneasily that it was closer than it should be. The Tagliamento river where the Italians were thought to be holding a line was ten miles north of here but the nearest guns he could see firing were not ten miles distant. Their flashes split the black sky little more than a mile away beyond the town. And they were not heavy artillery with a deep solid thump! of discharge: the reports that came back to him were more like the crack! of a field battery. Those guns would not be engaging a distant target. The enemy they fired on would only be five or six thousand yards away at the most.

  The MAS was entering the mouth of the river. Here it was a hundred yards wide between rocky banks but ahead of them it narrowed. About three hundred yards inland they made out a jetty on the southern shore, a torch blinked at them and Zacco turned the boat’s head towards it. The jetty was a ramshackle timber affair with the smell of fish hanging about it. A crowd of men waited there, soldiers. One of them shone the torch on himself and Smith saw it lighting the insignia of a lieutenant on a black and yellow border. Zacco said, ‘The Collar — he is artillery. He is our man.’

  He ran the MAS in alongside the jetty and the seaman standing on the counter slipped the tow and tossed it up to the waiting soldiers. They tailed on to it, hauled the first barge in alongside the jetty and jumped down into it. The crew of Helen Blair’s yacht were making fast expertly on the far side of the jetty.

  The MAS was secured, and Zacco climbed ashore. The gunner subaltern was plastered with mud to above his knees and when he shifted position on the creaking boards of the jetty his boots squelched wetly. Zacco spoke to him, listened to his rapid answer, then turned to Smith. ‘He is in charge of the unloading. The rest of the party are coming now. He says all must be done before the light comes.’

  Smith said, ‘Tell him that’s what we want, to be out of here before dawn.’

  Zacco interpreted and the subaltern nodded. More soldiers were clumping out along the jetty and an ammunition wagon was backing on to it, the drivers at the horses’ heads, urging them. The subaltern shouted hoarsely and more of his men jumped down into the barge, hauled back the tarpaulin cover and the unloading started.

  Smith and Zacco went back along the jetty and found the second ‘barge’, the Flying-Fish, secured there, Davies and his men already at work stripping off the battered canvas and timber of its disguise. Balestra and Enzo, his engineer, were moving about the boat together, inspecting it closely in the light of a torch. Balestra came to stand below Smith and reported happily, ‘Not a scratch! Fine! But — the torpedo mountings are ready, but where are the torpedoes?’

  Smith, ‘Take them from Zacco’s boat. That is why I brought you in. You’ll find it easier to take those torpedoes aboard here than outside in a seaway.’

  Balestra nodded vigorously. ‘Good!’ he laughed out of relief that the Flying-Fish was all right, out of tension at the thought of what lay ahead. ‘Trieste, here we come!’ Then: ‘Ah! Contessa!’

  Smith turned to find Helen Blair at his side in the rain, staring open-mouthed at the Flying-Fish. She asked, incredulously, ‘Isn’t it a barge? What is it?’

  Balestra laughed again. ‘A grasshopper! Or a flying-fish!’ Helen Blair shook her head, bewildered. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  Smith answered, ‘Very few people have.’

  She shook her head again, then looked at him. ‘Anyway, I came to ask if you’d like a cup of coffee.’

  Smith hesitated, but only for a moment. He could do nothing until the barge was unloaded and that would be a matter of hours. ‘Please.’

  He followed her slim figure along the jetty past the men labouring at humping the boxes of charges out of the lighter and into the wagon. It was a different wagon from five minutes before: the drivers holding the horses’ heads, soothing, were different. So one wagon load had gone already — but there would need to be many more. That was the advantage of supply by sea: this one barge’s cargo, carried overland, would have taken a small convoy of wagons many hours to haul laboriously up to this position.

  The men turned to greet Helen Blair as she passed. ‘Hey! Contessa!’ But it was said with affection and respect and she smiled at them.

  They came to the yacht and Smith climbed down after the girl into the well where the two Swiss stood up to greet her — and him — cordially, ‘Kapitan!’

  They looked hefty, tough, open-faced sailormen, he could see that despite the darkness as they stood close in the well, saw them smile a welcome. He answered. ‘Good evening.’ The courtesies sounded incongruous to him with the men above stumbling in the darkness as they transferred the cargo of death from barge to wagon, taking it one stage nearer its killing mission, where the guns fired to the north and lit the sky.

  Helen Blair stooped and entered the cabin and he followed her, stood close behind her, his body touching hers in the darkness. Then he closed the door and she switched the light on. The cabin was tiny, even for such a small vessel as this; he had thought it stretched farther forward. There was a small stove by the door with a huge kettle hissing on top of it, a table let down on chains from the forward bulkhead, benches with leather cushions either side of it. He and the girl were standing crouched under the low deckhead. Now she slipped around the table to sit on one of the benches and indicated the op
posite one. ‘Please. Make yourself as comfortable as you can. I think I warned you that it was cramped aboard.’

  Two white enamel mugs stood on the table with an iron coffee-pot and she poured the coffee, steaming, added milk from a punctured tin, spooned in sugar. Smith watched her and thought that she looked at home. That surprised him. Although Zacco had told him how this girl employed herself he had not been able to visualise the elegant beauty in these surroundings, but she fitted in. He saw now that she wore the cloak over a fashionable dress and the cloak itself looked expensive, was lined with a rose-coloured silk. The hood of it was thrown back and the piled hair was neat and shining in the light from the lamp above. Her face had a flush to it. He realised that the flush was rising because he was staring at her.

  He looked down and muttered, ‘Thank you,’ picked up the mug and sipped at the coffee, eyes on the table but he could still see her hands, slender fingers clasped round her coffee.

  She said into the silence, ‘I’ll make a big pot of coffee soon and take it to the men working up there.’

  ‘Good idea.’ He raised his eyes and saw that she was looking down now. He thought it would be good to sail this yacht with her, just the two of them. But in the silence of the cabin he could hear the clumping of boots on the jetty and the distant slamming of guns.

  He wished to God this war was over.

  Trieste. Salzburg. The booms and the dark coldness of the night hiding the waiting enemy...

  He asked her, ‘Why do you do this?’

  Helen Blair shrugged, then explained simply, dispassionately at first, then with growing emotion. ‘Because I can and I want to. I can because I am fairly well off. I was left some property and investments in Argentina. Before the war I spent several long holidays with an aunt in the south of Italy and that’s how I learnt my Italian. I was there when the war started but then I went back to England. Early in 1915 I became engaged to a second-lieutenant in an infantry battalion and soon afterwards he was sent to the Dardanelles. I came out to Italy again thinking he might be able to get a few days of leave, that we might see each other. It was a silly idea, I was very young, but...anyway.’