Seek Out and Destroy (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  The skipper looked them over and Smith saw his lips moving as he counted. Then he nodded; ‘Ja.’ Smith pushed him towards his men, already climbing down into the boat. ‘Auf wiedersehen.’

  He turned to see the two torpedomen, now empty-handed. Udina held up one hand with the fingers spread, but then folded down the thumb. ‘Quattro. Four minutes.’

  Smith smiled at them. ‘Buono!’ He leaned over the rail and saw the tug’s boat pulling away from her side with her crew aboard, the skipper in the sternsheets. Gallina’s face, square, calm, looked up at him from the after cockpit of the MAS. Smith said, ‘Into the harbour.’ He sketched in the air the course Gallina should take around the tug and through the gate.

  The MAS skipper nodded: ‘Si, signore!’ His boat cast off, went astern then turned, moved ahead, slid across the bow of the tug and turned again towards the open gate.

  Buckley said, ‘All gone. Just us left, sir. I reckon no more ‘n three minutes.’

  They climbed down into the cockpit of Zacco’s boat, bow and stern cast off and the boat moved ahead, still running on the electric motors. Smith said, ‘Start the main engines! Half ahead!’ There was no point in further stealth: the charges had only two minutes to detonation. As if to emphasise his order a searchlight’s beam poked out from the northern shore, fingered along the mole then shifted jerkily across the harbour mouth and the gate, came on the tug and halted there some seconds. The engines of the MAS fired and it surged forward under their power as the searchlight’s beam shifted on from the tug and traversed the gap in the gate they had just left.

  ‘Port ten! Steady!’ The boat turned to run northward round the end of the next boom, about two hundred yards inside the gate. They passed Pagani and then Gallina, their boats lying with idling engines, waiting for Zacco to take the lead. As he passed they swung into line astern.

  There was a muffled thump! from the port quarter, then another. Smith spun round and made out the tug against the lighter darkness of the gap between the moles, saw her lie over in the water, settling. With two holes blasted in her bottom she would sink in minutes. The gate was wedged open just enough. There was room for an MAS boat to pass but nothing larger.

  They were through. The wolves were loose in the fold.

  *

  Balestra watched as the seaman aboard the old sailing ship straightened and took one last drag at his cigarette. The glow lit his face, the nose and eyes, the fringing beard, then he flicked the stub over the side into the sea and walked away aft.

  At last they could move. Not daring to use the engine, they shoved away from the boom. The cold had got into their bones as they waited and now they had to fight not only the current but stiffness and lassitude, a numbness they knew was a creeping death. They fought it and swam around the sailing ship, pushing Seahorse between them. It took them long minutes. As they rounded her stern they saw a rowing-boat lying there, tugging gently at the line that secured it against the pull of the current. Then Lombardo pointed and Balestra saw a ship ahead of them and little more than a cable’s length away. She was bows-on to them, big: a dreadnought battleship, smoke streaming from her funnels. A boat was rowing out from her towards the buoy to which she was moored. Balestra looked beyond her. The sky was paling above the mountains that ringed the bay and against that first distant light he could see smoke rising all the way up the harbour from the ships lying there but still hidden by the night.

  He remembered what Smith had told him, that he believed the fleet would soon sail to Cattaro.

  The fleet had steam up now and the ship ahead of them looked to be preparing to slip and get under way. He had to make a decision and quickly. It was a bitter decision but he faced it. They could not reach Salzburg where she lay far up the harbour before it was broad day and in the light they could not escape detection. And if the fleet were putting to sea then his task would be hopeless. Seahorse with her speed of four knots could not get near a ship under way, let alone lie alongside, her and attach the limpet mines.

  Ilk said, ‘I’m starting the engine. We’ll take this one.’

  Lombardo nodded and Balestra reached out over the back of Seahorse. Lombardo gripped his outstretched hand, grinned and released it.

  The engine throbbed softly and Seahorse moved forward. They guided her, circling, away from the boat that was heading towards the buoy, then turned and made for the ship’s starboard side. Now they saw she was moored fore and aft, there was another shadow of a boat astern of her, hooking on to the buoy there. As they crept in the black bulk of her grew and Lombardo could see men moving about her deck, the anchor party on the foc’s’le, figures high on the bridge of her. Then Seahorse was right under the black wall of her side, Balestra stopped the engine and Seahorse bumped gently against her target.

  Together they unclamped the two charges. Each weighed 170 kilograms but because of air compartments they had buoyancy and were easy enough to handle in the water. They set the charges against the hull, working with stiff, fumbling fingers. There was no time to swim below the ship and plant them on her bottom. They felt the magnetic leeches bite on the steel and Balestra set the time fuses. Ten minutes. They edged Seahorse away and saw the charges sink slowly to hang at the ends of their lines — 340 kilograms of TNT.

  Ten minutes, and the seconds already ticking away.

  There was movement all over the mooring, shouted commands, engines rumbling, the clash of steel hawsers. Balestra started the engine and they guided Seahorse away from the ship’s side. His original plan had been to head for the shore once the mission was accomplished and then try to escape across country. But the shore was half a mile away and across the current; they would not reach it before daylight. Nor could they reach the open sea. He turned Seahorse back the way they had come.

  As the old sailing ship lifted out of the night again, a squat minesweeper steamed past the battleship they had just left and turned to follow the channel through the booms. She was followed by six more in quick succession and then by a destroyer that was the leader of a flotilla in line ahead.

  At that instant a searchlight beam swept out from the northern shore and along the mole, halted there. The rowing-boat bobbing at the stern of the sailing ship was close. Balestra stopped the engine of Seahorse, ran a caressing hand along her back, then opened the valve underneath her. Lombardo patted her. They swam away towards the boat, leaving Seahorse sinking as the sea flooded in through the open valve.

  They climbed in clumsily over the stern of the boat and Lombardo used his knife to cut her mooring. The boat drifted away from the ship and as they got out the oars there came the thump-thump of double muffled explosions. Balestra muttered, ‘Not ours. What the hell... that was towards the gate!’

  Lombardo growled. ‘How long now before they blow?’

  Balestra chewed his lip. ‘Too long already.’ They bent and pulled at the oars with what strength they had left, weak, splashing strokes, and stared back at the dreadnought bulking black against the faint dawn light under her funnel smoke.

  Lombardo ground out, ‘Those Goddam charges —’

  The flash seared their eyes and the blast shoved at them. The explosion was a thunderclap.

  *

  Smith turned away from the sinking tug and the wandering beam of the searchlight, and faced forward. Suddenly a flash lit the sky. Then the deep roar of the explosion came rolling out at them from somewhere ahead in the harbour.

  Zacco shouted, ‘Balestra!’ Smith nodded. Zacco was laughing and Smith grinned at him. It was incredible, but — ‘He’s done it! Not Salzburg, though — I think that was too close.’

  Zacco nodded reluctant agreement. That flash and explosion were a bare half-mile away and Salzburg lay far up the harbour, a mile or more further inside.

  They were steering due north and working up speed, the spray beginning to fly from the bow. Their eyes were still blinded by the flash so that when the other ships appeared they were already close off the starboard bow. They were minesweepers, a l
ine of them, and headed for the gate.

  The three MAS boats swept safely by them and on. Smith’s eyes were regaining their night vision and he used his glasses. Fine on the port bow was the hump of Cristo Point and off the starboard bow the deep indentation of the bay of Val Maggiore. Smith shouted above the engine’s rumble, ‘Boom should be to starboard! Look out for it!’

  But Buckley yelled, ‘Ship! Starboard bow!’

  Smith’s head jerked round. She was a quarter-mile away and looked like a destroyer, her head coming round to point at the MAS even while he watched.

  Another destroyer astern of her was still headed north. The tug had started to open the gate to let these ships out, the minesweepers going ahead of them to sweep up any mines laid in the night. The leading destroyer was turning around the northern end of the first boom, the other still coming up the Channel between the first and second booms. ‘Full ahead!’ No need now to feel his way into harbour, watching out for the booms. The destroyers were showing him the way.

  The rumble of the engines became a roar and the stern dug in deeper, the spray flew higher from the bow. Now destroyer and MAS were on a course to meet head-on, the gap of sea between them shrinking with every second. The destroyer’s bow lifted above them but Zacco’s touch on the wheel sent the MAS tearing down past the destroyer’s starboard side, leaping and bucking as they rode her bow wave. Smith snatched a glance astern and saw the other two boats, Gallina’s close astern and Pagani’s close on him. He turned forward. They were past the destroyer and bouncing through her wake, her smoke rolling down and around them. There was the second coming up and astern of her a third, a fourth — a flotilla in a long line and coming up the channel between the first and second booms. Smith pointed and Zacco was expecting it and turned the MAS to starboard to run down that channel and past the flotilla.

  Smith shouted at Buckley, ‘Look out for a boom to port!’

  ‘— Sir!’

  A fire was blazing inside the harbour but Smith had no time for that. The three boats went racing down the starboard side of the flotilla, close enough for them to see men on the decks of the destroyers, the pale smudges of their faces. Too close to be fired on by the destroyers’ main armaments, below their lowest angle of depression, but machine-guns were flaming above them and tracer sliding in flat arcs through the night. None came near them. Ship after ship lifted up at them, lurched by as they bucketed past on the churned and turbulent sea, and was left astern. Zacco twisted the wheel and the MAS swerved to starboard then straightened. They shot past a boat, two men at the oars, black shapes in the darkness. Buckley, startled, burst out incredulously, ‘What the hell are they doin’ here? Fishing?’

  Smith shook his head, dismissing them, and stared into the darkness over the bow. One more destroyer ahead and fine on the starboard bow but leaping up at them, the MAS boats running at their full speed of twenty-five knots now. Off to port was another vessel, masts and spars standing out against the glare of the fire beyond.

  Buckley shouted, ‘Ship! Port bow! — An’ I think I see the boom out there, sir!’

  So did Smith and that was an old sailing ship anchored on guard at the end of it. The gap between her and the destroyer was barely fifty yards. The boats tore through it and Smith shouted, ‘Hard aport!... Meet her!... Steer that!’

  They were through, the last of the booms left astern and the harbour open before them for all its long length. Wolves might be loose in the fold, but the sheep were very big, very dangerous. There was one ahead of them now. Smith and Zacco shouted together: ‘Balestra!’ No doubt this was his work. The ship was a dreadnought battleship, a monster of twenty thousand tons of armour plate and huge 14-inch guns, lying steeply over on her starboard side, wreathed in smoke. A fire burned amidships, lighting her up, and there was an irregular thumping as ammunition exploded aboard her. There were boats in the water, clustered around her side, but she could lower no more because she lay too far over. Men were sliding down her side and leaping into the sea, tiny figures that became a scattering of black dots on the surface of the water under the yellow light of the flames. Balestra had more than proved his point — two brave men and one tiny craft had accomplished all this.

  They were leaving the dreadnought behind but another was anchored astern of her. Smoke poured from the funnels of this one also. Smith, straining his eyes against the darkness, made out a third ship further ahead of him and she too had steam up.

  The mutineers’ information had been correct. The entire fleet was preparing to put to sea. He had been justified in not delaying. If he had waited just one more day his chance would have been gone forever.

  He saw the white faces of the torpedoman and his assistant in the forward cockpit. He shouted, ‘Torpedoes!’

  Zacco’s bass bellow translated the order. Udina and the seaman climbed out of the forward cockpit onto the deck between the two torpedoes where they lay in their clamps. The men stood wide-legged, bracing themselves against the pitching of the boat and hauled on the tackles. The starboard torpedo lifted from the deck, swung over and lowered to hang in its three pincer-like clamps outside the hull and above the foaming sea. Seconds later the port torpedo had been swung out. Smith peered astern, saw through the spray that Gallina and Pagani had copied the evolution and their torpedoes were out and ready.

  The line of battleships at anchor or moored stretched for a mile, deep into the harbour. The MAS boats passed them one by one, six of them, each first appearing as a vague black mass that then sharpened rapidly and grew into a floating fortress, with big guns, its towering superstructure crowned by the control-top. The boats were coming under fire now from the secondary armament of the dreadnoughts, five-inch guns or smaller, long tongues of flame seeming to lick out right overhead, but they were passing too close and too fast. The shells burst over or astern.

  The sixth and last battleship slid up and past like a great black shadow. Smith picked up the signal-lamp. The harbour before him was bounded by the circling mountains and the light behind them was, growing. Already there was a greyness to the night. Off the starboard bow stood Fort Max on its hill. To port lay the island of San Andrea while fine on the port bow and a mile away was the dockyard.

  If the reconnaissance photographs were correct, he knew they must be close to Salzburg. His head turned, searching for her, his hand gripping the signal-lamp. Buckley shouted, ‘Forty on the starboard bow!’

  Smith stared, picked out the ship, big and vague in the last of the night half a mile away. He pointed her out to Zacco then turned and blinked the lamp once at the boats astern, the signal for a turn to starboard. He saw the answering lights wink from them and shouted at Zacco, ‘Now!’ He blinked the light again, the executive signal, as Zacco spun the wheel and the three boats skidded around as one and headed for the ship.

  The range closed rapidly as they went into the torpedo attack at full speed. Smith glanced across and made out the solid, square figure of Gallina rock steady at the wheel of his boat. Beyond him was Pagani but hidden by the spray hurled up by Gallina’s boat. Smith faced forward again. Gallina gave a man confidence. He’d follow you to hell and bring you back. He stared at the ship, saw the wink of flame on her, a pinpoint that became a rash along her hull. Seconds later the shells shrieked overhead or burst far ahead of them hurling up a tower of water. Smith stared at the ship, eyes narrowed against the bursting spray, she was a big cruiser, but — ‘It’s not her!’ And: ‘Hard aport!’

  He blinked the signal-lamp twice at the other boats, the signal to turn to port, blinked it again then screwed his eyes shut as a shell burst on Gallina’s boat. He opened them as the MAS heeled under his feet in the tight turn but he was blinded for some seconds and when his night sight returned they were tearing on through the darkness, deeper into the harbour and it was Pagani’s boat that followed in their wake.

  He shouted at Pietro Zacco, ‘Gallina?’

  The lieutenant shook his head, ‘All gone!’

  Buckley said, ‘W
hen I looked round there was just bits of her falling into the sea.’

  This was where the aerial photographs had shown Salzburg to be lying but she was gone now, as if spirited away.

  *

  The girl still lay on the bunk in the tiny cabin of Hercules as she had passed the night, wide-eyed and listening, afraid. She thought that this had been his cabin when he had slept aboard. Now it was her cell, a lock on the door and a sentry outside it. She had no lamp, had refused it, and so they’d agreed not to screw the deadlight down over the scuttle. She wanted to see the night outside.

  The flicker of gunfire jerked her from the bunk to stand peering out of the scuttle. She could not hear the guns because of the steady beat of the drifter’s engines but she could see the distant flashes.

  He would be out there, in the midst of them.

  She hammered on the door and the sentry shouted for Menzies. He told her unhappily, ‘No news, I’m afraid. Still, no news is —’

  She asked, ‘Are they late?’

  ‘Well, they can’t run these things like a train timetable, you know.’ He was trying to cheer her but she turned from him and he said awkwardly, ‘As soon as I have any news I’ll do anything I can...’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Menzies climbed to the wheelhouse. Gunfire lit the horizon and he heard the distant rumble of it as he ran up the ladder. In the wheelhouse he said, ‘She wanted news.’

  Fred Archbold muttered, ‘Who doesn’t?’ Then he added, ‘I think we ought to give her a breath of fresh air when it gets light.’

  ‘She’s worried.’ Menzies stared at Archbold. ‘Not about herself, though she should be.’ He did not want to think about what lay ahead for the girl locked below. He looked towards the lightening on the horizon. ‘Something’s gone wrong. They’re under fire.’ He and Archbold had their orders, to patrol and wait for the return of the boats but to leave at first light, without them if necessary. Tamely wait for dawn and then run for home? The boats were in trouble but what could Hercules do? She was not a fighting ship, could do nothing against the fleet in Pola or its defences. And the orders were given by Smith, who was not a man to be disobeyed.